Happy New Year, if you’re into that whole Gregorian calendar thing. (And this photo is, inshallah, our last Gangnam Style reference.)

Sorry to those of you who thinks this blog inclines too much toward America-centric linkage; there’s a lot of that in today’s edition. Look below for more traditional IR links. On a related note, I’d appreciate hearing from commenters what blogs I should be reading. I skim a lot of them, but many seem to have gone moribund over the past several months (or been absorbed by our Borg-ish ducky blog here). And given Foreign Policy‘s irritating new sign-in procedures, I’m now much less likely to read anything over there. While we’re at it, let me promote Daniel Solomon’s Twitter feed (@danatgu).

There was a fiscal cliff deal:

• Even the Liberal New Republic‘s Tim Noah was critical. (Dear Congressional Democrats: “Do not ‘come together.’ Stay apart. Until it’s 2013.”)
• So was Brad DeLong, a University of California at Berkeley economics professor.
• Paul Krugman suggests it’s not that bad but that liberals are troubled by how Obama handled the negotiations.

Other U.S.-centric links:

• In our continuing desultory Hagel Watch, Pat Buchanan endorses Hagel. That shouldn’t make Duck readers more or less leery of supporting him, but I do want to disagree with a comment made on this site some few days ago that the natural position for an Obama Republican Cabinet nominee was State or Defense. I know the Democrats have a thin bench, but choosing administrative personnel matters a lot, and installing a Republican–even a man now apparently without a party, but not by his choice–at DoD can’t help but seem like an endorsement of a hazy elite norm of bipartisanship over the policies that actual Obama voters chose.
• I should note that, given the Duck’s contributors’ political leanings, it may occasionally seem as if we don’t note the differences among the varieties of the American Right. That’s not quite true. In particular, I’ve been consistently impressed by the American Conservative‘s commitment to dialogue and engagement; the contributors and editors at AmCon embarrass the Weekly Standard and National Review by showing that “conservative” and “troglodytic” are not synonyms. I may be biased by this anti-extravert article, however. (For the younger readers among us, this now decade-old Jonathan Rauch piece in the Atlantic is even better.)

In the wide world:

• John Hickman asks what’s up with all those territorial grievances in East Asia?
• Burma’s international relations shift as the sanctions era ends. (I’ll switch to “Myanmar” when the USG does.)
• Robert Potter suggests Jiang Zemin is China’s paramount leader.
• Juan Carlos Garzon Vergara discusses how U.S. pot legalization affects Latin America. Hot tip: as Kevin Drum noted some time ago, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and a host of related practices makes this an international issue.
• Central African Republic leader asks rebels to let him finish his term–“I only have three years left”. (Via Laura Seay)

Better Late Than Never division:

• Minxin Pei discusses how China’s foreign policy signals are weakening Beijing.
• I’ve discussed this Robert Oprisko study of political science hiring practices before, but this time I want to draw readers’ attention to the comments, and consider how the justifications for hiring elite departments’ candidates would sound different if we read “male” for “elite”. (E.g., “When there are 400 applicants … it’s often possible to take extreme short-cuts, e.g., considering only the [males], and still achieve the goal.”)

A note to E-IR.info: I’d link to more of your articles if your links worked consistently.