Additional Blogging and Writing

This week, Millennium: Journal of International Studies has published my article on "Cooperative Security: Grand Strategy Meets Critical Theory?" The piece is a revised version of the paper I delivered at the London School of Economics conference during October 2011. Here's the abstract:

Major powers are frequently urged to embrace grand strategies tied to particular International Relations theories. In the case of United States foreign policy, scholars generally analyse a well-known set of strategic choices – primacy, selective engagement, offshore balancing, collective security and cooperative security – favoured by relatively mainstream realist and liberal thinkers in International Relations. This article explores the evolution of cooperative security as an idea from its clear ties to liberal and neoliberal international relations theory to its current understanding in world politics, which is surprisingly consistent with many emancipatory ideals of critical International Relations theory. Cooperative security no longer merely implies multilateralism, negotiation and arms control. Rather, security is now more frequently described as indivisible, and genuine cooperation is said to require shared decision-making and consensual practices. Non-governmental organisations are more and more granted a voice in security discussions, as are international institutions. While weapons and warfare remain important security concerns, the cooperative security agenda today includes ideas associated with human security, including environmental calamity, global inequality and hunger.

Last Tuesday, May 22, I posted "How the Sausage is Made" on the Duck of Minerva group IR blog. Andrew Sullivan kindly linked to the post and nearly 15,000 people have viewed it to-date. Apparently, in the 7-year history of the Duck, it is the most-viewed post!** Thank you Zack Beauchamp.

If you haven't read the piece, it includes audio (with pictures) of world leaders speaking frankly about their negotiating position on greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The audio track is from  the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit and the leaders apparently didn't know the session was recorded. I cross-posted "Making Sausage" on the e-IR climate blog as well on May 23.

On May 5, I posted "Climate Change and Godwin's Law" on Duck of Minerva and it was cross-posted on e-IR on May 6. In case you are not familiar with the phrase, "Godwin's Law" refers to the implications of someone referencing Hitler or the Nazis in an internet debate.

This is me a few years ago, playing poker.

** It appears that the Google source I used for this information has only been tracking Duck of Minerva since July 2009.

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Pakistan: Failed or Rogue State?

Pictured: A.Q. Khan, "Father of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program." 

It has been a few weeks since the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. However, I meant to blog this line from a May 2011 piece by Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Pakistan's widely-read Dawn.

"If we [Pakistan] didn’t know [bin Laden was in Abbottabad], we are a failed state; if we did know, we are a rogue state."

Almeida continues with a question, "But does anybody really believe they didn’t know?"

Some readers may recall that I presented a conference paper about Pakistan as a possible target in the "war on terror" back in October 2008. In that paper, I argued that Pakistan could easily have been viewed as a foe all the way back in September 2001.

Actually, I've not been especially kind to Pakistan on this blog for some years:

• In 2003, I noted that Pakistan was viewed by many security analysts as the "typhoid Mary" of nuclear proliferation. Thanks, A.Q. Khan.
• In 2004, I noted Pakistani apparent support for militants in Kashmir that were interlinked to al Qaeda. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is typically implicated in this sponsorship.
• In 2006, some of the (allegedly) ISI-sponsored militants committed a violent act of terror in Mumbai. Also, Hamad Karzai worried openly about militants operating in Afghanistan based in Pakistan. 
• By 2007, the national security apparatus of the U.S. government considered Pakistan's border areas with Afghanistan a sanctuary for al Qaeda. 
• Since 2008, the U.S. has been committing acts of war inside of Pakistan. 
• Moreover, throughout 2007 and 2008, Pakistan played a significant role in U.S. electoral politics, as Democrats were especially willing to sound hawkish about this long-time U.S. ally. 

Pakistan is the "ally from hell" according to a December 2011 Atlantic piece by journalists Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder. While they discuss many of the same problems I've been addressing on this blog over the years, the authors end their piece by taking on the question of command and control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Indeed, they urge U.S. policymakers to remain "focused on the most important goal: keeping Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal secure and holstered." That might not be easy, as they report:

In 2006, General Kidwai, the SPD [Strategic Plans Division] leader, told a U.S. audience at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, that Pakistan maintained for its nuclear arsenal the functional equivalent of two-person control and permissive action links, or PALs—coded locks meant to prevent unauthorized arming of a weapon. When asked about Pakistan’s PAL protocols, one former U.S. defense official replied, “It has never been clear to me what Pakistani PALs really entail. The doctrine is ‘two people’—but is it two people to unlock the box around the warhead, or is it two people to launch the thing once you’ve mated the warhead to the missile?”

