by Charli Carpenter | 16 Nov 2009 |
Earlier I blogged about the importance and absence of data disaggregating unintentional civilian deaths from total civilian deaths in wars worldwide. To get a preliminary handle on this question, I examined a dataset on civilian victimization developed by Alexander Downes at Duke University for his study on why governments target civilians in war. His dataset includes 100 interstate wars and runs from 1823-2003. It includes low, medium and high...
by Jon Western | 11 Nov 2009 |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has just been released. According to the BBC:Analysts believe the game could sell as many as 5m units globally on its first day.It is the sixth installment in the Call of Duty series and gives players the chance to be a member of a military strike force that takes on a Russian ultra-nationalist terrorist group.It sees the combat team traveling to Russia, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Brazil and into orbit, in an...
by Rodger Payne | 11 Nov 2009 |
Back in fall 2007 and spring 2008, former Duck blogger Peter Howard was carefully following reports about the apparent Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility of some sort. I just linked Peter's last post on the event, from April 2008, and to a Duck search result that should unearth his entire series of posts. The Israel target was quite mysterious and the rumors associated with the attack far outnumbered the facts.The German...
by Charli Carpenter | 9 Nov 2009 |
This is an important question from a legal and humanitarian perspective. In legal terms, targeting civilians is a war crime. Accidentally killing or maiming them in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives is, well, just too bad. So in judging government's records of compliance with the law, one needs to measure the difference. There are policy ramifications to such measurements as well. Over time, atrocities against civilians seem to be...
by Charli Carpenter | 7 Nov 2009 |
Terrorist bombings. Government push-back. Nuclear brinkmanship. Drone attacks. The security situation in Pakistan has become so synonymous with mayhem, violence and the threat of state collapse that the Human Security Report Project has just launched a new blog, the Pakistan Conflict Monitor. In the context of those developments, the thriving civil society, democratic sentiment and rule of law in many parts of Pakistan are easy to forget. Matt...
by Charli Carpenter | 6 Nov 2009 |
When I make the connection between health and national security in my classes, we usually talk about pandemics or bio-warfare. But check this out: a new study from the Army Times tells us that unhealthy diets also drastically reduce America's military readiness. Turns out 35% of young Americans between the ages of 18-24 are unfit to serve in the military because they're too fat, up from 6% 20 years ago. Noah Schactman has more. Is this any...
by Jon Western | 6 Nov 2009 |
The "market" seems to be working in some sectors in Iraq and Afghanistan. New private security firms are popping up everywhere. Ten thousand Ugandans have gone to work as security guards in Iraq in the past two years. Now many are looking for work in Afghanistan. From the BBC:Seth Katerema Mwesigye, an instructor at Watertight, says the money has made him wealthy by Ugandan standards."I was a student at Makerere university, but when I left, I...
by Charli Carpenter | 4 Nov 2009 |
James Ron and Howard Ramos have a piece in Foreign Policy on how Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International select countries to criticize. Especially, they talk about how media coverage drives human rights reporting: Human rights groups are partly true to their mission, since they report more on countries with more human rights problems...Amnesty and Human Rights Watch also seek visibility and impact, however... Like any advocacy organization...
by Jon Western | 4 Nov 2009 |
The superficiality in the debate on Afghanistan is getting downright absurd. Last week, David Brooks claimed the problem was Obama's "determination deficit." This week, the New York Times saw fit to give more space to Fred Kagan who claims that McChrystal's recommendations will work as long as the administration gets moving on the right political strategy to augment McChrystal's military strategy. Let's face it: Afghanistan today is a minus-sum...
by Drew Conway | 2 Nov 2009 |
The growing desire to understand both the rationality of suicide terrorism, as well as test theoretical concepts empirically has generated several interesting political economic studies of terrorism. As such, a recent paper in the NBER caught my eye for several reasons. The article, entitled "The Economic Cost of Harboring Terrorism," adds to this body of work by focusing on an area that has yet to be explored. Very often the question of...
by Charli Carpenter | 30 Oct 2009 |
This week I served on a panel discussion for Jonathan Torgovnik's photo exhibit on the Rwandan genocide at the Woodrow Wilson School Bernstein Galley at Princeton University. The exhibit contained extraordinary photographs of female genocide survivors and their children born as a result of genocidal rape. There is also a extremely evocative video available here. I was asked to comment critically on the exhibit and the accompanying book,...
by Rodger Payne | 29 Oct 2009 |
I'm beginning to think that a number of important people in the Obama administration must have read the Keir Lieber and Daryl Press piece in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006, which explained burgeoning U.S. nuclear primacy, and have taken seriously the potential risks of primacy. Just more than 10 months since George W. Bush left office, the new administration in Washington has already taken a couple of important steps to reassure other states...