The New York Times is reporting that ISAF troops are making progress in Kandahar. Credit for progress is given equally to the surge in troops and a new mobile rocket which has "pinpoint accuracy -- like a small cruise missile." While military commanders are cautious, Western and Afghan civilians are saying that Taliban losses have "sapped the momentum the insurgency had in the area."As I am skeptical of some of the spin and zombie reporting...
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Too many bodies? Communicating the population question
The question of human over-population of our planet seems to resurface every few decades, driven by fears that there are too many people to feed, clothe and shelter, or that the sheer volume of human beings working, travelling and polluting is causing environmental damage. But the persuasiveness of such claims is weakened empirically and normatively. In terms of facts, it does not help the over-population claimants that every time the...
The Individual Utility of Incompetence
There are many reasons why organizations (government, businesses, etc) grow dysfunctional and stagnant. One major reason lies with the promotion and retention of less capable workers. There have been a number of studies that explored this dynamic (for example, The Peter Principle, which theorizes that people are promoted as long as they are competent, which means at some point they reach a position of incompetence). In general, though, the...
Happy 75th Anniversary to the Gallup Poll
"A unique anniversary is upon us. Seventy-five years ago today -- Oct. 20, 1935 -- the Gallup Poll published its first official release of public opinion data.Here we are three-quarters of a century later, still working to fulfill the mission laid out in that first release: providing scientific, nonpartisan assessment of American public opinion.The subject of that first release? Well, given the fact that 1935 was smack dab in the middle of the...
What do you call an aircraft carrier with no aircraft? HMS Queen Elizabeth.
The London School of Economics runs a blog on British politics to which I contribute occasionally; this week I’ve posted on the British Government’s defence review, and I thought I’d share this with the Duck readership. A little bit of context: the new British government is simultaneously engaging in developing a National Security Strategy, while conducting a Comprehensive Spending Review and a Defence Review. The previous government made a...
James Ron: IR Profs Should Teach Religious Fluency
Here is a fabulous interview on Canadian TV with Professor James Ron of Carleton University. Ron's key argument is that we are not giving our students a sufficient education if they leave our classes fluent in human rights discourse but not in the nuts and bolts of the world's leading religions. A real "aha" moment for me as a teacher - sure, I've always tried to make sure they know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a or the difference...
The Case Against the Case Against Blast Weapons II: Stigma and banning on intent vs effect (and a response to Charli Carpenter)
The debate that my original post has sparked has been really interesting. Charli Carpenter has written a thoughtful and excellent response to my first post, and even Discourse on Explosive Weapons (DEW) - part of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) has been paying attention. Happily, they seem to welcome this debate and it is in this spirit that I shall continue to engage on the issue.I would like to stress that by...
Between Scylla and Charybdis
James Traub reminds the Atlantic Community not to freak out over Turkey's "Neo-Ottoman foreign policy."It's a caricature to say that Turkey has chosen the Middle East, or Islam, over the West. Turkey's aspiration for full membership in the club of the West, including the European Union, is still a driving force. But Turkey aspires to many things, and some may contradict each other. The country wants to be a regional power in a region deeply...
Plagiarism and Frank Fischer
A fascinating, if somewhat depressing, article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (via Andrew Gellman) discusses recent accusations of plagiarism against Rutgers-Newark political scientist Frank Fischer by (1) an angry graduate student from the University of Zagreb and (2) Alan Sokal of science-wars fame.The account begins with a political-science graduate student at the University of Zagreb, in Croatia, named Kresimir Petkovic. Last year Mr....
The Drone and the Cyborg
The drone and the cyborg were born near the dawn of the nuclear age (i.e. the Vergeltungswaffen and the Kamikaze), and appeared in several previous conflicts, but they did not simultaneously reshape the dynamics of war until after 2001.The armed drone represents a displaced subjectivity that eludes the laws of war and Eurocentric/ anthropocentric notions of sovereignty. The soldier operating the drone spies, hunts, and kills from thousands of...
When Myths Meet Reality in Iraq and Afghanistan
What are America’s prospects in Afghanistan? Two articles from The New York Times today throw light on the question. In Afghanistan, the Exit Plan Starts With ‘If’:[America’s Afghanistan] strategy looks a lot like the one that brought General Petraeus success in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. With Iraq engulfed in apocalyptic violence, American field commanders reached out to nationalist-minded guerrilla leaders and found many of them exhausted by war...
What’s Intriguingly Not Getting Discussed at ISSS/ISAC…
... but is getting discussed at Women's Day? (Go figure.) Alex Wendt would be horrified but unsurprised.[cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money}