The Duck of Minerva

Dan encouraged me to mention a new book that some Duck readers might find interesting, Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), edited by William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell of Pitt's Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies. Their chapter 1, "Preemption, Prevention, Prevarication" is available on the press website.Disclosure: the volume includes my chapter, "Deliberate before Striking First?"There's a nice review in the July 20 edition of Pittsburgh's City Paper and I've blogged about the book throughout its...

"We're talking a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island," he said. "If an insider knows where the target sets are, in other words, the way to damage the reactor or to blow a hole in the spent fuel pool, it would be a hell of lot worse than anything we've ever seen in this country before." --- Peter Stockman, Senior Investigator, Project on Government Oversight (POGO)Widely read blogger-journalists Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan are noting the growing questions about last week's airline terror plot and arrests. Drum points to some sources who justifiably question the ease of making binary...

Last week, my email inbox received a post from a listserv with this subject line: "Opportunity: Social Sciences/ Iraq." I don't know that the list is confidential, but I suppose one has to be a member of a particular scholarly organization to receive postings. In any event, I don't have to violate list norms because another blogger already posted the entire ad. Read it here. Actually, Lincoln Group has the jobs linked on its own website. The openings are for "STRATEGIC CONSULTANTS" and this is the first line:"Lincoln Group has an opening for a number of strategic consultants to support...

Photo courtesy whitehouse.govThis is just a quick followup to my post last week about the risks of escalation in the current Middle Eastern conflict.Israel is apparently ending its incursion into Gaza , but there is very little good news emerging from the region.US Secretary of State Condi Rice is on the case, but she is employing an odd diplomatic style to say the least. News agencies pessimistically report "no sign of a cease-fire."So, is the worst-case still possible? And if we assume that the answer is "yes," then what are the plausible scenarios? How about we begin by pointing out the...

In grad school, Herman Kahn was my second favorite strategic theorist (after Thomas Schelling). I still have an original edition of On Thermonuclear War with the dust jacket -- restrain your envy, my copy was marked up as I read it. In any case, Kahn is known for a number of interesting ideas, including the so-called "ladder of escalation." Essentially, Kahn's term explains gradations of conflict, from "ostensible crisis" up 40+ rungs to "spasm" thermonuclear war. Such a spasm is to be avoided, obviously.While Kahn developed the ladder as part of his critique of the "massive retaliation"...

Given how the US reacted to the traumatic 9/11 attacks -- wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that are still ongoing and adoption of a dangerous public doctrine of "preemptive" action that openly embraces preventive war -- security scholars ought to be thinking seriously about India's possible reaction to this week's Mumbai commuter train bombings. Indeed, this should be a central concern to security strategists as well. Why? Though the Indian government has not accused Pakistan of direct involvement in this week's commuter train bombings, officials like Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh...

Previously, I've pointed out the overt hypocrisy of American non-proliferation policy. The U.S. continues to seek new nuclear weapons and maintains a very large arsenal of these weapons; yet, it tries very hard to prevent many other states from acquiring these same armaments.Since the U.S. position is that states like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea should abide international norms about nuclear proliferation, this hypocrisy could be viewed as a fairly serious problem. Many realists, however, note that this sort of hypocrisy is normal in international relations.In any event, the contradictions...

Many prominent bloggers on the left side of the blogosphere are meeting this weekend in Las Vegas for the first annual "YearlyKos" convention. There are certainly multiple panels that sound interesting, though I have no idea how meaningful this convention will prove to be. From a social science point of view, it clearly seems like a political blog-related event worth watching.A few hours ago, for example, the convention featured a panel on the "CIA Leak Investigation," which included these participants: former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Washington Post columnist-blogger Dan Froomkin,...

I'm not sure if my colleagues here at the Duck teach critical theory in their IR theory courses. I do, at least in my master's class.My classes ended last month, but I have a homework assignment just begging for a student population. Write an "immanent critique" of the following passage from President George W. Bush. Monday May 22, this question for President Bush came from a member of the audience at the Arie Crown Theater at Lakeside Center -- McCormick Place, Chicago:Speaking of oil-producing countries that are not friendly to the United States right now, I'm very concerned about what's...