Thursday Morning Linkage

25 October 2012, 1020 EDT

Michael Krepon argues that Asian nuclear competition takes place under different rules than did the US-Soviet rivalry.
The security situation in Darfour is “deteriorating” according to a UN official.
Aimée Fox-Godden on “organizational forgetfulness” in the WW1-era British military.
The National Security Archive is in the process of releasing critical documents pertaining to the Cuban Missile Crisis. On Saturday, 27 October, they are holding an event at George Washington University on the 50th anniversary of the crisis.
The podcast series won’t restart until next week, but in the interim you can go and read the latest installment of Theory Talks, which features Beate Jahn.

And also:

Katja Grace on the “transitivity of trust.” A sample: “So here the theory is that you trust friends substantially more than friends of friends because friends have the right incentives to cooperate, whereas friends of friends don’t. But if your friends are really cooperative, why would they give you unreliable advice – to trust their own friends? One answer is that your friends believe trustworthiness is a property of individuals, not relationships.”
The always excellent Tim Burke on “leisure and the liberal arts.”
Dave Schuler looks at contradictions in the Obama economic plan. Liberals have noticed this as well: how Obama talks both about unemployment as a “demand gap” problem but also as a structural problem. One possibility is that these aren’t exclusive propositions: we should be addressing both. Another is that a serious stimulus is off the table, so the only thing that he can offer is modest stimulus and a story about structural problems. A third is that this is just how politics works–what matters is that you tell stories about the economy, not whether those stories make any sense.
It looks like Marc Lynch will be joining our lineup for the Blogging Reception at ISA. Speaking of which, we’ve had additional nominations coming in via email and comments. But we need more. I’m particularly concerned that a large number of excellent international-affairs blogs won’t receive consideration.

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.