The FPA’s Must Reads (September 6-13)

The President and the Pipeline
By Ryan Lizza
The New Yorker

President Barack Obama’s second-term push to combat global warming and climate change has found itself at odds with the campaign for the Keystone XL pipeline, the seventeen-hundred-mile pipeline that promises to help ween the U.S. off of reliance on foreign oil. With a decisions on the pipeline expected to come in the next few months, activists such as billionaire Tom Steyer have begun to put the pressure on the president to live up to his promise for real action on climate change, starting with stopping Keystone.

Bad Manners
By Rana Mitter
Foreign Policy

Chinese and American military priorities have been clashing for years, even back several decades to World War II. Now, with the U.S.’ pivot to Asia and America’s not-so-subtle attempt to “contain” China, old wounds, specifically one left untreated from clash of personalities between American chief of staff Gen. Joseph Stilwell and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek in the wake of Pearl Harbor, threatens to freeze U.S.-China relations.

A Taboo Worth Protecting
By Sohail H. Hashmi and Jon Western
Foreign Affairs

Chemical weapons aren’t a taboo or a “red line” just because of their lethality — after all, if it’s a matter of numbers, conventional weaponry has killed more people than nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the past century, notes Hashmi and Western. In this defense of chemical weapons as a “red line,” Hashmi and Western argue that perhaps the most troubling argument that has come out of the debate over Syria is that killing is killing, no matter what the weapon.

The Geeks on the Front Lines
By David Kushner
Rolling Stone

Cyber war, Kushner stresses, is no longer the stuff of science-fiction fantasies, such as the 1983 thriller “War Games”; from Iran to China, it’s a live threat to critical infrastructure. The fear of what former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called “a cyber Pearl Harbor” has resulted in an all-out push by the U.S. government to hire the best and the brightest hackers. The only problem? Private companies beat them to it.

Hiding in N. Virginia, a daughter of Auschwitz
By Thomas Harding
Washington Post

For nearly 40 years, Brigitte Höss, the daughter of the Kommandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, has resided in north Virginia under the radar, keeping her family history a secret. Harding’s great-uncle, Hanns Alexander, a Nazi hunter, captured Höss after the war, an act that eventually lead to Höss’ hanging. Harding investigates Brigitte’s past, examining her experience as a child growing up in one of the most horrific concentration camps in World War II, and her live in the U.S. as the daughter of one of the most hated men in history.

Blogs:

A Candid Discussion with Ron Deibert by Reza Akhlaghi
Syria or the Symbolic Graveyard of the West by Maxime Larive
Hamas and the Peace Process: On the Sidelines? by Manuel Langendorf
Syria, Intelligence, and the Reasons for War by Scott Monje
U.S. Resolve Needed in Syria by W.A. Schmidt