With Crimea's secession and accession drama still unfolding, we wait with baited breath about whether we will bear witness to yet another war (Kimberly Marten's post on the Monkey Cage is sobering). Sure hard to believe that Steven Pinker is right with Syria blazing,...
Women missing...online? The Huffington Post has reported that the gender gap exists online- with 200 million fewer women using the internet than men. Scholars, students, and the general public are...
Human Rights Watch has a new report on the killing of 190 civilians in early August by members of five Islamist rebel groups:  Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and Sham,  Jabhat al-Nusra,  Jaish...
The U.S. had two dramatic efforts to capture high priority terrorist targets, one in Libya and another in Somalia. The snatch and grab operation in Libya was a seeming success (though I'm wondering...
A handful of links today, but with content. Dan Drezner discusses China, Thucydides, and the limit of metaphor. It strikes me that Dan's buried the lede here. The question isn't whether Thucydides is applicable to the Sino-American relationship, or whether Tuchman is better, but rather why even Chinese IR professors have adopted the tropes of the Western professoriate. After all, China has its very own history from which to draw analogies, as smart scholars like Victoria Tin-bor Hui and David Kang have reminded Western audiences. The history of the Warring States period seems at least as...
The Hong Kong Duck is back! Not much point in having the "best" military R&D in the world if a potential rival can steal your most important designs. A Law of the Sea symposium (and also) at Opinio Juris on "search and rescue operations." LFC on Kennan's opposition to the Vietnam War. Making the most out of Google dirigibles over Africa. Anti-vaccine themes in popular discourse. Jocelyn Cesari looks at France's "peculiar same-sex marriage debate"; Zack Ford summarizes recent anti-gay violence at "demonstrations in Ukraine, Russia, and France." Cranky sociologist reviews left-wing...
Good mornin' ducks.  Happy Memorial Day. The US public today, despite strong support for the military, is the least connected to the institution.  Only about 0.5% of the population has served on active duty since 9/11 (roughly 9% of the population served in WWII). The FAS revisits the potentially staggering costs of a war with Iran under different scenarios in the wake of the passage of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act. Is al-Assad and the new National Defence Force winning the civil war in Syria?  (The article has some useful graphics) The US is happy that India has cut...
What's worth reading this weekend? Lots of stuff. Here's a list of a few things, from analytic to oddities. No drones, machetes, or tornados. But it would be silly if none of our resident experts weighed in on recent developments in these domains. Right? If the market expects climate change, why don't those who profess faith in its inerrant wisdom? Notes on "naïve Bayesian classifiers and orders of composition." Kindred W. argues that ideational IPE doesn't do a good job of explaining developments in US-EU trade negotiation. My reaction is that he's (1) choosing, as he notes, one particular...
More of the same with the Syrian opposition. Will H. Moore really takes issue with Jonathan Panikoff on how to think about what comes next in Syria. Visualizing the Syrian conflict with the new GDELT event data set.  GDELT is about to go live (in the next couple of days or week) with daily updates on Syria. Meanwhile, Jay Ulfelder roadtests GDELT as a resource for monitoring atrocities. Roland Paris on What Went Wrong in Afghanistan. Seven lessons for the next time we end up in a small war.  Call me a skeptic. Joshua Keating asks what Chaos Theory can tell us about IR. and......
Greetings all. PM and I are switching linkage duty. Omar Ali looks at the 2013 Pakistani election at 3QD. Tom Nichols argues against US ambiguity on Iran and North Korea. Via Alana Tiemessen: international justice infographics from the Leitner Center (pdf). North Korean piracy and maritime disputes in Northeast Asia. Juan Cole on mounting sectarian violence in Iraq. The nexus between authoritarian rule, collective action, and disaster response in China. For more on strategies of divide-and-rule in modern empires territorially expansive composite states, see King et al. Tom Pepinsky's "Notes...
Good mornin'.  Here's your linkage... Paolo Sorbello critiques the elegantly fixed steps and rhythms of the last Waltz. Roger Mac Ginty at Plato's Cave discusses the construction of "greatness" in IR and the cult of followership. Thomas Meaney tries to explain why a passionate history of global alternatives to liberal capitalism becomes an exercise in nostalgia. Jason Ralph wonders if Headley Bull's Revolt Against the West thesis is appropriate for understanding contemporary international society. Oliver Steunkel asks: "Could the BRICS provide loans without conditionalities?" Siddharatha...
Syttende mai! Remembering Kenneth Waltz Erica Chenoweth and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham put together a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research on nonviolence. (Free access through July 31). A New Deal for Fragile States:  spoiler alert -- national leadership and ownership of agendas are key. In other IRS news -- don't F@#$ with adjuncts... 3-d printable drones in our future? Meanwhile, back in Syria: Could things get any worse? Michael Walzer sees dithering in Syria as an entirely rational response. Is the town of Qusayr next? Jon Lee Anderson on videos of atrocities in war. and.......