Interesting article from Defense News on US-Chinese relations. The US CINC of Pacific Command has noted that Chinese naval forces have seemed less aggressive this year than they were last year, and offers a couple of explanations for why. I have some thoughts on these explanations, but there is one other point that I also find particularly interesting:
Publishing
April 13, 2011
March 30, 2011
Another Word on Libya
So, it appears that the issue of just who the rebels in Libya are is finally beginning to receive greater attention. Good for the policymakers and the press! Even before the question of arming the rebels came into question, this should have been front and center. The presumption up until this point seems to have made is that the ouster if Ghadaffi is a good thing for regional stability. A solo-act rebel takeover would leave us in fundamentally the same situation that a western-backed ouster would leave us in. Specifically, we are left with the destruction of a regime, and little idea as to what sort of institutional arrangements would take its place, and who would occupy those institutions, which (in my mind) does not sound like a recipe for enhancing regional stability.
March 11, 2011
Stupid people doing their stupid jobs
Dan Drezner has a good post that is worth a read. Again, I think the issue he's discussing raises the question on how some of these lower-level actors fit into the policymaking process. This piece also sort of raises the issue of how these actors should fit into the broader public discourse over policies as well. But I suppose my advice to Senator Graham would be, if you're not prepared for, or don't want to hear the answer, then don't ask the question. Unless you're purposely trying to bait the DNI to bash him, that is. I agree that it's ridiculous to feign this sort of outrage and demand the resignation of a public official who is---dare I say it? Actually attempting to do his job in an unbiased manner?
As an extension of this issue, I have to wonder what sort of political capital there is to be gained from publicly attacking the DNI in this way? Does Graham impress voters? Colleagues?
March 10, 2011
Maps Maps Maps, Part Deux
I posted a few days ago about openheatmap.com, a website that will convert your csv files into fancy thermal maps. One problem with our initial attempts to map out the presence of American military forces abroad was that the data are highly skewed. Some countries host upwards of 50,000--60,000 American military personnel in the year we're looking at (2005). In the past this figure was even higher---Germany at one point plays host to roughly 250,000 members of the American military during the Cold War.
As you can imagine, we don't have that many soldiers in most countries. The original map I posted was somewhat misleading, as countries such as China and Russia appeared to have more soldiers within their boarders than they actually have, and this was mostly the result of the combination of skewed data and the way that software color-coded countries. Phil Arena suggested logging the troop values to see if this would help to take care of the issue:
I've changed the colors from blues to reds, as I think this helps a bit, but the figures used to generate the map above are the logged values of troops within the country. The paler countries obviously have fewer soldiers than the darker countries. Overall I think this map looks better, but there is still a fairly substantial amount of variation that is being masked by the limited range of tones. For example, Iran is actually coded as having one American soldier present during 2005, which explains why it's a pale tan/organge. Nevertheless, I think the important information that the map is intended to convey (namely the extent to which the US military has at least some presence virtually everywhere) is still there.
On a final note, I also found that the map doesn't distinguish between 0 values and positive values---rather, a 0 and a 1 will share the same color. Any observations that have a 0 value need to be dropped out of the data before the map is created. This is kind of a funny feature, but something that users should be aware of.
March 08, 2011
March 03, 2011
Maps Maps Maps
Back in December I had a brief post about CRACK, a mapmaking software package for Macs. The downside was that CRACK only worked for making maps of the United States. As the need has arisen, Michael Allen and I began looking for something similar that could handle world maps. This brings me to OpenHeatMap, an online platform for making those fancy looking thermal heat maps using data from a spreadsheet. We were looking for something to visually display some data that we have on US Military Personnel abroad, and this seems to work pretty well. Here's an example:
The program lets you mess with some of the details, such as borders, colors, etc. The only downside is that it does not appear to allow you to save an image. Mac users have the option of taking screen shots by selecting particular areas on the screen, but I don't think PCs have this feature yet. Anywho, if you have a Mac, this lack of a downloadable file probably won't matter too much to you. Also, there are some small troop deployments to some microstates that this map does not display--getting it to recognize some of the country names in the data may also be a bit of a struggle.