In short, bin Laden is dead, but there are still many reasons for security analysts to worry about Pakistan. A nuclear-armed failed state is just as worrisome as a rogue state with the bomb.  

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2012 Bolts from the Blue

For years, I've been posting the roster of my entry in the Hardy House fantasy baseball league. On Saturday, April 14, in Louisville, I attended my 24th consecutive auction draft. Only one owner had to participate by phone, but the rest of us enjoyed the auction, a local baseball game, some beer, and camaraderie.

As a reminder: the league has 12 teams and uses American League players exclusively to accumulate statistics in various hitting and pitching categories. For 22 years, we tabulated results in the traditional 8 categories (HR, RBI, SBs, Batting Average, Wins, Saves, Earned Run Average and ratio/Walks-plus-Hits per Inning Pitched), but in the 2011 off-season we voted to dump BA in favor of On Base Average. Also, we added runs scored (R) for hitters and strikeouts (K) for pitchers.

My 2011 team finished 3rd, but was 10 points behind the championship squad. It featured terrific starting pitching as the squad won ERA, WHIP, and strikeouts and finished 2nd in wins. The team finished 7th in saves, so I hoped to do something about that this season. Offensively, the team had good power, lots of regulars (so plenty of RBI and runs scored), but was weak on speed and horrible at OBA.

Please note one roster quirk now in its fifth year: we added a 10th pitcher and subtracted an outfielder from the "normal" roto squad. We continue to believe that this better reflects roster management decisions that real baseball teams have made over the past 20 years. Again this year, we allowed the purchase of any player on an American League 40 man roster. After the auction, only players on 25 man active rosters or the major league Disabled List (DL) can be obtained. We did vote to allow teams to retain ownership of players sent packing to the National League.

The 2012 Bolts from the Blue (9 retained players in blue):

C Mike Napoli (TEX) $19
C Hank Conger (LAA) $1 (AAA)
1B Adam Dunn (CHX) $14

2B Chris Getz (KC) $1

3B Mike Moustakas (KC) $15

SS Elvis Andrus (TEX) $30

MI Jean Segura (LAA) $1 (AAA)

CR Mike Carp (SEA) $3

OF Eric Thames (TOR) $8

OF Ben Revere (Min) $3

OF Josh Willingham (MIN) $21
OF Michael Brantley (CLE) $11
DH Billy Butler (KC) $23

Hitting $150 (down $25 from last season, which is a lot)

P Jered Weaver (LAA) $24
P Jon Lester (BOS) $26
P Matt Moore (TB) $19
P Alex Cobb (TB) $1 (AAA)
P Francisco Cordero (TOR) $2
P Mark Melancon (BOS) $9
P Aaron Crow (KC) $4
P Glen Perkins (MIN) $5
P Greg Holland (KC) $3
P Matt Capps (MIN) $14 (acquired in pre-draft trade for C Jarrod Saltalamacchia TEX)

Pitching $107 ($24 more than last year)

Andrus cost about 10% more than his price in most guides or early expert drafts, but our league typically has an inflation rate of about that amount. I think he is the best shortstop in the AL and worth the gamble.

I kept Perkins because he seems to be the likely substitute for Capps if the latter should falter as the Twins closer. It meant spending $19 for a likely bad team's saves, but there are lots of potentially good innings there. I also took stabs at saves in the bullpens in Toronto, KC, and Boston.

I did not mean to buy Moore at the listed price, but because I spent the money there at that time of the auction, I barely lost out on the bidding for 2B Jason Kipnis (CLE) a short time later. Their salaries are identical and I was offered a straight-up 1:1 trade at the auction. My team would certainly look more as intended if I had taken that trade, but I didn't really like very many of the remaining starting pitchers.  So far, Kipnis is far outperforming Moore.

Additionally, I rejected the deal because I thought one team was hoarding cash and I therefore feared that inflationary pressures were about to kick in big time. It turned out that a team left a great deal of cash unspent -- over $30, which is enough to purchase a star player!

