Things worth reading

The economic crisis is so bad that it is often easy to forget that the foreign policy challenges that so dominated the news a year or so ago have not gone away. The mission in Afghanistan will present General Petraeus with an even tougher challenge than Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions will have to be confronted or accepted sometime soon, this year we will find out what happens in China when the economy stumbles, Russia still seems intent on reasserting its dominance in its near abroad and there is—of course—the problems in the Middle East that have so dominated the news in the past few days. So, I’m very glad that my old home Foreign Policy has launched a set of blogs that promise to be required reading on these topics.

If I had to narrow down my recommendations, there are three I’d steer you to in particular. The one by Thomas Ricks who is a two time Pulitzer-prize winner and the author of Fiasco one of the best books on the Iraq war and one that John McCain used to recommend, Shadow Government which consists of former Bush administration officials giving advice to the Obama team on foreign policy and the Madame Secretary blog covering Hillary Clinton’s State Department by Carolyn O’Hara who is one of the smartest and nicest people you could ever hope to meet.

I’m obviously biased when it comes to Foreign Policy having worked there for four year. But do check them out for yourselves.