Also, the data used for making this map was obtained from Tim Kane at the Heritage Foundation.
February 24, 2011
Rumsfeld Interview
Given this piece from the other day, I thought this was an appropriate followup. Daily Show fans have probably already seen his interview from last night with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld, but for those who have not I would recommend it. Rumsfeld was unquestionably one of the most important architects of the Iraq war, and I think this interview fits in nicely with the discussion from the other day regarding the influence of unelected actors in the policymaking process. I found it particularly interesting how Rumsfeld acknowledges the important role played by presidential advisors in this process, but really seems to shift accountability away from the Defense Department and onto the State Department and the non-descript "intelligence community" (of which the DOD is an incredibly important member).
It's worth noting Rumseld's comments regarding his previous remarks on "going to war with the military you have, not the one you wish you had." I think it's easy to dismiss this comment as another of Rumsfeld's witticisms, but I think the question it poses is important and worth exploring. How much do we really know about how the decisions of an administration's predecessor constrain the ability of the current administration to act in certain ways? If we are to take Rumsfeld at his word--not much. He seems to be implying that the capabilities of the state don't factor into decisions related to the use of force, or at least that they only matter to a certain extent. Policy objectives come first--capabilities matter second.
Some of his remarks also suggest some interesting things insofar as the learning process of the miltiary/DOD is concerned. Is it preferable to invest significant amounts of money and resources up front to address possible shortfalls? Or is it better to go to war, knowing that capabilities are less than optimal, but that investments in updating or upgrading capabilities will be more efficiently and effectively applied after more information is gained through battlefield encounters? Rather, that it is impossible to know what the optimal allocation of funds is until more information is gained?
Thoughts?
February 23, 2011
Quick Post
So it's been a little while since I've posted here (very busy times these are). Anyway, I wanted to link to this post by Phil Arena over at his blog. Phil discusses how his views on various topics related to IR have changed over the past few years. I agree with a lot of what he has to say on these issues--I think a lot of what IR scholars focus on, to the extent that we're interested in the domestic forces generating foreign policy outcomes, tend to place too much stock in the qualities we typically assume to characterize democracies and autocracies. I also agree that economic forces play a huge role in shaping the incentives of political actors--particularly the elites that Arena mentions.
January 04, 2011
Citing eBooks
I got my Amazon Kindle about a year ago and I really enjoy it, but I am finding myself become increasingly frustrated by the apparent lack of standards when it comes to citing eBooks. On some occassions this isn't really a problem---if you need a particular page number you can often times type a phrase into Google Books and find what you're looking for (assuming the correct edition is available). But to some extent this defeats the purpose of having an eReader. Furthermore, Google Books often censors the content of a variety of books, so it's not guaranteed that you will be able to find the specific page that you happen to be searching for.
I am clearly not the first person to find this frustrating. Upon searching for an answer I came across this page with some comments written by a certain Stephen Smith. The location numbers that eReaders like the Kindle feature should indeed be more accurate, as I understand it. Depending on the reader's preferences you can change the size of the font. But, as this will change the content featured on each "page" of the eReader, page numbers are not particularly useful guides when searching for specific content.
The page referenced above suggests a solution offered by the Chicago Manual of Style, wherein a section title or chapter be listed for eBooks in place of page numbers. But this is really not much of a solution. Depending on the writer's style and length of the book, particular sections or chapters could be enormous, thereby making it difficult to track down what it is that you are looking for. True, as this page points out, even hard copies of books have some issues with page numbers varying across different editions. But this is only a problem when tracking content across multiple readers. And even in a situation where two or more readers are working from different editions, the content is often similar enough where the page different might only be a matter of a couple of pages.
The problem with eReaders seems to be that the reader/author themselves cannot accurately convey, by current academic standards, where it is that they are drawing information from. And it is more difficult to translate a location number into a page number than it is to navigate from a page number from one edition to the correct spot in another edition of the same hard copy. I haven't yet seen an article published in a political science journal that features eReader locations for some readings, in addition to page numbers for others. A quick Google search for political science style guides did not seem to shed any light on the issue either. I'm not sure this problem affects that many people at present, but it does seem like an issue that would, conceivably, be fairly simple to resolve.
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