I use that term a lot, and I've been realizing that it's unclear to many people what that actually means. As Roland Paris pointed out years ago, the term means different things to different people; in fact my own empirical research suggests as much. So as I think ahead to teaching a course on this subject in the Fall, I thought it might be useful to nail down what the term generally means to me when I use it. My first stab at doing just that...
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Beach Book Blegging
At the invitation of an old friend, my daughter and I will be traveling to Thailand the first two weeks of July, and I've been commanded to bring only vacation reading. It's been awhile since I did any of that and I could use suggestions for humorous, smart, non-war-crimes related non-fiction or other good beach reads.In the past I've enjoyed humorous science writing like Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; funny, twisted...
Some NPT Reading… if you’re out of summer novels.
International Affairs – the (increasingly policy oriented) official journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) has published a “virtual” issue of articles on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) dating back to 1968 and going up to the present. It includes one by Hedley Bull published in 1975 which (although very much dated) highlights the dilemmas of nuclear diplomacy during the period of detente and when India...
Free at Last
I am happily in receipt of a letter from University of Massachusetts' Chancellor Holub informing me that I have been awarded tenure. Of course you know what this means: the days of keeping my outside-the-box ideas to myself are gone like the Twelve Colonies. Yep, I just cannot wait to write something controversial or unpopular using my newly acquired academic freedom.
oh boy….
So, I'm in Brussels this morning meeting with various NATO folks on how they plan to develop a strategy for rebuilding public support for Afghanistan and for the future expeditionary operations outlined in the the Albright Experts Group report and someone comes in with a copy of Rolling Stone. Quite frankly, that's not something I thought I'd ever see -- Rolling Stone had the entire place buzzing....My first reaction: This can not end well for...
De-ComposingConstructing the Zombie Menace
Daniel Drezner has expounded on his seminal "Zombies and IR" blog postwith a full spread on the topic in the July/August Foreign Policy:The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses... poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response? How would...
Would A Few Trillion Dollars Really Help Afghanistan?
It is increasingly becoming evident that the venerable New York Times was played by the Pentagon last week. The announcement by a Pultizer Prize winning journalist that Afghanistan may have up to a trillion dollars worth of mineral resources under its war torn soil made a huge buzz. But this bit of "news" planted by the Pentagon was not very new at all (in fact, as the NY Times article notes even the Soviets knew about some of this) and the...
Meanwhile, in the West Bank
I’m traveling in Israel this week on an academic study tour with a mix of 15 political scientists, economists, and historians. It’s a grueling schedule – 14 to 16 hours of sessions per day – meeting with Israelis, Israeli –Arabs, and Palestinians. I finally have a short break in the schedule so this is the first of several posts. I’ll post some thoughts on Gaza later, but I’ll start with the West Bank. On Tuesday, we went to Ramallah and met...
Methodology411: feminist methodology?
Other duties have prevented me from posting as much as I'd like to for the past couple of months, but now that the summer is really upon us I am going to try to make more regular appearances. I received a query from a reader that seemed quite appropriate for the Methodology411, so here we go:Mada asks: "Is there a feminist methodology? And if so, what does it consist of?"By way of kick-starting a discussion, I reply: You ask a deceptively...
The ICC Review Conference : The Belgium Amendment
For those of you who are international law junkies (– and really, who isn’t?) ASIL has a very interesting blog on the ICC Review Conference that took place over the last two weeks in Kampala, Uganda. David Scheffer, a notable scholar on both the ICC and international criminal justice, has a really interesting post summarizing most of the decisions that were made.Of course one of the most interesting developments is, of course, the crime of...
So long for now, New England
I didn't meet many faculty on my recent tour of New England liberal arts colleges (and a few Ivies), but one scholar I dined with provided this great line about foreign language study: "Optimists study English; pessimists study Arabic; realists study Mandarin."After nearly 1400 miles of driving and visits to more than a dozen schools, my daughter and I enjoyed a personal tour of the Naval War College. Then, we walked around Newport and savored...
Taking it Personally
Earlier this year, all eyes were focused on Iceland in a very negative way for the second time in 18 months. First their banks collapsed in 2008 which caused many in Europe who had savings accounts there to take a rather substantial financial hit. For example, in the UK local councils were estimated to be at risk for up to £840 million in cash. And secondly, as is pretty well known, the Icelandic ash cloud basically paralysed Europe for the...