The Duck of Minerva

Everyone knows that there are 9 planets:Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Plutowhich you remember by saying My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickels (or some variation on the theme.Except that now, there are only 8 planets.Pluto just got demoted.So, a once critical fact, an immutable truth about the nature of the solar system has now changed.Plus, I really feel bad for all those Pluto scholars out there who once studied the most mysterious planet and now just study a dwarf object or whatever. Its kind of like being a specialist on the Soviet General...

Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe-Mentum Lieberman was certainly seen as a watershed political moment, where the anti-war message toppled an incumbent. Given that incumbents in Congress have something like a 90-95% success rate in re-election (actually, I think its higher than that, but i'm blogging at 6 am and not inclined to look it up), defeating a sitting Senator, former Presidential candidate and Vice-Presidential nominee is a pretty big deal. Its clear that the anti-war / anti-Bush vote is significant, not just within the Democratic party, but within Republican ranks as well. But...

Students in my Intro to IR Research and World Politics classes have, on occasion, heard me rant about Wikipedia and how it is not an appropriate research source for writing papers. While useful for background information and links to other useful sites, the fundamental nature of a Wiki undercuts its reliability as a source for scholarship. Students in that class will also be familiar with the three broad approaches to knowledge that I use as frames for methods of research: "scientific" style positivism, interpretivism, and relational "constructionism"No less an authority than Stephen Colbert...

I'm currently reading a counterinsurgency classic, David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Published in 1964, its a how-to manual for fighting a counterinsurgency war against a revolutionary insurgent based on the author's direct observations and experiences in Algeria, China, and Vietnam. I picked up the book after reading a Washington Post on-line chat with Thomas Ricks, who recommended it. Its lessons from then are very insightful for understanding issues in the present day.A central theme of Galula's doctrine of counterinsurgency is that the more powerful...

Here's my State Capacity post of the week (just to continue the trend.)From Today's Washington Post:Some in Congo Long for the Order Of Late DictatorYes, folks, we're talking Mobuto Sese Seko. Who ever thought you would long for the man who invented the kleptocratic state and his leopard-skinned chapeau?He brought State Capacity, of course!On the eve of the first multiparty balloting here since 1960, nostalgia was running high for a man who, though corrupt and brutal, kept united a country that has experienced little but mayhem since he was driven from power in 1997....... many Congolese say...

This month's Foreign Policy has a forum on the Israel Lobby, building on Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's very much discussed article in the LRB on the power of the "Israel Lobby" in producing a narrow-interest based but sub-strategically optimal US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.As I walked from the office with my mailbox back to my office, pondering the nice glossy cover on my copy of FP, I pondered the issues in the debate in the contemporary context-- Lebanon.Is the US supporting Israel in its attacks on Hezballah in Lebanon in a manner detrimental to US National Interest?...

Thomas Ricks, the accomplished military reporter for the Washington Post, has a front page article excerpted from his upcoming book, Fiasco, yet another richly detailed account of the failures of the US in Iraq.The article is certainly worth reading.Ricks asserts that the US was in trouble from the beginning:The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission.Echoing my earlier post, top administration officials were blinded by their own ideological zeal to the on-ground reality:Complicating the U.S. effort was the difficulty top officials had in recognizing what was going on in...

Two weeks ago, the NY Times reported that women are "leaving men in the dust" in colleges and universities nation-wide, with women now 58% of all undergraduates.(as a point of information, American University had a freshman class last year that was 64% female)Today, the Washington Post reports that women are also taking over TV news:The number of female anchors reached a record high last year, accounting for 57 percent of the positions in a nationwide survey conducted by the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Just as impressive are the gains in the rest of the newsroom. Women...

I have been revisiting US policy in Iraq of late-- to the extent that you can revisit an ongoing issue. Mostly, this comes in the form of reading Cobra II, Squandered Victory, the Foreign Affairs articles and on-line debates, and of course the fine work posted here on the Duck. After all this, I'm not sure I have an opinion or even a learned analysis on the issue (even given my previous postings on the topic). Quite frankly, I'm not sure what to think anymore in strictly analytic / "expert analyst" sense. My mood, however, is certainly one of pessimism and skepticism-- not just of the Bush...

Like all other frustrated scholars out there, I wanted to publish an Op-Ed, thinking I have something interesting to say about what's going on between Israel and Lebanon. I thought that I might have something to contribute-- my dissertation had a looooong chapter on the Israel - Lebanon Monitoring Group, a small organizaton set up after Israel's 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon. There's not a lot written about the ILMG, so I figured I might have some unique insights.But, of course, no one picked up the piece, so dear readers, here it is for your consideration:Ten years ago, Israel...