The Duck of Minerva

The Navy Yard in DC came under fire this morning. Developing. 9/11 Anniversary commentary of note: Tom Junod on the sanitization of disaster footage. Dan Nexon's original thoughts on this are always worth a re-read. Reframing the anniversary by conservatives (Benghazi) and human rights activists (Santiago). So President Assad pledged to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Yochi Dreazon on why this is no magic bullet. Kevin Jon Heller says Syria is the winner here. Assad seems to agree. Romeo Dallaire, former Head of the UN Mission to Rwanda who witnessed the slaughter and begged the...

To help offset the departure of two permanent contributors, we would like to welcome a few extra additions to our guest blogging pool. Burcu Ayten Bayram is Assistant Professor at University of Texas-Arlington, specializing in international organizations, political psychology, identities and global justice. She works with quantitative methods including survey and experimental methods. Her current research project examines when and why decision-makers develop a sense of obligation towards international law and how this fidelity to law shapes their compliance preferences. When not researching,...

Syria Boehner is backing Obama after this briefing. via CIVIC, the unclassified version of the USG's assessment of the Ghouta attack. Drezner on IR theory in practice. Academica The politics of academic salaries. Via. Rising star Dara Kay Cohen is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for her pathbreaking work as a scholar/public intellectual of wartime sexual violence. Unfortunately article is paywalled. I skipped APSA but learned via Phil Arena on Facebook of this terrific paper presented by Bear Braumoeller arguing against the declining war thesis. Goes to show Drezner is right...

Buzzfeed reports Internet memes about Obama's Syrian policy are 10-1 negative. And some are pretty funny. Will Imboden on why professors don't make good presidents. The Arab League has endorsed international action on Syria. Human Rights Watch points out that as norms go, the civilian immunity norm is also worth "reinforcing." The Economist has a write-up about how chemical weapons came to be so much more taboo whose authors actually seems to have read Richard Price's book on the topic. Price's January Foreign Affairs piece is worth re-reading as well. Opinio Juris has a terrific symposium...