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India’s soft power is unclear
India has soft power to the extent that its values, its way of managing its affairs and its vision for the international system are so attractive to other nations that the latter start doing what...
Human Rights: The Last Utopia?
I’ve just finished reading Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History and would highly recommend it to those interested in rights and norms. I have written a review of it that will...
Obama and Egypt: The Power of Inception?
On 4 June 2009 US President Obama went to Cairo to make a speech to the Muslim world, where, among other things, he addressed the question of political reform and democracy in the Middle East. In...
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Water, water everywhere
I knew that there was a large problem as soon as I pulled my car out of the driveway. There was entirely too much traffic running through my normally quiet suburban neighborhood -- we're kind of buried back in the middle of a tangle of winding streets, so we don't usually get many people driving through on their way to someplace. But there were a lot of cars out, driving in a slow line that bore all the characteristics of the blind leading the blind: drivers' heads frantically turning from side to side, trying to figure out where they were supposed to go, and following the car in front of...
Speaking of Idiotic Cartoons…
...I submit the latest from Ted Rall (click here for larger image) :I will leave aside the weak argumentation about the lack of importance of Afghanistan to the fight against al-Qaeda (however, who the hell cares where Bin Laden was physically on 9/11/01?? Wow, great argument Ted...), but will take issue with his claim at the end that Pakistan had a female President.Here is a list of past Presidents in Pakistan. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see any women. Perhaps Ted was referring to Benazir Bhutto, who was elected Prime Minister in 1988 and again in 1993. In either case the...
Richard Perle: In his world it all makes sense
Over the weekend former defense secretary Richard Perle wrote an op-ed for the WaPo excoriating—no, not the Democrats, but Neoconservatives' other favorite punching bad—the State Department for the current standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.Besides throwing in the now requisite amount of references to resolve, appeasement, etc, etc, Perle makes the unusual claim that we should have “…referred the matter to the U. N. Security Council and demanded immediate action.”Right, wait--what?Bruce Jentleson over at America Abroad has an adequate response:“2003, hmmm, wasn’t something else...
Missed Opportunity
In April I discussed a story making the rounds that the Bush administration failed to take Iran up on an offer to talk about its weapons program and support for anti-Israeli terrorists shortly after the President declared the end of 'major hostilities' in Iraq. Of course, whether the offer was legitimate or some sort of ploy has been debated a great deal. Stygius and Kingdaddy broatch the topic yet again and discuss its strategic implications in light of where we are today. More on the rise of President Ahmadinejad at the FT.Filed as: Iran
Deterrence is no secret
It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration:has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a broad new interpretation of the Treasury Department's administrative powers to bypass traditional banking privacy protections. It has swept in large volumes of international money transfers, including many made by U.S. citizens and residents, in an effort to track the locations, identities and...
Battening down the hatches?
Just saw this headline at the BBC: Iran calls halt to petrol importsI have no evidence for this statement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran was somehow readying itself and the public for potential punitive sanctions by the West, which may include disruptions to imported, refined oil.For all the oil Iran produces and exports its refining capacity is sub-par, making them dependent on imported oil (yeah, it's wierd I know). Just a thought.Apparently the FP Passport and I think alike.Filed as: Iran
Feed problems
Sunship has alerted me to some problems with the XML feed. Feedburner has detected two sets of problems:1. We're using 0.3 rather than 1.0. I'm not sure how to change this. If someone could let me know, I'd appreciate it.2. Peter wrote his first post using a wysiwyg editor, and that created some series serious markup garbage that seems to be creating problems for XML. As an experiment, I've pulled his introductory post. Could someone let me know if that fixed the problem?That's all folks!
Signaling and Grand Strategy: Or, Why Iraq Made Sense
In previous posts and other arenas I have argued that the Iraq War could not be explained simply by the threat of WMDs, the desire to liberate the Iraqi people, to spread democracy, to uphold the credibility of the UN, etc, etc. My point was that you must look at the operation in the larger context of a global struggle against innumerable threats to US security, both state- and non-state based, where the US for all its power recognized its limited resources and options.Iraq was not an end in itself but rather the means to further the ends of our grand strategy; it was to serve as a...