International Books - Page 11

Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Chalmers Johnson

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Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now with a new and up-to-date Introduction by the author, the bestselling account of the effect of American global policies, hailed as “brilliant and iconoclastic” (Los Angeles Times)

The term “blowback,” invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended results of American actions abroad. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia’s financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our conduct in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.

In a new edition that addresses recent international events from September 11 to the war in Iraq, this now classic book remains as prescient and powerful as ever.

The United States Of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

T.R. Reid

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Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In May 2004, the European Union will add ten new member states-including Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, among others-to become a union of twenty-five nations. While this might seem a fairly innocuous and minute shift of political semantics for most Americans, the enlargement will increase the population of the EU to 450 million citizens, making it larger (in population) and richer (in GDP) than the United States-not to mention that the EU has more trade than the United States and more votes on the UN Security Council and all other international organizations. This New Europe is determined to flex its political and economic muscle on the world stage. The Continent has moved much further than most Americans realize toward the dream of a "United States of Europe," to borrow Winston Churchill's term.

T. R. Reid's The United States of Europe lays bare the ways in which the EU is positioning itself to be a global counterweight and second superpower, on equal footing with the U.S.A. Reid traces the rise of the EU from the days when Churchill and other visionaries set out in the post-World War II rubble to find a means to end war in Europe. He shows how this remarkably successful effort to "create peace" also created a global economic and political power that is often at odds with the United States. This drive toward unity has been accelerated by the powerful mood of anti-Americanism (or, at least, anti-Bushism) that has swept the Continent since the war in Iraq.

In addition to the political ramifications of the EU, The United States of Europe shows the great impact this alliance is having on the global economic market. The euro, which now has more daily users than the dollar, is fast becoming a reserve currency and a new standard for global finance, a globally recognized replacement for the once-almighty dollar. Unification has spawned a generation of European corporate managers who have led firms like Nokia, Airbus, BP, Vodafone, and Red Bull to catch and surpass their U.S. competitors in global markets.

The European Union, from its beginnings as an experiment in statecraft, has rapidly emerged as a resounding success; yet Americans have so far managed to ignore the geopolitical revolution under way across the Atlantic. Reid's book shows how quietly-and not so quietly-Europe is developing itself into an economic, political, and cultural powerhouse.

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Roméo Dallaire, Samantha Power

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Total reviews: 75 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For the first time in the United States comes the tragic and profoundly important story of the legendary Canadian general who "watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect." When Roméo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he believed that his assignment was to help two warring parties achieve the peace they both wanted. Instead, he was exposed to the most barbarous and chaotic display of civil war and genocide in the past decade, observing in just one hundred days the killings of more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans. With only a few troops, his own ingenuity and courage to direct his efforts, Dallaire rescued thousands, but his call for more support from the world body fell on deaf ears. In Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire recreates the awful history the world community chose to ignore. He also chronicles his own progression from confident Cold Warrior to devastated UN commander, and finally to retired general struggling painfully, and publicly, to overcome posttraumatic stress disorder—the highest-ranking officer ever to share such experiences with readers.

Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China

Philip P. Pan

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and one of the leading China correspondents of his generation comes an eloquent and vivid chronicle of the world's most successful authoritarian state -- a nation undergoing a remarkable transformation.

Philip P. Pan's groundbreaking book takes us inside the dramatic battle for China's soul and into the lives of individuals struggling to come to terms with their nation's past -- the turmoil and trauma of Mao's rule -- and to take control of its future. Capitalism has brought prosperity and global respect to China, but the Communist government continues to resist the demands of its people for political freedom.

Pan, who reported in China for the Post for seven years and speaks fluent Chinese, eluded the police and succeeded in going where few Western journalists have dared.

From the rusting factories in the industrial northeast to a tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town courtroom to the plush offices of the nation's wealthiest tycoons, he tells the gripping stories of ordinary men and women fighting for political change. An elderly surgeon exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A filmmaker investigates the execution of a young woman during the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a crusade against forced abortions carried out under the one-child policy.

