I want to post things on this blog that are not so much "current events" as pieces that help you understand current events--either by contextualizing them in terms of larger and historically longer-term dynamics, or perduring features of the social order or the cosmos or whatever.  In other words, I don't want this to be informing you of new events so much as framing those events, which God knows you will find out about elsewhere,  in terms of larger patterns and significances.

So once in a while I may post pieces that are more like long-term investments in our collective education than they are relevant to any particular research or argumentative agenda I may have.  Though of course I have a large scale argumentative and research agenda in being interested in the world; so in that sense, posts like this can be seen as part of a larger plan.

This piece is both illuminating on a current fracas--the South Korean/Japan conflict over certain minerals necessary for electronics--and also for the larger point it makes about the rising prevalence of nations "weaponizing interdependence".  (The piece talks about "weaponized interdependence," but that is simply bad writing hiding a poorly thought-through idea; the interdependence is not in itself weaponized, but people use it, or rather mis-use it, in ways that are akin to "weaponizing" it.  But I don't have high hopes for academics' prose.)  We're seeing various states weaponizing interdependence these days, most notably Trump's America.  But as with all weapons, the issue is not who uses it first, but who uses it best, or who is most vulnerable to its effects.  The interconnection of the US with other economies is so vast, that it seems a bit hazardous to have US leadership employ it cavalierly.  Not that that could ever happen.

Then there's also this piece, which is a really nice small essay about the state of politics in Africa.  Now, the author of the piece knows (and the authors of the book she cites know as well), much better and more deeply than you or I do, dear reader, that "Africa" is not a singular entity, but vast, a massive continent with enormously complicated national and trans-national politics, and diverse forms of political states.  So a study of "Africa" is like a study of "multicellular organisms"--there's a class of creatures that fit that description, but it's held together more by contingencies than any fundamental and determinative commonalities.  What is going on in Mozambique and what is going on in Ethiopia and what is going on in Mali and Ghana are very different things (let alone North of the Sahara, in Libya and Morocco, say).  

But the book that the piece discusses seems to highlight a very important point--effectively, while elections have become increasingly common in sub-Saharan Africa over the past several decades, they do not always serve as a harbinger of a genuine democratic society.  So the increasing frequency of elections is interesting, but not in itself a determinate sign of anything.

The whole series this is part of--the "African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular"--is helpful; links to previous posts are at the bottom of the post.  (The post on Elizabeth Schmidt's Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War is especially good, I thought, though I think it doesn't play up how important a lacuna the book's avoidance of China is.)

Anyway--enjoy!