Patrick Frost of the FPA Afghanistan blog took a strong stand against the WikiLeaks revelations yesterday, condemning The New York Times, Guardian, and Der Speigel. I debate him in the comments section. Stop by and join in if you feel inclined. The revelations in the leaked documents were not revelations. As Robert Gibbs noted yesterday: […]
An important story as been hanging out in the news for the past couple months and it’s time I wrote about it. Barney Frank is on a serious campaign to get the U.S. to curb military spending. Earlier this year he convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force to find ways to do it. Read their […]
At Informed Comment yesterday, Tom Engelhardt ripped counterinsurgency (COIN) a new one. He writes that we should “start talking about the madness of making counterinsurgency the American way of war.” The Counterinsurgency Field Manual is a blueprint for civilian-killing and failure, he argues, and he concludes: …[L]et me offer my one-line rewrite of their 472 […]
Last week Daniel Hannan of the Telegraph argued that since, per the Lisbon Treaty, the EU can now sign treaties, it is now a state (h/t Opinio Juris). Hannan cites Article I of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: The state as a person of international law should possess the […]
On Wednesday, NATO and the Karzai government struck a deal to arm Afghan locals for defense against the Taliban. It’s a temporary measure devised to make up for the slowness of training permanent security forces. The local forces will be paid for and supervised by the Afghan Interior Ministry. But, of course, there are risks. […]
Ezra Klein recently wrote: Fairly few political commentators know enough to decide which research papers are methodologically convincing and which aren’t. So we often end up touting the papers that sound right, and the papers that sound right are, unsurprisingly, the ones that accord most closely with our view of the world. In response, Daniel […]
Last week David Fedman of the FPA East Asia blog posted a beautifully disturbing and disturbingly beautiful video made by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto. Here it is in case you missed it. Watch and be hypnotized.
The U.S. has a time-inconsistency dilemma with North Korea. In a time-inconsistency dilemma, someone’s preferences change over time. The concept is usually applied to behavioral economics, but it also applies to security situations. Take terrorism. The U.S. may want to negotiate with a terrorist to prevent him from committing future attacks. But negotiating might encourage […]
A while ago I read the book, The Marketplace of Revolution, in which T. H. Breen writes of the British Empire: Eighteenth-century writers seemed uncertain how best to describe Britain’s relation to its many overseas possessions. Only tepidly did they employ the concept of “empire,” since for them it carried uncomfortable intellectual baggage from ancient […]
In chess, zugzwang is when a player has no good moves. Anything he does will weaken his position. However, since it is his turn, he must move. Therefore, he is forced to weaken his position. This is America’s current situation in Afghanistan. Should the U.S. continue fighting a long and costly war or withdraw? Last […]
I’m back. Just in time to go away again for the holiday weekend. Take a moment to re-read the Declaration of Independence, why don’t you? All men are created equal. They are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Good stuff. But even better is Jeremy Bentham’s […]
After being married for over a year, my wife and I have finally found the time to go on a honeymoon. So I won’t be posting for the next several weeks. This post’s title should let you know where we’re going. Reading material for the long plane ride is, appropriately, The History of the Decline […]
There’s been a lot written about how terrible it would be if the ICC activated its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. Members of the U.S. Congress, the Heritage Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Goldstone, Harold Koh, and the Wall Street Journal have all come out against it. They’re wrong. Read my piece […]
Cynthia Schweer of the FPA Global Health blog notes that Obama’s NSS talks more about global health than Bush’s 2006 NSS (Obama mentions it 35 times compared to Bush’s 5). But does this actually represent an increased devotion on Obama’s part to solving global health issues? Obama’s NSS does contain this statement: The United States […]
Though Memorial Day did not become federal law until the 20th century, per above document, its origins reside in the post-Civil War era. Perhaps for this reason, the words of General William Tecumseh Sherman are with me today: I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success […]