The young people who filled Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 saw their hopes for a democratic China crushed in a massacre, but Pan reveals that as older, more pragmatic adults, many continue to push for justice in different ways. They are survivors whose families endured one of the world's deadliest famines during the Great Leap Forward, whose idealism was exploited during the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and whose values have been tested by the booming economy and the rush to get rich.

The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization

James Bamford

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Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1947, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand signed a secret treaty in which they agreed to cooperate in matters of signals intelligence. In effect, the governments agreed to pool their geographic and technological assets in order to listen in on the electronic communications of China, the Soviet Union, and other Cold War bad guys--all in the interest of truth, justice, and the American Way, naturally. The thing is, the system apparently catches everything. Government security services, led by the U.S. National Security Agency, screen a large part (and perhaps all) of the voice and data traffic that flows over the global communications network. Fifty years later, the European Union is investigating possible violations of its citizens' privacy rights by the NSA, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public advocacy group, has filed suit against the NSA, alleging that the organization has illegally spied on U.S. citizens.

Being a super-secret spy agency and all, it's tough to get a handle on what's really going on at the NSA. However, James Bamford has done great work in documenting the agency's origins and Cold War exploits in The Puzzle Palace. Beginning with the earliest days of cryptography (code-making and code-breaking are large parts of the NSA's mission), Bamford explains how the agency's predecessors helped win World War II by breaking the German Enigma machine and defeating the Japanese Purple cipher. He also documents signals intelligence technology, ranging from the usual collection of spy satellites to a great big antenna in the West Virginia woods that listened to radio signals as they bounced back from the surface of the moon.

Bamford backs his serious historical and technical material (this is a carefully researched work of nonfiction) with warnings about how easily the NSA's technology could work against the democracies of the world. Bamford quotes U.S. Senator Frank Church: "If this government ever became a tyranny ... the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government ... is within the reach of the government to know." This is scary stuff. --David Wall

Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters

Richard A. Clarke

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Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Richard Clarke's dramatic statement to the grieving families during the 9/11 Commission hearings touched a raw nerve across America. Not only had our government failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks, but it has proven itself, time and again, incapable of handling the majority of our most crucial national security issues, from Iraq to Katrina and beyond. This is not just a temporary failure of our current leadership—it is a systemic problem, the result of a pattern of incompetence that must be understood, confronted, and prevented.

Clarke's first book, the number one bestseller Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, explained how the United States had stumbled into a struggle with violent Islamist extremists. Now, in Your Government Failed You, Clarke looks at why these unconscionable failures have continued and how America and the world can succeed against the terrorists. Yet Clarke also goes far beyond terrorism, to examine the inexcusable chain of recurring U.S. government disasters. Despite the lessons of Vietnam, there is Iraq. A trail of intelligence failures litters the Washington landscape. From Katrina to color codes and duct tape, "homeland security" has been an oxymoron. Why does the superpower continue to bobble national security?

Clarke minces no words in his examination of the breadth and depth of the mediocrity, entropy, and collapse endemic in America's national security programs. In order for the United States to stop its string of strategic mistakes, we first need to understand why they happen. Drawing on his thirty years in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, Clarke gives us a privileged, if horrifying, look into the debacle of government policies, discovering patterns in the failures and offering ways to stop the cycle once and for all.

Democracy Matters

Cornel West

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Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

West disappoints again 2 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I'll be honest, I've never been able to understand the level of academic success Cornel West has been able to achieve over the years. I read "Race Matters" as a senior in high school and found it to be a somewhat half-hearted and ultimately trite examination of what at times can be a very serious problem in our country - racial relations. Having had seven years of education since reading "Race Matters" I feel even more comfortable denouncing West as something of an intellectual hack. My criticism of West is not a mere "polemic against the left," as some reviewers have claimed. I am a liberal, but I can honestly say I have never met an (in my opinion) intelligent liberal who has thought Cornel West has contributed anything truly worthwhile to the racial dialogue. This is not to say if you liked his book you are an idiot. But I've always been concerned that West's writing resonates with the same demographic of liberalism that, for example, considers Al Sharpton to be a meaningful black leader.

