The World

The World’s Most Undercovered Region?

I had fun talking to Reddit users for my very first AMA today. Slate has helpfully edited together the best questions and answers in a more readable form here.

For obvious reasons, the discussion focused mainly on Syria, but I also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss some other topics, such as what I feel is America’s most puzzling foreign-policy blindspot:

As far as regions go, I’m always a little shocked by how little attention is paid in the U.S. conversation to Latin American politics. Given the geographical and cultural proximity, the stark ideological divides, the economic transformations we’ve seen in some countries, and how great an impact U.S. policy has there—the drug war in Central America, for instance—it’s always a little baffling to me that the region gets short shrift compared with the Middle East and Asia, at least in the post-Cold War period.

As long as I’m in self-promotion mode, the September/October issue of Foreign Policy is out today, including some short pieces from me on why close families are bad for economic growth, and the financial impact of disease outbreaks