Important if unsettling.
How the world’s largest army got its act together.
Wuthnow and Saunders, of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, emphasize that just as the 2008 Olympics marked China’s emergence as a global heavyweight, the recent military demonstrations against Taiwan symbolize a new era for the People’s Liberation Army. It’s stronger, more modern, and more confident today, yet there remain intrinsic flaws that neither technology nor money will solve. American soldiers swear allegiance to the Constitution, the PLA to the Communist Party. Almost all officers and many lower ranks are Party members, and political indoctrination takes up a major part of their time even after basic training. Mao Zedong’s word was law until his death in 1976, when, following the disastrous Cultural Revolution, his successors aimed to clean up the mess he left. Few deny their success, which included reforming the PLA, although that remains a work in progress. The authors remind readers that authoritarian states must pay especially close attention to their military, whose professionals, like soldiers everywhere, look down on civilians. They add that, during its early decades, the military budget was not a top priority, and the PLA continued its tradition of raising money by commercial activity, which institutionalized a great deal of corruption. They recount 50 years of efforts to modernize as well as shrink the army and rein in the three negative consequences of party-army relations—autonomy, corruption, and ideological divergence. They conclude that it has been largely successful, although the PLA remains a quasi-independent self-policing organization. Along the way, readers will learn more Chinese acronyms, Chinese bureaucratic maneuvering, technical details, and scholarly military minutiae than they want to know, but they will also receive genuine insights into the transformation of this former shambling empire into a global superpower and rival.
Important if unsettling.Pub Date: March 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781509556939
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Polity
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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