This past week your humble blogger added another affiliation to his bio, as he has now joined the Brookings Institution as a... wait for it... nonresident senior fellow with the Managing Global Order project.

Now, those who live and breathe the mores and rhythms of DC's think tank community are already aware of the awesome rights, responsibilities and entitlements that comes with this honorific. Those not in the wonk priesthood, however, might wonder. Clearly, "nonresident" implies I'm not moving to DC. But what are the other perks of being a nonresident senior fellow?

The better way to phrase this query is -- what aren't the perks of being a nonresident senior fellow? It's almost as cool as being a full professor, for Pete's sake!! To list all the perks would take too long. Here are, in order, the top ten benefits to being a nonresident senior fellow at a think tanks, however:

10) Now all of my talks can be shorter. Before any academic or policy talk, a speaker usually receives an introduction in which the convenor reads the person's bio. If the speaker has lots of awards, affiliations, and publications, then this process can take a while, cutting into the speaker's allotted time. Secretly, all speakers want this, cause it means they don't have to remble on as long. Adding the Brookings affiliation will cut my talks by at least thirty seconds.

9) I'm now one affiliation away from the PACT. A key plot device in 30 Rock was Tracy Morgan's quest for the EGOT -- Emmy, Grammy, Tony and Oscar awards. Foreign policy wonks have a similar quest, except it operates by affiliations: Press, Academia, Consulting, and Think Tankery. Adding my nonresident senior fellow appellation to being a Fletcher professor and a contributing editor here at FP, I now have a PAT. The only thing missing is the for-profit consulting gig. I'm looking in your direction, Stonebridge Group and/or McKinsey!!

8) 50,000 frequent flyer miles with an airline of my choice. This sounds like a great perk, but really, it's just so that I can be conversant in frequent flyer-speak when bumping into other nonresident senior fellows at conferences:

ME: So did you get upgraded on this flight?

OTHER WONK: Oh, yeah, but that's because I'm Super Premium status. You?

ME: No, and I was willing to use miles too!!

OTHER WONK: Oh, no, never use your own miles!! See, what you should do it... [long disquisition about the art of frequent flyer mile management.]

You get the idea.

7) Officially one of the old boys now. The "senior" is a tipoff -- I can no longer declare "Young Turk" status. Instead, I'm clearly part of an old boy network of some kind or another. Which will, inevitably, lead to attacks from Glenn Greenwald.

6) Attract a much better class of groupies. Oh, sure, as a full professor I get the entreaty from a student willing to do just about anything to get an RAship/grad school admission/job. DC, however, attacts a much more desperate and stylish set of aspirants. Indeed, within 24 hours of becoming a nonresident senior fellow, my LinkedIn profile was beseiged with requests ranging from "I'm just dying to polish your memos" to "I feel like I'm the only research assistant who gets you -- I mean, really gets you!!"

5) One free black helicopter ride. I have every confidence that the sovereigntists in the crowd are already freaked out by the "Managing Global Order" moniker. AS YOU SHOULD BE!!! Who do you think supplies the black helicopetrs to the United Nations? Before we do, however, a nonresident fellow can pick where in the country the brand-spanking new black helicopter can buzz, just to freak out some locals. I, for one, am looking forward to a quick, below-the-radar trip through the Texas panhandle.

4) Playing the Lincoln card.  All nonresident senior fellows run into bureaucratic impediments at some point or another.  Once a year, I can pull the Lincoln card out of my wallet, and utter the following: "I am a nonresident senior fellow, clothed in IMMENSE POWER!  You will procure me these PowerPoint slides."

3) Preferential treatment at the Old Ebbitt Grill.  For years, I used to make reservations at this venerable DC establishment and still find myself cooling my heels and not impressing my date as more distinguished Beltway denizens would just waltz on in.  Not anymore!!  Now I just flash your "Nonresident Senior Fellow" gold card to the maitre d'hotel and -- KABLAMM!! -- my date and I are enjoying the finest champagnes in the land.  This is a much more civilized way of exerting power than the more old-fashioned method in which -- as I understand it -- the men simply unzipped their flies and compared penis sizes. 

2) At least ten more seconds of air time on CNN. Cable news nets will let senior nonresident fellows blather on for at least two more sentences before interrupting duing an interview.

1) "Nonresident Casual Fridays." One Friday, every other month, the nonresident fellows show up at the Brookings Institution very early, camp ourselves in the offices of the resident fellows, and scare the bejeezus out of them when they walk in. Alternatively, we prank call the senior resident fellows, pretending to be a White House flack asking for permission to vet them for a prominent subcabinet position.

I started blogging ten years ago today.  To celebrate, Foreign Policy asked me to write a little reflections essay about the changing state of the blogosphere, as well as my top ten favorite posts from the last ten years.  Go check them out. 

