As Blake Hounshell noted over at Passport, there was a story earlier this week in the Washington Post's Style section that's just the perfect mix of everything that foreign policy outsiders loathe about foreign policy insiders.  The first reason for loathing it is that Bob Woodward wrote it.  Here's the opener:

Roger Ailes, the longtime Republican media guru, founder of Fox News and its current chairman, had some advice last year for then-Gen. David H. Petraeus.

So in spring 2011, Ailes asked a Fox News analyst headed to Afghanistan to pass on his thoughts to Petraeus, who was then the commander of U.S. and coalition forces there. Petraeus, Ailes advised, should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested.

The Fox News chairman’s message was delivered to Petraeus by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former national security and Pentagon aide in three Republican administrations. She did so at the end of a 90-minute, unfiltered conversation with Petraeus that touched on the general’s future, his relationship with the media and his political aspirations — or lack thereof. The Washington Post has obtained a digital recording from the meeting, which took place in Petraeus’s office in Kabul.

McFarland also said that Ailes — who had a decades-long career as a Republican political consultant, advising Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — might resign as head of Fox to run a Petraeus presidential campaign. At one point, McFarland and Petraeus spoke about the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., which owns Fox News, would “bankroll” the campaign.

Read the whole thing.  Actually, listen to the whole thing -- I'd say that the audio recording of McFarland and Petraeus' conversation is more interesting than Woodward's story.  The tape has everything:

1)  A media mogul displaying overt partisan bias;

2)  Petraeus "working the refs" as it were, as he's done with think-tankers in the past. 

3)  McFarland pretty much admitting that Fox's news coverage is guided by its target audience preferences rather than things like, you know, facts. 

4)  Petraeus' allusions to the backscratching relationship between him and "the Troika" of Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman;

5)  A high overall level of off-the-record coziness between McFarland & Petraeus as emblematic of the "clubbiness" between government, the media, and think tanks more generally. 

McFarland has responded to Woodward's story in her own Foxnews.com column:

Though Bob is in possession of a secretly recorded tape of my conversation with the general, he was way off base to characterize it as a serious attempt to get him to run, or to give him political advice.

Petraeus and I were having fun. Having just told me definitively that he wouldn’t run, he suggested that maybe Ailes could run this non-existent campaign. It was not a serious conversation plotting General Petraeus’ political future; it was the kind of idle speculation that happens in every campaign season.  That’s why they call it the silly season.  I knew he was serious about not wanting to run, and he knew I wasn’t serious in pressing it.

I realize conspiracy theorists have used this off-the-record interview to claim it was some plot to put Petraeus in the Oval Office.  But it was little more than one defense analyst (me) trading some political gossip and laughs with one of the country’s most important military leaders (Petraeus). 

Now as someone who has been underwhelmed with McFarland's foreign policy analysis in the past, I will say that the tone of the conversation seems consistent with her characterization of it.  I'm not a Beltway insider, but I've been around enough DC bulls**tting and puffery in my day to know it when I hear it.  Even if this took place in Kabul, the "Petraeus should run!" segment of the conversation has that BS feel to it. 

Furthermore, I can't blame Petraeus for trying to work the refs -- that's part of a policy principal's job in the 21st century.  I'd argue that McFarland's side of the convo makes Fox look pretty bad. If one wants to be charitable, however, asking Petraeus where a news outfit is getting the story wrong isn't intrinsically wrong, it's perspective-taking.  It would only be wrong if, say, Fox News people failed to ask a similar question to other policy principals like Tom Donilon, Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta.  I'll let readers draw their own conclusions about whether Fox News does this due diligence. 

So this story is a supremely annoying conversation, and something of a confirmation of how Fox News operates.  But I'm not seeing Woodwardian-type scandal within the DC elite from this story.  I'm seeing standard Washington schmooziness.  This is not the most attractive thing to hear but also not nearly as important as the story suggests. 

It's also worth putting things into perspective here.  Take a gander at Jonathan Ansfield's story in the New York Times if you want to see a national political elite demonstrating truly world-class levels of corruption and exclusivity. 

Am I missing anything? 

