Professor Government and International Affairs
Virginia Tech, VTRC Office 6-020,900 North Glebe Road,Arlington, VA 22203, USAPopular Categories
Abkhazia August War Bosnia Bosnian war Caucasus conflict Critical Geopolitics Current affairs De Facto States Democracy ethnic cleansing Five Day War forced displacement genocide Geography Geopolitics Georgia Nagorno-Karabakh Nagorny Karabakh nationalism Obama Political Borders Political Geography Putin Radovan Karadzic South Ossetia Syria Uncategorized war crimes Washington D.C. World political mapBlogroll
- Duck of Minerva US IR scholars on contemporary international affairs
- Geographical Imaginations 2020 Historic posts on war & space by Derek Gregory
- Political Geography Specialty Group Political Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
- Political Violence at a Glance
- Progressive Geographies Thinking about place and power
Professional Affiliation
- Government and International Affairs The Government and International Affairs program at Virginia Tech
- The School of Public and International Affairs School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech
Research Projects
- The De Facto States Project The De Facto States Project
Critical Geopoltiics- Ukraine’s remarkable protests and whether it should draft all its young men
- Which leaders do Ukrainians trust most?
- Trump as an enemy
- Book Forum on my book: Oceans Rise Empires Fall
- New Publication: What Did the Donbas Want? The attitudes of ordinary people on the eve of the invasion.
- Will Ukraine Be Forced to Give Up Territory?
- Territorial Taboo or Territorial Trading in the Russian War against Ukraine?
- Oceans Rise Empires Fall is published in the USA
- Text of remarks for Kennan Institute’s “Why Ukraine Matters” series.
- On my new book: Oceans Rise Empires Fall
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Category Archives: Current affairs
Fears and Fantasies about the “Flesh of the Nation”
Yesterday Adis Maksic defended his Ph D dissertation “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethno-National Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Adis is a Sarajevo native who was fortunately able to come to the United States with his family after his family suffered a … Continue reading
Airspace in De Facto States: Remarks on Ukraine Crisis at the New School, 3 October 2014
Given the recent helicopter shoot down in Nagorno Karabakh, and the ongoing fighting over Donetsk airport, I’m posting below some remarks I made at the New School conference last month on the Ukrainian crisis. Point 2 addresses airspace. On Overlapping … Continue reading
Posted in Current affairs
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Social Survey Research in De Facto States After Crimea
I’m very happy to announce that I’ve a new home office, as a year long house extension project has come to an end. I will seek to renew my writing for this site, though I’m conscious that time spent writing here and … Continue reading
The Crimea Precedent & the Post-Soviet De Facto States
The well-known Political Science blog The Monkey Cage, now owned by the Washington Post (now owned by Jeff Bezos; we all work for Amazon now) posted earlier today a concise 3 graph summary of what our De Facto State Research Survey reveals … Continue reading
Bosnia by the Black Sea? Could Crimea be another BiH?
I have an op ed on this topic on the Open Democracy Russia website under the title “Could Crimea Be Another Bosnia?” http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/gerard-toal/could-crimea-be-another-bosnia-republika-srpska-krajina For Bosnia specialists, below is the source I used for the opening quote. Specialists will know I … Continue reading
The Birth of a Nation: Radovan Karadžić and the Ethnopoliticization of Bosnia in 1990
By the time he strode to the podium in Skenderija Hall, Sarajevo, on 12 July 1990 to speak, the journey of Dr Radovan Karadžić from obscure psychiatrist to politician, wartime leader, and later accused war criminal had begun. Karadžić had been working for months … Continue reading
Internal Legitimacy in De Facto States
The question of legitimacy is, of course, a central one in the study of de facto states. Unrecognized states don’t have it from the international community (or from only a few as in the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), … Continue reading
Joe Sacco and the Great War
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Sacco last night at Politics and Prose where he presented his latest work, The Great War. July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. An Illustrated Panorama. First conceived over 15 years … Continue reading
‘Land for Peace’ in Nagorny Karabakh? PUBLISHED
My latest publication, with Dr John O’Loughlin, from the De Facto States Research Project, funded by the US National Science Foundation, is “Land for Peace in Nagorny Karabakh? Political Geographies and Public Attitudes inside a Contested De Facto State” which … Continue reading
Posted in Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Caucasus conflict, Current affairs, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, Geography, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Nagorny Karabakh, Political Borders, Political Geography, World political map
Tagged academic research, conflict, Nagorny Karabakh, public attitudes, social survey, spatial perceptions
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Top 5 Things I learnt at “The PKK, Kurdish Nationalism and Future of Turkey” Conference
Our program hosted this conference which was mostly organized by Tugrul Keskin, a VT graduate now at Portland State University and Kemal Silay, Director of the Turkish Studies program at Indiana University, at 1021 Prince Street, Alexandria yesterday. We received … Continue reading
Posted in conference, Current affairs, Iraq, Kurdistan, Kurds, Middle East, PKK, Turkey, World political map
Tagged academic conference, future of Turkey, Kurdish nationalism, papers, presentations
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