Book Reviews
‘Why The West Rules – For Now’
By IAN MORRIS Reviewed by ORVILLE SCHELL
A Stanford historian views the clash between East and West from a long perspective, and argues that we face an immediate choice – East-West cooperation or catastrophe.
If neither East nor West has had any innate developmental advantage, what then allowed the West to propel itself forward so successfully in the 18th century (answer: the discovery of fossil fuels), and what does that dominance portend for the future? “One of the reasons people care about why the West rules,” Morris explains, “is that they want to know whether, how long and in what ways this will continue — that is, what will happen next. . . . How long the West will stay on top is a burning question.”
But before you get to the answer, you must be ready to steel yourself for Morris’s early chapters, which nonspecialists will no doubt find arcane. His discussions of primitive man’s common African gene pool; of how the “Hilly Flanks” in the Middle East developed after the Ice Age; and of China’s ancient Zhou dynasty can seem awfully remote. And as he visits ancient places like Urartu, Erlitou, Tenochtitlán, Uluburun and Yue; introduces us to individuals like Hoshea, Tiglath-Pileser III, Khusrau II, Merneptah and Zhu Xi; or sets us down among the Ahhiyawans, Xiongnu, Kizzuwatnans, Hurrians and Jurchens, your head may begin to spin.
However, just as you begin to wobble beneath the breadth of such impressive research, Morris will pull back and give a brief coda of down-to-earth clarification, rescuing those readers with the will to soldier on through a few more millenniums. Or he will drop in a welcome wry aside to goad you down the trail of history. Commenting on the Ming dynasty explorer Zheng He, he notes that Zheng “was enlisted in the emperor’s service and castrated,” but nonetheless “seems to have taken all this in his enormous stride.” Or, on the discovery of the Americas, he observes, “Europe got a new continent and Native Americans got smallpox.”
But with the West’s power and confidence now declining, and China’s authoritarian form of capitalism ripsawing its way toward an ever more dominant position in the world, a reader may be forgiven for becoming somewhat impatient. Is Morris ever going to answer the “burning question”? Who will win the next phase of our East-West horse race, the United States or China?
Finally, Morris surprises us. He duly acknowledges that “patterns established in the past suggest that the shift of wealth and power from West to East is inexorable” and that we may even be moving from “bankrupt America to thriving China.” But what really concerns him, it turns out, is not whether the West may be bested by the East, but whether mankind’s Promethean collective developmental abilities may not end up being our common undoing.
The competition that East and West have been pursuing for so long, Morris warns, is about to be disrupted by some powerful forces. Nuclear proliferation, population growth, global epidemics and climate change are in the process of radically altering old historical patterns. “We are approaching the greatest discontinuity in history,” he says.
Sounding suddenly more like an admonishing preacher than the amiable sportscaster to whom we have grown accustomed, Morris counsels that we now need to concentrate not on the old competition between East and West, but on a choice. We must decide between what Morris, borrowing from the writer Ray Kurzweil, terms “the Singularity,” salvation through the expansion of our collective technological abilities, and “Nightfall,” an apocalypse from the old Five Horsemen aided by their new accomplices. He warns that this choice offers “no silver medal.” One alternative “will win and one will lose.” We are, he insists, “approaching a new hard ceiling” and are facing a completely new kind of collective historical turning point.
For the Singularity to win out, “everything has to go right,” Morris says. “For Nightfall to win only one thing needs to go wrong. The odds look bad.”
Because distinctions of geography are becoming increasingly irrelevant, Morris views the old saw that “East is East and West is West” as a catastrophic way of looking at our present situation. Like it or not, East and West are now in a common mess, and “the next 40 years will be the most important in history.”
Although he implies it everywhere, Morris does not explicitly call for the United States and China to find new ways to collaborate. There may be no other solution. But will the leaders of these two unpredictable countries be able to rise to the unprecedented challenge they face? Not even Morris’s polymathic research abilities and pathbreaking analytic skills can help us answer that . . . for now.
Arvind Subramaniam says….
