Public Intelligence Blog

October 30, 2005

Ryan Mauro

NOTE: This review superceeds the written review in my third book, INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time.

I lost patience with this book after an hour of careful scrutiny of the notes and the assesertions within each chapter. However, while a mature analyst would normally receive only three stars for this work, because the author is only 19 and has done hundreds of hours of work, very good work despite the source issues, I rate this as 5 stars and a special read.

I happen to know and admire Yossef Bodansky, whose book provides the intellectual underpining for much of the book. Bodansky is the only speaker in history to be invited to address my annual conference three times, largely because of his path-finding work on Bin Laden’s declaring war on America, something the CIA and FBI refused to take seriously and still do not. Where Bodansky fails, as does this diligent and intelligent young author, is in falling prey to the false sources that claim Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Iran, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan are much closer to Al Qaeda, and of course their parent, Saudi Arabia.

The author is a talented young man. We have exchanged emails. I respect his intellect and his diligence, but I fear that his judgement remains somewhat immature. Virtually everyone he cites in his acknowledgements or his notes can be linked to Israeli defense committees, neo-conservative think tanks, or Jewish pro-Israel advocacy groups. This book is, in effect if not in intent (I see the author as being unwitting of the pernicious effects of his limited circle of contacts), a propaganda tract. I would go so far as to say that a substantial number of sources that he relies on are part of a nuanced and sophisticated Israeli covert action propaganda operation, in deliberate and careful connivance with the worst of the neoconservatives (the top ones having been on Israeli’s payroll years ago and perhaps still today).

It fails on three levels: first, it attempts to document deep and sustained relations between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The author’s sources are generally well-known neo-cons and Jewish sources that have been discredited by, among others, CIA analyst Michael Scheur, of “Anonymous” fame, and CIA case officer Robert Bauer, who has actually been heavily engaged face to face with people this young man only knows indirectly.

Second, it supports Chalabi, the Iranian agent of influence, and claims that Jordan is trying to discredit Chalabi. The book avoids telling us that Chalabi worked under CIA funding and was fired for being a liar and a thief of funds intended for the Iraqui democratic movement; and it fails to tell us that Chalabi was convicted in absentia by Jordon of stealing millions of dollars in a bank fraud scheme.

Third, the author parrots the neo-con line on Iraq continuing to have active weapons of mass destruction capabilities, something every other adult on the planet has realized was not true–we were lied to by the White House and the neo-cons, and Dick Cheney may yet be forced to resign for his lies and his mis-direction of U.S. national security policy and behavior. We did a formal study for the U.S. Government on where the Iraqi program wents, and our conclusions were quite straight-forward: they destroyed the stocks, kept the cook-books, and exported the bulk of their experts to Amman, Jordan and to Birmingham, England. Some stocks may well have gone to Russia, Algeria, and Syria, but on balance, the relative of Hussein who defected and then was killed by Hussein when he re-defected home, had it right: the knowledge but not the capability remained. Iraq was not a threat to the US or to Israel.

The book reads well. Neo-cons and Jews who equate Israel’s survival with America’s survival will love it. This is not, however, a book that can be relied upon. It lacks a table of contents and an index, and its sources are largely Internet blogs and Op-Ed material from neo-conservative and pro-Israeli sources.

There are numerous turns of phrase that betray the author’s naivete, including his suggestion that Bin Laden was a “super-star” as early as 1990, which is not the case. Major funding for Bin Laden’s fundamentalist activities did not start until 1988. The author fails to give Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld proper credit for transfering to Saddam Hussein all the bio-chemical capabilities he desired in his war with Iran and his genocide against the Kurds during earlier Administrations.

What we have here is a good-hearted young savant who is being show-cased by neo-cons and their Jewish-Zionist allies. When he matures, and has access to better and more balanced sources in many more languages, he will surely be a superb analyst. Right now he is simply a pawn in the great game, an attractive, personable, intelligent, diligent individual who is being used to further agendas that are not in the best interests of America. We like and admire him. We have cautioned him about the company he is keeping. We wish him well and are *certain* of his future success.

October 25, 2005

Peter Stearns

The title is misleading–Global Outrage is a bit strong–the book is actually a very long narrative about the emergence of “world opinion,” a phrase that appears innumberable times on every page. it is therefore a difficult read with no illustrations, charts, or tables. Somewhat tedious.

Removing one star, then, the book is never-the-less quite interesting in its topic, which the author says has not been systematically reviewed in the past, and its findings. The author reviews the early days of anti-slavery, women’s rights, labor rights, child labor, and the environment, concluding with the new campaigns against McDonald’s wrappers, sweatshops, and Central American death squads.

