The McCain opposition-research file circulating on the internet (if genuine) is just devastating in its picture of a man without any convictions whatsoever. It makes one thing crystal clear: Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, and quite possibly our next President, because he faced a GOP field made up of incompetent, unserious, and underfunded rivals. A serious contender would have eviscerated him.
Many of the positions that should have made him toxic to the Republican base will be far less damaging the context of a general election. Still, the total insincerity of the man has to be a liability. While my structuralist instincts tell me that Romney has an extremely good shot at becoming President, my "campaigns matter" side whispers that, if up against a halfway competent Obama organization, this guy is toast.
17 January 2012
Romney: A Charmed Life
Colin Kahl responds to Matt Kroenig
Foreign Affairs has gone live with Colin Kahl's explanation of why we shouldn't commence bombing in five minutes. A sample:
In arguing for a six-month horizon, Kroenig also misleadingly conflates hypothetical timelines to produce weapons-grade uranium with the time actually required to construct a bomb. According to 2010 Senate testimony by James Cartwright, then vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and recent statements by the former heads of Israel's national intelligence and defense intelligence agencies, even if Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in six months, it would take it at least a year to produce a testable nuclear device and considerably longer to make a deliverable weapon. And David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (and the source of Kroenig's six-month estimate), recently told Agence France-Presse that there is a "low probability" that the Iranians would actually develop a bomb over the next year even if they had the capability to do so. Because there is no evidence that Iran has built additional covert enrichment plants since the Natanz and Qom sites were outed in 2002 and 2009, respectively, any near-term move by Tehran to produce weapons-grade uranium would have to rely on its declared facilities. The IAEA would thus detect such activity with sufficient time for the international community to mount a forceful response. As a result, the Iranians are unlikely to commit to building nuclear weapons until they can do so much more quickly or out of sight, which could be years off.There's no question in my mind that Colin gets the better of Matt in this debate, but I think a bit of background might be of interest to Duck readers.
Strategic narratives: An uncertain science
Timing is everything; I'm not sure its good to be publishing a paper about strategic narratives just as the US cuts its Advisory Commission on Public Dipomacy, although RAND have begun exploring this field. National-level policymakers still try to tell stories about where their state and the international system are heading and should head. To the extent these narratives create expectations, shore up identities, create buy-in from partners, or have other discernible effects, we can say strategic narratives matter. The investment states have made in their international communications infrastructures in the past decade indicates the hope that aspiring or existing Great Powers can get their story out to overseas publics and elites. At the same time, sometimes just having an ambassador who carries his own bag can create a good impression. The 'science' of strategic narratives remains uncertain.
Hence, colleagues and I are trialing a working paper 'Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations', available to download here. It is authored by Alister Miskimmon (Royal Holloway), myself and Laura Roselle (Elon/Duke), and is based on the keynote Miskimmon and I delivered to International Studies Association (ISA) South at Elon University in October 2011. It comes from our long disatisfaction with how IR scholars treat media, communications and questions of influence, and how media and communications neglect many of the power dynamics of IR. It also comes from our experience working with foreign policymakers as they try to show measurable 'impact' of the narratives, and their attempts to harness new digital methods to monitor overseas public opinion. We plan to publish a book developing these ideas late in 2012, and we have panels on the subject at ISA San Diego in April and BISA/ISA Edinburgh in June with some great scholars (Neta Crawford, Karin Fierke, Antje Weiner, Robin Brown, Monroe Price, Amelia Arsenault), so if you're interested in please come along or look for the papers. For now, we'd really appreciate it if the Duck commentariat have comments on the paper.
16 January 2012
Learning from Histories of the AIDS Crisis
What can we learn from histories of the AIDS crisis? Jacques Pépin's The Origins of AIDS and Nathan Geffen's Debunking Delusions: The Inside Story of the Treatment Action Campaign are two important contributions to our understanding of a disease that has now claimed nearly thirty million lives.
