International Relations Major, Thucydides

BBC: Barack Obama defends 'just war' using drones

Sat, 25 May 2013 08:48:13 -0400

Drone ‘rules’

In an outline of the new policy released to the news media, the administration said it preferred to capture terrorist suspects, with drone strikes used only amid a “continuing, imminent threat” to the US.

Reports suggested that the military would assume greater control over the drone programme, which is currently led in most areas by the CIA.

However, it was also reported that the CIA would maintain control of the programme in Pakistan, where most strikes have been carried out.

Beyond that, the administration listed criteria for the approval of a drone strike:

“Near certainty” the target was present and that civilians would not be injured or killed

Capture would not be feasible

Authorities of the country in question could not or would not address the threat

No other reasonable alternatives were available

On Wednesday, the US disclosed that four Americans had been killed in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan since 2011, marking the first formal public acknowledgement of the US citizen deaths in drone strikes.

Read the full article and watch Obama’s speech here.

pol102: From foreignaffairsmagazine: China has drones. Now...

Sat, 25 May 2013 08:41:59 -0400

pol102:

From foreignaffairsmagazine:

China has drones. Now what?

Welcome to the new arms race? Except, with a much lower (i.e. cheaper) entrance threshold?

theatlanticcities: Even in the midst of war, Syria’s fighters...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:24:58 -0400

theatlanticcities:

Even in the midst of war, Syria’s fighters have been seen briefly putting aside their weapons for afternoon tea.

Read: Tea Time in Syria

[Images: Reuters]

Is “Star Trek Into Darkness” a Drone Allegory?

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:35:05 -0400

newyorker:

“The anti-drone argument that ‘Star Trek’ goes for most is not one having to do with due process or civilian or collateral casualties…but an essentially emotional one: they feel strange. It doesn’t seem right, or like a fair, forthright fight.”

— Amy Davidson on “Star Trek” as a drone allegory: http://nyr.kr/13G1xxg

FP's 5 Best Tumblrs for Foreign Policy Nerds (besides IR Major, obviously)

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:30:06 -0400

Now that Tumblr is all over the news, Foreign Policy shared their five favorite IR blogs. Sadly, Dan Drezner hasn’t noticed my fangirling.

1. Kim Jong Un looking at things
2. International Relations as Depicted by Cats

3. Cosmarxpolitan

4. International Relations Ryan Gosling and International Development Ryan Gosling

5. It’s Always Sunny in Kabul

foreignaffairsmagazine: How will history judge Hillary Clinton,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 05:52:13 -0400

foreignaffairsmagazine:

How will history judge Hillary Clinton, the soft-power secretary of state? http://fam.ag/YZeFht
The diplomatic world keeps pining for the next George Kennan, someone who might sum up the country’s overall mission in a strategic concept as simple as containment. But Kennan, in truth, had things relatively easy compared with today’s policymakers. He faced a bipolar world consisting of two utterly opposed ideological systems and an adversary whose strengths and weaknesses could be analyzed in a static way. Twenty-first-century strategists confront a far more complex and multidimensional world, one in which a lone terrorist or hacker can threaten a superpower.
…

Despite the lack of a singular triumph to her name, however, there is a case to be made that the impact Clinton had on U.S. foreign policy will be felt long after she has left office… Asked what she most enjoyed about the job, she replied, “A lot of it is not the headline stuff. It’s the slow and steady progress that I think provides a much firmer footing for us.”

Slow and steady progress is not necessarily the stuff of greatness. But it is valuable nonetheless, and it may be what, in the end, the world will remember most about Clinton’s tenure as the country’s top diplomat.

pol102: From wnycradiolab: Isao Hashimoto’s extraordinary...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:57:11 -0400

pol102:

From wnycradiolab:

Isao Hashimoto’s extraordinary musical map of every nuclear explosion since 1945.

To the extent there can BE such a thing as an audio infographic, this is it.

Woa.

GeoGuessr: Let's explore the world!

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:09:54 -0400

GeoGuessr: Let's explore the world!:

I’m going to commit blasphemy: Could this be more addicting than Sporcle??

(via Memories of Kenneth Waltz | Stephen M. Walt) Kenneth N....

Tue, 14 May 2013 06:43:00 -0400

(via Memories of Kenneth Waltz | Stephen M. Walt)

Kenneth N. Waltz, 1924-2013

Liberia Journalists Protest With Black Front Pages

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:37:35 -0400

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Newspapers in Liberia have printed black front pages after a government official was accused of threatening journalists.

The director of the presidential security service reportedly told a journalist: “Be careful, because you have your pens and we have our guns.”

Read the rest here.

…Even the constructivists are laughing. Walt cat is this...

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:54:34 -0400

…Even the constructivists are laughing.

Walt cat is this blog’s spirit animal.

All IR majors everywhere.

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:08:00 -0400

All IR majors everywhere.

foreignaffairsmagazine: Meet Ahmadinejad’s Chosen...

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:38:09 -0400

foreignaffairsmagazine:

Meet Ahmadinejad’s Chosen Successor

Ahead of Iran’s presidential election in June, President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei are squabbling over the succession. Ahmadinejad wants Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his chief of staff, to run but Khamenei disapproves. Regardless of who wins, the real loser will be Iranian democracy.

Invisible Armies Insurgency Tracker

Thu, 02 May 2013 07:02:18 -0400

Invisible Armies Insurgency Tracker:

The interactive Invisible Armies Insurgency Tracker presents a database of insurgencies from 1775 to 2012. It supplements the comprehensive historical narrative in Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present, by CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot.

