by Dan Nexon | 13 May 2009 |
Peter:What it is not, however, is a Realist argument. To continue my picking on Walt, if you're going to run around calling yourself a realist and writing a realist blog, for cryin' out loud, advance a realist argument from time to time!!!Lets review: Realism assumes an anarchic world of rational state actors maximizing security, defined as sufficient military force to defend the integrity of a the state. In that anarchic environment, systemic...
by Dan Nexon | 13 May 2009 |
I identified with Calvin. Now my sympathies lie at least equally with his parents.Spurred by Calinball rules via DeLong.
by Peter | 13 May 2009 |
Stephen Walt asks a very interesting question: why does the US overspend on defense? This is a very smart question, the kind you need to be contrarian theorist to ask. Given the global downturn in the economy, you'd think defense spending would absorb its fair share of pain.As is well documented, the US spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And yet, worried that China may be less than 5 years away from sending a sub...
by Peter | 12 May 2009 |
As if there wasn't enough depressing evidence about the poor state of the academy, Inside Higher Ed covers a new report documenting the disappearance of tenure track jobs. (H/T to Craig)Take home point: Only 27% of all higher education faculty jobs are tenure or tenure-tracked positions.The overall number of faculty and instructor slots grew from 1997 to 2007, but nearly two-thirds of that growth was in "contingent" positions -- meaning those...
by Charli Carpenter | 9 May 2009 |
It's not going to get on anyone's list of top ten IR movies, that's for sure. But that doesn't mean I'm disappointed, exactly... more like a little shell-shocked.Lawyers, Guns and Money doesn't have a peekaboo function, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone else, so my reactions from seeing the film only once so far are hidden safely below the fold. Foreign policy subtext - decidedly post-Global War on Terror. The original Federation always...
by Peter | 9 May 2009 |
There’s been a lot of discussion about the Movies and IR, and I couldn’t resist a list. Plus, there’s a Bond movie on TCM—Goldfinger and now Thunderball—and I think Walt is crazy for leaving out war and spy movies, as that’s as much the stuff of IR as anything else.I’m not a film critic. A lot of the movies I love aren’t “brilliant” by film critic standards but are nonetheless fun to watch, and are very illustrative of particular concepts or...
by Charli Carpenter | 7 May 2009 |
So I'm guest-blogging over at Lawyers, Guns and Money the next week. My first post is on the latest 100+ civilian dead in Afghanistan. Suffice to say, as the ANSO graph above suggests, the international military forces (IMF) kill fewer civilians by accident than either pro-government or anti-government forces do on purpose. But as I point out, this doesn't mean much politically, and so the US needs to change its counter-insurgency strategy....
by Charli Carpenter | 6 May 2009 |
The Rachel Maddow Show weighs in on the Walt/Drezner/Kaplan/Howard/Payne debate over films and IR:
by Charli Carpenter | 5 May 2009 |
Great. The "peace deal" in Swat is officially off, and not only will Pakistan whole-heartedly address militants in the region, it will also enforce Sharia law itself, ostensibly to rob the Taliban of public support in the region. What are the assumptions at work here? Assumption A) That Taliban have begun to thrive in the northeast provinces primarily because the civilian population wants sharia law (and not because the Taliban have guns and...
by Dan Nexon | 5 May 2009 |
A quick note on events in Georgia: be very suspicious whenever the government accuses any opposition group or movement of being linked to Russia. Tbilisi has mounted a concerted effort to paint it opponents as Russian stooges, and to shore up Saakashvili's regime by raising fears of a Russian plot against the country itself.Of course, the Russians could be involved. But under no circumstances should readers take Tblisi's word for it.The...
by Peter | 5 May 2009 |
At one time, I kinda almost liked some of Stephen Walt's work. At another point, I found works such as Origins of Alliances useful pivots in making an argument to move from explanations based on realism to explanations based on constructivism. But to still call Walt a "good" or "eminent" IR theorist worthy of a job at Harvard... Walt thought it would be fun to list the top ten IR films. Outsourced to Fred Kaplan:The most jaw-dropping pick of...
by Dan Nexon | 1 May 2009 |
Who could resist such an entreaty?FROM: xxxxxxSUBJECT: Honest Partnership NeededDATE: May 1, 2009 7:34:41 PM EDTReply-to: xxxxxHELLO,We on behalf of the Committee to Free Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky & Platon Lebedev wish to proposea business transaction worth $46M from Yukos Oil Russia.We seek your partnership in the transferof this amount out of russian for the eventual investment under your supervisionin your country.You can read more details of...