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

Condi’s dream and “the second surge”

by Rodger Payne | 23 May, 2007 |

Is Condi's dream about to become a reality?The Guardian has a story today with this headline: "Bush may turn to UN in search for Iraq solution." It is filled with quotes from "a former senior administration official...who is familiar with administration thinking." A "senior US diplomat" also chips in anonymously as well. So, what's the forthcoming plan -- apparently to be outlined this September when the UN meets in NY?· Expanded UN involvement in overseeing Iraq's full transition to a "normal" democratic state, including an enhanced role for UN humanitarian agencies, the creation of a UN...

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MSF’s Foreign Policy

by Rodger Payne | 19 May, 2007 |

It is a time of political transition in Europe. While Tony Blair is not leaving his post as the UK's PM until next month, Jacques Chirac has already been replaced as French President by Nicolas Sarkozy.A few weeks ago, Sarkozy'z UMP party of the center-right beat Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal 53% to 47%. However, Sarkozy has just named Socialist Bernard Kouchner as his Foreign Minister. What will this mean for French foreign policy -- and perhaps US-French relations?The former is perhaps easier to predict. Kouchner is best known as a founder (1971) of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors...

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A crisis in American generalship?

by Rodger Payne | 12 May, 2007 |

Is last fall's "revolt of the generals" about to extend to active duty officers?Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, offers a stinging critique of America's military leadership in the May 2007 Armed Forces Journal:Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare...

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Whack-a-mole?

by Rodger Payne | 25 April, 2007 |

Last August, Senator John McCain famously used the phrase "whack-a-mole" to describe and criticize the Pentagon's "old" strategy in Iraq. What I worry about is we're playing a game of whack-a-mole here. We move troops, it [insurgency] flares up, we move troops there.Based on that metaphor, McCain concluded that the US needed more troops in Iraq. The logic is simple: more US troops can whack more insurgent moles and reduce the places in Iraq safe for them to appear. Putting more troops in Iraq also theoretically means creating larger-and-larger zones of security in Iraq. Indeed, McCain now...

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Enabling proliferation

by Rodger Payne | 3 April, 2007 |

What do other states think of America's nuclear arsenal and strategic posture? Defense analyst Lewis Dunn, with coauthors Gregory Giles, Jeffrey Larsen, and Thomas Skypek, recently completed a project sponsored by the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (ASCO) of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency that looked at this and related questions. Their report is available on the web: Foreign Perspectives on U.S. Nuclear Policy and Posture (warning: long pdf).On March 20, Dunn presented the findings at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Through his interviews with foreign individuals,...

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Who’s feeling the heat?

by Rodger Payne | 31 March, 2007 |

Why the lack of posts? Well, I've been under two writing deadlines in recent weeks. For both projects, I've been working on pieces about the domestic and international politics of global warming -- one for a magazine and one for a textbook. Here's some news from that research worth serious discussion:A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.This information, along with data from the...

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J.D. Salinger and al Qaeda’s “Chinese Democracy”

by Rodger Payne | 18 March, 2007 |

Writer J.D. Salinger has not published any work since 1965 ("at least under his own name," writes someone at Wikipedia). Many theorize that the author of the classic book Catcher in the Rye just cannot top that effort -- so why try? I'd stop short of calling him a literary "one hit wonder," but you can find that description on the web.Rock band Guns N'Roses was most definitely not a one hit wonder, though I never owned any of their recordings. Lead singer Axl Rose has apparently been re-working the album "Chinese Democracy" for years and years and years -- since 1992, in fact. The latest...

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The Comedy of Great Power Politics

by Rodger Payne | 24 February, 2007 |

Next Wednesday in Chicago -- that's February 28, at 8:30 am -- at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, I'll be presenting a paper called "The Comedy of Great Power Politics in the 21st Century." Warning: that's a pdf, which I posted on my rarely used University homepage.On the same panel, my friend Nayef Samhat is presenting "The 'Comedic Turn' and Critical International Relations Theory." If those titles sound strange to you, read my paper (and Nayef's once it is available) and pass along your comments. Better yet, come to the panel. If you are an IR theorist, you...

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Iran

by Rodger Payne | 6 February, 2007 |

Scholar Larry Diamond resides at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution, but he worked for the Bush administration in Iraq just a couple of years ago. He thinks that a war with Iran might be in the cards: President Bush's neoconservative advisors and pundit supporters have been beating the drums of war with Iran since 2003, when the president declared Iran to be part of an "axis of evil." Recall that a senior administration official told The Times that Iran should "take a number" in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. In his recent address to the nation on the troop surge in Iraq, Bush...

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Publicity

by Rodger Payne | 31 January, 2007 |

Much of my academic scholarship is concerned with the idea of deliberative democracy. Nayef Samhat and I have argued, for instance, that norms of transparency (or openness) and participation (or inclusion) promote public deliberation.By contrast, secrecy and exclusion distort public debate.Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists, together with the Government Accountability Project, told a House Committee about their survey of nearly 300 government climate scientists. The results, as reported by AP, are far from ideal for those interested in deliberation: At the House hearing, two private...

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