The Duck of Minerva

It's Syria week. Post use of chemical weapons, some sort of intervention looks more likely than not. We are conflicted. Here to help us make sense of this: The intel that suggests the Syrian regime did it, but unclear command and control George Packer on our inner dialogue about why intervention is necessary but folly James Fallows on the folly part Erica Chenoweth on the history of interventions, again emphasizing folly, here and here Jon Western says not so fast, what is this case of? Bosnia or Iraq? Or something else? Eric Voeten concurs Ian Hurd and Charli Carpenter on breaking...

It's morning somewhere, right? Here are some belated links to stories, covering Richard Haass and Syria, climate change and the IPCC 5th assessment, a lethal bat-born virus, gay rights and Russia, and the new Fukushima nuclear worry... Syria FT op-ed by Richard Haass of all people urging the president to intervene in Syria Environment Draft IPCC Fifth assessment report on climate change impacts leaks, guess what, more climate change Andrew Revkin muses that a focus on current weather and climate attribution may feed into uncertainty and inaction New study - action on short-lived greenhouse...

Sad turn of events in Egypt, a situation in which the U.S. is inextricably implicated. Not sure if there was a policy course we should have followed that would have been different. I understand the defenders of the democratic process who would have wanted Morsi to leave via the ballot box. I also am sympathetic to the claims that the Muslim Brotherhood was running the country in to a ditch. Unfortunately, the military response seems to have made things much worse. All of this suggests that democratic transitions can be bloody and unstable moments in a country's history. Here are some links...

Apologies for the delay in Thursday linkage but was a bit under the weather. It's the Texas heat, making me crazy and violent, or at least so suggests a recent empirical study in Science though it has its detractors. This week, I link to the back and forth of a major study on climate and conflict that carries out a meta-analysis of 60 studies and finds a 1 standard deviation change in variety of climate indicators leads to a 4% rise in "interpersonal violence" and a 14% rise in "intergroup" violence. "Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict", Science, Hsiang et al., 2013 More...

Here is your Thursday late morning linkage. Let's start with a couple of stories about getting out to the field. Kim Yi Dionne writes about the challenges of taking her toddler to Malawi during field work (on second thought, maybe not!) U.S. diplomats confined to Kabul and can't visit aid projects as military drawdown deprives them of protection for field visits In environmental news, here is some fracking and Google-related chatter and more: Environmental research group study claims efficiency more than fracking drove U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reductions of late Back and forth by...

Here is your mid-morning linkage for this Thursday. Three strands this week: one on higher education and social science, another on conservation, and a third on global health. Oh, and CFR's International Affairs Fellowship is taking applications. Higher Education and Social Science You all saw the story by the Harvard prof (now tenured I might add!) who mused on treating her tenure-track position as a 7-year postdoc (and Steve's commentary). You probably also saw the broadside about shaking up the social sciences (and Dan's post). Here are some other social science-y and higher ed. stories...