Among the gems that made the purchase and the effort worthwhile:

1) World opinion, when it does mobilize, is generally right.

2) World opinion is insufficient to deter a great power such as the USA from its chosen course, but it can impose great and lasting costs on that power as time goes on.

3) World opinion is equally helpless against local customs and conditions, including the economic need for child labor and the deep cultural attachment to female mutilation in some regions.

4) World opinion is a force that rises and ebbs, whose tools and techniques change across issues and times, but it is a constant force in that it exists and it can have an impact.

5) World opinion has been reduced in force by the demise of the U.S. Information Agency and the once powerful labor unions whose AFL-CIO did so much to nurture labor rights around the globe. I had two thoughts as I contemplated this observation: first, that the US and the multinationals were short-sighted in ending the one and crushing the other–it is only now that we appreciate the intangible power for good they both represented; and second, as we grapple with the needs of Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication, it is clear we need to reinvent both.

6) The book excels at pointing out across several examples that world opinion is powered by information sharing. The most important information sharing is from the bottom up–from those who are persecuted to the outside world, and then back again in the form of petitions, letters, emails, etc. Information sharing is also important across national and cultural boundaries, helping raises expectations and standards as well as the costs of non-compliance with expectations.

7) Finally, “world opinion” is put forth by the author as the means by which humanity agrees on common standards and expectations that co-exist with regional and cultural differences, and provide a shared vision for humanity.

I found the author’s concluding suggestions quite relevant to the global Information Operations campaign that the USA is about to embark upon: he suggested that we need to research as deeply and broadly as possible where popular opinion rests on a wide variety of issues, and use that as a benchmark for evaluating the acceptability and sustainability of governmental politices as well as corporate practices; and we should, at least once a decade, examine the organizations, tools, and techniques of “world opinion” to see who they are changing, and if they are changing in the composition of constituencies or the focus of effort.

Concluding, the author is slightly optemistic about “world opinion” being a countervailing force against both militant Americans and radical Islamists, but he notes that “world opinion” is by no means a steady or assured power, only one that will have some form of influence, always varied.

This is an academic work, with a good index, notes, and recommended readings for each chapter. It can be tough going, but all things considered, a useful reading on that intangible power called “world opinion.”

September 26, 2005

Meic Pearse

It takes a great deal of education, experience, and faith to write a book such as this. Originally a series of lectures, the author has developed some useful, and calmly articulated, thoughts on both why there is a disconnect between the “West” and “the Rest,” and why the West is on a downward spiral to oblivion in practical terms, with the triple whammy of declining birth rates (non-replenishment), increased longevity (generally among those who are not necessarily productive in their older years), and substantial apathy among the self-absorbed, self-righteous, and largely clueless teen-agers and 20-30 “me me me” generation.

There are many books that I have reviewed here for Amazon that support this author’s personal reflections, and his citations of those books that did stimulate him are more than adequate. A few themes made by the author strike me as worthy of emphasis, for they provide a road-map for any Western society that wishes to survive into the 22nd century:

1) Morality matters. It is a historical force. Will and Ariel Durant emphasized this in their “Lessons of History,” and many strategic confrontations have borne out the point. Tribes and nations that become amoral ultimately decline and fall.

2) Western myopia cannot be understated. The ignorance of the West regarding global realities and the relationship between Western behavior (inclusive of US support for 44 dictators, immoral and predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and the general view of others that the West is “barbaric” in sexual and other matters of fidelity and integrity) and how others view is simply unrealistic.

3) The West fails to understand that the rest of the world, where faith and integrity and loyalty to the family and tribe are often all that keeps the entire society from disintegrating in the face of more primitive environments that we ourselves experience, wants to be modern but not Western–modern with cultural cohesion, not modern with the commoditization of the individual, which both the author of Lionel Tiger (“The Manufacture of Evil”) credit with destroying family, community, tribe, and nation.

4) The author excels at discussion how Western individuals today have lost the context of history, the reverence for tradition, the utility of specified morality. Westerners are “out of touch” with the lessons of history, out of touch with the implications of our selfish decisions in the present that have implications for the future generations.

5) The author discusses competing concepts of legitimacy, and here he goes into nuances all too often lacking in “objective” Western analysis of competing social models. He sees the value of personal versus impersonal authority in the context of societies where bureaucracy is not yet developed and kinship remains the foundation for trust.

6) The author, educated at Oxford, would agree with Philip Alcott, brilliant Cambridge scholar and author of “Health of Nations,” in dismissing most nations as false constructs inconsistent with their tribal and religious networks and beliefs. This is as true of the “Nine Nations of North America” (Joel Garreau) as it is of most of Africa, where colonialism heritage is that of inevitable genocide.

