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Washington Thinktanks are a good start (though they still tend to 'flourish' things in nationalist language). I prefer their publications to their press events,
by jwtadvice 10y ago
Washington Thinktanks are a good start (though they still tend to 'flourish' things in nationalist language). I prefer their publications to their press events, though the latter is easier to consume.
The press briefings at the State Department are pretty good from a reporting side, but you need to follow for a long time before you see the forest instead of the trees.
A good direct source is the Strategic Studies Institute. They publish primarily academically minded geostrategy reports and assessments, and are mostly centered in the military War Colleges and a couple universities that offer Strategic Studies programs.
Establishments that host pre-PRified documents from strategy organizations are a good source of mostly historic but sometimes current documents. Looking up, for example, the Pentagon Papers or pre-PR version of the Wolfowitz Doctrine are very clear. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) does a good job documenting some of these documents. Of course Wikileaks and others who have copies of documents (like the Stratfor docs you mentioned) is another.
But let's put that out to Hacker News: what are your sources?
- elcapitan 10y ago> But let's put that out to Hacker News: what are your sources? As a German reader, I was surprised about how good "Foreign Policy" is to get a coherent understanding of certain viewpoints in geostrategy. Such publications would be the exception here, because they are not very "journalistic". I think it doesn't necessarily satisfy parents question about "what really is going on", because what's going on is dependent on exactly those viewpoints. That's the nature of political discourse, and I find it more helpful to read about coherent versions rather than a holistic "truth".
- jwtadvice 10y agoInteresting. I also follow Foreign Policy but despise their editorializing, since it takes the meat out of the reporting and skews it toward PR. You will get "more important" news on the international front from ForeignPolicy, but it's going to remain in the format of news journalism. They will include cheesy pictures of world leaders “we don’t like” and nice pictures of the ones we do. They occasionally use Buzzfeedlike headlines like “Will Russia drop a nuclear weapon?” and report in a one sided manner on a number of issues (“Russia flew near NATO with a nuclear bomber” but never “US flew near the Caucauses with a nuclear bomber”). Overall I would rate FP a solid 5 out of 10. But that’s in comparison to venues like CNN that might get a 2 or 3.