Pépin, a Canadian medical doctor with a specialty in African sleeping sickness, has written a compact yet magisterial book that traces how the virus that causes AIDS leapt from chimpanzees to humans and then became a generalized epidemic in Africa that radiated around the world.
14 January 2012
Visas and scholarship
I describe the expensive, time-consuming, and often quite invasive procedure of applying for a visa to explain why they influence my work. Because my American visa is valid until 2015, I jump at the chance of attending conferences in the US. Next year, I hope to present at a conference in Australia, but I will only attend if I manage to secure travel funds that will cover the cost of the visa (another £65). I recently presented a paper at a conference in London via Skype because I had neither the time nor the funds to apply for a British visa.
Given what we hear in the media (and how Europeans complain to me of lines at US airports) it’s interesting here that the US system (which can provide up to a 10 year visa) is almost enlightened by comparison. Certainly it is fairer to scholars who are trying to network and get their research noticed.
However, the point I want to raise is (writing as a Western academic) more selfish. While Duff’s article suggests the way that these expensive and complicated visa systems have an impact on scholars in the developing world and how they do research, it seems clear to me that these systems are also affecting, if not damaging, research in the West. If scholars “in the West” cannot get access to scholars in the developing world, surely this is also affecting our ability to carry out research and exchange information and ideas as well. Yes, of course there is the internet, Skype, online journals, etc. The research is there if you look for it. But don’t we learn more at conferences when we have better global representation and views? Additionally, aren’t our students (who may not have large grants /funds to travel) better off when they can meet with and speak to scholars from the developing world? These things just seem self-evident.
Given recent trends in the West, I don’t expect this visa situation to be changing any time soon. But I think it is important for scholars to consider the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the absence of voices from the developing world because of their inability to engage and network is affecting the way both groups of scholars carry out research.
12 January 2012
"I am not a Chicken!": Social Mobilization at Its Best
I can't resist sharing this wonderful news clip from Malawi. I challenge Duck readers to have fun with this: What might the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movements learn from Malawi?
Malawi protests scheduled for January 15, Chilembwe Day
12 January 2012
tags: chilembwe day, malawi, protest
by dadakim
The following call to protest in Malawi on January 15 (Chilembwe Day) was sent as an email, and has been reported on by opposition online news agency Nyasa Times.
11 January 2012
Information wants to be free. Congress wants it to be held for ransom.
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| It's bad form to criticize other disciplines' journals based solely on titles, but Annals of Tourism Research? This is the sort of thing libraries spend their budgets on? |
And yet the academic publishing market really is different, as one UC-Berkeley professor argued last year. When Nature tried to extort a 400% subscription fee increase from the University of California system, there was very little to do except engage the nuclear option--that is, threaten to boycott the journals entirely. Academics, whose lives are shaped by publishing in journals, are at the mercy of those journals' publishers. In such negotiating positions, it's unsurprising that publishers have managed to steadily increase their yield from universities that--as you may have heard!--are otherwise struggling to get by.
10 January 2012
Politics, Intelligence, and Academic Analysis
Writing in Foreign Policy, Paul Pillar makes the case that most so-called "intelligence failures" stem from bad leadership rather than problems with the US intelligence community. He touches upon a number of cases, but Iraq looms large:
Had Bush read the intelligence community's report, he would have seen his administration's case for invasion stood on its head. The intelligence officials concluded that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction against the United States or give them to terrorists -- unless the United States invaded Iraq and tried to overthrow his regime. The intelligence community did not believe, as the president claimed, that the Iraqi regime was an ally of al Qaeda, and it correctly foresaw any attempt to establish democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq as a hard, messy slog.
Blondie
If you are running for the nomination of the Republican Party for President, there are a few
indispensables – you have to hate welfare recipients, oppose gay marriage, and have fired a gun at an animal at some point. (But apparently you no longer have to support a robust military presence overseas. Or have fired a gun against another person in a foreign war. That has not been a requirement since Eisenhower.) But it seems there is another sine qua non. If you are a man, you 
need a blond wife. 
