2 Things to Read on Syria While I’m Away

I am having a fabulous visit to Brazil, lecturing at FGV in Rio earlier today and flying down to Sao Paulo this afternoon. I also managed to do some interesting sightseeing in Rio, including a visit to a community ecopark in a Rio favela ("shantytown") where local activists are reclaiming vacant land from drug gangs. Truly inspiring.

There has been hardly any time to catch up on news or do serious blogging, but I will have reflections when I return. In the meantime, here are a couple of resources you can use for background on the ever-evolving situation in Syria.

•First, the Project on Defense Alternatives has this website, full of useful commentary.

•Second, my colleagues at the Belfer Center have put up this collection of resources.

You had better get busy and read them, because the situation will probably have changed in another 48 hours.

And by the way, isn’t it interesting to think about how much time, energy, political capital, presidential attention, press coverage, etc. the Syrian affair has burned up over the past few weeks? There’s something seriously maladjusted with U.S. foreign policy when an event like this commands so much attention, especially when there really aren’t truly vital interests involved and when the best moral course isn’t obvious either. (Unfortunately, just intervening because Bashar al-Assad is a thug and his forces used chemical weapons isn’t necessarily the most moral thing to do, because it might make a bad situation worse and lead to greater human suffering.) Yet Syria has managed to take over the U.S. foreign-policy agenda for a time. Learning to keep U.S. interests in somewhat greater perspective would be a real advance, but ADHD seems to be a chronic component of the U.S. foreign-policy apparatus.