Time for a New Religion

A friend of mine (h/t to JJ) posted on her facebook page the divergent reactions to the National Household Survey of Canada, which is like a census but is no longer mandatory (Harper hates social science along with all other sciences, apparently).

JJ noted that the anglophone press noted that immigrants are speaking more French than before.  The French press notes that 20% of the immigrants do not speak French.  Oh joy, the cup is either 80% full or 20% empty?

For me, what this means is this: I want Confirmation Bias to be a religion because I so strongly believe in it.  Of course, those who want to see the "census" reporting French is under attack note that not all immigrants are picking up French, and, of course, those who think that the language thing is over-wrought in Quebec (which it is, I can confirm with bias).  People see what they want to see much of the time.  How can 80% of immigrants learning French be insufficient?  Oy.

Anyhow, now that we are trying to start up Confirmation Bias as a religion, what does that require?  Hmmmm.  From here, I cropped this:

The idea is that information is filtered as it comes in, so that only that which confirms one's beliefs makes it through.

Ok, next step is dogma, which we borrow from the Ironborn of Game of Thrones: That Which We Believe is Never Dead Disconfirmed.

The only rite of passage required to join is to believe what one has always believed no matter how much disconfirming information is provided. 

Holidays? We can steal the holidays of pre-existing religions by focusing on those aspects of each holiday that celebrate the selective filtering of information.

I am not an expert on religion, so let me know what we need to add, and if it fits with latent existing beliefs, I will support your suggestions.  If not, then not.

Breaking vs. Unbreaking

How best to illustrate the problem of post-conflict reconstruction?

Thanks to twitter conversation, I came up with this at CIC.

And the soundtrack inevitably would be this.

Meeting a Canadian Hero

This afternoon, a couple of NPSIA students, NPSIA Director Dane Rowlands and I attended a Carleton U Alumni Association luncheon.  The keynote speaker was Ken Taylor, who served as Canada's Ambassador to Iran during the Iranian Revolution.  Taylor's role and that of Canada in the rescue of six American diplomats were slighted in Argo.  Taylor made no bones about it in his talk today, displaying something that Americans tend to miss: a keen Canadian nationalism.  This was a big moment in Canadian history, making a difference in the lives of six Americans and in America's situation in the Mideast at the time.  Taylor did more than just open doors (as he is mostly depicted in the movie), and Canada did most of the paperwork.


Indeed, Taylor responded to a question about the passports used by the Americans with this story:

The Canadians had prepped the passports but then the CIA used the wrong stamp (using the Shah's dating system and not the new revolutionary regime's).  Ottawa had to do the passports twice, and it was not Ben Affleck's character (Tony Mendez) doing the passport alterations in a hotel room.

Taylor gave an excellent talk about his experiences in the Canadian foreign service, and some interesting perspectives on the current situations in Iran and Ottawa.  So, a well spent lunch hour or two.  

Game of Thrones, IR Theory Update 3.5

Since we are halfway through the third season (but not the third book), and we got a nice dialogue about the interplay between nation, nationalism and anarchy between Varys and Littlefinger, it is time for us to ponder how these basic concepts play in Westeros.*

* A reminder that Westeros is only one part of this world--there are the places beyond the seas that have their own political systems and identities.  Plus the world beyond the Wall is not really part of Westeros either.

When I first wrote about the IR of Game of Thrones, I tended to treat each House as a country of its own, at least the major ones.  But another way to look at this is that Westeros is one multi-ethnic nation espcially given the  aforementioned conversation about the meaning of "realm."  If one considers Robb Stark's campaign as a secessionist one, then Westeros as a nation-state makes more sense. 

Anyhow, Varys argues that he serves the realm, even if it is a bit of a myth or lie.  Sounds like imagined community to me.  That the shared sense of belonging is based on belief and shared perceptions rather than any reality yet still has real impacts on the actors and their identities.  Without a shared sense of community and identity, without all of those myths and symbols (the pointy throne for Westeros, the White House in every attack on DC movie this spring), we may only have anarchy or as it is called in the show: chaos.*  Of course, for IR theorists, anarchy simply means without government which may or not be chaotic.

* As pointed out elsewhere, in the old D&D games, characters had two sets of alignments--good/evil and lawful/chaotic.  The contrast between Melisandre and Thoros perhaps.

While the alliance by marriage stuff that dominates the politics seems so very feudal, it can also be seen as a power-sharing system that gives as many of the major Houses/ethnic groups a stake in the political system.*  If all of the marriages go right (not spoiling things for the non-book readers), Joffrey, the son of two Houses (Barratheon and Lannister, sort of if we ignore Joffrey's true father), will be married to a third house, Tyrell.  Meanwhile, Tyrion will be married to a Stark, and so on.  The Lannister strategy, for all of its, well, evil, is quite inclusive.  The only folks left outside are the Martells and the Aryns.  Mycella, the third child of Robert and Cersei (ok, Jaime and Cersei) was sent off by Tyrion to the Martells to build some ties. Tywin is also reaching out to the Aryns via Littlefinger's pursuit of Lysa Tully. 

*  Of course, power-sharing has often been criticized for not being democratic but a series of elite bargains.  And Tywin really is not sharing power, but he is, via the various claims that get inherited by the progeny of these marriages, giving the various houses stakes in the current Lannister-dominated political order.

