Status Updates From Աշխարհակարգ

Yet again the book’s outdated. Hank’s assessment of the lasting impacts of Afghanistan was oh so wrong. No, they did not drag the world back into conflict upon the American exit — turns out the Taliban are actually perfectly content violently oppressing their constituency only within the confines of their own borders, and don’t really care about what happens elsewhere.
He was wrong in other predictions too.

Eight chapters in and I’m finally getting the US foreign policy crash course that I was too stupid to internalize in high school. Teddy Roosevelt might be number one

Still good. Funny to read a passage so laudatory of Shinzo Abe’s prospective bright future. This book is 12 years old after all.

I’m gonna start reading with intent again. This book is well written. It’s kind of just a refresher of a first year IR lecture, but it’s been five years since my last IR lecture, so maybe a theory-rehash isn’t so bad.