The Duck of Minerva

A couple of years ago, Human Rights Watch launched a report arguing for a treaty ban on fully autonomous weapons, claiming military robots who target and kill human beings would violate international law. Among other arguments, the report Losing Humanity cited the Marten’s Clause of the Hague Convention, which encourages states to consider the “dictates of the public conscience” in determining whether as-yet-ungoverned activities were morally permissible among civilized nations. Intrigued by this advocacy claim, I conducted a survey in 2013 to test whether public revulsion at the idea of...

Last December, on “Giving Tuesday,” I encouraged friends and family to send donations to three of my favorite charitable causes in lieu of birthday presents: low-income housing, domestic violence, and Syrian refugee relief. My son and I had signed up to compete that week in the Habitat for Humanity Gingerbread Build (see our prize-winning creation in the photo!),* the Safe Passage 5K run, and a UMass benefit dinner for Syrian refugees being organized by the student Amnesty International chapter. Safe Passage had an online portal for collecting donations, but for the two other organizations...

A short time from now, at a conference venue far, far away (at least from Amherst, MA...): The papers on this panel examine the relationship between the Star Wars franchise and socio-political dynamics in the area of international security, broadly defined. In other words, this panel focuses specifically on the inter-relationship between pop culture ideas and “real-world” security-seeking processes and practices. The papers span methodological approaches, but all reflect on or empirically investigate connections between Star Wars’ fictional memes, concepts or allegories and the real-world...

This is a guest post by Dan Nexon, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University and Stacie Goddard, Jane Bishop ’51 Associate Professor of Political Science of Wellesley College.  In the wake of the Russian Federation’s intervention in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared that, “You just don't in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.” Indeed, a number of analysts see the return of traditional realpolitik, that “old-fashioned power plays are back in...

This is a guest post by Luke M. Perez, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin where he studies religion, ethics, and foreign policy. Luke is also a graduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas. He can be reached at lukemperez@gmail.com. __________________ The Empire apologists are making their case, and it is convincing. Perhaps we were wrong all along to support the Rebellion.  But that doesn’t mean we should let the Empire off the hook entirely. This week for example, Sonny Bunch argues in the Washington Post that the destruction...

This is a guest post by Philip Baxter,  Ph.D. Candidate in International Affairs, Science, and Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Senior Research Associate with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. His research focuses on international security issues, in particular nuclear proliferation, deterrence, strategic stability, illicit trafficking, and nuclear safeguards. He can be reached at pbaxter@miis.edu. A recent article in the National Interest by Hans Rühle, former Head of the Planning Staff in the German Ministry of Defense, argues that Turkey is...