The one neglect of India and Indian history that did seem odd even to someone with only a superficial knowledge of Indian history related to Morris’ discussion of the so-called Axial Age. This term, used by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, describes the centuries around 500 BCE, when a new and revolutionary view of man arose. This view advocated that men turn within, focusing on themselves rather than on gods or on despotic rulers (which was distinctive of the preceding times) as the means to salvation.
Now, Morris’ list of the key contributions of this Axial Age includes Confucian and Daoist texts from China, Greek Philosophy, the Hebrew Bible, and Buddhism and Jainism from India. The only real export from India that is said to have wider impact, according to Morris, is Buddhism. The obvious omission here seems to be some of the older Upanishads — the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya — which are thought to be clearly pre-Buddhist in origin and which represent no less radical a break with the past than those that feature on Morris’ list. Is Morris’ inattention to these texts justified? And was India’s economic development commensurate with such intellectual achievement at that point in time? Again, these are questions worthy of inputs from Indian scholars.
Why the West Rules will give pause for India in one important respect. There is a cottage industry of writings on the “will-it-be-China-or-India” question and I do not want to rehearse well-trodden arguments. But if Morris’ view that China was consistently ahead of India in the past is correct, it carries the implication that the economic future is better for China.
The reason relates to two historical correlations noted by him: regions that were relatively more developed in the past tend to industrialise and develop faster than those which were less developed; and countries that avoided European colonisation also tended to industrialise faster than the colonised. Japan was developed in the past (before 1800 or so) and not colonised; China was highly developed in the past and only partly and intermittently colonised; and India was both less developed and colonised. Looking ahead, therefore, India’s prospects may be bright but China’s are brighter still.
Now, there is nothing deterministic about any of the patterns identified by Morris. But it would be imprudent to ignore them altogether. India can no doubt rule in the future but that might require it to defy to some extent, rather than return to, the patterns of history. At least, it should guard against the complacency on India’s relative prospects that is reflected in three routine invocations: “India is a democracy”, “India has the demographic dividend going for it while China is ageing”, and “India has a better, more dynamic private sector”.
Economic growth might not be a zero-sum game so that there is enough room in the world to accommodate the rise of China and India. If so, discussions of the relative prospects of China and India are unnecessary and meaningless. But for India to keep its eyes fixed on China is no bad thing if not as a rival and threat, then as a partner for expanding mutual economic possibilities, as an inspiration, and not least, as setting a floor on India’s ambitions.
The author is senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for Global Development
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‘The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires’
Tim Wu’s ambitious history of modern communications posits that information technologies move through a cycle from open to closed systems.
The story covers the history of phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All of these businesses are susceptible to the cycle because all depend on networks, whether they’re composed of cables in the ground or movie theaters around the country. Once a company starts building such a network or gaining control over one, it begins slouching toward monopoly. If the government is not already deeply involved in the business by then (and it usually is), it soon will be.
Wu argues that it has little choice. Not only are communications businesses particularly prone to consolidation, but the political effects are far greater than they would be in other industries. The book’s title comes from a line by Fred Friendly, the longtime CBS News executive, in which he distinguished between free-speech laws and “exclusive custody of the master switch.” They are two different things, but either has the ability to shape the flow of information. The same cannot be said, Wu notes, “of orange juice, heating oil, running shoes or dozens of other industries, no matter their size.”
Today may seem an odd time to be making this argument, given the online flowering of discourse, civil and otherwise. But Wu makes a good case that the Internet is vulnerable to the cycle. The world’s computer network is ultimately a physical entity, onto which other forms of communication — film, telephone, television, radio — are starting to migrate. This is what media executives mean by “convergence.” It seems likely to help big companies get even bigger, and arguably offers the potential for even tighter control of information than existed in the past.
Wu’s candidates for the AT&T of the future are Comcast (if its takeover of NBC-Universal succeeds), Google (if it decides to abandon its tradition of openness and instead tries to eliminate rivals) and some combination of AT&T itself and Apple. But he ponders this only briefly and acknowledges that it is too early to know. His most thought-provoking argument about the future may actually be the past.
