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

Analyzing Obama’s National Security Team: change you can believe in?

by Peter | 1 December, 2008 |

Today Obama formally announced the core of his National Security team: Clinton at State, Gen. Jones as SAPNSA, and Gates to remain at DoD. It’s a team of experienced insiders, centrists, pragmatists, and even Republicans. Some have asked the obvious question: Is this Change you can Believe in for national security and foreign policy?The selection of Jones is particularly interesting. He breaks a recent trend in the National Security Advisor position as a close policy associate of the President. Condi once said that her top job as NSA was to “staff the President” and she is very close to...

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The Best Chicken EVER!

by Peter | 1 December, 2008 |

El Pollo Rico is back!!! Let the rejoicing commence!I just ate the best chicken one can buy in the Washington DC metro area. After a weekend of excellent food, this was perhaps the best thing I ate (with the possible exception of my pumpkin pies, those were quite nice and I do love pumpkin pie). If it weren't raining, I'd consider shouting from the rooftop.El Pollo Rico makes rotisserie chicken--that's it--and its the best around. It was a special type of restaurant in its previous incarnation, a hole in the wall in a strip of otherwise forgettable stores in Wheaton. The food is excellent,...

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Krugman goes constructionist

by Peter | 29 November, 2008 |

Many years ago, I attended a talk by Michael Shapiro. He was doing something on memory and place, and showed a clip from some Steve Martin movie--Father of the Bride, maybe II--and a colleague of mine, ever the concerned young scholar, said Yes, but Professor Shapiro, over in Bosnia (which was going on at the time), people are dying, and here you are showing movies. What does this tell us that we should do to stop that?And he replied: Who is this "we"?In his current column, Paul Krugman channels his inner pomo and opens with a similar story:A few months ago I found myself at a meeting of...

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Happy Thanksgiving!

by Peter | 27 November, 2008 |

Its Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays. I'm in Ohio, visiting family in Cleveland and Canton. Driving out here Tuesday night was quite the adventure, there's nothing like a minor snow storm on the Pennsylvania turn pike. When we finally did arrive at 1:30am, the driveway was slick and my car couldn't make it up! There's nothing like shoveling a driveway at 1:30am. There's snow on the ground here--something that is a fact of life in Cleveland but inconceivable back in DC. Yesterday I baked pies. Two plus a small mini-pie. Pumpkin. Used the recipe on the side of the pumpkin can, and...

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The Problems we face facing the Pirate Problem

by Peter | 22 November, 2008 |

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cThe Buccaneer Stops HereBarack Obama InterviewJohn McCain InterviewSarah Palin VideoFunny Election VideoWhy is it so hard to deal with the Pirate problem? The Daily Show is onto something here....

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Pirates get ambitious

by Peter | 18 November, 2008 |

Just when you thought that the Pirates couldn't get any more ambitious than seizing a freighter full of Ukrainian weapons...Somali Pirates seized a Saudi supertanker Tuesday. The tanker, one of the largest ships on the ocean, is the size of a US Aircraft carrier and three times a heavy when full. It has a crew of 25 (by comparison, an air craft carrier has a crew of over 5000). It carries over a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily crude output.It is, perhaps, one of the most valuable targets that the Pirates could have seized. Its contents are estimated to be worth over $100 million. Of course,...

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The Undiscovered Country

by Peter | 13 November, 2008 |

Toward the end of the Cold War, Georgi Arbatov, the top America analyst in the Soviet Union, told his American interlocutors that the USSR was doing a terrible thing to the US, it was depriving it of its enemy. In a letter to the NY Times in 1987, he wrote:And here we have a ''secret weapon'' that will work almost regardless of the American response - we would deprive America of The Enemy. And how would you justify without it the military expenditures that bleed the American economy white, a policy that draws America into dangerous adventures overseas and drives wedges between the United...

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From Liar’s Poker to A House of Cards

by Peter | 13 November, 2008 |

Michael Lewis's account of the collapse of Wall Street is a must read for insight and understand of what was going on that led to the current mess.I know it won't, but it should, end this foolish notion that markets are self-organizing, self-regulating, rational entities where rational actors maximize value and where self-interested firms don't lie, cheat, and steal. Markets are social entities, perhaps best studied as networks governed by certain rules and norms--and those rules and norms read more like and MBA textbook than an Econ textbook. The implications of that are, I think, quite...

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The Election is Far from Over

by Peter | 5 November, 2008 |

(or why Patrick shouldn’t worry just yet)This is morning, one thing is clear: Barack Obama has won a clear majority of both electoral and popular votes. The polls were not all that far off on the final total, ending up with a respectable record of what states went for which candidate.But to read nearly every major news outlet, publication, and blog this morning, you’d never know it—in an instant, everyone has moved on to the more important question of the hour, “What does this all mean?” Does Obama have a mandate, and what is that mandate? Mandates are about meaning, and mandates, like...

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The New Senate

by Peter | 5 November, 2008 |

It looks like the D's are going to fall just short of that mythical 60 votes in the Senate. At this point, 58 seems likely, 59 a possibility given how close MN is. Subtract one for Lieberman. However, the Senate is a coalition-building body, and Reid and the Obama Administration will probably want to / need to bring a few Republicans along on major Legislation.Likely targets? Senators up for reelection in 2010 in states that Obama won:Mel Martinez of FLCharles Grassley of IAJudd Gregg of NHRichard Burr of NCGeorge Voinovich OHArlen Specter of PAMcCain is also up for reelection in 2010 as...

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