First, from the archives: Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted by Hamish McDonald, "Cheney's tough talking derails negotiations with North Korea," Sydney Morning Herald, December 22, 2003: The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain said a senior official had quoted Mr Cheney as telling the meeting: "I have been charged by the President with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat...
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On the Israeli Convoy Raid – briefly
I wanted to write/post something about the Israeli-Turkish ship incident but this post here on Information Dissemination pretty much sums up everything I wanted to say: the attack was legal… but this doesn’t mean it was in any way intelligent or a clever thing to do. (Hat tip to LGM's Robert Farley's Twitter for pointing out the post.)Drezner also has a post on this last point (ie: that it wasn’t really clever) at FP and brings up the the North...
Visualizing National Security Rhetoric
Obama's 2010 National Security Strategy according to Wordle:Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy according to Wordle:
Happy Memorial Day
What Farley said..
The downsizing of WMD
What does the term "weapon of mass destruction" mean to you? A few years ago, I was part of a team of academics involved in a project examining the implications of the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of preventive use of force. The editors of the book we produced, William Keller and Gordon Mitchell of the University of Pittsburgh, wanted us to avoid using the phrase "WMD." In their introductory chapter, Keller and Mitchell noted that the phrase WMD...
“Disappearing” Intersex, Trans, and Genderqueer Persons
Though it has been in the works for a while, in recent months the TSA has implemented its "Secure Flight" program, where it assumes responsibility for those on "Don't Fly" and "Extra Search" lists. The catch? It does so by asking passengers for extra information when they book their tickets. You might have noticed this on airplane ticket purchases in recent months - you are asked for three pieces of information: your name, your birthday, and...
Open Thinking-Outside-The-Box-on-How-To-Out-Crazy-North-Korea Thread
Daniel Drezner asks whether there are any options for dealing with evidence of North Korea’s involvement on the sinking of the Cheonan besides diddling around in the UN Security Council with a resolution that China may well veto. He rightly suggests that this is essentially a game of chicken that the North always wins because it seems crazier and less predictable than most civilized states (true). He points out the conventional wisdom that war...
What ISA Can Learn from Small Niche Conferences
What you see on the board in the picture is the visual description of my latest research article on weapons advocacy, which will be out later this year in International Organization. Also in the picture are yours truly and Duck co-blogger Drew Conway hob-nobbing. Those things we're waving around as we talk? Yuengling beers. This took place earlier this week at the Networks in Political Science conference at Duke University, and the nature of...
UK Torture Inquiry: Our BFD?
The coalition government here in the UK has announced that there will be an inquiry into torture and rendition alleged to have been carried out since 9/11. This was a major item platform for the LibDems and some Tories, the latter group while conservative, committed to a deep sense of eroding “British values”.It’s early days, and we do not know what such a commission would look like, but if this Guardian article is correct, individuals will be...
What “New Rules of War?”
I’ve been meaning to comment for awhile on the Mar/April print issue of Foreign Policy , and I finally got around to posting my observations at Current Intelligence. In brief, for an issue devoted to transformations in the way we fight, what struck me is how completely the authors and FP editors overlooked the ways in which the trends described relate to the law of war:Even John Arquilla’s lead article misleadingly titled “The New Rules of War”...
Worst. Treaty. Name. Ever.
I’m trying to finish up a paper on the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). But that of course it not the treaty’s full name. No – instead it is: The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects Has there ever been a treaty with a worse or more awkward name? Apparently there was some issue as to the name during...
Shameless Self-Promotion
My new book, Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond is finally out from Columbia University Press. Basically, it's all you never wanted to know about why children born of wartime rape have been overlooked by the human rights movement for the last two decades, and how this could be changed. Here's what's on the back cover: Sexual violence and exploitation occur in many conflict zones, and the...