I've blogged on occasion about the development of a sovereigntist lobby that reflexively opposes all treaties because they erode U.S. sovereignty.  For these people, any infringement on American sovereignty is a death blow to freedom, regardless of the benefits from joining.  This kind of reflexive opposition has caused even stalwart groups on the right to cringe in embarrassment. 

This hasn't slowed down the sovereigntists a bit, which led to a somewhat awkward day in the U.S. Senate: 

Former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas sat slightly slumped in his wheelchair on the Senate floor on Tuesday, staring intently as Senator John Kerry gave his most impassioned speech all year, in defense of a United Nations treaty that would ban discrimination against people with disabilities.

Senators from both parties went to greet Mr. Dole, leaning in to hear his wispy reply, as he sat in support of the treaty, which would require that people with disabilities have the same general rights as those without disabilities. Several members took the unusual step of voting aye while seated at their desks, out of respect for Mr. Dole, 89, a Republican who was the majority leader.

Then, after Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth, rolled him off the floor, Republicans quietly voted down the treaty that the ailing Mr. Dole, recently released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, so longed to see passed.

A majority of Republicans who voted against the treaty, which was modeled on the Americans With Disabilities Act, said they feared that it would infringe on American sovereignty.

The Cable's Josh Rogin has more on today's vote. 

Now to be fair to the Republicans who voted "nay," you don't approve a treaty just because Bob Dole favors it.   And to be more than fair, it's true that the United States has comparatively robust legislation in the form of the ADA and IDEA. 

On the other hand, the point of this convention is to ensure that other countries start embracing the rules and standards codified by the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act -- you'd think most Republicans would be super-keen on other countries embracing principles of U.S. law.  Furthermore,  the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports the treaty, and I hear that Republicans are pro-business, so that is a bit confusing.  I also read that "the treaty was negotiated by the George W. Bush administration," so, again, you can understand my confusion. 

If you want to see the arguments against the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, click here, here, here, here, and here.  As near as I can determine, critics don't like the treaty because... it's a treaty.  Most of the objections are either bogus or unsubstantiated by practice.  As Joshua Keating notes, "a perfectly reasonable treaty was just rejected based on a complete misreading of it."

Or, as Tim Fernholz explains: 

The treaty’s critics, like the conservative Heritage Foundation, were left arguing that the treaty shouldn’t be ratified if the US already complied with its intent, since endorsing the treaty could lead to problems down the road by unspecified means. That dismayed the treaty’s advocates, who see the treaty’s value in the message it sends to other countries about the importance of protecting disabled people. “It’s a treaty to change the world to be more like America,” protested John Kerry, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, before the failed vote.

Dana Milbank notes that sometimes the treaty's opponents contradicted their own arguments: 

[O]pponents couldn’t agree on how this box would be opened. “Do I believe that states will pass laws or have to pass laws in conformity with the U.N. edict?” [Rick] Santorum asked himself. “Do we have to amend IDEA?” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “I don’t have any fear anytime soon that IDEA will be amended. But I do have concerns that people will go to courts and they will use this standard in this convention.”

This was contradicted by the next man at the microphone, home-schooling advocate Mike Farris, who pointed out that the document has a provision stating that “you can’t go to court automatically. You must have implementing legislation first” — the very thing Santorum says he does not expect to happen.

Still, their spurious theory of a U.N. takeover of parenting was enough to lead Lee and Santorum to oppose a treaty that would extend American values worldwide and guarantee disabled people equal treatment, and freedom from torture and exploitation.

Now I'm honestly pretty dubious about whether U.S. ratification of the treaty would accomplish all that.  Unlike Law of the Sea, not ratifying this treaty doesn't appreciably harm U.S. interests.  It does, however, make the United States look pretty dysfunctional.  In essence, the U.S. Senate just rejected a treaty on protecting the disabled that would have globalized the status quo in U.S. law on this issue.  To use the parlance of international relations scholars, this is dumber than a bag of hammers. 

David Sanger and Eric Schmitt have a story in today's New York Times about... well, as near as I can figure, the purpose of the story is that the intelligence comnunity wants to communicate with the Assad regime in Syria. Here's the opening:

The Syrian military’s movement of chemical weapons in recent days has prompted the United States and several allies to repeat their warning to President Bashar Al-Assad that he would be “held accountable” if his forces used the weapons against the rebels fighting his government.