I left $3 on the table, but I had reserved some extra cash to purchase a few AAA players at the end of the auction to fill in my roster. The guys I really wanted went for too much money (or only qualified at positions I had already filled), so I ended up with several dime AAA players instead of a couple that cost a bit more. Because of injuries and roster limits, I've already had to release Hank Conger, who was injured in the minors.

Moustakas was on my 2011 team and I bought him again for a much lower salary than he cost as a minor league free agent last year. Butler is a long-time favorite and former member of the Bolts. Lester was on my 2010 championship team.

To replace minor league players Conger, Segura, Revere (sent down early), and Cobb on my active roster, I bought C Anthony Recker (OAK) for $1, MI Jason Donald (CLE) for $2, OF Bobby Abreu (LAA/LAD) for $11, and P Casey Janssen (TOR) for $3. I also nabbed CI Eric Sogard (OAK) for $2 to replace the then-injured Carp. Donald and Sogard have already been waived. So has Cordero, once he lost his job to Janssen.

Obviously, I'm hoping for a big bounce back year from Adam Dunn -- and the decision looks good to-date as his HR total in mid-May 2012 already exceeds his 2011 output. Also, I bought a large number of KC Royals, the hometown-favorite team of my youth. I've got a lot of confidence in Moustakas and Butler as hitters. Eric Hosmer cost too much for my tastes. I avoided KC starting pitching.

As I noted above, my team's OBA was terrible last year, so I intentionally sought to avoid guys with poor on-base skills. It was a major reason for trading Saltalamacchia. He and Vernon Wells were a bad 1-2 combination of sub-.300 OBA in 900 plate appearances during 2011.

You can find posts about the 2005, 2007 , 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 auctions elsewhere on this blog.

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Ethnic Cleansing in Freedonia?

Faithful readers may remember that in early 2010 I promised to blog about real-world references to film.  While I often write about film and teach a course on "Global Politics Through Film," I'm not sure I've been faithful to that promise.

In a recent book review of a satirical novel, I found an old reference to film. Specifically, literary critic Liesl Schillinger reminded readers of this 1993 prank that was apropos of its Marx Brothers film reference:

It’s worth remembering that in 1993, when Spy magazine prank-called U.S. congressmen, asking what the administration should do about ethnic cleansing in Freedonia, several of the officials demanded immediate action. Freedonia, as it happens, was not a warring Balkan land but the fictional setting of the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup. Spy soon exposed the trap it had laid...

If readers are unfamiliar with the 1933 film Duck Soup, my advice is to watch it! Turner Classic Movies airs it frequently. For now, however, suffice to know that it is a farce about the buildup to war between Freedonia and Sylvania. Groucho becomes Prime Minister and his brother Chico serves as his Secretary of War. The storyline is wacky and as I wrote a few years ago, one would be "hard-pressed to learn any valuable lessons about international relations or war from the film."

In any case, I found a news item about this old prank in The New York Times of January 13, 1993, which means the congressional interviews must have occurred about the same time as the U.S. humanitarian intervention into Somalia.  The newspaper of record supplied some details about Spy's methodology:

Posing as the host of a New York radio talk show, Spy's staff called about 20 first-term House members and, after a series of innocuous questions, asked, "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop what's going on in Freedonia?" or "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop ethnic cleansing in Freedonia?"

The Times also quoted some of the responses: 

Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, said she approved of what the United States was doing in Freedonia, and added, "I think all of those situations are very, very sad, and I just think we need to take action to assist the people."

Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, was candid. "I have to be honest with you, I'm not familiar with that proposal," he said. "But it's coming to the point now that a blind eye to it for the next 10 years is not the answer."

Representatative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana, said, "Yeah, it's a different situation than the Middle East."

The magazine also called Nick Smith (R-MI),  who said that "moving through the United Nations effort has a great deal of merit."

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel noted January 27, 1993, that "All 20 of them were tricked by the clever editors of Spy magazine, who concocted this little exercise in political embarrassment.....not one of the gullible freshmen caught on to the joke."

Before closing, I should note that members of the general public also provide answers when pollsters ask them questions about fictitious issues.




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Obama's Drone War

This is just a quick note to save some statistics I read recently. In the April 30 issue of The Nation, University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole referenced some hard numbers about US use of drones:

American drone strikes on individuals and groups in the tribal belt of northwestern Pakistan, as well as in Yemen, also typify Washington’s global shadow wars. The United States has 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, which it has deployed in strikes in six countries. Both the CIA and the US military operate the drones. Rather than being adjuncts to conventional war, drone strikes are mostly carried out in places where no war has been declared and no Status of Forces Agreement has been signed. They operate outside the framework of the Constitution, with no due process or habeas corpus...

