Stevenson’s army, December 19

– Russia’s buildup for new offensive per NYT.

– Action with Belarus, per WSJ.

– What Ukrainian generals see, per the Economist.

– What Kevin McCarthy will do, from New Yorker.

Meanwhile, from TMC, suggestions for bingeworthy political shows.

Charlie also posted this:

End of year ruminations led me to post this explanation of how I choose what to send you.

The most frequent reason is to send something worth talking about in class — something revealing about Congress or interagency policymaking.  I want the class to follow key foreign policy legislation and interagency fights.

I assume you get your regular news elsewhere, but if I see one lead story as significantly better than the others, I’ll send that.

When there are official documents like National Security Strategy or interesting think tank reports, I want to send actual links and not just the news articles.

I want you to think about overlooked problems or emerging ones– hence stuff on trade, technology or cracks in our alliances.

And if I find something quirky or funny, I like to send it.

I wish I could find more on threats to American democracy and examples of things that help.

As you’ve probably noticed, I think reporting on Ukraine is overly optimistic, so I send counter-messages about nuclear risks, alliance and American backsliding, and the need to find off ramps for both sides.

I have a regular schedule for reading the news — up early every morning — but I don’t always have time to curate before doing other things.

Thought you’d like to know.

Happy Holidays!

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).