The warnings, which one European official said were “deliberately vague to keep Assad guessing,” were conveyed through Russia and other intermediaries.

So I guess the New York Times is now one of those "other intermediaries."

Given the expansion of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, this kind of "signaling through the press" function is not going away anytime soon. The problem, of course, is that very often these intelligence officials can't come right out and tell Sanger and Schmitt what they want Assad to know, cause, like, there are other people reading these stories.

So, as a public service, the hardworking staff here at this blog will try to parse out exactly what is being communicated. Let's excerpt every direct quote (bolded below) and run it through the Drezner Intelligence Explainer (D.I.E.: patent pending):

One American official provided the most specific description yet of what has been detected, saying that “the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation,”

TRANSLATION: "We're seeing deviations from the status quo ante. We 're not entirely sure what this means, and we don't like that, so we're going to talk about it in the press to see if we can get a rise out of Assad."

“These are desperate times for Assad, and this may simply be another sign of desperation,” one senior American diplomat, who has been deeply involved in the effort to try to dissuade Mr. Assad’s forces from using the chemical weapons, said Sunday.

TRANSLATION: "We're seeing deviations from the status quo ante. We 're not entirely sure what this means, and we don't like that, so we're going to talk about it in the press to see if we can get a rise out of Assad."

“It’s very hard to read Assad,” one senior Israeli official said. “But we are seeing a kind of action that we’ve never seen before,” he said, declining to elaborate.

TRANSLATION: "We're seeing deviations from the status quo ante. We 're not entirely sure what this means, and we don't like that, so we're going to talk about it in the press to see if we can get a rise out of Assad."

“The president has made it clear that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a red line for the United States,” the [senior administration] official said. “We consistently monitor developments related to Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, and are in regular contact with international partners who share our concern.

“The Assad regime must know that the world is watching, and that they will be held accountable by the United States and the international community if they use chemical weapons or fail to meet their obligations to secure them.”

TRANSLATION: "We're seeing deviations from the status quo ante. We 're not entirely sure what this means, and we don't like that. So forget what Sanger and Schmitt said about 'being vague back in Paragraph 1; we're just gonna reiterate our policy on this so there's no misunderstanding in Damascus."

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, declined to comment on the new intelligence reports but said in a statement late Sunday: “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world."

TRANSLATION: "This is all Obama's fault."

“We’re worried about what the military is doing,” one official said, “but we’re also worried about some of the opposition groups,” including some linked to Hezbollah, which has set up camps near some of the chemical weapons depots.

TRANSLATION: "Our actual Syria policy remains entirely unchanged."

Am I missing anything?

It's now December, which means it's time to start garnering nominations for the 4th annual Albies, so named to honor of the great political economist Albert O. Hirschman. 

To reiterate the criteria for what merits an Albie nomination:

I'm talking about any book, journal article, magazine piece, op-ed, or blog post published in the [last] calendar year that made you rethink how the world works in such a way that you will never be able "unthink" the argument.

This year was certainly not a boring one for the actual global political economy, which means it's a good year to write about it.  So, please submit your ideas to me.  And remember, this is the only year-end Top 10 list that neither Time nor the Atlantic has yet to comandeer.  Here are links to my 2009, 2010, and 2011 lists for reference. 

The winners will be announced, as is now tradition, on December 31st.  In the meantime, readers are strongly encouraged to submit their nominations (with links if possible) in the comments.

So, my post about good and bad reasons to get a Ph.D. in political science has made a few waves.  I'd like to clarify, endorse and respond to some of the feedback I've received. 

Just to recap, here was the primary point of my post:

Even standard political science departments are littered with students who have sterling resumes, glittering letters of recommendation from well-connected fixtures of the foreign policy community, and that disturbing tendency to look past the task at hand to plot out steps three, four and five of their Ascent to Greatness.

Here's the thing about these students: 95 percent of them will not earn a Ph.D. -- and most of the rest who do get it will only have done so by finding the most pliant dissertation committee alive. Ambition and intelligence can get someone through college and a professional degree. It can even get someone through Ph.D.-level coursework. What it can't do is produce an above-the-bar dissertation.

