Gerard Toal and Gerry Kearns (both of Virginia Tech) threw a great little academic bash today: GEOPOL 2010, keynoted by a lunchtime presentation by Derek Gregory on "War Cultures" that was, among, other things, a marvelous demolition of the idea that "our" techno-strategic wars are clean and precise while "their" new wars are messy and imhumane. I had to leave before the day was over, but this morning I was on a panel entitled "Geopolitics and...
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Is Putin the Right Man to Head Smolensk Crash Investigation?
Vladminir Putin has personally taken charge of the investigation of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and most of his upper government and top brass this weekend.I'm sure this is meant to signal solidarity with and support for the Polish people and government. But how likely is it to be perceived as such? Conspiracy theories about Russia's possible involvement in the crash began swirling about shortly after news broke...
The Johnny Foreigner’s Guide to the UK Election (in where I demonstrate a very poor knowledge of UK politics.)
So, in Duck ex-pat news it was announced that a general election (a big national election) will be held on 6 May 2010 this week in the UK. At stake are 13 years of Labour rule, debate as to how the economic “recovery” should be protected.Yet, despite the relative importance of the election, coming as it is during a time of insecurity, I have to say that it feels like basically no one is inspired by it. Politicians here have been hit by a year...
Nuclear Arms Control
Yesterday, in Prague, President Obama signed a new START deal with Russian President Medvedev. In strategic and military terms, the treaty does not make much difference. I think it is generally good to reduce nuclear overkill, but the treaty allows both states to retain 1550 strategic nuclear weapons. That's plenty for deterrence purposes and still a long way from zero. Potentially, the 30% cut in nuclear weapons is symbolically important as...
New Nuclear Posture
Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defense presented its latest Nuclear Posture Review Report. I haven't had a chance to read the entire document yet, but media reports have focused on a new policy declaration that is of great interest to states and scholars alike. The statement garnering the greatest attention is included in the "Executive Summary" of the NPR (p. viii): The United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in...
Methodology Lessons: DOE’s Natural-gas Overstatement
[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the US Department of Energy is set to restate the data it collects on U.S. natural-gas production. The reason? The Department has learned that its methodology is seriously flawed:The monthly gas-production data, known as the 914 report, is used by the industry and analysts as guide for everything from making capital investments to predicting future natural-gas prices...
Disorder
"Once the Afghan conflict could no longer be understood in terms of global imperatives, it became part of what the language of international relations refers to as an example of disorder. Thus the war in Afghanistan was described as a Hobbesian situation..." -Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution UnendingDorronsoro's quote about Afghanistan after 1992 reminds us of the way in which the gaze of International Relations as a discipline turns away from...
Smashing as Feminist Practice?
All of five minutes after I posted thoughts from a conference I am currently at , a "response" (in scare quotes because that's a charitable characterization) was posted on American Power called "13 year-old smashes post-colonial feminism". My response here comes little slower (because I value intellectual conversation, and am trying to participate in it both at the conference and in this discussion), but I thought it was important to talk about...
The Ethics of State Involvement in Women’s Health
I have been fortunate to be a part of a number of interesting conversations over the last few weeks, and am currently attending the conference linked above, hosted by the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, the University of Southern California Global Health Institute, and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Conversations are centering around global norms and international agreements on women's...
The Flimsy Case for Drone Warfare
Amitai Etzioni, a law professor at George Washington University, has followed up the State Department's justification for drone attacks in Pakistan with an argument of his own, published in the new issue of Joint Force Quarterly. Here is the first paragraph, sentence by sentence with commentary:The substantial increase in the employment of unmanned aircraft systems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other arenas has intensified debate about the moral...
After the Surge
Washington and its "partner" in Kabul are simultaneously pursuing different strategies to try to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion. While the US has opted to pursue a "whack-a-mole" military strategy across Southern Afghanistan that drives the Taliban from one district only to have them pop up in the next one, the Karzai regime is moving forward with its reconciliation strategy. In essence, the Americans have foregrounded a military...
Nuclear Protected Terrorism
With apologies for the shameless self-promotion... My co-authored article on "Nuclear Protected Terrorism" is out in this month's Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review My co-author and I argue:"The prospects for an end to the protracted conflict between India and Pakistan appear as remote as ever. In fact, it is likely that there will more deadly provocations in the future by terrorist groups based on Pakistani soil. In a recent op-ed...