Stovepiped?

I am a big fan of Doctrine Man:


Very appropriate given that I just lectured about the limits of Whole of Government [WoG] and I just attended a dissertation proposal defense where my newest student is pondering variations in WoG-ness.

Saturday Silliness: Dog Nostalgia

Twenty years ago and perhaps a month (March 1992), my wife and I found Flynn at an animal shelter in San Diego.  He was a mutt, a mix of Corgi and other stuff, with the coloring of a doberman.  Female dogs and their female owners considered him the Fonz of dogs.  He was a super-cool dog who passed a few years ago.  Every time  I see a Corgi, I think of him.
Hence:

Hope is Not a Plan But We Have No Plan

My weekly post at CIC--this one is on Syria, explaining my pessimism.

Today's Xenophobia

Today's xenophobia brought to you by Golden Dawn of Greece.  It is hardly surprising that xenophobia is on the rise in the most economically stricken country in the EU, nor is it surprising that other parties are picking up some of the xenophobic themes.

The question is: what are their points of emphasis?  Might this lead to less focus on Cyprus, Turkey and other traditional nationalist issues as the focus turns inward?  It looks like immigrants are the focus of today, that and hating the EU/Germany. 

No, I will not be spotlighting a different xenophobic movement each day--who has got the time?

Favorite Teaching Moments in 10 Years of McGill

Monday I will be teaching my last class at McGill.  Tomorrow, I am driving to Ottawa to participate in my first student's dissertation proposal defense.  So, I started thinking about the teaching highlights of my time at McGill, where I spent more than half of my career.  Time flies when you are interacting with sharp, interesting students.  I am already impressed by the students I have met at Carleton, but I know I am leaving behind some awesome students.  So, here are the top moments that came to mind tonight.

1. Seven way tie: the emails/phone calls when my grad students told me that they got their first job offers.  Nothing makes me prouder than having great students succeed.  As much as I argue that folks should not get PhD's these days due to an uncertain job market, these folks have done just fine and then some.
2. Kangaroo Milk: just a fun moment in my big lecture class a couple of years back where the students took my frequent joke about bags of milk in Canada and threw it back at me.  I cannot remember a time I laughed harder in a class.  I am pretty sure that if I had been drinking anything, it would been shot out my nose at that moment.
3. First honours seminar my first year at McGill: I would introduce a topic and then sit back and watch these really sharp undergrads just tear into the material.  I got to see stuff I had read before from different perspectives.  I knew then I was at a special place with some phenomenal students.  The second one I had was also super-fun and interesting.  Too bad I never got a chance to teach that class again.
4. My teaching evals after my first lecture class, asking me to demand more from the undergrads.
5. My first teaching award from the undergrad Poli Sci Students Association.  And then my second.  I have some awesome colleagues who are great teachers, so it was a great honor, twice.
6. Having an undergrad research assistant suggest to me a research project as he was graduating.
7. The last day of class the first time I taught Intro to IR at McGill.  I was most honored.
8. The time I taught Civil War as a special topic grad class.  Fun students, addressing an interesting topic some folks thought was not appropriate for an IR class.  Perhaps they were right, given how few civil wars there are these days with significant international implications.
9. The time where I had a pop quiz where the students had to stump me with a Harry Potter question.  Took them a good twenty minutes. 
10. The relatively new tradition I started last year, I guess, where I buy the first round of beer at the student bar if they reach a certain threshold of participation in the course evals.  
11. This fall, I suddenly discovered that McGill students will work for free to get some research experience.  This winter, they wanted to get academic credit for their labor for me, and this group of about 14 students ended up sparking interesting conversations and getting very into their papers they were writing for me.  I would say I cannot wait to read them, but I think my blog is chock full of passages about how I feel about grading, even when the stuff is really interesting. 
12. Update: I somehow forgot to mention the spontaneous handshake line at the end of my last Intro to IR lecture. That meant quite a lot to me. 

I will miss most the students here.  No doubt about it.  Thanks for an awesome decade of IR teaching and learning.

Turkey, Syria and Zombies

Spent much of this afternoon tweeting about Turkey and NATO and Syria.  Which I posted about yesterday here.  I also wrote a piece for Canadian International Council on applying the IR of civil war to the case of Syria [will link when it is posted], so not much energy for additional blogging. 

Instead, I discovered this:

Created by Oatmeal

Who Needs NATO When Avengers Are Around?

NATO potpourri: Consider Me Confused

Just a fun day to be thinking about NATO.  Actually, every day is a fun day to be thinking about NATO as I start to reach the end of the Dave and Steve book.

