by Dan Nexon | 2 Nov 2005 | Featured
A minor brouhaha over at America Abroad. David Rieff sent an email to Anne-Marie Slaughter (short version: liberal interntionalism inevitably leads to neoconservativism, so stop enabling!). Today, John Ikenberry summarizes Reiff's argument:Behind Rieff’s comments is his own intellectual journey away from the liberal interventionism of the Clinton years chronicled in his recent book, At the Point of a Gun. The Iraq war has led Rieff to question...
by Rodger Payne | 31 Oct 2005 |
Iraq is merely the latest example of the US going to war under apparently false pretenses. In the debate leading up to the war against Iraq, the "mushroom cloud" fears were almost completely unfounded. Ironically, of course, intelligence to challenge the claim was publicly available before the war. Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel prize winning Director of the IAEA, reported on March 7, 2003: After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date...
by Dan Nexon | 30 Oct 2005 | Featured
Chris Bertram received some flack, apparently, for describing the recent Birmingham race riot as a "pogrom." Today he gets to enjoy a qualified (and somewhat angsty) last laugh:But I see that both the conservative columnist Theodore Dalrymple and the Observer’s Nick Cohen have also noticed the echoes. Dalrymple wrote:The rumour that a 14-year-old black girl had been caught shoplifting by a Pakistani shopkeeper in the Lozells area of Birmingham,...
by Bill Petti | 29 Oct 2005 | Featured
I recently wrote about the misuse (or, more to the point, apparent schizophrenic understanding) of reputational logic in the war on terror. Administration officials have repeatedly utilized rhetoric which rationalizes US policy against terrorists and rogue states on the basis of maintaining a reputation for resolve--i.e. we need to show our enemies that we won't back down just because the going gets tough, therefore staying the course is...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 28 Oct 2005 | Featured
Through the magic of podcasting, I've been able to listen to a number of pre- and post-game interviews with baseball players and managers as I go for my morning run -- subscribe to the daily MLB podcasts through iTunes, plug in my iPod, and when I get up in the morning there they are, ready to go. (Of course, now that the baseball season is officially over -- congratulations, White Sox, even though I wanted the Astros to force a game 5 so that...
by Dan Nexon | 28 Oct 2005 | Featured
In my post on Stanford's iTunes store, I mentioned that Patrick has always been on the cutting edge of integrating technology into the classroom. Well, Patrick's just been featured prominently in a Chronicle for Higher Education story on the costs and benefits of podcasting (subscription only). Here are some key excerpts:Lectures on the GoAs more colleges use 'coursecasting,' professors are split on its place in teachingBy BROCK...
by Bill Petti | 28 Oct 2005 | Featured
Couldn't resist (thanks to Brian Levy for the link):Strauss Guides Sox From GraveFiled as: Leo Strauss, White Sox
by Bill Petti | 28 Oct 2005 | Featured
Iranian officials, not surprisingly, defended President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments at a conference Wednesday called "The World Without Zionism" where he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Their argument: It has been Iran's policy since the 1979 revolution. Oh, well that does it I guess. World leaders, including many in the Arab world, condemned the statement. The Washington Post has a great article which discusses the context of...
by Bill Petti | 28 Oct 2005 | Featured
As if on cue the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, yesterday released the US National Intelligence Strategy of the United States (NIS). The WP has a nice article which summarizes the report as well as notes what is different from past reports. Most of the rhetoric in the report is unremarkable. However, the portion of the report getting the most attention is the appearence of democracy promotion as a main strategic objective...
by Dan Nexon | 27 Oct 2005 | Featured
The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains a review by John Owen IV of Ed Mansfield's and Jack Snyder's Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Mansfield and Synder contend, among other things, that a transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes can make states more war prone than it would otherwise have been. As Owen argues, this has profound implications for Iraq:The Bush administration's desire to break with its...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Oct 2005 |
I haven't had the time to write my next installment on the balance of power, but it looks like I'll be addressing some of the key issues I wanted to raise in an incremental form.The Christian Science Monitor has a provocatively titled story on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): "Russia, China looking to form 'NATO of the East'?"MOSCOW - Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Oct 2005 | Featured
A growing number of professors use podcasting - or the functional equivalent - to distribute their lectures, overviews of readings, and so forth. When I have the time, I know that I want to supplement blogging with podcasting. Our very own Patrick Jackson, on the other hand, has long been on the cutting edge of using technology in the classroom. Perhaps some day he'll tell us about what he's been up to.Meanwhile, Stanford is testing the waters...