How Brett Favre Teaches Us About Politics

I decided to go back through my social media feeds for mentions of recently released Taliban prisoner Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. My N=1 findings match those of this Vox piece regarding the about-face done by many of Bergdahl’s fiercest advocates.

It may be an excellent example of cognitive dissonance and balance seeking at work. This is something we all can catch ourselves in. Or, as I call it, the Brett Favre problem.

Yes, this guy teaches us about politics.
















The “Brett Favre” problem:

1. Packers fans love Favre.
2. Favre joins the hated Vikings.
3. Packers fans need balance. 

Obama's Foreign Policy: Art of the Possible or Playing out the String?

Today, President Obama chose a West Point commencement address to revisit for the public his administration's foreign policy. The address will be picked apart by many, but it is unlikely to go down in history like Bush's 2002 commencement speech in terms of importance. That doesn't mean it's not worth considering. 

The Russian Ruble Goes for Gold

The following is a guest post from Blake Hall, a senior majoring in Political Science-Economics at Anderson University. He is preparing to begin graduate study in business. His research interests include global finance, global political economy, investment strategy, and emerging markets. You can follow him on Twitter @SBHall765.

Lights. Camera. Action. The Sochi Winter Games began Thursday with the opening ceremony scheduled for Friday evening. What a spectacle for Russia and my key player is the Russian Ruble, will it be able to achieve gold as direct result of the games or will it be another drag/bust on the already ailing economy?

Ruchir Sharma's "Breakout Nations"

As someone who teaches regularly on global economic interconnection, trying to find meaningful, book-length treatments of contemporary markets that are written for a broad audience is important to me. Even when there is a lot to be critiqued in a work, the efforts are valuable. Among the more popular examples of such a work is Fareed Zakaria’s Post-American World, which discussed the "rise of the rest" relative to the developed economies, and even made a brief cameo as a debate point in the 2012 presidential campaign.

I am pleased to report that Ruchir Sharma’s Breakout Nations is a worthy successor to Zakaria’s snapshot of the state of the global economy. Despite some notable flaws, Sharma’s work is ambitious and informed. It has much to critique precisely because it is so ambitious. Sharma’s major conclusions are spot on, though I still have unanswered questions.

Debating the Future of Nuclear Weapons

My essay on American nuclear weapons policy was posted last week on Capital Commentary, a current affairs publication by the Center for Public Justice. CPJ is a think tank in Washington that focuses on public policy through the lens of a Christian faith perspective.

The essay argues for reductions in our nuclear weapons arsenal on the basis of two things. First, it is hypocritical to be opposing other forms of WMDs in places like Syria while we maintain large stockpiles of even deadlier weapons. Second, the use of nuclear weapons can not be justified under Just War, one of the three main Christianity-inspired approaches to the problem of warfare.

Not everyone agrees, and there are certainly intelligent points that can be made in opposition. However, mainstream arguments in support of large nuclear weapons stockpiles tend not to emphasize the moral and ecological dimensions, in my opinion. This is one of those issues where reasonable people can come to distinct conclusions.

Reflections on Israel: the tyranny of geography

Last summer I had the opportunity to travel to Israel as part of an academic fellowship from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The purpose of the fellowship was to explore issues related to terrorism and counterterrorism in the region. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me a lot about how complicated the issues are facing Israelis and Palestinians in their attempts to carve out a peaceful solution to the legacy of conflict.

Looking back on my time in Israel, the major lesson that stands out to me relates to geography. Geography is a tyrant that threatens the peace process, shaping all the advice that one could provide when commenting on Middle East peace. Combined with the presence of constant spoilers in the form of extremist actors, I returned sobered on the prospects for lasting peace in Israel.

The U.S. Role in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Dispute

As part of our effort to highlight the work of Anderson students and alumni, the author has agreed to share the following piece from an assignment on American foreign policy. In this piece from last fall, recent graduate Ryan Daugherty argues for the U.S. to take a moderate stance towards the island dispute between China and Japan.

---

 

The U.S. Role in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Dispute

Ryan Daugherty

The United States is in a very similar role that the United Kingdom was in over a hundred years ago. In this time, the UK saw its power overall falling and the rising powers of the United States and Germany. The UK went two different routes in how it accommodated the rise of new powers while it was still the overall dominant power. With the United States, the UK embraced and worked with the United States to behave as a world power should and the US over time took over many of the same roles that the United Kingdom had previously played. With Germany it was a different story. The UK and allies such as France tried to block and stymie the rise of Germany and this eventually led to the two World Wars. In a sense this is the role the United States is in now. While the United States is now an overall declining power but is losing relative power because of the rise of many other nations, it must find a way to accommodate the rise of many new powers to the world stage and China is the most important of those rising powers.

Guest Post: The Current State of Syria

As part of our effort to highlight the work of Anderson students and alumni, the authors have agreed to share the following piece from an assignment on American foreign policy. Despite being written last November, the piece holds up well due to the lack of a real global consensus on how to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Students Mackenzie Scholte and Ryan Busby propose in this essay a humanitarian coalition to respond to the growing refugee problem resulting from the Syrian civil war.

---

 

The Current State of Syria

Mackenzie Scholte and Ryan Busby

The United States should support any peaceful intervention efforts made by the UN in Syria. It would be in the interest of all states to be part of a peaceful resolution to ensure the safety of the Syrian people. However, due to the failed efforts of Kofi Annan, it is imperative that the U.S. becomes a presence in Syria.

This is for the protection of the Syrian people in a post-haste effort to move the millions of refugees out of the country as safely as possible. Jordan has already registered over 85,000 refugees and Turkey more than 78,000. Lebanon and Iraq are all willing and able to take in refugees, as long as the necessary resources are available for such a mass movement of people.

Who would want this job?

I’m struggling to remember a recent stretch of time with so many significant challenges facing America’s foreign policy establishment. Put yourself in the shoes of the Obama administration and think about what you see when you look at the world…

Protests across Asia and North Africa related to an offensive, low-quality movie, with many of the protests turning violent;

The murder of our ambassador by a group taking advantage of instability in post-revolution Libya;

We don’t really know if one of the largest recipients of foreign aid, and the largest country in the Arab world, is an ally that can be trusted;

A dispute between the second and third largest economies in the world (China and Japan) regarding uninhabited islands that is exacerbated by nationalist pride and leading to closing of factories and more protests;

The collapse of our strategy in Afghanistan following a series of attacks, one of which being a brilliantly executed attack on an important aviation unit;

A rise in oil prices related to moves to stabilize employment markets domestically and the currency and banks in Europe;

Complaints by one of our closest allies, Israel, about how we plan to back up our statements about Iran’s nuclear weapons program; and,

Oh, by the way, there’s this election coming up in less than two months.