US-Russia Arms Race II: This Time Its Personal

I was trying out movie titles above. I think Hulk Hogan is free for the lead role. This article details the rising Russia defense expenditures.

The Big NeoCon

Near perfect example of applying an IR concept to a contemporary movie. Here the Big Lebowski and Neocons are covered.

Spain = Latin American Leftists?

McCain gaffe that is going to cause a few problems:
"A reporter asked McCain whether, if elected, he would receive Zapatero in the White House. McCain answered, "Honestly, I have to analyze our relationships, situations, and priorities, but I can assure you that I will establish closer relationships with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to harm the United States." As a result, much of the Spanish press has decided that the Republican candidate, who hails himself as the experienced foreign policy choice in this election, confused Spain - a NATO member and key ally in the fight against terrorism - with one of those troublesome Latin American states. That was certainly the interviewer's impression, for she followed up with a gentle reminder that Spain was a country in Europe."

Alliance between Russia and breakaway enclaves

Now Russia has signed security alliances with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"The treaties also allow Russia to build military bases and station additional troops in the territories. Those steps, if put into effect, would violate the European-brokered cease-fire that ended Russia’s war with Georgia last month."
and for new relating to our Latin American class:
"So far only Nicaragua has joined Russia in recognizing the two as sovereign nations, as has Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza. Ms. Rice mocks Russia’s diplomatic efforts in her remarks. “A pat on the back from Daniel Ortega and Hamas is hardly a diplomatic triumph,” she says, referring to Nicaragua’s president."

Link Fixed

I fixed the link to this Tuesday reading on Latinos and Soccer. Sorry for the error. In future coudl someone please tell me early!

America and its fracturing relationship with the Latin 'Left'

Recent AP article on Latin America-US Relations

Why Republicans Should Attack Latinos by Frum

Here is the recent David Frum article that outlines how to save the Republican party by attacking immigrants. He is basically saying that the middle class is being harmed by Latinos and the Republicans need to protect the middle class against the immigrant wave.

"The poverty rate for post-1970 immigrants and their native-born children is almost 50 percent higher than for the native born. No mystery why this should be so: one-third of adult new immigrants have not finished high school. And there is reason to fear that this poverty will become entrenched: barely half of Latino students complete high school on time; 48 percent of births to Latino women occur outside marriage. IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant. Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact."

Territorial Claim

Here is an interesting article about a territorial claim disputed between Japan and South Korea.

"For outsiders, the dispute over islets that seem to rise vertically from the sea and have little economic value, might seem esoteric. But for those Koreans who have never forgiven Japan for its brutal occupation of their country and who continue to measure success against Japanese competitors, the dispute over what the South Koreans call Dokdo and Japan calls Takeshima is very real, and very emotional."

Bush Behind the Surge

Bush was behind the decision to increase the number of troops in Iraq!?! Its all kinda shocking, my head is spinning a bit. We have evidence of Bush as a bold and decisive leader. The NYTimes released a long article today going the successful surge strategy in Iraq. A must read.

"In January 2007, at a time when the situation in Iraq appeared the bleakest, Mr. Bush chose a bold option that was at odds with what many of his civilian and military advisers, including his field commander, initially recommended. Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 troops to carry out a new counterinsurgency strategy has helped to reverse the spiral of sectarian killings in Iraq."

And now for a non-IR moment

As some of you know, soccer has sorta lost its allure to me after my team, Manchester United, won it all last year. We won the league and the European championship. Now there isn't much to play for. The best player, Ronaldo is being a jerk about wanting to leave the team that made him a star for Real Madrid. My other team, the US national team, is playing some of the worst soccer I have ever seen, even though the players are supposedly getting better and more experienced.

So I have pretty much moved on full time to baseball. Going back to my first childhood love has been a fun experience. It is nice to remember what it was like to be a kid. To idolize Steve Garvey, then Jim Abbot, then Barry Bonds (yes, I liked him back when he was a skinny kid). By my count I have been to 34 Cubs games this year with four more to go (ain't a sabbatical and a flexible schedule grand).


Baseball brings everything I love together, stats and luck. Statistics are about finding means and averages, knowing what to expect based on the past. That is the whole point of numbers, to tell a story. Baseball is pretty much like that in that most players preform pretty much as expected given a certain amount of at bats and innings. Yet, there are always those that luck out, those that have a career year that no one expected, like Geovanny Soto or Ryan Dempster.

And then there is the other part of baseball I love, the stories, the pain, and excitement of being a fan. Of rooting for your home team, and when they do well, everything is right in life. As my friend said, it must be nice to be a guy and have your whole day made by a sports team. But such is life.

