Lite Morning Linkage

by Dan Nexon

25 July 2012, 1300 EDT

I’m out of town, so this is the best I can do. And since one post with Dunecat isn’t enough….

Climate:

‘Tis the summer of depressing climate news. Today is Greenland edition (via).

Syria:

Dan Byman urges full US support for the rebels.
Rob Farley discusses CJ Chivers analysis of the impact of rebel-deployed IEDs on the Syrian army.

Russia:

A long essay by Greg Afinogenov on Putin’s Russia and current protests there. Afinogenov argues that Putinism isn’t so much authoritarian as “post-democratic” (via).

American Grand Strategy:

Celeste Ward Gventer argues that maintaing America’s position depends on resisting the temptation to nation-build, i.e., avoiding imperial overextension. The piece is part of a week-long forum at the NIC’s Global Trends 2030 blog on American Decline. Which, as I’ve alluded to before, I would be more enthusiastic about recommending if the blog’s banner wasn’t headache-inducing.

Methodology:

“For those who continue to conduct ethnographic research as a professor, juggling research with increased responsibilities is a challenge. With increased teaching, service, and family commitments to aging parents and/or children, researchers have slimmer blocks of time and energy to undertake observations, write field notes, and analyze and prepare the results for publication.“

Random:

Neatorama has Phineas and Ferb Stainless Steel Liquid Lock Bottles for sale. Below is what Google Ads paired with it:

Phineas and Ferb does not, I submit, provide the Romney campaign’s preferred corporate association for Bain Capital.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.