by Peter | 27 Nov 2007 |
A US President, needing a signature policy victory, faced with a hostile Congress controlled by the opposing party, nearing the end of his term, seeks ensure his legacy and make a major foreign affairs statement by brokering a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. He brings them together for a big meeting here in the US, hoping to put together the structure of a deal to bring peace to the region.Sounds familiar. It could be...
by Maia Gemmill | 26 Nov 2007 |
Next Sunday, Russians are expected to go to the polls and overwhelmingly endorse the candidates of the pro-Putin party, Edinaya Rossiya.* What I find surprising is the level to which the government feels it needs to engage in electoral hanky-panky: all signs suggest that Edinaya Rossiya would receive a comfortable majority, even without the blatant manipulation of the system. Kommersant reports that a recent poll shows that it is very likely...
by Rodger Payne | 23 Nov 2007 |
Was the Iraq war designed to break up OPEC?Do OPEC states now have a perverse incentive to favor continued instability in Iraq?I explore these questions today on my blog: "Oil: the third rail of the Iraq debate."Sorry, I probably just should have posted it here.
by Rodger Payne | 20 Nov 2007 |
Dan Drezner calls this piece in today's New York Times "the story that will occupy the blogosphere for today -- Baghdad is safer."Then, Dan excerpts a bit of the story by Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin that makes a point I've been stressing since General Petraeus made his optimistic report in September. Fewer Iraqis are dying because they fled the war zone: About 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of the more than...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 19 Nov 2007 |
There have been some interesting replies to my post a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between policymaking and scholarship. Well, when it started out it was a post about the idea that teaching IR ought to be about more than certifying the idealism of our students, but as it went on it morphed into a set of complaints about the very idea of a terminal MA degree in IR. And then a discussion ensued: Rob Farley weighed in, as did Dan...
by Peter | 19 Nov 2007 |
In today's NYT, Fredrick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon editorialize that:We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.Insanity. Near total insanity on almost every level--except one.Now, granted, they are only talking about a worst case scenario here:The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill...
by Rodger Payne | 13 Nov 2007 | Featured
This weekend, the AP's Katherine Shrader wrote a fine story about the "myth" of suitcase nuclear bombs."The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies," said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. "No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices."Many of the fears about suitcase bombs originated years ago in statements by a couple of Russians...
by Peter | 13 Nov 2007 |
Front page article in today's Washington Post on Condi Rice's management style as Secretary of State.Yeah, all the usual stuff about Blackwater, Baghdad, and Passports, but here's the zinger, as far as I'm concerned:Condi Rice does not use email.Seriously? Not at all?How on earth does she communicate? Is she a Luddite? Is she too busy going hither and yon to sit down at a computer? Or, is she too paranoid that anything she writes emails will...
by Rodger Payne | 10 Nov 2007 |
I'm late in commenting on Joshua Muravchik's long defense of neconservatism in the October issue of Commentary (republished by the Wall Street Journal here). If you haven't read it, I recommend doing so. Muravchik outlines the basic tenets of neoconservatism, explains why neocons find the war on terror so compelling (he compares it explicitly to the long cold war struggle against an evil empire), and defends the decision to attack Iraq. He also...
by Rodger Payne | 8 Nov 2007 |
Bloggers on the right have been trumpeting the apparent decline in Iraqi civilian deaths as a clear sign that the surge is working. Apparently, we do body counts now that we like the numbers.However, I've been arguing since September that civilian deaths may well be down because Iraqis feel insecure and have simply fled their homes. Such self-segregation is a classic response to ethnic war and there's new evidence suggesting this viewpoint is...
by Peter | 7 Nov 2007 |
(Kaplan and Arkin make pretty much the same point, but I'm rather exercised about this whole deal, and hence the following)I'm not really angry with Musharraf for his crackdown--he's a barely legitimate dictator who took power in a coup trying to hold on to power and keep his fractured country together. Like so many in his position before him, he sees his country in danger and thinks that only he can hold it together, so he holds onto power and...
by Rodger Payne | 7 Nov 2007 |
Once again, I was recently contacted by an Iranian journalist for Fars News Agency.Kia Kojouri asked 2 questions, which I have slightly reworded:1. While IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says that there is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons, the US and Frence are claiming that Iran seeks nuclear weapons. They have not presented any documentation for their claims. What do you think about that?2. The IAEA declares that outstanding...