I've been too busy to blog much this week, but I thought I"d mention that I've taken the plunge and signed up for Twitter (@StephenWalt). I'll probably use it sparingly, but who knows? Please bear with me until I get the hang of it. Brevity has never been my long suit, so this may take awhile.

The esteemed CEO here at FP Inc., David Rothkopf, thinks Benjamin Netanyahu has finally killed off the Israel lobby. This step was probably unnecessary, however, because Rothkopf also thinks the lobby never existed or if it did, had very little influence.

Rothkopf is surely right in saying that Netanyahu has overplayed his hand in recent months. He is also correct to remind readers that AIPAC and the other key organizations in the lobby do not get everything they want. (No serious person ever said it did, of course.) His attempt to slay the supposed "myth" of the Israel lobby is unconvincing, however, as it rests mostly on misrepresenting what others have said and ignores the overwhelming evidence that groups like AIPAC, some other organizations, and a few individuals are in fact an important force in shaping U.S. Middle East policy. But his article deserves to be read carefully anyway, because it provides a primer on how Israel's defenders are now trying to hide the elephant in the room.

Step 1: Always portray discussions of the lobby's influence in the most extreme and easily ridiculed form. The first ploy is to suggest that people who write about the lobby think it is "all-powerful," that it "controls" U.S. foreign policy, or that it is responsible for every single problem in the Middle East. Use phrases like "Super K-streeters" to lampoon the idea that there is in fact a well-organized interest group trying to reinforce the "special relationship" on a daily basis. Or use words like "conspiracy" or "cabal" to hint that anyone who talks about the lobby is really just channeling discredited and venal anti-Jewish stereotypes.

A variation on this tactic is to suggest that such writers also see the lobby as a single monolithic organization, or that they believe "all Jews think alike." Pay no attention to the fact that serious scholars and journalists who do write about the lobby's influence have rejected all of these views; in fact, they've said the exact opposite. In short, start by erecting a straw man and then attack it.

Step 2: State or imply that anyone who writes critically about the Israel lobby is an anti-semite or a self-hating Jew. This is of course an old stratagem designed to silence anyone who thinks about raising the subject. It's not as effective as it used to be, because it was been used so widely and so inappropriately in the past, but it's still a key part of the playbook. As Rothkopf writes in this most recent piece, the Israel lobby "is just a boogie-man cooked up to serve the nasty agenda of people all too eager to sacrifice the truth on the altar of their prejudices." There's really nothing to see here, folks, and if you think you do see something, you must be a bigot.

Step 3. Studiously ignore all of the politicians and commentators who have openly testified to the lobby's influence. Such as the following well-known Israel-haters:

Bill Clinton: AIPAC is "stunningly effective. . . better than anyone at lobbying in this town."

Jeffrey Goldberg: AIPAC is a "leviathan among lobbies."

Rep. Lee Hamilton: "There's no lobby group that matches it . . . they're in a class by themselves."

Sen. Harry Reid: "I can't think of a policy organization in the country as well-organized and respected as AIPAC."

Rep. Newt Gingrich: "AIPAC is the most effective general interest group . . . . across the entire planet."

Sen. Barry Goldwater: "I was never put under greater pressure than by the Israeli lobby. . .It's the most influential crowd in Congress and America by far."

Sen. Fritz Hollings: "You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here [on Capitol Hill]."

Alan Dershowitz: "My generation of Jews . . .became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy."

Aaron David Miller: "Today you cannot be successful in American politics and not be good on Israel. And AIPAC plays a key role in making that happen."

Step 4: Focus attention on those occasional moments when Israel and the lobby don't get their way, and ignore all the other times that they do. Rothkopf's main piece of evidence that the lobby is a minor force is Benjamin Netanyahu's failure to get the United States to commit itself to a preventive war on Israel's behalf. That is one hell of an ask, of course, and sometimes when you demand the moon you don't get it. As Matt Duss tweeted yesterday, by this logic, the cancellation of the F-22 proves that there's no defense lobby either.

