by Drew Conway | 8 Jul 2009 |
Robert McNamara was complex giant in the field. Since his passing on Monday, several prominent IR scholars and practitioners have eulogized his life in a variety of ways. Most authors, however, note the disjointed nature of his legacy—great achievement in modernizing the Department of Defense, but also enormous failure in Vietnam. As someone often consumed by the power of numbers, for me McNamara's most compelling accomplishment was his dogged...
by Dan Nexon | 7 Jul 2009 |
If the owl of minerva flies at twilight, then the duck merely keeps on waddling.As I've hinted at before, we're in for some changes.While Charli introduces her kids to the Great American Roadtrip, PTJ is grinding away at his much-anticipated new book on the philosophy of social science. Both shall return, but their lack of activity leaves a void here at the Duck.Both Peter Howard and I, on the other hand, will soon suffer from more serious...
by Rodger Payne | 6 Jul 2009 |
Robert McNamara was arguably one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. I summarized the highlights from his CV on my blog a few years ago: He was a Harvard professor, an executive at Ford Motor Company (the first leader not from the Ford family), Secretary of Defense from 1961-1967, and then President of the World Bank until 1981.This sentence omits the role McNamara played in World War II, which involved his assignment to the...
by Peter | 4 Jul 2009 |
By now you've probably seen the news of Sarah Palin resigning as governor of Alaska. My first reaction was Whaaa?????? Since I too am aware of all internet traditions, my second reaction was to cruise over to LGM and see what DaveNoon had to say about things. My third reaction was to scan the blogosphere for newsy-political gossip. TPM, employing the patented Duck methodology of analysis, had as good a take as anyone:It looks like a duck and...
by Rodger Payne | 3 Jul 2009 |
The Barnes and Noble website is currently advertising a new and potentially interesting book slated to be issued later this summer: Historical Dictionary of Terrorism by Sean K. Anderson. Unfortunately, the book pictured is not the one advertised -- the second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Islam by Ludwig W. Adamec: ISLAM is clearly readable in all caps and quite large font.Anyone can make a mistake, but this one is particularly...
by Dan Nexon | 1 Jul 2009 |
Our regular readers have probably noticed a general slowdown in the arrival of new content around here. The first week of the Iranian election masked this trend a bit, but it will likely continue. The reason? Fewer active bloggers.Some, such as Charli and PTJ, are taking short leaves of absence. In contrast, Peter and I will soon be taking much more lengthy breaks--both of us are due to start fellowships with responsibilities that either...
by Rodger Payne | 27 Jun 2009 |
In the June 15 dead-tree version of The Nation (online since May 27), Jonathan Schell writes that the Iraq war was produced by torture. Everyone knows that the "war on terror" and the Iraq war produced torture, but few have focused on the reversed causal arrow. And we are still learning details of the prominent and apparently unprecedented role Vice President Dick Cheney played in approving torture and promoting war.To document his charge,...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Jun 2009 |
The Gazprom Song:
by Dan Nexon | 26 Jun 2009 |
In case you haven't seen it yet....
by Peter | 25 Jun 2009 |
I happened to be consulting the triangle on page 83 of Skocpol's Social Revolutions in the Modern World for an article I'm drafting, and came across her chapter "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution." I decided to take a closer look to see if there were any insights that might help put recent events into a broader context. Indeed there were.Now, Skocpol, a leading scholar of social revolutions before she was a scholar of...
by Rodger Payne | 25 Jun 2009 |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Barack Obama is behaving just like George W. Bush. Reuters, June 25: Obama said on Tuesday he was "appalled and outraged" by a post-election crackdown and Washington withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations on July 4 -- stalling efforts to improve ties with Tehran."Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap...
by Dan Nexon | 24 Jun 2009 |
I don't usually post on domestic policy issues. I'm even less likely to waste bandwidth explicitly seconding sentiments found on a big-time website. But, I'm afraid, that's what I'm going to do here.Theda Skocpol, author of, among other things, a bookthat insiders assure me gets a great deal right about why the Clinton health-care plan failed, gets it right.Key leaps forward for U.S. public social provision -- Social Security, Medicare, etc. --...