Of course, the irony here is that we know that Littlefinger is out for himself.  While Tywin Lannister is trying to create a Lannister-based order, Littlefinger is trying to upset all efforts as he sees more opportunity in chaos.  As an IR person, I could use this to focus on anarchy at the international level, but I prefer to stick with the domestic analogy.  In civil wars, those who control the smuggling become enriched and powerful--this is the ladder of which Littlefinger speaks.  As a brothel owner and then as minister of the coin, Littlefinger was best positioned to benefit from the war and the chaos that ensued.  He started from a position of low birth but has used his "indispensible-ness" to gain a title, lands, and trust.  Well, sort of.  Tywin probably wanted a Lannister to control the money, but still gave Littlefinger heaps of opportunity.  As we shall see, Littlefinger's plans are pretty damn complex and orderly as he uses disorder to his advantage. 

The contrast between the intel expert seeking to promote order, even it is soaked in blood, and the legitimized organized criminal promoting and taking advantage of political conflict (his betrayal of Ned was key, remember) will be an interesting contest even if most of it happens behind the scenes with only a few (and the audience) privy to it.

The Game of Thrones is not for those afraid to spill blood or break a promise.  Just like civil war and ethnic conflict (and IR, of course).

Dallying at DFAIT Due to the DRC

I went to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade today as they had a roundtable on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  I don't know bumpkus about the Congo since I only studied its politics for the years 1960-1963--when Katanga tried to secede.  But I went today because the topic was intervention there, and I figured I could catch up a bit on one of the most intensive/extensive/enduring UN efforts. 

What did I learn?

• M-23, the new rebel group getting heaps of attention, despite having various ICC indictees involved, is actually better than average on human rights abuses.  Of course, that says a lot about the average rebel group .... or government in Congo.  The army of the DRC--the FARDC--is pretty awful.
• The various rounds of DDR (disarmament, demobilization, reintegration) have meant the inclusion of "former" rebels in the FADRC, which means that the government's military is infiltrated, that not all of the DDR-ed have given up their allegiances.  I know that the prospect of this is one thing that makes DDR hard, but I am curious whether there has been much social science to assess when this problem is particularly bad.  Any readers have any suggestions?
• That DFAIT, the Canadian government, and perhaps Canada in general has awesome MAT leave.  The person running the roundtable is going to be gone for a year as she is about to have a baby.  I know I have heard about this policy before, but when I am reminded of this, I just think this is awesome.  I had, um, a few days.  And it was a very tough year.  So, much kudos to Canada for this policy.
• Speaking of such stuff, this roundtable at DFAIT is a lot like a political science class at McGill--the gender balance was about 65%-35% females to males.  All of the CIDA reps who came over were female.  Not sure what, if anything, this means.  Is the DRC as a topic more likely to have female desk officers at Foreign Affairs and at Canada's Development branch?  Do the two agencies  just generally have more women?  The Department of National Defence, military folks excluded, seemed more balanced. 

Anyhow, it was an interesting morning in the big brown building on the edge of Ottawa.

Are 3D Printers the Replicators of ST-TNG?

Are the new 3-d printers the replicators we are familiar with from Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Lots of concern that these devices, which can apparently make guns, will end any effort gun control and otherwise let anyone create anything.

But are we there yet?  Can they reproduce something so that the internal chemistry, the internal wiring, whatever is all the same?  More importantly, are these things so cheap that anyone can have them?  I simply do not know.  But I sincerely doubt that anyone can simply get one of these things and pump out tons of guns, bullets or whatever.  Especially when guns and bullets and whatever are easy to  get at a fraction of the price.

Lots of fear-mongering, but until the supply and demand of these things leads to quality/quantity/input/output dynamics that compete with guns, I am more worried about the conventional gun manufacturers and their political power than the new cool devices.

The Implications of Iron Man for IR

Last night, the Spew family saw Iron Man.  We were celebrating a good week and then relief that came with Teen Spew taking the SAT yesterday morning.  It was also marking the beginning of summer--which official begins with movies aspiring to be the block-busters.  Iron Man 2 was meh, but we enjoyed the first one and Avengers very much.  So, we were looking forward to this one, and were not disappointed.  Well, that's not true.  I don't have any principal-agency theory to apply to the movie, as there was no team involved (definitely some shirking along the way) nor really any caveats.  Still, there is plenty of stuff in the movie to over-think beyond the break:

Rebel? No. Insubordinate? Hell Yes.

As much of a fan as I am of the Rebel Alliance on this May the Fourth, I have to say that I have never launched or participated in a rebellion.  However, insubordination is entirely different.  I am reminded of this as I caught this thread at Business Insider (h/t to Doctrine Man).

In the rededit thread cited in the BI piece, folks are telling tales of "the worst thing they said to a senior officer or NCO."  Check it out--heaps of fun.  So, I got to thinking--what was the worst thing I said to someone who was above me in the chain of command?

The one tale that comes to mind is when I was at TTU, and our department was in receivership--which meant that our chair was a Psychologist.  I was the adviser to the undergrad poli sci association, and then wanted to hold a debate in advance of the 2000 election and have a GOP and a Democrat debate each other since we could not get Bush and Gore.  The chair said no, as it would be too controversial.  When I found out about this decision, I went to him and reminded him that we are a political science department, where we do things like talk about politics.  He was not pleased to be reminded of his limitations.

While I have had more than a few chairs that I might wanted to have "corrected," I have had only two that I have been mildly "rebellious" towards: the psychologist and this guy.  I am sure friends can provide examples of what might be the worst thing that I said to either, but my memory is lousy.

