The Duck of Minerva

Adrienne LeBas

Recent Posts

What is to be Done in Nigeria?

by Adrienne LeBas | 22 May, 2014 |

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, “Why Foreign Intervention in Nigeria is a Bad Idea.” That post focused on larger issues that make Nigeria a particularly problematic context for foreign involvement of any kind; this post focuses on what policies -- mostly domestic -- might work. In the past week, things have not gotten better with regard to Nigeria and the effort to #Bringbackourgirls. On the US front, the administration began a blessed crawl away from direct US military involvement in Nigeria the day of my earlier post. In last Thursday’s hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations...

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Why Foreign Intervention in Nigeria is a Bad Idea

by Adrienne LeBas | 15 May, 2014 |

This is the first of two posts about Boko Haram & possible US involvement in Nigerian counterterrorism operations. For the second, see "What is to be done in Nigeria?". Note: two sentences added shortly after publication to clarify that my concerns encompass the full range of foreign intervention, from direct intervention to operational support to limited strikes to an expanded role in shaping Nigerian policy. Yesterday, American drones began flights over northern Nigeria in hopes of locating the 276 girls abducted a month ago from a school in Borno State. American and British...

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The inevitability of transnational racial profiling?

by Adrienne LeBas | 13 November, 2013 |

Today's thought experiment: A foreign national is killed in your state, igniting emotional protests and a road blockade by members of his community. Your state is almost entirely economically dependent on tourism. There's standard boilerplate for these events, right? You express regret, you pledge to investigate the murder, you vow that locals who violently attacked protesters will also be brought to justice. Now imagine that it was a Nigerian national who had been killed. And the death may have been linked to rival drug gangs fighting over territory. Does the picture change? Recent events...

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Monday morning linkage

by Adrienne LeBas | 14 October, 2013 |

The shutdown continues to dominate the day's news.Resolution still seems distant. Last week, US Treasury Department Secretary Jack Lew reminded the Senate that extraordinary measures used to cope with our current debt limit run out on Thursday. This weekend, IMF head Christine Lagarde says that a default could tip the world economy into recession. The African Union served up some of the more consequential international news over the past few days, first slamming the International Criminal Court for an allegedly anti-African bias and then demanding that trials against sitting presidents Omar...

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What Terrorist Attacks Don’t Tell Us

by Adrienne LeBas | 2 October, 2013 |

This past week, terrorists struck Westgate Mall in Nairobi. Al Shabaab, a Somali Islamist organization, claimed responsibility. Frustratingly, we still know very little about the attackers, their origins, or the Kenyan security forces’ response. And the news about the last just keeps getting worse. But there has been some analysis of the attacks – by both journalists and academics. In one of the most widely-circulated pieces, Somalia specialist Ken Menkhaus suggested that the attacks were a sign of desperation, the last gasp of an organization that had run out of an intra-Somalia game (also,...

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Monday morning links

by Adrienne LeBas | 23 September, 2013 |

The international news continues to be dominated by Saturday's terrorist attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The coverage of the attacks in most major newspapers has been excellent (and peppered with first-person reflections) due to the large number of reporters and photojournalists who are based in Nairobi. Somali Islamist group Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility via Twitter, and Twitter struggled to deactivate its feeds. The immediate demand was the withdrawal of Kenyan troops from Somalia, where they have been assisting AU forces and the interim Somali government since October 2011....

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Monday linkage

by Adrienne LeBas | 9 September, 2013 |

Syria continues to dominate the news. President Obama will appear on television both tonight and tomorrow to make the case for intervention in Syria. Both Senate and House votes are leaning against authorization. Assad will appear tonight on Charlie Rose (!) to deny responsibility for last month’s chemical weapons attack.  More Syria linkage after the jump. The most important non-Syria international news story of the past ten days is the United Nations deployment in the Democratic Republic of Congo of its first peacekeeping force with an offensive combat mandate. After nearly two decades of...

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Monday early morning linkage

by Adrienne LeBas | 26 August, 2013 |

Syria agrees to allow a UN team of experts access to the site of last week's alleged chemical weapons attacks.  US government officials says it's too little, too late. The Tunisian opposition is back in the streets and is again calling for the government’s resignation.  FP’s James Traub remains optimistic. Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.  The Atlantic examines why it’s so hard to find a copy of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech online, and The American Prospect has an excellent piece on the socialist roots of Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and the original...

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Déjà Vu in Zimbabwe

by Adrienne LeBas | 31 July, 2013 |

Polling stations are opening in Zimbabwe, and, if one's Facebook feed is to be believed, some enthusiastic voters have already spent a few hours queueing (and winter mornings in Zimbabwe are *cold*). Today's elections are notable for a few reasons: they're the first elections since extensive state-sponsored violence in 2008; they mark the formal end of the coalition government inaugurated in the aftermath of that violence; and they are the first elections to occur under a brand-spanking-new constitution.  Comparisons to Kenya's March elections have flown fast and furious. So what's new?...

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The Global Diffusion of Bikeshares (I)

by Adrienne LeBas | 17 July, 2013 |

Editor's Note: This started off as two bullet points, but it’s morphed into a surprisingly lengthy piece about Bikeshares.  Blame the easy availability of both picturesque bike rides and cheap wine in Western Europe.  This is the first installment; a second will follow. At the age of 19, I moved to the Netherlands for a summer.  Like most tourists, I had read about the famous Dutch “white bikes,” a non-locked bike-sharing system that guidebooks were fond of presenting as proof of Dutch civic-mindedness.  The system was simple: see a white bike, take, use, leave wherever.  Of course, there...

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