Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University in 2013. His research focuses on the political economy of foreign policy with a specific focus on security cooperation and military deployments.

Aid to Pakistan II

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Apparently some US policymakers have decided to cut some of the US' aid to Pakistan.  I'll keep the commentary short on this one as I've already commented on the topic before at greater length.  I still have a suspicion that getting some distance between the US and Pakistan is not for the relationship's greater good—assuming … Read more

Update

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Between dissertating, data collection, and side projects, blogging has been pretty lite here lately.  I'll try to keep up with the occasional updates so as not to dissappoint our loyal reader… Protests continue in Syria. France drops arms to Libyan rebels.  What's particularly interesting about this event (a couple days old I admit) is the … Read more

The Targeting of Corporate Executives

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I came across this article from Defense News yesterday, and the topic is something that I have not come across before.  The gist of the article is that a Pakistani branch of al-Qaeda, or at least with members affiliated with al-Qaeda, was planning the assassination of Lockheed Martin's CEO.

More after the jump…

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Obama’s New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

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Things have been fairly quiet here—all of us here at QP have been pretty busy with the end of the year and the onset of summer.  Anywho, I came across this article today and wanted to offer a few quick comments. Obama has named Admiral Mike Mullen's replacement as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of … Read more

Libya Update

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A quick update on goings on in Libya.   US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman visits rebels in Benghazi.  Members of the rebel "organization" have apparently been invited to open offices in Washington DC.  The article also discusses the deployment of attack helicopters by France and the UK to Libya to directly assist the … Read more

Evolution, Secrecy, and Bureaucracies

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This sort of reminds me of this.  Really one passage in particular, I suppose: We tend to marvel at the Darwinian perfection of organisms now, saying 'this must have been highly selected for, it's a tuned and sophisticated machine'.  In fact, it's a mess – there's so much unnecessary complexity. Bear with me.  The preceding … Read more

Quick Word on Elite Actors

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Dan Drezner has the most recent in a line of posts discussing the role of elites vs. masses in policymaking (See Drezner for links to the other posts in the series–they're worth reading). I don't really have much to add to the pile here–these are some pretty smart folks and they've said a lot of … Read more

Aid to Pakistan

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Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy has a piece up regarding the changes to US-Pakistani relations that may be coming out of this week's events.  Rogin is specifically discussing the debate in Congress over cutting military assistance to Pakistan.  Clearly this discussion has a long way to go, and the article indicates that significant divisions are emerging in both houses of Congress over what the appropriate response is. 

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