Stevenson’s army, January 12
– NYT has a long tick-tock on the days before and after the Suleimani killing. Most interesting to me are how strongly CIA Director Haspel pushed for the attack and how many officials admitted the lack of imminence of Iranian attacks.
– WSJ says US has threatened Iraq with loss of access to NY Fed accounts to handle oil sales if Iraq forces US troops to leave.
– Reuters says there is still no final text for US-China trade deal, due to be signed Wednesday.
– WaPo has article on Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy views.
– I’ve just finished reading an unsettling book detailing the history of xenophobia in America. I learned, for example, that Ben Franklin used Trumpian language against German immigrants — and then lost an election to the Pennsylvania assembly, leading him to move to Britain for a decade. Time and again, already arrived Americans demonized the newly arriving — Irish and Catholics and Italians and Jews and Eastern Europeans and Mexicans and now Muslims.
And once here, a NYT story tells us, even school history textbooks reflect regional prejudices.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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