Trying to come up with the Top Ten list was tricky and just a little disorienting -- at times I was reading stuff I'd written but had no memory of writing.  Still as I think about it,  the best work I've done on the blog isn't encapsulated in a "greatest hits" package per se.  The blog has run best when I sink my teeth into a question du jour -- be it offshore outsourcing, the relative generosity of American foreign aid, the Sino-American relationship, or the current state of public intellectuals.  And, of course, Salma Hayek.  Most of those ongoing riffs have led to larger research projects, which highlights for me the ways in which the blog has complemented rather than substituted for my academic research. 

When I started this, I honestly thought I'd blog for a year and then write up the experience as a pedagogical exercise for International Studies Perspectives.  The reason it lasted longer than that, is, well, all of you.  Most blogs aren't read by anybody and fade away into oblivion.  I'm still not entirely sure how I avoided that fate, but I am extremely grateful to all the readers that decided to stick around. 

There have been occasional moments over the years when I have thought about when I'd stop blogging.  There  were even briefer moments when I thought ten years was the perfect length of time.  The move to Foreign Policy recharged my batteries more than I realized, however. So, in conclusion, ten years on, I should be doing this, and I most certainly do have tenure.  Onward!

My latest Bloggingheads diavlog is with NSN's Heather Hurlburt.  We discuss Greece, Palestinian recognition, and the state of the foreign policy debate among the GOP 2012 candidates. 

Given those topics, be warned:  I might have been liberal in my use of profanity in the diavlog below.

 

Enjoy!

I was all set this morning to blog more about high-falutin' theoretical IR debates or what's happening in Libya or whether Hugo Chavez can really move all of his gold without these guys somehow stealing it, when, well.... this happened: 

So instead, today your humble blogger was busy stockpiling supplies like vodka fresh water, whiskey, batteries, bourbon, dry goods, etc. 

This might seem like an overreaction, and hopefully, it will be.  However, I learned a valuable lesson from the last time I labeled an event like this as "hurricane porn."  Never again will I trivialize hurricane warnings.  Even if, nine times out of ten, a hurricane/tropical storm/tropical depression turns out to be less than advertised, there is that one time that the worst case scenario nis actually realized.  And in that event, better to be prepared than not. 

Of course, the problem with this approach is that after each iteration in which a natural disaster warning does not come to fruition, one is  tempted to be more blasé about the next one.  It's the meteorilogical equivalent of festering foreign policy problems -- unless and until a slow-motion problem becomes an acute crisis, attention will not be paid. 

Still, on a day when parts of New York are being evacuated, I am grateful that this is unlikely to happen: 

 

This week I'll be media whoring talking about Theories of International Politics and Zombies in a lot of venues.  For example, I have an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education about what it was like to write a book about the living dead.  Here's the opening paragraph:

Regardless of what parents tell their children, books are routinely judged by their covers. Indeed, many book titles encapsulate a premise so obvious that the text itself seems superfluous. I'm talking about the literary equivalents of Hot Tub Time Machine or Aliens vs. Predator. I should know­—I'm the author of Theories of International Politics and Zombies.

In the interest of getting Media Whore Week off to a good start, here's a brief rundown of reviews so far. 

Publisher's Weekly:

[A]n intriguing intellectual conceit to explain various schools of international political theory…. Drezner is fascinated with zombies–he’s seen all the movies and read the books–and writes with clarity, insight, and wit…. This slim book is an imaginative and very helpful way to introduce its subject–who knew international relations could be this much fun?

Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed:

Whatever else it may be, an attack by bloodthirsty ghouls offers a teachable moment. And Drezner, who is a professor of international politics at Tufts University, does not waste it. Besides offering a condensed and accessible survey of how various schools of international-relations theory would respond, he reviews the implications of a zombie crisis for a nation’s internal politics and its psychosocial impact. He also considers the role of standard bureaucratic dynamics on managing the effects of relentless insurgency by the living dead. While a quick and entertaining read, Theories of International Politics and Zombies is a useful introductory textbook on public policy — as well as a definitive monograph for the field of zombie studies….  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Josh Rothman, The Boston Globe

Political science isn’t really a science at all – it’s more like a collection of disparate and even contradictory world-views.  Daniel Drezner… has hit upon the perfect way to weigh those world-views against one another…. the detail with which Drezner can apply international political theory to the zombie apocalypse is striking. 

Adam Weinstein, Mother Jones: 

A light, breezy volume, TIPZ is a valuable primer in international relations theory for laypeople, and thank God for that—it’s been a long time coming. But Drezner’s real genius is that he’s written a stinging postmodern critique of IR theorists themselves…. It’s both a pedagogical text and a lampoon of pedagogy.

All of these reviews raise interesting questions, as does Charli Carpenter's recent post.  I promise a response to these criticisms later in the week (just as soon as I can find Hosni Mubarak's soeechwriter, because that guy was comedy gold). 

