by Dan Nexon | 13 Jun 2005 |
David Adesnik takes an odd swipe at the mainstream media.What the WaPo actually reported on Sunday's front page was thatBlair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.As Kevin Drum points out, this isn't exactly a revelation (even if Juan Cole calls...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Jun 2005 |
After the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square by the People's Liberation Army, the NRA ran advertisements claiming that if the protesters had been armed, they could've defended themselves and thus prevented the anti-democracy crackdown. This kind of argument, rooted in the (correct) conviction that the ultimate recourse against tyranny is armed insurrection, has a long history both in political theory and in gun-rights...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Jun 2005 |
I just discovered that my colleague at Georgetown, Tony Arend, has started a weblog on Georgetown's new - and barely used - blog system. Besides being an expert on international law, Tony's a Georgetown institution unto himself.Tony's latest post argues that the Geneva Convention is actually only one of a number of treaties that the US may be violating in Guantanamo Bay.I'd say "welcome" to Tony, except that his blog is older than the...
by Dan Nexon | 10 Jun 2005 |
It looks like the Duck of Minerva's going to start quacking "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" if I don't post something on international relations soon. So, in the interests of all non-baseball fans everywhere... On America Abroad, Ivo Daalder reflects on the The High Cost of Unilateralism:In the early days of the Bush administration, us foreign policy wonks would sit around and bemoan Bush’s unilateralism — his decision to walk out of the ABM...
by Bill Petti | 10 Jun 2005 |
[Cross posted at Discord and Elaboration]As a New York Mets fan I can't help but marvel at the acquisition and the performance of Pedro Martinez this season. True, many doubted whether giving Pedro a 4-year deal given his age, loss of velocity, and recent injuries was a wise move by the Metsies, but so far the investment is paying off. It got me thinking--just exactly how good is Pedro? It seems to me that his antics over the years (the midgtet...
by Rodger Payne | 9 Jun 2005 |
Cross posted on my blog.Two days ago, Steve Holland of Reuters asked Tony Blair and George W. Bush about the so-called "Downing Street Memo." You know, the leaked transcript from a secret British government meeting held during summer 2002: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 9 Jun 2005 |
Last weekend my wife and kids and I went to visit the National World War Two Memorial that now stands on the Mall in Washington between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. We hadn't been before, and since both of our grandfathers served in WWII, we though it was kind of appropriate for Memorial Day weekend. I don't quite know what we were expecting; I'd heard some of the press about the site's sterility and its nineteenth-century...
by Dan Nexon | 9 Jun 2005 |
The international community's inadequate response to the ongoing genocide in Sudan (and yes, it is a genocide) brings shame upon us all. Recent polling suggests the American people agree, as majorities favor a stronger US commitment to the stop the crimes against humanity being committed by the Sudanese-backed Janjawid.Today, NATO pledged to provide airlift support to send additional African troops to the region:NATO defence ministers gave the...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Jun 2005 |
Dan Drezner briefly reconsiders the security benefits of hegemonic orders. The reason? A recent AP report that global military expenditures are on the rise. After digging a bit deeper, though, Dan finds that most of the rise can be accounted for by increased US defense expenditures since 9/11.What are the normative implications of this? We go back to the AP report:"It's hard to put the United States in the center, or blame everything on the...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Jun 2005 |
My wife and I started watching 月詠 -MOON PHASE the other day. It is far from the best anime we've seen, but it is definitely entertaining.The main female character is an adolescent vampire. Given the general idioms of vampire fiction, it should come as no surprise that Moon Phase is full of psychosexual themes that run from the interesting (e.g., awakening of adolescent sexuality) to the disturbing (e.g., sexualization of young girls). The...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Jun 2005 |
Guicciardini on the perils of bandwagoning (allying with the strong against the weak), and generally of being a minor power:I was in Spain when the news came that the Venetians had made an alliance with the king of France against His Catholic Majesty. Upon hearing it, Almazano, his Secretary, told me a Castilian proverb which says in effect that the thread breaks where it is weakest. What it means is that the weakest always get it in the neck;...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Jun 2005 |
The BBC:Mauritania has accused Islamic insurgents from Algeria of attacking a Mauritanian army base in the Sahara desert killing at least 15 soldiers. Defence Minister Baba Ould Sidi said the gunmen were from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) - suspected of links to al-Qaeda.... In recent months the Mauritanian government has arrested about 50 people accused of links with al-Qaeda.Critics accuse the government of using the...