Books Folder - 2008 onwards!!!

[ramana]

There were many studies right after FSU collapsed worrying aboyut future of US. The reason is US is based on pre Imperial Rome. Its instituions are based on that Rome. That Rome collpased after the war on Carthage was won and Imperial order stepped in. So New World Order and wars in Eastern/Central Europe and GOAT were the way to create new Carthages. We saw what that did in 2008 exactly two decades after 1988.

Pat Buchanan is on the same path.

[abhishek_sharma]

Extraordinary Case Study: The Kesavananda Bharati Case

[abhishek_sharma]

Daniel Yergin, "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World," (Video)

"The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism" (Video)

"Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda" (Video)

"The Secrets of the FBI" (video)

"'Islam' Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today" Amitabh Pal (Video)

[abhishek_sharma]

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (Video) (Bad audio)

Panel:

Abhijit Banerjee (Professor, MIT)
Esther Duflo (Professor, MIT)
Jeffrey Sachs (Professor, Columbia Univ.)

[svinayak]

http://www.amazon.com/State-vs-Defense- ... 0307408418

State-vs-Defense
State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America's Empire
Stephen Glain (Author)

Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Crown (August 2, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307408418
ISBN-13: 978-0307408419

The title conflict, State versus Defense, is one of the most important of those threads. This is the recurring question of whether the United States' interaction with real or manufactured rivals (in roughly historical order: China, the Soviet Union, China, the Serbs, "drugs," Saddam Hussein, militant Islam, and now, China again) should be handled primarily by diplomats with regional expertise, or by generals, admirals, and hawkish congressmen with armaments plants in their districts. No prizes for guessing which side won that argument, when today the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and proconsular "combatant commanders" bestride the world like colossi while the director general of the foreign service (which Glain notes is a roughly equivalent position to JCS chairman) languishes in absolute obscurity.

The victory of the propagandistically-misnamed "Defense" Department in that struggle, and the parallel rise of the military-industrial complex (which Glain tellingly compares to the USSR's own "industrial-military commission," or VPK, which was a big contributor to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet economy), are big parts of Glain's argument, but there's much more too. He describes, for example, how by purging the State Department of its experienced and knowledgeable "China hands" and, by extension, creating a lasting political prejudice against any kind of State Department regional expert, McCarthyism blinded American leaders to the historical and geopolitical nuances of the situations we were and are confronting. As a result, military power has come to be seen as the necessary and sufficient means of promoting American interests. If all you have is a hammer...

"State vs. Defense" also contains fascinating depictions of the Nixon and Reagan White Houses; a recounting of the rhetoric and reality of "civilian control of the military;" and skillfully-crafted, in-depth portraits of Reagan, Nixon, George Marshall, Curtis LeMay, and others. Glain is an excellent researcher but also a talented writer, and he has put together an extremely readable history. Far from dry inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic tedium, "State vs. Defense" is an excellent and often alarming history that deserves a wide audience.

A masterful account of how sixty years of American militarism created the Cold War, fanned decades of unnecessary conflict, helped to fuel Islamist terror, and threatens to bankrupt the country.

For most of the twentieth century, the sword has led before the olive branch in American foreign policy. In eye-opening fashion, State vs. Defense shows how America truly operates as a superpower and explores the constant tension between the diplomats at State and the warriors at Defense.

State vs. Defense characterizes all the great figures who crafted American foreign policy, from George Marshall to Robert McNamara to Henry Kissinger to Don Rumsfeld with this underlying theme: America has become increasingly imperial and militaristic.

Take, for example, the Pentagon, which as of 2010, acknowledged the concentration of 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees inside 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories. The price of America’s military-base network overseas, along with the expense of its national security state at home, is enormous. The bill comes in at well over $1 trillion. That is equal to nearly 8 percent of GDP and more than 20 percent of the federal budget. (By comparison, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, the five countries Pentagon planners routinely trot out as conventional threats to the national well-being, have a cumulative security budget of just over $200 billion.) Quietly, gradually—and inevitably, given the weight of its colossal budget and imperial writ—the Pentagon has all but eclipsed the State Department at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

In the tradition of classics such as The Wise Men, The Best and the Brightest, and Legacy of Ashes, State vs. Defense explores how and why American leaders succumbed to the sirens of militarism, how the republic has been lost to an empire, and how “the military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower so famously forewarned has set us on a stark path of financial peril.

Though you might think that this book is of primary appeal to a US audience, it deserves an international readership. The cautionary tale Stephen Glain tells in a skilfully-spun narrative about the dominant role in US Foreign Policy played by the Pentagon and their supporters, Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex, is both fascinating and depressing. Yet it becomes even more relevant in an age when America is going to have to get used to living in a multipolar and not a unipolar world.

The old certainties - the Cold War, the dominance of American power - have gone. In a post 9/11 world, the emergence of new power blocks in the Far East and the shift in the balance of international economic power is going to demand from the USA an acceptance of the world as it really is and a much more finely nuanced foreign policy, for example in areas like the Middle East, where the old simplicities simply will not cut the mustard any more. Therefore the question must be whether the present political environment in Washington will allow this to happen. Of course the US will continue to be a player of massive substance in international affairs, but it also means that the impetus for policy development will have to encompass a far wider horizon that that projected by the Pentagon and its allies, so that episodes like Vietnam and, more recently, Iraq, can hopefully be avoided.

[svinayak]

No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington
Condoleezza Rice (Author)

Hardcover: 784 pages
Publisher: Crown (November 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 030758786X
ISBN-13: 978-0307587862

From one of the world’s most admired women, this is former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s compelling story of eight years serving at the highest levels of government. In her position as America’s chief diplomat, Rice traveled almost continuously around the globe, seeking common ground among sometimes bitter enemies, forging agreement on divisive issues, and compiling a remarkable record of achievement.

A native of Birmingham, Alabama who overcame the racism of the Civil Rights era to become a brilliant academic and expert on foreign affairs, Rice distinguished herself as an advisor to George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign. Once Bush was elected, she served as his chief adviser on national-security issues – a job whose duties included harmonizing the relationship between the Secretaries of State and Defense. It was a role that deepened her bond with the President and ultimately made her one of his closest confidantes.

With the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Rice found herself at the center of the Administration’s intense efforts to keep America safe. Here, Rice describes the events of that harrowing day – and the tumultuous days after. No day was ever the same. Additionally, Rice also reveals new details of the debates that led to the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The eyes of the nation were once again focused on Rice in 2004 when she appeared before the 9-11 Commission to answer tough questions regarding the country’s preparedness for – and immediate response to – the 9-11 attacks. Her responses, it was generally conceded, would shape the nation’s perception of the Administration’s competence during the crisis. Rice conveys just how pressure-filled that appearance was and her surprised gratitude when, in succeeding days, she was broadly saluted for her grace and forthrightness.

From that point forward, Rice was aggressively sought after by the media and regarded by some as the Administration’s most effective champion.

In 2005 Rice was entrusted with even more responsibility when she was charged with helping to shape and carry forward the President’s foreign policy as Secretary of State. As such, she proved herself a deft crafter of tactics and negotiation aimed to contain or reduce the threat posed by America’s enemies. Here, she reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that kept the world’s relationships with Iran, North Korea and Libya from collapsing into chaos. She also talks about her role as a crisis manager, showing that at any hour -- and at a moment’s notice -- she was willing to bring all parties to the bargaining table anywhere in the world.

No Higher Honor takes the reader into secret negotiating rooms where the fates of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon often hung in the balance, and it draws back the curtain on how frighteningly close all-out war loomed in clashes involving Pakistan-India and Russia-Georgia, and in East Africa.