...the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that not only are civilians routinely killed by US drone strikes in northern Pakistan; often people rushing to the scene of a strike to help the wounded are killed by a second launch. The BIJ estimates that the United States has killed on the order of 3,000 people in 319 drone strikes, some 600 of them civilian bystanders and 174 of those, children. Some 84 percent of all such strikes were launched after Obama came to office.

Those are some disturbing stats. Even worse, as Cole notes, this is not an area of great government transparency or publicity. Quite the opposite -- secrecy prevails:

...the drone operations are classified. When asked about strikes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to confirm or deny that they have occurred. The drones cannot be openly debated in Congress or covered in any detail by the US media. Therefore, they cannot be the subject of a national political debate, except in the abstract. The Congressional intelligence committees are briefed on the program, but it is unlikely that any serious checks and balances can operate in so secret and murky a realm...

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2012 Louisville Sluggers

This is my annual post about the Louisville Sluggers of the Original Bitnet Fantasy Baseball League. We drafted many weeks ago in March, but I didn't get around to putting this together until now.

The OBFLB crowns champions for both the "A" first half and "B" second half of the baseball season, divided by the All Star game. For obvious reason, I can only report results of the draft in preparation for the first half season. As I list the team roster, keep in mind that the OBFLB is a 24 team head-to-head fantasy baseball league using 10 categories: home runs, stolen bases, batting average, runs produced average, plate appearances, innings pitched, wins, saves, earned run average and "ratio."

Here are the 2012 Sluggers (players in red were retained from 2011). Since I kept 11 players, I started the draft in round 12:

 Starters

 C: Nick Hundley(16th round)

1B: Joey Votto (CIN)

2B: Jason Kipnis (CLE)

3B: Scott Rolen (CIN) (17th round)

SS: Troy Tulowitzki (COL)

OF: Cameron Maybin (SD)

OF: Jeff Francouer (KC) (12th round)
OF: Chris Heisey (CIN) (15th round)

DH: Billy Butler (KC)

SP: Tim Lincecum (SF)

SP: Josh Beckett (BOS)

SP: Brandon Morrow (TOR)

SP: Chris Capuano (LAD) (14th round)
SP: Joe Blanton (PHI) (18th round)
RP: Joel Hanrahan (PIT)

RP: Chris Perez (CLE)

RP: Jonathan Broxton (KC) (13th round)

Bench

 C: Jose Lobaton (28th round)
IF: Maicer Izturis (LAA) (19th round)
3B: Wilson Betemit (BAL) (21st round)
SS: Jurickson Profar (TEX)  (minors)
UT: Kyle Blanks (SD) (23rd round)
OF: Craig Gentry (TEX) (24th round)
OF: Roger Bernadina (WAS) (26th round)

SP: Kevin Slowey (CLE) (20th round)
SP: Alex Cobb (TB) (25th round) (minors)
SP Felipe Paulino (KC) (22nd round)
RP: Tom Gorzelanny (WAS) (27th round)

Already, Blanks has been lost for the season and I replaced him with Todd Frazier (CIN).

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Lego House

One of my neighbors has built three houses on our street out of Lego blocks. This one is mine:



Check out his Flickr page to see the others and additional photos of my home.

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Jim O'Sullivan

On occasion, former colleagues read this blog. For those who remember Jim O'Sullivan, I am saddened to pass along his obituary:

James L. O’Sullivan, retired Foreign Service officer, retired Head of the Political Science Department at the University of Louisville (KY) died at the Connecticut Hospice Center in Branford CT on Tuesday April 10, 2012. O’Sullivan was born on October 23, 1916. He attended Orange Center School (Orange CT) and Hillhouse High School (New Haven) and Canterbury School in New Milford before attending Williams College (AB 1938) studying economics and receiving a letter in golf. In addition, one of the things Jim was most proud of was his receiving the Eagle Scout medal in 1933 as a member of Derby ’s Troop 3. He served in the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service from 1942 until 1971. In 1945 he served in the American Embassy in Chungking , China after an adventuresome ride over the Hump in a C-140. He met Chang Kai-Shek and Chou-en-Lai and other important figures while there. He then continued on to Hanoi where he served from spring of 1946 until December 1947, observing Ho Chi Minh and the conflict with the French colonial forces as the only American official in northern Indochina.

