The Duck of Minerva

Robert Kelly

Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Pusan National University, Korea Home Website: https://AsianSecurityBlog.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @Robert_E_Kelly

Recent Posts

7 things I don’t like @ being an Academic

by Robert Kelly | 11 May, 2012 |

This genre is growing on the Duck, so here are are a few more thoughts before you take the PhD plunge. Enjoy your last summer to read as you choose, without following a peer reviewer or a syllabus. Such lost bliss… Generally speaking, yes, I like being an academic. I like ideas and reading. I like bloviating at length. The sun is my enemy, and exercise bores me. I would really like to be a good writer/researcher. Including grad school, I’ve been doing this now for 15 years, so clearly I could have switched. I am committed. But there are at least 7 things I didn’t see back in my 20s when I...

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The World Does its Duty & Conforms to Social Science: More on Korea & Japan

by Robert Kelly | 9 May, 2012 |

<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('000902d5-7b3b-4c9c-b77d-2a0f6080ed33'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-xHchAHKaTKA/T6nywRxtfXI/AAAAAAAAALg/2rX2oBbeHk4/video6cf4c2596412%25255B7%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Greatest Movie Line Ever on Academia: “How the Social Scientists Brought Our World to the Brink of Chaos” Hah!If academia’s taught me anything taught me, it’s that the real world is flawed, not theory, and that facts should change for me, not the other way around. As...

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Oliver North threat-inflates for the next ‘Modern Warfare’: a new Low for the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex

by Robert Kelly | 3 May, 2012 |

<img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('4050f2d5-ac8f-40e4-b01c-f6efcd5c7932'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://lh4.ggpht.com/-VryqPXZd3y4/T6JAfRaoJBI/AAAAAAAAALU/5Zngh2TsXvw/video1be4ce2ddc1c%25255B12%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" />Video Games as the Fear-Mongering Pop Adjunct of America’s post-9/11 ‘forever wars’Even tea-partying righties should be pretty shocked at this shameless, exploitative (and wildly inaccurate) manipulation of Americans’ post-9/11 paranoia as a marketing gimmick. And you...

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Why don’t Korea and Japan Align, even though IR says they should?

by Robert Kelly | 29 April, 2012 |

For awhile I was collecting links and such to make an argument about Korea and Japan working together on big issues like China and NK, or finally clinching the much-discussed but little worked-on FTA. Both the realist and the liberal in me wanted to see two liberal democracies working together in a tough environment with similar structural threats. Initially I had written: “This may be the biggest news of the year if it actualizes: Japan is apparently considering real defense cooperation with SK. If you follow East Asian security, this is a revolution. Try here, here and here.” But this is...

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What’s So ‘Institutional’ @ Historical Institutionalism?

by Robert Kelly | 25 April, 2012 |

NOTE: The following was actually written before Dan Nexon posted a good piece on exactly the same essay. I’m not sure if that coincidence means anything, but here’s my take: ----------------------------------------- So I just read Orfeo Fioretos’ “Historical Institutionalism in International Relations” (IO 65/2, 2011). It’s very good - erudite and sophisticated, the kind of dense, abstract writing that makes me wonder if I can keep up in our uber tech-y scientistic field. In it (fn. 18), he defines ‘institution’ as “rules and norms that guide human action and interaction, whether formalized...

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‘Bleg’: How Long are your ‘Revise & Resubmit’ Letters to the Editor?

by Robert Kelly | 22 April, 2012 |

I have been asked to revise and resubmit an article submitted for an IR journal. But it’s a big r&r; the editor even said it would be “a great deal of work” (groan). While I must make the changes to the ms, I must also submit a letter to the editors and reviewers to explain my changes. That’s normal of course, but I wonder how the community would appraise the proper length of a letter to the editor for a major r&r? In my last r&r, thankfully a minor, I wrote 2-3 pages. But for a major r&r that “needs a great deal of work'’, I was thinking around 10 pages. Is that too much?...

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Why N Korea Gets Away with its Stunts: a Response to Jennifer Lind

by Robert Kelly | 16 April, 2012 |

Jennifer Lind has a good piece up on Foreign Affairs this week on why NK seems to regularly get away with with hijinks like last week’s rocket test (which directly contravenes UN Resolution 1874). She notes, correctly, that NK has been pulling unanswered, wild stunts like this for years – shootouts in the Yellow Sea, nuclear tests, kidnappings, etc. Further, the US particularly tends to hit back when hit. Indeed, looking at the GWoT, America’s problem is over-reaction rather than passivity. If we look at the Israelis, it’s similar. They have a well-established reputation of hitting back,...

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All Politics is Local, Korean style

by Robert Kelly | 12 April, 2012 |

<img src="https://lh3.ggpht.com/-lXf905vas9I/T4Zfu5yVCwI/AAAAAAAAAJg/Cgr7ZRk41Cg/videoefa933ead93d%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('6321b8cf-9761-4208-8fea-48b2a79cce22'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" alt="" />Dancing for Votes in Dongnae!   Because I work for a public university, I am a national civil servant. So it was inappropriate for me to comment on my site about the recent Korean parliamentary election. But now that it’s over (here are...

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Kim Jong Un’s Ascent (2): Rocket Launch as a Sign of a Power Struggle?

by Robert Kelly | 8 April, 2012 |

Here is part one, where I argued that Kim’s rise scrambles our conventional wisdom on NK, opening a lot of unexpected room, at least early in his tenure, to try to deal. The cold war stand-off in Korea is now so bad, that there is little to lose in trying to talk with him, and it would seem like a huge missed opportunity to simply blow him off as identically awful to his father. For my regular argument that negotiating with Kim Jong Il was impossible, try here and here (or if you’d rather just read about the ridiculous Homefront video game, try this).The tentative ‘Leap Day deal,’ from the...

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Kim Jong Un’s Ascent (1): A Unique Negotiating Opportunity

by Robert Kelly | 5 April, 2012 |

Or maybe not…The following short piece for the Korean National Defense University was written after the Leap Day Deal, but before the rocket launch announcement. In the interim, the US has decided to cancel the leap day deal, which is entirely understandable, but a mistake nonetheless I think. NK’s elite has to do something for Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday this month (the cause of the launch); the regime depends on these sorts of shows. But this is a lot more tame than other possible hijinks, like another clash in the Yellow Sea, could be. Kim Jong Un might be signaling us from within the...

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