Surprisingly candid in her appraisals of various Administration colleagues and the hundreds of foreign leaders with whom she dealt, Rice also offers here keen insight into how history actually proceeds. In No Higher Honor, she delivers a master class in statecraft -- but always in a way that reveals her essential warmth and humility, and her deep reverence for the ideals on which America was founded.
About the Author
CONDOLEEZZA RICE was the sixty-sixth U.S. Secretary of State and the first black woman to hold that office. Prior to that, she was the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. She is a professor at Stanford University, and co-founder of the RiceHadley Group. Rice is also the author of the New York Times bestselling Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Leadership Secrets of Bismarck

Over the last two decades, a distinctive regime type has emerged across the developing world, one that scholars have come to call competitive authoritarianism. This sort of political system allows for the contestation of power among different social groups, but with so many violations of electoral fairness and so little regard for liberal norms that it cannot be called a true democracy. From Russia to Peru, Cambodia to Cameroon, such regimes are now located in almost every region of the world, and how they develop will determine the shape of the twenty-first century.

One of the best ways to gain insight into the future paths of these political systems, ironically, is to look backward rather than forward, because the past can be prologue. Wilhelmine Germany is a particularly interesting point of comparison, because it had many similar characteristics. Like many of these regimes, it, too, experienced late, rapid growth and social transformation. It, too, developed a competitive form of politics that fell short of full-blown democracy. And potentially like some of today's emerging powers, Germany had a domestic political crisis that was capable of shaking the world.

The larger-than-life figure who presided over Germany's rise was Otto von Bismarck, foreign minister and minister-president of Prussia during the 1860s, architect of German unification in 1871, and chancellor of a unified German empire from 1871 to 1890. Given Bismarck's role in German history, a vast amount has already been written about him, so one might question what more there is to say. However, in Bismarck: A Life, Jonathan Steinberg, a respected historian with a long career at Cambridge University and the University of Pennsylvania, has produced a first-rate biography that combines a standard historical narrative with an intriguing account of Bismarck as a personality.

Incorporating reflections from the man himself, as well as from his friends, enemies, and coworkers, Bismarck offers a fresh and compelling portrait of a fascinating character. Steinberg shows how the German political climate Bismarck fostered -- marked by deference to authoritarianism, an aversion to compromise, and reactionary antimodernism -- contributed to the country's disastrous course in the decades after Bismarck's fall from power. And in doing so, he indirectly sheds light on the prospects of competitive authoritarian regimes in the contemporary era. The thing to keep an eye on, it turns out, is less the character of the classes rising from below than the willingness of elites at the top to loosen their grip on power.

BISMARCK'S POLITICAL GENIUS

Bismarck was born in 1815 to that stratum of Prussian nobility, the Junkers, that combined hardscrabble farming in the rye belt east of the Elbe River with an ethic of disciplined and often militarized service to the Hohenzollerns, Prussia's ruling family. He was educated, witty, and highly intelligent (although not an intellectual). Like many Junkers, his politics were reactionary; he was antidemocratic, antisocialist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic.

Bismarck first rose to prominence during the revolutions of 1848, when nationalist and democratic uprisings challenged Europe's political status quo. As a new member of the Prussian legislature, he forcefully defended the monarchy's desire for unfettered executive power. Thanks in part to his maneuvering then and later, the dynasty survived the tumult and went on to rule for seven more decades -- a period during which Prussia unified Germany around it and blossomed into an industrial and military powerhouse.

Germany's economic development was relatively late by European standards. Social scientists such as Alexander Gerschenkron and Barrington Moore have noted that its embrace of capitalist modernity and rise to power were predicated on a new pattern of authoritarian development -- in Moore's words, a "revolution from above." This meant using industrial policy to push development in those sectors that enhanced state power and simultaneously suppressing or co-opting all political opposition. In order to catch up with the more advanced economies of the West, the government protected heavy industries essential to the nation's military strength, as well as Junker agriculture, with tariffs.

The transformation of a largely agrarian and rural society into an industrial and urban one always involves major changes in social structure. Social change, in turn, almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power. Although Steinberg does not dwell on the larger socioeconomic or theoretical picture, he does a good job of presenting the specifics of how this story played out in the German case. The success of the German economy led to the expansion of three groups: the bourgeoisie, the middle class, and the working class. These groups challenged Junker dominance through the Catholic Center Party, various liberal parties, and the Social Democratic Party. Ultimately, following Germany's defeat in World War I, these parties would abolish the empire and declare a republic. But Bismarck, by playing these forces off one another and selectively granting policy concessions, managed to keep them at bay for decades.

Nondemocratic regimes that try to manage their publics by simulating democracy have to walk a fine line. Establishing a veneer of democratic institutions, such as elections, can allow traditional or dictatorial rulers to incorporate rising groups into the political process without fully empowering them, thus stabilizing an existing regime and giving it some popular legitimacy. If elections are too obviously a sham and legislatures too obviously impotent, however, their hollowness can spur demands for progress toward real democracy, increasing rather than decreasing the regime's political problems.

The imperial German political system grappled continuously with this tension. It featured a monarch, the kaiser, who appointed the chancellor, the head of government. But it also featured a bicameral parliament, with the powerful lower house, the Reichstag, elected competitively through universal male suffrage. It was here that new social forces in Germany could give voice to their concerns. During his two decades as chancellor, Bismarck reported directly to the sovereign rather than the public at large, but he needed the consent of a majority in the Reichstag in order to pass budgets and other legislation.

The politics that played out in the Reichstag were real. The monarchy could not count on automatic support for all of its policies. It lost battles from time to time, and it was forced to compromise with legislative factions. Despite these constraints, Bismarck outmatched all his competitors in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, by practicing a style of politics similar to that used in competitive authoritarian regimes today.

SUPPRESSION AND CO-OPTATION

Bismarck's strategy was to weaken his opponents through authoritarian suppression while building temporary political coalitions in order to enact his preferred legislation. The skillful execution of this strategy allowed him to keep control over the legislative agenda for 20 years, despite his lack of a natural parliamentary majority and the growing power of the middle and working classes.

His favorite move was to divide and conquer, turning his ire on the Catholics, the liberals, and the Social Democrats in turn. The first of these maneuvers, the Kulturkampf of the 1870s, was directed against the third of the Prussian population that was Catholic. Bismarck saw Catholics and the clergy as potential fifth columnists who could be manipulated by Catholic Austria (which he had kept out of the empire) and the Vatican. He was able to put strong anticlerical measures in place by securing the support of conservatives and liberals. This worked for a while, but in the long run, the Center Party's strength continued to grow, and many of its leaders came to believe that constitutional democracy would protect their interests better than the monarchy.

The Kulturkampf was followed by the Anti-Socialist Laws. After two failed assassination attempts on the kaiser in 1878, Bismarck was able to convince both conservatives and liberals to pass restrictions on the rapidly growing socialist movement, denying socialists the right to publish or assemble. Even as he pressured the working class' formal political representatives, however, Bismarck tried to gain the support of workers themselves by sponsoring an array of pioneering social welfare legislation -- health insurance (1883), accident insurance (1884), and retirement pensions (1889). He was among the first to understand, in other words, that authoritarian regimes can legitimize themselves by lifting their citizens out of poverty and providing some security against economic uncertainty. Here, too, the strategy worked in the short run but failed over time, as the Social Democrats continued to grow, becoming Germany's largest political party in 1912. In 1890, following Bismarck's dismissal, the Reichstag allowed the Anti-Socialist Laws to lapse.

