Foreign Policy Blogs

The FPA’s must reads (July 31-August 7)

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The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here
By Eric Holthaus
Rolling Stone

From acidification and warming waters to the disappearance of entire species, climate change has already begun to take its toll on the earth. Some of these changes may be irreversible, and what’s particularly frightening is a lot of them are coming sooner than expected.

Hiroshima
By John Hersey
The New Yorker

Pulled from the archives in remembrance of the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima, this extraordinary article provides an in-depth look into the lives lost and those who somehow managed to survive.

The harrowing story of the Nagasaki bombing mission
By Ellen Bradbury and Sandra Blakeslee
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Although the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were touted as clear and decisive victories by U.S. leadership, the Nagasaki mission in particularly was riddled with screw-ups and errors that could have plunged the plane into the Pacific Ocean. This comprehensive account of the bombing on August 9, 1945, looks at what went wrong and how it changed the course of history.

The Bureaucrats Who Singled Out Hiroshima for Destruction
By Paul Ham
The Atlantic

At first glance, Hiroshima may have seemed like an odd target for the 1945 bombing. It wasn’t Japan’s biggest city, nor was it as obvious of a military target as, say, Kokura. In this excerpt from Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath, Paul Ham tells the story of the reasons military strategists chose their targets and the process that led to dropping the two atomic bombs a few months later.

When Canada Learned It Had Spies
By Graham Templeton
Vice

Canada’s intelligence gathering efforts remained largely a secret until 1972, when a senior analyst at the U.S. National Security Agency divulged the name of its intelligence branch in an interview with the leftist magazine Ramparts. Dubbed the Communications Branch of the National Research Council, or CBNRC, the 1970s marked the death of anonymity for Canada’s SIGINT program. Templeton explores how this information came to light.

Blogs:

Rebuilding Afghanistan: The Way Forward by Elly Rostoum
Russia and the World are not on Good Terms by Hannah Gais
Netanyahu’s Problematic Remarks on the Iran Deal by Josh Klemons
GailForce: Aspen Security Forum Part II – Terrorism by Gail Harris
Beijing Attempts to Stifle South China Sea Discussion at ASEAN by Gary Sands