How Do We Know an Intervention Has Succeeded?

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. . . . We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans. – President Obama Back in late August of 2012, President Obama uttered words these in an impromptu press conference. At the time, it represented the most concrete and coherent statement of policy regarding the conflict in Syria. With the latest revelation that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on a small scale, calls …

Syriana: Responsibility to Protect or Someone Else’s Problem?

If you’ve ever taken an International Relations Theory course then it’s likely that you’ve encountered the ubiquitous naysayer or two of IR Theory. “Why does this even matter in the study of foreign policy?” “Who cares what the Athenians told the Melians (FYI: 'The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must')?” “Leaders don’t think about this stuff when formulating foreign policy!” Now, the last accusation may in fact be true. Sure, foreign policy elites are not necessarily thumbing through volumes of Morgenthau, Grotius, Kant, Wendt, and/or Waltz when deciding what to do about North Korea. But, these authors and the IR theories they construct provide useful …

Steel Towns, Motor Cities, and Cuban Refugees: Part III of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the third installment of ToM's four part coverage of the 2012 UHAs.  You'll detect a clear bias in favor of aged/renewed rust belt cities with a flourish of transnationalism at the end via the Cuban Revolution and post WWII Miami.  If you missed Part I click here and for Part II here. Panel – Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism Joshua Akers – Settling the City: Urban Homesteading and the Construction of Markets in Detroit “It stands out on the highway like a creature from another time/ It inspires the babies’ questions for their mothers as they ride/ But no one stopped to think about the babies or how they would survive/ We almost lost Detroit, this time.” - …

A Fool Such as Biden: Point Break, Wayward Teeth, and Man Love in the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate

“This is a bunch of stuff!”  I couldn’t have said it better myself…. Wait, of course I could have. So the good people at ToM (I use both terms loosely) asked me what I thought of last night’s hellacious, knockdown, by-the-book, paint-by-the-numbers, firecracker-of-a-parent-teacher-conference. Let me tell you, this couple has fire! The way the one pretended to dismiss his younger (and better looking, mind you) partner with that scenery eating grin and broad armed expressions of dismay, while the fit one blinked those pale blue-green eyes like the emo-loving student-government-vice-president he always strived to be.  The passion between these two feels like Point Break-era Patrick …

Dog Days Classics: Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair’s Ideal Idler

"It was profoundly true that movements of the spirit came first, and that events of history were consequences thereof." -Upton Sinclair, Wide is the Gate Several years ago I was directed toward Upton Sinclair’s socialist-minded quasi-spy novels about a young man named Lanning Prescott Budd. The 11 books span the breadth of time from the onset of The Great War to the rise of the Cold War, but as I have been able to acquire only the first half of the series, my investigation has followed Lanny only so far as the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A New York Times reflection on the books gives a decent introduction to the protagonist: Born in 1900, he was the illegitimate child of an …

Hearting Hamas So Hard Right Now

It says something about where we are that a play called I Heart Hamas can be staged in America without the actors, writers, and producers being run out of town on a rail.  Ten years ago it did not seem like someone could even say “I Heart Palestine” without being hooted down with howls of derision.  I recall the sorry spectacle of a UNCC anthropology professor who wrote to the Charlotte Observer to rebut a virulently racist op-ed piece in the early 2000s; to claim that Palestinians are not, in fact, innately bloodthirsty and fixated on nothing but revenge made Gregory Starrett a lonely voice indeed. Academics such as Edward Said, Joseph Massad, and Nadia Abu el Haj have been hounded …

The 2012 AHA: The Chicago Way

Chicago dogs, deep dish pizza, nasal Midwestern accents, and sunny 50 degree days. Three of these things are associated with Chicago in January. Perhaps the larger forces of the universe took sympathy on the army of academics that descended upon Chicago last week for the annual American History Association conference (one might note the annual meeting of the American Economics Association also held there conference in the Windy City last week, throttling native Chicagoans with questions about opportunity costs, endogenous influences, credit supply in the age of financial crisis and so on). The dark arts of academic employment deserved at the very least blue skies and semi-warm weather. As …

Richard Olney: The Worst Person in the World?

If Keith Olbermann lived a hundred-odd years ago, there’s no doubt that Richard Olney would have made his “Worst Person in the World” segment. For starters Olney’s politics are not exactly Olbermannian. Richard Olney (not to be confused with the food writer of the same name) is known to historians for two acts in public life. In 1894, as attorney general, he convinced President Grover Cleveland to send federal troops to crush the massive Pullman railroad strike (and this despite the fact that the Illinois governor not only did not request the troops, but actually begged Washington not to send them). The following year, as secretary of state, Olney famously stated that “To-day …

Another Look at the Fall of Tripoli

A perspective from our Libya correspondent, an expatriate with close ties on the ground in Tripoli: I am still in shock as to how quick and easy Tripoli fell. They had that all planned in advance and knew the situation in the city and how weak G’s forces were and so they went ahead with the attack on their own without waiting for those rebels from the surrounding towns. They’ve been arming themselves clandestinely for months smuggling weapons in and getting a lot from current army officers who secretly worked with them. They also bought some from whoever had them and was willing to get 500 dinars for each machine gun or rifle, which is a lot of money. Remember that it was G who gave …

Shouting in Silence: 9/11 and the Importance of Not Saying Anything

As August comes to a close, the dog days of summer end, leaving before everyone the distance of Fall. For some like myself, Fall remains the premier season of the year. The air cools, football, England’s Premier League (EPL), and basketball (well, maybe not this Fall) commence and the business of work begins. In its own way, Autumn initiates a sort of professional renewal. For New Yorkers though, Labor Day marks the uncomfortable memory of an impending milestone many would rather forget, 9/11. Unfortunately as the tenth anniversary of this national tragedy approaches, a cacophony of rhetoric seems to be greeting it.I lived in New York for nearly a decade working as a public educator in the …