Casey capably delves into a key U.S. policy of the Cold War and the reasons for its successes and failures.
A Cold War–era study of how military aid to “friendly tyrants” often created as many problems as it solved.
Realpolitik was the idea that informed much of the thinking of U.S. policy during the Cold War, especially when it came to supplying military aid to autocratic regimes. In this book, government analyst Casey explores the question of whether such support was successful and how American strategy differed from that of its main competitor, the Soviet Union. The author worked on much of this book while he was a research fellow at the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan, so he was able to draw together a large body of evidence, which he puts to good use in this carefully researched history. Casey readily accepts that many U.S. clients were, to say the least, unsavory. Still, if they were fighting communist insurgencies, or claimed to be, they received military and financial support. One of the primary policy goals was to separate the military from the political leaders, based on the American model. But as the author shows, this strategy often backfired, and the most common reason for the fall of an autocratic leader was a military coup, which then led to more autocracy. The Soviet aim, in contrast, was to integrate the army with the government party, which circumvented the problem of coups but led to mismanagement, stagnation, and corruption. Many autocracies would eventually move toward democracy, although Casey argues that this was only possible once the threat of communism faded away. He explains all this material with authority, though the book is written mainly for specialists in Cold War history and politics.
Casey capably delves into a key U.S. policy of the Cold War and the reasons for its successes and failures.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781541604018
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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