Foreign Policy Blogs

The FPA’s Must Reads (March 22 – March 28)

11854749315_f85ea330e3_z

A graveyard in Sarajevo. (babakoto.eu)

Sarajevo: the crossroads of history
Financial Times
By Simon Kuper

100 years after the Gavrilo Princip assassinated the archduke Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo continues to live in the shadow of war. Simon Kuper describes this sleepy Balkan town’s careful struggle to move past its history.

Confronting Putin’s Russia
New York Times
By Michael A. McFaul

Recently retired U.S. ambassador to Moscow Michael A. McFaul expresses his disappointment and frustration with Putin’s Russia, arguing that now is the time to devise a unified policy of isolation towards the repressive regime.

The Chaos Company
Vanity Fair
By William Langewiesche

Langewiesche follows Pierre Booyse, a soldier of fortune serving G4S, a private security firm commanding a force three times the size of the British military, into some of the most dangerous conflict zones in Southern Sudan. He describes difficult mental, not to mention physical, toll of constant conflict for the seemingly disaffected mercenaries and reveals their company’s complicated relationship with regular forces.

The Interpreters We Left Behind
Men’s Journal
By Paul Solotaroff

Paul Solotaroff explores the plight of Afghan and Iraqi interpreters for the U.S. military that are now being left behind in increasingly hostile territory.

Inside the Kafkaesque World of the US’s ‘Little Guantanamos’
Vice
By Annie P. Waldman

Annie P. Waldman examines the bizarre and relatively little-known arrangement known as the Communication Management Unit (CMU), where prisoners, usually Muslim, are held under strict conditions and little access to the outside world. 

Blogs:

A Method, Yet a Madness: Understanding Russian Democracy by Anna Pivovarchuk
Smog is enemy #1 in China’s ‘war on pollution’ by Jordan Stutts
Crimea’s Impact on Syria and Iran by Scott Monje
Analysis: Recent U.S.-Israeli Tensions Based on Cultural Misunderstandings by Rachel Avraham
How Hospitals Are Helping U.S. Trade Policy by Elyse Lichtenthal

Podcasts:

Michael Werz on Turkey with Sarwar Kashmeri