For more than 25 years, the State Department has been required to list all state sponsors of terrorism because such a designation precludes the US from providing foreign aid and exporting arms. Here's the latest list:Country and Designation DateCuba, March 1, 1982Iran, January 19, 1984Libya, December 29, 1979North Korea, January 20, 1988Sudan, August 12, 1993Syria, December 29, 1979On October 20, 2004, Iraq was formally removed from this list....

I've been dusting off a long dormant paper on nomadic empires and international-relations theory. While doing so, I came across this discussion of one pathway of pre-modern Central Asian state formation.The centrifugal tendencies of the tribes and the nomad’s natural anarchical inclinations, could be contained only by successful campaigns for booty waged against “outsiders”. This is the paradox inherent in nomadic state-formations, which gives...

Walter Pincus, staff writer for the Washington Post, reports proposed changes in US nuclear doctrine.The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear,...

The new issue of International Security has a long-awaited forum on the state of the "balance of power" after fifteen-some years of US hegemony and four+ years of the "Bush doctrine." The main focus seems to be soft balancing: what is it, is it happening, does it matter?I haven't read it yet, but it should spark some debate.As if there wasn't enough fodder for blogorama smackdowns about Jared Diamond, my colleague John R. McNeill has a review...

Dan Drezner provides a link to - and discussion of- a new paper on the commercial peace. The paper, written by Columbia's Erik Gartzke, argues that:The transformation of commerce made possible by economic freedom also leads to a transformation in international affairs. Conquest becomes expensive and unprofitable. Wealth in modern economies is much harder to “steal” through force than was the case among agricultural and early industrial...

I agree with Dan that it's a little silly to refer to a FEMA spokesman's comments about the commitment and loyalty of some firefighters as "fascist." Appalling, yes; fascist, no.However, the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in the case of Jose Padilla strikes me as a much better candidate for the "fascist" label, since it basically gives the government carte blanche to detain U.S. citizens on the suspicion of having...

Things I like about OSU:1) Checking books out of the library is like ordering from Amazon. I search a title, author, or somesuch. I select a book. I select "MY OFFICE" as my delivery option. The book shows up in my mailbox in a few days.2) Parking is cheap. The "A" parking pass is less than half what it costs to park at Georgetown.3) I have a bigger office, with a window.Things I don't like about OSU:1) The football team is supposed to win...

Atrios on the latest "it just looks worse and worse" report:The fascist at FEMA:On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters' willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told...

Amidst the continuing stories of tragedy and survival emanating from the Gulf Coast, this article in this morning's Washington Post caught my eye: Ursinus College, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, has turned the higher education clock back by requiring all freshmen to take a required philosophy and literature course that covers what we might think of as the Usual Suspects in the Western Canon: the book of Genesis, Plato, Descartes,...

Dan Drezner writes a post I considered and rejected for the Duck.Today's Washington Post has a story entitled "Chernobyl's Harm Was Far Less Than Predicted, U.N. Report Says." Here's what Dan writes about it:Good news about ChernobylPeter Finn reports in the Washington Post that twenty years after the disaster at Chernobyl, the health effects have been much less than prior estimates would have suggested:The long-term health and environmental...

John Ikenberry has a new post responding to Timothy Garton Ash's comparison between Britain c. 1905 and contemporary America. John goes much further than I have in my own posts on the subject, but his conclusion is similar:The problem with this analogy is that Britain really was overstretched and on the way down, whereas the United States is not. The United States is vastly more powerful than fin de siecle Britain – and its opportunities to...