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

Everyone’s a Critic

by Peter | 9 May, 2009 |

There’s been a lot of discussion about the Movies and IR, and I couldn’t resist a list. Plus, there’s a Bond movie on TCM—Goldfinger and now Thunderball—and I think Walt is crazy for leaving out war and spy movies, as that’s as much the stuff of IR as anything else.I’m not a film critic. A lot of the movies I love aren’t “brilliant” by film critic standards but are nonetheless fun to watch, and are very illustrative of particular concepts or moments that make them tremendous fodder for moments such as in-class discussion.This is a very incomplete list. Its an off-the top of the head list,...

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Walt, Walt, don’t tell me….

by Peter | 5 May, 2009 |

At one time, I kinda almost liked some of Stephen Walt's work. At another point, I found works such as Origins of Alliances useful pivots in making an argument to move from explanations based on realism to explanations based on constructivism. But to still call Walt a "good" or "eminent" IR theorist worthy of a job at Harvard... Walt thought it would be fun to list the top ten IR films. Outsourced to Fred Kaplan:The most jaw-dropping pick of all, though, is Independence Day, which "makes my list," Walt writes, "because it is balance-of-power theory in action: an external threat (giant alien...

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Perpetual Hiring Difficulties II: Academageddon

by Peter | 27 April, 2009 |

To continue a thread I started some weeks ago: If you're thinking about getting a Ph.D., think again. Its a dysfunctional industry. From today's NY Times op-ed pages, Mark Taylor writes:GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising...

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Theory and Policy

by Peter | 14 April, 2009 |

Joe Nye has an op-ed in Monday’s Washington Post decrying the gap between theory and policy in political science. You should read it, in part because its the most press our discipline is likely to get this year, which almost proves his point. I am largely sympathetic to his view, and I lament the fact that our profession, which professes to understand how the world works, has seemingly so little to offer in terms of useful insight to those who might benefit from it. One would think, given all our collective study of foreign policies and state interactions, we might have something helpful...

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Who will buy the movie rights?

by Peter | 13 April, 2009 |

The dramatic conclusion of the Maersk Alabama Pirate encounter is now a wrap, and this screams for a movie. My only question is who will buy the rights to Capt. Phillip's story? NBC? Lifetime? I happen to think its bigger than a made-for-tv production, worthy of like Michael Bay or John Woo. Staring Bruce Willis as Captain Richard Phillips, Mark Wahlberg as first officer Shane Murphy, Keifer Sutherland as Special Operations commander Jack Bauer, and of course Johnny Depp as a Pirate.Updated: It looks like SPIKE has made the first move, green-lighting the docu-series "Pirate Hunters: USN."H/T...

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Scribbles in My Notebook…

by Peter | 8 April, 2009 |

I have a mental queue of about 3 or 5 post that I've been meaning to get up in the past couple of days, but the demands of a new baby in the house are leaving me sleep deprived and somehow unable to find time to construct the posts I want to write (go figure...). So, in lieu of that, a couple of scribbles from my mental notebook that merit your attention and our discussion.--SecDef Gates unveiled his defense budget. This could be one the most significant policy undertakings of the Obama administration and lead to some real, meaningful reforms with profound consequences on both domestic and...

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G-20

by Peter | 2 April, 2009 |

The G-20 is wrapping up in London, and they seem to have successfully issued a communique that is actually more than straight boilerplate non-commitment.My hope is that the reforms discussed for the IMF begin a re-fastening of the embedded-liberalism that has served as the foundation of the international order and an institutionalization of this new compact.The global economic turmoil is revealing two key structural facets of the international order. First, the US remains the Hegemon. In the end, the world is looking to the US for leadership, and its clear that only the US can provide the...

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Shadow War comes to light

by Peter | 26 March, 2009 |

Another mysterious air strike has come to light. Via the NYT, we have links to reports that in January, a "major power" conducted a significant air strike in Sudan on a convoy of trucks supposedly transporting weapons from Sudan to Hamas in Gaza. CBS reports that while Sudanese officials have accused the US of carrying out the strike, US officials hint that Israel was behind the attack. Haaretz reports that Israeli officials, while not confirming the report, certainly are denying it. According to CBS:In the airstrike in Sudan – said to have been "in a desert area northwest of Port Sudan...

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Replace the Dollar?

by Peter | 24 March, 2009 |

A friend writes,* "What the end of hegemony looks like..."In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.A new system is necessary, he said, because the global economic crisis has revealed the...

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Those were the days

by Peter | 17 March, 2009 |

Yesterday as I drove to work, two stories on NPR caught my attention with how completely out of touch the interviewees sounded about their particular fields. These are people who are highly trained, performing what used to be important--if not vital--services, and well rewarded professionally for their accomplishments. And yet, listening to them talk about the importance of preserving the culture, practices, and institutional arrangements that enabled their profession, their claims rang so hollow, so 20th century, that I was struck that they would even say such things on radio.The culprits?...

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