I saw this image on Twitter tonight and it kind of summarized how I feel about the news this summer which has been awful. I’ve been reading posts from thoughtful commentators like Steve Walt, Micah Zenko, and Jay Ulfelder who remind us that it’s not all bad or at least it’s not as bad as has been in the past (anybody remember World War II? [anyone] or perhaps even the early post-Cold War was as bad as it right now).
Still, from Ukraine to Ferguson to ISIS in Iraq/Syria to Gaza to Ebola, this has been one shitty summer for news and also nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing. I think the current security threats are making many IR security folks feel as uneasy as the IPE folks felt during the 2008 recession. Since I kind of straddle different worlds, I worried then and I worry now.
In the midst of all this, we’ve at least had a ray of lightness and kindness which is the viral “IceBucket Challenge.” I know some have scoffed at this act of slacktivism, but awareness and fundraising for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) has gone way up. So, I say go out and dump ice on your head and donate money to a good cause. Relax, hug and kiss your kids, and let’s hope cooler heads around the world prevail. F–k bad news. Some links below that capture some of the rough news.
– Strobe Talbott profiles Putin
– James Foley should be remembered for his stories
U.S. Special Forces tried and failed to rescue James Foley from his captors in Syria. @eliasgroll, @k8brannen: https://t.co/tvf1BN58nN
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) August 21, 2014
– Liberian military struggles to contain Ebola outbreak in quarantined neighborhood in outskirts of Monrovia
– Steve Walt says Obama is more calculating and realist than we might think, not sure if this a good thing
– Groundbreaking study of elephant carcass counts in Kenya and extrapolations continent wide suggests 100,000 were killed in a three year period, threatening the survival of African elephants
– Drought and groundwater decline in American Southwest makes me wonder if parts of the country will even remain habitable
To end on a happier note, I’m going to post the following video of the Icebucket Challenge and the equivalent of America’s funniest home videos, though I wonder if everyone is okay.
I wonder about your tendency to talk about the news on TV as a bit divorced from the IR community and our research concerns. I find myself wondering what the long-term effects on the field in general will be as we begin to think about the significance and implications of events such as the rise of ISIS in particular. Don’t we sound a bit naive and silly as we sit around theorizing about things like norms and regimes when it’s clear that there are groups out there that don’t share the values that norms are meant to uphold (restraining conflict, treating our enemies humanely)? Doesn’t it show that there really is no such thing as a universal norm? Doesn’t it show that clearly the world is not becoming more peaceful or better organized over time?
Did anyone else notice the fact that Obama used the term “civilization’ in his speech yesterday in a completely unironic manner? I found myself wondering about the fact that academics are so careful not to judge, not to give offense and to treat all (or at least most) ideas in the international system as worthy of consideration. In talking about civilization, Obama reminded me of Bush talking about good and evil, something which many academics sneered at as irrelevant and not very scholarly.
Does the development of a group like ISIS force us as academics to rethink some of the assumptions we have been making in recent years about the irrelevance and narrowness of values as a criteria for making policy recommendations? Don’t we seem a little out of touch?
Mary Manjikian writes:
Don’t we sound a bit naive and silly as we sit around theorizing about things like norms and regimes when it’s clear that there are groups out there that don’t share the values that norms are meant to uphold (restraining conflict, treating our enemies humanely)? Doesn’t it show that there really is no such thing as a universal norm? Doesn’t it show that clearly the world is not becoming more peaceful or better organized over time?
Has there ever been a “universal norm” in the sense of one that *every single actor* in the system accepts?
As for the world becoming more peaceful over time, certainly the civil war in Syria with its relatively large casualties has caused an upturn in the battle-death figures, which had been fairly steadily declining for the last 25 yrs or so. But a sense of perspective shd be kept. Most of the world outside of several regions — i.e., the (broader) Middle East (stretched to incl. s.w. Asia, i.e. Afghanistan and Pakistan); parts of Africa; and Ukraine — seem fairly peaceful. There are simmering disputes and ongoing separatist mvts in various other areas, but few sustained armed conflicts that produce lots of casualties on a regular basis. The challenges faced by significant numbers of people in many parts of the world are more social/economic/environmental, having to do with meeting basic needs for survival, than they are directly tied to armed conflict (though in some cases the two intersect).
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been very long-running, unfortunately, so the (horrible) events in Gaza do not represent a big change in terms of something particularly new. The Ukraine situation is also not all that startling if one puts it in the context of Russia’s actions in its ‘near abroad’ over the past decade or two. ISIS *is* a new development, but it may be too soon to judge its long-term implications.
In short, I’m not sure the ‘security’ picture, narrowly defined at least, has changed all that drastically. (Others, of course, may disagree.)