Cross-posted on my blog.On June 27, I blogged about Thomas Friedman's old claim that "no two countries that have McDonald's have ever fought a war since each got McDonald's."That was falsified by the NATO/US bombing of the former Yugoslavia.Now, it seems, Friedman's new book, The World is Flat makes a similar claim. This quote by the author is from a book review in the July Progressive: "“The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are...

This is cross-posted on my blog.Years ago, I sometimes read the usenet group rec.sport.baseball. Many of the posters on that board used a word that I hadn't seen before, but it was one I soon embraced: "mediocy." According to baseballthinkfactory.org, the word was coined "by Dave Kirsch and defined by David M. Tate":It is a portmanteau word, combining 'media' and 'idiot' to denote a member of the print or broadcast media who hasn't a clue....

On his relatively new blog, The Useless Tree, Williams College political scientist Sam Crane recently posted an excellent entry entitled, "The Sad Lesson of Iraq." Crane is an expert on Asian affairs, and thus logically discusses the wisdom imparted by Chinese military strategist Sun Tsu.However, Crane begins where national security experts often begin -- by quoting the most famous line written by German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz:...

My family is relocating (temporarily) to Columbus, and the move won't be over with for at least a week. In consequence, I won't be posting here very much. The other members of the collective will, I hope, make up for my absence.I hope everyone's having a good August. August may be a "slow news month," but there's a ton - both good and bad - going on in international politics.

Peter Jennings, long-time anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, died yesterday. Granted, he hadn't been on the air since April because of complications stemming from his treatment for lung cancer, but his death -- along with the retirements of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather as the news anchors of NBC and CBS respectively -- seems to me to symbolize something bigger: the demise of the nightly television news program as an institution.No, this isn't an...

Cross-posted on my blog.Last week, I blogged about the G-SAVE: global struggle against violent extremists. Reportedly, the Bush administration decided to toss aside the "war on terror" for this new "catchphrase." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been using some variant of SAVE for over a year, and Joint Chiefs Chair Richard Myers says that the new phrasing recognizes that the threat must be met by diplomatic, economic, and political...

From the AP:Some who don't approve of Bush's job performance admire him personally."I think he tries to be likable and I think he's somewhat honest," said Cindy Bashura, a Democratic-leaning resident of Seymour, Conn. "He tries to do what he thinks is right, but sometimes I think he takes the wrong advice from people in his circle."The "evil advisors who lead the ruler astray" narrative was a mainstay of not only Tsarist Russia, but of many...

Dan Drezner posts on one of the best science-fiction series that was ever cancelled before its time... and the upcoming movie. Firefly, for those of you who don't know, was a Joss Whedon series in which he took the western influences in space opera (Roddenberry described Star Trek, after all, as "Wagon Train to the Stars") and magnified them to create an explicit "space western."I find myself a bit annoyed to discover that the Sci-Fi Channel is...

Cross-posted on my blog.The point of Dafna Linzer's front page story in Tuesday's Washington Post (August 2) is clear from the headline: "Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb." A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new...

Some thoughts on Chirol's "History of Empires II". I'll state my basic concern up front: Chirol's "second-generation empires" sound pretty much like what international-relations (and other) scholars call "hegemonic systems." There are a number of good overviews of hegemonic-stability theory available on the web. It holds that, "The stability of the International System requires a single dominant state to articulate and enforce the rules of...

From my inbox:Once I get that PhD, I'll finally be rich!Oh, wait. Never mind.Filed as: spam

I'm sure Chirol has no idea what he's done, but he waved an enormous red flag in front of my face by posting "A History of Empires." Sadly, I can't really respond (yet). I'm two weeks away from moving to Ohio for the 2005-2006 academic year, I owe a coauthor a redraft of a piece on hierarchy in international politics before I leave, and the paper that really addresses these questions is currently sitting in revise-and-resubmit limbo. But, as I...