Baseball also is about experiences, good and bad. And this story is one of the best, most heartbreaking, stories I have ever read. It is not a fun read, but sometimes the best ones are like this, as is life. It is what it is.

The Steps to War

My mentor, John Vasquez, released his new book. Get it for extra credit (if you write a paper on it)!

South Ossetia Primer

Here is a primer on issue behind the Russia-Georgia conflict.

The 'Other' as the President

I don't know how I could be more offended by this. What does it mean to be a 'typical American?" What does Mark Penn mean? Is it wrong to have different views in the American melting pot?

"Penn, the presidential campaign’s chief strategist, wrote in a memo to Clinton excerpted in the article: “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

184 Summer Second Set of Readings

What is War?
Clausewitz, Whole On War Book
Selection on What is War?
Bremer, Dangerous Dyads

Lawrence of Arabia
T.E. Lawrence's Proposed Map of the Middle East
Lawrence the Peril's of State Building

Detterence (Dr. Strangelove)
Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine
Nuclear Deterrence Theory: Book Review
Deterrence and Dr. Strangelove Teaching Guide
Carol Cohn: Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals

Gandhi
Means and Ends
Passive Resistance

Cold War Diplomacy
Diplomacy of the Korean Conflict

13 Days (Cuban Missile Crisis)
Cuban Missile Crisis Docs
Conceptual Models of Decision Making

New Territorial Dispute

Dispute between Cambodia and Thailand over a World Heritage Site.

McNamara's 11 Eleven Lessons

Here are the 11 Lessons from Fog of War that I have listed. I am not sure why there are different versions of the lessons listed.

Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.

Lesson #2: Rationality will not save us.

Lesson #3: There’s something beyond one’s self.

Lesson #4: Maximize efficiency.

Lesson #5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war.

Lesson #6: Get the data.

Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.

Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.

Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.

Lesson #10: Never say never.

Lesson #11: You can’t change human nature

War Powers Act

There is a new debate about War Powers Act and how to reform it. Here is an op-ed piece in the NYTimes and here is the link to the full report produced by Warren Christopher and James Baker.

Rice's New Realism

Here is a follow up to an old article Condi Rice wrote about American FP goals. This article advances a form of the national interest that includes the spread of democracy, even before capitalism, as a necessary element of the national interest.

War of the World

This new documentary on PBS that explores the World Wars and morality. Extra credit option for summer class. The documentary and book it is based on deals with morality, suffering, and the continuous warfare that Europe experience in the 20th century.
In Chicago, the first episode is on Wed (technically Thurs) at 3:30am on Channel 11. Second episode is at 10pm on Monday. Listed under War of the World if you do a search.

Israel Demonstrating Realism

This is not an official government sentiment, but it does reflect typical realist thought.

"He warned that while it would be preferable to have American support and participation in a strike on Iran, Israel will not be afraid to go it alone. When it comes to decisions that have to do with our national security and our own survival, at best we may update the Americans that we are intending or planning or going to do something. It's not a precondition, [getting] an American agreement," he said."

Soccer in Politics

Taking a novel approach, this op-ed piece proposes threating the coming World Cup in South Africa as a consequence for South Africa's non-action on the Zimbabwe question.

"Perhaps it’s time to share the Zimbabweans’ pain, to help persuade Mr. Mbeki to bear down on its source by threatening to grab the world’s soccer ball and take our games elsewhere."

Sports rules the world...once again

Fog of War Report

The Fog of War report is due on July 15. It should be between 5-7 pages. There is no length requirement but you obviously need a certain amount of space to complete the assignment.

Assignment:
Propose a documentary movie based on an interview with one person or a group of people. Outline who you are choosing and why. Then explain how you would conduct a critical oral history interview of the subject(s).

What case are you choosing? Why is it important?
What lessons from the Fog of War book would be useful in examining this case? Why?
What new lessons might be learned by doing a critical history project?
How did the Fog of War influence your choice of subject and goals?
(Do not pick a President or similar leader of a state. Stay away from any event since 9/11.)

