One of the perennial issues for academics, and perhaps especially for academics studying social phenomena (although I can easily see how this would be of concern for those of my colleagues in the physical sciences as well), is the relationship between the issues and topics that we choose to study and the concerns of politicians, bureaucrats, and the electorate as a whole. This is a perennial issue in part because, whether we teach at public or...

I was going through some of last week's dead tree editions of the NY Times and found this in the January 19 edition:Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, including five who served Republican presidents, said Wednesday that the Bush administration needed to act more aggressively to limit the emission of greenhouse gases linked to climate change.Speaking on a panel that also included the current agency chief, Stephen L....

Peter Beinart writes in the Washington Post (hat tip: Marc Schulman) about cycles of isolationalism. I tend to cringe whenever I read invocations of "political cycles" in American history, so I was pleasantly surprised to read Beinart's comment that:Such theories, of course, lack social scientific rigor; American foreign policy cannot be set to a clock. But cyclical thinking still subtly frames much public discussion. For President Bush, the...

In a speech last week at a nuclear submarine base in Brittany, French President Jacques Chirac signaled a shift in his country's nuclear doctrine (for coverage see here, here, and here; for hilarity, see Chirol over at Coming Anarchy). The speech outlined the reconfiguration of French doctrine which reflects Chirac's concern with ability of regional powers/actors to threaten French strategic concerns. This shift has been in the works for over a...

[Updated 1/23]George H.W. Bush, "Global Message", March 19, 2003:In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against neighbors...no more poison factories...no more executions of dissidents...no more torture chambers and rape rooms.Nicholas D. Kristoff, The New York Review of Books, "Genocide in Slow Motion," February 9, 2006:On one of the first of my five visits to Darfur, I came across an oasis along the Chad border where several...

Spread the quacky goodness and vote Duck for "Best New Blog" in the 2005 Koufax Awards [Voting isn't open yet, so check out our competition and be ready to cast your ballot].Patrick and I just wrapped the Mershon leg of the "realism and constructivism" conference. We'll be back to blogging soon. Heck, I'm even thinking of completing my long overdue final installment on balance-of-power theory soon. Please remind me in the future never to...

The United Nations has cancelled the speaking engagement of Pakistani human rights activist Mukhtaran Mai (a.k.a. Mukhtaran Bibi). For those that don't remember, Ms. Mai was sentenced to be gang-raped by a tribal court as punishment for misconduct by her brother. She fought her rapists in court and won, giving the compensation she received to schools in her district. Apparently, the Pakistani government blocked the appearance. The appearance...

This headline today on Yahoo (from AP) made me laugh out loud: "U.S.: Venezuela Overspending on Military."And we were just discussing this kind of American hypocrisy. Venezuela is planning a "buying spree" for military equipment that goes beyond the country's legitimate needs, the State Department said Friday.In recent days, the United States has sought to block proposed sales of military planes and other equipment to Venezuela by Spain and...

Tom, an often-funny blogger at at Functional Ambivalent, today criticizes "liberals" among Kevin Drum's commenters for failing to respond to a direct question Kevin asked concerning the US attack in Pakistan last week. Here's the question from the popular blog: For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did...

Many critics of the Bush administration -- including those on the left -- have often over the past three years complained that the U.S. was focusing on the wrong state in the war on terrorism. Iran sponsors terrorists (especially Hamas) and pursues WMD. The evidence is arguably much, much clearer than it was with Iraq. Setting aside the question of sanctions for a moment, which are quite problematic given the west's great need for imported oil,...

Over at my blog, I've written a lengthy post on "'Pro-war' Democrats and the 2006 Elections." Since it is about the likely role of Iraq in the congressional midterm elections, it is probably suitable for the Duck. However, I'm resolved in 2006 to generate unique content for each space and to avoid excessive duplication by cross-posting.Click the post title, read, and comment.I'll have something for this space soon.Put "after the fold" in...

Rob over at LGM has a great post in which he cogently makes the case for why the Iraq War is now screwing up our ability to effectively deal with Tehran. Besides removing an obvious security concern from Iran's western front and providing Iran with 110,000 "hostages" in the form of US troops right next store (not to mention the ability to threaten to or actually destablize Iraq domestically), Rob touches on one issue that I find particularly...