Netanyahu may not get his war with Iran, but he and his predecessors still get a lot of other things that no other country receives: $3 to 4 billion in aid each year for country that now ranks 27th in the world in per capita income, reliable diplomatic protection (including an endless stream of U.N. security council vetoes that place us at odds with our other democratic allies), plus a parade of prominent politicians delivering pandering speeches at the annual AIPAC policy conference and the opportunity to address joint sessions of Congress more often than any other world leaders. But wait, there's more! You also get the United States turning a blind eye toward Israel's nuclear program, and U.S. officials offering only the mildest of complaints when Israel builds another settlement, bombs Gaza, or kills an American peace activist. Does anyone seriously believe that the political clout of AIPAC and other "pro-Israel" organizations (including a few Christian Zionist groups) has nothing to do with all this?

I agree with Rothkopf that Netanyahu overplayed his hand badly, and that this incident does reveal both the limits of the lobby's power and (perhaps) some diminution of its influence overall. The declining influence may also be due to the fact that it is becoming harder to justify the special relationship after forty-plus years of occupation, and when Israel's own political order is moving in worrisome directions. It is also harder to defend that relationship when the costs to the United States -- in terms of rising anti-Americanism and declining influence in the region -- are more apparent. The special relationship isn't the only reason for those trends, but it is surely one of them, as former U.S. CENTCOM commanders have repeatedly said.

But there's another factor at work, which is not incompatible with this view, and that is the fact we are now getting a much more open discussion of these issues. Why? Because those of us who have been done serious research on the Israel lobby have presented an accurate and nuanced view of the lobby's influence and its limits and the negative impact of that influence on the United States and Israel. All someone has to do is read these works to see that they were not the bigoted screeds that Rothkopf and other critics described. And once people showed what was going on, others could see it and start to talk about it too. Netanyahu's humiliating smackdown of Obama over the settlement question and the two-state solution made this even more apparent to anyone with eyes, as Peter Beinart has documented quite convincingly, and his more recent antics over Iran just drove the point home.

Facts are stubborn things, and no amount of dust-kicking and hand-waving can prevent more and more people -- including Jews like Peter Beinart and M.J. Rosenberg and philo-semites like Andrew Sullivan and me -- from pointing them out. If AIPAC and its allies are in fact beginning to lose some of their clout, the recent emergence of a somewhat more open discourse on this question is at least partially responsible. 

You may have noticed that there is an active campaign underway to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In fact, the real goal is to prevent Iran from having even the latent capacity to build a weapon if at some point it decided it wanted one. This is why the United States and other countries have imposed increasingly draconian economic sanctions on Iran, launched covert actions such as the Stuxnet virus, and made repeated threats to use military force.

One of the background elements in this campaign has been repeated warnings that Israel's leaders believed "time was running out" and that they were getting ready to launch a preventive strike on their own. This recurring theme has depended heavily on cooperation from sympathetic journalists and compliant media organizations, who have provided a platform to disseminate these various dark prophecies.

In September 2010, for example, The Atlantic published a cover story by Jeffrey Goldberg ("The Point of No Return") based on interviews with dozens of Israeli officials. Goldberg concluded that the odds of an Israeli attack by July 2011 were greater than 50 percent. Fortunately, this forecast proved to be as accurate as most of Goldberg's other writings about the Middle East.

Then, in January of this year, the New York Times Magazine published an article by Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman entitled "Will Israel Attack Iran?" The piece essentially replicated Goldberg's earlier article: once again, various Israeli officials were quoted as saying that Iran's nuclear program was nearing a critical stage and that Israel was going to take action if Iran did not agree to end all enrichment. Despite a few caveats about the risks of an attack and the possibility that it wouldn't halt Iran's progress for very long, the overall tenor of the piece made it clear that Bergman thought war was very likely.

Even Foreign Policy has gotten into the act, publishing a similar report from former Cheney aide John Hannah a few days ago. According to Hannah, his recent conversations with Israeli officials convinced him that "Israel's resolve to deal with the Iranian nuclear program on its own is no mere bluster." His conclusion: "an attack on Iran was significantly more likely than I had believed before."