Following those early years he served in Rome , Tunisia , Brazzaville , Congo , Kinshasa Congo/Zaire, Djakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney , Australia. Jim joined the faculty at the University of Louisville in 1967 as a visiting Diplomat in Residence. Following his final posting to Australia as the Consul General in Sydney (1968-1971) he returned to Louisville and joined the political science department. He served as head of the department from 1974-1977. He was an active member of the faculty senate and served on the Athletics Committee and as the faculty representative to the NCAA committee. Jim was the 1st recipient of the Minerva Award for the University of Louisville . Jim was an avid and excellent golfer, playing nearly to the last day of his life. He was a life member of the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur and won championships in Italy , Tunisia as well as being a renowned player in Louisville and on courses across Connecticut . He was also a life member of the Oronoque Country Club. Jim was very active at the Oronoque Village Condominium and served as an officer on the board of OVCA. Jim is survived by step-son Robert Hilgendorff of Fairfield, CT and step-daughters Katherine Blanchard of Oxford, NH and Jane Huggins of Altamont, NY as well as step-grandchildren Stevens, Emily, Jeffrey and Andrew. Additional survivors are his brother Robert and family, ( Lakewood CO ), and sister Patricia ( Orange CT ), Jeff, John, Kathy, Patrick and David, children of his brother Thomas and his friends and acquaintances in Oronoque Village , especially his friend Myrtie Hall. He was predeceased by his first wife, Eleanor Goode (d. 1977) and his second wife, Jean Fraser Hilgendorff (d 2008). A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, April 14,2012 at 10:00 AM Directly at St. Margaret Mary Roman Catholic Church, Shelton, with father Chris Samele officiating. Interment will follow in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Stratford . Friends may greet the family on Friday, April 13, 2012 from 3 to 7 pm at the Dennis & D’Arcy – Abriola & Kelemen Funeral Home, 2611 Main Street Stratford . For online condolences please visit www.dennisanddarcy.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions are requested for the Community Soup Kitchen, 84 Broadway in New Haven Ct (06511).

Jim would have been 96 years old this October, so he certainly lived a long and productive life. I'm not sure of the last time I saw him -- perhaps when he was in town to accept the University's Minerva award. At the ceremony honoring Jim, I sat directly behind Denny Crum.

In the early 1990s, Jim used to warn everyone about the possibility of future disorder in China -- perhaps a return to the brutal politics of the warlord era. He and I had several discussions about "gender norming" in the State Department. And he wanted  outsiders to realize that Kentucky farmers are incredibly dependent upon marijuana as a cash crop.

One last memory shared by others: Jim used to trounce various junior colleagues in racquet sports -- he repeatedly challenged me to play, but I declined.

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Duck droppings

Today, at Duck of Minerva, I posted "Academic Rigor in the Classroom: Time to Get Serious?" The post discusses both the tendency at the Duck for our bloggers to focus on pop culture (movies, film, novels) in both scholarship and teaching and the recent call for greater rigor in academia. Are Duck choices part of the problem -- or part of the solution?

Earlier this week, on April 23, I posted "Can game participants change the payoff structure?" The post examines an interesting communication choice used by a participant prior to playing a televised single-shot game, arguably altering the payoffs and thereby converting the structure of the game from something like prisoner's dilemma to chicken.

April 10, I blogged "Castro is Our Hitler" about the reaction to controversial comments about Fidel Castro uttered by Miami Marlins baseball manager Ozzie Guillen. 


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2012 Hardy House draft

Yesterday (Saturday April 14), all but one member of the Hardy House fantasy baseball league met in Louisville to conduct the annual player auction. Guys flew or drove in from Chicago, Cincinnati, Lexington, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C., though four team owners reside in Louisville.

That photo is courtesy of Rich Puszczewicz, who is obviously not pictured. You can see his brother Jim third from right in front of the brick wall.

Jim took this photo, which includes a photo of Rich sitting to my left:

Friday night, most of us attended the home opener for the Louisville Bats and watched the team win 4-2. Saturday, Ohioan Mike Toguchi purchased Columbus Clipper Lonnie Chisenhall (we can buy anyone on a 40 man roster).

