Going off the grid…

I’m off on my summer vacation tomorrow, and I’m hoping to spend most of my time away from blogging. Not that I don’t find this enjoyable and even a bit addictive, but pounding out prose on a daily basis is also draining and it’s time to recharge my batteries and replenish the intellectual larder. I’m going to be working on an essay for the Social Science Research Council on "international relations and the public sphere" while I’m at the beach, but mostly I’m hoping to do a lot of reading and kayaking and resting. I will be taking my laptop and MyFI connection along, but mostly I intend to stay off the grid.

While I’m gone (or at least less active), here are a few questions I’ll be pondering. Feel free to debate them among yourselves.

1. What’s the endgame in Libya? I think Qaddafi’s removal is inevitable, but I haven’t heard much about what comes after. Given that our stated motivation was humanitarian, doesn’t NATO have a responsibility to ensure a benevolent aftermath? And how much will that cost?

2. What does the rest of the world think of Michele Bachmann? When someone with her manifold deficiencies gets taken seriously as a presidential possibility, what message does it send to the rest of the world about the pathologies of the American political system?

3. Why is the United States working so hard to stymie the latest effort to send a symbolic relief flotilla to Gaza? (Of course, you know the real answer). Put differently, why is it in the U.S. national interest to keep Gazans under a punishing blockade? Or to be even more precise: How does it make Americans safer or more prosperous or more influential around the world to be colluding in the collective punishment of the Gazan population? Letting the flotilla sail would be a smarter move for the United States and Israel alike, as Bradley Burston of Haaretz explains here.

4. It looks like another deal may let Greece escape default, but for how much longer? And what then? All this makes me wish I knew a lot more about international banking and finance, except for the fact that the people who DO know about this area have been wrong a lot of the time too.

5. What new inconvenience will airlines and homeland security paranoids come up with to make international travel even less pleasant? I paid almost 3 euros for a single cup of coffee on one flight (and it wasn’t a "budget" airline), stood in the usual mind-numbing security lines, and got full-body scanned at three different airports. And this was a good trip. (On the positive side, flying back home in economy class on British Airways wasn’t half-bad, and they deserve full points for making their full entertainment package available for those of us traveling on cheap tickets).

6. If you put Barack Obama on truth serum, what would he say? What would he list as his biggest achievements, his greatest disappointments; and how would this most thoughtful of presidents discuss the policy problems that have dominated his presidency? And I also wonder what would happen if he showed up at a press conference and just blurted out what he really thought about Iran, Israel-Palestine, China, Afghanistan, the EU, the GOP, WikiLeaks, the war on terror, the financial sector, or the overall state of the planet.

OK, so this is not the most provocative or probing set of questions. All the more reason for me to drop off the grid for a week or so and let my brain wander down some unfamiliar byways. I suspect I won’t be able to resist the urge to chime in occasionally, but regular blogging will resume around July 10. In the interim, may you live in not-so-interesting times.