I'm writing you from the ISSS/ISAC conference in Providence, RI, the yearly guns 'n' bombs gala thrown jointly by the Security Studies section of ISA and the International Security and Arms Control section of APSA. Drawing a large crowd this morning was the roundtable on "How to Publish in International Security," peopled by representatives from Stanford University Press, Georgetown University Press, the Journal of Strategic Studies and...
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Credit and penalty
The Federal Government makes you pay a penalty if, among myriad other things, you: don't have children, don't get married, and don't take out a mortgage. Of course, we don't call these "penalties." We call them "not getting a tax credit." Yet some people think that reducing someone's tax liability if they engage in a particular behavior is different than increasing someone's tax liability if they don't engage in that same behavior. The same...
The Blogs of War
Later this week, I will be participating in a roundtable discussion with my esteemed colleagues Juan Cole, Manan Ahmed, Joshua Foust and Madiha Tahir on "The Blogs of War: The Analytical Terrain of the Af-Pak Blogosphere" at the annual conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.For my contribution to this discussion, I have been scouring blogs from US/ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan. (I ignored the glossier blogs which are...
Denied-ada. Canada fails to get a UN Security Council Seat. (But how many EU Nations do we need on there anyway?)
It was Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend but Canukistan has one less thing to be grateful for today - it failed to get a UN Security Council seat for the first time in 50 years of trying. Alas, (eh?), Canada lost out to Germany and Portugal in the Western group (with India, South Africa and Colombia running uncontested for the other three seats.)The Harper government, ridiculously, is blaming Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff...
And the AL Cy Young Award Should Go To…
Time for a little baseball blogging.There is quite a lot of buzz surrounding the AL Cy Young award this year. While there are a number of pitchers that possess a high number of wins (17, 18, 19, and even 20 games), there are many who believe the award should go to Seattle's Felix Hernandex. Despite only winning 13 games and losing 12, Hernandez's performance this year has been nothing short of amazing. His problem is that he played on one of...
Explosive Arguments
Recently, Stephanie made "the case against the case against blast weapons," - that is, "explosive weapons" as described by Landmine Action's recent report:"The short version is that it is calling for a ban on so-called ‘blast-weapons’ as a method of warfare... I think that 1) the report is problematic; 2) that there may actually be a case for not banning such weapons – possibly even humanitarian ones. Instead, states AND humanitarians should...
Mobile Duck: Wireless for War?
I am going to try to keep this short, because the function to split the page is not available in this browser ...what browser, you ask? Safari for IPad, I'll tell you.I've decided to make this my first IPad post in part because I was itching to try it, but also because it seemed fitting for it's subject matter...a talk that Peter W. Singer gave at ISA-West in Los Angeles on September 25 on his book,Wired for War. So I thought I would write...
The Osirak Myth (again)
I failed to comment on Jeffrey Goldberg's September 2010 Atlantic Monthly piece about US or Israeli responses to Iran's apparent nuclear weapons program. Goldberg has the threat meter set to nearly 10 as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly said this summer that Iran is one to three years away from building a nuclear weapon (p. 60).A lot has been said and written about this piece, but this claim has not received enough attention (p....
Whither Human Security?
In an International Affairs article earlier this year, Mary Martin and Taylor Owen point out that the term is all but dead, both in the UN system and within the governments who once championed the concept: "The term 'human security' has all but vanished from the reports of the UN Secretary-General and high-level panels, and from branch organization use... Canada, one of the principal initial proponents of the human security agenda, is also...
Kandahar and My Lai; Drone Strikes and Carpet Bombing
The New York Times recently posted reports about the U.S. military's trial of soldiers accused of randomly killing civilians in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, “for sport.” Apart from the horrors of the alleged crimes, there is a terrible irony in the stories. This goes beyond the fact that these kinds of incidents are hardly news. They are completely predictable in any war, even among the best-trained and most disciplined armies—let alone...
A gulf in understanding?
Last week I participated in a workshop at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies in Doha, Qatar, which brought to an end the ESRC’s Radicalisation & Violence programme of research projects, led by Prof. Stuart Croft. I was one of several researchers invited to present recent research on ‘terrorism, resistance and radicalisation’. My fledgling experience of academia has thus far been that debates rarely get politicised. It is noteworthy when it...
Homeland Security Heads Roll in Pennsylvania—But the GWOT Keeps on Rolling
Two weeks ago, I wrote about Pennsylvania’s Perverted War on Terror. This week the state’s Homeland Security Director James Powers, Jr. resigned. Governor Ed Rendell had refused to fire him, saying Powers was not the only one responsible for hiring the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). True, enough: Rendell had command responsibility, and Robert French, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency,...