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

Why the Pentagon Can’t win the Long War

by Peter | 19 December, 2006 |

David Brooks, in his Sunday NYT column (requires Times Select to read), gives out awards for great magazine articles of the year. He recognizes two outstanding articles on how the Pentagon is fighting in Iraq and terrorism. In his article, Brooks makes a fundamental and vital insight that needs to become part of the emerging Grand Strategy Debate.*Brooks writes:There was also a sense that we were losing ground in Iraq. One of the best magazine writers on that story, George Packer of The New Yorker, tended to profile American dissidents who were trying to change the way we fight that war.In...

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The Importance of HST

by Peter | 12 December, 2006 |

Kofi Annan gave his "farewell speech" yesterday, choosing a very interesting and symbolic location for the address--the Truman Library in Missouri. As a good farewell speech should, it crystallizes the wisdom of a career of international civil service and provides a call to action to those who will carry on in his stead. What I found most interesting, though, was the location and theme of the speech and how it took a very nuanced approach to the United States. (full text of speech here).To really get where I'm going with this, my reaction to the speech was shaped by my one of my current...

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Iraq by any other name

by Peter | 27 November, 2006 |

I have this thing about Definitions. In short, I hate them. Perhaps its the influence of Wittgenstein in my work, but nothing irks me more than people who lay out a dictionary definition, as if its obvious, and proceed with a political or academic analysis, leading logically to some conclusion. As those people say in debates, well, if we could only agree on defining terms..... well, sure, then the debate would be all over.Within IR, one of the most important insights of critical, constructivist, post-structural (and others) theory is that the political battle over definitions is a central...

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Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home: Moonwalking out of Iraq

by Peter | 21 November, 2006 |

We now have 3 major review panels asking "serious" and "hard" questions about the future of US policy in Iraq. There is the infamous Baker Commission, a high-level group within the National Security Council, and a top-secret review within the Pentagon. Despite all of these "outside-the-box" efforts to take a "fresh look" at Iraq, the supposed solutions are seeming rather conventional. In great Washington policy tradition:The Pentagon group has, predictably, arrived at 3 choices. As Ricks reports in the Wash Post:"Go Big," the first option, originally contemplated a large increase in U.S....

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Election Roundup, part I of probably many

by Peter | 8 November, 2006 |

Last night's election seems to have been the political wave that some had anticipated. Democrats won big-- taking not just the House and Senate (it seems), but also governorships and other local races nationwide.Aside from all the post-election analysis that will be coming out in the next few days, 2 points stick out from an International Relations perspective.1. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil once famously said "all politics is local" and that mantra usually applies in Congressional elections, when local issues are very important for local candidates. This election was markedly...

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Charting Iraq’s Descent into Chaos

by Peter | 2 November, 2006 |

The New York Times published today a chart obtained from a classified military briefing that shows how the US military is measuring Iraq and charting its descent toward chaos.This chart is fascinating on so many levels.The first is the most obvious. The US military paints a bad and worsening picture of sectarian violence in Iraq. Quite disturbing, actually. Moreover, this is not new-- they have been monitoring this for some time. The article reports that:According to a Central Command official, the index on civil strife has been a staple of internal command briefings for most of this year....

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Some Assembly Required

by Peter | 30 October, 2006 |

Always be wary of office furniture that comes in a nice compact box and then says "assembly required." This weekend was the weekend to reclaim the basement and reclaim some functional workspace at home. For the past 10 months, i've been using a half-sized card table as a "desk" in the basement. The original plan when we threw out the desk from the old office (donated, actually) and moved the computer downstairs to the then newly finished basement was to have a nice desk / office set up at home where I might get some work done. Well, to make a long story short, it didn't quite work out that...

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When you ASSUME, you make an….

by Peter | 27 October, 2006 |

In my research methods class, I assign David Kang's fantastic article, "International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War." Its a very well written, well argued piece that criticizes IR theorists who have repeatedly been wrong in predicting a second Korean War and then offers a detailed analysis of why the arguments are flawed. One of his key points is that many analysts smuggle in mis-placed assumptions about North Korea that leads them astray time and time again.Today, we learn via the NY Times and National Security Archive that flawed assumptions have guided US policy toward North...

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Failure–more than just an option

by Peter | 23 October, 2006 |

Last week, we were treated to a stunning admission from the head General in Iraq. What he said was not all that stunning--anyone who has been paying attention could see that things in Iraq were getting bad-- but stunning in that he actually said it. As reported in the WaPo:A two-month U.S.-Iraqi military operation to stem sectarian bloodshed and insurgent attacks in Baghdad has failed to reduce the violence, which has surged 22 percent in the capital in the last three weeks, much of it in areas where the military has focused its efforts, a senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.The...

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North Korea tests a Nuke

by Peter | 9 October, 2006 |

North Korea announced that it had tested a nuclear device last night. Though initial reports are still a bit cautious, it seems pretty clear from the global reaction that this was in fact some sort of nuclear test. You can see the seismic event catalogued here, click on the red dot in North Korea to see the event of magnitude 4.2 in the northwest of North Korea (and thanks to the current student who pointed out this cool website).This is, needless to say, a significant event, one that substantially and forever changes Northeast Asia. The initial reactions to the test all condemn it. The Post...

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