Then yesterday Ha'aretz published an article by Barak Ravid -- based on interviews with an unnamed Israeli official -- claiming that U.S. intelligence had now concluded that Iran was making rapid progress toward a bomb. The information in the article was subsequently "confirmed" by Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak (who for all we know was the source of the original leak), but quickly denied by American officials. (Side note: shouldn't someone ask Ravid and his editors if they now want to retract the story?) And as Noam Sheizaf describes here, newspapers in Israel are now filled with stories suggesting that the danger is growing and that Netanyahu and Barak are determined to hit Iran sometime this fall.

Last but not least, yesterday's New York Times featured a one-sided story on the "shadow war" between Israel and Iran that placed virtually all the blame for the trouble on Tehran. On the front page, it described a "continuing offensive" by Iran, without mentioning that there has been a long cycle of tit-for-tat between these two countries. Only after the jump came any mention of the assassination of Iranian civilian scientists (almost certainly by the Mossad), or any acknowledgement that Iran might be acting defensively rather than conducting a totally unprovoked campaign of aggression. I'm not defending what Iran is doing, by the way, only suggesting that it's deeply misleading to portray what the U.S. and Israel are doing as purely defensive and to suggest that it is Iran that has launched some sort of ambitious "offensive.")

As I noted a few months back, it's virtually impossible to know how much credence to place in the repeated predictions that Israel is about to attack. It does prove that there is no shortage of journalists or pundits who are willing to serve as sympathetic stenographers for government officials, but it doesn't tell you very much about what is going to happen or what these officials really believe. Why? Because the various officials whose alarming testimony forms the basis for these articles have lots of different reasons for stirring the pot in this fashion.

In this case, those prophesying war may be trying to reinforce the global sanctions effort and keep Iran isolated. They know that the U.S. and the EU see sanctions as preferable to war, so constantly threatening to slip the leash is a good way to stiffen others' resolve and get them to ramp up demands and pressure. It's also a good way to blackmail the United States into providing additional military assistance, and it helps distract everyone from annoying issues like settlement expansion and the nearly-dead-and-buried "peace process." Given these various motivations, one should take all these forecasts of an imminent Israeli attack with many grains of salt.

Although I believe war with Iran would be folly, one cannot rule it out. All countries commit blunders, and neither the United States nor Israel is immune to this sort of miscalculation (see under: Iraq, Lebanon, etc.). But I am remain skeptical that Israel will attack, for the simple reason that it does not have the military capability to inflict strategically significant damage on Iran's nuclear facilities. As the Congressional Research Service reported earlier this year, "Israeli officials and analysts generally agree that a strike would not completely destroy the [Iranian nuclear] program." The CRS report also suggested that an Israeli strike could not delay the program for long, and that long-term success would depend either on repeated follow-up strikes or on subsequent diplomatic activity (e.g., more sanctions).

All of which suggests that all this talk of Israeli "red lines" and some sort of imminent attack (including the possibility of an "October surprise") is just talk. Indeed, those prophesying war are starting to sound like those wacky cult leaders who keep predicting the End of the World, and then keep moving the date when the world doesn't end on schedule. At what point are we going to stop paying attention?

Like I said, I can't be completely sure that reason will prevail and that a war won't happen, although there do seem to be a lot of sensible voices inside the Israeli security establishment who are counseling against it. What worries me most is that the people who have been sounding all these alarmist warnings will start to worry that their credibility is evaporating, and they will feel compelled to go to war because they've talked about it for so long. That's just about the dumbest reason I can think of, but sometimes even pretty smart people do dumb things.

FP is about to inaugurate a new "comments" system, and it will be interesting to see how this change affects discourse on this site and on others. I don't yet know exactly how the new system is supposed to operate, but I want to use this moment to offer a few comments of my own on the reactions that readers have contributed since I started writing this blog back in 2009.

On the whole, it has been gratifying that some of my posts have elicited a lot of lively discussion. I don't read the comments religiously -- who has the time? -- but when I do, I often find a lot of smart observations and occasionally some useful corrections to things I've written. It's also instructive just to read people scrutinize my ideas from different perspectives, some of them sharply at odds with my own.

