Operation Moshtarak ("Together" in Dari), which is slated to move into a more active phase any day now, has been billed as the largest ground battle in Afghanistan since 2001 and the largest air assault since the Iraq War in 1991. The planned attack, which will be centered around the towns of Marjeh (Marjah) and Nad-E'ali (Nad-e-Ali) in Helmand Province, was announced in a press conference by the Pentagon last week. Villages have been leafleted...
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Canadian Banks do it Better
Recently I assigned my students to identify the nationality of different global companies. The results were interesting. No matter what information they looked at-- from the nationality of CEOs and managers, to the location of most employees-- major global companies had clearly identifiable nationality even when the majority of sales were abroad. Some companies seemed to try to hide their background when marketing abroad--hello, did you know T...
Rethinking War Deaths in the Congo
Nicholas Kristof is writing about Congo again this morning:It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the...
US Contemplated Giving India Nuclear Technology in 1961
Two days ago the National Security Archive released a fascinating State Department document from 1961. In the document, US officials recommend passing nuclear technology to India in order to take the steam out of the anticipated nuclear tests by Communist China. Ultimately, of course, Secretary of State Rusk vetoed the recommendation to pass America's nuclear secrets on to India. China would go on to hold its first test three years later. India...
The UK Iraq Inquiry: The Agony and the Ecstasy or International Law and Deja Vu
The legality of the 2003 Iraq War has been back in a big way in the UK over the last few weeks. This, no doubt, is the result of several high-profile figures who were involved in the decision as to use force testifying in front of the Iraq Inquiry.For the uninitiated, the Iraq Inquiry is an independent panel of figures set up “identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict.” It is often referred to as the Chilcot Inquiry, so named...
Two philosophers shoveling snow
A brief non-Platonic dialogue.Dramatis Personae:Friedrich William Shotter-Wittgenstein ("Will"), a mind-world monistRene Roy Searle-Wight ("Roy"), a mind-world dualistRoy: Hey there, Will. Surprised to see you out here shoveling snow.Will: Hey, Roy. Why would you be surprised at that? It snowed a lot last night, and I need to get the sidewalk cleared in front of my house.Roy: Well, can't you mind-world monists just think the snow away? Why...
The Short Career of Hakimullah Mehsud
In the latest round of the ongoing blood feud between the US military/intelligence agencies and the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP), it appears that the TTP's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed by a Predator drone attack in mid-January. The assassination was apparently in “revenge” for the murder of seven CIA operatives at a forward operating base in Afghanistan by Hakimullah's associate and Jordanian double agent, Humam...
Hello Ducks
Hi. I've been invited to guest blog here at Duck of Minerva for a little while. So I thought I'd introduce myself... I'm Vikash Yadav. I teach Political Science and International Relations at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. My doctoral research (and first book) was an attempt to apply the framework from Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality to understand the concept of risk and its effects in international financial markets. I...
Israel’s Integrated Military
Danny Kaplan at Foreign Policy is pointing out how the US lags behind other top-notch militaries like the IDF in its nascent, grudging willingness to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly. The United States and Turkey are now the only NATO military powers that do not allow gays to serve openly, but Israel and other countries have shown that the participation of gay soldiers in combat units presents no risk for military effectiveness. What's...
Why Sign the Torture Convention If You Plan to Torture?
At the Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten has a round-up of some conventional answers and calls attention to a novel explanation just out as a working paper from NYU.[cross-posted at LGM]
Re-schooling IR Theorists
I was intrigued to read my colleagues' latest essay in International Studies Quarterly a couple of weeks ago. Here's the abstract. American scholars routinely characterize the study of international relations as divided between various Kuhnian “paradigms” or Lakatosian “research programmes.” Although most international relations scholars have abandoned Kuhn's account of scientific continuity and change, many utilize Lakatosian criteria to...
Randomized Controlled Trials: Just Abstain
A new study (summarized here; full text available here if you're lucky enough to be at an institution with a medical school and an institutional subscription to the relevant journal) released yesterday purports to have some implications for sex education policy. By conducting what the authors -- or the publicists at the University of Pennsylvania, at any rate -- refer to as the first randomized controlled study of the effectiveness of various...