The Duck of Minerva

Stacie Goddard

Recent Posts

Conquest by other means, Ukraine edition

by Stacie Goddard | 2 March, 2014 |

Over at the Monkey Cage, Henry Farrell suggests that President Obama is using the OSCE to give Putin an exit strategy. Farrell writes: Obama’s “phone call with Putin on Saturday suggests that the United States wants to invoke the old-style OSCE. It notes that Russia’s armed intervention is inconsistent with Russia’s commitments under the Helsinki Final Act (the agreement that established the OSCE), calls for “the dispatch of international observers under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)... If Putin wants an...

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The power of mentorship: a reflection

by Stacie Goddard | 25 October, 2013 |

In the Monkey Cage’s recent symposium on gender and political science,  David Lake writes how important it is that our scholarly networks become less gendered, how male scholars must make an effort to mentor women in the field.  In my view, the importance of mentorship cannot be understated.  Without the support of several scholars in security studies, not all but many of them men, I may have indeed decided that this field was not for someone like me. In my first year of graduate school, I was beginning to see myself as more of an “IR theory” than a “security studies” student (yes, whatever...

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Women and the residential fellowship: a few thoughts

by Stacie Goddard | 22 September, 2013 |

In my email inbox last week was a notification of a fellowship opportunity.  Since I have a sabbatical coming up shortly—okay, in a couple of years, but time flies, right?—I eagerly skimmed the details.  It’s a fellowship squarely in my field.  The funding is pretty generous, probably enough to help me buy out some extra time at my institution, and finish the damn book that is core to my next promotion.  But at the end of the description, there sat the deal-breaker: “visiting scholars are expected to be in residence for the entire year.” I understand the advantages of residential...

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Syria and the problems of compellence

by Stacie Goddard | 30 August, 2013 |

To my mind, the situation in Syria has prompted an incredibly thoughtful debate within the political science community, one that undermines the idea that scholars have become irrevocably detached from policy. Ian Hurd and Charli Carpenter have written excellent pieces on the legality of chemical weapons and military intervention.  James Fearon contributed this superb piece on the strategic dilemmas involved in the US response.  And once again, The Onion has shown us all that it is the smartest game in town when it comes to foreign policy.Much of the conversation has concerned the question of...

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Blogging the syllabus, international security edition: what is security?

by Stacie Goddard | 22 August, 2013 |

With all of the focus on APSA, there’s been little discussion of another Labor Day ritual—the Revising of the Syllabus. In truth, I should have begun this ritual a few weeks ago.  Now that the panic dreams have kicked in—you know, the ones where you show up to class on the first day without a syllabus and thus lose all authority over your students for the rest of the semester…you do get those too, right?—I know I must take action. My first task is to revise my introductory-level course on security studies and, luckily, it’s in pretty good shape, thanks to some major overhauls I did over the...

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Levee en Masse–but it’s only an operational concept!

by Stacie Goddard | 9 August, 2013 |

Over at the National Interest T.X. Hamnes has a nice critique of AirSea Battle, seemingly the Pentagon's reigning  strategy…sorry, operational concept...for dealing with a rising China and the problem of Anti-Access/Area Denial (for the official overview, see here).  I expect I’ll be writing a bit on ASB during my time at the Duck, so I won’t try to engage in every debate in the first post. For now I’ll limit myself to one question Hamnes raises: does it make any sense to talk about an operational concept as isolated from strategy? Some quick background.  The argument that ASB is an...

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Put Middle East Peace Process to a Vote

by Stacie Goddard | 2 August, 2013 |

Always good to start out blogging with a non-controversial topic, like the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.   But just before the Israeli Knesset went into recess, they advanced a bill requiring that any land ceded in a peace process be approved  in a national referendum. The bill could become a Basic Law--tantamount to a constitutional amendment--when the Knesset returns in the fall.  My take on this is in the  International Herald Tribune/New York Times: The argument in brief: Far from undercutting the peace process, a referendum is necessary to the legitimacy of a two-state solution....

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