As for the liberals, Bismarck repeatedly sought their help for his moves against the Catholics and workers, but his larger relationship with them blew hot and cold, particularly on the issue of free trade (which they supported and he did not). And toward the end of his term, he turned against them, too, using rising anti-Semitism as a weapon. Like many Junkers and conservatives, Bismarck rejected modernity and capitalism as a Jewish plot to gain power and upset the natural order of society. Over the course of the third quarter of the century, this sort of anti-Semitism gathered steam in Germany. Bismarck did not drive the movement, but he was happy to profit from it, permitting attacks on prominent Jewish liberals as a way of weakening and cowing liberalism as a political force.

Bismarck's success in domestic political combat enabled him to remain in control of the Reich and enact the foreign and industrial policies that ensured Germany's status as a great power. His example seemed to show that illiberal politics could achieve results that matched or exceeded the results of liberal political institutions elsewhere in the West -- and his contemporaries took note, making "revolution from above" an attractive option for other autocrats, not unlike the so-called China model today.

IS COMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIANISM SUSTAINABLE?

Many ambitious politicians in developing countries today, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, have adopted some aspects of democratic political systems, allowing parties, elections, constitutions, and the like, while harassing their opponents and finding ways to keep power in their own hands. This might well end up being the outcome of the political turmoil in many of the countries that experienced the Arab Spring, such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. And even some democracies have slid backward in their practices, with leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey using their power to throw unfair obstacles in the way of their political rivals. Some relatively stable authoritarian regimes, meanwhile, such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, owe their success in part to their ability to enhance the welfare of their populations. Whether they realize it or not, all these regimes are following in Bismarck's footsteps.

Lifting populations out of poverty is clearly a good thing. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as Germany became an economic and military powerhouse, the country's standard of living rose appreciably, and it became a world leader in science, the arts, technology, and education. But in creating a powerful and authoritarian state to attain his goals, Bismarck retarded the political development of the society around it. Through his continuous and contemptuous manipulation of parliament, suppression of dynamic new political forces, and intolerance of all independent sources of intelligence and authority, he denied Germany exactly what it needed to govern itself successfully over the long term: a well-developed parliamentary tradition and robust political parties capable of providing effective leadership. The sociologist Max Weber's classic analysis of Germany's limited democratic prospects at the end of the empire, which Steinberg appropriately highlights and appreciates, should be sobering reading for fans of competitive authoritarians in the developing world today.

To be sure, there are also some grounds for optimism. In her important study Practicing Democracy, the historian Margaret Anderson offers a significantly less gloomy interpretation of imperial Germany's ultimate political trajectory. She paints a picture of a country in which 40 years of competitive politics produced a thriving civil society, a well-established party system, and a vibrant public sphere. Anderson argues that Germany may well have evolved naturally in the direction of real democracy were it not for World War I and the Carthaginian peace that followed. And other scholars have made similar points about less than fully democratic political development in mid-nineteenth-century France and contemporary Africa and other cases with similar features.

The crux of this debate is whether competitive authoritarianism can serve as a useful halfway house toward a better political future -- whether institutions that offer some form of open contestation, even if seriously flawed, inculcate good habits that eventually facilitate the emergence of liberal democracy or whether they constitute a detour away from it.

Here, too, the German case has lessons to teach, if one extends the discussion from Bismarck's era to the decades that followed, and particularly to World War I itself. Anderson, for example, may be correct that Germany was on a path to evolve in a democratic direction in the early decades of the twentieth century. But many would argue that it was precisely in order to head off such an outcome that conservative German elites were prepared to act so aggressively during the run-up to war and accept the terrible risks of an expansionist foreign policy. Bismarck's wars of German unification had helped stymie the reformist impulses of the liberals, after all, so it was not crazy to think that a new round of expansionism might cause the opposing parties to fall into line this time around -- which, in fact, they did for the first three years of the war, until the full economic brunt of failure began to be felt.

Competitive authoritarian political systems, like imperial Germany's hybrid of monarchy and parliamentary rule, might contain the seeds of future democracies. However, for this to occur, the elites that benefit from competitive authoritarianism need to be willing to let the electoral process play out to its conclusion. They have to accept a loss of control over the outcome of elections, the need to compete fairly with newly empowered political forces, and the prospect of ultimately sharing or even losing power. The willingness of local elites to cope with the uncertainty of fully competitive politics will thus be the ultimate factor in determining whether competitive authoritarianism proves a way station in democratic development or a safe house for autocrats.

[abhishek_sharma]

Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China

According to the contributors to this volume, the Chinese government tries to channel citizen disputes away from protests and petitions and into the courts, which practice both mediation and adjudication. But few citizens actually use the courts, and those who do are often dissatisfied with the outcome. Judges, who are civil servants, are graded on a point system that motivates them to check pending decisions in advance with higher courts, lest they lose points for making mistakes. Citizens seeking justice often take their cases to the media, the Internet, and the street, and courts often respond to such pressure with decisions favoring those litigants who have pushed the hardest. Overseeing the entire court system is the Supreme People’s Court, which maintains a good deal of independence because its work is regarded as too technical for either the ruling party or the legislature to manage. Yet the highest court instructs lower-court judges that their primary responsibility is to support social stability, rather than defend citizen rights. It has also resisted attempts by pioneering lawyers to use the constitution to overrule government regulations. It is no surprise, then, that Chinese citizens remain unconvinced that they can find justice in court.

Beyond the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on China’s Capitalist Transformation

With this book, China joins the flourishing scholarly literature on “varieties of capitalism.” The country resembles Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in its use of a state-controlled financial system to channel investment to favored industries but differs by imposing sink-or-swim conditions on tens of thousands of lower-tier companies. Not unlike Brazil and France, China protects big, well-connected firms -- but in China, the state directly owns those companies. China is so big that the central government’s efforts to consolidate enterprises in some sectors (including the automobile industry) have been frustrated by powerful provincial governments, which has not happened in dirigiste economies with smaller populations. As Margaret Pearson puts it in her contribution, China’s adoption of capitalism has been “superbly ambivalent.” China is capitalist but does not have what Americans would call a free-market system. In all, China has more in common with large developing countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, than with states in any other category, which suggests that the China miracle may face similar limits to growth.

Coming to Terms With the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China

How did the more than 400 ethnic identities discovered by China’s first modern-era census, conducted in 1953–54, become the 55 national minority groups officially recognized today? Mullaney has discovered the archives of the Yunnan office of the Ethnic Classification Project and has interviewed some of its surviving members, allowing him to reflect on modern state making and identity creation. Yunnan is the southwestern province where almost half the classified minority groups reside. Ironically, the young communist ethnologists dispatched by Beijing in 1954 to “scientifically” classify the groups used a linguistics-based system that, unbeknownst to them, was designed in the early twentieth century by an officer in the “imperialist” British army. In the process, they ended up creating some groups that had never actually existed. But in the decades since, the state has taught the minorities to accept the official categories, and today they are socially real.

[abhishek_sharma]

Water: Asia’s New Battleground

Owing to growing populations, richer lifestyles, and government mismanagement, water is desperately scarce in Asia (a region defined in this book as including much of the Middle East). Climate change will threaten supply more in Asia than anywhere else, potentially curbing the region’s economic growth. Complicating matters further, much of the region’s water comes from contested areas. Tibet, for example, is the biggest regional source, supplying water to 11 countries. Detailing a number of ecological and economic risks, as well as threats to Tibetan spiritual and cultural life, Chellaney criticizes plans China reportedly has to divert water from and build hydroelectric dams on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River, which runs into India and Bangladesh. Ranging widely across the region, this forcefully written study warns of a growing risk of interstate conflicts over water. The only way to avoid such outcomes, Chellaney argues, is to adopt a cooperative, rule-based approach to water management -- a hard sell for sovereign states.

Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia

Thant, a former UN official, interweaves reflections on the past and future of Myanmar (also known as Burma) with a sharply observed account of his travels on both sides of the country’s borders with India and China. Myanmar is historically and culturally close to India, but trade between the two countries is surprisingly limited and their political ties are thin. By contrast, the boom in China’s Yunnan Province has boosted Myanmar’s economy and brought the country closer to China, which covets a pathway to the Bay of Bengal, an important shipping hub. According to Thant, the military regime in Myanmar has a firm grip on most of the country, and sanctions have served only to deprive Western democracies of any influence. In his view, Myanmar’s future is roads, railways, pipelines, and hydropower transmission lines, accompanied by a consumer revolution that will make the country “China’s California.”

The Age of Equality: The Twentieth Century in Economic Perspective

Pomfret, an Australian economist, uses the rallying cry of the French Revolution -- “Liberty, equality, fraternity” -- as an organizing principle for this brief but engaging history of the twentieth century, an “age of equality,” which followed an age of liberty, from 1815 to 1914, and preceded what he expects to be an age of fraternity in the twenty-first century. His argument is straightforward: the philosophical underpinnings of the United Kingdom’s Industrial Revolution emphasized the need for freedom of action from feudal restraints on commerce and, eventually, on political decision-making. Those beliefs became predominant in Europe and North America by 1914, but unfettered capitalism left too many people behind. Marxism, communism, fascism, and non-Marxist social democracy all emerged in reaction to the resulting inequality, producing the great battles of the twentieth century, both within and between countries. By 2000, fascism and communism had failed, and capitalism -- tempered by government provision of education, health care, and a social safety net -- had won. The collective challenges of the twenty-first century, such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and climate change, call for an age of fraternity.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda and The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA

Gerges, one of the most astute chroniclers of Islamist radicalism, begins this book with a masterly and trenchant account of the origins of al Qaeda and its decline after 9/11. As he moves into more recent years, the book loses focus, becoming more assertive and less analytic -- a victim, perhaps, of recent developments whose impact on global jihadism is difficult to predict, namely, the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Gerges’ main goal is to refute the mainstream “terrorism narrative” that has shaped U.S. policy since 9/11. An exaggerated threat of terrorism has led the United States to engage in disproportionate and inappropriate responses, a tendency Gerges sees continuing with President Barack Obama. The al Qaeda threat undoubtedly lends itself to overblown rhetoric in Washington. But Gerges’ core thesis, that the group is in decline, is closer to the mainstream view than he acknowledges.

Analyses of high-level counterterrorism strategy sometimes lose sight of the fact that the “war on terror” comprises a series of individual operations. Warrick, a reporter for The Washington Post, narrates an extraordinary story of intrigue and betrayal behind one such effort. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor, started out as an “Internet jihadist” whose contribution to holy war was limited to spewing vitriol online. After his arrest by the Jordanians in 2009, he was recruited as a CIA informant. But later that year, Balawi revealed his true loyalty, killing seven CIA officers and his Jordanian handler by blowing himself up as the team welcomed him at a base in Khost, Afghanistan. Warrick shows how the pressure for results led the CIA to take shortcuts when it came to handling an agent who some feared, correctly, was too good to be true.

Political Parties, Business Groups, and Corruption in Developing Countries

Corruption is endemic in most developing countries, and it is widely believed to inhibit their economic development. Most people’s firsthand experience with corruption usually involves individual government officials or courts, and those interactions are the most frequently studied aspect of corruption. Yadav believes that most studies of corruption have seriously neglected the role of elected legislatures. She argues that legislative procedures strongly influence the extent of corruption, particularly through lobbying by business groups. Her analysis reveals that when a legislature is organized around political parties that can set the policy agenda, determine amendments to legislation, and discipline party members who step out of line, there is significantly more corruption than when parties are weaker and legislators are more independent. This careful empirical work focuses in detail on Brazil and India -- large, complex countries with federal structures. But it also draws on evidence from 62 other democracies in the developing world. Yadav finds that contested elections do not eliminate legislative corruption in the form of financial payments made to parties and politicians by business groups to assure policy outcomes favorable to their interests. On the contrary, costly elections create more opportunities for corruption.

A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan

In this important memoir, Zakheim recalls his surprise on learning, in 2002, that his portfolio as the Defense Department’s comptroller and chief financial officer would include coordinating U.S. civilian reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The task fell to him because other senior Pentagon officials were preoccupied with planning for the imminent war in Iraq and were losing interest in Afghanistan. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate the dire consequences of that neglect and how it prevented grand policies from becoming practical actions. Zakheim traces the current travails in Afghanistan to a failure to convert the military successes of late 2001 into political gains that would aid the larger goal of nation building. He also conveys the daily frustrations of trying to make the U.S. policymaking system work sensibly. Zakheim was part of a group of early advisers to presidential candidate George W. Bush -- the “Vulcans” alluded to in the title. His memoir nonetheless offers a measured portrayal of the Bush administration’s failings and of the personal clashes behind the debates over policy.

[abhishek_sharma]

Sharpeville: A Massacre and Its Consequences

On March 21, 1960, police in Sharpeville, South Africa, shot hundreds of people protesting laws that restricted the movement of blacks. Sixty-nine protesters died, and the massacre became an iconic moment in the struggle against apartheid. Relying on fascinating archival testimonies of demonstrators -- but little from the police -- Lodge explains that the protests had been organized by the Pan-Africanist Congress, which was then at the peak of its influence in the anti-apartheid movement. The PAC was slowly displaced by its rival, the better-organized African National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela. Lodge argues convincingly that the major effect of the Sharpeville massacre was international. It galvanized an international civil-society coalition against the white minority government in South Africa, leading directly to the regime’s first major diplomatic defeat: its exclusion from the British Commonwealth in 1961. Yet Lodge also observes that in the short term, the massacre consolidated minority rule. The South African government used the threat of black violence to bolster its legitimacy with whites and justify its repressive practices.

Playing With Fire: Pakistan at War With Itself and Pakistan: Beyond the “Crisis State”

Constable, a veteran Washington Post reporter, tells a somber tale of honor killings, justice denied, Islamists and terrorists, and a feudal elite avoiding taxation. In this portrait of Pakistan, the country’s heavy-handed military and its elusive Inter-Services Intelligence agency loom large, as does a tendency throughout society to see the outside world in terms of crude conspiracy theories. The dysfunction is so debilitating that at one point, Constable suggests Pakistan should be seen not as a “failed state” but as a “fake state.”

Pakistan: Beyond the “Crisis State” is a very different book. It is the work of 19 Pakistani experts, including three former career diplomats, three journalists, a former brigadier general, a historian, a novelist, and a number of social scientists and lawyers. Most of the contributions are substantive, but not easy reads: too much data and not enough interpretation. The glossary of the many acronyms and abbreviations used throughout the book extends to more than four pages. Still, the hard slog is rewarding. The many specialties assembled assure the kind of thorough coverage not possible for any single author. The Pakistani roots of the authors might be said to assure a more insider picture, although their otherness can be exaggerated: 11 received their graduate training in the United States, and six now work there. Taken together, their contributions are in no way an apologia for Pakistan’s flaws, and their clear-eyed analyses cover the same deficits deplored by Constable and many others. Still, this collected work is more upbeat about Pakistan and its prospects than is Constable’s book. Both will help readers more clearly see Pakistan in all its complexity.

Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941

“Cosmopolitan” is not the first adjective that comes to mind when thinking of culture in the Stalin era. But even the nightmare of totalitarianism can be complex, and Clark traces the efforts of regime-blessed Soviet cultural figures of the 1930s to foster a “transnational fraternity” with leftist European artists and intellectuals, comrades-in-arms against fascism who were enamored of Marx and fascinated by the Soviet “experiment.” It was something of a two-way street, with Stalin, very much a hands-on impresario, allowing the import of Western film and literature, as long as the cumulative effect was to give his political vision imperial reach. As a result, for much of the decade, the exchange of ideas about theater, film, literature, journalism, and architecture was richer and more intense than one might have thought. As Clark demonstrates in this masterful tour of trends in Soviet culture and their echoes in Europe, the modified version of universalism tolerated by Stalin placed the Soviet Union at its center, and at the Soviet Union’s center stood Moscow -- the site and symbol of centralized Soviet power.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939

This sequel to The Lights That Failed, Steiner’s classic account of Europe in the 1920s, narrates the following decade’s diplomatic history right up to the brink of war. Its subtle, deceptively straightforward conclusions are firmly grounded in judiciously selected facts and a vast secondary literature. The League of Nations was weak, but hardly responsible for war: in the mid-1930s, no international institution could have contained the intense pressures of economic depression and dictatorship. Adolf Hitler was a single-minded gambler who calculated his chances precisely, launching a risky attack in the hope of exploiting a window of opportunity before his more powerful enemies rearmed. Democratic societies were split by deep partisan and social divisions that impeded a more timely response to the threat. Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and the West all opportunistically sought to buy time before the inevitable conflict. (Among those efforts, the Nazi-Soviet pact stands out primarily because it was more successful than others, at least temporarily.) This book is destined to become the standard reference on this period.

Oil of Russia: Past, Present, and Future

One does not expect the CEO of a major oil company to write a detailed history of the industry going back to antiquity. But that is what Alekperov, the president of Lukoil, the second largest of Russia’s ten key oil companies, has done. A full third of this lengthy book is devoted to the history of the industry from before Peter the Great’s reign through the nineteenth century, at a level of detail found in no other English-language publication. The discussion of the early years of Bolshevik rule through Lenin’s five-year plans is particularly rich and balanced, but Alekperov pays relatively little attention to the period stretching from the end of World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union. Unsurprisingly, he has general praise for present-day Russian energy policy and prospects. Still, this does not detract from the wealth of detail he provides, detail that will interest even the most informed student of the subject.

Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths

All countries spin their national myths around heroes. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, however, echo in Russian society less as heroes than as avatars, reflecting the outer limits of Russia’s traumas. Platt treats the way Russian historians, writers, and artists since the early nineteenth century have tried to come to terms with the legacy of these overpowering figures -- sometimes merging Peter’s “greatness” and Ivan’s “terror” into a single, reinforcing unity and sometimes treating those qualities as polar opposites. Their struggle, as Platt traces it -- from Nikolai Karamzin’s seminal early-nineteenth-century history of Russia, through Ilya Repin’s portrait of a horror-stricken Ivan holding the son he just murdered, to Stalin’s remaking of the two tsars into founders of Russian great power, to the use of Peter’s image to sell chocolates, cigarettes, and vodka in the 1990s -- reflects the ambivalent, at times tortured, standing Ivan and Peter have in the country’s collective identity.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan

There is an irony in Miscamble’s description of the atom bombing of Japan in August 1945 as “the most controversial decision,” as it is well documented that there was barely a decision at all and that the bombing was not particularly controversial at the time. The resources that had gone into the Manhattan Project meant that the weapons were bound to be used when they were ready, especially by an administration determined to explore all means to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end. It became controversial only after the war, as a result of claims, made most notably by the historian Gar Alperovitz, that President Harry Truman and his advisers knew the bombing was unnecessary. Miscamble skewers Alperovitz’s argument, countering that there was no reason to suppose that Japan was close to surrender prior to the bombing, that the bombing turned the debate in Tokyo in favor of surrender, and that the grim calculus of war suggested that if the atom bombs had not been used, many more would have died than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War

A fixation with the unreliable and misleading metrics of body counts and “kill ratios” has long been identified as one of the flaws in the U.S. military effort in Vietnam. When progress could not be measured by territorial gains, there was a temptation to show that U.S. forces were inflicting unbearable losses on the enemy. A focus on winning hearts and minds produced a different set of problems. How could an invading army measure whether civilians felt secure and were not alienated? In this meticulous study, Daddis reviews the U.S. Army’s search for a winning strategy in Vietnam and its attempts to evaluate its performance. Counterinsurgency operations rely on political effects that are intrinsically hard to measure. As Daddis notes, the search for numerical formulas was a poor substitute for a deep understanding of the operational and strategic environment. Yet perhaps the greatest challenge was political, rather than methodological: once one of the military’s main objectives became convincing an increasingly doubtful American public that victory was possible, could any metric avoid being distorted?

Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe

Why do radical right-wing parties with an anti-immigrant message succeed in some western European countries but fail in others? Why do the citizens of Belgium, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom seem more resistant to nationalist appeals than their counterparts in France, Italy, and the Netherlands? Analysts have suggested a number of variables, including electoral rules, immigration levels, and the ability of certain right-wing parties to craft neoliberal economic appeals. Art’s book concentrates on another factor: the ability of the parties to recruit and retain leaders and members who are reassuringly educated, experienced, and moderate. For this, they rely on long-standing political subcultures, built on historical memories and prevailing social norms. The rigor of Art’s analysis may be open to debate, but his book is a useful reminder of the tremendous diversity in how western European societies face modern political challenges.

[ramana]

Thomas L. Pangle - Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham
Publisher: The Jоhns Hоpkins Univеrsity Prеss | 2003-07-24 | ISBN: 0801873282 | 304 pages |

In this book noted scholar Thomas L. Pangle brings back a lost and crucial dimension of political theory: the mutually illuminating encounter between skeptically rationalist political philosophy and faith-based political theology guided ultimately by the authority of the Bible. Focusing on the chapters of Genesis in which the foundation of the Bible is laid, Pangle provides an interpretive reading illuminated by the questions and concerns of the Socratic tradition and its medieval heirs in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic worlds. He brings into contrast the rival interpretive framework set by the biblical criticism of the modern rationalists Hobbes and Spinoza, along with their heirs from Locke to Hegel. The full meaning of these diverse philosophic responses to the Bible is clarified through a dialogue with hermeneutic discussions by leading political theologians in the Judaic, Muslim, and Christian traditions, from Josephus and Augustine to our day. Profound and subtle in its argument, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, and religion but also to thoughtful readers in every walk of life who seek to deepen their understanding of the perplexing relationship between religious faith and philosophic reason.

Important to understand America which was founded by the Puritans. The first Christian nation state.

