Contagious Divides News Today

Nayan Shah’s profile on The Conversation

—National Security Agency director Robert O’Brien, 2020 U.S. fantasies of expansion, commercial dominion, and military prowess have long hinged on a premise of Pacific exceptionalism. Couched in the millenarian language of manifest destiny, the Pacific region and its multitudinous ecosystems, cultures, peoples, and nations have been vacated in favor of an aqua nullius that frames the region as an empty space designated for U.S. possession by divine providence. This manufactured Pacific id...