The author concludes, as one would expect of a Christian moralist, that “Nothing less than a massive cultural reversal is necessary. We need to rejoin the rest of the human race.” He focuses on the renewed relevance of religious and moral vision, and here he would find common cause with David Johnson, distinguished author of books on “Faith-Based Diplomacy” and the vital role of religion in fostering reasoned dialog between West and East.

Apart from restoring the role of morality within our over-all culture, the author concludes that we must become informed–like it or not, our lives are bound up with those of everyone else all over the world. Here he is in tight agreement with both President David Boren (former Senator) of the University of Oklahoma, and David Gergen, advisor to multiple Presidents of the United States (most of whom did not listen too well). We must internationalize and modernize our educational system, restore the importance of history and international studies, and give life to the finding of E. O. Wilson from “Consilience,” to wit, that the sciences demand the humanities if they are to be in the service of humanity.

This is a most thoughtful book, reverent in its arguments, one that reminds us all of the value that can be had from listening to or reading the careful reflections of a man of the cloth, born in Wales, educated in England, and now speaking to all of us.

July 12, 2005

Robert Pape

The University of Chicago is an extraordinary institution–the author, employed there, lives up to their reputation for methodical, scholarly, useful reflections grounded firmly in the facts. This work significantly advances our understanding of terrorism and of the three forms of suicidal terrorism: egotistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. The author documents his findings that most suicidal terrorists are altruistic, well-educated, nationalistically-motivated, and fully witting and dedicated to their fatal mission as a service to their community.

Of the 563 books I have reviewed–all in national security and global issues, and all but four among the best books in the field–this new work by Professor Pape stands out as startlingly original, thoughtful, useful, and directly relevant to the clear and present danger facing America: an epidemic of suicidal terrorism spawned by the “virtual colonialism” of the US in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and now Iraq as well as other countries.

I will not repeat the excellent listing of facts in the Book Description provided by the publisher–certainly that description should be read carefully. If you are a Jewish zealot, don’t bother, you will not get over the cognitive dissonance. Everyone else, including Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic contributors to Congressional and Presidential campaign funds, absolutely must read this book.

There are many other books that support the author’s key premises, all well-documented with case studies and the most complete and compelling statistics–known facts. I am persuaded by the author’s big three:

1) Suicidal terrorism correlates best with U.S. military occupation of specific countries that tend to be undemocratic and corrupt, where the U.S. in collusion with dictators and one-party elites are frustrating legitimate national aspirations of the larger underclass and middle class;

2) Virtually all of the suicidal terrorists comes from allies of the U.S. (at least nominally–they actually play the U.S. as “useful idiots”) such as Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran;

3) The three premises shared by Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and now the Iraqi insurgency, are all accurate and will continue to be so if the U.S. does not pull its military out of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other locations:

a) Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and virtual colonialism everywhere else, demand martyrdom operations;

b) Conventional inferiority mandates self-sacrifice (not only suicidal terrorism, but other asymmetric attacks including the death of a thousand cuts against key energy, water, and transportation nodes in the USA; and

c) The US and its European allies are vulnerable to coercive pressure. The withdrawal of the Americans and the French from Viet-Nam and then Lebanon, of the Israelis from the West Bank, and other concessions itemized by the author, have all made the case for suicidal terrorism. It works and it will explode.

I will mention several other books to support this author, but wish to stress that alone, his work is spectacularly successful in documenting the fallacies of the U.S. national security policy.

Among the books that support him are
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods
Understanding Terror Networks
The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

This is a core reading for every officer at STRATCOM and SOCOM, and for anyone who wishes to be effective at either Public Diplomacy or Strategic Communication or Information Operations. This author should be an invited distinguished funded speaker at every single war college in the Western democracies. We cannot win without listening to him. Military withdrawals, combined with energy independence, are essential. Without them, we not only will not fully defeat the current crop of suicidal terrorists, but we will, in attempting to deal with the current threat with old counter-productive and heavy-handed means, give birth to hundreds of thousands in the next generation of suicidal terrorists.

There are not enough guns in the world to win this one, even if we had competent intelligence at the neighborhood level, which we do not. In keeping with the author’s recommendations, it is clear that moral capitalism, informed democracy, equanimity toward bottom up movements for national liberation and an end to corruption, an honest policy process in Washington, D.C.–these are the keys to victory.

This is a towering accomplishment and a major contribution to strategic thinking.

January 31, 2005

Jean-Francois Revel

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This author, this book, are extraordinary. His is the kind of intellect that Harry Truman had in mind when CIA was created, with its motto, from John 8:32, regarding the importance of truth. Get the facts. This author is a master of the facts, and I am somewhat ashamed, having fallen prey to “facts” from others, that I should have to learn these facts from a Frenchman.

