by Charli Carpenter | 16 Dec 2009 |
Stacie Goddard has a guest post at the IR Blog promoting her new book, Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy:In international relations, territory often appears indivisible: actors are unable to divide territory through negotiation, shared sovereignty, compensation, or other mechanisms of division... As the site of competing national and religious claims, it may seem little wonder that Jerusalem, Northern Ireland, Kashmir and...
by Jon Western | 15 Dec 2009 |
Obama has received a lot of credit and praise for his articulation of Just War doctrine in his Oslo speech. And, while I, like Charli, found a lot to like about the speech, I take exception to the way in which he set up the issue of Just War:We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force...
by Charli Carpenter | 15 Dec 2009 |
With growing attention to the legal implications of unmanned drone attacks (LA Times reported yesterday that the US is considering expanding its campaign to Quetta), the latest International Humanitarian Law Live Seminar at Harvard's Humanitarian Law and Policy Forum is particularly timely. The title is "Unmanned Weapons and Challenges to International Humanitarian Law" and it will be webcast live Thursday morning at 9:30 eastern time. Register...
by Charli Carpenter | 14 Dec 2009 |
Recently Switzerland got a lot of press over the results of its referendum on religious architecture. But almost no coverage globally of another ballot measure last month: an initiative to ban the export of military weapons abroad. The initiative was voted down by more than a 2/3 majority on the same day as the minaret ban, according to SwissInfo:Official results show 68.2 per cent of voters against the initiative and 31.5 per cent for. Turnout...
by Charli Carpenter | 11 Dec 2009 |
My previous remarks about the relative lack of attention to climate change in Obama's speech were written after having read the text of Obama's speech. I stand by those comments - he spent 160 words on nuclear proliferation, 663 on human rights, and 128 on poverty reduction; but only 79 on climate change, which was folded into "freedom from want" rather than separated out into its own section. However, having now listened to the whole thing, I...
by Charli Carpenter | 11 Dec 2009 |
Dan Drezner encourages us to analyze what he said for references to policy prescriptions from IR theories. Steve Walt tells us let's focus not on what he said but on what he does. I'm with those who would focus on what he didn't say as an indicator of what he might or might not do. (Not to be contrarian, but hey.) Namely, with the Copenhagen summit at hand, I'd have liked to see more than just a passing reference to the relationship between the...
by Bill Petti | 9 Dec 2009 |
Sort of safe-for-work (as long as no one is reading the subtitles)...
by Rodger Payne | 9 Dec 2009 |
As you might expect, I've had a number of conversations with friends and colleagues about the prospects for the so-called "Afghan surge." Boosters like to point to the alleged success of the Iraq surge, but many of them ignore some salient points.For example, the U.S. also changed its military tactics in Iraq even as it implemented the surge. The military embraced counterinsurgency tactics, something it had been reluctant to do since...
by Charli Carpenter | 8 Dec 2009 |
The New York Times reported Friday that the Obama Administration has stepped up its Predator strike campaign in Pakistan concurrent with the announcement of a troop surge in Afghanistan. The article focuses on comparing estimates of civilian casualties from strikes and estimates of how controversial the strikes are - interestingly, the greatest blowback comes from Pakistanis who live outside of the tribal areas: many of those in the FATAs...
by Rodger Payne | 8 Dec 2009 |
Monday, Steve Walt posted about the environment, drawing reader attention to several corporate efforts to make themselves greener. When I read those kinds of items, I always suspect "greenwashing." Actually, to be fair, Walt noted that Jared Diamond wrote about these business initiatives in the NY Times. This one caught my eye: Walmart is working to reduce its energy expenditures because energy (e.g., fuel for delivery trucks) is...
by Bill Petti | 7 Dec 2009 |
A while back I started reading The Fat Tail, a book about political risk by Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer (who also pens The Call for Foreign Policy) and Preston Keat, but couldn't really get into it. I recently picked it back up and have been plowing through. I am reserving my final judgment until I've had a chance to complete it. However, one area has already irked me enough that I wanted to post a (rather long) comment: their treatment of...
by Jon Western | 7 Dec 2009 |
A group from MIT won DARPA's recent balloon challenge. In case you missed it, DARPA placed ten 8-foot red balloons around the country on Friday and issued a challenge to groups to be the first to identify the correct location of all of them. The winning group received $40k.Here's how DARPA defined the challenge:a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building,...