Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, but sometimes it feels like there’s a school of thought that basically says implementing partial solution that helps some people proves you are a bad person because they imagined fixing everything.
In IR undergrad I had a VERY post-structuralist prof who argued that it was words and construction all the way down. I asked: but do you really think that’s useful to a kid living in war-torn Iraq? He can’t change his own reality. He said “Well, maybe he could” and that was just too Matrix-y to me.
It's not that we necessarily would have seen vigorous pushback under a different president, but you wouldn't have had a White House visit at the very moment Erdogan was dismantling the main opposition party
Reminds me of the anti-Erdogan Turkish analysts who'd complain about Reductio ad Erdoganum and explain how they all supported Erdogan's most provocative policies, somehow assuming that this would somehow make foreigners more supportive of those polices instead of more hostile to Turkey
"Netanyahu presents Israel, like Sparta, as a besieged country surrounded by enemies and forced into perpetual defense. But this misunderstands both states.
"Just recently, Turkey stood out for its repeated assaults on international norms. Now, those norms have been shattered by a host of bigger and more aggressive actors, and Turkey looks almost calm in comparison.
