The Duck of Minerva

Steve Saideman

Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.

Recent Posts

Online Media Caucus Call for Papers for ISA 2016 Reminder

by Steve Saideman | 13 May, 2015 |

Our new caucus seeks to promote the use of online media in our teaching, research, policy engagement and service. We have a broad imagination both about what we mean by online media and what kinds of papers/panels would be of interest. Online media include social media such as twitter, blogging, facebook, tumblr, and the like, but also the use of the internet for surveys, simulations, data repositories, virtual meetings, and more. We are in interested in papers/panels that are research-oriented (using the internet in one’s research), pedagogical (internet in the classroom, online...

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Not All Alarms are False

by Steve Saideman | 24 April, 2015 |

This piece raises the question I have been asking for the past week in Brussels: can we credibly commit to the defense of the Baltics?  Without a permanent NATO (or at least American) presence, is our Article V commitment (an attack upon one is an attack upon all) believable? There are two ways to look at it.  First, to be clear, any nuclear threat is incredible.  That is--not to be believed.  At any single point, it really is not that believable that country x will use nuclear weapons since they are always so disproportional and always raise the question of a global exchange and mutual...

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Comparing World Crises

by Steve Saideman | 17 April, 2015 |

On my second day in Belgium, the Atlantik-Brücke conference, a Canada-Germany conversation, got underway and was immediately quite interesting.  The opening session had two speakers that provided broad surveys of the world's crises, and I was struck that there seemed to be some comparisons that did not work for me.  Why? Because some crises are harder than others and that we can focus on three dimensions of each crisis so that we can compare apples and oranges: the degree of difficulty of the actual policy problem, the stakes, and the level of consensus among the key players. I recently...

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Memories of Rumsfeld’s Snowflakes

by Steve Saideman | 8 April, 2015 | ,

I have written before about my Rummy experiences, but wanted tor revisit after seeing this post yesterday at vox.  I was able to dig through Rummy's website and found the document that spawned a heap of paperwork at my desk on the Joint Staff. In the aftermath of 9/11, many allies, partners and others offered to help the US, and since Rumsfeld didn't want allies on the battlefield (with a few exceptions), he wanted to use these offers to get the US out of a variety of commitments around the world.  Backfill refers to finding other forces to fill the gaps after one removes one's troops. I...

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Online Media Caucus: News and Contact Info

by Steve Saideman | 12 March, 2015 | ,

The Online Media Caucus was ratified at the ISA in New Orleans.  The question is: now what? First, we now have a variety of online media outlets to publicize: ISA's homepage for us: https://www.isanet.org/ISA/Caucuses/OMC Twitter:  https://twitter.com/OnlineMediaISA or @OnlineMediaISA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ISAOMC Blog to be announced later. Pinterest, Vine, Instragram, and other online media outlets will be developed by volunteers. Second, I have been asked by the 2016 ISA Program Chairs to put together a panel for the Presidential Theme of Peace.  So, if you are working on...

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Which Costs Matter?

by Steve Saideman | 5 March, 2015 |

There has been much focus, and deservedly so, on the economic sanctions hitting Russia hard.  The problem is whether they hit those who support Putin or not, and whether they create economic opportunities for those who are good at evading the law (the police, organized crime) who also happen to be tied to Putin. The latest reports focus on a different set of costs--that the Russian military is losing "large numbers" of soldiers in Ukraine.  This matters a great deal not so much because the mothers of these soldiers might become a huge political force (I am not sure their impact during...

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The Duckies of 2015

by Steve Saideman | 22 February, 2015 |

We gave out the Online Achievement in International Studies (OAIS) a.k.a. the Duckies, Thursday night, in a wonderful reception sponsored by SAGE.  Given that this is Oscar night, we should say that there are no winners, just that the Duckies went to: Best Independent Blog: Dart Throwing Chimp.  Runner Up:  Chris Blattman Best Group Blog:  The Monkey Cage. Runner Up:  PV@aGlance Best New Blogger:  Allison Beth Hodgkins. Runner Up:  Brandon Valeriano Best Blog Post:  Erica Chenoweth, "Nonviolent Conflicts in 2014 That you May have Missed Because They Were Nonviolent" at Political Violence at...

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ISA 2015 Update: Bloggers Win

by Steve Saideman | 18 February, 2015 |

Yesterday, the Governing Council met for 17 days and nights .... or about six hours to discuss the various issues on the agenda.  I will not get into the details of the meeting (I live-tweeted the highlights).    The key bits of news are this: I learned how to do emoji on my Ipad. The blogging issue from last year produced a report by the Professional Responsibilities committee, and the recommendations which became policy essentially said that we ought to expect everyone to be professional and treat each other with respect and dignity. This applies to not just ISA journal editors who were...

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