The Duck of Minerva

Peter

Dr. Peter Howard focuses on US foreign policy and international security. He studies how the implementation of foreign policy programs produces rule-based regional security regimes, conducting research in Estonia on NATO Expansion and US Military Exchange programs and South Korea on nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Recent Posts

Narrating the Democratic Primary

by Peter | 9 May, 2008 |

An interesting thing happened late Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning. The narrative that had driven the Democratic Presidential primary contest unraveled before our eyes and a new narrative was cast.Going into the Tuesday primaries in IN and NC, the story was Obama has the lead, Hillary is making a move, and they will probably split the two states with the contest continuing on through June 3. And, the predicted outcome did in fact come to pass. Obama won NC, and Hillary won IN. And yet, it was how they won and how those ‘victories’ were given meaning that shifted the narrative....

read more

If a caucus is held in the Pacific but nobody hears it, does the vote really matter?

by Peter | 5 May, 2008 |

Obama's losing streak is over, he won the Guam caucuses this weekend.Guam only has 9 delegates (8 half-votes plus 5 super delegates). Obama won the caucuses by 7 votes, Hillary and Obama split the 4 delegates, but it looks like Obama will come out 1 up with the super delegates.Now, no one is really talking about Guam. You could write it off as another small-state/territory caucus win for Obama, and its not even a state, really just a huge military base. But, with the Puerto Rico primary looming in June as the last major contest in this race, it might be important to pay attention to those...

read more

Skills Revolution

by Peter | 3 May, 2008 |

How would this column read if David Brooks had actually read Rosenau?A skills revolution that drives elements of globalization-- it would be a fantastic new discovery if it wasn't an idea that could be old enough to vote.

read more

Globalization and the new world food crisis

by Peter | 27 April, 2008 |

Today's Washington Post has an excellent story that I strongly recommend on recent rise in food prices worldwide and resulting international upheaval.Its the exact story I would assign to my World Politics class-- an example of how this thing we call Globalization brings international trade, poverty, financial speculation, climate change, domestic farm subsidies, energy prices, and environmentalism together for a perfect storm of rising food prices around the world, leading to massive world hunger, destabilizing governments, and turning much of world politics upside down. Moreover, this is a...

read more

If only it was on You-Tube….

by Peter | 27 April, 2008 |

Yet another page in the continuing saga of the Secret Raid on they Syrian Reactor that maybe never was....As many loyal Duck readers know, I've been following this story with fascination since it broke. To recap: Israel bombs a "site" in Syria, Syria says nothing, 3rd hand reports indicate a North Korean nuclear reactor was the target, nobody talks.This week yet another bit of key information leaked out. Turns out, they had a video! The Video is said to show North Koreans inside the Syrian site with all the tell-tale signs of a nuclear reactor.Syria, of course, denies the whole thing.Syrian...

read more

Winning the other War of Ideas

by Peter | 27 April, 2008 |

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been sick all week and finally feel like myself again this afternoon, so I'm going to try to catch up on a few things that I had meant to mention but....First off: A must read from last Sunday's NYT (I had actually started the post earlier, but only typed 2 lines before I started coughing).So, to all those who thought that the US needed to do a better job in winning the “war of ideas,” it turns out that the US is doing a fantastic job—just targeting a different audience. Last Sunday’s NYT has a fascinating bit of investigative journalism on the cozy...

read more

Deconstructing the Linguistic turn in Epistemology

by Peter | 7 April, 2008 |

Stanley Fish uses a review of the forthcoming book “French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States” (University of Minnesota Press) to provide (what I think is a) very good summary of the debates and issues raised by what we in IR have come to call the Linguistic Turn in epistemology and resulting IR theory. This morning I was teaching discourse analysis in my Intro to Research Methods course, and trying to articulate the different views of language that Fish locates at the center of the debate on French Theory. So, when I sat down...

read more

After Bush: plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

by Peter | 3 April, 2008 |

This week's Economist has an outstanding look at US foreign policy (Leaders and Special Report), with a pointed analysis of Bush's policy shifts that have made him hugely unpopular both at home and abroad and an insightful look at the dilemmas that the next President will face. Their conclusion: While the new President will certainly enjoy a brief honeymoon, there are deep currents of world politics and US foreign policy that auger for more continuity, rather than change. The crux of the analysis centers on a traditional realist's reading of the current state of international affairs:[I]n a...

read more

Meet the new boss…

by Peter | 3 March, 2008 |

A focus on foreign policy has returned to the campaign, and the Washington Post had an telling series of articles yesterday and today on what the next President might do in the Foreign Policy arena. A column in Sunday’s Outlook section speculated on what lies ahead:The next president will inherit a turbulent, intractable world that sharply constrains the room for creative new U.S. initiatives, according to many foreign policy experts of varying ideological persuasions. Despite the sharp campaign jousting, it's not hard to imagine the next president – even a Democrat – pursuing basically the...

read more