Intro to IR Summer Readings, Post 1

Thomas Aquinas, Of War

Thucydides, Melian Dialogue

Machiavelli, The Prince
Read parts of Chapter 5, 15, 17, 18, 21

Morgenthau, A Realist Theory of International Politics

Kennan, Diplomacy in the Modern World
No clear copy online, use these sources to get some background
Kennan Century
Kennan Obit
Excerpt from Book

Wolfers, National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol

Wilson, World Must be Made Safe for Democracy
14 Points Speech

US National Security Strategy

Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government

Zinn, Setting the Moral Equation
This version refers to Afghanistan, not Vietnam as reader version does

Colombia Border Dispute

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/world/americas/01colombia.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Talkat UW

University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicty, Race, and Sexuality
WISER Winter 2008
Brown Bag Series
Prof. Brandon Valeriano
Tuesday, February 5th
Gowen 1A
11:45am—1:00pm
W I S E R
“Latino Assimilation, Divided Loyalties, and the World Cup”
Professor Brandon Valeriano
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Political Science

Talk at USC

I am presenting "The Tragedy of Offensive Realism: Testing Aggressive Power Politics Models." at USC on Jan 30th.

The event is 12:30pm-2pm, and is located in the Social Sciences (SOS) Building, Room B40 (see campus map). To park enter campus through Gate 3 off of Figueroa Blvd (between Jefferson Blvd and Exposition Blvd) and park in Lot PSX. The cost of parking is $8. From the parking lot, they would just have to walk across the quad and the SOS building is right there adjacent to the building with the big globe on top (we are down in the basement of the building). They can use this address if they need to mapquest driving directions: 3520 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0037

Chavez and FARC

Emerging Rivals, Venezuela and Colombia
FARC and Terrorism in LA Times
"But when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed this month that Colombia's largest rebel group be recognized as "belligerents," not terrorists, the reverberations reached to Washington and Europe, and relations between the two Latin American nations plunged to what one observer called perhaps the lowest point in their history.

But the Colombian government bitterly protested what it viewed as interference in its affairs. Colombian officials worry that Venezuela might take the further step of recognizing the rebels as a "state in formation," a status that France and Mexico granted the Sandinista rebels during the Nicaraguan civil war in the late 1970s.

Such a move would mean "giving the FARC diplomatic immunity, asylum rights, Venezuelan passports, and freedom from extradition," said former Colombian Defense Minister Rafael Pardo, now a consultant based in Bogota, the capital. "They would be giving the FARC a legitimacy, and that's very grave."

FARC rebels are thought to hold captive for barter or ransom about 700 civilians they have kidnapped in the last decade. Over the course of a 40-year war, they have killed hundreds of local and national politicians who didn't share their views.

In many areas of Colombia where they control the drug trade, rebels force poor farmers to grow coca. They burn vehicles that use roads they say are off-limits and deploy car bombs that sometimes kill passersby."

First Strike

This is scarier than Cloverfield.
"The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world"."

Columbia's Big and 'Bad' Military

Los Angeles Times article on Columbia
Key points:
"Seven years and $4.35 billion since the advent of a massive U.S. aid program, the Colombian military has been transformed from an outmatched "garrison force" that had yielded huge swaths of terrain to leftist guerrillas, to an aggressive force that has won back territory."

"The transformation, however, has had a dark side. Soldiers and police officers have committed rising numbers of human rights abuses, even as U.S. training intensifies, rights groups charge. During the five-year period that ended in June 2006, extrajudicial killings increased by more than 50% over the previous five years, according to figures compiled by human rights groups."

According to statistics compiled by the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human rights group, the armed forces committed 1,035 extrajudicial killings in the five-year period that ended in June 2006, compared with 685 in the previous five years.

Extra Credit Oppurtunity

There is a US v Sweden Soccer game going on this weekend at the Home Depot Center.

Ticketmaster Link

Guidelines for Extra Credit

You may choose to either write a report on a movie or a book (treat an event or lecture as a book) for extra credit. This report is due when you turn in your final paper. The movie review will be worth up to 10 points; a book/event review will be worth up to 20 points.

Details:
Movie: The movie must deal with international latino issues (foriegn policy, conflict in latin america, migration, crime and latinos, or sport and latinos) including anything we have covered in class. No movies on interpersonal relationships or tenuous connections to international events will be accepted (Borat). The movie can come from any time period. It would be best to get the movie approved before you watch. You must write at least a 4 page paper that will include one half review of the movie and the issues it covers. The second half will consider how it is relevant to the class and what lessons we can take from it. This assignment will be graded like any other essay, 10 points are not guaranteed. I do NOT want a recap of the movie.

Book: The book must deal with contemporary international latino issues (see above). It should be published after 9/11. The same issues mentioned in the movie option are fair game. It would be best to get the book approved by me before attempting to write a review. Your review must be at least 7 pages. It should be completed as your normal required book report (1/3 review, 1/3 connection to international latino issues, and 1/3 criticisms or support). This assignment will be graded like any other essay, 20 points are not guaranteed. I do NOT want a recap of the book/event.

