While the sun and moon endureLuck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,I’d face it as a wise man would,And train for ill and not for good. —A.E. Housman, “Terence This is Stupid Stuff,” (1896) THE WORDS of Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered on the 3rd of June to the assembled […]
Image Source. Nibras Kazimi, who blogs at Talisman’s Gate, has a long essay out for the Hudson Institute that you ought to read. It’s focus is on the ideological contest being waged between Saudi Arabia and ISIS over who can claim to be the true defender of the Sunni faith in the face of Shi’a […]
What does Darwin have to do with terracotta warriors, samurai armies, or Napoleon’s conquests? Quite a lot. Or at least this is what I argue in a paper I finished back in April. I anticipated refining it with extra research in the months since then. This hope was not realized. Other projects have consumed my […]
. “Hadrian’s wall at Greenhead Lough” by Velella,Image Source: Wikimedia In a recent War on the Rocks piece Iskander Rehman argues that the United States should not favor a foreign policy of retrenchment because United States policy makers are simply too daft and out of touch with the world to play the part of a modern day Castlereigh: […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. TOP BILLING “Down With the Nihilists!” and “Love Thy Country““T.J. Ma.” Chublic Opinion. (31 & 6 August 2015). I was led to this blog by the recommendation of Kaiser Kuo and instantly knew that it needed to be on the blog roll. “T.J. Ma” writes […]
Major religions in the Middle EastImage Source: Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 Project I am not a specialist in arms control or nuclear technology. I must rely on the judgement of others with relevant expertise to assess the viability of the new agreement with Iran. This makes things difficult, for the opinions of experts I trust […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. TOP BILLING “What Does a “Good” Adjustment Look Like?“ Michael Pettis, China’s Financial Markets (1 September 2014). This essay is long but excellent. It is also the best thing I have read about the Chinese economy in months. Two quotes to give readers the flavor of […]
. Last week Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) brokered a deal that ended the CNRP’s year-long parliamentary boycott. The CNRP disputed the results of last summer’s election (which they lost) and refused to take the 55 seats they won until an ‘independent’ election committee could audit […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit.TOP BILLING“The Little Divergence“‘Pseuderoerasmus,’ Pseudoarasmus (12 June 2014) In this blogpost I will argue the following : While very few economic historians now dispute that East Asia had lower living standards than Europe well before 1800, …there is no agreement on whether European economies prior to 1800 were “modern” […]
A Chinese coast guard ship fires a water cannon at a Vietnamese vessel.Image Credit: AP News (16 May 2014) Over the last two weeks remarkable things have happened in the South China Sea. I assume that the readers of The Stage have read the relevant news reports; I will not copy them here. At the […]
