I have the op-ed below on the Globe and Mail website. It’s on why Canada might not be quite as quick to adopt UK-style coalition government as many have suggested. At the very least, we can’t simply compare our political parties based on seat percentages - the ideology matters, and at the moment [...]

Commenting on the British election is a bit of a fool’s game, as the variables change hourly, but here are a few quick thoughts based on recent events:
1. Gordon Brown is out, and formal Lib-Lab talks have begun. This was obviously the only choice Brown had. And it stems from the really tough spot [...]

I have another piece on election debates in today’s National Post. This one goes a little further than the last, arguing that while the British debates were a sucess, that they happened at all was a matter of happenstance. The lesson to learn is if we want debates that put the public good [...]

I have an oped in today’s National Post, (full unedited version below), which uses yesterday’s British election debate as a starting point for a critique of our own, deeply flawed, televised debates. This is the opening salvo in a what we hope will be a reform of our debate system. Much more on [...]

Last week I had the opportunity to moderate an e-conference on Afghanistan for the CIC as part of their GPS (Global Positioning Strategy) process.
There ended up being a lively and substantive conversation building on contributions from Mark Sedra, Major-General David Fraser, Sarah Jane Meharg, and Ben Rowswell. It is well worth checking out, here.
My [...]

If you have $200 burning a whole in your pocket, I have a chapter in what aside from the price, is a great new edited volume, put together by my friend (and at various times boss), Peter Burgess. It’s the first in a new Routledge series on New Security Studies, and has a couple [...]

I have an article in the latest International Affairs, written with Mary Martin from LSE, on the future of the concept of Human Security in the UN and EU. We argue that the EU flirtations with the concept as a potential unified foreign policy narrative may signal a second generation of human security policy. [...]

This year i have the absolute pleasure of teaching Intro to Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto.
While I am keenly aware of the history this course, and didn’t want to radically change the syllabus, developed by some great canadian academics over the [...]

In October, Emily Paddon and I wrapped up our DFAIT project on integrated peacebuilding (or 3D/Whole of Govn’t) in Afghanistan, with a forum at the Liu Institute in Vancouver. The idea was to bring together some of Canada’s leading voices on Afghanistan, both in person and via video conference, to discuss our role in [...]

Apologies for the total negligence of this site - has been an unbelievably hectic fall. A site re-design is in the works, and I’m going to start writing here regularly again as soon as the new digs are live.
In the interim, I’ve gotten into this twitter thing. Posts, following, etc, can be found here.

The oped below, written with Adrian Bradbury was in The Mark a few weeks ago:
Government’s Newspeak
It is a curious feeling to wake up one morning and have the focus of your career banished from your government’s vernacular. But this is what recently happened to both of us.
An internal DFAIT email was leaked this summer which [...]

Two years ago the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) hosted a panel (audio available here) with Steven Rattner, Jim Brady, Amanda Bennett, Jill Abramson, and Robert Kuttner (with Nicholas Lemann moderating). The purpose was to discuss an article the CJR had commissioned Robert Kuttner to write on the future of print media where he essentially argued [...]

Two years ago Dave and I wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review (which they opted not to publish) critical of Kuttner and the CJR’s faith in the print-hybrid model for media.
After having it sit on our hard drives all this time we are putting it up for download (back story on my next [...]

Last summer I went on a fascinating trip to the Kurdish Region of northern Iraq. I have been fairly derelict in writing about it. Not due to lack of things to say though, as the “other Iraq” (as Kurds so want it to be called), is a fascinating part of the world that [...]

Yesterday, a friend at Prospect Magazine asked for a run down of what was happening in Canadian politics, and in particular, how Ignatieff, the magazine’s intellectual zeitgeist, was suddenly leader of the Liberal Party. Below is what they posted:

One Step Closer to an Obama-Ignatieff Continent
Somewhere, Samantha Power is smiling. Yesterday, while she was working [...]

