Foreign Affairs
Drones Over Ethiopia
Less than two months ago, the Ethiopian government was on the brink of defeat as Tigrayan forces closed in on the capital. Now the Tigrayan troops have turned about and withdrawn north back into Tigray. The government’s use of foreign-supplied unarmed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and armed drones appears to
The Free-ish World
A review of World in Danger: Germany and Europe in an Uncertain Time by Wolfgang Ischinger, Brookings, 280 pages (November, 2020) Every winter in Bavaria, the great and the good from Europe and the United States gather to take stock of the threats facing the world. The Munich Security Conference
Taiwan, Ukraine, and Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations Revisited
An attack on Ukraine by the Russian forces massed on its eastern border would nakedly demonstrate the nature of President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and, by extension, the nature of authoritarianism itself. The Russian state seeks control of Ukraine for reasons of power, and to assuage a Russian population taught
Ethiopia’s Stunning Battlefield Reversal
A year is a long time during warfare, and the Tigray conflict that began last November has now been flipped on its head. Not many observers saw the current scenario coming. The world’s recurring tendency to forget Ethiopia, noted by the eminent 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon, has reasserted
Sandinista! The US Left and Nicaragua
When the Sandinista insurgency overthrew the barbaric dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, many on the international Left believed that Nicaragua had become a nation alive with political possibility. American radicals, in particular, understood the revolutionary new government led by Daniel Ortega to be a noble rebuke to the hegemony
Bitter Lessons from Afghanistan
A review of Can Intervention Work? by Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus; W.W. Norton, 272 pages (August 2011) The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian; OUP, 576 pages (July 2021) The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock; Simon and Schuster, 368
Welcome to Cold War II
In early June, with little fanfare or press coverage, the US Senate passed a 2,400-page bill called “The United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).” Heralded as “the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades,” the bill will pump over $200 billion into a diverse spectrum of