More here
‘Monsoon’
Robert D. Kaplan examines the Indian Ocean, where the interests of America, China and India are starting to intersect.
Indian Ocean The New Tea Cup
Through much of the 19th century these oceanic moats made possible what the historian C. Vann Woodward called an era of “free security.” As it grew stronger and stepped onto the world stage, the United States projected its power primarily toward Europe and East Asia. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans waged wars, hot and cold, to prevent these vital regions from falling under the dominion of hostile forces.
Whatever purpose they may once have served, yesterday’s maps have now outlived their usefulness. Since the end of the cold war, and with increased speed and intensity since 9/11, our focus has shifted toward the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, as well as toward the waters of the western Pacific. In “Monsoon,” Robert D. Kaplan argues that we need fresh ways of seeing the world, and especially these parts of it that, despite being split in two by the old projections, are actually integral elements in a single coherent whole.
Kaplan’s goal is to provide his countrymen with just such a map, one centered on what he calls “the Greater Indian Ocean.” This is a region that stretches “eastward from the Horn of Africa past the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontinent, all the way to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond.” Thanks to monsoon winds that shift direction at regular six-month intervals the waters connecting these far-flung shores have long been readily navigable, even by relatively primitive sailing vessels. Linked first by Muslim merchants, the Greater Indian Ocean was later dominated by Portugal, then by the British and most recently by the United States.
Perhaps. What seems more plausible at this point is that the competitive impulses Kaplan so accurately assesses will grow stronger. If that is what happens, then the United States and India are very likely to find themselves working harder and more closely in the years ahead to balance China’s growing power.
India in Afghanstan
Nation Building or Proxy war by Matthieu Aikins
Read this story for a perspective on India’s options and perspectives of the West. Biased but interesting – wish RAW could do what he says!
‘A World Without Islam’: Graham Fuller
by Zachary Karabell, latimes.com:
Fuller never makes a convincing case that contemporary conflicts could have
been just as acute had Islam never existed, and at times the precise point of his digressions is lost. The analysis of Islam in India and tensions between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs is informative about the degree to which culture and context shaped conflict, but it isn’t clear how that adds to his overall argument that Islam is incidental. The other main contribution is to illustrate the degree to which the legacy of Western control and empire shape contemporary attitudes toward religion and terrorism in the Muslim world.
Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward
The book says U.S. President Barack Obama‘s top advisers have had stronger disagreements on the Afghan war strategy than previously acknowledged. Some high-ranking officials are said to have questioned whether the plan will succeed.
Bob Woodward, an associate editor at the Washington Post, interviewed President Obama and his advisers about the process of deciding on a policy for the Afghan war.
Kaplan’s take on the book
Even more than his four-volume Bush at War series, Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, out this week, has so much inside detail, so many accounts of behind-closed-doors conversations (laced with quotation marks, as if they were verbatim), that one sometimes wonders if Woodward wired a source before he went into a Cabinet Room meeting and retrieved the tape afterward. But this time out, beneath the usual he-said-then-he-said (then-he-said), lurks a saga of tragedy: about the snares and illusions of the war in Afghanistan, the corruption of war generally, and the jangle of motives—the convergence and clash of bureaucratic interest, personal ambition, and earnest strategic analysis—that led Barack Obama to escalate an armed struggle that he didn’t begin and that he knew was fraught with great risk all along. Read his review here
The excerpts say Mr. Obama was calling for an exit strategy in Afghanistan, with no long-term nation-building. They say military leaders only offered plans for deploying larger numbers of U.S. troops.
The U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, was quoted as saying the strategy would not work.
The excerpted accounts also detail deep personal differences between some administration officials.
“I think that the book portrays a thoughtful, vigorous policy process that led us to a strategy to get the best chance of achieving our objectives and goals in Afghanistan,” said Robert Gibbs. ”I cannot imagine that any option that the president looked at would not have engendered some debate,” he said. “That is the nature of this process. The process was, over the course of 12 or 13 meetings, a pretty public one.”