[abhishek_sharma]

Europe’s Vanished States

[abhishek_sharma]

Obama's Book Club

[abhishek_sharma]

Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events, Vol. 2, 1946–2006, rev. ed., by Norman Polmar

Few ships are as awe inspiring as the aircraft carrier. To say “it’s big” does not do the carrier justice. The vast amount of military might contained in this one ship, let alone its size, is simply staggering. It is only appropriate that an author with a reputation as impressive as that of the aircraft carrier take on the task of revising and updating the previous edition of this book. After reading Aircraft
Carriers, I can say that Norman Polmar was the right man for the job. An internationally known
specialist in naval, aviation, and technical intelligence issues, with over 40 books to his credit and
service as a consultant or adviser to three secretaries of the Navy and two chiefs of naval operations,
Polmar comes well prepared for the task. I found this book a very interesting coffee-tablesized
historical reference with insightful analysis woven into the text. Like the ship, this soup-to-nuts
compilation of aircraft carrier information is beyond “big.” Polmar has clearly done his research and performs yeoman’s work, bringing relevance to each phase of carrier operations he discusses. He ends
most of the chapters with a summary that captures the major points in a few concise paragraphs.
The author’s narrative begins just after World War II ends, when US leadership begins to debate
the future of the aircraft carrier in light of atomic (and, later, nuclear) weapons, the jet age,
and, eventually, space technology. Polmar describes this ongoing debate over relevancy
through Korea and Vietnam, well into the Reagan presidency. Not surprisingly, each time a crisis
flares up, the American leadership first asks, “Where are the carriers?”
Especially interesting are the chapters on foreign navies’ carrier investments and ventures, including
an entire section on the Falklands War, which summarizes very well the British experience with expeditionary war in the late twentieth century. Also insightful was the extended chapter on the Soviet
Navy during the tenure of the Soviet Union. The second volume of Aircraft Carriers is a
magnificent piece of research. The chapters guide readers through naval history by putting the aircraft
carrier into context with the crises of the times. As a historical text, this is a good read, with
the tables and pictures providing color commentary that accompanies the text. The summaries
offer a concise wrap-up of the chapters, leading the reader smoothly into the following chapter. In
all, I highly recommend this book to Airmen—if for no other reason than to gain a professional
awareness of our flying brethren in the Navy.

Maj Paul Niesen, USAF, Retired
Scott AFB, Illinois

[ramana]

New lne of attack

Paula Banerjee, "Women in Indian Borderlands"
Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd | ISBN 10: 8132106504 | 2011 | 260 pages |

Women in Indian Borderlands is an ethnographic compilation on the complex interrelationship between gender and political borders in South Asia. The book focuses on the border regions of West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast India.

The chapters in the book examine the stories of women whose lives are intertwined with borders, and who resist everyday violence in all its myriad forms. They show how most of the traditional efforts to make geopolitical regions more secure end up privileging a masculine definition of security that only results in feminine insecurities.

These essays discuss how women negotiate their differences with a state that, though democratic, denies space to differences based on ethnicity, religion, class or gender. Borders are interpreted as zones where the jurisdiction of one state ends and that of the other begins. What comes out is the startling revelation that women not only live on the borders, but also, in many ways, form them.

[ramana]

Vsunder !

Kameshwar C. Wali, "A Scientific Autobiography: S. Chandrasekhar"
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company | ISBN 10: 981429957X | 2011 | 296 pages |

S Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Chandra, was one of the foremost scientists of the 20th century. The year 2010 marks the birth centenary of Chandra. His unique style of research, inward bound, seeking a personal perspective to master a particular field, and then pass on to another was so unique that it will draw considerable interest and attention among scholars.
As Chandra elucidates in the preface, "The various installments describe in detail the evolution of my scientific work during the past forty years and records each investigation, describing the doubts and the successes, the trials and the tribulations. And the parts my various associates and assistants played in the completion of the different investigations are detailed". It is indeed a remarkable and rare document, fascinating to read and experience the joys, frustrations and struggles of a creative mind.

[abhishek_sharma]

Ali Soufan's book, The Black Banners

[Rony]

Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror

Watch out for this book by Mathhew Aid. It will contain some raunchy details about CIA-ISI nautanki.

[abhishek_sharma]

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: The Making of the Modern World

Walter Russell Mead laments at the beginning of God and Gold, "The study of British history and culture has about vanished from American schools today; as a result, many Americans are unaware of just how deep the connection between the two countries go." Mead sets out to dispel that ignorance, but his deeper purpose is to expound a thesis: that the modern world is the creation of the United Kingdom and the United States. This, Mead writes, is "the biggest geopolitical story in modern times: the birth, rise, triumph, defense, and continuing growth of Anglo-American power despite continuing and always renewed opposition and conflict." In his view, militarily, politically, economically, and culturally, their will has prevailed, first with the United Kingdom leading, then with the United States taking over. Americans need to know how and why this has been the case -- not only to understand themselves fully but also to appreciate the nature of the world they have created and to cope with the problems it presents.

To describe the United Kingdom and the United States as Anglo-Saxon countries is to describe not their ethnic makeup but their culture -- to underline how it differs from that of the world at large and even from that of the rest of the West. Mead sees Anglo-Saxon culture and its success across the globe as the product of four elements: a slowly evolved liberal political system amenable to compromise, adjustment, and innovation; a Protestant religious tradition that has become tolerant enough to accommodate different sects and accept the separation of church and state while retaining a strong sense of purpose; a capitalist system preoccupied with material wealth not for its own sake but because of "a passion for growth, for achievement, for change"; and a maritime strategy, initially borrowed from the Dutch, that has used both the freedom of action provided by detachment from the European mainland and ready access to the rest of the globe to manipulate the world's balance of power. Each of these four elements has in itself been a powerful force for change. And each has supported and reinforced the others, constituting a virtuous circle whose impact has been dynamic and self-perpetuating.

Mead puts plenty of flesh on these bones, taking his readers through four centuries of history, from Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell to Wal-Mart and George W. Bush. His account is rich in anecdote, laden with quotations, and impressive in its range and erudition. Some things, such as his use of Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to capture the combination of impractical idealism and cynicism that sometimes characterizes Anglo-Saxon enterprises, work brilliantly.

On other occasions, perhaps because Mead is trying to address different audiences at the same time, his tone is disconcertingly uncertain. There must be a better way to illustrate a supposed affinity between Cromwell and Ronald Reagan than with reference to a passage from a speech by the Lord Protector being suddenly interrupted with, "Don Felipe, tear down that wall!" And it is surprising to find Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's awful poem "Excelsior" quoted at all, let alone favorably, after what James Thurber did to it.

WEST SIDE STORY

A more substantive, and substantial, problem is that Mead's emphasis on what is special and distinctive about Anglo-Saxon culture downplays the features that all Western countries have in common while focusing on what divides the continental nations from the maritime ones. There is, for example, little acknowledgment of the West's shared Greco-Roman inheritance. Mead's readers will get no sense that during the centuries of the United Kingdom's ascendancy, the education of the British ruling class consisted overwhelmingly of the study of Greek and Latin languages and culture. Yet that education must have shaped these elites' understanding of the world, perhaps as much as the Old Testament and its "Abrahamic narrative," on which Mead lays heavy emphasis. He also gives scant attention to the vast imprint -- positive, negative, and complicated -- of the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution on the minds of the educated classes of the United Kingdom and the United States, and Europe as a whole. And Germany, whose malign influence did so much to determine the contours of modern world history, gets very short shrift.

These weaknesses are not negligible, but nor are they life threatening. Mead's basic case is sound: the two great maritime, capitalist democracies have been the main shapers of the modern world. There are important virtues in the way Mead makes this case. In his treatment of the international behavior of the United Kingdom and the United States, he is without illusion or sentimentality. If anything, his criticism of the two countries goes too far: "Greed, cowardice, arrogance, complacency, sloth, and self-righteousness: every vice known to history has flourished in the politics and policy of the maritime states. They have committed about every possible folly and crime." Still, he is right to stress the ruthlessness that characterized the ascendancy of both powers, a quality that reflects "the unique mix of cynicism and faith at the heart of the Anglo-American view of the world."

