People tend to balk at pressure. Isn’t it time to find an alternative to deadlines and timelines?
Readers’ Challenge: Have IR Deadlines Outlived Their Usefulness?
read more
Focal Points Blog
Iran, Brazil, Turkey and the Ghost of Lord Palmerston
The U.S. State Department’s claim that the “international community” is behind the U.S. is increasingly sounding like whistling past the graveyard.
Reader’s Challenge: ‘Ritual Nick’ — Preventive Measure or Cultural Relativism?
Right of wrong, the “ritual nick” provides plenty of fodder for the hard right.
Extreme Energy
Noted author and Hampshire College professor Michael Klare, whose latest book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet describes the geopolitics of the energy crisis, will talk about the causes behind the Gulf oil spill.
Kyrgyzstan: Tinderboxes and Tangled Webs
If Kyrgyzstan becomes a pawn on a larger board, then the “Great Game” will shift from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the rest of Central Asia.
Worst Fears May be Realized In Iraq
Can you imagine that candidate Obama would have campaigned on the promise of having 125,000 personnel in Iraq by the end of summer 2010?
Redshirts: To Thai Middle Class They’re Terrorists
Captured Redshirt leaders and militants are treated like POWs and the lower class Redshirt mass-base like an occupied country. No doubt about it, a state of civil war exists in this country, and civil wars are never pretty.
Reader Challenge: Does Afghanistan Spell the End of NATO as We Know It?
Will confining NATO to its own backyard and scaling back its mission could spell the beginning of its end?
Cheonan: Retaliate with Diplomacy
It was probably North Korea behind the sinking of the South Korean ship. But we still need to respond with a hand and not a fist.
Reader Challenge: Red Shirt Leaders Turn Yellow — Whither Now?
Thailand’s Red Shirt leaders surrendered to authorities, leaving their followers to fend for themselves.