“I am a Mutt”
For the last week at the Steinhardt School I have examined the historical narratives of local autonomy and pluralism in America. My particular interest in examining the evolution of the US nation-state has been the relationship between environmental conditions (structures of the state, society and culture) and the individual.
IRAQ QUESTIONS
With American forces turning over security responsibilities to Iraqis as another step toward complete withdrawal from Iraq, I am searching for the war’s lessons and am left mostly with questions.
BLOOD BROTHERS
To understand American policy better, I suggest you consult a recent, very well written and argued paper by Stephen Peter Rosen of Harvard on why we Americans are less the peace-loving people we often claim to be.
SOMETHING FISHY
Afghanistan is a country of 33,000,000 people that has been at war for 30 years, has a life expectancy of only 44 years, an infant mortality rate 151/1000 births, and experiences about 660,000 deaths from all causes per year. Life is hard, brutal and short in Afghanistan
PEER COMPETITOR
The American military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger who has to be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia? Can we really trust those café-living Europeans? The Peer Competitor is here and about to hobble our interventionist inclinations. In […]
TORTURED TRUTHS
torture is slippery slope. One officer told me that troops have to be watched all the time. Unsupervised 10% will do something stupid. Abu Ghraib involved untrained (reserve) soldiers working at night without supervision. Guards have power which can easily be abused.
TORTURED TRUTHS
We know that torture is a constant presence in warfare, most especially in counter-insurgency operations. Terrible things happen in wars. But warfare is also a learning process where participants try to avoid repeating the mistakes of their own experience and that of others.
Understanding the fall of the wall and other time tales
The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall offers has understandably generated a number of opportunities to look backwards to what happened, and to ask why it was that IR specialists seemed unable to see what was coming.
Migration and State-making: Explaining Xenophobia in South Africa
What has become of the idea of the Rainbow Nation, the triumphant trope broadcast by the irrepressible Nobel Laureate, Desmond Tutu, and in which all the country’s people, under Nelson Mandela, rejoiced?
