Recommended by The Cosmopolitan Globalist
When it comes to finding and publishing essays that are of interest to Jews (or people with an interest in Jews), David Hazony is the best editor in the business.
Cristina Maza is the author of our "Cristina Maza's Reading List" feature, a national security and defense correspondent in Washington, and a great place to get caught up on what the media's reporting about the world on the days when we don't send out Global Eyes.
By far the best source of information on the war in Sudan--the most under-covered story in the world.
My friend Tim Mak used to be an NPR investigative correspondent in Ukraine. When NPR downsized, he decided Ukraine was too important to abandon. So he struck out on his own in Substack. A former US Army combat medic, he's been based in Kyiv since the onset of the full-scale war. He wants his readers to understand the stories of the real people whose lives make up the statistics and the headlines.
I stop strangers in the street and tell them, "If you want to understand what's happening in Israel, read 'State of Tel Aviv.'" Editor Vivian Bercovici is the former Canadian Ambassador to Israel. After that, she made Aliyah and now she lives in Tel Aviv. She's a great writer, she's extremely perceptive, and she seems to know everyone. She's also a great interviewer: Check out the podcasts.
Foreign policy for global development and international affairs insiders. They say: "Think of it as 'War on the Rocks' or 'The Hill' but for the UN-crowd and world news junkies of all stripes."
This is a terrific resource if you're interested in news and analysis about migration in the Western Hemisphere—"from Canada to Argentina, from Barbados to Mexico, and everything in between," in Jordi Amaral's words. It's extremely thorough.
Mick Ryan, a 35-year veteran of the Australian military, writes knowledgeably about technology, ideas, people, and their interaction in modern war, specifically in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Indo-Pacific.
Of course we recommend him. From his about page: "We emphasize strong property rights, the rights of the individual, civil and economic liberties, international human rights obligations, strict adherence to the rule of law, and international trade rules." What's not to like?
Eamonn is extremely well-informed about Spanish and Catalan politics and Argentina, and he sometimes writes about the UK and Ireland, too. (About which he's also well-informed.) He's on the right side of the war for liberal democracy.
Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa writes about how the West's adversaries inject disinformation into our society and how to strengthen our democratic and social fabric against this. She calls this newsletter a “citizen’s academy” for democracy.
If you're interested in the academic literature on international relations, Dan Drezner (who teaches international politics at Tufts) presents it engagingly, which is more than can be said of the literature itself.
Latin America Daily Briefing is a daily dispatch of news from Latin America and the Caribbean: a mix of stories from the international and local press, as well as analysis from think tanks, academics and other commentators.
Everyone who follows Middle East politics reads Abu Aardvark. He was one of the first bloggers about the Middle East; he also built Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel, The Monkey Cage, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the Middle East Political Science Podcast. This is his MENA newsletter, featuring his own commentary about the Middle East. He also reviews the best new academic publications about the region.
Monique Camarra's EuroFile is the most useful resource on Substack, by far, for people who want a detailed, daily update on the war in Ukraine and related events in Russia. I know you've already got a lot to read, but this is the one you *have* to read.
Nicolas Tenzer is an international security expert who has had a long career as a senior civil servant in France. He writes about strategy, international relations, security, information, and intelligence. But above all, he writes with passion and rare moral conviction about Russia and Ukraine.
Timothy Snyder is another writer who hardly needs our recommendation. He's one of the world's best-known historians of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. But his newsletter, particularly its treatment of Ukraine, is invaluable. Don't miss his class on the history of Ukraine, which he taught at Yale. It's available in its entirety on YouTube. You'll learn an enormous amount from it.
Since I discovered this Substack it's been one of the first I read for news from Israel.
Old Turkey hands and professional journalists based in Turkey never miss an issue of this newsletter. There's also a Turkish-language version, in-depth reports, and a variety of news tracking tools available to subscribers. (And if you follow Turkish news obsessively, you'll take special delight in their clever headlines.)
Want to know whenever the US Navy does something especially dumb? CDR Salamander has your back. He's "an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement on great power competition via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity." (And a great source of naval insight.)