Here are pictures of the wives of all the major contenders for the Republican nomination for President. You will notice a similarity. They are not all skinny, or pretty, or young. But they are all blond. Even Ron Paul’s wife. You can want to legalize marijuana but do not, under any circumstances, marry a swarthy woman.
This inspires so many questions. Why is a blond wife such a necessary accessory? Is blondness just white skin in hair color form? Or are blond women a kind of status symbol, the diamonds of hair color because blond hair is relatively rarer? 
Do male politicians in training go looking for a blond wife before they run for office for the first time? Or is there an endogeneity problem with that explanation – that is, do they realize after they marry a blond woman that they might have a productive career in politics? Are these women all blond to start with? Or do they change their hair color to suit their husband’s ambitions. That would be quite sad.
But it appears to be something of an iron rule. Here is the wife of Tim Pawlenty, who was the first to drop out before the race really began. Notice something – brunette. Brown, but still.
Many Republicans pinned their hopes on this guy, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. But those hopes were false. Look, she’s dark-haired. It does beg a completely different question though. Why is Chris Christie meeting the Queen? 
07 January 2012
Pentagon as Economic Dynamo: Not
The Pentagon is remarkable for its ability to contrive reasons to justify its bloated budgets. In recent years, it and the gaggle of contractors, analysts, and journalists that support it have found military-security risks in everything from “hot zone" diseases to global warming. But with looming budget cuts, the defense establishment is being forced to downsize, albeit modestly.
To protect itself, it has now taken to fear-mongering. Some of this is the usual: the supposedly dire threats we face abroad – e.g., from distant, 10th rate military powers like Iran or Pakistan or al-Qaeda, or from major trading partners like China. All of this, of course, is stated with a straight face even while our military spending dwarfs that of other nations combined. Somehow, however, and even with the natural geostrategic advantages provided by two oceans, the U.S., at least in the eyes of our panicky military brass remains forever UNDER THREAT.
In addition to such perennial hyperbole, the Pentagon now warns that cuts will have nasty domestic consequences, raising unemployment and killing economic innovation. It’s hard to argue that major military cuts might lead to job losses, not only among uniformed servicemen but also among the hordes of government contractors who’ve grown fat on defense budgets paid for by taxpayer dollars.
But that’s a good thing! If in fact it happens – and, unfortunately, that remains a big if given the proven power of the military-industrial complex to defend its narrow self-interest – ex-soldiers and ex-contractors will find other ways of getting along. Sure there will be some temporary pain for the displaced, but this will in the end help the larger economy and certainly the government’s budget picture.
As for innovation, the New York Times’s Binyamin Appelbaum has a front-page article today about that issue – one that’s worth reading as much for its misjudgments as for anything else.
The DC Government's Priorities
Last year I mentioned an editorial in the Washington Post decrying the District's decision--prodded by a small number of wealthy Georgetown residents--to force the University to meet unrealistic targets. A refresher:
A recommendation by the city’s office of planning would require the university to provide housing for 100 percent of its undergraduate students by 2016; failure to do so would force cuts in enrollment starting in 2015. Georgetown houses a higher percentage (84 percent) of undergraduates on its campus than most of the other universities in the city. Not only is it unfair to hold Georgetown to this new standard, but it’s unrealistic to expect the school to raise the money or find appropriate sites. The city’s suggestion that the university consider an off-campus site outside the university’s Zip code (Arlington?) is laughable.
What’s most troubling about the city’s posture is the notion that an increase in young people, particularly those in search of an education, is somehow undesirable. What happened to the idea that these are the very kind of people that should be lured to make the District their home? Here’s how Sally Kram of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area put it in testimony supporting Georgetown: “Given that students are one of the District’s most assured conduits for new residents — a lifeline for any urban community — it seems particularly odd that the District’s Office of Planning seems committed to restricting student growth, particularly graduate and continuing education students.”