In my day, I've known too many students who were talented in many ways, and yet got stymied at the dissertation phase. For people who have succeeded at pretty much everything in life to that point, a Ph.D. seems like just another barrier to transcend. It's not. Unless you are able to simultaneously love and critically dissect your subject matter, unless you thrive in an environment where people are looking forward to picking apart your most cherished ideas, you won't finish.

Now, some of the comments and tweets about this post suggested that I was pooh-poohing the idea of getting a Ph.D. if you don't want to become a professor.  To be clear:  that is not what I was trying to say.  Indeed, if anything, given the state of the academic job market I heartily endorse "non-traditional" career paths for Ph.D.s.  Furthermore, as Joshua Foust notes in his response, "If you want to succeed in Washington, a PhD is the quickest path to it. Anything less is just an uphill battle."  There is no shame in going from a doctoral program to a job in DC, and I was certainly not implying that there should be. 

Foust offers a strong counter-explanation for why aspiring policy wonks should go for a Ph.D.:

[A] PhD offers a better way for many [than getting a professional M.A.]. PhDs are usually funded, which means they cost nothing to the student (stipends may not be much, but that’s a separate matter — the financial loads are drastically different). They also take a lot longer, say 5 years minimum but more likely 7 if you’re young and right out of undergrad.

Even so, that PhD is more or less free. Entering the DC workforce with a PhD, instead of a Masters, is an instant leg-up. For organizations like think tanks, it instantly signals research skills; for NGOs it signifies a strong work ethic. And for many government jobs, contractor jobs, or jobs at IGOs like the World Bank or IMF, it is a basic minimum requirement for most non-admin jobs. In almost any field, having a PhD is a shortcut to the initial round of CV scrutiny — an easy and quick way to sort candidates.

Now, let's assume Foust is correct about the money (doctoral students about to comment that a doctorate is not "more or less free" -- I know!!  I'm not asserting this, Foust is!!  Go bug him!!!).  It seems like the Ph.D. is the smart play then, right? 

Wrong.  Foust is assuming that the choice is a binary one -- between climbing the policy ladder without a a doctorate or with a doctorate.   The point of my initial post is that there's a third possibility, and it's the one that will fell people getting a Ph.D. for professional reasons only -- that one will start a Ph.D. program but never finish. 

First of all, that is, by far, the worst outcome.  Matt Groening can express this far better than I: 

In all seriousness, life is not quite this bad for those who fail to finish.  It's not great, however.  For those who recognize early on that the Ph.D. is not for them, it's OK.  Exiting a doctoral program after, say, three years with a terminal masters is about as graceful an exit as one can execute. 

The more years one stays in, however, the greater the pain of exiting.  There's a lot of psychological scarring, and the networks built up in a doctoral program are likely inferior to those that would be built up via a lower-level policy job.  And I'd wager that it's precisely the ambitious, career-minded DC types who are less likely to cut and run -- because their entire life experience to date suggests that quitting is the wrong course of action. 

Furthermore, not finishing a Ph.D. is not exactly uncommon.  Click on this slide show about Ph.D. attrition rates from the Council of Graduate Schools, and note the following three facts:

1)  Only 46% of all entrants finish their Ph.D. after seven years in a program.   

2)  For social science Ph.D.s, that figure is even lower -- 41%

3)  If you extend it out to ten years, the lowest completion rate among the social sciences is political science -- only 44% complete a doctorate after a decade.  In other words, entering a Ph.D. program and then not finishing is the modal outcome. 

Foust is likely correct that getting a Ph.D. gives one a leg up in the DC policy wonk rat race.  But I know I'm correct when I say that starting but not finishing a Ph.D. is the worst possible career trajectory.  It is this outcome that I'm harping on when I'm warning ambitious go-getter policy wonks to think long and hard about why they want to get a doctorate.  It can't just be to win "The Game." 

Now, to be fair, Tara Maller makes a valid point when she notes that "personal challenges" can fell a Ph.D. candidate.  However, I would argue that the biggest impediment to finishing is not having a clear idea of what's involved in getting a doctorate in the first place.   In an email from Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Dempsey -- a Columbia Ph.D. and published scholar -- made this point: 

Part of the dynamic I think is 'degree-inflation' where everyone has a master's, so it seems logical that to distinguish yourself from the pack that a PhD is the next logical step.  While finishing my dissertation I had quite a few officers who had just finished MA or MPA programs asking how they could proceed to a PhD, with no idea that they were two entirely separate animals.