International Latino Politics Schedule

Here is an updated schedule for International Latino Politics.

Jan 15: Latinos and National Interest
Jan 16: Latin American and the US
Jan 17: Mexico and the US
Jan 18: Importance of Conflict Studies
Jan 21: MLK Day, No Class
Jan 22: TJ Trip, No Class
Jan 23: Interventions
Jan 24: Drugs and Rivalries
Jan 25: International Migration Patterns, Test

Diversity = Good

Here is a link to an interview with Scott Page of UMich about his research on diversity and success. This type of work seems to strike a nice balance with the Putnam research that shows that diversity decreases political participation.

IR Theory Links

We be discussing these theories.

Political Realism
Internet Encyl of Philosophy
Wikipedia
Liberalism
Wikipedia
Constructivism
Wikipedia
Marxism
Wikipedia


This website also has a brief overview of all theories

Obama solving Kenya's problems

The fact that Obama took time off during his campaign to make this call goes a long way in my book:

"The political crisis here, which has claimed at least 486 lives and probably many more, seems to be raising wider concerns, with President Bush issuing a statement urging “both sides to engage in peaceful dialogue” and Senator Barack Obama speaking to opposition leaders by telephone.

Mr. Obama, Democrat from Illinois who is running for president, has close ties to Kenya. His father was Kenyan and a member of the same ethnic group as Kenya’s top opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Mr. Obama took a short break from campaigning on Monday and asked Mr. Odinga to meet directly with Kenya’s president without preconditions, a spokesman for Mr. Obama said."

Multiculturalism and Foriegn Policy

I can hardly have said it better myself:

Obama’s argument is about more than identity. He was intelligent and prescient about the costs of the Iraq War. But he says that his judgment was formed by his experience as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I’d agree with Obama. I’ve spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I’ve got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I’ve never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification.

But any insights I have are thoroughly informed by the perspective and judgment that I’ve gained from being first a foreigner, then a foreign student, then an aspiring immigrant and now an American. My biography has helped me put my book learning in context, made for a richer interaction with foreigners and helped me see the world from many angles. So I understand what Obama means when he talks about his life and its lessons.

Wow, a candidate who can speak well

From the NYTimes, Romney speaking about Obama
“He just trounced her there because all that experience isn’t what they wanted to hear about — they wanted to see somebody who said they would do something new and change Washington,” Mr. Romney said. “And,” he added, “we cannot afford Barack Obama as the next president. He’s a very nice fellow and he’s a well-spoken fellow, but he’s never done it.”

I think I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that. What do people expect from Obama? When is the covert racism and lowed expectations going to end?

Richardson the Diplomat

Bill Richardson, bold, brash, aggressive, Latino, reminds me of someone I know...

NY Times article on diplomatic efforts

POLS 284 Review

Review session will be at 1pm on Thurs, BSB 385.

Climate Change and War

NYTimes just listed climate conflict as an important new idea of 2007

December 9, 2007

Climate Conflicts

"It took years for a consensus on the existence and causes of climate change to emerge. But it took no time at all, it seems, for leaders around the world to latch onto the notion that global warming will bring war. In the spring, a report by retired U.S. generals and admirals called on Washington to incorporate climate change, especially its destabilizing effect on weak states, into the United States’ national defense strategy. Soon after, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote in The Washington Post that the origin of the brutal fighting between herders and farmers in Darfur was an extended drought that was tied to the warming of the Indian Ocean — itself the product of new weather patterns driven by human activity. And then Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in part for his climate-change documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” What does global warming have to do with peace? In the view of the Nobel panel, it “may induce large scale migration and lead to greater competition for the Earth’s resources ... [and] increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.”

It stands to reason that the consequences scientists expect from global warming (droughts, floods, failed crops) would worsen the problems that can lead to conflict (poverty, inequality, refugee flows). But Idean Salehyan, a political scientist at the University of North Texas, warns against making too much of that point. There’s little empirical data linking scarcity to conflict, he argues; if anything, people tend to fight over the abundance of resources."

Iran

One of the most interesting political developments in the last few years. This report derails the call for war, sanctions, call into question the policy of preemption, and suggestions that Iran is a rational actor. Pretty much groundbreaking all around.

NIE Iran Report 2007

Although I do fail to see how this is a victory for Iran. Basically it just says, fine, we believe you.