In the meantime, just buy the friggin' book already. 

If you're a DC reader of this blog, and you have nothing to do between 12:30 and 1:30, well...

The End of America's Global Hegemony: Implications for the Global System
Lecture by Daniel Drezner 

Date: October 21, 2010
Time: 12:30-1:30

Rome Auditorium
JHU School of Advanced International Studies
1619 Massachusetts Ave NW

Subject: Professor Drezner will be speaking on the implications of a multipolar world where the United States is no longer the sole superpower. Specifically, he will discuss the prospects for global coordination in a world without a dominant power.

 

I see that, over the weekend, Megan McArdle, Brad DeLong and Tyler Cowen all posted about stuff they've gotten wrong as bloggers.  This is an excellent topic to post about.  Bloggers are supposed to prvide real-time analysis on breaking events -- of course we're going to get a lot of stuff wrong.  As Brad correctly notes: 

f you don't mark your beliefs to market occasionally, and throw out worthless intellectual trash, you ossify--you become one of those demented old coots detached from reality ranting unintelligibly at the moon.

Looking back on my eighth (!!) year of blogging, here are the big things I think I got wrong over the past year: 

1)  The Green Movement did not cause Iran's regime to crack up.  Score one for the Leveretts -- Iran's regime has effectively silenced the Green movement, without any visible internal cost.  Indeed, the regime now seems entrenched enough so that the fundamentalists and conservatives can now ignore reformists and start turning on each other.  I confess, I though the Ashura protests marked an inflection point on Iran.  Nope.  The regime has suffered some serious costs from its internal repression, but Khamenei ain't going anywhere anytime soon. 

2)  Iceland was willing to pay the price of financial isolation.  I knew that Icelanders were outraged at the notion that they had to help bail out Icesave depositors in England and the Netherlands.  I also thought, however, that when the question was put to a referendum, Icelanders would pause for a moment and consider the ramifications of financial isolation.  Um... whoops. 

3)  The G-20 was been far less useful than I anticipated.  A year ago at this juncture I was pretty pessimistic about the prospects of G-20 macroeconomic policy coordination.  I was hopeful, however, that the G-20 could function effectively as a mechanism to pressure China into revaluing the yuan. 

And... things are worse on both fronts than I anticipated.  At Toronto, the G-20 encouraged contractionary fiscal policies way too early, helping to push the global economy into double3-dip territory.  On the yuan, China has niminally pledged to let the yuan float, but acual movement has been pretty meager.

It only took me about 15 minutes to come up with this short list.  I hereby invite and encourage all commenters to root through the archives to find other screw-ups. 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is up, with UMass Amherst's Charli Carpenter.  We talk about what's going to happen and what should happen on the Korean peninsula (click here for more on Carpenter's take), the National Security Strategy, and whether it's OK to target Americans overseas. 

Here's a fun exercise -- see if you can detect the moment when Charli and I switch hawk and dove positions.  It's a tricky maneuver!   

Your humble blogger will be MIA for the next few days, as he is attending the annual meeting of the Japanese Association of International Relations in Kobe, Japan for the next few days. 

Let me assure my readers that my decision to flee leave the country has nothing whatsoever to do with recent events.  It's just a very, very, very, very happy coincidence. 

While I'm gone, let me recomend reading Evan Feigenbaum's new Council on Foreign Relations report, "The United States in the New Asia."  I'll certainly be reading it on the flight.  The latest issue of The National Interest is also worth a gander. 

And now a request from my readers -- what's worth reading that I haven't commented on?  In other words, what should I be reading? 

 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is with David Frum.  We discuss the situations in Iran and North Korea, and whether John Bolton is the Glenn Beck of U.S. foreign policy. 

 

As the moment of the inauguration approaches today, my mind keeps traveling back to an argument I had when I was a second year in college. 

In a political science course, I got into a disagreement with a guest lecturer from the local peace and justice center, who was leading a discussion on the future of race relations.  I remember her asking me, as a way of demonstrating the abject lack of progress in race relations, whether I thought there would be a black president in my lifetime.  The tone of her question radiated the sense that, unless I answered "no," I was a naive fool who understood little about America. 

And, of course, I said "yes" -- not because I was trying to be contrarian, but because I genuinely believed it to be true.  I remember her shaking her head sadly from side to side and smiling ruefully.  I bet Mark Penn shook his head the same way early last year.   

I hope, when Obama is sworn in, that she's smiling for a different reason.   

