A provocative treatise for foreign-policy wonks, calling for both engagement and peaceful competition.
A study of the unexpected reemergence of superpower conflict after the supposed reign of peace following the end of the old Cold War.
As New York Times White House and national security correspondent Sanger notes, it’s miraculous that the protagonists of the old Cold War, extending four decades, managed to keep the war cold instead of hot. We may not be so lucky with the new Cold War: Putin’s frustrated project in Ukraine may lead to his reaching for the nuclear button. Against the rise of Russia and China, the U.S. has not developed a coordinated response. While the Biden administration’s policy of engagement with China is largely positive, it is poorly articulated: “Biden’s own cabinet members do not share a common understanding of what ‘engagement’ with China means.” The West views Russia either as a failing giant that no longer plays much of a role on the world stage or as an emergent threat with designs on invading not just Ukraine, but also retaking and remaking the old Soviet Empire. (The latter view, Sanger notes, is a little off: Putin wants to be Peter the Great, not Stalin.) In whatever instance, the U.S. has lost some of its suzerainty in the world; even Henry Kissinger, toward the end of his life, conceded that the time when it set the rules for the world order was over. That does not mean the U.S. should not stand up to Russia and China, especially now that the latter’s rapid rise seems to have slowed down in a kind of malaise. Regardless, Sanger warns that America’s leadership has been damaged in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the Trump administration’s policy of disengagement, which threatens to resume with the next election.
A provocative treatise for foreign-policy wonks, calling for both engagement and peaceful competition.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593443590
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A powerful guide to national reconciliation.
In this nonfiction book, an activist and scholar shares strategies for peace and reconciliation based on her experiences in West Africa.
More than a decade ago, Hoffman listened to her internal “soul-whispers” calling her to help facilitate peace in civil war–torn Sierra Leone. Drawing from her successful collaboration with local activists, she not only provides a contemporary history of a successful West African peace movement, but also offers a tested strategy for national reconciliation. “The answers are there,” as the book’s title suggests, if only people heed the “larger whispering echoing through our world—a part of our collective, unconscious, awakening, wanting us to listen and receive.” Indeed, listening lies at the center of the volume’s strategy. Fifteen years ago, Hoffman co-founded the nongovernmental organization Fambul Tok with John Caulker, a human rights activist from Sierra Leone. Meaning Family Talk in Krio, Fambul Tok centered on the voices and perspectives of those directly impacted by the nation’s civil war. The organization facilitated more than 200 “tradition-based community bonfire ceremonies of truth-telling, apology, and forgiveness,” involving more than 2,500 villages, 4,500 speakers, and over 150,000 witnesses. Though these events required Sierra Leone to confront “difficult truths,” they became the “taproot…of community healing” and are featured not only in this book, but also in Hoffman’s award-winning 2011 documentary, Fambul Tok. To the author, a former political science professor, they also reveal an alternative solution to Western involvement in Africa, which has traditionally manifested as a top-down, money-centered approach that failed to tap into the “real reasons for peace—healthy and whole communities.” While the volume could have used visual aids like maps and photographs, its account carefully balances an astute scholarly analysis of African geopolitics and Western aid with an intimate portrayal of Sierra Leone’s citizenry. With forewords by the country’s current minister of state in the Office of Vice President and the British director of the Institute for State Effectiveness as well as an afterword by Caulker, this volume has much to teach about the ways in which Western organizations and activists can effect positive global change through humility, listening, and empowering local communities.
A powerful guide to national reconciliation.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9862030-1-0
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Blue Chair Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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