In his new memoir, former President George W. Bush says that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) let electoral politics influence his advice about the Iraq war in 2006. Cincinnati's CityBeat has the exchange from Bush's memoir: "In September 2006, with the midterm elections approaching, my friend Mitch McConnell came to the Oval Office. The senior senator from Kentucky and Republican whip had asked to see me alone. Mitch has a sharp...
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Currency Rap, or “your IR youtube video du jour”
Drip, drip, drip
I do not own a copy of the George W. Bush memoirs, but I have been following the bits and pieces that appear in my newspaper. I'm going to try to blog about a few of the most important items, especially as they pertain to my past blogging and/or research interests.For example, the former President confirms that Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2002. This has long been a matter of discussion on the Duck.Even more...
The NYT op-ed page remains a fact-free zone
Even if John Bolton's and John Yoo's latest missive against New START ratification had been scrawled in crayon on the back of a cardboard box, it still would have been a waste of precious resources.Rather than explain why, I'll just outsource to Fred Kaplan.
Undefended Buildings
I have been meaning for a few days to respond to this query on the law of land warfare posted recently at La Riposte: Article 25 of the Hague Convention on the Law of Land Warfare states “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited” and violation of this article is listed as a War Crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Do...
Priority check, eh?
First they came for the icebergs...So let me get this straight - Canada is going to close down 1/5 of its African embassies, but we're worried about terrorism in the Arctic where terrorists might attack our.... igloos? Frozen piles of rocks? Radicalize our polar bears? Really, I'm all for patrolling the place but I can't think that Tuktoyaktuk is really that high on the al Qaida radar. Rather, I'm pretty sure that this is the reason why we as a...
Any progress in the study of international security?
Not so much, argues Phil Arena, whose epistemological leanings are likely very far from my own (via John Sides).I'm inclined to agree; I also remain unclear if any of the other major subfields of International Relations (IR) can point to the existence of significant settled findings, whether correlative or causal. This matters, insofar as (some of the) major arguments for demarcating non-behavioral work from "political science" rest upon the...
An Interesting Pattern in the Wikileaks Data
I have recently read a book entitled Inventing Collateral Damage in which the authors argue, among other things, that that concept of collateral damage was created for and in fact serves the purpose of allowing military officials to shrug off or gloss over the civilians they are indifferently killing in high-tech wars. I found this rather interesting argument poorly substantiated in the book for reasons I will outline at greater length in a...
I’m not sure what to say….
A MarkZist Manifesto. Or Not.
Me: “Look, here’s ‘me and Rob Farley’.”Stu: “Who’s Rob Farley?”Me: “Dude. My co-blogger; also, he’s coming to dinner next Wednesday after his guest lecture on battleships in my human security class. That’s not the point. Look, look this is ‘our’ Facebook page.”Stu: “You mean the Lawyers, Guns and Money page? I’ve visited it once or twice.”Me: “Not the LGM page. See? Look."Stu: “Whoa. How did you do that?”Me: “I didn’t do that; Facebook did it...
Guy Fawkes Night: Fireworks, but does torture?
England doesn’t really have a national holiday. Sure there is St. George’s Day – but I would have to actually check Wikipedia to know when it is. The only sign is usually some white flags with a red cross outside of various pubs. It’s a bit of a shame, really, but that’s a post for another time. Fireworks are usually left to 5 November – Guy Fawkes Night (aka Bonfire night… leave it to the English to put a firework night in the middle of rainy,...
Structural explanations are not always sexy or gratifying, but they typically explain a lot
In the days after the US midterm elections cable news outlets, radio programs, political pundits, newspapers, and activists on both sides of the ideological spectrum have exerted a great deal of blood and sweat to explain the nationwide drubbing of the Democrats. Democrats are predictably covering their behinds—conceding voter anger, but cautioning that the country has not lurched to the right in just two years. Republicans are claiming...