Five random thoughts

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, June 28, 2010 - 11:37 AM

I'm in New York right now, delivering my kids to summer camps and such, and then I'm going to take a couple of days off from blogging. Here are a few random musings of mine that you can ponder until I'm back at the keyboard.

My bedtime book right now is Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. It is a great read, if not quite as elegantly argued as his prize-winner Guns, Germs and Steel. I'm learning a lot about a host of primitive cultures (some of which I'd never even heard of), and finding about the modern science of forensic archaeology. It's sorta like CSI meets Margaret Mead ... I'm hoping to glean some larger lessons for how societies respond to setbacks, as part of a larger research project I'm pursuing. If I do get any brainwaves, I'll pass them along.
I flew to DC last week, and when I checked in at the airport the United Airlines self-service kiosk gave me three different options for "upgrades," including two that would have helped me get through the security line faster. I declined them all, and then discovered that the TSA checkpoint was a mob scene that took over twenty minutes to get through. This made me wonder: do airlines have an increasing incentive to make regular economy class travel as miserable as possible, so that they can sell us marginal improvements at marginal cost? And does that mean they'd prefer it if the TSA process were as inefficient as possible, so that more of us are tempted to buy our way out?
New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon apparently thinks terrorism used to be "romantic," at least when it was being done on behalf of Zionism (h/t to Phil Weiss and Matt Duss).
Given how much it apparently costs to hold a G20 summit (i.e., more than $1 billion), and given that the member governments have all pledged to cut budgets, maybe they should consider doing the next one via videoconference. Not as many nice photo-ops, perhaps, but they could save a bundle. And I'll bet the carbon footprint of that summit wasn't exactly trivial either.
I was disappointed when the United States got eliminated in the soccer World Cup, but also relieved. Having the world's most powerful country eliminate the last team from the host continent would not have endeared the United States to anyone. Plus, the United States got outplayed and didn't deserve the win.

That's all, folks. I'll be back in a few days, unless I just can't resist.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

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Who told Obama to go to Copenhagen?

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Friday, October 2, 2009 - 9:05 PM

Denmark is a lovely country and Air Force One is a very nice plane, so I hope Barack and Michelle enjoyed their little jaunt to Copenhagen. I said it was a mistake for Obama to go shilling for the City of Chicago even before we knew the results, and now of course I'm sure of it.

What I'd really like to know is which one of his aides told him that this was a good idea, and convinced him that his involvement would seal the deal. Sending the President across the Atlantic to lobby in this fashion might make sense if you knew the vote would be close and were very confident that his intervention would be decisive, but it now looks like it wasn't a near thing at all. Don't these people know how to count noses in advance? Chicago's bid got rejected in the first round, leaving the Leader of the Free World looking ineffectual. And that's just about the last thing you want a president to seem.

It's not a huge deal -- though you can count on the right-wing smear machine to be all over it -- but I hope somebody at the White House gets taken to the woodshed on this one. As I've said repeatedly, they are trying to do way too much, and have been forced to use Obama for too many small things. I hope they learn a lesson from this, and I sure hope the president does better with his next overseas sales pitch.

OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images

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Did I double-fault?

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - 1:38 PM

A number of readers wrote in regarding my last post, which described French Open champion Roger Federer as having delivered most/all of his acceptance speech in English (even though he speaks French fluently). They report that I was dead wrong, and that most of his remarks were in French, save for the comments he directed at runner-up Robin Soderling (who spoke in English), and Andre Agassi (who was there to present the award).

Except for the announcer, I didn’t hear any French in the broadcast I watched, but NBC may skipped that portion of the coverage. It's also possible that I was refilling my coffee cup and returned to catch the English portion of his remarks. Mea culpa, and apologies to all for missing this one.

Speaking of French, I will be trying to resurrect my own rusty skills in that language over the next week. I'm visiting the The Graduate Institute in Geneva to participate in a thesis defense and give a colloquium, and then attending a conference on "Rising Powers Amidst International Turmoil: The United States and Europe Facing China and Russia" in Talloires, France. I'm told the hotels all have WiFi, so I'll be posting from the road as time permits.