West's writing to me always displays the worst of academia: using big words to paint broad concepts but never truly drawing any actual conclusions. In a book called "Democracy Matters," West never takes the time to explain or define what he really means by "democracy." Is it free speech and open dialogue? Elected government? Personal involvement in the political process? All of these? Without a more specific explanation, I had a difficult time understanding what precisely it was about democracy that mattered, since democracy is, after all, a complex concept with multiple variations and meanings. In the end I felt like I'd just read through 200-pages of a George Bush speech, which is to say: democracy = good.

Reading the book I was also struck by the extent to which Cornel West is essentially a racist - or "Afro-centrist," if you prefer the more patronizing term. I do not exaggerate when I say every other paragraph had a reference to either the hegemony imposed by white males over various demographics of American society or the manner in which black-specific contributions to American culture (ie, jazz or Toni Morrison) are the true reflection of democracy. I believe both that white men have exercised an oppressive dominance over American society and that black culture has offered much to the American experience, but neither to the extent West does. A good but benign example is when West refers to Tavis Smiley as the political voice of my generation. I respect Tavis Smiley very much, but it is pretty well accepted that it is in fact Jon Stewart, a mere white man, who is the political voice of my generation. In the end I found this overpromotion of black America off-putting and self-serving, distracting from what should otherwise have been an examination of the importance of "democracy" (however you define it to be).

I also found it to be incredibly self-serving on the part of West to dedicate a significant portion of one chapter - and I kid you not - to essentially gripe about how Lawrence Summers was mean to him at Harvard. Their famous exchange may have deserved an off-handed mention in a paragraph, possibly two, particularly to illuminate West's point about opening a racial dialogue in America through all mediums accessible (rap CDs, you see, are one such medium, while scholarly journals are not). But to dedicate page after page to the incident not only distracted from the true focus of the book, but also came off as childish.

I can guess by the low ratings that negative reviews have garnered on Amazon that this review will not be received favorably. I hope people will understand that this is intended to be an honest examination of the book and not an opportunity to put down Professor West. Despite having little respect for his intellectual acumen, I purchased and approached this book with my best effort at an open mind, hoping to be convinced that West's supposed brilliance would in fact be merited. But in the end I walked away with the conviction that my friends' appraisal of West is in fact the correct one, and that he is riding off the (undeserved) goodwill of liberal America, rather than any sort of meaningful continued contribution to the racial dialogue.

Editorial Review:

Praised by the New York Times for his “ferocious moral vision,” Cornel West returns to the analysis of what he calls the arrested development of democracy with a masterful diagnosis. Pointing to the rise of three antidemocratic dogmas that are rendering the energy of American democracy impotent—a callous free-market fundamentalism, an aggressive militarism, and an insidious authoritarianism—West argues that racism and imperial bullying have gone hand in hand in our country’s inexorable drive toward world dominance, including our current militaristic excesses. This impassioned and empowering call for the revitalization of America’s democracy, by one of our most distinctive and compelling social critics, will reshape the raging national debate about America’s role in today’s troubled world.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

Richard Clarke

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Total reviews: 485 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Buyer Beware 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

As targets of the political mass suggestion discussed in my reviews of: Propaganda, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication), and Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s, we must be careful with books like this from an "insider". The pattern is the same on all these books "written" by insiders who have "left" the administration: There is one and ONLY one controversial assertion given in the book (the hook to generate sales and publicity), with the remainder of the book running parallel with the party line.

I have no doubt, given corroborating evidence from other authors, that Clarke is correct that Bush and his cabinent were planning an Iraq invasion well before 9/11. The "Downing Street Memo" is the smoking gun on this.

The much bigger purpose of this book, in my opinion, is simply to disseminate the party line, yet again, that Osama bin Laden is the boogeyman, that his world-threatening military is al-qaeda, and that they can deliver mass destruction anytime, anywhere (you know, the Cold War program). It's the repeat, repeat, repeat that we get from George Tenet, Michael Scherer (sp) and all others who are wittingly or unwittingly part of the propaganda campaign.

