Brexit and the Northern Irish Border

A new fight has been brewing over the consequences of Brexit for the border between Northern Ireland and the neighboring Republic of Ireland. Both British and EU negotiators have identified the border as one of the key political questions that have to be addressed early on in negotiations. It’s easy not to have a border between two states that are both part of the EU’s single market (the regulatory regime that allows easy trade across the EU) and customs union (the arrangement under which European states do not impose customs duties on each other and maintain a common

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Other Writing:

Essay

Facebook and Falsehood

After the election, many people blamed Facebook for spreading partisan — and largely pro-Trump — “fake news,” like Pope Francis’s endorsement of Trump, or Hillary Clinton’s secret life-threatening illness. The company was assailed for prioritizing user “engagement,” meaning that its algorithms probably favored juicy fake news over other kinds of stories. Those algorithms had taken ...
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Essay

The Modern History of Economic Sanctions

Nicholas Mulder’s new book, “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War,” remakes debates over European history between the two world wars. It rescues the League of Nations from the enormous condescension of posterity, arguing that the league was neither ridiculous nor doomed. However, it also demonstrates that the league’s ...
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