Given that academia provides a heaps more unaccounability than the military chain of command, I am sure plenty of folks have good tales of the worst thing they said to someone in administration, right? 

Getting Things Right, Pentagon and Religion edition

I tend to complain a lot about many things, so I need to pay attention when some individual or agency does something right.  So, it looks like the Pentagon is finally grappling with a problem that is been the subject of many spews: the role of religion in the U.S. armed forces. It is a tough line to draw between permitting religious freedom and preventing the military from being the play thing of a particular religious faction.  But given that the military already restricts the freedom of those who choose to join it, it is something that the military can do.  And should do.  That people at the USAF academy have had to hide their non-Christianity is about as un-American as anything I can imagine. 

I hope the academies are taking seriously this new policy.  I am sure the government will get much heat for this, but it is the right thing to do.  The right thing is not always inevitable and often quite difficult.  So congrats to the Pentagon for getting to work on this.

Mac without Cheese

My absolute favorite quote by any political theorist has to be this one from Machiavelli:

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them."  The Prince from here*

* Because I am too lazy to go to school and get my Machiavelli and re-type the passage.

Exactly 600 years ago, Machiavelli diagnosed the essential dilemma of politics.  If you want to change anything, the fans of change will generally be uncertain and unenthusiastic and opposed strongly by those who benefit from the status quo.  This explains so much of today's politics and provides much of the stickiness of path dependence.  It is why I found punctuated equilibria to be an interesting idea (thanks to Stephen Krasner). 

This is why, although I claim to be Liberal, in the sense that history can be progressive rather than just a cycle, I still tend to be surprised when there is change, when progress does occur.  Sure, I can get cocky and claim that some event or politician is now on the right side of history, but that old Machiavelli quote is always bouncing around my head.  Change is really, really, really hard.  Yet it happens.  Which is why politics can be so very interesting albeit frustrating.

Ethnic Politics Uber Alles?

cross posted at Political Violence at a Glance

Canada is taking a strong stand on a humanitarian issue, stepping out way in front of the rest of the world. The issue is Sri Lanka’s human rights abuses, and Canada, often seen as the most mild of countries, is upset that no one else is concerned about Sri Lanka hosting the biennial Commonwealth meeting:

“John Baird, Canada‘s foreign minister, said he was stunned that Colombo was not facing censure for its behaviour. ‘We’re appalled that Sri Lanka seems poised to host [the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] and to be chair-in-residence of the Commonwealth for two years,’ he told the Guardian.”

Canada is threatening to boycott the meeting. This is especially striking as the current government has been doing everything it can to remind everyone of its British/colonial past, including putting the “Royal” back into the names of the air force and navy: the Royal Canadian Air Force and Royal Canadian Navy. So, the prospect of skipping out on a Commonwealth event is a big step for this Canadian government.

Sure, in the past Canada has taken the lead on other humanitarian issues, such as Responsibility to Protect [R2P] and the treaty on landmines. But this particular government, led by Stephen Harper, has been most reluctant to even mention R2P when it engages in efforts that might seem R2P-ish, such as the Libyan conflict in 2011.

Not to dismiss the importance of Sri Lanka’s human rights record, but there may be something more consistent in Canada’s stance here: ethnic politics. Sure, it could just be my cognitive bias based on my previous research stances, but playing up an anti-Sri Lanka stance is a way to appeal to a key voting bloc in Canada: Tamil Canadians. This would not be the first time that Canada has taken a surprising position on this part of the world, as Canada was perhaps the last developed democracy to list the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group. Indeed, a government official recently lamented that decision in front of… a group of Tamil Canadians.

This gets to a larger issue for observers of violent conflict. There are many, many potential causes for individuals, groups, and countries to take as their own, but everyone has finite time and political capital. So, we need to ask why countries, in particular, but also non-governmental actors make particular issues their priorities. My claim has always been that the international issues that often resonate most at home are those places and those sides with which key constituents have ethnic ties. So, I cannot help but notice that Canadian parties have been pandering to the Tamil Canadians for quite some time, and now we see Canada standing alone among the Commonwealth countries in its criticism of Sri Lanka.

Now, if I can only figure out Harper’s obsession with Iran. Anyhow, this Canadian tale matters beyond Canada because it reminds us that even relatively small ethnic groups can shape foreign policy if they occupy key districts and especially if they are willing to swing their vote depending on how much fealty the parties show to the group.

Even More Unaccountable!

I can no longer sing the Assoc Professor blues.  Nope, I have finally learned the secret handshake and will be henceforth dropping all modifiers to the word Professor.  Students can add "bitchin" "gnarly" "damn" "swell" but not assistant or associate.  Those days are over!

What does this mean professionally?

Ignorance is Bliss, Canadian Edition Continued

I posted last week about the strange thing that Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper said about committing sociology as if it were a crime.  Well, this sociologist has produced an incredibly biting, satirical response: that he is a homegrown sociologist.


Probably will not change anything as this government seems impervious to such stuff.  I truly doubt that it will face much of a challenge in the next election, so we are probably stuck with the forces of ignorance for quite some time. 

Of course, Canada is hardly unique in all of this.  Ron Rogowski just published a pretty trenchant piece noting that the problem with political sicence is not that it is not policy relevant but that we are too policy relevant--we find things that are inconvenient truths.  The only time politicians want to hear what we have to say is when we can give them advice on how to win, not on how to govern good.

So, in sum, we social scientists and society in general are just screwed.

