This past week, with the very generous assistance of the political science and global studies departments, I was very fortunate to attend the 54th Academy Assembly of the U.S. Air Force in Colorado Springs. Concordia is one of a small number of institutions of higher learning that are invited to send a delegate or two…
One of the biggest and potentially most dangerous misconceptions prevalent among policy circles, pundit rounds and election campaigns today is that the United States should do everything in its power to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The laundry list of calamities that would supposedly occur in the event Iran acquired nuclear weapons is quite…
On the morning of January 21, while the first family of the United States was hurried from place to place in preparation for their second inaugural address, Kjersten Bratvold sat in the orange seats of Jones 212 listening to an anatomy lecture about metabolism and energetics. Bratvold, a sophomore at Concordia, was only half listening,…
As the Cold War wound down over twenty years ago, it became fashionable among some intellectual circles in the West to suggest that the ideological struggles of the 20th century were about to culminate in the irrevocable triumph of liberal democracy. That century began under the yoke of expansive European colonial empires, experienced unprecedented devastation…
Just a few months ago in September, I wrote a piece for The Concordian Politics called “Charting a Course”. The gist of the piece was basically the idea that the United States needs to disabuse itself of the notion that it can unilaterally shape the affairs of the world to its liking. In the United Nations the…
This year, like many years, the two presidential candidates provide American voters not with a decision about who might be the best man for the job, but rather who would be the less worse option. Indeed, it is often the case that presidential elections amount to little more than an agonizing guessing game about which…
Last week this column explored the phenomenon of China’s recent rise to power and how this is presently changing the nature of the international system. While readers will be directed to that piecefor a better understanding of what precisely China’s emergence as a central global power means for China, what still needs to be better understood…
Anybody who’s been following the 2012 campaign for any length of time has most likely been inundated by pundits from the left and the right with the idea that this year would be a reprise of Bill Clinton’s 1992 classic “It’s the economy, stupid” and to a large extent this has been the case. A…
The Cold War was probably the most high-stakes and globally encompassing theatre of Great Power struggle the world has ever known. Never before had two states of such immense power and international influence competed so vigorously to carve out indomitable spheres of influence, militarily checkmate the other, and – probably most significantly – promote such…
The problem with any argument is the will to win. I’d rather use the term “debate,” but outside of rigidly structured academic debates, such a thing rarely exists in the day-to-day world, and instead it results in shouting down the other party. For some topics, this is fine. I don’t care what rational arguments you…