Mid East

Latest episodes
November 30, 2020

How the Syrian War Became the Gravest Mistake of Our Era

When the Kwantung Army of Japan invaded Manchuria crushing Chinese forces in 1931, the world did nothing. It was the first sign of the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Then, in 1937, Japan started to invade Ch...
November 17, 2020

Departures Podcast with Philip Gordon

For the past 70 years, the United States has toyed with interventionism in the Middle East on numerous occasions, from Iran to Afghanistan (twice), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, among others. And yet, despite the consistently disastrous consequen...
October 9, 2020

Departures Podcast with Noah Feldman

Only a few years after the Arab Spring failed to convert Middle Eastern dictatorships into democracies (with the exception of Tunisia), many scholars and analysts stopped talking about it entirely, as if to pretend these events never took place. H...
August 18, 2020

Departures Podcast with Michael Scharf

As the Syrian conflict has raged on for almost a decade, and the United Nations is hamstrung with Russia’s veto power over proposed legal instruments to intervene, international law finds itself being innovated at light speed in response. Mi...
July 20, 2020

From Libya to Syria, French-Turkish Interests Collide

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Friday that Turkey is still waiting for an apology from France over a naval standoff last month in the Mediterranean Sea. To recap, an incident happened between the navy forces of Turkey and France, two NA...
December 20, 2018

Five Things to Read on Trump’s Syria Withdrawal

President Donald Trump’s completely unexpected decision to pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of the conflict in Syria – announced this week via Twitter without much visible consultation – has predictably caused a bit of a shitstorm in t...
  • 1
  • 2