Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 29

To Embargo or Not

It's impossible to visit and write about Cuba without mentioning the US embargo, so I wrote a piece about it for the print edition of World Affairs. It's available online now. Here's the first part.

Aside from the Arab boycott against Israel, American sanctions against Cuba have lasted longer than any other embargo in the modern era.

The sanctions were imposed in stages in the early 1960s after Fidel Castro began economic warfare against the United States by nationalizing private US property on...

Vietnam is Funded

I’ve raised the money I need to get to Vietnam later this spring. Thanks so much to everybody who pitched in on Kickstarter.

I owe everyone a personal thank-you, but I should wait until the 30-day period ends to make sure I don’t miss anyone.

Your regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

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We’re at 70 Percent. Let’s Get to 100.

I’ve raised around 70 percent of the money I need to get to Vietnam later this spring, but I won’t get any of it unless the project is 100 percent funded.

I’d like to get this wrapped up as soon as possible so I can plan my trip properly and get the prep work taken care of. I’ve already started that process, but I don’t want to move ahead at full speed until I know for sure I can go.

So if you haven’t pitched in yet, let’s get this done.

The toughest part about completing a successful Kickstarte...

I Need a Kickstarter Boost

My Kickstarter project is 54 percent funded and I will only get money if it’s 100 percent funded.

Help me out, folks. You need me out of the office just as much as I need to get out of the office, but I can’t do it without resources. The journalism industry used to cover travel expenses, but that’s a thing of the past.

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Vladimir Putin and the Zombie Apocalypse

I’m on the Ricochet podcast again this week. James Lileks, Peter Robinson, and Rob Long interviewed me about Vladimir Putin’s general malfeasance and my new book, Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, which is still selling well and getting great reviews.

I come in at 18:15.

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Botching North Africa

The United States government is putting another alliance at risk—this time with Morocco, which is a little like screwing up Canada. The White House is partly to blame, but the main culprit here is the State Department, the one institution that should be the least likely to drop the ball diplomatically since managing diplomatic relations is its job.

Morocco’s main foreign policy problem is its Cold War with next-door Algeria which backs the Polisario—a communist guerilla army hatched by Fidel C...

Let's Go to Vietnam

I’m finished writing about Cuba, but you are not yet finished reading about Cuba. Two of my essays haven’t been published online yet except in the e-book which has been privately distributed to those who backed my fundraising project on Kickstarter. (Those essays will appear here eventually, but I sold them to magazine editors and can’t publish them anywhere else in advance. One of them has, however, appeared in the print version of World Affairs, so you can always pick up a hardcopy if you d...

What Vladimir Putin is Up To

So Ukraine’s Crimea “voted” to join Russia at gunpoint.

I have no doubt a large percentage of Crimeans sincerely wish to join Russia despite the obvious-to-the-rest-of-us drawbacks. Crimea has a Russian majority—58 percent according to the 2001 census. And Crimea used to be part of Russia before Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev moved the border in 1954.

But just a few years ago, a majority of Crimeans in a national survey identified Ukraine, rather than Russia, as their motherland. The referend...

Thanks for Reading, and for Buying

Right out of the gate sales of my new novel are strong enough that Amazon is listing it in the top-100 in Post-Apocalyptic Science-Fiction and the top-ten Hot New Releases. All kinds of people who have never heard of me before are seeing my book now. A percentage of them will find my other books as well as this blog.

Thanks to everyone who bought their copy right away. This wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Those of you who haven’t bought your copy yet—I’ll take it as a personal favor to me if...

New Book Release

Next month will mark my ten-year anniversary as a full-time journalist, but I’ve been writing fiction twice as long, for twenty years. During all that time I intended to one day write a book set in a post-apocalyptic landscape and I’ve finally done it.

This one is a zombie novel called Resurrection.

But as Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic said of The Walking Dead, “Zombie movies aren't about zombies; they're about how humans react to zombies.”

That’s right.

The zombie apocalypse is just a way to...