Tom Stevenson

LRB Blog Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.

On the myth of the post-Cold War "peace dividend" (in Britain) www.lrb.co.uk/blog/

Tom Stevenson | The End of Rojava The Syrian government’s effort to take full control of the north-east clearly has the approval of the United States....

‘The cultural and ethnic heterogeneity of northern Syria was a good reason for political autonomy from Damascus. But whatever happens, the days of the SDF as a multiethnic coalition are over.’

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on the end of Rojava, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...

Episode 6: Aftershock ‘Live’ Podcast Episode · Aftershock: The War on Terror · EP6 · 37m

In the final episode of our ‘Aftershock’ podcast, @danielsoar.bsky.social is joined by Patrick Cockburn, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social and @tomstevenson.bsky.social for a live discussion.
What is the legacy of America’s ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East? Listen here:

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

Tom Stevenson | Don’t crack your teeth The US desire to annex Greenland is traceable to at least 1867 and the ambitions of the secretary of state William H....

‘The US desire to annex Greenland is traceable to at least 1867 and the ambitions of the secretary of state William H. Seward, who negotiated the Alaska purchase that same year.’

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Trump’s Greenland fixation, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...

Tom Stevenson | Don’t crack your teeth ‘The US needs Greenland for the purpose of national security,’ Donald Trump has said. ‘Anything less’ than ‘...

The @financialtimes.com columnist @edwardluce.bsky.social has argued that in annexing Greenland, the US ‘would kill Nato in one swoop’. But would it? Trump appears to think Europe’s leaders are cowed enough to accept even this. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...

Issue 48.01 is now online, featuring:

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping
David Runciman on Kamala Harris’s memoir
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Auden and Eliot
Chal Ravens on Britney Spears
Tony Wood on Trump’s invasion of Venezuela
and a cover by Jon McNaught.

Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

Tom Stevenson · Climbing the Ziggurat: Xi Jinping’s Inheritance China, which in the post-Cold War period was viewed as either lunch for American capital or an irredeemable dungeon, has...

In the new @LRB, I wrote about Xi Jinping and his father. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tony Wood · On Venezuela The choice of narco-trafficking as the pretext is partly motivated by a desire to skirt even the feeble murmurs that...

‘During the Cold War, US-sponsored regime change was most often carried out at arm’s length. The kidnapping of Maduro seems to follow an older model, closer to the gunboat diplomacy which saw US troops occupy Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua between 1900 and 1934.’

Tony Wood

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson | Detrimental Outside Influence Last week, the US published its new National Security Strategy (one is produced each presidential term; this is Trump’...

On the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, the White House issued a proclamation celebrating trade deals in Latin America and the restoration of ‘privileged access through the Panama Canal’. The US, it said, would always decide destiny in ‘our hemisphere’. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

Our new issue 47.16 is now online, featuring:

@tomstevenson.bsky.social in El Salvador
Kasia Boddy on Dorothy Parker
Seamus Perry on Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce
Ruby Hamilton on David Lynch
and Emily Witt (@embits.bsky.social) on the manosphere.

Read online at lrb.co.uk

Tom Stevenson · The Mask Is Off: Bukele’s Prison State Giving the US access to El Salvador’s expanded prison system as an offshore gulag has made Nayib Bukele a darling of...

‘Calling himself the “coolest dictator in the world”, the restorer of the state monopoly on violence has replaced the state and seized the monopoly for himself.’

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on El Salvador under Nayib Bukele: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · The Mask Is Off: Bukele’s Prison State Giving the US access to El Salvador’s expanded prison system as an offshore gulag has made Nayib Bukele a darling of...

In the new @LRB, I went to El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has mopped up the gangs and set up Washington's favourite prison state. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Loubna Mrie · ‘We were tricked’: Assad and the Alawites For a long time, it had seemed that Assad might outlast everything. Then, almost overnight, it was over. And with his...

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Patricia Lockwood · Diary: Back to the Rectory It was our first visit to Kansas City since before the election and the rectory seemed to have grown smaller, darker,...

‘A friend was reading to me one day from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 and I misheard a line as “the senses have wind.” They did, they do.’

@tricialockwood.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson | Trump’s Midnight Hammer The US has declared an uncertain and messy end to its attack on Iran. Trump announced a ceasefire some hours before it...

Trump's Midnight Hammer www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Iran's nuclear programme is mainly a diversionary justification for this attack - not a motive.

Tom Stevenson | Operation Rising Lion Israel’s codename for its attack on Iran, launched last Friday, was Operation Rising Lion, a pointed reference to...

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Issue 47.11 is now online, featuring:

William Davies on right-wing TikTok
Andrew O’Hagan on Joan Didion
Tom Crewe on Ocean Vuong
Francesca Wade on the librarian Belle da Costa Greene
Jenny Turner on Olga Tokarczuk
and a cover by Lola Bunting.

Read online at
www.lrb.co.uk

Tom Stevenson | Across the Line of Control In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of...

In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, modelled the climatic effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

Tom Stevenson | Condo Diplomacy The Trump court is a royal progress that moves between Palm Beach and the White House, for the most part in private...

On the Mar-a-Lago Secretary of State www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

Tom Stevenson · Beyond Mesopotamia: Linear Elamite Deciphered Decipherment has attracted more than its fair share of formidable scholars, enthusiastic amateurs and crackpots, all...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about the decipherment of the 4000 year old Linear Elamite script by François Desset www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Illusions of Containment: Versions of Hamas Hamas was founded to pursue armed resistance against the occupation, but in practice violent confrontation was always in...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about Hamas. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Assad’s Fall Assad’s legacy is the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. It is difficult to imagine how a working Syrian state...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, on Assad's fall, the post-Arab Spring era, and Turkey's and Israel's opportunism www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson | Road to Damascus Part of the reason for Assad’s rapid collapse is that his international backers – Russia, Iran, Hizbullah – were...

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/de...

Tom Stevenson · Exquisite Americana The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the...

‘The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the question of what that order is really like.’

Tom Stevenson on Trump and US power, online early from our next issue: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Exquisite Americana The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the...

In the new LRB, I wrote about Trump, who has more in common with his domestic opponents than they like to admit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new LRB, I wrote about how Israel has replaced much of Gaza with an uneven igneous landscape of black-grey mounds. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...