Anyhow, just a couple of stories today:

• The former Hungarian Ambassador, Andras Simonyi, addressed the future of NATO as the Chicago summit is on the horizon.  He blasted those countries that did not share the burden adequately and admired partners (Sweden in his Libya example) that did more than members.  This comparison is not surprising except that it comes from an Hungarian official. 
•  Hungary was such a lightweight in Afghanistan that the New Zealanders in the neighboring province would send patrols into the Hungarian sector to find out what was going on since the Hungarians were heavily restricted.  Oh, and the real punchline--the Kiwis had 220 or so troops, so sending a patrol into the Hungarian area of responsibility was not a minor task even if the NZ sector was one of the easiest in Afghanistan (remote, ethnically distinct from Pashtuns, bad past experiences with Taliban. 
• So, the real question is what is Simonyi doing?  Attacking his own country for not doing much in Afghanistan besides showing up?  For not showing up at all during the Libyan campaign?  
• I am seriously confused.  It would be like a Bush administration official snarking at another country for acting unilaterally.  
• The second story is that Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan spoke about the threat of war with Syria.  Refugee flows and possible attacks across the border are causing Turkey to become more assertive.  This has raised the idea of Turkey invoking Article V of the NATO Treaty--an attack upon is an attack upon all.  Of course, asking and getting are two different things:
• Invoking the article is a political act requiring a decision of the members of the alliance--not just one member saying it was attacked.  Only time A-5 was invoked was after 9/11.  Getting the rest of NATO to agree or enough to agree and the rest to stay silent is mighty hard.
• Indeed, France would likely oppose A-5 for Turkey as the two countries have heaps of tensions over a variety of issues.  Greece, of course, would oppose anything Turkey wants.  Other countries in NATO would likely side with France as they would not want to appear to be obligated to help Turkey while being financially constrained at home.
• Which gets to the second part of A-5: an attack upon one is equal to an attack upon all, and each country responds as it deems necessary.  That A-5 has a huge opt out clause that one can drive a country through [this is where caveats are inherent in NATO].  Some countries did not join in A-5 associated efforts in 2001-2002, such as participating in NATO AWACS planes flying over major American cities/events.
• So, what is Turkey up to, knowing that asking for A-5 is likely to split NATO?  Perhaps pushing NATO to act in a way that would not prompt the same kind of crisis that a debate about Turkey and A-5 might?  

So, today, we have two puzzling cases of actors asking for stuff that they cannot get and the mere asking is pretty controversial.  I don't quite understand.  Do you?

Social Science is Beautiful

Check out this post where Brett Keller uses sophisticated social science statistical methods to ascertain how badly fixed the Hunger Games depicted in the novel/movie are. 

All I can say is that we live in a wonderful time where folks can radically over-think some pop culture and then disseminate widely and quickly via Al Gore's internet.  Indeed, all Alan Sepinwall has to do is ask the internet, and it provides him with the rules for True American must mere hours after the game was presented on New Girl.

Anyhow, back to the Hunger Games analysis--I am now beginning to regret not teaching Intro to IR next fall, as we now have a great example of a collective action problem: why doesn't every kid in a Panem district ask for the max amount of tessera?  If every kid does this, their odds of being entered into the games does not change....

Read the piece--it is chock full of nerdy goodness.

Picking on the USAF

I have not been pushing for the end of the US Air Force as a separate branch of the military (unlike a certain twitter-er), but the discussion surrounding a new Chief of the USAF makes me take more seriously that idea.

Here's what the Air Force source said are the "characteristics badly needed" by the next chief:

• The ability to effectively advocate for Air Force capabilities and who is not apologetic for those capabilities;
• Someone who is not a "lapdog" to the SECDEF and simply does what the SECDEF says regardless if it is not the best way forward;
• Someone who understands that "jointness" requires four separate and distinct services, and that the CSAF role is to advocate for the unique benefits and capabilities that the Air Force provides for the nation;
• Someone who does not "go along to get along" thinking that is "jointness;
• Someone who can restore the innovative nature of the Air Force -- the last four years saw the chief eliminate those who pushed new ideas, concepts, and technologies in favor of "yes" men (and women);
• Someone who can get AF acquisition back on track and focus on cost-effectiveness, not simply cost elimination.

 Lapdog to the SecDef?  I guess the air force folks are still bitter that Gates fired the chief and the secretary of the Air Force when they did not respond to the exigencies of the two wars the US was fighting in the 2000's.  Given the F-35 mess (not just a mess in Canada), it is not so clear that the USAF really has gained a clue or two about the problems of budget constraints. 

Yes, a Chief of the AF has to be an advocate for the AF, but the line about jointness seems to ignore that service should not be more important than ... country.  Jointness means doing what is needed for operational success, not what is needed for service autonomy, prestige, whatever. 

It is tough to determine the difference between a "yes" man/woman and someone who actually takes seriously civilian control of the military.  Rummy certainly chose yes-folks for key slots, but Gates?  Only if you think that a USAF chief who thinks about the national interest is a yes-person. 

Oh, and if only the USAF cared about cost-effectiveness?  If only they cared about effectiveness? 

I did ponder on twitter if the next Chief might fix the USAF academy, and the response I got was: unlikely. 

I do understand why USAF folks might be miffed, but since they are still getting heaps of bucks and are not being asked to bear much of the burden of the defense cuts (that would be the folks on the ground), they might want to find a learning curve and figure out what is really necessary and what is really affordable and what is really the purpose of the USAF besides promoting itself.