Yglesias is more impressed than I by Pat Lang's discussion of successful and failed counter-insurgency campaigns. In particular, I think he misconstrues the objectives of many of the major counter-insurgency campaigns of the post-war colonial period:This theory of warfare [COIN] was developed by the colonial...
foreign policy
Today was graduation day at Patterson. For lack of anything better to post, below is the graduation keynote that I delivered to the Spring 2009 graduates:Congratulations to the graduating class,.
Al Kamen, via Jason Sigger:This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Clinton administration's cavalier handover of the Panama Canal -- leaving an alleged front for the Chinese Red Army.
Tom Ricks:As a British naval historian friend I know once noted, the time when the British government could have helped -- and perhaps stopped the war -- was back in the winter of 2002-2003. Real friends speak up when a friend is making a big...
Stephen Walt:Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed wth suspicion, but spending billions.
This doesn't seem right to me:During the Cold War, the United States and Turkey formed a "strategic partnership" based on both countries' fear of Soviet intervention in the Middle East..
The European Union selected its President and High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and Vice President for External Affairs. In the classic stereotype of the dull gray bureaucrat, they've selected a couple of relative lightweights (given the nature and stature of the position) whom...
Stephen Walt, following a rundown of ten "scary monsters" of foreign policy:First, we are often told that international politics is a dangerous business, and that it makes sense to prepare.
I'm guessing that this is going to make it hard to treat the settlements as "bargaining chips."
Nicholas Thompson'sThe Hawk and the Dove is an exceptionally readable dual biography of George Kennan and Paul Nitze. George Kennan is, to some, rather an odd dove; he helped formulate the vision of containment that led to NSC-68 and militarized confrontation between the United States...
Peter Beinart has a rather bizarre column praising the Democrats for "sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage" amidst some nostalgia for.
Two QOTDs:Jacob Levy:A Veteran's/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn't just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be.