I've also had to break it to people that publishing an academic book is not the road the glory it might seem from afar, and that the most you can expect out of it beyond the intrinsic reward of contributing to an ongoing discussion is a box of very heavy 'business cards'....

Knowing what you are getting into and the need to fully embrace the topic are key to success.  Sometimes that will align with a non-academic career-- probably more often not....  The difference between an MA and a PhD isn't incremental but fundamental, and that is a hard gap to bridge when coming from an institution that is decidedly pragmatic and application-oriented as a matter of survival.

Dempsey's point is the one I was trying to ham-handedly make in my last post.  It is natural for people in DC to believe that the Ph.D. is the next logical step after a professional or masters degree.  It.  Is.  Not. 

When asked about whether getting a Ph.D. is a good idea, I usually tell men that writing a dissertation is the closest experience they will have to being pregnant -- except that instead of nine months they'll be carrying that sucker for 2-5 years.  I then tell women that, of course, writing a dissertation is not remotely close to being pregnant -- but take the most volatile relationship from your past and then multiply that volatility by a factor of fifty.  That's what it's like.  And I haven't even gotten to the incredible socialization pressures within graduate school to feel like you should pursue an academic career instean of a non-academic one. 

Despite these barriers, is it possible to simply "grind out" the Ph.D. without loving the subject matter and the process?  Yeah, in theory.  I've met one or two extraordinary people in my day who were able to pull that off.  But -- and I cannot stress this enough -- I've met far more people who thought they could grind it out and then met their ruin on the shoals of some doctoral program.  These are the people who stay in a doctoral program long after everyone else knows that the jig is up.  That is the fate I am warning policy wonks  away from. 

There is no shame in thinking that a Ph.D. gives one a leg up in the Beltway job market.  But that cannot and should not be the primary reason to get a doctorate.  What separates a Ph.D. from other degrees is the scholarly act of writing a dissertation.  If there is no genuine fascination with the subject matter, if there is no love of the topic, then there is a 99.5% probability of failure.  That has to be the primary driver.  If it's fame and fortune, then the professional degree route -- a J.D., an M.B.A. or a M.A.L.D. -- is the better route for you. 

Steve Saideman sums up why I'm making this argument so vehemently: 

An MA is a professional degree for the policy-maker but most PhDs are not that.  They require patience, analytical rigor, the ability to think theoretically, to be open to criticism, and so on.  So, [Dan] has seen those who are in it just for the stamp flounder and fail. 

That's correct.  Maybe I'm exaggerating the costs of failure here -- but I don't think so. 

So, to conclude.  There is no shame in getting a Ph.D. with the intention of pursuing a non-academic career.  Foust is correct that there are certain material rewards that come with earning a Ph.D.  But unlike other degrees, those rewards cannot be the principal reason you choose to pursue a doctorate.  That is the recipe for misery and heartbreak. 

I've received a lot of interesting feedback to my post earlier this week about Paula Broadwell as a cautionary tale of attempting to get a Ph.D. as a ticket-punching exercise.  I promise to write a follow-up post on that particular bugaboo very soon. 

However, as I said in that original post, I used Broadwell primarily as the hook to write about the more generic question of why one gets a Ph.D. in the first place.  This raises the question of whether I was fair in my treatment of her case.  The New America Foundation's Tara Maller argues that I was not.  Below is her (unedited by me) defense of Broadwell and her critique of the Broadwell coverage.  Read the whole thing: 

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been hesitant to weigh in on the debates surrounding the multifaceted situation involving General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell.  My reservations have mostly been in light of both my previous role as a former analyst at CIA and someone who has known Paula since 2007, due to her leadership role with Women in International Security in Cambridge, MA. I was deeply saddened by the serious personal mistakes of Broadwell and Petraeus and this piece is not intended to absolve either of blame or responsibility for their personal indiscretions.  However, as an individual who studied international relations, worked in government and respected their service and accomplishments, I've been disheartened by the tone, double standards and arguments exhibited in some of the recent media coverage. 

