Robert Farley

URGH. I can’t imagine this news will please the British, given that they’ve been complaining about excessive U.S. aerial bombing in Afghanistan: A bomb dropped by a U.S. fighter jet was believed to have killed three British soldiers in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defense said Friday. Two other soldiers were injured.The ministry said the […]

THIS IS A STRANGE COMPETITION. Hans at Strategic Security Blog notes that very recently both the British and Chinese governments have declared themselves to have the smallest nuclear arsenal of any NPT recognized nuclear power. After doing some digging, Hans concludes that either may be right; while secrecy precludes a determination of the exact number […]

RECRUITMENT. The Times has an interesting article on African-American recruitment into the armed services: That kind of rejection of military service as an option of young blacks throughout the country has resulted in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the war began. Defense Department reports show that the share of blacks among active-duty […]

AVERAGE INCOME. What surprised me most about this article was that average income had not, by 2005, recovered to the 2000 level. Noting a drop in median income wouldn’t be much of a story, given the degree to which the Bush administration has stacked the deck in favor of the wealthy. But aside from the […]

MORE ON MITCH IN TROUBLE. To add to what Andrew Green says in his TAP Online piece today, Matt Gunterman of Ditch Mitch highlights a Washington Times article also suggesting that Mitch McConnell might be in serious jeopardy in 2008: When the Washington Times is running stories about Senator Mitch McConnell’s extreme vulnerabilities in Kentucky, […]

A DANGER TO THEMSELVES. As has been reported in several places, Russia is resuming trans-oceanic bomber flights after a break of longer than a decade. Via Danger Zone, Richard Weitz at World Politics Review writes: Russia’s aging equipment and Russian air crews with less comprehensive training than their American or Soviet-era counterparts make the bombers […]

PATRICK HENRY AND MARK LILLA. I had the same reaction to Mark Lilla’s long article on faith and politics in the New York Times as Matt; I’m not convinced that we can reasonably say that the religification of politics is in America’s past. Lilla: As for the American experience, it is utterly exceptional: there is […]

POINTLESS BORDER DISPUTES. Defense News is reporting that India has begun substantial infrastructure improvements along the disputed area of its border with China. These include roads and airbases large enough to accommodate the C-130s that the Indians are buying from the U.S. The Indians say this is in response to similar moves on the Chinese […]

RUDY AND REALISM. Dan Drezner calls out one of Rudy’s ghostwriters: You know, you can slam realism for not caring much about human rights, or for advising a hard-hearted approach to world politics. What you can’t do is claim that realism “exaggerate[s] America’s weaknesses and downplay[s] America’s strengths” because it doesn’t pay attention to economics. […]

THE SPIRIT. Robert Kaplan’s Atlantic article on the B-2 is an embarrassment, both for himself and for the Air Force personnel that he interviewed. It’s all fine and well to find a particular kind of military hardware appealing, but Kaplan’s enthusiasm for the B-2 leads him to make laughably idiotic assertions about its capabilities and […]