Early Tweet of the Week: Grading Edition

I just loved this tweet so it is the early favorite for tweet of the week:

Instead of writing "F" on a bad exam, I'm going to tell the student that the exam went to live on a farm.
— Daniel Lin (@DLin71) April 30, 2013

Fear-mongering or Good Advice

I had a long twitter conversation yesterday with Sarah Kendzior about a piece we both read at the Chronicle of Higher Ed.  She considered the various pieces of advice a bad idea as the academic survival guide seemed to suggest that profs need to be worried and cautious in order to get tenure. 

If you believe that academia is a conformist cult running on fear, this article will do nothing to dissuade you chronicle.com/article/Self-S…
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) April 29, 2013

My take was that the advice as actually quite good--aimed at providing folks with useful strategies for avoiding some serious mistakes while they pursue their research and manage their career. 

The obvious question would be: do folks really need such advice to avoid sabotaging their career?  Do they need to be told to have multiple mentors, get outside feedback, that perfection is the enemy of the good enough, to take criticism seriously and revise seriously before resubmitting, and so on?  Well, Florian Bieber just posted the lessons he learned as an editor of Nationalities Papers.  The key bits of advice are at the end:

• Revise a draft and have a friend read it
• Never submit the article at the same time with two journals (it happened in one case and both Nationalities Papers and the other journal rejected it)
• Don’t plagiarize (it can ruin your career and reputation)
• Be patient with the reviewers
• Never respond immediately if you get negative reviews (always sleep over it). It will not just make editors less unhappy, it will also help your chances of remaining on good terms with the journal.
• Don’t blame the editor or send insulting emails (they don’t help, believe me)
• Most articles require revisions (often major revisions, this is not the exception, but the rule)
• Don’t be discouraged and revise (most articles that are submitted, but not published, are due to authors not revising their articles).
• Don’t just think about getting published, but also on getting read and cited. Just getting published does not translate into much readership considering the large volume of academic publications.

You would think that folks would know this without having to be told or that they got this kind of advice in grad school, but no, folks think you can insult editors apparently.  We should not be surprised--the list of topics and requests for advice on the various rumor boards indicate that people are not getting advice or they are not listening.  Am I surprised that some folks have crappy advisers?  Um, no.  Most of us are not as lucky as Harry Potter, and even he faced a series of potentially lousy advisers.

The point here is that the academic enterprise is stressful enough--that it is hard to get that first tenure track position and that tenure is an up or out decision.  There is no fear mongering needed (although I am probably guilty of it myself).  Much common sense is required, but often common sense is not all that common or as intuitive as we would like to think.  People will still sabotage themselves as some people are just self-destructive, but if we can reduce that by a bit with some unsolicited advice, shouldn't we?

Early Self-Promotion Day!

Strange day.  I was not looking to find pre-order information for my next couple of pubs but I found them nonetheless.

The much awaited (by me anyway) book with David Auerswald, "NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone," is available for pre-order at Amazon.  Yep, you can order it now for delivery in December, which either means a great gift for Mother's Day or an early plan for your special Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa present to a loved one or two or dozen. No, no cover yet.  We are awaiting the publisher's graphic geniuses since Dave and I have no artistic abilities.

The second pub of mine, a book chapter in a volume on Nationalism and War edited by John Hall and Siniša Malešević, is coming out much sooner--May.  You can pre-order that as well.  Good for Mother's Day, Father's Day or graduation day!

One of the hardest parts of being an academic writer is the waiting for the stuff to come out.  Never too soon to get excited!

Lists Are Like Rankings--Everybody's Got One

PM posted at Duck of Minerva 15 Must-Read books for Poli Sci Students.  The overlap between his list and my list is, well, mighty thin: Hendrik Spruyt's The Sovereign State and Its Competitors and Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.   I like Michael Ross's other work but have not read his
Oil Curse book.
 
If the premise is to give students a hint of what academic poli sci really is and also to get them into "the systematic study of politics," I would have a somewhat different list focused more on Comparative Politics and IR (since I deftly avoided American Politics at all levels until I had to teach it).  I would have a shorter list simply because the more you assign, the less folks read.  So, what are my top twelve books (ten below plus the two above) to get people into Poli Sci, either as undergrads starting out or for summer reading for those who are unlikely to go to grad school (especially if they listen to us).

1. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action.  It is fundamental--why do large groups lose and small groups win?  Why do we fail to cooperate or under-provide? 
2. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in Intl Politics. The book that should teach us humility.  That the world is a confusing place, one that we have to perceive and not just process as we get conflicting signals all the time.  The perceptions we make may be systematically biased.  The book also shows how we can profit by stealing from other social sciences.
3. Robert Gilpin, War and Change.  Simply a fun, fun book that takes Realism and applies it in a most Marxist kind of way.  I wish this was the Realist that got the biggest play beyond the 1980s besides Waltz. 
4. Deborah Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change.  Combines civil-military relations with principal agency theory to compare and contrast the US and the UK in their cold war wars in Southeast Asia.  Sure, this means that we have two books by folks with whom I went to grad school (Hendrik being the other), but Debbi wrote a fun book that affected my thinking and also showed to the UCSD-haters that the school could produce some sharp work in International Security. 
5. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.  Just an amazing book on the dynamics of civil wars, showing how to do lit reviews in ways that are not boring, how to build an argument and test it in different ways, to present a series of case studies that both interest the reader and make a convincing case.  That one of my students targeted it for her dissertation is just more evidence that this book gets heaps of respect.
6. Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics.  Changed the way I think about reputation and where it comes from.  Definitely builds from Jervis so this might seem like duplication, but Jervis presents a series of cognitive biases, while Mercer shows how you can take one bit of social psych to develop predictions in a most interesting way.  
7. Kelly Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration. This book just thrilled me and continues to have much relevance with Libya and Syria.  She argues that weak countries have a potential weapon against stronger ones--the ability to force some of their citizens to flee, producing refugee crises in the recipient states.  This book convinced me to look at the world and key dynamics in ways that I had not considered. 
8. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire.  Snyder might not consider himself to be a Liberal, but this seemed like a very Liberal theory of international conflict: that states are more likely to go to war when an elite cartel is in power.  You may or may not buy the historical accounts, but the argument itself is provocative and interesting.  If I didn't recommend this book, I would have recommended Ideology of the Offensive as Snyder is the most interesting of the security scholars revisiting old wars.
9. Dan Drezner, Theory of International Politics and Zombies.  This is, indeed, summer reading.  And it gets anyone who is curious about IR Theory at all to see how it can be extended.  Yes, to a fictional war, but once we move into the fictional world, we can then see how the various theories can be extended to other realities--alternative pasts and potential futures.  One of the hardest things to get folks to do is to think theoretically--how do we take this theory from context A and move it to context B?  Does the theory help in explaining the different context?  By making it fun, Drezner makes it deceptively easier to think theoretically.
10. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.  I guess I am a sucker for applying social psych to politics, but this book is an exhaustive effort to understand ethnic conflict.  One can just read pieces and find heaps and heaps of testable hypotheses.  

UPDATE:  I wrote the list at home rather than at work where my books hang out.  So, two omissions:
11.  Alexrod's Evolution of Cooperation which is a fun read and gets to a key distinction in IR between repeated PD where trust/cooperation can emerge .
12.  Cynthia Enloe's Bananas, Beaches and Bases, as the feminist approach to IR that most shook my brain and intrigued me.*

* Speaking of feminism, I tried to find an earlier blog post where I came up with a list of a heap of my favorite books by female IR scholars, but I could not find it.  Maybe the old boys network nuked that post?

There is no critical IR here, as, well, the point of this list is to interest undergrads and engage hobbyists.  I am not a fan of critical IR as it is, to me, hardly ever interesting/readable and never really useful for understanding the world.  Sorry, but them's my biases and it is my list ;)

I have more current stuff on my "to read" list so take this list with a big grain of salt, but I do think that each of these have and will continue to have enduring relevance.

PM also lists two movies.  For the IR scholar, I would recommend Classic Star Trek which had a heap of episodes that have un-subtle applications, Battlestar Galatica for its Civil-Military Relations, and, as afar as movies go, I would recommend three to start: Wag the Dog, Doctor Strangelove, and  No Man's Land (about Bosnia and the lameness of the UN).  But I could (and probably have) spend endless posts on movies and television that are fun for political science fans.

Epic Fail, Indeed! Congressional Style

Brian McFadden is brutally on target this week:

Yuck, You Have Some Policy Experience on Your Suit!?

I posted about professors and the policy world over at Duck of Minerva, and one of the responses repeated an oft-told myth that having policy experience is bad for one's career.  I have no stats to back me up, but my impression is that having some policy experience is not harmful to one's academic progress. 

In the post, I mention a bunch of scholars who dipped their toes into the policy pool and yet managed thrive afterwards. In my experience, having the one year in the Pentagon has been obviously and measurably good for my career.  My competitor for the McGill job way back was also a CFR International Affairs Fellow--that it seems that having policy experience was seen as a qualification for the job.  I am pretty sure that my year in the US government also helped me get my current job since it is at a policy school.  The experience also opened up a series of questions that led to a major research project that has occupied much of the past several years, one for which I have received several grants and have published in prestigious places.  While the pubs are not super-policy oriented and I am still trying to get something published in a more policy-oriented outlet, my career has certainly thrived despite, nay, because of the taint of the policy world. 

It may be the case that it is hard for someone who has worked in the policy world a decade or two to make the transition to the academic world, as pubs do matter.  And if you publish all your work in policy oriented outlets, that may hurt one's tenure case.  But in general, I find it hard to believe that crossing into the other world for periods of time is damaging to one's career. 

Or am I wrong about that?  Are there cautionary tales of which I am unaware?

Good American Options for Syria

Um, I don't have any.  Suggestions?  Going on Canadian TV tomorrow to ponder US foreign policy as the red line of chemical weapons being used in Syria seems to have been crossed.

So, I repeat: does the US have any options?  Bueller?

Ignorance is Bliss, Canadian Edition

There is so much silliness in Canada's party politics, but the latest has the Prime Minister doubling down on ignorance.  Really.

Ok, the context is this: the newly selected Liberal leader, Justin Trudreau reacted to the events in Boston by saying something like, we need to take seriously the root causes. Well, it might have been poorly timed since the focus should have been on the investigation and on condolences.  So,  Prime Minister Stephen Harper, always eager to attack even on a relatively minor point, jumped on Trudeau, saying that this utterance represented an immaturity that makes Trudeau unfit to be PM.  To be sure, Trudeau does not exactly reek of maturity and preparedness, but then again, Harper came off sounding just a bit unreasonably strident.

