Recent developments in Europe, and especially the ongoing meltdown in Ireland, should force political economists to reevaluate how well their theories can explain the perpetuation of current international regimes. The past twenty years of IPE theorizing has been exceptionally exciting and productive, but as Kathleen McNamara and others have argued the tendency toward intellectual monoculture may have left the discipline without a toolkit for...
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Mega-Leaks: Right Idea, Wrong Strategy
I've been asked over the past week to comment on Wikileaks in the press, primarily to answer the question "is Wikileaks good or bad?" It may seem like a silly way to frame the debate (and I'm grateful to Vikash especially for trying to move the debate forward) but that's where the media cycle remains. And it's a fair question for the media to be trying to sort out: the Wikileaks site (currently down) claims that “publishing improves...
Will transparency take a hit?
I really like the posts from Vikash and from Chris and at the risk of a bit of overkill on the topic (and upsetting Bill's stomach further), I'll add one more angle. This is from my monthly column at Current Intelligence:...aside from a small cadre of foreign policy scholars, a few foreign national intelligence services, and Jon Stewart, I’m not sure who benefits from this release. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s stated intent for the...
The Wikileaks Rap
In keeping with the Duck tradition of reducing IR issues to rap videos...(It is worth sticking around until 4:55 for the cameo...)From The Juicemedia and Mother Jones
Let’s whack them
Got to love the neocons. They are outraged by Wikileaks and by the Obama administration's response. William Kristol challenges President Obama with a series of questions: Why not use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are? Why can't we disrupt and destroy WikiLeaks in both cyberspace and physical space, to the extent possible? Why can't we warn others of repercussions from...
Why Wikileaks Matters
The initial release of a mere 291 out of 251,287 diplomatic cables has generated a predictable buzz on the blogosphere and established media outlets. Pundits have quickly maneuvered into standard structural roles in relation to the content of the leaked documents: the ho-hum nothing-to-see-here-move-it-along dismisser, the passionate defender, the morally outraged diplomat, etc. What seems to be missing is an analysis of this phenomenon as a...
2011 Grawemeyer winner
Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves, has won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The prize is worth $100,000 this year.The press release describes the award-winning ideas from Ending Slavery, the most recent book published by Bales with University of California Press:In the book, Bales outlines steps to end the enslavement of some 27 million people worldwide. Slavery and human trafficking are tightly interwoven into...
American Foreign Policy research and Wikileaks
There may not be a whole lot of diplomatic shockers in Sunday's release, but this really has the potential to be a game changer for American foreign policy research over the next several years. I’m still not convinced we’ll actually see the full set of 250,000+ documents, but if we do, it will be big.Most of American foreign policy scholarship evolves in subsequent waves over the course of 30 years or so. The first wave usually relies on press...
Riverdance your way through through the Irish Bailout in two minutes: Taiwan animation style!
From NMA – those who brought you the Tiger Woods Video, and the USA-China Currency Crisis Rap Battle video comes the Ireland Bailout video (which I can't make fit in the frame! Edit: Fixed!)As an IR blogger with an interest in econ, you might be interested in this animated take on Ireland's current state of financial distress. I can't vouch that a leprechaun really charged into Biffo's office as he was taking in a Guiness, but we tried our...
Feminist IR 101, Post #2….vocabularies for talking about sex/gender hierarchies
In the last post, I discussed gender as a system of symbolic meanings. People understood to be "men" are often expected to be "masculine" and associated with masculinity/ies; while people understood to be "women" are expected to be feminine, and associated with femininity/ies. Traits associated with masculinities and femininities are often also transposed onto ideas, concepts, and things, in everyday life and in global politics. Masculinities...
Wikileaks and the global public interest
A couple of observations on the Wikileaks diplomatic info-dump as seen from London. First, European governments have been unanimous in their condemnation of Wikileaks, disgraceful undermining of diplomacy etc etc. But what do they really think? I’m sure they will be philosophical about the content of the US cables. These are the sort of assessments that every diplomat makes, and is supposed to make; I would bet a year’s salary that the sort of...
“Diplomatic Shockers”
Wow. Iran's neighbors are threatened by its rise! Many governments think Pakistan may not be able to secure its nuclear arsenal! The US attempts to use its leverage with its allies to achieve its political objectives! China has engaged in a cyber-campaign against Google and other American companies! Yemen approves of US' targeted killings on its soil (but claims otherwise to quell domestic opposition)! Also, governments routinely spy on United...