If You Love Someone, Set Them Free…
Yesterday Alyona and I chatted about Afghanistan:
The technical difficulties 6 minutes in threw me off a bit…
Author Page for Robert Farley
Foreign Entanglements Episode III
Heather Hurlburt and I talk Responsibility to Protect, among other things:
Let me also encourage fans of Foreign Entanglements, the number of which I am utterly convinced pushes the boundaries of the term “several,” to “Like” Foreign Entanglements on Facebook.
And the Empire Crumbled, ’til All that Was Left…
Argentines getting twitchy:
Fast forward to 2012, the 30th anniversary of the war. Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, is flying to the Falklands tonight to begin a six-week mission as Britain prepares to dispatch an advanced warship to the islands, prompting Argentina’s Foreign Ministry to declare that Britain is “militariz[ing]” the conflict and sending Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson “in the uniform of a conquistador.”
Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s new centre-right Prime Minister, meanwhile, is to demand talks over the future of the colony without the involvement of authorities in Gibraltar.
His call marks a hardening of Madrid’s position over its controversial claim for the return of the Rock. Under the previous Socialist Spanish government, the authorities in Gibraltar had been included in three-way talks with Madrid and London. Madrid was unimpressed after Mr Cameron told a meeting at the Council of Europe last week that the future of Gibraltar depended on the wishes of the colony’s 30,000 inhabitants.
Questioned by Spanish MEPs, Mr Cameron said that Britain backed the Rock’s right to self-determination and that going against the wishes of its people would amount to “recolonisation”. In response, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the new Spanish Foreign Minister, wrote to William Hague, his diplomatic counterpart, stressing that there was no mention of auto-determination in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Spanish diplomatic sources insisted that Mr Garcia-Margallo’s letter was “not in the tone of a protest”. But Mr Garcia-Margallo called on Mr Hague to explain the British stance regarding the Rock.
Scotland is barely hanging on:
The Scottish Government was formed after the May 5, 2011 parliamentary election at which the SNP gained a clear majority with 69 of the 129 seats at Holyrood and a mandate to govern until the next election in 2016.
Prior to the Your Scotland, Your Referendum consultation, the Scottish Government conducted the National Conversation between August 2007 and November 2009 inviting public comment on a range of potential changes to the country’s constitution.
It began with the publication of a discussion paper Choosing Scotland’s Future, and culminated in the publication of Your Scotland Your Voice, a White Paper laying out options supported by detailed policy papers. The independence referendum consultation, Your Scotland, Your Referendum was launched by the First Minister on Burns Night, January 25, 2012.
At this rate, William will be lucky to succeed to the crown of Wessex.
Present at the Re-Creation?
Channeling my inner Tom Friedman this morning. I’m convinced that a candidate willing to espouse the platform I set forth would immediately win a bipartisan mandate for reform…
On rare occasions, however, we have the opportunity to revisit national values and to redesign the institutions that constrain our policy choices. These contingent moments come when the accumulated weight of years of muddling, combined with geopolitical and technological changes, leave us with institutions fundamentally out of sync with the strategic environment the nation faces. There is reason to believe that the United States now faces such a moment. The strategic, political and technological challenges facing the Obama administration — and potentially a successor Romney administration — differ so dramatically from the environment that faced Harry Truman and Acheson at the time of the “creation” that they now risk pulling the national security bureaucracy out of shape.
I’ll Take the Triple, Please
As Ari Kohen points out, posting this is virtually a contractual obligation:
For the record, the Fielders have together hit 16 triples; seven by the father, nine by the son.
Foreign Entanglements Episode Two
Matt Duss vs. Daveed Gartentstein-Ross. Here they discuss the SOTU:
Matt talks with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross about foreign policy in the State of the Union. Will America miss the boat on the Arab Spring? Is Obama’s triumphalism over Al Qaeda premature? Also, the simmering crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and Daveed’s foreign policy trends to watch over the next decade.
See here for links to the video and audio RSS feeds, as well as the video and audio podcasts.
Say No to Lunar Imperialism
Ron Paul is the only candidate willing to take a stand against assassinating US citizens on the moon with drone strikes. Listen up, so-called progressives.
The Seductiveness of Airpower
Another predictably unhinged anti-airpower screed:
Steven Cook argues that the United States and NATO ought to start seriously discussing intervention in Syria. If not and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is left to massacre his political opponents, he wonders, what message will it send to the international community about the right to protect? Anne-Marie Slaughter reluctantly concurs, suggesting that Western military power could ensure the security of safe harbors and corridors for Syrian civilians.
