The FPA’s Must Reads (August 31-September 6)

Crossing the Line
By Steve Coll
The New Yorker

President Obama’s response to the chemical weapons attacks on August 21, 2013, in a suburb of Damascus have been burdened not just by his comment about chemical warfare as the “red line” for U.S. action in Syria, but also by memories of Iraq. Yet even with an America skeptical of interventions after Iraq, Coll argues, Obama’s instincts are sound. Al-Assad has crossed a “red line,” even if the rest of the war seems muddled.

The Syrian War Is Creating a Massive Kidnapping Crisis in Lebanon
By Sulome Anderson
The Atlantic

Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s plagued the country with a series of kidnappings — a sort of tit-for-tat between tribes and warring sects. The country, which has had the unfortunate experience of being the site of proxy wars on a couple of occasions, is now experiencing a new wave of kidnappings in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Anderson, whose father was kidnapped in the 1980s, investigates the motives and meaning behind them.

Stealth Multilateralism
By David Kaye
Foreign Affairs

“The U.S. Senate rejects multilateral treaties as if it were sport,” states Kaye. Some may be rejected outright; others through inaction. Yet these treaties go on — many without U.S. involvement and influence, a dangerous move to make in an era of “American decline” and waining U.S. influence. Blockades aside, the executive branch has found a way to keep on going, exercising leadership without the approval of the Senate through what Kaye calls “stealth multilateralism.”

Egypt: The Misunderstood Agony
By Yasmine El Rashidi
The New York Review of Books

The real coup, argues El Rashidi, wasn’t the Morsi ouster; it was the day, February 11, 2011, when Mubarak left office. But the aspects of the state responsible for the discontent in 2011 still remain, and even though Egypt’s “real revolution” may still have yet to come, Egyptians who find themselves pitted against a band of armed militants and armed men in uniform are bound to choose the latter.

The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman
By Jeffrey Gettleman
The New York Times Sunday Magazine

Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, has been credited with turning around the country in an incredibly short time. He’s fought against poverty, pushed for more women in office, and re-engineered the country to help diffuse ethnic tension. The question, however, isn’t about his results; it’s a matter of his methods. And on that front, Kagame’s notoriously brutal and merciless tactics are not free from criticism.

Blogs:

The Last of the Red Lines by Manuel Langendorf
The Unwanted Federally Administered Tribal Areas by Sahar Said
The Shadow of Iraq? by Maxime Larive
Russia opens first of ten new search and rescue centers in the Arctic by Mia Bennett
Spineless on Syria by Ben Moscovitch