My hot-off-the-press analysis of what has been going wrong for years & what can be done now foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
Vanda Felbab-Brown
28.3K posts
Vanda Felbab-Brown
@VFelbabBrown
Brookings scholar of crime, conflict, & nontraditional security threats; addicted to foreign & public policy; in love w/ fieldwork, nature, design, & more
- Whitey Bulger was a despicable person who committed heinous crimes & deserved his life sentences. But it’s NOT OK that he was murdered in prison. Serious investigation needed into failures of prison control systems & rectification of inadequacies urgently needed.Whitey Bulger, Boston Mobster, Is Dead in WV Prison at 89, Killed by Fellow Inmates nyti.ms/2yI08fX
- Very little. Avocado is legal yet Mexican criminal groups fight over it in the same way as they do over drugs. Same w timber & gas & oil. Illegal economies, drugs, can be very peaceful (UK or Indonesia) & legal economies can be very violent (minerals in the Congo or a Colombia)
- The Lopez Obrador administration has adopted "double-cross sabotage" of the US-Mexican bilateral security relationship. "It is time for the US to get tough w its southern neighbor on security, public safety, & rule of law issues" My take
- "The Biden admin should at least privately communicate a concrete deadline to the sanctions grace period...The big question is whether Russia, China, and even Turkey will try to undercut the threat of U.S. sanctions" My latest on US #Ethiopia policy
- The decision to withdraw US forces from Af is in NO WAY abrupt. The writing was on the wall for years -- since 2014 really. The wall was moved forward in 2018-19, and writing became painted in bold block letters in 2020. Those who are surprised have ignored reality.
- A tiny snippet of my fieldwork in #Mexico over the past several weeks, more pics maybe tomorrow … articles & reports starting soon
- 1/ Delighted to announce that various rich @BrookingsInst streams of work on various illicit economies & nonstate armed actors abroad & in the US now have a new home: The Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors I have the privilege to direct
- 2/ Since Russia's egregious invasion of Ukraine, India's trade w Russia has grown 400%! The US needs to realize that India’s view of its role in the Quad is a very narrow limited anti-China posture & not any kind of broader partnership w the US the US seeks, but will not get.1/ "Despite Western efforts to attribute global inflation and a food crisis to the Russian invasion, most countries around the world blame the West for the imposition of sanctions, said Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary." washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/…
- March 28 10-11:30am China’s role in the smuggling of synthetic drugs and precursors brook.gs/3tESSgg Looking frw to speaking w @clairegalofaro @RupertStone83 @ryanl_hass via @BrookingsInst
- In 1 year, COVID-19 has killed 420K Americans: far more than terrorism & crime combined. This is NOT a one-time in a century event. Zoonotic diseases emerge every 3 years or so & the speed will pick up. PREVENTION, not just mitigation key. How 👇 brook.gs/395OVIx
- My take: Apart from dogma, “a reason why the drug ban persists because it actually serves Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada’s interests by depriving Taliban commanders of independent funding for patronage”
- Several reasons to start working every day at 5am: 1) most important: usually no zoom calls, the bane of our existence, for at least 3 hours. Though I regularly get asked to participate in zoom calls that start at 3am or give a talk at 4am!! 2) the morning bird chorus 3) 👇
