Promotional and Disciplinary

• Peter Henne’s guest post — in which he asks questions about peer reviewing from the perspective of a junior scholar — has been getting a lot of traffic. But it’s a pretty big tell that no one has attempted to answer his questions.
• Iver Neumann’s not the first scholar to be interviewed for both the Duck Podcast and Theory Talks, but he may be the first to have the latter interview released the day after he conducted the former.
• I’ve been enjoying Namesake, a webcomic involving characters travelling into classic stories. Check it out.
• Also take a look at Alex Wallerstein’s Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog.
• I didn’t know that MIT Press Journals has a podcast series, which includes two from International Security. Good idea. Not, as far as I can tell, very well publicized.
• Kindred W. wonders why political scientists don’t practice what they study, but chooses a questionable example: the lobbying effort on behalf of NSF funding worked. More interesting: some of the behavior he discusses is not at all puzzling from an identity-politics or social-psychological perspective. So perhaps the question ought to be: why do we peddle theories inconsistent with our own political behavior?

Grand Strategy

• It was the week of grand strategy, highlighted by the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. Barry Posen advocated a US “pull back.” Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth called for “deep engagement” (see also their International Security version of the article) Dan Drezner discussed how the GOP can rebuild its foreign policy credibility.
• Erik Voten weighed in at The Monkey Cage, noting that the demarcation problem makes it difficult to distinguish between the practice of “deep” and “selective” engagement.
• Steve Walt also engaged.
• I noted that these debates, despite being incredibly important, aren’t as exciting as they once were.
  
• In Proceedings Magazine, Colonel T.X. Hammes (retired) advocates “offshore control” as an alternative to “offshore balancing” for the US in Asia (via Taylor Fravel — note that I so consistently mispel Taylor’s last name that the Duck is the first google hit for “Taylor Favrel.”)
• Danielle Pletka has a “Think Again” piece arguing that the GOP is in great shape on Foreign Policy. Daniel Larison is unimpressed. James Poulos is also underwhelmed.

Other Stuff

• House Republicans seek to torpedo New START (via TPR).
• Andrew Yeo looks at the nexus between peace activism and the Asa pivot.
• “Bling monitor” at Blood & Treasure.
• Jay Ulfelder ponders the recent wave of collapsing states.
• Daniel Soloman write about “The Batman and the State.”
• Marc Lynch rounds up the Middle East Channel‘s greatest hits of 2012.