Summer 2012, Part I

Cayyolu, Ankara, June 2012

Esteemed Readers;

I’ve been quiet lately. My last post was almost 5 months ago. Actually, many things happened since then. But it was the sheer volume and intensity of the stuff that kept me from writing.

So here is a quick summary of this summer:

May:

Went back to Ankara, to my beloved university and students. I LOVE teaching IPE! (international political economy). And the feelings are mutual, I might add. My students seem to enjoy my classes as much as I do, at least according to the student reviews.

This semester we stirred up quite lively discussions in class on auto industry. Does Turkey need its very own auto company? My students made excellent claims on both sides. We also had a few engineers in class, who were very much engaged by the topic. I am very proud of them all.

In the second half of May, my family flew in from the US. My son went to a public school in the neighborhood. To everyone’s surprise, he managed to fit in quite well. No harm done by local bullies, and he actually made some good friends...

June:

Classes and university obligations continued full blast. Upon Mexican Embassy’s request, I organized a panel on G20. Other than the “death by powerpoint” incident by one of the presenters, it went quite well.

We had a big party for my son and his best friend from our apartment. I mean BIG PARTY! 2 huge cakes, clowns, music systems set up in the basketball court. After hearing the music and seeing the clowns and the guy walking on stilts, lots of people from the neighborhood joined. Both the kids and their parents had great time.

When school was over, we registered our son in an all-day sports school, since both my husband and I were working full-time at the university.

First week, he got injured in gymnastics. At the end of the month when he completed the program, they gave him a “gold medal” in gymnastics! I am telling you, this is a spoiled generation we have… They are pampered left and right…

July:

My son went to the summerhouse with my mom, my brother and his Russian girl friend. It seemed like they had great time along the Aegean Sea, while land locked Ankara was baking in the summer heat. 

The snorkel grandma got for him truly enamored my son. He insisted to speak with me over the phone, while wearing it! Needles to say, I didn’t get most of what he was saying but we played along…

In the absence of a young son, my husband and I jumped right into the exciting nightlife of Ankara! This meant attending some uptight parties thrown by various embassies in town.

Probably one of the best was at the Canadian Embassy, jointly organized by their NAFTA partner, the Mexicans! Don’t ask me why they excluded the US. We didn’t want to stir up any controversies, and were just happy to be invited.

At the party, the Embassy staff had a funky payment arrangement: You paid some money, say 20 Liras, and got a card with a bunch of monkeys on. 5 Monkeys would get you a beer, 6 monkeys for margaritas, and 7 monkeys for whisky.

It turns out, my husband had left over monkeys in a card, but from 4-5 years ago! He pulled it out and politely asked the bar tender, if they would honor the monkeys in his old Embassy card.

To our surprise, the bartender did! He said it’s been years since he had seen a card like that, but served the beer anyway… When my husband shared the incident with the Canadian Ambassador, the Ambassador was super proud! He said: “We Canadians honor our contracts!”

Wishing you all fun neighbors like the Mexicans, and virtuous neighbors like the Canadians!

The Diplomat-Friendly Academic Mommy

News and Noteworthy Events, Part 2

Esteemed Readers,

Not very pleasant things are taking place around us. Buckle up, hang in there, it's going to be a tough winter. Here we go:

• My parents hit a WOLF while driving this evening. They're OK, the wolf is dead, serious damage on the bumper, headlights and the radiator of the car. 

• There was a major earthquake in Turkey again, in the Eastern city of Van. 7.2 in richter's scale. Over 600 dead, thousands injured. It demonstrated once again that:
• contractors in Turkey are either too greedy, or too ignorant or both
• state is still as incompetent and unorganized as it was in the 1999 quake
• people are generous
• civil society is in slightly better shape than it was in 1999

• NATO ended its Libya mission, probably making Colin Powell really proud! For once, the US has made a clear exit in one of its military missions in the last decades! Here the numbers since Nato took charge of Libya mission on April 1st: 

•  26,000 sorties flown 
• 9,600 strike sorties
• 5,900 targets destroyed
• 600 tanks or armoured vehicles destroyed
• 400 artillery/rocket launchers destroyed
• 16 countries have provided air assets         

                   (Source: NATO)

The "slaughter-a-ram-for-your-God" holiday (also called Kurban in Turkish or Eid in Arabic) is coming up soon. 

I wish Happy Holidays to all my readers from all over the world. 

Be merry, healthy, and try to protect yourselves from earthquakes, wolves and NATO sorties...

The bad news-weary Academic Mommy

International Relations Theory and Diplomats

 Recently, I had the privilege to listen to a high ranking NATO diplomat. I won't disclose his nationality, since that would reveal too much info. Suffice to say that he's pretty high up in NATO hierarchy, and had served as the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of his country prior to this post.

 For almost half hour, he talked about NATO's Afghanistan mission.
 I honestly cannot recall anything of substance from that entire speech.
 Except that troop withdrawal is planned by 2014.

 Since it seemed impossible to derail the NATO diplomat from his rehearsed lines, I saved my questions for this blog.

Here we go:

Q1: What exactly is NATO's job definition in Afghanistan?

My educated guess: Establish stability and security??

My comment: Good luck with that one!

Stability and security requires a functional state. What is the grand strategy to achieve this?

The only two successful cases of state building through military intervention were Japan and Germany. Besides, they had functional, highly effective state apparatuses before being destroyed during WWII. In both cases, state building was not just a military task. World Bank, then called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was heavily utilized to rebuild Europe.

In short, NATO in Afghanistan is de facto engaged in state building. But it is ill-equipped for this task. Furthermore, we don't even know if all the members are content with this "state building" mission...

Q2: What exactly is NATO's exit strategy in Afghanistan?

My educated guess: Nada!

My comment: We owe this concept largely to Colin Powell, probably the only decent man in GWBush cabinet. The senior NATO diplomat said absolutely nothing about the exit strategy in 2014.

What amazes me the most is, how they come to speak for so long and manage to say absolutely nothing... Hence, is the cartoon below. Sorry if it offends any diplomat admirers...

 Lastly, someone in the audience asked the diplomat his opinions of Arab Spring. He said, "well, each case is very specific, unique to itself..." As a scholar, this kind of statements just spike my blood pressure.

 I'm not saying let's rush to lump apples and oranges, but come on. Where is your systematic analysis?

There is either some kind of ignorance or contempt for generalization among the diplomats. They feel like they have to re-invent the wheel at every single incident. Yet, there is a huge literature on revolutions and social movements. Political science have not been sleeping over the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions.

 Likewise, diplomats seem to completely ignore theoretical approaches in the study of IR and foreign policy. Mostly, they endorse almost an archaic form of realism, that even realists have grown out of, and expect their audience to concur... come on...

Unfortunately, Turkish universities have an old habit of employing retired diplomats as faculty in International Relations departments. This is a huge retrogress for our discipline. If anything, IR scholars should lecture the diplomatic core about the recent theoretical and analytical insights of our discipline.

Diplomats should keep in mind that anecdotes, no matter how interesting they are, do not count as social science.

The diplomat-weary Academic Mommy