What's more disappointing, however, is the level of name-calling and gratuitous spleen that some commenters display. This problem is hardly unique to this site, of course, and plenty of other bloggers and online publications have dealt with this problem too. Unfortunately, anonymity gives people the freedom to write a lot of venomous bilge, and some participants here have leapt to exploit that opportunity.

I welcome pointed arguments, sarcasm, wit, and even the occasional modest dose of snark, but some issues seem to bring out some people's worst instincts on a consistent basis, and reason and civility just run right out the door. The problem is not confined to people who disagree with me, by the way, as I find some readers' attacks on my critics to be equally offensive and/or juvenile. It may be cathartic for the person who's typing, but flame wars do not advance our understanding of difficult issues.

So by all means take issue with me, or with each other, but why not see if you can do it on the basis of logic and evidence, instead of relying on character assassination and name-calling? Or if you do want to call someone out in a direct and personal fashion, drop the cloak of anonymity, sign your real name, and include your email address.

A related gripe is the tendency of some participants to paste lengthy articles from other publications into the "comments" thread. Not only does this clog up FP's servers, it's a disservice to other readers, as it forces them to scroll through a long entry just to get to the next comment. (Hint: because it's so annoying, I suspect this practice doesn't win many converts either.) My view is that readers should feel free to paste in links to articles that support the point they are making, or offer a brief quotation from another source to back up their claims. But as a courtesy to others, commenters would refrain from inserting whole articles from other publications.

Last point: because I don't read every comment, I've refrained from trying to monitor or censor the comments thread. I have deleted a few comments on occasion, either because I judged them to be bigoted, because they were completely off-topic, or because they consisted solely of an excessively long entry "borrowed" from another publication. But I don't have time to do that consistently, and while I take full responsibility for what I write, I bear no responsibility for what all of you write. But I will offer the following unsolicited advice: regardless of what views you espouse, you will win more converts with logic and evidence than you will with invective.

At least I hope so.

It's Thanksgiving once again, and it's become something of a ritual for me to record what I'm feeling grateful for each year. For starters, I want to thank the various people who responded to my request for advice on "policy analysis" yesterday, both via the "comments" section and to me directly. I got some very good suggestions, and I appreciate the help. Whether my students will be similarly appreciative remains to be seen.

This year, I'm thankful that the euro hasn't collapsed - yet -- and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't. It's true that the unraveling of the eurozone would be a striking vindication of a broadly realist view of international relations, but it would also produce tremendous human suffering and that's way too big a price to pay to vindicate a theory. So I hope Europe's leaders manage to defy my usual pessimism and navigate through the crisis. If they do, I'll be even more thankful next year.

I'm also grateful that there's been no war with Iran. Whatever the Obama administration's other shortcomings might have been, those at the top seem to have understood the folly and futility of unleashing major military action against Iran. I won't give them high marks for imaginative diplomacy, but at least they haven't done great harm.

I'm also giving thanks that the United States is getting out of Iraq, and I wish I could believe that we will draw the right long-term lessons from the debacle. On that score, it is not a good sign that many of the architects of that war are still taken seriously as foreign policy "experts," and some are even advising GOP candidates. Doesn't say much for our national learning curve, does it? But even if historical amnesia sets in quickly, I'm pleased that we are finally leaving Iraq to its own leaders. Now if we can just draw a similar conclusion about that other exercise in imperial futility ... Afghanistan.

Like nearly everyone, I'm troubled by the continued turmoil in Egypt and by the Assad regime's brutal behavior in Syria. But I'm thankful that the situation in Libya has thus far defied my worst fears and made at least some modest progress toward the establishment of a more legitimate political order. The capture of former heir-apparent (and accused war criminal) Saif al-Islam Qaddafi and former security head Abudullah al-Senussi pretty much eliminates any possibility of a "loyalist" insurgency, which is a good sign too. The country still has a long way to go, but I will be keeping my fingers crossed.

