The Duck of Minerva

Charli Carpenter

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

Recent Posts

Explosive Arguments

by Charli Carpenter | 8 October, 2010 |

Recently, Stephanie made "the case against the case against blast weapons," - that is, "explosive weapons" as described by Landmine Action's recent report:"The short version is that it is calling for a ban on so-called ‘blast-weapons’ as a method of warfare... I think that 1) the report is problematic; 2) that there may actually be a case for not banning such weapons – possibly even humanitarian ones. Instead, states AND humanitarians should look to regulation as a more effective alternative.I have written a longer riposte to this argument at Lawyers, Guns and Money. But let me just say here...

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Whither Human Security?

by Charli Carpenter | 4 October, 2010 |

In an International Affairs article earlier this year, Mary Martin and Taylor Owen point out that the term is all but dead, both in the UN system and within the governments who once championed the concept: "The term 'human security' has all but vanished from the reports of the UN Secretary-General and high-level panels, and from branch organization use... Canada, one of the principal initial proponents of the human security agenda, is also going through a period of withdrawal from both the advocacy and use of the concept... 'human security' was among a group of term blacklisted in government...

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Metrics for Winning Hearts and Minds

by Charli Carpenter | 29 September, 2010 |

I often find myself in disagreement with Amitai Etzioni, but he does makes some sense in his recent Politico op-ed on Petraeus' "metrics" for progress in Afghanistan: The newest way General Petraeus plans to measure success in the war in Afghanistan reminded me of what the government did when its campaign to persuade the public to stop smoking did not make much headway. It stopped counting how many people had had their last cigarette - and started counting how many anti-smoking pamphlets it mailed....Gen. Petraeus has outlined five metrics of military success, including: 'the elimination of...

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Moral Movements and IR Theory

by Charli Carpenter | 22 September, 2010 |

Joshua Busby has a new book out on transnational campaigns that might be the best new contribution to the advocacy networks literature since Keck and Sikkink's original Activists Beyond Borders. In Moral Movements and Foreign Policy, Busby proposes a theory of the conditions under which such movements succeed at securing commitments from states: Whether states accept commitments made by principled advocacy movements depends primarily on how three factors conjoin: 1) the balance of material incentives facing states, 2) the cultural resonance of the messages and 3) the number and preferences...

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Creeping Reasonableness

by Charli Carpenter | 20 September, 2010 |

I've been wondering when the Locke/Demosthenes effect would manifest itself through the faux political rivalry of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Could this be their moment? Stewart on the need to return to a deliberative ethic in American democracy - best if viewed starting @ 2:10 below:The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cRally to Restore Sanitywww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea PartyColbert's response @ 3:54 below: The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cMarch to Keep Fear Alivewww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full Episodes2010...

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Fresh (and Re-Freshed) Duck

by Charli Carpenter | 18 September, 2010 |

In addition to being blown away by the recent Duck facelift (ht to Dan), you may have also noticed a slight shuffling in the roster. Congratulations to Stephanie Carvin, Laura Sjoberg, Vikash Yadav, all of whom are now officially (to quote Stephanie) "perma-ducks." Some of our other guest bloggers have stepped aside for now. We are grateful to Tony Lang, Mlada Bukovansky, Drew Conway, Daniel McIntosh and Craig Hayden for their contributions to the Duck over the past year of transitions, and wish them the best. Many will continue to write at their other fabulous blogs, and we'll continue to...

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What I Learned At Nerd Camp

by Charli Carpenter | 22 August, 2010 |

I spent last week at an ICPSR workshop on network analysis methods in Bloomington, Indiana, and while I wouldn't say I'm exactly an expert now on network analysis, I did learn to do a few interesting things with my human security data.For example, below is a visual representation of the "human security issue agenda" as represented by 88 websites of organizations in the "human security network" circa May 2008. I identified the organizations in that network through a hyperlink analysis using the tool Issuecrawler, and then we downloaded their mission-statements and "issue lists" and tagged...

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Smart Bombing War Criminals While Avoiding Civilians

by Charli Carpenter | 13 August, 2010 |

Despite what is sometimes argued, fighting wars is not a crime. But it is against the law for weapons-bearers to target large areas indiscriminately without regard for potential collateral damage. Instead, they are required to carefully choose only legitimate military targets. In my view, the same standard could be applied to whistle-blowing advocacy groups: organizations like Wikileaks should engage in precision targeting of legitimate military foul-ups, rather than indiscriminate bombshells aimed at the entire military-industrial complex; and most importantly, they should aim to minimize...

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How About Some Collateral Damage Control?

by Charli Carpenter | 11 August, 2010 |

In an earlier post on the lessons of the Afghan War Diaries, I pointed out an unfortunate legal fact: that civilian harms aren't necessarily evidence of war crimes. But I also argued, as I long have, that such "unintentional" civilian casualties are unacceptably high. Today, I have an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune that goes a bit further, suggesting a number of ways that the rules of war themselves could and should be updated to hold governments more accountable for civilian harms even when they're unintended. ... Such rules would need to be worked out by states, but...

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Could Simple Automated Tools Help Wikileaks Protect Its Afghan Sources?

by Charli Carpenter | 10 August, 2010 |

Julian Assange has a problem. When pressed by human rights organizations to redact any current or future published documents because they too feared the effects on Afghan civilians, he reportedly replied that he had no time to do so and "issued a tart challenge for the human rights organizations themselves to help with 'the massive task of removing names from thousands of documents.'" Leaving aside his alleged claims about the moral responsibility of human rights groups for his own errors, the charitable way to think about his reaction is that Assange wants to do the right thing but simply...

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