There is no question that the neighborhoods surrounding Georgetown have some legitimate complaints. There have been issues of noise and litter and other problems by students living off-campus. But the solution isn’t to banish students or punish the university. Georgetown has increased police, provided additional garbage pickup and disciplined chronic troublemakers. Besides, for all the complaints, the neighborhoods — which, it must be pointed out, came long after the university — still are desirable places with steady demographics and increased home prices.
05 January 2012
Grand Strategy or Glossing Over Budget Cuts: Q&A;
The twitter-verse, or at least, one of the corners I follow, had heaps
of tweets dedicated to the rollout of the US defense review, with Obama
playing a starring role. Apparently, Obama briefing at the Pentagon is a
new thing. Anyhow, it raised all kinds of questions, so I thought I
would answer them all here. Yes, all of them. Ok, some of them.
- Q: Is the review really a review of what the US wants to do, or is it a gloss over the requirements imposed by the fiscal crisis?
- A: Yes, it is a gloss, but it is more significant than that. In the good old days, Grand Strategy meant the overall approach a country took to pursue its interests and match commitments and capabilities. So, having less money than planned (note, less money than planned, not significantly less money than before these wars of the Aughts) means adjusting commitments. Which leads to the next question:
- Q: All this talk of the Gulf and East Asia, and cuts to the Army, focusing on the Navy and Air Force means that Europe is taking a back seat in US grand strategy, right?
- A: Yes.
- A: Oh, you want more than that. Well, to be honest, that change happened the second week of my time on the Joint Staff, when the daily/weekly urgency about the Balkans dissipated as a war in Central Asia and then a second war took the focus and the resources of the US. The Balkans became an afterthought. Other than providing a handy set of bases for the Libyan enterprise, Europe has not been a place that American defence planners have spent much time thinking about.
- Q: But what about Russia?
- A: Good question. Well, my guess is that Russia is not seen as a conventional military threat to Europe right now or the near future. That European forces could potential deter the Russians. Ok, that makes us both laugh. With Europeans cutting their defense budgets in ways that do far more harm to readiness (as in: no more fighter planes or no more armor), Europe is not going to be that fit to take care of itself. But it has as much economic capability (once the Euro crisis settles down) to provide defense for itself, or at least supplement an American effort to "spoil" an attack. Plus the reality is that any Russian invasion of Europe would require invading countries we do not care about unless we are stupid enough to let Ukraine into NATO. Oh, never mind.
- Q: Back to the core of the new strategy, what is this one war and one other thing?
The Peacenik Profession
Given some of the recent discussion on the Duck about the use of force in the Arabian Gulf, I thought I'd point out something interesting from the recent TRIP survey of international relations scholars. It turns out that between 60 and 90 percent of IR scholars surveyed simply reject the U.S. use of force in five hot-button regions. Asked "Would you approve or disapprove of the use of U.S. military forces in the following situations?", scholars responded:
- War between North and South Sudan: 84.6% disapprove.
- If it were certain that Iran had produced a nuclear weapon: 79.9% disapprove
- If extremists were poised to take over Pakistan: 63.3% disapprove
- To support democratic transition in Syria: 78.6% disapprove
- To support democratic transition in Yemen: 84.4% disapprove
Addendum: The Use of History in IR and the Causes of World War II
Frank's intent was not so much picking one or another historical interpretation, as suggesting a greater, mutually beneficial dialogue between historians and IR specialists. I think what emerges from this discussion is that any particular -isms centric perspective on the causes of World War II may do violence to the complexity of the historical record. It raises questions about how to do theoretically informed work that necessarily simplifies a complex reality without reifying erroneous tropes about the past that then get locked in and passed down to IR scholars in ever simpler form as conventional wisdom.
Here is what Frank wrote:
04 January 2012
Hu's Culture War
First, Walt argues that cultural and artistic production is something which authoritarian states cannot manage well. He writes, "What Hu doesn't understand is that you can't just order creativity up by fiat or by making a cheerleading speech." For Walt, the cutting edge of creativity comes autonomously from the state.