As The New York Times and other media outlets debate whether Petraeus' next move will be to a prestigious university or corporate board, discussions of Broadwell have been reduced to conversations about her outfits, criticism of her personal drive, complaints about her routine faculty office hour visits and a critique of her motivations' for pursuing an advanced degree. In Professor Daniel Drezner's recent blog post titled "The Broadwell Recognition," he drew on a recent Boston Globe article to critique Paula as someone destined to "flail miserably" and make some broader arguments about the types of people well-suited for Ph.D. programs.  As an individual who completed a Ph.D. program,  knows Paula (along with many other "scholar-officers" from my time in Cambridge), and is generally a fan of  Drezner's writings, I respectfully disagree with Drezner on a number of his points. 

First, there are many types of Ph.D. candidates from a variety of backgrounds and a multitude of goals.  Drezner paints a portrait of just one acceptable type of candidate for a Ph.D. program and implies that Broadwell's career ambitions, background or personality was not the right fit. As someone who knows Paula and interacted with her during her time in Cambridge, I agree with Drezner that individuals like Paula are not the traditional Ph.D. candidate, or typical professionals in the field of international affairs.  There aren't many women in this field, let alone women with two small children, who excelled at West Point, mentored young women over brunch at their home, served as an army intel officer, attended Harvard, completed marathons and served as an unofficial advisor to younger professionals in the field like myself.  In fact, many of the "scholar-officers" I encountered in Cambridge were the most thoughtful, impressive, unique and service-oriented individuals I have ever met in my life.  One of the most rewarding aspects of my program at MIT was the blend of academic, military and policy experience - and the knowledge that our shared educational experience would be used to impact the world in different ways.  Shouldn't we be encouraging our future military and political leaders to pursue higher levels of education?  The "soldier-officer" types or those on their way to "way to power and influence" in Washington tend to be individuals committed to public service and  issues about which they are deeply passionate.  Entering a Ph.D. program to gain skills or expertise to employ in the military or policy community does not make one less equipped for a Ph.D. program nor does it make Paula's motivations any less legitimate. 

Second, many brilliant and successful individuals take breaks or do not finish their Ph.D. due to unanticipated personal or professional challenges or even opportunities.  This does not mean that you aren't able to think critically about ideas or that you were only pursuing a Ph.D. purely for ambition's sake.  Drezner himself even acknowledges many of these challenges, particularly for women, in a previous blog post.  Unfortunately, his recent post fails to mention that during the time Paula was at Harvard (where she did receive a Master's) she had two children in under two years, serving as the Deputy Director of the Tufts University Fletcher School's Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism and founded the New England Women in International Security chapter (she has also started the Denver WIIS chapter and served on the executive board of international WIIS).  Her husband was also putting in extremely long hours doing his residency, so she was working to make extra money for her family.  Broadwell gave birth to her first son within a two months of starting the Harvard program and her second son less than two years later.  When she left Harvard's program, she had two children still in diapers.  If there was anything Paula failed at during this particular time period, it was being able to continue to function at a superwoman level as she tried to juggle "having it all" at one time.  Many men and women of our generation need to balance all sorts of life decisions and career trajectories as they struggle with work-life family balance and competing priorities. 

Lastly, one doesn't have to like Broadwell or even think she is a star academic to acknowledge some of the unfair characterizations by the media and higher levels of scrutiny and criticism that women seem to face in these situations.   Over the last couple of weeks, the media has been criticizing Broadwell for many behaviors and personality attributesthat are not only typical of  her peers in academically rigorous program, but ones that are encouraged and desirable. The Boston Globe piece Drezner cites includes criticism of Paula for both seeking out faculty during office hours and promoting her work.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard faculty, career counselors, advisors and public officials in DC advise students to do just these things.   Other articles in the media have lashed out at Paula for being driven and ambitious. I'm pretty sure many successful individuals and leaders have been praised for similar characteristics - including General Petraeus.  It is worth noting that much of her drive was also directed at advocating on behalf of veterans and women in foreign policy.  Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution recently chimed in on this in an op-ed writing, "She [Paula] never struck me as more ambitious than the average Washingtonian, and she never seemed cutthroat in how she pursued her ambitions." As a Ph.D. student who met Paula in the winter of 2007 through her work with WIIS, I've known Paula as someone who has exhibited leadership and mentorship to advance the careers of many younger women - including myself. If Broadwell was a "self-promoter" of her own work, then she was just as much a promoter of others' work and important causes as well. 

