Defense & Security

We know that the global banking system is riddled with corruption (‘vulnerable’ to corruption may be more polite), some authored by its own principals, some embraced opportunistically by financial insiders to snatch sudden profits, a great deal ushered into the world’s financial system by bankers in search of the commissions and corporate profits that ‘high net-worth customers’ (in many cases, money launderers) bring in. And sometimes the bad guys exploit legitimate financial service providers. But the question remains, and it turns on the distinction between deregulation and irregularity, between fair play and laissez-faire, between the right of the ‘haves’ to have still more, and the right of the people to real economic protection under the law.
At what point does financial entrepreneurship turn criminal, and how blind an eye is the US prepared to turn toward banking practices that clearly prosper the powerful and imperil the growing ranks of the poor, in the United States and across the world?

There’s been some back and forth this week between Julian Ku and David Bosco about Jeremy Rabkin’s recent critique of the ICC in the Weekly Standard.  I’ll add my two cents, for to me, Rabkin’s piece seems like a ghost story told around a campfire.  Rabkin intends to make the ICC seem really really scary, […]

Daniel Drezner theorizes that the U.S.’s covert operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program is going well and has led to U.S.-Israeli agreement on eschewing preventive strikes against Iran. I think he’s right. Drezner was responding to the New York Times article published in the wake of Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article. Goldberg reported an apparent consensus […]

Searching for unbiased commentary? Look elsewhere. Last week, two Israeli Zionist groups unveiled a seminar series on Wikipedia editing designed “to influence what is written there, how it’s written and to ensure that it is balanced and Zionist in nature.” The groups were concerned that entries on the user-edited encyclopedia did not offer a balanced, […]

The Heritage Foundation published a report by Brett Schaefer earlier this month that argues (unsurprisingly) that the U.S. should remain wary of the ICC (h/t Opinio Juris).  I (unsurprisingly) think he’s wrong.  The report’s problems begin in its first paragraph: Until recently, U.S. policy toward the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been clear and consistent: […]

Reports of continuing misery caused by the flooding tragedy continue to come out of Pakistan.  The flooding has affected one fifth of that nation, killed 1,600 and is affecting as many as 20 million people.  According to a BBC report, “Tens of thousands of villages remain underwater and there are warnings the crisis may worsen […]

Many people claim that international law is not like other law.  Some claim it is not even law.  (See an earlier post of mine on the subject.)  But there are many ways that international law is just like good old municipal law.  From a lecture David Kennedy gave last fall: Indeed, many military professionals remain […]

Maxine Waters and OneUnited Bank: Some Minority and Community-Owned Banks Fail to Pay Dividends to Treasury

Over the weekend, I listened to the recent Radiolab episode on the power of words to shape our thoughts, feelings, and abilities (watch the accompanying video below). The most interesting part of the episode is when they examine an experiment conducted by Elizabeth Spelke at Harvard.  Spelke’s experiment shows an interesting relationship between language and […]

Patrick Frost pointed my way to a Foreign Affairs article published earlier this year, The Best Defense? Preventive Force and International Security, by Abraham Sofaer (downloadable here if you have access).  Sofaer argues that unilateral uses of preventive military force are illegal but can be legitimate, and thus states should feel free to eschew international […]

Yesterday the New York Times published an article titled U.S. Military Seeks Slower Pace to Wrap Up Afghan Role.  The opening paragraph stated:  “American military officials are building a case to minimize the planned withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan starting next summer, in an effort to counter growing pressure on President Obama from inside […]

A comments section conversation about WikiLeaks between myself and my FPA-o-sphere colleague Patrick Frost has morphed into a conversation about the morality of American military force.  Patrick wrote: The US military’s history of bringing literally unsurpassed prosperity, liberty, and security to the world in the past 70 years cannot even be compared to a minimal […]

Tom Engelhardt expands on the same point I made earlier this week about the hypocrisy of the Pentagon’s condemnations of WikiLeaks.  Read Engelhardt’s post here.  He ties the issue into the general media bias against U.S.-caused civilian casualties.  For example, the highly emotional, attention-getting Time magazine cover, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” could easily […]

On April 6, 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda was assassinated as his plane descended to Rwanda’s Kigali airport. It remains unclear who was responsible for the attack but everyone knows what happened next. Somewhat less well-known is France’s role in the training, arming, and supporting of the Hutu government and its violent paramilitary groups. […]

“A President McCain would almost certainly have subverted the schedule and tried to keep more troops, and more active combat troops, in Iraq than the Iraqi legislators wanted,” wrote Juan Cole earlier this week.  Cole was referring to the Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the United States, which states in Article 24: 1. […]