On a purely personal note, I'm thankful for the courageous policy analysts, writers and bloggers who make it easier for me to do this blog. I'm talking about people who seek puncture conventional wisdom, challenge orthodoxies, and rock the boat on occasion. I value them because they are an antidote to the flood of cautious semi-official narratives that dominate most of the writing on foreign policy, and so they help me think outside the box. So heartfelt thanks to Carl Conetta, Phil Weiss, Juan Cole, Gordon Adams, Martin Wolf, Jerry Haber, Uri Avnery, Jim Lobe, Helena Cobban, Glenn Greenwald, M. J. Rosenberg, John Mueller, Andrew Sullivan, Spencer Ackerman, Jerry Slater, Gideon Rachman, and many others too numerous to list or even remember. I don't know a lot of the people just mentioned, and I don't always agree with any of them. Heck, I don't always agree with this guy either. But I'm glad they are doing what they do.

Of course, I cannot omit my annual word of thanks to the whole gang at FP, including the reporters, writers, and bloggers with whom I've occasionally tussled. The editors remain a delight with whom to work, and it's been a pleasure to be part of their team. And because all bloggers ultimately depend on readers, I'm especially grateful for those of you who take the time to read this stuff.

With each passing year, I've become more aware and more appreciative of my own good fortune. It's been a pretty soft gig to be born a white American male in the mid-1950s, in a country enjoying enormous geopolitical advantages and considerable prosperity. I like to think I've done ok with the advantages I was handed, and there's no doubt that the deck was stacked in my favor from the start. And that goes for a lot of my colleagues and contemporaries too.

More broadly, if you compare the era in which most of us have lived to the previous fifty years (1900-1950), there's little question that we've enjoyed a period of comparative benevolence. The first half of the 20th century witnessed two enormously destructive world wars, the worst economic depression in history, and several brutal genocides. The past sixty years has its own share of tragedies, to be sure, but the overall level of violence was much lower, economic growth was fairly steady (until recently), and many of us never had to endure the insecurities, travesties, and sacrifices that earlier generations experienced or that were still common in other parts of the world.

Most Americans ought to be especially grateful for their extraordinary good fortune, and Thanksgiving is an appropriate time for us to reflect upon it. And as I watch Europe teeter on the brink of financial collapse, observe the violent political contestation that is sweeping the Middle East, note the rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia, and contemplate the tragicomic follies of our so-called leaders in Washington, I do wonder how long it will last, and whether I will look back with regret at the tranquility we have lost.

But tomorrow, I will give thanks for the good that remains, and think about what can still be done to preserve and extend it.

The steadily expanding "phone hacking" scandal in Great Britain is a good reminder that understanding politics requires a healthy appreciation of the role of arrogance and stupidity.  What began is a seemingly straightforward example of sleazy journalistic practice has grown into a full-blown scandal, and the circle of guilt keeps widening.

Just look at the repercussions so far: 1) the NewsCorp's bid to take over all of British Sky Broadcasting has been scuppered, 2) NewsCorp CEO Rebekah Brooks has resigned and is now under arrest, 3) long-time Murdoch associate and Wall Street Journal publisher Les HInton has also resigned his post, 4) Prime Minister David Cameron has been badly tarnished, and oh yes, 5) the head of Scotland Yard has resigned in the wake of revelations that it had bungled the investigation (which is a charitable way of putting it). The WSJ and FoxNews have been exposed as shills for their boss (Murdoch), which is hardly surprising but is hardly going to help their reputations.   

Oh, what a tangled web we weave....

Gallons of ink (or gigabytes of blog posts) have already been devoted to this story, but one broader element has received less attention amidst all the juicy personal stuff. What the scandal really teaches us is the dangers that inevitably arise when any single company or individual exercises excessive influence in media circles. Why? Because a healthy democracy depends on a well-informed citizenry, and media oligarchs can use excessive influence to skew what the public knows or believes in order to advance their own political objectives.  If the Murdoch scandal doesn't convince you, just look at how Silvio Berlusconi used his media empire to drive his political career and look where Italy is today.

