After negotiating for the better part of a year, American and Russian powers that be have finally found their way to agreement on a new arms control treaty to replace the START protocol that expired in December of last year. The new pact is to be signed in Prague a year to the day [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
START to finish in the Senate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arms control, Nuclear arms, Obama foreign policy, US-Russia relations on March 31, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
A bunch of very glum “I told you so’s”
Posted in Middle East, Uncategorized on March 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Before President Obama even took office, I tried to warn about the dangers of overexerting oneself in the Arab-Israeli peace process: It would be a mistake for [Obama] to invest in trying to solve the dispute at this stage, however. Paradoxically, outside actors (e.g., the United States) tend to hold more influence over the course [...]
Letters from Helmand: The Battle for Marja
Posted in Uncategorized on February 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Perhaps Americans can finally rejoice in some good news just in from the Afghan Kush this weekend. NATO’s massive offensive in Marja, Helmand Province, a notorious Taliban stronghold in a volatile region that was almost singlehandedly suffocating coalition prospects in this war over the summer, seems to be the first emerging success story in Gen. [...]
Yulia’s Dilemma
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged election, Fenno, incumbant, Tymoshenko, Ukraine on February 11, 2010 | 4 Comments »
It is clear that Viktor Yanukovych is going to be the next president of Ukraine. Today the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, added his congratulations to the growing international choir, despite the fact that Yanukovych remains one of the few politicians in Ukraine who has vocally supported the autonomy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In [...]
NJ Marriage Equality: More Money, More Problems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged LGBT, marriage, New Jersey on February 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s largest civil rights group, announced today that they will no longer make contributions to political parties, and they are urging their members to follow suit. This controversial move is in response to New Jersey’s failure to pass same-sex marriage through the legislature. “No political party has a record good enough [...]
Perpetual Confusion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Democratic Peace Theory, IR, Political Theory on January 26, 2010 | 2 Comments »
In response to the previous two posts discussing the vaunted democratic peace theory, I would say this: “democracy” has to exist in the same basic state, at essentially the same level of development among the countries subject to comparison for any grand “theoretic” pronouncements to be made. Thus proponents of the DPT can indeed point [...]
A Pleasant Myth?
Posted in Uncategorized on January 25, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Jack has a good overview of the most resilient (and for IR scholars, vexing) theories in international politics today, democratic peace theory (DPT). I am hesitant to endorse DPT. As description, DPT seems at first glance self-evident. As prescription, however, even DPT advocates disagree on why democracies go to war. It is certainly not because [...]
An exception to the rule
Posted in Uncategorized on January 24, 2010 | 3 Comments »
It has been nearly twenty years since Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the ‘End of History’ in reaction to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unstoppable rise of what many believed to be a new, democratic first world order. With these reactionary movements in political theory widely popularized, so too was the Democratic Peace Theory: [...]
Yushchenko Loses: Ukraine’s First Round Elections
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 2010, Elections, first round, Ukraine on January 18, 2010 | 1 Comment »
In the days following the famously narrow 2000 election between Bush and Gore, headline writers could come to only one conclusion: “Nader Loses.” Today in Ukraine, the results were similarly inconclusive. Only one thing was certain — incumbent president Viktor Yushchenko had lost his seat, with a slim 5 percent of the vote. Unsurprisingly, neither [...]
Question: What is a “Teapublican” Anyway?
Posted in Uncategorized on January 15, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Answer: Nobody really knows, least of all the very activists who identify with the “tea-party” movement that has become a fixture in American politics over the past year. A recent article in the New York Times describes how its members have arrived at a sort of torch-and-pitchfork consensus that the best way to stop the [...]