We should be cognizant of the serious implications of some of the arguments made in Drezner's piece and the tone of many other recent articles in the media lest we discourage future generations of very bright and talented young women and men with a commitment to public service from entering the field. 

Tara Maller is a Research Affiliate at the New America Foundation.  She is a former military analyst at the CIA and holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

My only rebuttal to Maller's essay is that I had not seen the information regarding Broadwell's personal situation during her time at Harvard reported anywhere else, and Broadwell herself hasn't been commenting on anything -- so it would have been difficult to mention it. 

Still, what do you think? 

MacArthur Foundation president Robert Gallucci has an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education on a topic that feels juuuuuust a bit familiar.  Here's how he opens it:

Something is seriously wrong in the relationship between universities and the policy community in the field of international relations. The worlds of policy making and academic research should be in constant, productive conversation, and scholars and researchers should be an invaluable resource for policy makers, but they are not.

One hears perennial laments from those in academe that their valuable work is being ignored by policy makers. And, on the other hand, policy makers complain they can get nothing useful from the academy. They may all be right.

Now your humble blogger has explored this topic again and again and again and again and again.  I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that while a gap still exists between these two worlds, the bigger gap is between the perception of people like Gallucci and actual reality.  Also, to be blunt about it, I also suspect that no one will actually say this to Gallucci's face, because, well, he's got the money.  Why argue against a gravy train? 

Consider the following: 

1)  There is pretty clear evidence that academics are becoming more copacetic with the media through which policy advice can be communicated.  It's also worth noting that two of Time's top 25 blogs this year are run by political scientists *COUGH* self-promotion *COUGH*. 

2)  We are beginning to see routinized channels through which academics are learning how to affect the policy world. 

3)  On the policy side of the equation, Joshua Foust notes that the Ph.D. is both highly valued and increasingly de rigeur inside the Beltway.  Whether that's a good thing or not is a topic for a later post, but Foust's observation cuts against Gallucci's assertions.

So I think Gallucci's claim is exaggerated.  But what's interesting is why he believes that the theory/policy gap has gotten worse: 

There has been a theoretical turn across the social sciences and humanities that has cut off academic discourse from the way ordinary people and working professionals speak and think. The validity and elegance of the models have become the focus, rather than whether those models can be used to understand real-world situations. Conferences and symposia are devoted to differences in theoretical constructs; topics are chosen for research based not on their importance but on their accessibility to a particular methodology. Articles and books are published to be read, if at all, only by colleagues who have the same high regard for methodology and theory and the same disregard for practice.

Look, I'm not going to deny that there's a lot of abstruse research in the academy filled with lots of seemingly impenetrable jargon.  That said, I would humbly suggest that the pattern of recent published work does not match Gallucci's observation.  I would also note that it is way too simplistic to divide political science research into "policy relevant" and "not policy relevant."  

There is still a gap between scholars and policymakers.  But Gallucci's essay suggests a bad situaion that's getting worse, whereas I see a mediocre situation that's trending in a positive situaton.  

Still, let me also confess that I might be a victim of sample bias here.  Over time I've found greater and not fewer pathways that connect scholarly international relations research and real-world policymaking.  That might be because I've got a bit more girth gravitas than I did a decade ago. 

So I'll ask this question to the crowd:  do Gallucci's assertions ring true?  What do you think? 

So China has not been shy over the past few months in expressing its territorial aspirations, going so far as to imprint them in new passports.  Now on the one hand, this is a predictable reaction to the U.S. pivot from last year.  On the other hand.... well, for a country that ostensibly thinks a lot about realpolitik, they sure haven't internalized the notion of cooperating under a security dilemma.  Indeed, two recent stories suggest that Chinese behavior is disrupting long-held norms in the Pacific Rim. 

In the South China Morning Post, Greg Torode reports that much of ASEAN is getting fed up with Beijing: 

China is set to face mounting challenges from the grouping over the South China Sea as Cambodia's controversial year as Asean host and chair comes to an end. As difficult as it may have been, Cambodia's year may be as a good as it gets for Beijing - in the short term at least....