Furthermore, politicians are likely to accommodate powerful media organizations that are willing to play hardball, punishing politicians they didn't like and rewarding officials who played along. The NewsCorp was a master at this, and it is no wonder David Cameron and even Scotland Yard became compliant.

Read on

I'm generally not inclined to take issue with my FP colleagues, but David Kenner's recent posting on the WikiLeaks release of a cable recounting Saddam Hussein's infamous meeting with U.S. ambassador April Glaspie deserves a response.

In an article headlined "Why One U.S. Diplomat Didn't Cause the Gulf War," Kenner argues that the new release shows that Glaspie should not be blamed for the U.S. failure to make a clear deterrent warning to Saddam. And that is what he accuses me and John Mearsheimer (and the Washington Post) of doing. In his words, "the Washington Post described her as ‘the face of American incompetence in Iraq.' Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer piled on in a 2003 article for Foreign Policy, arguing that Glaspie's remarks unwittingly gave Iraq a green light to invade Kuwait."

I agree that the WikiLeaks release may exonerate Glaspie for being personally responsible for a diplomatic gaffe, but there are two problems with Kenner's version of events.  

First, we never accused Glaspie of diplomatic incompetence, and we certainly didn't "pile on." Here's what we actually said in our 2003 piece:

In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.' The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.' The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did."

Notice that we offered no opinion on whether Glaspie was free-lancing, mis-reading Saddam, or simply following orders from Washington. Our article was focused on the issue of whether Saddam was deterrable, and the key issue that concerned us about the Glaspie meeting was whether she had conveyed a clear deterrent threat to Saddam, or whether she might have unintentionally given him reason to think he could go ahead and absorb Kuwait without facing a strong military response from the United States.

Read on

My FP colleague Dan Drezner looks at recent poll data showing that America's image around the world has improved (how could it have gotten worse?) and makes an intriguing point:

Consider the ability of the U.S. to enact multilateral economic sanctions. The Bush administration, at the depths of its unpopularity, was still able to get the U.N. Security Council to pass three rounds of sanctions against Iran, as well as measures against North Korea. The Obama administration, despite a serious effort to open a dialogue with Iran, is encountering resistance from China, Brazil, and Turkey in its efforts to craft another round of sanctions."

Dan knows more than I do about the intricacies of economic sanctions, but I can think of two obvious explanations for this apparent paradox. First, as I noted a few days ago, countries like China have little interest in sanctioning Iran, no interest in war, and some interest in prolonging the U.S.-Iranian imbroglio. So they'll drag their feet no matter how popular or unpopular the United States is. Second, we've been down the sanctions road for some time now, and (as one would expect), it's not having any appreciable effect on Iranian behavior. Maybe other states are figuring this out: Why take some costly and inconvenient action when it won't do much good? Obama and the United States may be more popular, but that doesn't make sanctions more effective and therefore international enthusiasm for more of them isn't forthcoming.

NOTE: I will be on the road for the rest of the week, giving a guest lecture at Wesleyan University and attending a conference at Notre Dame, so posting will be dependent on the vagaries of travel and internet access.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of FP's on-line re-launch, and thus the one-year anniversary of this blog. So I thought I'd offer a few reflections on what the experience has been like, and what I've learned from it.

I was of course flattered when FP invited me to contribute, but I agreed to do so with some trepidation. I'd done a lot of writing by this point, including for some popular venues, but I had usually found it difficult to write op-eds and short pieces of commentary and therefore hadn't done a lot of it. The only way to attract readers is to provide a fairly constant stream of commentary (i.e., nobody comes back if you only post once a month), and I was worried that I'd find it hard to keep the words and ideas flowing.  

Thankfully, that hasn't been a big problem. Although there have been a few slow days where I was less than fully inspired (you may have noticed), its more often the case that I don't have time to post on all the topics that I'd like to discuss. One result is that my respect for those who write a biweekly column in the mainstream media has gone down; it would be a luxury to write only twice a week. Given that most of them aren't teaching classes, chairing committees, or writing letters of recommendation, what do all those big-time columnists do with their time?

