I am currently working through Martin Meredith’s mammoth volume, The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. While I am only half-finished (the paperback version is nearly 700 pages), my impression is that Meredith does an excellent … Continue reading
“Africa has the shape of a pistol, and Congo is its trigger.” Jason Stearns borrows this prescient utterance from Frantz Fanon, a fiery anti-colonial philosopher of the 1950s and 1960s, to open a chapter of his impressive chronicle Dancing in … Continue reading
Mao Zedong, the notorious and brutal father of China’s Communist Party, once wrote: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, … Continue reading
A Middle East scholar and former aide to the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke at the State Department, Vali Nasr holds back no punches. His latest book, The Dispensable Nation, rips into the Obama administration—particularly the White House—on one foreign policy … Continue reading
“This was Karachi…destination of pilgrims and home of the poor, a field of operations for the makers of buildings and bombs. The instant city mixed the good and the bad, battering people with the impartiality of a typhoon.” (p. 141) … Continue reading
Max Boot’s recent book, Invisible Armies, takes an interesting dive into history to extract lessons from past wars—though of a different kind than we are used to reading about in textbooks. Boot’s gargantuan volume (567 pages, plus another 150 of … Continue reading
Most counterterrorism wonks know the basic story of al-Qaeda’s rise: the brainchild of a rich and charismatic Saudi (Osama bin Ladin) and an Egyptian doctor-cum-theologian and terror organizer (Ayman al-Zawahiri); jihad against the Soviets in 1980s Afghanistan; the move to … Continue reading
Andrew Wojtanik
Sara Plana
William J. VogtSurveying the world's largest democracy
A trip to Mali that will last a lifetime
An incomplete guide to hiking Utah, Colorado, Virginia, and beyond
MAKING WORLD POLITICS LESS FOREIGN
Lessons from the world's forgotten conflicts
Lessons from the world's forgotten conflicts
What then shall we do?
Lessons from the world's forgotten conflicts
Sharing and exchanging ideas on governance and development
Lessons from the world's forgotten conflicts
Lessons from the world's forgotten conflicts
Charting Strategy and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Pacific Century
Thoughtful analysis or bloviation? Your call.
A blog on violence and comparative politics by Yale PhD candidate Danny Hirschel-Burns
African politics, security, and occasional travel tales
