"We're talking a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island," he said. "If an insider knows where the target sets are, in other words, the way to damage the reactor or to blow a hole in the spent fuel...
Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe-Mentum Lieberman was certainly seen as a watershed political moment, where the anti-war message toppled an incumbent. Given that incumbents in Congress have...
An addendum (and yes, I still have internet access) to my post on progressive foreign policy. Ron Suskind, in his interview with Salon, gets it mostly right:One of the things that I think is clear...
Brad DeLong has an interesting post on "Wilhelmine China". In a recent Wall Street Journal Greg Ip editorial Ip and Neil King, Jr. take issue with Brad's analogy between the UK and the US in the nineteenth century. Brad quotes them:Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley, sees a useful parallel in Britain's policy toward the emerging industrial colossus of the United States in the 19th century.... As late as the 1840s, he notes, the U.S. and Britain -- then the world's sole superpower -- came close to war over territorial disputes in the Pacific...
John Hawkins' interview with Mark Steyn recently made the rounds at conservative and right-leaning international-relations blogs. Since I spent part of last year involved in an edited book project on religion and Europe, I thought it might be interesting to look closely at Steyn's arguments. The caveat, of course, is that my contribution involved the history of religious conflict in Europe. John Hawkins: In your opinion, why is it that Europe has become so much more secular than the United States, where Christianity is still strong?Mark Steyn: The short answer is separation of church and...
President Bush's address on Iraq made choosing today's maxim very difficult. Many of Guicciardini's maxims put a different spin on the speech, and particularly about what people are writing about its strengths and weaknesses. So, given a wealth of possibilities, I have settled on this one:If you are involved in important affairs or are seeking power, you must always hide your failures and exaggerate your successes. It is a form of swindling and very much against my nature. But, since your fate more often depends upon the opinion of others than on facts, it is a good idea to create the...
First, the administration explained in a famous advertisement featured during the 2002 Super Bowl that buying drugs abets terrorism.Then, in 2003, Arianna Huffington's "Detroit Project" ran ads claiming that owning an SUV indirectly aids terror; buying lots of gas provides lots of cash to the Iranians and Saudis.Now, apparently, it turns out that feeding your baby fosters global terrorism. This link is explained by FBI Director Robert Mueller (quoted by Bradley C. Bower of AP) in today's Christian Science Monitor: "Middle Eastern criminal enterprises involved in the organized theft and...
Although I've commented extensively on these issues on other people's blogs, I haven't used the Duck as a platform for weighing into the morass of the Karl Rove "evil liberals want to destroy America" or Richard Durbin "stop behaving like Nazis" speeches. The whole debate surrounding both speeches makes me angry. When I get angry I mouth off. The result is neither lucid nor illuminating discussion, on my part, of issues relevant to international politics.Indeed, many other (and smarter) people have examined problems with Rove's claims and the Republican party's defense of them. Clearly,...
I'm slated to teach International security this fall for the first time in a couple of years and have been thinking about what to cover. It is a broad topic, of course, and people have all sorts of perspectives. Especially prior to the "war on terror," there was a vast literature developing on environmental security, human security, food security, etc.To a large extent, post 9/11 and war in Iraq, the field has returned to its fascination with guns and bombs.On that note, here's something interesting from the Washington Post, March 26, 2005 (p. D12), that I missed when it ran originally:...
I don't agree with Rodger that the Iraq War was totally unjustifiable. Rodger and I do, presumably, agree that the Bush administration's marketing of the war was marked by "threat inflation" at best, and outright deceit at worst.I am certain, however, that we agree that they've done a terrible job - from day one - of actually waging warfare in Mesopotamia. Indeed, even most of my pro-war friends and colleagues have been shocked at the gross incompetence of the administration when it comes to the invasion and occupation.Thus, although I'm not some hard-core anti-war type, I simply can't agree...
There's another mention of "dog-whistle politics" over at Political Wire. Taegan Goddard quotes from a recent Congressional Quarterly article by Craig Crawford:Dean and Durbin were trying to rally their faithful with the harsh, red-meat language that partisans enjoy, but they have a lot to learn about how to deploy the stiletto instead of the assault rifle.One reason Republicans keep Democrats on the defensive is how effectively they speak to their partisan ideologues and still manage to avoid a backlash from moderates. Speaking in words that the faithful understand — while sounding...