Conflict

(Mis)Understanding Political Science and Some Other Stuff

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Let me preface this by saying that I started writing this post a little while ago, so some of the content is a bit dated at this point. That said, over at the Duck, Steve Saideman has a post up that continues the ongoing discussion on political science, its utility, and its relationship with the … Read more

The War We Don’t See

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This is a topic that I’ll probably expand on later, but I was just reading an article discussing the role of Hamid Karzai’s brother in the present Afghan conflict.  This article gets at an issue that I’ve thought about before.  From the FP article cited above: But he could not exist without the support of coalition … Read more

Economy of Force and Asymmetric Conflicts

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Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy had a piece posted a couple of days ago that just caught my eye.  It basically talks about the current status of terrorist training camps and what the itinerary for the typical attendee entails.  It's pretty brief, but I think it covers some interesting subject matter.  And let me preface … Read more

Bargaining with Your Right Brain

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A friend outside of political science linked me this post asking if we deal with bargaining models in political science.  For those of you who are not in the know, one of the mainstays of contemporary International Relations game theory treats war as a bargaining process between states.  As such, the author argues that traditional … Read more

End of the week blogging

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The summer is rapidly approaching its end as many of us are preparing for the classes we are teaching, quickly completing those papers for the upcoming APSA conference, and finishing up any summer projects (or finding ways to push back those deadlines).  As such, the blogging here has slowed down a bit while the Dark … Read more

Pax Corleone

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I could not pass up this article posted on The Monkey Cage yesterday.  Hulsman and Mitchell use the movie The Godfather as an analogy for post-9/11 America and each one of the Vito’s potential heirs represents a different theoretical path for America.  The article is an interesting treatment of the subject, though not entirely novel.  … Read more