Having made that first move that we should not be talking about root causes last week, Harper continued this week by saying this is not time to "commit sociology."  Actually, the "committing of sociology" never stopped.  There is much social science being applied to the question of the causes of terrorism, the causes of radicalization, testing theories about why dissent becomes violent, the recourse to and the effects of indiscriminate violence and so on.  Indeed, the Government of Canada (perhaps I should not say it ...) is funding the study of the root causes of terrorism both through the Social Science Humanities Research Council and via the Kanishka project, which is a fund that was created in the aftermath of the Air India disaster. 

It is perhaps typical of this government and this Prime Minister to portray the systematic pursuit of knowledge to be akin to a crime--when else does one commit x?  Making sociology seem like crime is, well, pretty criminal if fomenting ignorance is a crime.  Perhaps fomenting ignorance is not against Canadian laws but it is a crime against against common sense. 

Best Gif Ever

Source
H/T Chris Blattman
and 2nd H/T Josh Foust

Tweet of the Week: Jenny and the Vs

For those not on twitter, here is the tweet of the week:

Vaccines. RT @jennymccarthy When you travel, what are some of your must-have items?
— Gerry Duggan (@GerryDuggan) April 24, 2013

Yep, hoist by her own un-scientific petard.

Ritual NATO Skepticism

The funny thing about writing a book on NATO and Afghanistan that is pretty critical of the alliance's performance is that I still end up being a NATO defender.  How so?  Well, whenever I see folks ponder the future of NATO, I get grumpy.  In the New York Times, there is a Room for Debate bit with five perspectives on the issue.  This seems like a semi-monthly exercise.  Google trends for "NATO end" produces this nice sine wave (although to be fair a bit more lately):




Too bad we don't have that capability yet for the 1990s.


Anyhow, it is moments like this when I realize that I am a Liberal Institutionalist a la Robert Keohane.  How so?  The alliance solves finesses a heap of transaction costs and represents a lot of sunk costs so that its members, however frustrated, are not going to end the alliance.  As I have said before, the Churchillian quote about democracy applies here: NATO might be the worst alliance save all the others.

What are the alternatives?  One of the pieces in the NYT posits the European Union.  I would laugh, but my cold-induced sore throat would not appreciate it.  The EU?  Since when has the EU come through in a major international security crisis?  The EU failed to manage the end of Yugoslavia, which required ... NATO to end the war in Bosnia and stop Serbia in Kosovo.  The E.U. found the Libyan thing to be a huge crisis as France backtracked on a fundamental part of the EU enterprise--open borders.  ESDP, the effort to build a European defense effort akin to NATO, has not gone anywhere.  Symbolic bi-national units have seen no action.  So, please.  EU? Nay.

Coalitions of the willing?  Well, yes, an ad hoc alliance can replace NATO, but such entities tend to have all the same problems of NATO with few of the advantages?  Legitimacy?  No.  Caveats?  Yes.  Mixed burden-sharing?  Yes.  Common training, doctrine, equipment? Only if a subset of NATO.

How about a global NATO?  Well, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to get consensus, right?  NATO has been able to act precisely because it has kept opponents outside of the organization, such as Russia over Kosovo and China over everything down the road.  Adding Japan and Australia and a few other select countries might make sense, but I am not sure how expanding NATO's role in the world fits with the reality that NATO members are spending less money on defense.

NATO will continue to be asked to do stuff that people never anticipated.  Remember, Yugoslavia was an "out of area operation."  Afghanistan?  Way the hell outside of Europe.  Libya?  Almost Europe.  It is true that everyone's budget cuts will make it harder to engage in and sustain operations, but the history of interoperability, the practice of interoperability, and the relatively common views of the world mean that NATO can be far more functional as a multilateral military enterprise than anything else.  There are no real rivals on the horizon.  Indeed, with the US spending less on defense (well, maybe) and looking to the Pacific, NATO will remain important as a security institution to manage affairs in and around Europe.  Why?  Because there is no one else.

Canada Is a Constitutional Monarchy!

 The Governor-General of Canada held an event at his residence, Rideau Hall, to give five Canadian scholars the Killam Awards.  These recognize senior scholars for their contributions to the world.  I was attending as one of the Killam Laureates this year is John McGarry.  John is one of the top scholars in the world on power-sharing--designing political institutions so that democracies can manage their divided societies.  He is most well known for his work on Northern Ireland, but his stuff has broader applicability.  Indeed, he now holds a UN position, in addition to his day job as a professor at Queen's University, helping to finesse the Cyprus situation among others.  He had me on his guest list, so I had to find a tux and be presentable.  That is John with me doing my best Harvey Weinstein impersonation. 

The event started with people coming in and waiting in a room as they set up the room where the awards were going to be given (not unlike the last seen of Star Wars or not).  Folks who know me would be surprised, but in a crowd where I know absolutely no one (John's wife, Margaret Moore, happened to be in China), I am kind of shy.  So, I looked around the room.  Then, we were corraled and sent into the room where there was a small stage set up and then rows of seats.

They had the Laureates come in last.  Well, second to last.  The Governor General, David Johnston (former head of McGill) and his wife came in.  He got to sit on the stage on a comfy seat in the middle of the stage, as if it were a throne.  The room itself reminded me of rooms I have seen in palaces in Europe--the decorations on the wall, the chandelier, everything.  On the wall behind the stage was a huge portrait of Queen Elizabeth, looking smashing, standing in front of a Canadian flag (yep, Queen of Canada Liz, not Queen of England Liz).  If that was not already making me feel out of place, I certainly was as each person who came on stage would first stand in front of GG and bow slightly.  Bowing!  Wow.  No curtseys, but what can you do.