According to the Washington Post, the book also reports that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has a 3,000-member paramilitary army consisting mostly of Afghans. U.S. officials Wednesday confirmed the existence of that force.
The Associated Press quotes a spokesman for Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai as denying an allegation in another excerpt that the Afghan leader has been diagnosed with manic depression.
More here.
The Power
A sequel to The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. A profound study of the intutive mind.
The law of attraction states that whatever you experience in life is a direct result of your thoughts. It really is that simple. If you think about being fat, you will get fatter. If you think about thin people, you will become thin yourself. If you think about your bills, you will get more bills, but if you think about checks instead, your mailbox will overflow with them. According to “The Secret” and “The Power,” your thoughts and feelings have magnetic properties and “frequencies.” They “vibrate” and resonate with the “universe,” somehow attracting events that share those frequencies back to their thinker.
More here
Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind
Review by By Dr. Amy Zalman
The inside cover promise to “unveil the workings of a ‘storytelling machine’ more effective and insidious as a means of oppression than anything dreamed up by Orwell,” was incentive enough for me to pick up and start reading the recent English translation of French writer Christian Salmon’s Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind. Even more compelling for this reader: the ‘storytelling machine’ in question is one that I have been working in for the last five years, as a proponent of the use of narrative as a tool of influence in U.S. strategic communication.
More here.
Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization
and , Brookings Institution Press 2010 c. 223pp.
Against this backdrop of new affluence and newfound access to foreign military technology, Cohen and Dasgupta investigate India’s military modernization to find haphazard military change that lacks political direction, suffers from balkanization of military organization and doctrine, remains limited by narrow prospective planning, and is driven by the pursuit of technology free from military-strategic objectives. The character of military change in India, especially the dysfunction in the political-military establishment with regard to procurement, is ultimately the result of a historical doctrine of strategic restraint in place since Nehru. In that context, its approach of arming without strategic purpose remains viable as India seeks great-power accommodation of its rise and does not want to look threatening. The danger lies in its modernization efforts precipitating a period of strategic assertion or contributing to misperception of India’s intentions by Pakistan and China, its two most immediate rivals.
Advance Praise for Arming without Aiming:
“Much has been made of the emergence of India on the global stage. In Arming without Aiming, Cohen and Dasgupta provide an expert assessment of what India’s rise means for its unevenly modernizing military, which is destined to become the third largest in the world. Anyone with an interest in the growing rivalry between India and China, or in the impact that a stronger, although still extraordinarily outdated, Indian military will mean for U.S.-India ties, should read this. This is an important book on an important subject, which is likely to remain unparalleled for many years.”
—Edward Luce, Washington bureau chief, Financial Times
“India’s rise to power will remain incomplete until it acquires, and develops, the capacity to effectively utilize the full panoply of military power. Although India has made impressive strides in this direction in recent years, Stephen Cohen’s and Sunil Dasgupta’s Arming without Aiming demonstrates how much still needs to be done. This cautionary tale will be required reading for all those concerned about Indian defense policy and military modernization.”
—Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
“The book is an empathetic, objective, and comprehensive narration and analysis of the evolution of Indian defense policy and management. The Indian strategic establishment is groping to find ways and means of safeguarding its progress toward becoming a twenty-first-century knowledge power in an international community still dominated by strategic thought from the World War II era. Steve Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta have brought into bold relief this somewhat inchoate and as yet not fully formulated effort. This will be a required reading for all senior service officers, civil servants, politicians, and academics engaged in Indian security.”
—K. Subrahmanyam, Indian defense expert
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Stephen P. Cohen
Sunil Dasgupta
Pakistan’s Future: The Bellagio Papers
Pakistan, India , South Asia, Development, Politics
The following papers are one component of a project conducted at the Brookings Institution in 2010. They were written by the participants in a conference in Bellagio, Italy in May 2010 that examined the future of Pakistan.This project was conceived shortly after the publication of the Idea of Pakistan, in which Chapter 8 looked at ‘alternative’ futures, speculating on the directions in which Pakistan might evolve. These included the continuation of the “establishment” dominated Pakistan, a state in which democratic forms—if not democracy—were maintained. This is also a state with stable if not good relations with two of its neighbors, Afghanistan and India. Overt military rule was also discussed, as was the emergence of a truly “Islamic” state, or even a full-fledged democracy. The book also examined the possibility of a Pakistan in which the provinces of the Northwest Frontier Province, Sindh, Balochistan, or even the Mohajir dominated areas of urban Sind and Karachi broke away. Finally, the possibly that Punjab itself might split was briefly noted, as was the possibility of a new war with India. At the time, Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan was not seen as a major problem, nor did that study examine the role of the press and other changes in culture and society.
