Admin announcement: The Progressive Realist blog network

Just a note to let everyone know that we've accepted an invitation to become a part of The Progressive Realist blog network, which the editors describe as "a metablog about American foreign policy." The site doesn't produce original content, but it's not an automated aggregator, either; the editors choose a selection of posts from the blogs that make up the network in order to populate the site. (I'd expect you might see something from Ink Spots on there perhaps once a week.) Read more about the site and the concept here.

I'll admit that I felt some initial trepidation about associating with such an expressly political label. While we do often cover the subject of defense politics, and while several of us have very strong positions staked out along what you might call the defense-ideological spectrum (I think it spans from "Dinosaur" on one end to "Enthusiastic COINdinista" on the other, or something like that), our blog isn't about liberal or conservative or anything else that might connote the primacy of political platform over pragmatic analysis. But I think you'll find that The Progressive Realist represents a wide array of political and policy views and has no truck with ideological orthodoxy or litmus tests, and if it did, we wouldn't be a part of it.

Personally, I'm pleased at the way this development reflects evolving perceptions of Ink Spots: my impression is that we're increasingly viewed not just as a narrowly-focused "COIN blog," but as contributors to the broader dialogue on strategy, policy, and a range of national security topics. Many of the other participants in The Progressive Realist network are folks you'll be familiar with from our blogroll and Twitter feeds. They come from a range of analytical viewpoints and sub-specialties, and I'd encourage you not only to read those posts that are lined up for aggregation on the metablog, but also to click through to their sites and take a deeper look.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to drop in and read us, and thanks to The Progressive Realist for making us a part of what they do.