Each Laureate was introduced by someone who knew them (mostly university administrators).  John gave a very nice speech about the difference between Canada's good history and Ireland's bad history--that the British treated the French Catholics of Quebec far better than the Irish Catholics, so that violence never had much support here and thus no need for the power-sharing institutions.  The talk by the earth sciences guy was also memorable as he basically condemned the current government's attitude/policies towards the sciences.  That support for science should return to focus on basic sciences and the support for curiosity, as our big findings have mostly been through serendipity rather than strategic research.

After that, there was a reception and then a buffet dinner with tables of food strewn throughout the hallways.  I ended up eating with students and grants people from Queen's thanks to hanging out with John.  They all tried to sell me on their school for my daughter.  They don't have to sell me--I am a big fan of Queen's and Kingston.  It was my favorite place in Canada before I moved to Ottawa.

In the Women's Lounge at Rideau Hall

After dinner, we got to tour some of the rooms of the residence including the greenhouse.  Very tasteful decorations with lots of modern art and then an amazing greenroom.  While I felt out of place until I was hanging with John's graduate students, it was a pretty neat night.  I got to wear a tux and experience the constitutional monarchy that is this weird place.  If only there were a crown or sceptre and my favorite monarchist and it would have been complete.

Overthinking Recent Pop Culture

Check out my post at Political Violence at a Glance to see me over-think the prisoner's dilemma as applied in Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Community.

Update: Check out Crooked Timber since they consider the problem of credible commitment as well with a different angle.

Is the Terrorist Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty?

The Tsarnaev brothers were clearly not criminal masterminds.... just criminals.  Mother Jones collected 11 Most Mystifying things the brothers did, ranging from what the younger brother wore to sticking around in Boston to running out of cash, and so on.  We will probably be able to add to the list as we learn more.  But for me, I don't know whether to feel more relief or more anxiety that these two guys were able to kill three people and injure more than a hundred people.  They were so, ahem, not bright, so does that tell us folks who do this kind of thing, self-radicalized terrorists can do some damage but not so comparable to an unregulated fertilizer distributor?  Or, if these anti-geniuses could do this much damage, what would happen if some sharp terrorists were atwork?

I can easily see either side of this.  The picture, I guess, is complicated enough that there are elements that should worry us and elements that should give us some solace.

In the worry category:

• that the younger brother was easily turned from a pretty decent life as a middling student with plenty of friends to an ally of his more messed up brother.
• that it only took two self-radicalized folks to disrupt the life of a city for nearly a week
• that despite their obvious cognitive limitations, they were able to build a bunch of bombs that mostly worked
• that they might not have been caught so soon if they were not such, well, idiots.

In the solace category:

• the Boston medical and first responder community was so competent that all of the patients that reached the hospitals alive survived
• that the terrorists would tracked down and contained within about 100 hours--the same amount of time it took the US to defeat Iraq in 1991.  We tend to be an impatient people, but that is some fast work. 
• that perhaps brighter folks are less likely to do this kind of thing because they are smart enough to sense that they would get caught, that maybe it ain't worth it, that maybe the US really is not at war with Islam even if it is in wars in Muslim countries (Bosnia, Libya are essentially pro-Muslim interventions, right?), and so on.  I guess there are plenty of smart folks who are radicalized, but they may still be deterred.
• perhaps more older brothers are not so messed up as to get their brothers involved in something so self-destructive.

Timothy McVeigh was much more destructive and not that much brighter.  So, is this progress?

I really have no clue how to think about this.  I am not an expert on terrorism or terrorists or radicalization or anything really related to this.  I am just a confused observer.  So, any clarity on this would be much appreciated, readers.

Camp Counselor as Political Career Prep

Do we need a super-counselor?

Canada is so cute sometimes.  The new leader of the Liberal party, Justin Trudeau, has been criticized for having a lame resume, including serving as a camp counselor.  So, the response then gets interesting--that being a camp counselor is excellent prep for being a Prime Minister.  Given my expertise in this area, as a camper for eight years and a counselor for three, I feel duty bound to weigh in. 

Hmmm.  Well, the first thing to remember about being a camp counselor is that the camp is there for you and not for the campers.  Yep, that's right.  Your task is to keep the kids entertained long enough so that you can hang with friends, go swimming, hiking, and generally prolonging one's adolescence while getting paid for it.  This, of course, included playing all kinds of pranks* on the kids.  This is perfect prep for politics because the reality is that the politicians end up focusing on the games in the capital and ambition and perhaps not so much on helping out the folks in the district/riding.

* I could hang a spoon off of my nose.  My campers wanted to imitate me, so I told them to dunk the spoons in spaghetti sauce and then put the spoons against their nose.  Ten seconds later, kids had red stains on their noses.  Tis the easiest and least traumatic prank I pulled or witnessed.

The second thing is that the biggest fights were over the distribution of scarce resources.  In this case, it was breakfast.  In addition to pancakes or eggs or whatever, we would have about a dozen or so small boxes of cereal ranging from sweet (frosted flakes, corn pops) to healthy.  So, allocating those on a regular basis required some system that seemed fair enough not to create fights every morning.  I forget what systems I used, but perhaps politicians could use similar ones to close military bases.

The third thing is that you had to figure out ways to get the kids to do what you wanted without it making it look like a chore.  So, when we had the occasional water balloon fight, the group of kids that picked up the most pieces of balloon afterwards would get a treat.  Yep, they cleaned up for a
token prize.  I don't know how the Republicans do it, but getting poor people to oppose welfare seems like a similar trick.  I guess the token prize is easy access to guns.