Unfortunately, Kevin Hamrick was at a debate-related event in Las Vegas and was unable to attend -- but he managed to have a good auction on the phone.

I'll post the annual piece about my team soon.

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Toonces is the tip of the iceberg

In March 2012, The Atlantic had an interesting and much-discussed article called "How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy." The central argument of the piece wasn't based on owners' emotional relationship to their cats. Rather, science journalist Kathleen McAuliffe discussed a "parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces." It "is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosi." Toxo is bad news according to the research of Czech evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr:

Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.

But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents.

The bottom line is quite disturbing -- the cat parasite is linked to incredible human carnage.

[Flegr] also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

....Closer inspection of Flegr’s reaction-time results revealed that infected subjects became less attentive and slowed down a minute or so into the test. This suggested to him that Toxoplasma might have an adverse impact on driving, where constant vigilance and fast reflexes are critical. He launched two major epidemiological studies in the Czech Republic, one of men and women in the general population and another of mostly male drivers in the military. Those who tested positive for the parasite, both studies showed, were about two and a half times as likely to be in a traffic accident as their uninfected peers.

...two Turkish studies have replicated his studies linking Toxoplasma to traffic accidents. With up to one-third of the world infected with the parasite, Flegr now calculates that T. gondii is a likely factor in several hundred thousand road deaths each year.

This information made me think of an old SNL bit:




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Dictators vs. Democrats

OK, so my picks are not doing very well in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It is what I deserve for putting Missouri in the Final Four. Oy!

So far, however, I'm 8-for-8 in the first round of Foreign Policy's Dictators vs. Democrats Challenge. This is my bracket.

A lot of people must be perfect since I'm not even included on the current leaderboard. But just wait and see what happens when Christine Lagarde starts kicking butt implements her game plan.


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Elsewhere

I wrote two posts this week for the Duck of Minerva:

"Friday Nerd Blogging: Baseball Edition" is about Duck contributor Bill Petti's growing (televised) influence as a baseball analyst.

March 14, I posted "The Selling of the Iraq War: Case Study of Presidential Persuasion?" I contributed to a debate among journalists and bloggers.

Oh, on February 22, I posted a short note about the so-called "Abusers' Peace," which is the hypothesis that human rights abusing states do not make war with one another.


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NCAA Hoops

Like much of America, I spend too much time this month paying attention to "March Madness." With various friends, I partake in a couple of NCAA tournament pools. Hint: if Kansas wins the tournament, I win the pool.

This year, I've created a private group for my Twitter followers and blog readers. Here's the link to this password-protected group.

The password is simple: minerva.

Update: Yahoo closes the competition at 9:15 am PDT Thursday, March 15.


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Music of Vietnam Vets

Saturday March 3, my family attended a talk at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame delivered by Wisconsin Professor Craig Werner: "'Chain of Fools': A Vietnam Veteran's Top 20."

Craig Werner will discuss the story of music and the Vietnam experience. His talk draws from his current project, a book entitled We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Music, Memory and the Vietnam War, co-authored with Doug Bradley. The book tells the story of music and the Vietnam experience through the music-based memories of scores of veterans.

The authors have been working on the project for some time, as demonstrated by this Chicago Tribute story from 2006:

They've even come up with a top 10 list of songs that resonate with Vietnam vets, led by "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," by the Animals; "Chain of Fools," by Aretha Franklin; and "Fortunate Son," by Credence Clearwater Revival.

The list has expanded and the ordering has changed a bit -- plus, "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" is now near the top if I recall correctly.

Werner and Bradley interviewed 200 veterans and are compiling their words into an oral history.

Update: my spouse had a copy of the handout, which included a list of the top 20 and "Honorable Mentions."


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Atomic Bombers

The evening of February 29, I very much enjoyed attending a University of Louisville Theatre Department production of "Atomic Bombers," written and directed by my colleague Russ Vandenbroucke:

The play, dramatizing the lives of the extraordinary team of international physicists racing to make an atomic bomb during World War II, will be performed Feb. 29-March 4 at 8 p.m. nightly plus a matinee at 3 p.m., March 4. All performances are at the Thrust Theatre, 2314 S. Floyd St.

Directed by Vandenbroucke, a theater professor, the play will be the third stage production of the play originating from an earlier short play by Vandenbroucke that was performed on stage and for public radio.

