Hello and Welcome!

An introduction to my blog

A month into my break from corporate life, I’ve been finding myself with a lot more time on my hands. There are many things I’ve been meaning to do with that time, from traveling and reading more to finally getting my driver’s license and learning to cook things other than eggs and pasta. But given the amount of time I’m taking off work, I also wanted to use this opportunity to spend time on a personal project that intellectually excites me.

Since I’ve always enjoyed writing, I ultimately decided to start a Substack during my mini-sabbatical (hence the name of this blog), with a specific focus on U.S. foreign policy as well as international economics and politics more broadly. Aside from my deep interest in these topics, there are a couple key reasons why I’m choosing to write about them now.

First, I think it’s an incredibly interesting time to write about global affairs. Under the second Trump administration, the U.S. is undergoing a major shift in how it interacts with the rest of the world. We — and as a newly minted American, I can say that now — seem to be straining longstanding alliances, making overtures to historically adversarial nations, and are experiencing the most explicitly transactional approach to foreign policy from an American administration in decades. At the same time, from the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars to the clashes this month between India and Pakistan, some of the world’s most powerful countries are engaging in active conflicts that have major implications for regional and global security. While I’m still refining my views on where the world should go from here and what role the United States should play in it, one thing has become clear to me: for better or worse, the post-Cold War era dominated by the U.S. as a unipolar power is being replaced by something new. I think that in itself is worth thinking and writing about.

Second, on a more personal level, in recent months I’ve been increasingly feeling that while I have strong opinions about world events, my knowledge supporting these views is more limited than I would want it to be. This has been especially apparent to me when reading or listening to the contemporary writers I most admire, like Noah Smith, Adam Tooze, and Ezra Klein. I find that they add a lot of credibility to their arguments by backing them up with historical examples, hard data, and a fair consideration of opposing viewpoints. Though it would take me many years to build a comparable knowledge base, I want to take advantage of the unique opportunity I have now to start doing so.

To that end, I’ve been working on an initial reading list (which I’ll share in my next post) covering a range of topics across traditional IR theory, international economics and trade, and modern U.S foreign policy. Obviously, these are broad fields that many academics have dedicated entire careers to. But I hope to use the next several months to at least begin to more deeply engage with different perspectives on a few select topics that most interest me. And as I read these books, I plan to use this blog to track how they change or reinforce my existing opinions. I therefore see my Substack less as a forum to convince others that my views are right — though I will certainly not shy away from expressing them — and more as a public journal to stress-test my opinions and reflect on my learnings in real time.

One final note: I am a big believer in learning by engaging with perspectives different to my own, and am lucky to have friends and family — including many of you reading this first post — with views spanning the political spectrum. So if you’re reading my blog and see a point you disagree with or think of an article I should read, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a message, comment on my posts, or even send me hate mail; I will appreciate it all the same.

Welcome once again! And thank you in advance for reading my writing — it means a lot to me.