The Duck of Minerva

Rodger Payne

Rodger A. Payne is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. He serves on the University’s Sustainability Council and was a co-founder of the Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice program. He is the author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters and coauthor, with Nayef Samhat, of Democratizing Global Politics: Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community (SUNY, 2004). He is currently working on two major projects, one exploring the role of narratives in international politics and the other examining the implications of America First foreign policy.

Recent Posts

Escalation: Turkey enters the war?

by Rodger Payne | 22 October, 2007 |

I've warned before that one danger of war is that it can escalate. The Iraq war could escalate to include Turkey, which claims that it will attack Kurdistan Iraq. From Monday's Times of London (it is already October 22 there): Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times.Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments...

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Bush on WW 3

by Rodger Payne | 18 October, 2007 |

Did President Bush, at his October 17, 2007, press conference, threaten the world with war? You decide: Q But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?THE PRESIDENT: I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.But this -- we got a leader...

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UNAMI Report on Iraq: Dire, Grave Crises

by Rodger Payne | 15 October, 2007 |

On October 11, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) issued its 11th report (warning: pdf) on the human rights situation in Iraq. The report is filled with bad news -- and not much good news.For example, the "dire" situation in Iraq poses "devastating consequences for the civilian population....Daily life for the average Iraqi civilian remains extremely precarious. The violence remains in large part indiscriminate.... UNAMI’s findings, based on its monitoring and research activities, suggest that the human rights situation in Iraq remains grave." New insurgent-related...

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Sarah Sewall and COIN

by Rodger Payne | 14 October, 2007 |

This past week, I've read Sarah Sewall's name three times in different magazines and blogs. Perhaps you are asking, who is Sarah Sewall?Well, Sewall is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I first heard her name more than 20 years ago when I worked briefly at Center for the Defense Information in DC -- a left of center think tank that studies the military. Sewall also interned at Institute of Policy Studies. She must have worked at IPS when Michael Klare ran the Program on Militarism and Disarmament.So, what's up with Sarah Sewall...

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Securing Our Survival

by Rodger Payne | 11 October, 2007 |

The University of Pittsburgh's Ridgway Center is hosting "Securing Our Survival," a conference starting tomorrow that focuses on nuclear proliferation -- and global climate change. You can watch the events on-line and ask questions of the speakers. The program begins Friday morning at 9 am ET and continues through the day and into Saturday.Joseph Cirincione talks at 9:30 am, Bill Hartung at 10:30, and Jon Wolfsthal at 1 pm.If you wonder why the hosts are combining global warming and proliferation, consider that nuclear power is presented as an alternative to fossil fuels -- but comes with...

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Mearsheimer on Colbert

by Rodger Payne | 3 October, 2007 |

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is on "The Colbert Report" right now. Check out the video here. As you might expect, the scholar is promoting his latest book on the Israeli lobby. Perhaps you remember the earlier article.Why Colbert?Maybe Mearsheimer, in his critical theory mode, buys into the comedy of great power politics?

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Bush: still alone on climate change

by Rodger Payne | 29 September, 2007 |

Secretary of State Condi Rice and President George Bush made news this week by calling for global action to prevent global warming. However, neither one even really hinted at caps, limits, or mandatory cuts in so-called greenhouse gases. Secretary Rice kicked off the White House's climate summit by declaring "it is our responsibility as global leaders to forge a new international consensus on how to address climate change." In the end, however, Rice sounded like a confirmed libertarian -- or maybe an "artiste", or gnarly surfer dude -- unwilling to be bound by any rules, man: "Every country...

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Terrorism and your neighbor’s sex life

by Rodger Payne | 15 September, 2007 |

The September Atlantic had a brief note in its Primary Sources section about how "Terrorists are turning more and more to crime to fund violence." The piece references a Congressional Research Service report that apparently included "bootlegging Viagra" as one source of income.I guess they've moved on from infant formula. In any case, I did a bit of searching around and found this MSNBC/Newsweek piece from August 2006, which describes an alleged criminal ring in Detroit that was funneling funds to Hizbullah in 2002:By 2002, Hammoud and some of his colleagues were believed to be running...

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Petraeus

by Rodger Payne | 10 September, 2007 |

General Petraeus finished delivering his prepared remarks to the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees not long ago -- and I've already been interviewed about them by the local NPR station (WFPL).Basically, I concluded that his report was not surprising. Most analysts expected an optimistic assessment that would not call for a substantial reduction in American troops. The General is only talking about returning the US troop level to pre-surge levels by mid-July 2008. A modest proposal, eh?I also noted a few points that General Petraeus did not address (though many in the...

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Neorealism and hypocrisy 101

by Rodger Payne | 4 September, 2007 |

Note: A full citation of the piece is below the fold.OK, so this is shameless self promotion. The September 2007 Perspectives on Politics, which arrived in my mailbox today, includes my article "Neorealists as Critical Theorists: The Purpose of Foreign Policy Debate."Editor Jim Johnson offers a brief explanation of the article in his "Introduction and Comments" piece at the front of the journal: Rodger Payne seeks to catch the neo-realists among International Relations scholars in what we might call a pragmatic contradiction. He argues that while their own theory of politics discounts ideas...

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