Image Source. I wish I could say that this Vox hot-take by Max Fisher is the most foolish piece Vox has published and Fisher has written. Alas, this is not the case. It is a rather run-of-the-mill effort from Vox‘s foreign policy team, no more vapid than their usual fare. What distinguishes this piece from it peers is […]
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 […]
“Photo of the Hawelka Cafe on a Quiet Thursday Morning,” Photograph taken by “KF” (Vienna, 2 Feb 2006). Image Source: Wikimeda There have been many responses to last week’s post, “Requiem For The Strategy Sphere.” Ryan Evans, Brett Friedman, Adam Elkus, Kelsey Atherton, Andrew Exum, and Mark Safranski all participated in long tweet streams discussing the piece. […]
The Washington Post published an essay yesterday that is making the waves. It is titled “Why Asian Americans Don’t Vote Republican.” The author presents Asian-American voting patterns as a mystery to be solved: In the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama won 73 percent of the Asian-American vote. That exceeded his support among traditional Democratic Party […]
I typed “online communities” into Google images and this was the best thing it gave me. Image Source. I began blogging in December, 2007. I chose to name this blog The Scholar’s Stage mostly because I thought the alliteration was neat. The title was not without irony. When I began blogging I completely lacked the […]
. “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: […]
Image Source. Yesterday’s post, “Pre-Modern Battlefields Were Absolutely Terrifying,” has proven immensely popular. The sheer number of responses to it on social media, web forums, and other websites has been a bit overwhelming. My favorite of these was written by Lynn Rees, co-blogger over at Zenpundit. In a personal message to me he describes how […]
Image Source. “Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second” –Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle, trans. John Greely and Robert Cotton (or. pub. Paris, 1870; trans. edition, New York, 1921), pg. 1. Of the many […]
The famous “nine-dash line” that marks China’s territorial claims in the South China SeaSource: “Q&A: South China Sea Disputes.” BBC News (15 May 2013). A worthwhile debate between Lyle Goldstein and Alexander Vuving has been playing out on the pages of the National Interest this month. It started with a short essay by Goldstein titled “The South China Showdown: 5 Dangerous Myths.” […]
Many of the Stage’s readers will be familiar with the work of “Pseudoerasmus,” currently the internet’s best blogger working on both economic development and macro-history. His most recent post is titled “Where do Pro-Social Institutions Comes From?“ I strongly urge you read it. In essence, Pseudoerasmus’s post tries to answer two questions: Why do humans cooperate? […]