The Duck of Minerva

Finally after a busy teaching term I've got a chance to add some thoughts to the great post and articles by Jon Western and Joshua Goldstein on humanitarian intervention. Bottom line: I think Jon and Joshua make a robust case that not only can intervention work, but that the international community is learning effectively how to go about it. As they argue, it is a technique of statecraft that is being refined and better understood. It might not necessarily transform societies on every metric of human well being, but prompt military action combined with due attention to the rule of law,...

I was lucky enough to play a small part in a Radio 4 documentary that went to air yesterday on the 70th anniversary of the surprise attack by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbor. Here it is on iplayer.

A few of us in the Politics/IR Department at Reading were asked to summarise the major results and effects of the war in Afghanistan for its tenth anniversary today. I should have talked more about the overall economic crisis that the war on terror has accelerated, but anyway:Today is the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. But it is not the anniversary of the start of the war between the United States, the Al Qaeda network, and the Taliban. The armed struggle can be dated earlier to Osama Bin Laden’s fatwa and unilateral declaration of war on the US in August 1996. After...

This post is a little impressionistic and attempts a few trans-Atlantic generalisations, but is probably still worth a punt.If Clausewitz was right that each period holds to its own theory of war, what do we see when we look in the mirror after a decade of the conflict against Islamist terror networks? In the US and UK at least, I'd suggest that the War on Terror was a reflection of the evolving liberal-market state.That is, a state that defines its security interests through an expansive liberalism, securing itself by exporting liberal institutions and values and investing its struggles...

Can any readers here at the Duck direct me to the exact quote of Dean Acheson (I believe it was), who said something along the lines of 'nine tenths of foreign policy is managing the domestic ability to have a foreign policy' or something like that. It was his argument that domestic politics and coalition-building was paramount.Thanks!

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting Boston and Washington DC.During this academic junket research-related visit, sparkling conversation was had with some of the liveliest minds on foreign policy in the US, including the established heavy-hitters Andrew Bacevich and Edward Luttwak, as well as some of the sharpest younger thinkers around including the hawkish idealist and internationalist David Adesnik, the sardonically skeptical Dan Nexon from here at the Duck, and one of the most astute observers of Afghanistan-Pakistan, Christine Fair.The subject of Israel ran like a razor-sharp...