Best finals procrastinating tool, or best finals procrastinating tool?

NYT: Amid Hunger Strike, Obama Renews Push to Close Cuba...

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:57:25 -0400

NYT: Amid Hunger Strike, Obama Renews Push to Close Cuba Prison

President Obama said on Tuesday that he would recommit himself to closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, a goal that he all but abandoned in the face of Congressional opposition in his first term and that faces steep challenges now.

“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “The notion that we’re going to keep 100 individuals in no man’s land in perpetuity,” he added, makes no sense. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?”

…

Mr. Obama made his remarks following the arrival at the prison of more than three dozen Navy nurses, corpsmen and specialists to help deal with a mass hunger strike by inmates, many of whom have been held for over 11 years without trial. As of Tuesday, 100 of the 166 prisoners were officially deemed to be participating, with 21 now being force-fed a nutritional supplement through tubes inserted in their noses.

“I don’t want these individuals to die,” Mr. Obama said.

…

The military’s response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups that say doctors should not force-feed prisoners who decide not to eat, reviving a similar clash over Guantánamo detainees from the Bush administration.

Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”

…

Mr. Obama’s remarks about the prison came in an otherwise sedate news conference, and at times he appeared almost anguished.

“This is a lingering problem that is not going to get better,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to fester.”

Read the whole article here.

And read a chilling first person account of the injustice at Guantanamo here.

foreignaffairsmagazine: Writing final papers? Every Foreign...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:44:17 -0400

foreignaffairsmagazine:

Writing final papers? Every Foreign Affairs article has a “Cite!” button that automatically generates the reference in three different styles.

Re-posting because this is wonderful!

(…Except for the fact that “The Clash of Civilizations?” is the example citation. Will professors please, please stop assigning us Huntington?)

nprfreshair: Here’s a link to today’s interview with New York...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:01:27 -0400

nprfreshair:

Here’s a link to today’s interview with New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers about the situation in Syria. Chivers has spent much of the past year with rebels in the country and you can read his reports for the Times here.

Damascus from above by rajarajaraja via Flickr

BuzzFeed/Foreign Policy Mashup? “11 BuzzFeed Lists that...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:03:00 -0400

BuzzFeed/Foreign Policy Mashup? “11 BuzzFeed Lists that Explain the World”

“The real point, however, is that entertaining pieces of web culture — often the iconic images known as “memes” — spread virally. This is the way the web now works: It’s a different kind of front page for the world, one where Overly Attached Girlfriend and a dead-serious exposé of Malaysian government propaganda in the U.S. media can and do coexist. So don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because the social web is full of cat pictures, great journalism is dying. (In fact, many great journalists are fond of cats.) This new viral world not only promotes the heck out of powerful original reporting, but it also is a crucial new channel for understanding closed, authoritarian societies, and for activists and campaigners from Russia to Zimbabwe to communicate with the outside world.

Then there are the lists, an old journalistic form reborn online with a vengeance: 21 Cats Who Aren’t Striking the Right Work/Life Balance, 10 NCAA Coaches Who Look EXACTLY Like Their Mascot. Once you stop laughing and start thinking, the extreme virulence of the social web just might revolutionize the way you think about the world too. Lists, I suggest to you, are the news of the future. Here are 11 we’d like to see on BuzzFeed — or ForeignPolicy.com — soon”

(via 11 BuzzFeed Lists That Explain the World - By Ben Smith | Foreign Policy) h/t Christina

I absolutely agree with Ben Smith that social media and web culture are mixing up the way we digest serious, hard hitting news. Heck, I run a Tumblr called “IR Major, Thucydides” and reblog pictures of Ryan Gosling paired with international development quips, so dismissing Foreign Policy’s piece on memes would be more than a tad ironic.

However, I’m wary of Smith’s delight in proclaiming that lists are the news of the future. Lists aren’t news. They’re easy to breeze through, but they’re superficial. They shouldn’t replace well researched, longer articles. Which is not to dismiss them—if a list like “9 Disturbingly Good Jihadi Raps” can interest you enough that you delve into longer articles covering terrorism and ideology, excellent. But that’s all lists like the ones found in BuzzFeed’s politics section are: appetizers, not full meals.

Megan Garber made an excellent point about the increasing co-habitation of “pop” culture and “serious” culture when she wrote about Oreo’s response to the Mars Landing:

Last night, we landed a robot on Mars. Today, a sandwich cookie celebrates that accomplishment. The fluidity here between history and banality — and between science and pop culture — is, actually, kind of wonderful. It represents an access point to a fairly complicated news story. It makes the epic seem accessible, and it makes the accessible seem just a little (teensy, tiny) bit epic.

I echo Smith in hoping that we heartily embrace the interaction between frivolous memes and serious news. But as someone studying IR first and foremost and running a Tumblr on the side, I hope Garber’s critique rings truer. Memes and lists are wonderful, but they should serve as access points to more thoughtful analysis—they shouldn’t replace the news.

foreignaffairsmagazine: Gallery: Choking on China China’s...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:00:44 -0400

foreignaffairsmagazine:

Gallery: Choking on China

China’s pollution problem in photos

Not Your Average Chechen Jihadis: Drawing the Wrong Conclusions...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:13:20 -0400

Not Your Average Chechen Jihadis: Drawing the Wrong Conclusions About the Boston Bombings

Since the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were identified as ethnic Chechens, the national conversation about the incident has focused on the connection between the violence and terrorism in Chechnya. Here’s why that is the wrong model.

My professor’s analysis at Foreign Affairs.