By 2006 it was clear that Pakistan was, if not ‘failing,’ at least not fulfilling the hopes that many people had for the regime of General/President Pervez Musharraf. There was always room for skepticism regarding Musharraf’s claims to be Pakistan’s saviour, and the warning indicators that were described in 2004 were all blinking bright red by 2006.
In returning to the question of what makes Pakistan work and what might be its future, a three-fold strategy was pursued. This collection of papers written by a group of Pakistan specialists comprises one prong of that strategy. The other two are a survey of recent predictions of Pakistan’s future (attached below as an Appendix) and an extended essay, Pakistan 2011-16, which will be published on the Brookings website later this year.
The experts who wrote these papers, European, American, Pakistani, and one Indian, were asked to specify the underlying variables or factors that would shape Pakistan’s future, and then set forth the most likely of these futures. They were also urged to be very brief. I chose this approach rather than sectoral analyses (the economy, the military, foreign influence) because I wanted to get the group to focus on the range and variety of likely futures. There are instructive differences in how they treated the same events or factors. Some contributors were however to also focus on a particular issue, problem, or factor. Thus the papers are not exactly comparable.
The papers were edited and reformatted, but otherwise are reproduced as they were presented at Bellagio. The authors were subsequently given a chance to revise, but together they represent a snapshot as of May-June 2010 of what these experts thought were the key variables that would shape Pakistan in the long-term, and what kind of alternative futures it might see.
Two events occurred after the conference, one was the extension of the Chief of the Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani for an additional three years’ tenure, the second was the calamitous floods that struck Pakistan in July-August 2010, submerging about a quarter of the country under water at one time or another. The floods could be seen as a classic Black Swan event, with possible negative consequences for the people and state of Pakistan, but my view is that it is too early to judge one way or another: they could accelerate the negative trends that all of the paper writers comment on, but they could be the stimulus for fundamental rethinking on the part of Pakistan’s leadership—especially the army—its friends, notably the United States, and its most important neighbor, India. These are trying times for Pakistan, but they are also a moment for reconfiguration and regeneration, we will see over the next year whether the floods usher in the destruction of Pakistan as we have known it, or whether something much better (or much worse) will emerge.
The group met for four days in the Rockefeller Foundation Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy from May 17-22. Some of the papers were discussed in detail, but generally we focused on the factors themselves, and plausible alternative futures. In the words of one conference participant, there may have been very few instances when such a grim subject was discussed in such a beautiful setting, for just about all the papers reflect varying degrees of concern (the word ‘pessimism’ comes to mind and I discuss hope-pessimism in my own paper). The papers show great concern about Pakistan’s chances of emerging from its prolonged crisis and becoming a normal state, defined as anything resembling the moderate, progressive state envisaged by the man most responsible for its creation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. However, very few saw the situation as beyond redemption, and my summary paper reflects the general belief (although there were exceptions) that if Pakistan got several things right, it would avoid slipping into extremism, chaos, or a nasty spell of authoritarianism or worse. That is a huge “if.”
The group did not take a poll or try to form a consensus, the views of individual participants are expressed best in their own papers. There was, however, a learning process: the group was selected because they came from diverse backgrounds, and looked at Pakistan through different lenses. This was not just because of their national original (there were seven Pakistanis, five Americans, two Europeans, and one Indian),but there were three former ambassadors (Fatemi, Milam, Synnott), four students (Haider, Shah, White, Yusuf), three scholars with deep experience with Pakistani society and politics (Rizvi, Weinbaum, Weiss), three “think tank” scholars (Cohen, Fair, Guruswamy), and one retired Pakistani officer (Brig. Shaukat Qadir, who could not obtain a visa in time to participate at Bellagio; his revised paper is included in the collection).
