If you missed IR scholar John Mueller's appearance on the Daily Show, watch it soon on the Comedy Central website.Mueller has been writing a great deal about the overblown threat from terrorism -- and he managed not only to plug his current book, but also his next one!Incidentally, that next book is going to be The Cold War as Farce. Perhaps Nayef Samhat and I will produce The Comedy of Global Politics first. Incidentally, I've been on a conference panel with Mueller, frequently assigned his writings in my class, and even hosted him in Louisville in a work-related endeavor. Thus, even though...

Always be wary of office furniture that comes in a nice compact box and then says "assembly required." This weekend was the weekend to reclaim the basement and reclaim some functional workspace at home. For the past 10 months, i've been using a half-sized card table as a "desk" in the basement. The original plan when we threw out the desk from the old office (donated, actually) and moved the computer downstairs to the then newly finished basement was to have a nice desk / office set up at home where I might get some work done. Well, to make a long story short, it didn't quite work out that...

Rob Farley of LGM has a thoughtful "web exclusive" article up at The American Prospect that everyone here should read. Here's his question: Does the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan hold up in retrospect, or have our difficulties there belied the wisdom of this war in the same way the disastrous occupation of Iraq has underscored the folly of that one?Again, I urge everyone to read the entire piece.That does not, however, stop me from offering this spoiler: Rob thinks that the decision to go to war was correct and that progressives were right to support it. Most of the essay...

In my research methods class, I assign David Kang's fantastic article, "International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War." Its a very well written, well argued piece that criticizes IR theorists who have repeatedly been wrong in predicting a second Korean War and then offers a detailed analysis of why the arguments are flawed. One of his key points is that many analysts smuggle in mis-placed assumptions about North Korea that leads them astray time and time again.Today, we learn via the NY Times and National Security Archive that flawed assumptions have guided US policy toward North...

I assume we'll be closer to an answer when I get up.The North Korean news agency KCNA says its country has successfully conducted an underground nuclear test."Our science research section has safely and successfully conducted an underground nuclear test on October, 9," it said.It added that there was no leak or danger from the test.There are no more details at this stage.The South Korean News Agency Yonhap is also carrying reports that Pyongyang may have carried out the test.Neither US intelligence sources nor South Korean defence officials can confirm at this stage that a test has taken...

Feeling safe? You shouldn't-- its the threatdown!I'm teaching a National Security Policy class this semester, and last week our topic was Threats. The assignment that day was for each student to write a Threatdown--an ordered, annotated list of the top 10 threats facing American.Two things struck me in reading the threats my students identified.First, most--like on the order of 60% - 70%--were non-state threats. Things like Global Warming, Pandemic Disease, Natural Disaster, Economic Collapse, Oli, and Global Terrorist Networks figured prominently in many papers. Of the states that did...

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and publicly post a response to a debate that I've been having with a friend on email for a while now. Moreover, I'm going to go even more out on a limb and argue, well, you saw the title. The beauty of a blog.Background: What got this started was my earlier post where I concluded that withdrawal from Iraq was the least-bad option. My friend replied, yes, but isn't that just leaving a mess that will do further, future damage? In a way, he echoed David Ignatius's point:Many Democrats act as if that's the end of the discussion: A mismanaged occupation has...

The ongoing VDH war at Lawyers, Guns, and Money has, at least for the moment, degenerated into an exercise in CV parsing. No. I'm not joking. The question: does Rob Farley's status as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky automatically make his arguments concerning President Carter's defense policy less compelling than those of someone who is a Professor Professor Emeritus at Stanford Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, a former Visiting Professor at Stanford, and a Professor Emeritus at CSU-Fresno? Here's a multiple-choice version:A. Yes. If someone is at Stanford...