An announcement on Sunday from host Cambodia that Asean's leaders had formally agreed not to internationalise the issue "from now on" sparked a flood of questions. Asean-China talks would be the sole forum, spokesman Kao Kim Hourn added.

Given that leaders - including US President Barack Obama and allies from Japan, the US and Australia - were converging on Phnom Penh determined to raise the need to lower South China Sea frictions, it was a remarkable agreement, and a victory for Beijing's backroom lobbying.

But the consensus hailed by Cambodia lasted less than a day. The Philippine delegation, led by President Benigno Aquino, cried foul, warning there was no such deal and insisting on its rights to seek international redress if it felt that its national sovereignty was threatened.

In the rhetoric of Washington, its re-engagement across Asean is part of an effort to "shape" China's rise, forcing it to conform to international norms. With considerable discretion, it has buttressed efforts among Asean countries to co-ordinate and organise diplomatic responses to Chinese challenges.

While the Philippines stood up publicly this week, others were helping in the background, for example. ....

Just four years ago, China had successfully kept Asean nations officially quiet on the subject. The events of the last week have shown that, despite considerable efforts, the calculations are now much more complex.

If ASEAN is known for anything, it's for developing bland consensus statements.  That's a key component of the ASEAN way.  If that norm is breaking down, then China is having a serious impact on the behavior of member countries -- and not in a way that benefits Beijing's interests. 

The other interesting story is Martin Fackler's story in the New York Times about Japan's naval activities in the Pacific Rim.  Shorter Fackler:   Japan is getting more active in the region.  Now what's interesting about this isn't Japan's behavior; one would expect Tokyo to counter Beijing.  No, what's interesting is how other countries in the region -- most of whom had a very bad experience with Japan during the Second World War -- are reacting.  Which is to say, they're pretty cool with Japan exercising their naval muscle:

In a measure of the geopolitical changes roiling the region... concerns about any resurgent Japanese militarism appear to be fading in some countries embroiled in their own territorial disputes with China, like Vietnam and the Philippines, the scene of fierce fighting during the war.

Analysts there and elsewhere in the region said their countries welcomed, and sometimes invited, Japan’s help.

“We have already put aside our nightmares of World War II because of the threat posed by China,” said Rommel Banlaoi, a security expert at the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research in Manila.

On a recent morning, 22 coast guard officials from a dozen Asian and African nations joined a training cruise around Tokyo Bay aboard a sleek, white Japanese Coast Guard cutter. The visitors snapped photos of the engine room, the electronics-studded bridge and the 20-millimeter cannon. Before the cutter left port, the foreign contingent and the Japanese crew stood at attention on deck facing each other, then bowed deeply.

“Japan is joining the United States and Australia in helping us face China,” said Mark Lim, an administrative officer from the Philippine Coast Guard who joined the cruise.

Japan is widely viewed as being the only nation in the region with a navy powerful enough to check China....

The Japanese Navy took a big step toward opening up in 2009 by holding a joint military drill with Australia — its first such exercise with a nation besides the United States. It has since joined a number of multinational naval drills in Southeast Asia, and in June held its first joint maneuver with India.

Hostility towards any Japanese great power behavior has been another longtime diplomatic staple of the Asia/Pacific.  That norm also appears to be eroding fast. 

Does this make any difference?  Well, yes.  As Fackler notes, Japan has the 6th largest defense budget in the world.  India, Australia and South Korea aren't exactly defense midgets either.  The more that Beijing pushes the rest of the Pacific Rim into the arms of the United States, the more Washington's job becomes one of policy coordinator rather than policy provider.  In other words, China's policies are making the pivot cheaper.  To repeat a point I made earlier this year: 

In [Wang Jisi's essay about how the Chinese leadership views the U.S.], the United States is the chief architect of any misfortune or policy reversal that affects the Middle Kingdom.  Wang notes the U.S. "pivot" without speculating why countries like South Korea, Vietnam, or even Myanmar might be so eager to welcome Washington with open arms.  If Chinese policymakers truly believe that the U.S. is solely to blame for these turn of events, then they will likely continue to act in ways that alienate their neighbors in the Pacific Rim, thereby exacerbating the geopolitical straight-jacket that they disliked in the first place. 

Am I missing anything?