The papers together represent a comprehensive attempt to look at Pakistan’s future. Several paper writers were encouraged to range beyond a discussion of factors and a prediction of the future to discuss specific issues in depth. Laila Bokhari looked closely at radical groups and militants in Pakistan, especially the Punjab, while Josh White focused more on developments in the Frontier. Fatemi, Milam and Synnott, the three former diplomats, each looked at Pakistan’s strategic environment, but mostly focused on the influence of India and the United States. Mohan Guruswamy did not explore Pakistan in general, but did provide a fine-grained study of China’s role. Shaukat Qadir and Hasan Askari Rizvi were asked to pay special attention to the state’s dominant bureaucracy, the army, and Anita Weiss, one of the very few sociologists to work in Pakistan over the last few decades, shared her insights about social and gender issues in a rapidly changing state. Marvin Weinbaum and Chris Fair represent two generations of Americans with deep knowledge of Pakistan, and they focused on political and party developments and state coherence.
It is inappropriate to speak for the group, but there was consensus on the centrality of the army, on India’s role in shaping Pakistan’s identity and policy, and on the rapid deterioration of law and order in Pakistan. For the most part, participants were skeptical of the capability of outside powers, notably the United States, to transform Pakistan without a major effort by the state’s elite. Behind the issue of reforming the police, the parties, the governmental structure, and the economy, there lurks the near irreversible demographic trends that will shape Pakistani society in many ways over the long run. Together, the papers present a grim but realistic picture of a state whose importance has grown vastly over the last decade. As I have written earlier, Pakistan has not failed comprehensively, as have some African states and Afghanistan (although the latter is more properly described as having been murdered, rather than failed), but it has failed along almost every dimension. It is too important to let fail, but there are grave questions as to whether its elite has the will to make the structural and ideological changes that would allow it to become a state at peace with its neighbors and with itself. The answer to the larger question, “is it too late,” has to be nuanced; it may be too late in some sectors, but not in others. These papers, plus my own overview, provide a more detailed answer to this question.
Read the Bellagio Conference Papers »
The Brookings Institution
Taliban: The True Story of the World’s Most Feared Fighting Force by James Fergusson
One of the few subjects which unite left and right in the west is dislike of the Taliban. The former abhors their abuse of women and contempt for human rights; the latter their hatred for America and Israel. So the notion that the governments now waging war against them should instead negotiate with them has, at least until recently, met with little favour in any western political quarter. James Fergusson, a British journalist who has been covering Afghanistan for 14 years, believes that dealing with the Taliban is in the interests of both foreigners and Afghans. His argument, woven through a book which describes the rise, fall and rise of a bunch of Pashtun guerrillas who have pinned down the armed forces of the world’s great powers in an unwinnable war, comes in two parts: that the Taliban are not as bad as westerners think, and that they are too important to be ignored.
On the first part, he points out that at first the Taliban improved life for Afghans. They (the word is a plural, denoting seekers after knowledge) emerged from the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal, when competing groups of mujahideen blew Kabul to pieces, warlords sliced the countryside up into fiefdoms and bandits set up roadblocks to extort money from travellers. With their swift enforcement of tribal law and their brutal sharia punishments, the Taliban were, initially, welcomed by their fellow Pashtuns.
But the chaos of civil war was swiftly replaced by a horrible new order. The Taliban stopped girls from going to school and women from leaving their houses without their husbands, executed criminals in front of crowds, sawed off the hands of thieves, forbade people from using computers, listening to music or watching TV, and destroyed the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan.
All these things were widely reported in the west, and, in Fergusson’s view, exaggerated. On educating girls, for instance, he argues that the Taliban say they are not against it, so long as girls are not taught alongside boys. Unfortunately, when they were in power they did not have enough money to set up girls’ schools, so the girls had to be excluded. Still, the girls could always be taught at home. The Taliban, generously, did not object to that.
