Or, how do we compare the not so nearly like? There is an obvious temptation to compare Libya to Syria and ponder why the US has not jumped into the fray now that Syria has started killing lots of people (to be fair, the piece does show how different the cases are). ...
John Bolton writes in the LA Times, which unlike the rest of the world I read because where else could I find out who died in my neighborhood recently, that we must stay in Afghanistan forever!...
Steve Walt has a challenge: ...who are the most amusing, entertaining, or witty writers in the field of international relations and foreign policy? I don't mean books or articles that are "funny"...
Excellent in-depth discussion of the Stryker Brigade in the New York Times. What's great about this piece is that the author goes into considerable depth to understand the structural context behind...
Whatever version of political realism you are dealing with, the sovereign state is still central to its universe. Which is one reason realists are uncomfortable with any world view that accords 'non-state actors' a pivotal or even significant role.I'm a huge fan of the work of political realists such as John Mearsheimer, Robert Pape or Christopher Layne, especially of their warnings against our own self-defeating behaviour. But there is a contradiction, or at least a tension in some of their arguments that deserves further thinking.They argue that we have inflated the threat of AQ-style...
Regarding the revelations in the latest diplo-document-dump, there are some good questions to be asked. Charli is wondering who actually did the leaking and Ben Wittes is concerned about the effect that this will have on not only the government, but the detainees themselves:Should it most upset the government, for whom the story represents yet another devastating failure to keep important secrets? Or should it most upset detainee counsel, for whom this trove means the public release of huge amounts of unsubstantiated speculation about clients who have not been charged and against whom it is...
... which hit the stands this evening via NYT, WAPO, the Telegraph and numerous other media outlets; courtesy of Wikileaks, many say.Interestingly, NYT reports Wikileaks was not responsible for this release, claiming the documents were originally leaked to Wikileaks but were released to the media by "another party":These articles are based on a huge trove of secret documents leaked last year to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times by another source on the condition of anonymity.If not Wikileaks, who? Well, who knows? Openleaks, founded by defectors...
I have the suspicion that my fan base might be the choir, and I want to be sure I play it down the middle. I am sure that Duck readers are the kind of folks who can laugh at themselves.European political scientists like post-positivism, also known as post-structuralism or post-modernism. Or at least non-European political scientists think those things are all the same. No one really knows. No North American political scientist has ever met a post-positivist political scientist. They might be hiding in the anthropology department, where it is safer, coming out to forage for food at night....
Unidentified ‘British security officials’ are telling journalists there is a possibility that sections of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) could attack next Friday’s royal wedding in London. At an event I attended this week, Patrick Mercer OBE, Conservative MP for Newark and member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Transatlantic and International Security, warned that the three security threats facing Britain are Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism, violence ‘attached’ to student protests, and ‘Irish terrorists’ attacking the royal wedding. Mercer questioned the wisdom of holding a royal...
Nobody has come close to explaining how strategic narratives work in international relations, despite the term being banded about. Monroe Price wrote a great article in the Huffington Post yesterday that moves the debate forward. As I have already written, strategic narratives are state-led projections of a sequence of events and identities, a tool through which political leaders try to give meaning to past, present and future in a way that justifies what they want to do. Getting others at home or abroad to accept or align with your narrative is a way to influence their behaviour. But like...
India appears to be continuing to shift its West Asia policy away from a once budding partnership with Iran, which aimed among other things to stabilize Afghanistan. It is rumored that in late March, the Indian National Security Adviser, Shiv Shanker Menon, delicately delivered a message to the Islamic Republic that India's PM would not be making a state visit later this year (Telegraph [Kolkata] 3/10/11). If the news reports are correct, the diplomatic maneuver comes only a few months after India abandoned the practice of paying for its crude oil imports from Iran through the Tehran...
Vadim Nikitin has an excellent run down. With a possible Putin - Medvedev face-off looming for next year's presidential elections, the campaign season has already begun. This trailer shows how it all might go down in 2012 and was featured on, of all places, the Russian Communist Party's website. The clip ends with "There's always an alternative: Communist Party of Russia."Nikitin has translated the key points as they appear in the clip: ANCIENT RELIGIONS HAVE FORETOLD THIS… IT IS UNAVOIDABLE… Clip of Putin: “The next elections in the Russian Federation are in 2012″ TWO CANDIDATES… BUT ONLY...