This blog has been silent about Caroline Kennedy's shadow campaign for a Senate appointment, mostly because he was convinced that this was just some effort by karma to tap dance on those partisans who took too much glee mocking the qualifications of Sarah Palin.  As someone who thought Palin was unqualified for VP-dom and thinks Kennedy is unqualified for the Senate, I nevertheless feel a massive twinge of sympathy for Caroline Kennedy after her New York Times interview.  Several media outlets are mocking her verbal tic of saying "you know" a lot in that interview.  Longtime watchers of my bloggingheads and other media appearances are well aware that I've owned that tic for several years now.  That's my thing.  That I do.  When I'm formulating what I am about to say.  When a live mic is close by.  Anything Kennedy can do to make it acceptable to the mainstream would be good for my media whoredom, and therefore a Manifestly Good Thing for the Republic. 

I have been blogging at danieldrezner.com for 5+ years now, and it has been a wonderful ride.  When I look back on this half-decade, I think of the good times, like when I cussed out James Lileks, or when I corrected Matt Stoller, or I adapted A Few Good Men to explain pork-barrel spending, or my DC potboiler written in the jargon of IR theory, or [I think they get the point--ed.  Really, I'm almost done!]  or what Junior Soprano and the G-20 have in common.  Hell, this blog has outlasted the birth, life and death of TimesSelect.  But five years in the blogosphere is a looooooong time.  So, as of January 4th, 2009, this blog as you know it will cease to exist.  Gone.  Kaput.  Goodbye, farewell, and amen.....  ...because on January 5th, danieldrezner.com will be relocated to Foreign Policy's website at foreignpolicy.com!  That's right, I'm officially selling out!!    Now, in light of some recent developments in the blogosphere, I can imagine that longtime readers of this blog will be curious about what this means.  So, just to be clear:  I will continue to be the sole editor of my blog.  When I want to post something, it's going up -- there are no other filters here.  To put this in blunt blogspeak terms -- if either Jennifer Palmieri or David Kuo goes anywhere near this blog, I'll whack them with a f$%#ing two-by-four.  Seriously, Foreign Policy is not affiliated with any think tank or ideological foundation -- it is now owned and operated by the Washington Post Group (as is Newsweek and Slate).  And I will not be the only person joining Foreign Policy's web team.  Without spilling any secrets, I know some of the other political scientists that Foreign Policy is bringing in after the first of the year, and I've had zero problem disagreeing with them in the past.   Blogging will continue uninterrupted at this site until January 5th, after which all y'all will be re-routed to my new home at Foreign Policy.  Finally, in the only sucking up I plan on doing in public, a big thank you to Moises Naim and the rest of the Foreign Policy crowd for having enough stupidity faith to bring me on board. 

Last week was this weblog's sixth anniversary.  A lot has happened during this time -- children being born, children growing up, books being written, tenure being denied, promotions being given, baseball teams shocking the world, me turning forty, audiences waxing and waning, etc.  I was going to write a long, contemplative essay on the significance of blogging for this long and how it's changed me.  This is a blog, however.  So, instead, a few bullet points tapped out while everyone else in the house is sleeping:

• My fastball ain't what it used to be.  Compared to other bloggers I read, I'm not keeping up the pace and depth of my blog posts (sorry about that --fewer free lunches for you!).  This is for a lot of reasons.  First, a lot of top bloggers are professionals -- i.e., they are paid to blog.  It's just really, really tough to compete as a generalist when the division of labor kicks in.*  Second, I have a lot more day job responsibilities than I did in the past, and I'm very comfortable with putting the blog at the bottom of the list.  Third, my children are walking and talking now, which makes them more interesting (and time-consuming).  And fourth....
• I've screwed up a lot.  There are some big, big issues that I've gotten wrong in my blogging.  I supported the invasion of Iraq and that hasn't gone so well.  I opposed a surge in Iraq and that has turned out better than I thought.  I've gotten a lot of stuff right too, but in my mind the screw-ups are what stand out.  On the other hand, this has been good, because....
• I'm a bit better at avoiding some blog traps.  Blogs call for instant analysis, but after six years at this I'm concluding that there are times when it's a virtue to not expressing an immediate opinion.  For example, I'm very glad I was too busy to post about the Russian-Georgian conflict when it first broke out.  Why?  Because the immediate blog debate was over who was to blame for the conflict, which was not terribly interesting.  I thought it distracted many from the "what happens now?" questions that are much more salient.  Posting too early can also cause a blogger to lock in their opinions before enough information is on the table (this, by the way, is why I'm holding off on blogging about the bailout -- I need more information). 
• The blog has been a godsend to my day job.  I've chronicled why here, but the basic point is that all aspects of my job have been facilitated by maintaining this site. 
• Thanks for the comments!  For six months the comments feature on this blog was broken.  I quite enjoyed that for the first few weeks -- much less energy devoted to dealing with trolls and spam.  Since the new software has been installed, however, I've been enjoying and learning from the downthread discussions.  So thank you, dear readers, for stopping by -- and for coming back. 

*Also, let's face it, if I have any faith in markets I have to presume that professional bloggers possess a comparative advantage in blogging relative to your humble blogger.