A box of copies of Harry Potter and International Relations just arrived at my house. According to the people the publisher asked to endorse the book, it's a good read:"A landmark in muggle studies."—The Daily Prophet"Nexon and Neumann explore an underdeveloped area of Harry Potter scholarship in a collection of essays covering a wide range of political and cultural topics. In a post-9/11world, international relations is a critical area of...

Victor Davis Hanson is the gift that keeps on giving. He articulates a certain strain of neoconservativism so badly as to bring discredit upon many of his more eloquent fellow travelers.Here's one of his recent essays (via American Future). I've edited it just a bit to see if I could generate an equally poor, but diametrically opposed, argumentEurope's America's Good Intentions Have Gone SourBy V. D. HansonROME New York - The European American...

From a letter published in the Columbus Dispatch:"Marathon to uproot more trees" was a fantastic report, complete with pictures and the location of the Marathon oil pipeline.I am sure the terrorists were thrilled to see this report with the pictures – especially the sign, "Warning petroleum pipeline" – and the location of the pipeline.The media do a beautiful job of telling terrorists all about America's weaknesses. I am sure the terrorists...

I'll be guest posting at Lawyers, Guns and Money for a bit. I'll be cross-posting at least some of my writings here at the Duck.

Jesus' General has the goods on Georgetown's latest hire.The Washington Post explains what this is all about:Douglas J. Feith, the former Pentagon policy chief who was an architect of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies, is joining the faculty of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.In an announcement yesterday, the university said Feith will teach a course on the administration's anti-terrorism strategy and also will...

I'm not sure if my colleagues here at the Duck teach critical theory in their IR theory courses. I do, at least in my master's class.My classes ended last month, but I have a homework assignment just begging for a student population. Write an "immanent critique" of the following passage from President George W. Bush. Monday May 22, this question for President Bush came from a member of the audience at the Arie Crown Theater at Lakeside Center...

Montenegro votes for independence. Probably. By a hair. Rob Farley points to Doug Muir's excellent pre-vote post. It looks like EU politics may have made the difference in a vote that mapped largely onto ethnic and religious divisions. The BBC:Serb politicians, Orthodox church leaders and Montenegrins from the mountainous inland regions bordering Serbia broadly opposed secession.However, ethnic Montenegrins and Albanians from the coastal area...

Victor Davis Hanson takes on the "too few troops" criticism of the Bush administration's war plan. He approaches the topic with the same discursive style that his readers have grown to love. After lobbing some largely irrelevant attacks on the critics' motives, VDH advances five arguments. First, the claim that we’ve deployed too few troops can apply only since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. Whatever the difficulties of the three-week war,...

Dan Drezner's at Princeton discussing liberal internationalism, so he posts this rather interesting placeholder on his blog:One question that came up at today's sessions was pretty basic but rather important: how, exactly, would one define liberal internationalism? It's one of those terms that foreign policy wonks like to throw around, but often means very different things to different people.[So what's your definition, smart guy?--ed. A...

I arrived back in Columbus yesterday after spending about five days in Bielefeld, Germany. I chose not to purchase the insanely expensive WLAN access offered by the conference hotel and instead relied on a nearby internet cafe--which was fine for checking my mail, but not so much for blogging. I have a couple of posts stored up, so expect to hear from me a great deal over the next week.A few impressions from my first trip to Germany.• Delta...

In the war on terror, the United States now officially considers Venezuela part of the problem. The BBC today: The US is to impose a ban on arms sales to Venezuela, US state department officials have said.A spokeswoman, Darla Jordan, said the decision was taken because of lack of support by Venezuela for counter-terrorism efforts. Condi Rice expressed disappointment in October 2003 at Venezuela's failure to live up to its "responsibilities in...

From https://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/west/awfact.htm.From a Columbus Dispatch article (6/7/2006) on the role of religion in Ohio's upcoming gubernatorial race:"I want to know how they feel about it -- if they have a strong belief in God," said Republican poll participant..... "This country was set up to lead the rest of the world. God picked this country."I hope he isn't disappointed if God throws his support behind China. After all,...