This ruthlessness has been as evident in the two countries' dealings with each other as in their relationships with the rest of the world. The United Kingdom and the United States have often stood together as allies or partners, but when they have done so it has been, quite properly, on the basis of hard calculations of self-interest. The accompanying rhetoric might claim a "special relationship," but even on the occasions of closest cooperation, each country has always looked after itself first when a choice has been necessary. Mead has written elsewhere of their relationship during World War II, when the two countries worked more closely together than ever before, "No reptilian brain could have dealt as unsentimentally with an old friend as Franklin Roosevelt and the Treasury Department dealt with Churchill's government," and, "Despite the best efforts of Lord Keynes, the United States picked the imperial carcass very clean during the war." It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the dismantling of the British Empire was an unacknowledged but important U.S. aim during and immediately after the war.

AN EXPLOSIVE CENTURY

In an impressive set of concluding chapters, Mead meditates on the consequences of the triumph of the Anglo-Saxons in creating a maritime-capitalist order that now encompasses the whole world. Americans, he observes, are inclined to see that triumph as essentially resulting from the application and attraction of certain principles and values. But this is a case of victor's amnesia. As the rest of the world rightly understands, the Anglo-Saxon success has been based on power and is the product of "long and bitter battles to shape the future of the world." Today, the civilizations of the world have to live together in a state of unprecedented intimacy because "liberal capitalist society imposes its preferences on the rest of the world." Much of the world bitterly resents this and is seriously destabilized by it. But having created that intimacy, the United States is going to be faced with managing its consequences as the prime task of its foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

How should the United States go about this, and what are the prospects of its success? Mead is extremely interesting on these questions and cautiously optimistic. He believes that the emergence of a cluster of substantial powers in Asia -- China, India, Japan, and Russia -- will work in favor of the United States, because these states have the potential to form a stable balance of power among themselves. And should they fail, the United States would still be well placed to manipulate and exploit the power equation among them. The greatest danger, Mead argues, is not the rise of China and India but their failure -- which, given the magnitude of the tasks facing them, is not unlikely. If one were to fail, it would seriously upset the regional balance and require more active intervention on part of the United States. If both failed, the region would be reduced to chaos.

Mead expresses qualified optimism concerning the future of the West's relations with Islam. The extreme Wahhabi and Salafist movements of today, he observes, bear a striking resemblance to some of the radical Protestant groups of the Reformation. They, too, wanted to return to the original sources of their faith, denounced later deviations and elaborations, attacked rival cults, demanded theocratic rule, and, if deemed necessary, spread their religion by war. The Puritan movement adjusted to reality after repeated failures and over time became a critical force in the development of Anglo-American liberalism and democracy. Mead speculates that in the medium to long term, the same process of adjustment might happen in Islamist movements.

But "we should not delude ourselves with easy optimism," Mead warns. "A collective whose feelings have been deeply outraged" by 300 years during which "the Christian powers have been carving up the Islamic world" is not going to set its grievances aside quickly or easily. More generally, the non-Western world is going to have to ride out "huge storms" because of the tempo of change, and those will be even bigger, faster, and more disruptive than the ones that convulsed the West during its own murderous progress to modernity. Mead sees an "explosive century" ahead.

The United States, Mead notes, will continue to be the dominant presence in the next century (he will have no truck with American declinism). The question is, how should it play its hand? In different chapters, Mead offers two different answers to that question. First, "stick to the plan" -- the plan being the maritime grand strategy by which, in Mead's account, the United Kingdom and the United States created the modern world. Second, the United States should adopt a policy of ethical realism, based on the thinking of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, that combines moral concern, an acceptance of the reality of power, and prudence in its exercise.

Opinions will vary about the compatibility of these two pieces of advice. But setting that aside, each has its own implausibility. Sticking to the plan means continuing the implementation of the very policy that created the current state of affairs: it would result in more intimacy with non-Western civilizations and more of the problems that flow from that intimacy. Staying the course would require managing sensitive dealings with other civilizations, which is not an Anglo-Saxon specialty. Why, then, should it mend rather than intensify the damage?

As for adopting Niebuhrian ethical realism in foreign policy, it is an excellent piece of advice. But Mead himself believes that the prospects for the kind of nuanced and demanding foreign policy that Niebuhr advocated are remote. Considering recent performance and the current political scene in the United States, one is compelled to agree. In the end, Mead pins his hopes on the adoption of a Niebuhrian approach by, of all groups, American evangelical Protestants -- possibly the least nuanced constituency in U.S. politics. It is a determined effort to find an upbeat ending to an ambitious and stimulating book, but it is not a convincing conclusion. Walter Russell Mead begins God and Gold by quoting some inspirational lines by Alfred, Lord Tennyson predicting a golden future of prosperity and peace for mankind. He might well have ended it with some more equivocal lines by the same poet:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

[abhishek_sharma]

An Excerpt from "The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan"

Books on Henry VII

[ramana]

Someone cared to study our pet peeve!!!!!


Nandini Chatterjee, "The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960"
Palgrave Macmillan | 2011-03-01 | ISBN: 0230220053 | 320 pages |

This book examines religion in India under British rule and the immediate postcolonial years, from an unusual angle, placing Indian Christians at the centre of the story. It addresses legal developments regarding religion and its practice during British imperial rule in India, and the political emergence of Indian Christians as a community in this context.

[ramana]

"China Counting: How the West Was Lost" by Alex Mackinnon and Barnaby Powell
P/ve M-n | 272 pages | English | 2009 | ISBN: 0230234038 |

China is now the global counting house, trading Western debt and cashing Western obligations – financially, socially and diplomatically. By 'buying' its own democratic electorate with easy credit, the West has ceded power to the Chinese.

China's primary goal, however, is internal stability and external security, aiming neither for international dominance nor military confrontation. Its governing Party has a national mandate – of, by and for the people – a main street mandate for a resurgent China.

Mackinnon and Powell show how China is determining its destiny. This book interprets China's policy of gradual global expansion and the alternatives it offers to open capitalism and liberal democracy. It sifts constants from variables to reveal a China positioning itself for recognition as an equal.

[svinayak]

This thread is for book reviews only. No comments allowed.

[ramana]

John Philip Jenkins, "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years"
H r p e r O n e | 2010 | ISBN: 0061768944 | 352 pages |

*Starred Review* The fifth-century Christian church faced a doctrinal issue, now largely forgotten, that precipitated intramural Christian savagery unparalleled until the 11-centuries-later Thirty Years’ War. The bone of contention was the nature of Jesus Christ. That he wasn’t a mere man was indisputable. But was he a human-divine cross-breed, so to speak, or was he purely divine and his human body an illusion? Neither was accepted, but the conclusion of the council of Chalcedon in 451 that he was fully divine and fully human—that is, said dissidents, of two natures—incensed those who held he was of one nature, entirely divine. The fight broke out well before Chalcedon, entailing the death-from-assault of the patriarch of Constantinople during the 449 council of Ephesus, thereafter disowned as the “Gangster Synod.” Chalcedon eventually triumphed, but not until well after 250 years of intermittent violence in which monks behaved like the Waffen SS. Jenkins condenses centuries of church and imperial strife with admirable clarity despite the continuous blizzard of historical names and ecclesiastical terms the narrative entails. He suggests that this era, not the later Dark and Middle Ages, is the most violent (un-Christian?) in Christian history and that it may have lessons for the present and future conflict between Christians and Muslims over the nature of God.

[ramana]

Empires Apart: A History of American and Russian Imperialism by Brian Landers
Pegasus (November 16, 2011) | ISBN: 1605982644 | English | 576 pages |

A fresh, commanding, and thought-provoking narrative history of the competing Russian and American empires.

