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

The Latest in Mole Whacking

by Rodger Payne | 16 September, 2010 |

Yesterday, the New York Times had a story about huge proposed increases in military assistance to Yemen, framed around the "war on terror." Since the Christmas day 2009 attempted airliner bombing that was linked to Yemen, the U.S. was allocated about $155 million in military aid for FY 2010 -- up from about $5 million in FY 2006.The Pentagon's latest plan calls for $1.2 billion in the next six years, about $200 million annually. That's nearly a 25% increase from 2010 and an enormous change in commitment over a short period of time.Apparently, by comparison, Aghanistan is so 2009: “Yemen is...

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Debate Day

by Rodger Payne | 6 September, 2010 |

When I was a college student, I spent every Labor Day working in the debate squadroom at Kansas. Everyone on the team, in fact, was expected to put in a full day working on their affirmative cases, negative arguments, etc. Sometimes, debaters learned the identity of their colleague on that day -- it is a two-person team activity after all. After the work ended, our coach and his wife hosted the team for dinner.Even though it was a Labor Day of work and not rest, I always enjoyed it and have fond memories. Recently, former National Debate Tournament champion Michael Horowitz (Emory 2000)...

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Preemption News

by Rodger Payne | 1 September, 2010 |

Search the current White House website for the phrase "Bush Doctrine" and "no results" are returned. However, as I've previously argued, that does not mean the Obama administration has abandoned the Bush view of "preemption" (which was really a rebranding of preventive war). This week, the Pentagon has announced a new cyber-spin on "preemptive war": The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes pre-emptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary’s computer network overseas - but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the...

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Coalition of the Unwilling: Final Edition?

by Rodger Payne | 19 August, 2010 |

For many years on my personal blog, I monitored the disintegration of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. My last post on this topic was apparently in December 2008, when the United Kingdom announced that it was soon withdrawing its final troops from Iraq. Prior posts had documented the exits of Australia (2007), Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia (2007), Japan (2006), Italy (2006), Poland, the Netherlands, Thailand, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Norway (2005), Ukraine (2005), the Philippines, Spain, and Honduras (2004).Now, the U.S. has withdrawn its last...

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Another Iran data point

by Rodger Payne | 5 August, 2010 |

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden (who served George W. Bush) said something fairly provocative on CNN in late July -- but Fox News trumpeted the story: Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, said that during his tenure "a strike was way down the list of options." But he tells CNN's State of the Union that such action now "seems inexorable."During the cold war competition with the Soviet Union, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, was famously quoted as saying, "when we build they build; when we stop, they build." (It was apparently a...

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Identifying Groupthink

by Rodger Payne | 28 July, 2010 |

Many of the Journolist critics have expressed concerns that the listserv's membership -- you had to be political "center to left" to join -- fomented groupthink. Andrew Sullivan's critique is succinct, but he's hardly alone in leveling the charge: "It is this tendency to groupthink and exclusivity that concerns me."Reihan Salam, who was generally sympathetic to Journolist in an on-line piece he wrote last week, has recalibrated his argument to criticize J-list about the alleged groupthink problem: What I meant to say, and evidently didn’t say very effectively, is that JList is inevitable. So...

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Hypocrisy watch

by Rodger Payne | 20 July, 2010 |

Before departing on vacation, Stephen Walt posted about a rift between South Korea and the United States concerning spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. The U.S. is opposed, primarily because plutonium is a byproduct, while South Korea wants to reprocess waste so as to reduce the volume of nuclear refuse from its large-scale atomic energy program.To reduce proliferation fears inherently tied to plutonium production, South Korean policy in this area reflects a pledge (and as Walt notes, implicit threat), that "We will never build nuclear weapons as long as the United States keeps its alliance...

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Hybrid car bleg

by Rodger Payne | 4 July, 2010 |

I've been doing some car shopping this past week and it appears as if one of the best bargains around is the 2010 Nissan Altima Hybrid. The base car's invoice price is a bit less than $26,000. However, Nissan is offering $5000 (!!) cash back in some areas of the country -- $4000 that has been available for many months, $500 that is a generic Nissan incentive over the next month, and $500 more for the holiday weekend. That means that

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So long for now, New England

by Rodger Payne | 15 June, 2010 |

I didn't meet many faculty on my recent tour of New England liberal arts colleges (and a few Ivies), but one scholar I dined with provided this great line about foreign language study: "Optimists study English; pessimists study Arabic; realists study Mandarin."After nearly 1400 miles of driving and visits to more than a dozen schools, my daughter and I enjoyed a personal tour of the Naval War College. Then, we walked around Newport and savored the end of the journey and beautiful vistas. Incidentally, this was a real highlight of the trip. Someone needs to export it to Louisville.If anyone...

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