Here's my State Capacity post of the week (just to continue the trend.)From Today's Washington Post:Some in Congo Long for the Order Of Late DictatorYes, folks, we're talking Mobuto Sese Seko. Who ever thought you would long for the man who invented the kleptocratic state and his leopard-skinned chapeau?He brought State Capacity, of course!On the eve of the first multiparty balloting here since 1960, nostalgia was running high for a man who,...

Steven Cook (who holds a PhD from my department I might add) argues in the Washington Post this morning that the current problems in the Middle East are not to be blames on President Bush's democratization strategy. It isn't that there has been too much democratization to-date, but rather too little. Unfortunately, his analysis suffers from a number of problems: a rather weighty faith in the power of democratization and ignoring the more...

I've been skimming the Washington State Supreme Court decision (PDF) on gay marriage (via Andrew Sullivan), and I'm pretty appalled. My jaw started to drop when I read this line:Finally, DOMA does not violate the state constitution’s equal rights amendment because that provision prohibits laws that render benefits to or restrict or deny rights of one sex. DOMA treats both sexes the same; neither a man nor a woman may marry a person of the same...

I really, really hope that today's developments prove my skepticism about the efficacy of Israel's coercive pressure on Lebanon wrong.BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour...

This month's Foreign Policy has a forum on the Israel Lobby, building on Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's very much discussed article in the LRB on the power of the "Israel Lobby" in producing a narrow-interest based but sub-strategically optimal US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.As I walked from the office with my mailbox back to my office, pondering the nice glossy cover on my copy of FP, I pondered the issues in the debate in the...

Photo courtesy whitehouse.govThis is just a quick followup to my post last week about the risks of escalation in the current Middle Eastern conflict.Israel is apparently ending its incursion into Gaza , but there is very little good news emerging from the region.US Secretary of State Condi Rice is on the case, but she is employing an odd diplomatic style to say the least. News agencies pessimistically report "no sign of a cease-fire."So, is the...

I had lunch yesterday with two of my colleagues at the Mershon Center, John Mueller and Markus Kornprobst. The conversation inevitably turned to the Middle East and the efficacy of US and Israeli policy. As the discussion progressed, I mentioned that when we got back I would be revising my chapter on the French Wars of Religion--a case of trans-national and trans-regional religious movements prompting decades of violent conflict. I said,...

In an attempt to lighten things up this morning I would like to try something new. Many readers are surely familiar with the practice of "Friday Cat Blogging". Well, I don't have a cat. However, I see no reason to limit this activity to felines. So in the interest of inclusiveness (and since I don't have the time or the strength for a substantive post at the moment) I present to you--Quint:My wife and I adopted him last year from a shelter near...

Courtesy of Marc Lynch over at Abu Aardvark (you should go there and read the whole post):Karen Hughes should quit immediately. Get somebody in as an acting public diplomacy director who is at least going to try.Not much more I can say, after Condoleeza Rice's "birth pangs of a new Middle East" comment. It makes me wonder: what in the hell is the Administration up to? Makes me wonder whether Digby is on to something by linking that kind of...

Pardon my absence from the blog roughly since the current Mideast hostilities began; besides the fact that my blogmates here at the Duck have been doing an admirable job quacking away and trying to provide a little insight into the situation, and the fact that I've just been busy with other work, I haven't felt like I had a lot to say about the situation that hadn't been said already.That changed this morning, when I read in the Washington Post...

Thomas Ricks, the accomplished military reporter for the Washington Post, has a front page article excerpted from his upcoming book, Fiasco, yet another richly detailed account of the failures of the US in Iraq.The article is certainly worth reading.Ricks asserts that the US was in trouble from the beginning:The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission.Echoing my earlier post, top administration officials were blinded by...

Two weeks ago, the NY Times reported that women are "leaving men in the dust" in colleges and universities nation-wide, with women now 58% of all undergraduates.(as a point of information, American University had a freshman class last year that was 64% female)Today, the Washington Post reports that women are also taking over TV news:The number of female anchors reached a record high last year, accounting for 57 percent of the positions in a...