On the somewhat more academic front, I have a few new articles out.
On Afghanistan, Patrick Travers and I have an article in the International Journal called Between Metaphor and Strategy: Canada’s Integrated Approach to Peacebuilding. It looks at some of the pretty challenging shifts that are underway in the Canadian mission, and what they [...]

Giles Coren’s letter to the Times’ copy editors, sent to and published in the Guardian:
Chaps,
I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don’t know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i’m assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it’s only fair), [...]

There have been many wonderful things said about Brad in the days since his tragic death. From my limited perspective, all are understated, even in their deepest praise. I wouldn’t have presumed to add anything. But at the Ignatieff group drinks after his funeral yesterday, so many of the feelings that I [...]

Sullivan, on the Clinton machine, in no uncertain terms:
Now they have to either kill or coopt the hope that Obama has unleashed. Just as Bush coopted McCain’s New Hampshire message in 2000, so Clinton is coopting Obama’s message in 2007. She didn’t find her own voice; she took Obama’s, removed the eloquence and added a [...]

Haven’t read Belgravia in a while, but dug in on a flight this morning.  Aside from all but endorsing Obama on foreign policy grounds, he is really quite good and calling out bullshit.
He decimates Bush’s “demagogic tactics” of listing specific attacks supposedly stopped through torture.
He gives folly to the hypocrisy of presidentialists who at once [...]

In light of recent developments in Pakistan, this might be a good time to post an exchange I had with Jeff Weintraub a few months ago on the subject of democracy promotion as a foreign policy meta-narrative. The first is his response to this blog post of mine. He is in Italics. [...]

Dave and I wrote the review below of Michael Byers’ new book on Canadian foreign policy, Intent for a Nation for Embassy Magazine.Intent for NationMichael Byers describes his book, Intent for a Nation: A Relentlessly Optimistic Manifesto for Canada’s Role in the World, as a challenge to George Grant’s generation-defining thesis, Lament for a Nation. [...]

Dave and I had the following oped in the Tyee today on the NYT decision to take down their paywall.
Newspapers Online: Welcome to the NeighborhoodBy Taylor Owen and David Eaves
The New York Times made waves in the media world recently by dismantling its subscription paywall. As a result, anyone with a computer and an Internet [...]

…for the lack of posting. It has been due, in part, to the twin challenges of being on the road for the better part of the past two months, and having a sustained and agonizing computer melt down. On the latter, a few notes.
First, computer repair people are a lot [...]

Few scenes better sum up the wondrous complexity of the evolving online world that the following paragraph from a Globe and Mail article on legality and justice in virtual online worlds:
Last year, Second Life claimed its first living, breathing millionaire, Ansche Chung, who had made $1 million US entirely by developing virtual real-estate and other [...]

Whatever else we can say about Michael Ignatieff, he piques emotions, spurs debates and creates headlines with a fervor that is unrivaled in Canada.
True to form, his essay in last week’s NYT magazine has received the column inches usually reserved for the Health Act and the Stanley Cup. So just what did [...]

I forgot to post this here when it was published last week, but David Eaves and I had the following op-ed in the Toronto Star:
Blogosphere at age 10 is improving journalism
Although hard to believe, this month marks the 10th anniversary of blogging, a method for regularly publishing content online.
And what a milestone it is. A [...]

On a train from Rome to Venice, I just tucked into Samantha Power’s review essay on the future of War on Terror in this Sunday’s Times.  Again, she shows why she a leading driver of an emerging liberal foreign policy position that deviates at once from the utopian militarism of neoconservationism, the isolationism of realism, [...]

Yesterday, Obama caused bit of a blogospheric stir by drawing a link between US genocide prevention in Iraq and unilateral invasions of the DRC and Sudan. His attempt to explain this position in a 10 second sound bite, and the reaction to, and interpretation of, his statement marks a telling example of a position [...]

The FT, on the new Harvard boss, and gender. Of course.
Ms Faust said that leadership experts contend that the female management style, thought to be more collegial and involve more consensus-building, is particularly suited to running an educational institution. Her predecessor, Lawrence Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, resigned as Harvard president amid tensions [...]