At the Africa Blog: Self Indulgence Alert

In case you are not a regular visitor, you should know that I have been very busy at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog. One of the huge benefits of a fellowship such as this one is that it gives me the breathing room to do a whole range of writing, including blogging, short-form pieces and essays, as well as scholarly work. The Africa blog, in particular, has been a beneficiary of this time. (Although I've been as busy with dcat as at any time in recent memory too).

You also should check out the main FPA Blogs page that consolidates the work of all of the organization's bloggers. We are the largest network of foreign affairs blogs on the web (or so they tell us!) and our readership has been huge and growing. Even if you do not always check out the Africa Blog, bookmark the main page to get as good an overview of a range of global issues as is available anywhere.

At the Africa Blog

I've been busy busy busy over at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog. I hope you'll go over and take a look at my commentary on African affairs ranging from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and across the continent, with lots and lots of South African politics as a focus. South Africa will hold elections later this month, and the country has not been in this kind of political flux since 1994. I hope you'll check in regularly, bookmark the Africa Blog, and put it on your blogroll if you blog.

Mumbai, America, and the Global Community

This David Ignatius column in The Washington Post on the Mumbai terrorist attacks asks some important questions. I am always astounded when I hear about how safe Bush administration policies have made us. And I am reminded of how profoundly we have devalued our alliances these last eight years. For while there have been no attacks on United States soil (note: We went longer between attacks on US soil during the Clinton administration and into the first eight months of this one, so the "kept us safe" meme is a bit fraudulent in any case) our allies have certainly faced the horrors of terrorism. Madrid, London, Mumbai, and of course Israel have all faced terrorist attacks. American solipsism has led too many to assume that 9/11 somehow made us singularly victimized and thus singularly virtuous. If, as many have asserted, 9/11 ended the American holiday from history, perhaps 1/20 will mark the end of our holiday from the responsibilities of (and not just expectations from) our alliances.

David Ignatius is right that we, the United States, almost certainly will face future threats of terrorist attacks. But it is equally important to recognize that we, as part of a larger world, have been facing these challenges regularly, and that triumphalism about supposed successes on the home front should not cloud our judgment as to the realities of the world.

From Colony to Superpower

In this Sunday's New York Times Book Review Josef Joffe reviews George Herring's ambitious contribution to the Oxford History of the United States, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776. Joffe concludes that while Herring's synthesis is not perfect, "We have long been waiting for a single-volume history like this one, and “From Colony to Superpower” deserves a place on the bookshelf, if only for sheer effort and sweep."

Stuff That Caught My Eye

The title of this post says it all. Here are a bunch of links to things that have caught my eye of late but about which I am too lazy, busy, or unmotivated to comment:

It took a bit of tracking down, as the New Republic seems to have disappeared the link, but here is a version of Jonathan Chait's glorious evisceration of the state of Delaware. I love the Joe Biden pick, but he comes from a little pustule of a state.

At Foreign Affairs Robert Kagan looks at the post-Bush world in "The September 12 Paradigm." This article represents the early stages, not the final word, in assessment, of course. My guess is that this will be one of those dialogues that we never quite resolve, as is the case with most ideologically and politically fraught issues with long-range ramifications.

Several New York Times articles have grabbed my attention in recent days, including Allan Barra's revisiting of John Carlos' and Tommie Smith's 1968 Olympic protest, the travel section's return to one of my favorite countries, Namibia, Robert McFarland's fairly brutal takedown of Paul Theroux's latest travel book, and Bill Keller's considerably kinder review of John Carlin's book on Nelson Mandela and the 1995 Rugby World Cup. I just ordered the Carlin book, as I am in the final stages of an article on rugby, race, and nationalism in South Africa since 1994 and the 1995 Springbok triumph plays a large role, as you might well guess. As for Theroux, I tend to enjoy his travel writing, especially his early stuff, but the man can be insufferable. Plus, one more serious problem I have with his work is that I wonder how reliable he is. No one expects a great deal of depth with someone who covers so much ground, but in Dark Star Safari, his tale of trekking from Cairo to Cape Town, he gets so much rudimentary stuff wrong or mangled about southern Africa that I cannot help but wonder what else he gets wrong about all of those other places about which he has written that I do not know so well.

At his Atlantic blog Mark Ambinder imagines a conversation between an Obama supporter worried about the state of the Democratic campaign and one who by and large is not. It's gimmicky, of course, but worth a perusal. My own view is that we live in times when both parties are pretty much guaranteed about 40% of the vote in a presidential election, but neither party is guaranteed 50%. This has been the case since at least 1992. Why is anyone surprised that it looks as if the 2008 election will be close?

Finally, I can take or leave MoveOn. But free Obama buttons are, after all, free Obama buttons. And if you want, you can buy even more. Then again, of course you can.

Stating the Obvious

The Council on Foreign Relations has produced two obvious but necessary reminders of the realities of the world in which we live: This nifty slideshow shows how the Olympics are pretty much always about politics, grandstanding to the contrary notwithstanding. And this op-ed piece from the CFR's Leslie Gelb states what ought to be an obvious point: American presidents nearly always negotiate with even the most noxious of leaders.

Ten Stories You Missed

Foreign Policy has a list of the top ten stories you missed in 2007. Naturally I'd like to point out that we almost always "miss" stories on Africa, and as if to prove my point, notice the paucity of Africa-related stories on this list of what you missed in 2007. That's, like, irony or something.