Walt's argument is flawed because all states are involved to varying degrees in cultural production, including liberal democratic states. Canada and France are perhaps the most prominent examples of states that seek to enhance and shape cultural production through bureaucratic regulations. Other states effectively subsidize the arts and cultural activities through tax codes as well as national institutes and the US is no exception. Even the general income tax code can provide incentives for artists to be innovative and unique so that they can try to join the top 1% of the income bracket. The same tax code can provide incentives to patrons of the arts when they decide to donate their purchases so that they can be viewed by the plebeians. Moreover, cultural production does not have to be at the cutting edge of global culture to serve the interests of the state -- particularly when the Chinese state's main concern is to defend against a growing domestic preference for American popular culture.
Really Real: Take II on the Chicago IR Guys
In this post, I want to provide a similar albeit friendlier critique to Rosato and Schuessler's article (not least because Sebastian introduced me and my wife!). Rosato and Schuessler (R&S) make the case that realism can and should be taken as a prescriptive theory to guide U.S. foreign policy, and had their advice been followed, the U.S. might not have had to go to war in World War I and II (essentially a problem of underbalancing in both cases) and wouldn't have gone to war in Vietnam and Iraq (basically both were unnecessary wars in either strategically unimportant places or areas where deterrence could have worked).
What's more, R&S make the case that liberal theories held by policymakers (belief in international institutions, support for democracy, promotion of trade) actually made conflict more likely.
Let me offer a few reactions in this post, mostly dealing with their concept of security and controversial claims about World War II.
What does Mitt Romney's victory in Iowa tell us about who the Republican nominee will be?
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| Unless... |
Nothing at all.
Four years ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.
Six months ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.
One month ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.
Two days ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.
This morning, we know neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum will be president.
Given the cavalcade of crazies that has populated the Republican primary to date, amazingly, the party is on the verge of nominating Willard Mitt Romney--the heartfelt choice of nearly 22 percent of GOP voters--by acclamation.
In the meantime, though, perhaps Chuck Norris, Amy Grant, and some of the other PAX network luminaries can come up with a new version of "Yes We Can" celebrating Senator Santorum's photo finish.
03 January 2012
Cultural weapons and international relations
At The Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten notes the ascendancy of constructivism within International Relations (although "non-paradigmatic research" is an even more popular category).
I suppose that's it for realism, then. So much for the null hypothesis that every article in IR published in the past 20 years has treated as a punching bag. From now on, I hope that we can all agree that theory articles don't have to start by attacking the bogeyman of structural realism and can instead begin with a more interesting discussion of the problem at hand.
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| Next from Steve Walt: Cultural Revolution and War |
Take Samuel Barkin's Realist Constructivism. It strikes me that Barkin more intuitively understands Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent missive condemning the Westernization of Chinese ideas than a 1990s-vintage constructivist. After all, Hu is speaking a constructivist dialect, but it's not the cheerful liberal one that we grew most familiar with in the 1990s. Instead, Hu is lending his name to a point of view that is a little different, one that views ideas as a site of contestation in which states qua states (or at least regimes qua regimes) can play a major role.
Get Real! Chicago IR guys out in force
In light of the recent exchange on the Duck about Matthew Kroenig's work on Iran and policy-relevant research, I thought I'd flag a couple of articles from three University of Chicago alums from International Security (where Nuno Monteiro has a piece on unipolarity) and Perspectives on Politics (where Sebastian Rosato and John Schuessler have an article [Ed: behind paywall] prescribing a realist foreign policy for the United States).
While I disagree with a number of their conclusions and theoretical observations, these are the kind of pieces that I think will generate a lot of healthy discussion in the discipline because they are accessible, address important topics in the real world, and yet are theory-driven inquiries. Kudos to them for that!
For our Duck readers, in summarizing their main arguments and conclusions, I wanted to throw out a couple of concerns that stuck out for me. As is my wont on this blog, this is going to take a couple of posts to get out.
