The bloggers at Coming Anarchy have put together an informative series of posts about the shifting borders of states and empires. There’s a time-lapse animation of the expansion and contraction of Rome and Byzantium, a series of maps for each of Ethiopia, Poland, Armenia , Persia, and Russia. Also, there’s a series of comparative maps on state borders in...
I think it's safe to say that Marty Lederman has been one of the blogosphere's most passionate, articulate, and persuasive critics of the Office of Legal Counsel's authorization of waterboarding. So I was very surprised to read his latest post on the subject, in which he argues not only that the CIA officers who actually conducted the waterboarding would...
Once again, thanks to Roger Alford and everyone else involved with Opinio Juris for a rich discussion and an excellent example of how the Internet can facilitate in-depth exchanges. I wrote God and Gold hoping to set off a conversation about some important and often uncomfortable truths: that the modern world has developed under the auspices of an ever growing and deepening...
This is the question Peter Spiro poses in his response to God and Gold. While noting that I call for an ‘organic, Burkean evolution’, he wonders whether I’ve given full weight to the role these institutions need to play, not as utopian solvers of humanity’s many problems, but as ‘the arena for addressing the problems of global society.’ It’s a probing...
The situation in Kosovo may be coming to a head in the next few days. (See also this.) The New York Time is reporting today:Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Friday about 100 countries were ready to recognize the province's independence from Serbia, which political sources say could be declared on Feb 17. "We have confirmation by around 100 countries that...
The ICC has a third suspect in custody. Not surprisingly, he's another Congolese rebel:Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, a Congolese national and alleged former leader of the National integrationist Front (FNI) and currently a Colonel in the National Army of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo [Forces armées de la RDC/ Armed Forces of the DRC ] (FARDC),...
The final section of God and Gold addresses the question of why Anglo-Saxon optimism has so often been wrong, and what three centuries of Anglo-Saxon success means for world history. Much of this section focuses on American misapprehension of liberal capitalist democracy. While Americans think of it as a way to promote social peace and stability, they fail...
The fun continues at Opinio Juris next week, February 11-14, as we host an online discussion of Professor Andrew Guzman's book, How International Law Works, which has just been published by Oxford University Press. Professor Guzman teaches at UC-Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, where he directs the International Legal Studies Program. Guzman is a prolific scholar and...
One of the key arguments in that latter half of Mead’s book is that Anglo-Americans are particularly given to visions of history working itself out toward some greater purpose. Mead believes that Anglo-Americans are distinctly oriented toward utopian visions of fixing human affairs. Of course, there are ample examples to support naïve and idealistic American dreams of a...
Mead’s discussion of the Anglo-American Protestant work ethic ventures into the fascinating subject of the sociology of religion. I am by no means an expert in this area, but I once was a student of the subject and I do have some reflections on his discussion of the societal benefits of the Anglo-American Protestant work ethic. His thesis...
This is a terrific read, a Big Book in all the good ways. I’m particularly struck by the way that Mead stretches The End of History out backwards as a persistent trait of Anglo-American culture. One can hardly not have heard of Norman Angell these days, as the herald of false dawns, but connecting the dots from him...
Part Four of Gold and Gold builds upon the previous sections to discuss what Mead calls the golden meme of Anglo-American history and politics. The English-speaking world has adopted a dominant paradigm representing a deeply rooted vision of how the world works. The idea that the world is built (or guided by God) in such a way that...