The American road to empire started when the first English settlers landed in Virginia. Simultaneously, the first Russians crossed the Urals and the two empires that would dominate the twentieth century were born. Empires Apart covers the history of the Americans and Russians from the Vikings to the present day. It shows the two empires developed in parallel as they expanded to the Pacific and launched wars against the nations around them. They both developed an imperial 'ideology' that was central to the way they perceived themselves.

Soon after, the ideology of the Russian Empire also changed with the advent of Communism. The key argument of this book is that these changes did not alter the core imperial values of either nation; both Russians and Americans continued to believe in their manifest destiny. Corporatist and Communist imperialism changed only the mechanics of empire. Both nations have shown that they are still willing to use military force and clandestine intrigue to enforce imperial control. Uniquely, Landers shows how the broad sweep of American history follows a consistent path from the first settlers to the present day and, by comparing this with Russia's imperial path, demonstrates the true nature of American global ambitions.

[ramana]

Madhusree Mukarjee, "Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II"

In the tradition of The Rape of Nanking and A Problem from Hell, this account will change the way we think of Churchill and World War II.

In 1943 Winston Churchill and the British Empire needed millions of Indian troops, all of India's industrial output, and tons of Indian grain to support the Allied war effort. Such massive contributions were certain to trigger famine in India. Because Churchill believed that the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, he proceeded, sacrificing millions of Indian lives in order to preserve what he held most dear. The result: the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, in which millions of villagers starved to death.

Relying on extensive archival research and first-hand interviews, Mukerjee weaves a riveting narrative of Churchill's decisions to ratchet up the demands on India as the war unfolded and to ignore the corpses piling up in the Bengali countryside. The hypocrisy, racism, and extreme economic conditions of two centuries of British colonial policy finally built to a head, leading Indians to fight for their independence in 1947.

Few Americans know that World War II was won on the backs of these starving peasants; Mukerjee shows us a side of World War II that we have been blind to. We know what Hitler did to the Jews, what the Japanese did to the Chinese, what Stalin did to his own people. This story has largely been neglected, until now.

[ramana]

Angelo Codevilla, "Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft"
Ba..c B..ks | 2009-03-24 | ISBN: 0465004830 | 336 pages |

“War presidents” are hardly exceptional in modern American history. To a greater or lesser extent, every president since Wilson has been a War President. Each has committed our country to the pursuit of peace, yet involved us in a seemingly endless series of wars—conflicts that the American foreign policy establishment has generally made worse. The chief reason, argues Angelo Codevilla in Advice to War Presidents, is that America’s leaders have habitually imagined the world as they wished it to be rather than as it is: They acted under the assumptions that war is not a normal tool of statecraft but a curable disease, and that all the world’s peoples wish to live as Americans do. As a result, our leaders have committed America to the grandest of ends while constantly subverting their own goals.

Employing many negative examples from the Bush II administration but also ranging widely over the last century, Advice to War Presidents offers a primer on the unchanging principles of foreign policy. Codevilla explains the essentials—focusing on realities such as diplomacy, alliances, war, economic statecraft, intelligence, and prestige, rather than on meaningless phrases like “international community,” “peacekeeping” and “collective security.” Not a realist, neoconservative, or a liberal internationalist, Codevilla follows an older tradition: that of historians like Thucydides, Herodotus, and Winston Churchill—writers who analyzed international affairs without imposing false categories.

Applies to every PM of India too.

[abhishek_sharma]

On Renaissance Worlds

[abhishek_sharma]

On Genocide

[abhishek_sharma]

Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, An Indian Destiny

A major booboo is her interpretation of “aam admi”, the common man for whom the Congress targeted all its programmes. The author believes that “aam admi’’ stands for “mango man”, a person who carries a basket of mangoes on his head.

[abhishek_sharma]

What to Read on Communism

[abhishek_sharma]

THE 100 BEST NON-FICTION BOOKS OF THE CENTURY

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books

100 best nonfiction

[ramana]

Paul Wallace, "India's 2009 Elections: Coalition Politics, Party Competition and Congress Continuity"
Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd | ISBN: 8132105834 | 2011 | 432 pages |

India's 2009 Elections is an inquiry into the 15th General Elections of India. It explores how the elections played out, what factors influenced the electorate, and how the elections are an important contribution to India s democracy. Authored by renowned scholars and analysts from various backgrounds, the collection of articles critically examines multiple areas of the Indian polity: Coalition and alliance politics, representation, national integration, and women s participation Dominant party, competitive two-party and multi-party states including Gujarat, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, and the northeast states Caste, tribal, and ethnic politics According to the contributors, the public outcome of the 2009 elections indicated a demand for integrity, continuity, and competence values that were considered almost obsolete in today s political scenario. At the same time, the contributors admit to problems in structure, providing for minority cultures, stability, and contentious public policy issues.

[ramana]

Bruce Bueno, Alastair Smith, "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics"
Pub..fairs (9-2011) | 352 pages | ISBN: 161039044X |

For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to.
This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.

[ramana]

Nile Green, "Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915"
C U P| 2011-03-21 | ISBN: 0521769248 | 344 pages |

As a thriving port city, nineteenth-century Bombay attracted migrants from across India and beyond. Nile Green's Bombay Islam traces the ties between industrialization, imperialism, and the production of religion to show how Muslim migration from the oceanic and continental hinterlands of Bombay in this period fueled demand for a wide range of religious suppliers, as Christian missionaries competed with Muslim religious entrepreneurs for a stake in the new market. Enabled by a colonial policy of non-intervention in religious affairs, and powered by steam travel and vernacular printing, Bombay's Islamic productions were exported as far as South Africa and Iran. Connecting histories of religion, labour, and globalization, the book examines the role of ordinary people - mill hands and merchants - in shaping the demand that drove the market. By drawing on hagiographies, travelogues, doctrinal works, and poems in Persian, Urdu, and Arabic, Bombay Islam unravels a vernacular modernity that saw people from across the Indian Ocean drawn into Bombay's industrial economy of enchantment.

[ramana]

Thomas Benjamin, "Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism Since 1450"
Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA | ISBN: 0028658434 | edition 2006 |

The period from the Renaissance onward has seen several nations and their citizens explore areas beyond their own borders in attempts to discover and colonize new territory, thereby expanding their sphere of influence for economic reasons or, for some, to escape persecution in their own land. Whatever the reason, colonialism still has its effects on the modern world, whether it led to the birth of a new nation (as in the case of the U.S.) or helps to explain simmering tensions that remain in Africa and India. Editor Benjamin is a professor of Latin American history at Central Michigan University; according to his preface, this set "provides the most comprehensive, accessible, and international reference work about the entirety of Western Colonialism from the Portuguese voyages of Prince Henry the Navigator in the fifteenth century to the making of feature films about British colonialism in India in the twenty-first century." The encyclopedia contains 411 articles by 234 academically affiliated contributors and is liberally illustrated with more than 300 illustrations, maps, and charts. A thematic outline is included in the first volume; the set concludes with selected text from 29 primary sources (for example, Monroe Doctrine, Treaty of Utrecht) and a comprehensive index.

[ramana]

Marta Tienda, Faith Mitchell - Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future
Publisher: Nаtional Acаdemies Press | 2006-03-01 | ISBN: 0309096677 | 176 pages |

Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics.
The book looks carefully at the diverse populations encompassed by the term “Hispanic,” representing immigrants and their children and grandchildren from nearly two dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It describes the trajectory of the younger generations and established residents, and it projects long-term trends in population aging, social disparities, and social mobility that have shaped and will shape the Hispanic experience.