Notwithstanding many well-meaning arguments to the contrary, the final goal of any potential military intervention in Syria — which will necessarily be conducted primarily with airpower — will be the toppling of the Assad regime. Slaughter, for example, insists that military force should not be used with the express intent of overthrowing the Assad government. Instead, Western aircraft will bomb Syrian airfields, shoot down Syrian aircraft, blow up Syrian tanks, destroy the Syrian air defense network, disable Syrian command and communications installations, and generally deprive the Syrian government of control over whatever parts of its territory the international community deems Assad unfit to govern. We would agree to the illusion, I suppose, that this is not regime change until Assad actually falls, after which we would congratulate ourselves on another successful intervention.
Gonna be Hard to Laugh this One Off…
The Buccaneers and Oregon coach Chip Kelly are involved in active contract discussions and Tampa Bay has identified Kelly as the main target for its coaching vacancy, according to a source close to Kelly.
Kelly interviewed with the Buccaneers last week and the two sides are aiming to work out a deal within the next 48 hours, according to the source.
The Bucs will resolve talks with Kelly either way before proceeding further with their search, the source said.
A source told KGW in Portland that Kelly is close to a deal with Tampa Bay.
I haz a sad.
UPDATE: Offer declined. Breathe….
NEWTMENTUM!!!
For my wife, Gena, and I, we sincerely believe former Speaker Newt Gingrich is the answer to most of those questions and deserves our endorsement and vote.
We agree with our friend and governor of the great state of Texas, Rick Perry, when he suspended his campaign and endorsed Gingrich, that Newt “has the heart of a conservative reformer.” We believe Newt’s experience, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, faith and even humility to learn from his failures (personal and public) can return America to her glory days. And he is the best man left on the battlefield who is able to outwit, outplay and outlast Obama and his campaign machine.
I will credit Newt with this; he has taken his campaign much farther than I (or most others) would have been willing to venture a year ago. If Santorum gives up the ghost after South Carolina (certainly possible if he comes in 4th), Newt could end up winning a handful of Southern states and perhaps competing in a few others. The hope for progressives, I suppose, is that he sticks against Mitt long enough to allow factional lines to harden sufficiently to cause problems in November. Wouldn’t bet on it, but then Mittens has been looking terrible of late.
The Budget Scrum
Thoughts on the defense budget:
Rather, the real fight over the future of the defense budget will happen in the corridors of the Pentagon and in congressional committees. The nuclear weapons industrial complex will fight bitterly to maintain a role for itself, undoubtedly assisted by the senators and representatives from Tennessee and New Mexico. The Army and the Marine Corps will use every trick they have to deflect cuts and reaffirm their current size and status. In part because of mergers, the major defense conglomerates have spread geographically, reducing sectional conflict over major military projects. At the same time, however, maintaining an open spigot of defense money remains a bipartisan priority for many in Congress.
Unfortunately, this battle is likely to gain little national public attention. Defense politics would benefit from greater public scrutiny, but the lack of an imminent military threat like the Soviet Union, or an exciting partisan battle as developed in the 1980s, make it unlikely that the public will pay much attention to how the bureaucratic fight plays out. Defense budget politics has increasingly become a field of narrow contestation between experts, elites and interested actors, rather than a field in which different visions of the political good engage with one another. This has resulted in a prioritization of bureaucratic interest and parochial concern, both of which are enemies of real grand strategy.
And Now We’re DRIVING the Bus!
The Powers That Be over at Bloggingheads have decided to hand Matt Duss and myself the keys to a new, weekly foreign policy show which we’ve decided to call Foreign Entanglements. Announcement and discussion here:
My relationship with Bloggingheads began, of course, with this vicious anti-bloggingheads screed. Let it never be said that the squeaky wheel does not get the grease. This is a very interesting opportunity, and Matt and I hope to make the most of it by continuing to include many of the contributors who have long been involved in Bloggingheads, as well as new contributors who speak on different subjects and to different interests. Feedback regarding potential contributors (or favorite past contributors) is very welcome.
With regards to the alternative names for the program, the following were considered and rejected:
Manhattan Project
Solarium Redux
The Next Objective
Present at the Summation
Statesmen and Scoundrels
Worse than Immoral, it’s a Mistake
Diplomacy by Other Means
All Foreign Intrigues
Alliances, Attachments, and Intrigues
A Clash of Wonks
The Internationalists
The Foreign Policy Faction
The Undiplomatic Corps
People’s Front for the Liberation of Bloggingheads
