This week Tamara Cofman Wittes joins the Bombshell ladies to discuss the fallout of the Khashoggi assassination and the future of US-Saudi relations. We get further bogged down in Afghanistan and try to understand the migrant caravan moving north from Central America. Then Radha tries to cheer us up by explaining the intricacies of the Universal Postal Union. For icing on the cake, we dive deep into the INF treaty and wonder if the Defense Department really being asked to cut its budget.

Saudi

• Emma Ashford, “The U.S.-Saudi alliance was in trouble long before Jamal Khashoggi’s death,” War on the Rocks

Keeping up Foreign Relations

Caravan

• Delphine Schrank, “Thousands of caravan migrants take shelter in southern Mexico,” Reuters

Afghanistan

• Dan Lamothe, “U.S. general wounded in attack in Afghanistan,” Washington Post
• Thomas Ruttig, “The Killing of Razeq: Removing the Taleban’s strongest foe in Kandahar, an indirect hit at elections,” Afghanistan Analysts Network
• Ashley Jackson, “The Taliban Just Won a Key Battle for Afghanistan’s Future,” Foreign Policy
• Matthieu Aikins, “The Master of Spin Boldak,” Harper’s
• Maija Liuhto, “Regional leaders are defying Afghanistan’s president. The latest is a police chief who was once a close U.S. ally,” LA Times

It’s Aghast

• Jen Kirby, “Here’s why Trump threatened to pull out of a 144-year-old postal treaty,” Vox
• Daniel W. Drezner, “The Trump administration’s brinkmanship with *checks notes* the Universal Postal Union,” Washington Post

White House Mayhem

INF Treaty

• Amy F. Woolf, “Russian Compliance with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service
• Jacob Heim, “Missiles for Asia? The Need for Operational Analysis of U.S. Theater Ballistic Missiles in the Pacific,” RAND
• Julian Borger and Martin Pengelly, “Trump says US will withdraw from nuclear arms treaty with Russia,” Guardian
• Steven Pifer, “The Trump administration is preparing a major mistake on the INF Treaty,” Brookings

Budget

• Aaron Mehta, “Trump appears to call for defense spending cuts,” Defense News

Pop-Culture

• Caroline Hallemann, “Everything We Know About the New Masterpiece PBS Adaptation of Les Miserables,” Town & Country
• “Death Comes to Pemberley,” PBS