Before writing and producing the play, Vandenbroucke had to obtain permission from Richard Feynman, the eccentric American scientist and Nobel Prize winner whose essay in a science journal was his inspiration. Vandenbroucke even went as far as to engage the president of the California Institute of Technology, where Feynman taught, to aid his request.

Feynman agreed to Vandenbroucke’s proposal and the first play was based on the atomic bomb tests at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Vandenbroucke later expanded the play to include the initial work at the University of Chicago which was broadcast on public radio during the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.

“It is a funny play about a very serious subject,” Vandenbroucke said. “This was the greatest gathering of scientific geniuses at one time and place for a single purpose. Only later did they realize the full extent of the horrible devastation that resulted.”

Those interested in the material should note that Russ has cooperated in producing a CD.

Anyone interested in how comedy can be employed for critique should check out this play.


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Mearsheimer Profile

Back in 1990, in the Atlantic Monthly, prominent neorealist IR theorist John Mearsheimer published a popular version of one of his best-known academic arguments: "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War."

The next forty-five years in Europe are not likely to be so violent as the forty-five years before the Cold War, but they are likely to be substantially more violent than the past forty-five years, the era that we may someday look back upon not as the Cold War but as the Long Peace, in John Lewis Gaddis's phrase.

This pessimistic conclusion rests on the general argument that the distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace.

His argument was based on the difficulty of assuring stability among a larger number of great powers -- and the higher chance that states would have different amounts of military power. Of course, Mearsheimer was also quite skeptical about the role democracy and economic interdependence might play in assuring peace, though he was also pessimistic that realist prescriptions could avoid war.

In short, the essay reflected most of the important ideas associated with Mearsheimer -- a pessimistic (if not tragic) realist emphasis on great power competition and the enduring prospects for war.

In the January/February 2012 issue of The Atlantic, Mearsheimer is profiled by the magazine's frequent contributor Robert Kaplan: "Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)." Kaplan highlights the University of Chicago scholar's ongoing interest in the threat of major power war. The essay gives a great deal of attention to the potential rising threat from China, a point Mearsheimer has been emphasizing for over a decade.

If you follow IR theory, none of the political science discussed by Kaplan is new. The piece does include several photos.

Because of my interests in political communication and deliberation, I'm including this quote from one of Mearsheimer's ex- students:

As Ashley J. Tellis, Mearsheimer’s former student and now, after a stint in the Bush administration, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, later tells me: “Realism is alien to the American tradition. It is consciously amoral, focused as it is on interests rather than on values in a debased world. But realism never dies, because it accurately reflects how states actually behave, behind the façade of their values-based rhetoric.”

Here, Tellis is echoing a point Mearsheimer has frequently made.

Again, for scholars, the article is filled with redundancies like that. If you've read several pieces by Mearsheimer, chances are you did not learn anything from this article.

Yet, it is kind of interesting that a national magazine profiled Mearsheimer at this time. If the U.S. soon enters into a long cold war with China, he'll be credited (or blamed) with framing the logic behind the competition. Alternatively, if the U.S. or Israel launches war against Iran out of concerns about nuclear proliferation, then Mearsheimer will likely emerge as a vocal critic (as he was in the Iraq war case) and so this article helps to establish his credentials to a wider audience outside the academy.

In short, the article is (mostly) an effort to rehabilitate Mearsheimer after he and Steve Walt published their article and book about the role of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Kaplan says that work is polemical and not objective, so the piece does not serve as a complete rehabilitation. Indeed, within the media Kaplan says that The Israeli Lobby has "delegitimized" Mearsheimer.

Kaplan is occasionally described as a neocon and apparently served in the Israeli armed forces, so he may not be the most objective observer of Mearsheimer. Notably, neocons have long shared Mearsheimer's worries about China.

In short, the subtext makes for an interesting read.


Note: I updated the post March 1 to provide a real conclusion.

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Meanwhile...

I have made a couple of blog posts elsewhere that may interest you:

On February 20 at the e-IR Climate Politics blog, I posted, "To Santorum et al: What would Reagan do?" I examine the climate comments of the remaining Republican candidates for President and compare then to Ronald Reagan's environmental record.

On February 9 at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "Walmart Still Isn't Green."


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For 140 character IR and foreign policy talk, follow me on twitter.

Or for basketball, baseball, movies or other stuff, follow this personal twitter account.