I am sure there are other lessons I learned as a camp counselor, but those are a good start.  Any suggestions?

MOOC Amok

Much buzz about Massive Open Online Courses.  The NYT has a column on it today.  I have to address it because MOOCs seem like a really cool idea, but pose some problems if when politicians and administrators  consider them as a panacea for solving some of the real challenges we face in higher education--spiraling tuition. 

The author, AJ Jacobs, has a nice pithy take and looks at some of the important stuff as he took 11 different courses via MOOC.  The article is interesting and engaging, but I am afraid it suffers from grade inflation.  How so?  Well, other than convenience, nearly all of the other grades given (except for the profs who get a B+) are below a B yet the final grade is a B. 

The profs get a B+ as they are interesting, organized, and knowledgeable.  Rock on for the profs!  Jacobs does worry:

MOOCs are creating a breed of A-list celebrity professors who have lopsided sway over the landscape of ideas. I pity the offline teachers. I fear one of the casualties of these online courses might be the biodiversity of the academic ecosystem.

Fed Foibles

Now that those responsible for the bombs at the Boston Marathon are dead or captured, folks are going to question the FBI's handling of the case.  The two big questions du jour are: why did they lose track of the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and was it necessary to shut down Boston for nearly 24 hours?

I am actually pretty sympathetic about the FBI's plight.  It is easy to criticize them for not following Tsarnaev after they were warned by Russia.  Yet, the FBI gets lots of tips about a lot of people so they investigated and moved on when they did not find much.  Did Tsarnaev do anything since 2011 that should have caught the eyes of the FBI?  Well, when we know where he got the guns (oops, still problems getting gun purchases under control), and if there were any special components for the bombs, then we can see if there is reason to criticize the FBI.  If the bombs were built from ordinary stuff, then it is hard to see an FBI agent playing close attention to Tsarnaev pulling the alarm after a purchase of a few pressure cookers.  I guess what I am trying to say is: if the FBI kept him under close observation, would they have been able to detect the bomb plot?  Given that it was a two brother operation (unless it was more than that), even closely watching him might not have been good enough.  Even if tailed by the Feds, going to the Marathon with a backpack would not have triggered any alarms, right?

Regarding the shutdown of Boston, I see both sides of the argument.  That the police and FBI mitigated risks by keeping people out of harm's way while they tried to track this guy down.  But it does send bad signals about what a couple of "losers" (using the uncle's term) can do to a city.  I don't think there were easy, clear choices.  The cops/Feds could have gone either way, and chose to remove the lockdown after less than 24 hours.  It did remind me of the US closing the border with Canada on 9/11, which was a very costly move and an overreaction.  We need responses that are between all and nothing.  I think it would have made sense to keep the greater Watertown area locked down and allowed the rest of Boston to continue their lives, but it is easy for me to say from my safe bunker beyond the Wall.

So, I am reluctant to point fingers and place blame for these moves.  I think other FBI moves, where they entrap folks, might not be so wonderful.  I do think we need to fight terrorism as one crime problem but not THE crime problem and certainly not as a military problem in the US.  That is, stick the younger brother in the civilian courts, try him for murder and put him away for life.

To be clear, my emotions on this are running against my brain.  Learning that the younger brother may have killed the older brother by running him over provided me with a certain degree of satisfaction.  That the younger brother may end up feeling guilty for killing his brother makes me somewhat happy, as it seems pretty clear that he was not feeling so guilty about the three people he helped to kill on Monday and the many he helped maim.  Sucks to be him right now. 

TFC13 and More in Retrospect

I had the chance to do something online that I had never done before.  That's right: bloggingheads!
It is a chance for two people to converse and have it recorded.  The process is more complicated than I care to describe, but the key thing is that I was invited to participate.  And with whom?  The woman who crushed in in Twitter Fight Club's Finale this year: Laura Seay of Morehouse College now and Colby College next fall.


I fiddled too much with my headphones, but it was a fun experience.  We talked about TFC, the academic job market, and a bit on secession and irredentism in Africa.

Multi Media Day For Steve

I have two pieces in various outlets today:

• One that is critical of the media on the Boston attacks at the Globe and Mail.
• One on the future of the Canadian army in a military type magazine.

 Check them out and let me know what you think.

More Info Is Not Always More Insight

Beware of folks considering themselves experts on Chechnya, Dagestan, and on these bozos.  We don't know much.  I was up throughout the night (thanks to icky cold) and got to watch as the scanners said the bombers were two other guys (with names, webstuff and all the rest).  The key real facts are these: one of the two suspected bombers is dead (no crying here), the other is on the run, the police/FBI have much better info now about who these guys are and ....   that is about it. 

My twitter feed of national security experts is not looking forward to heaps of folks posing as experts.  There are a few, but not too many.  So, it is easy to get sucked into the coverage (as I did), but more info in this case is not always better info.  The good news is there is damn little we can do about it with or without good info, except to worry about our friends in the area that have to stay inside today while the hunt continues. 


If you want to follow the sharpest, skeptical folks on twitter, check out @intelwire for good info judiciously distrbuted, @Joshuafoust for caution, @realjeffreyross for needed humor, @dandrezner for the stranded Boston academic take, @caidid for another Bostonian national security perspective.

Update: I ended up writing a longer version of this for the Globe and Mail.

We Need More Silliness This Week

It has been an awful week, so here is some HP silliness




Yep, heaps of child endangerment abound.