Fergusson recognises that westerners are likely to find the Taliban’s morality repugnant. Yet he argues that it is not very different from traditional Pashtun attitudes. To some extent, that is true: Pashtuns have long kept their women locked up in fortresses. But even Pashtuns found the Taliban too harsh. When western forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, crowds cheered not just in Kabul, which has always been relatively liberal, but also in the Pashtun-dominated Kandahar.
Most readers will find Fergusson too forgiving towards the Taliban, but his contention that the west needs to deal with them stands because of the second part of his argument. Since their defeat, they have regrouped. They have been helped by the Pakistanis, who have covertly protected them; by westerners, whose use of air power has alienated Afghans; by the Afghan government, whose corruption has disgusted its people. The numbers of attacks on Nato forces, and the body count of both civilians and soldiers, continues to rise. They are the strongest force among the Pashtuns, and the Pashtuns are Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group. The northern, Persian-speaking ethnic groups who dominate Kabul, the government and business cannot govern the Pashtun areas.
America continues to fight the Taliban. But President Obama has said it will start pulling its troops out next year, and Afghanistan is supposed to be able to stand on its own feet by 2014. Among those who think about the country’s future, there is a growing consensus that sometime before then America will start talking to the Taliban.
This book is probably on the right side of history. Sadly, it is also rather dull. Occasionally – as when Fergusson is talking to newly recruited policemen who tell him how much they hate America – it comes to life. However, it relies too much on colourless interviews with Taliban bigwigs who are keen to persuade foreigners that they disapproved of past excesses. The reader gains little sense of this beautiful, troubled country, which has given invaders – and received from them – so much grief.
Emma Duncan is the deputy editor of the Economist.
At the Center of the Storm, but Still a Mystery – Tony Blair
A review of Blair’s latest Book on NY Times – A good read.
Fiasco – Thomas Rick
In Fiasco, Washington Post military correspondent Thomas Ricks chronicles the path to war in Iraq and the mistakes made by both the military and the politicians that have resulted in the war becoming something much different than originally planned. It began with those already pushing for war before the events of 9/11 convinced the Bush administration to agree with them. That was followed by a self-delusion within the administration about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and a plan for war that conquered and destroyed Iraq’s central government leading to an unstable center of power that ultimately aided the insurgency. Ricks finds plenty of blame to go around, including the Bush administration, the Democrats and national press which were afraid to ask the tough questions, to military leaders who didn’t expect much resistance from the insurgency. Fiasco has received positive reviews with the Portland Oregonian saying, “Ricks has written an honest book that could help America move beyond the reflexive, red or blue coloring of the war and toward a more dispassionate discussion of the kind of Iraq we hope will emerge from today’s near-anarchic state.”
Read more reviews at http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/fiasco/
War – Sebastian Junger
War is Sebastian Junger’s experience during five trips he made to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008 while embedded with an Army platoon. The Americans were hated by the locals and suffered heavy casualties. The men of the platoon had a thankless job that saw them engaged in battle with insurgents more than any other platoon in the country. The men were young and crowded into cramped quarters, and each man was the other’s man’s lifeline. Despite their bravery and casualties, the Army eventually abandoned the valley. War has received positive reviews with the Washington Post saying, “But what elevates War out of its particular time and place are the author’s meditations on the minds and emotions of the soldiers with whom he has shared hardships, dangers and spells of boredom so intense that everyone sits around wishing to hell something would happen (and wishes to God it was over when, inevitably, it does).”
More reviews of the book at http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/war/
Related articles
- Robert Kaplan Pegs Indian Ocean Rim As Global Hub – Newsweek (yzerfonteinchronicles.blogspot.com)
- A New Cold War in Asia? (nybooks.com)
- The New Great Game (nytimes.com)
- The Final Conflict (nytimes.com)
- Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future by Ian Morris: review (telegraph.co.uk)
- Why the West Rules For Now: the Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future (newstatesman.com)
- Global history: Ian Morris and the Great Divergence (rs.resalliance.org)