The only question on Clarke is: is he witting or unwitting? The answer, however, is moot. As long as he is spewing party-line propaganda, his books are worthless to a suspicious public.

Editorial Review:

THE EXPLOSIVE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

With all-new excerpts from Richard Clarke's dramatic public testimony, and revealing corroboration from The 9/11 Commission Report

From the 9/11 Commission Report:

"On the day of the meeting [September 4, 2001], Clarke sent Rice an impassioned personal note. He criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts past and present. The 'real question' before the principals, he wrote, was 'are we serious about dealing with the al Qida threat?...Is al Qida a big deal?...Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG has not succeeded in stopping al Qida attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the US,' Clarke wrote. 'What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier? That future day could happen at any time.'"

The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power

Ronen Bergman Ph.D.

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the years since 9/11, the U.S. war on terror has focused on al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Coverage of Iran has been devoted almost exclusively to its nuclear ambitions. Yet, as Ronen Bergman's groundbreaking reporting in this vital investigative history reveals, for thirty years, Iran has been the world's leading sponsor of global terror and stands as the most formidable sponsor of terror in the world today.

Bergman, one of Israel's top investigative reporters, gained unprecedented access to extra-ordinary sources from top to bottom in the Mossad and intelligence agencies around the world. Based on over ten years of research and more than three hundred exclusive interviews with key intelligence figures, he reveals that Iranian terrorist masterminds have crisscrossed the globe, conducting bombings and assassinations with impunity -- even renting apartments and planning bombing attacks in New York City. Iran's proxy, Hizballah, has virtually taken over southern Lebanon and threatens Israel with high-powered weaponry supplied by Iran. Iran and Hizballah worked closely with al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist groups in developing their terrorist operations, and Iranian commandos trained Iraqi insurgents in the crafts of suicide bombing and the building of the roadside bombs that have killed so many U.S. troops in Iraq.

In response, and largely beneath the public's radar, a vast clandestine war has been fought with Iran and Hizballah on one side and the CIA, Israel's Mossad, and their European counterparts on the other. The full story of that secret war, told for the first time here, will fundamentally change the debate about U.S. national security priorities.

A new axis of evil is emerging from Iran and spreading around the world, and Ronen Bergman shows that the CIA and Mossad have so far been unable to thwart it. The Secret War with Iran is riveting and urgent.

Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror

Robert Young Pelton

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Robert Young Pelton first became aware of the phenomenon of hired guns in the War on Terror when he met a covert team of contractors on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the fall of 2003. Pelton soon embarked on a globe-spanning odyssey to penetrate and understand this shadowy world, ultimately delivering stunning insights into the way private soldiers are used.

Enter a blood-soaked world of South African mercenaries and tribal fighters backed by ruthless financiers. Drop into Baghdad’s Green Zone, strap on body armor, and take a daily high-speed ride with a doomed crew of security contractors who dodge car bombs and snipers just to get their charges to the airport. Share a drink in a chic hotel bar with wealthy owners of private armies who debate the best way to stay alive in war zones.

Licensed to Kill spans four continents and three years, taking us inside the CIA’s dirty wars; the brutal contractor murders in Fallujah and the Alamo-like sieges in Najaf and Al Kut; the Deep South contractor training camps where ex–Special Operations soldiers and even small town cops learn the ropes; the contractor conventions where macho attendees swap bullet-punctuated tales and discuss upcoming gigs; and the grim Central African prison where contractors turned failed mercenaries pay a steep price.

The United States has encouraged the use of the private sector in all facets of the War on Terror, placing contractors outside the bounds of functional legal constraints. With the shocking clarity that can come only from firsthand observation, Licensed to Kill painstakingly deconstructs the most controversial events and introduces the pivotal players. Most disturbingly, it shows that there are indeed thousands of contractors—with hundreds more being produced every month—who’ve been given a license to kill, their services available to the highest bidder.


From the Hardcover edition.