I quickly discovered that there is a big difference between blogging and academic scholarship, and one has to approach them with a completely different mental attitude. In academic writing, the overriding imperative is to make things as perfect as you can (even though perfection is impossible), and to take as much time as you have to refine and bolster an argument. When academics write a scholarly book or article, it typically goes through a dozen or so drafts, gets presented and criticized at conferences and seminars, and gets circulated to colleagues for additional feedback. And in some cases (e.g., our book on the Israel lobby), we hired two professional fact checkers to go over every line and then spent an entire week with our editor proofing and fine-tuning.

Needless to say, that's not how the blogosphere works. I sometimes spend a fair bit of time researching what I write here, and I occasionally run a piece past a colleague to get their advice, but there is a premium on being timely and analytically sharp, and you rarely have time to sit, sift, ponder, and deliberate. That means bloggers are by definition writing things that are more provisional. If we're honest, we all have to admit that we're going to get a few big things wrong, or offer opinions that we subsequently conclude are mistaken. I'm reasonably happy with most of what I've posted in the past year, but I confess to a sense of trepidation every time I hit "publish." Advice to would-be bloggers: Bring a sense of humility, but also a thick skin.

Of course, that same sense of immediacy is one of the most gratifying things about having a blog. Instead of writing an op-ed and sending it in to some newspaper, and then waiting for days until some editor rules up or down, I just hit "publish" and it appears. Writing a more-or-less daily commentary forces me to stay more closely in touch with world events, and it has made it imperative to develop new sources and new methods for tracking what others have to say about issues I'm interested in.

Indeed, given the concerns I've sometimes expressed about the "cult of irrelevance" in academe, I've come to believe that blogging ought to be actively encouraged in the academic world. I'm not saying that all political scientists, historians, or economists ought to start their own blogs, but we shouldn't penalize scholars who do engage in this activity and we might even consider rewarding it, the same way we should reward scholars who care enough about public service to use their talents and training working in the public or NGO sector. It would be good for the IR field if academic scholars were expected to write a few blog posts every now and then, if only for the purpose of self-examination. If the typical academic had to write a blog for two weeks, they might discover they had nothing to say to their fellow citizens, couldn't say it clearly, or that nobody cared. That experience might even lead a few of my fellow academics to scratch their heads and ask if they were investing their research time appropriately, which would be all to the good. 

What's been the best part so far? First and foremost, I've appreciated the opportunity to participate more actively in the public debate on key topics like U.S. foreign policy, the AfPak dilemma, the ongoing drama in the Middle East, etc.). At the same time, I've also enjoyed exploring more fanciful topics (movies, pop music, sports, novels, holidays), as well as the chance to wander into areas I simply didn't know that much about. Knowing that I had to "feed the beast" each morning has encouraged me to read more widely and keep a notebook of ideas (a useful diversion during boring faculty meetings), and I've found that intellectual spur to be very satisfying.

And as I had hoped, writing this blog has forced me to connect more with the blogosphere itself, which I see as a revolutionary development in mankind's collective conversation.  I remain in awe of many of my fellow bloggers -- there are simply far too many for me to mention them all -- and I wish I had more time to wander the net and search out nuggets of insight that aren't likely to make into more conventional formats (at least not yet). I've also appreciated the supportive emails I've received from lots of readers, and even smiled at some of the snarky comments from some who seem less-than-enthralled (if not downright hostile).  Forgive me if I don't read them all or respond; I am trying to retain some semblance of a normal life.

The downside? Obvious: it's a big time-sink, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write my next book while doing this gig. Writing a solo blog can have a certain treadmill-like quality to it, and there have been a few mornings where I approach my laptop with a sense of obligation rather than zest. And there are those cringe-worthy moments when I realize I've made an obvious mistake; thankfully, there haven't been too many of those.

But on the whole, it's been a fun ride and I'm looking forward to Year 2. If peace breaks out, expect to read more about arts and music and less about fear, greed, stupidity, corruption and other enduring features of world politics. But don't hold your breath.

I didn't think David Rothkopf's rather personal attack on me deserved a response, but Jerome Slater clearly disagrees.