The Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University, with which I will renew my affiliation when I return next year, has a weblog.So far there are three posts.The most recent is by Jeff Anderson, the Director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies. He provides a short post-mortem on the German elections and predicts that " neither Schroeder nor Merkel will succeed in becoming chancellor."There is also a debate between Carol Lancaster, the Director of the Mortara Center, and Michael Hawes, a Visiting Professor in the Government Department, over John Bolton at the...

I don't really understand the nature of the kerfuffle between the good folks at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Justin Gardner of I-can't-say-this-name-without-grimacing Donklephont. It does provide me, however, with an opportunity to quote the Duck's patron saint, Max Weber.The sociology of self-described "moderate" sites (as opposed to people who are simply moderates) on the blogoverse has always interested me (I have a few aborted posts on the subject). Perusing these sites, whether Donklephont or Totten's, one comes away with the distinct impression that "moderate" sites are mostly...

Over at Coming Anarchy, Curzon links to an MA paper by the very well credentialed Steven Huybrechts ("Biology of Conflict: Ruling Out World Government"). Curzon writes,I adhere to a Kaplanesque version of pessimistic realism and fundamentally believe that human beings are hardwired to be violent. Steven Huybrechts agrees in his recent paper Biology of Conflict: Ruling Out World Government, arguing that people naturally divide into tribe-like subgroups destined for conflict. Conclusion: no world government will ever be able to wholly eradicate war, and thinking otherwise will actually make...

Have you noticed this very odd story (from CNN)?:The [Iraqi] official [speaking to CNN on the condition of anonymity] said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several, including a traffic police officer. There were no fatalities, the official said.The two gunmen fled the scene but were captured and taken in for questioning, admitting they were British marines carrying out a "special security task," the official said.Within three hours, British forces rescued these marines in dramatic fashion, crashing an armored vehicle (escorted by a...

I've updated my "current reading" on the sidebar, which had gotten horribly out of date. I'm particularly enjoying Bryan Ward-Perkin's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, which was recommended to me by Vivek Sharma during a long discussion at APSA about the need to do more comparative-historical work in International Relations.Ward-Perkin's book is mostly a critique of certain trajectories of the "Late Antiquity" literature, which he believes downplay the general pain and suffering attending the collapse of the western Roman Empire. There really was a dark ages, Perkin's argues,...

Those of us in IR who do "constructivist" work (broadly speaking) spend a fair amount of time questioning the notion that things like states are usefully treated as more or less solid objects. Instead of treating states as relatively unproblematic territorial containers with fixed and stable borders, we concern ourselves with processes of stabilization -- the various ways in which socially relevant distinctions are produced, inscribed, and sustained in daily practice. Elsewhere1, Dan and I have suggested that states should be regarded as ongoing dynamic projects rather than as...

I present... a quiz! In reverse-"SAT reading comprehension" format. Later, perhaps, someone will post on Germany's electoral mess, what may prove to be the shortest-lasting North Korean deal yet, China's courageous stance in favor of geno - er, sovereignty, or other aspects of international relations. Until then...In order to be a hip, fashionably "smart" literary twenty- or thirty-something, you must:(a) Continue to say the same sort of things you and your friends would've found extremely clever when you were still in college... and a tiny bit drunk.(b) Model your conversations after...

I've been meaning to blog about this for a bit.Ronald Krebs, in an exchange with Chaim Kauffman in International Security ("Selling the Market Short? The Marketplace of Ideas and the Iraq War," Vol. 29, No. 4, Spring 2005, pp. 196–207), argues that once the Bush Administration decided to go to war with Iraq, there was no way the opposition could win. Krebs' argument is related to a broader theory about what he and The Duck's own Patrick Jackson call "rhetorical coercion," which means exactly what it sounds like. What set of conditions made it relatively easy for the Bush administration to...