On every page there is an eye-opener, and what I came to realize is that this author is demonstrating what public diplomacy *should* be in America–on every single page he compares and contrasts what anti-Americans are claiming against America, what the real facts are, and what the facts are for Europe, where it is oh so fashionable to be critical of America when in fact Europe has done far less for the world, and for its own people.

Four facts stand out that bear emphasis, for they represent what this author has done so well with this book:

1) Europe provides four times the subsidies for its farmers than does America for American farmers.

2) Africa has received the equivalent of a hundred Marshall Plans since World War II, only to squander them all in corruption.

3) The US Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty under Clinton, not Bush, and Clinton’s executive order leaving Bush holding the bag as a deliberate political gambit.

4) There is a one to one correlation between globalization and the improvement of the lot of the poor in the least developed countries.

Now, having “accepted” some of this author’s fact, which correct “facts” I had previously accepted, what really hit home with me is that we need to get all these facts on the table, subject to the collective intelligence of the people, and we need to do a much better job of communicating the facts to both our own domestic public, and the international audience. “Public diplomacy” in America stinks, in part because Otto Reich thinks he can do public diplomacy by assertion rather than by demonstration. Facts–open source intelligence–is what will work. The Department of State is not doing its homework, precisely because it refuses to be serious about open sources of information and the process of distilling information into overt intelligence.

The book is sometimes tedious but always rewarding. It is here that I learn that the Algerian terrorists were frustrated in 1994 in their plans to hijack an airplane and fly it into the Eiffel Tower. It is here that I see, explained in excellent context, the term “hyperterrorism.” It is here that I see discussed as some length the “myth of Muslim moderation,” and where I also see a persuasive condemnation of multi-culturalism and bi-lingual education.

I recommend this book be read in conjunction with Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History. Jean-Francois Revel helps us see the history of the past as we should: America with warts, but triumphant. Lee Harris helps us see the history of the future as we should: America at risk, unless it becomes ruthless at the same time that it faces reality.

This book has forced me to re-evaluate a great deal of what I took to be “scholarship” that I now realize needs to be subjected to much closer scrutiny. We need more facts on the public table. This book is a good starting point for all of us.

See also:
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
The Lessons of History: The Most Important Insights from the Story of Civilization

August 13, 2004

Paul L. Williams

This is the third of three books that I am reviewing today and that I strongly recommend be read by every adult in America. The first two, in order of priority, are Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror and CIA Anonymous Executive Analyst, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. I should add that terror is a tactic, not an enemy, it is impossible to win a war against a tactic.

What this book does is piece together all of the English-language reports over the past ten years or so regarding the probabilities and specifics of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s having acquired several forms or portable nuclear devices. Although some reviewers have slammed this book for being fictional, they do not know what they are talking about. The FACTS are that the Soviet general officer responsible for the 100 suitcase nuclear bombs designed for Spetznatz use, some pre-positioned in the USA, has said publicly, in writing, and on more than one occasion that 66 of those are unaccounted for.

I took one star off for excessive reliance on two secondary sources, both excellent but never-the-less cited too often, and the commensurate lack of attention to foreign language materials that could have deepened this study considerably, especially when one takes into account the CIA executive analyst’s comments in IMPERIAL HUBRIS regarding the straight truth-telling that can be found in Bin Laden’s Arabic-language postings. “Nuclear hell storm” is out there (the author does cite this), and we had better take this more seriously than our government has.

The author opens with a notional “letter to America” from Bin Laden that is based on Bin Laden’s actual statements (as itemized in IMPERIAL HUBRIS) and is alone worth the price of the book. If we don’t take a long hard look at ourselves and correct the misbehavior that is radicalizing over a billion Muslims, we will not (not!) win this war.

The author does a really fine job, not just of amassing and stringing together a coherent story of Bin Laden’s likely possession of nuclear capabilities, but also of showing the inter-relationship between the Afghanistan drug fields that the U.S. Government has stupidly allowed to flourish, the Pakistani production facilities that take the opium to a “Number 4″ level of quality, and criminal organizations as well as corrupt governments everywhere that facilitate Bin Laden’s operations. The roles of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan (especially Pakistan) in facilitating the storage, refurbishment, and technical maintenance of the purchased nuclear elements are covered in a manner that persuades me–this is a very real threat.

The book is a useful compilation of both mistakes by the US, and events taking place from 2002-2004, and it ends with full translated copies of the 23 Aug 96 Fatwa and the related 23 Feb 98 World Islamic Statement. Within the book are some extracts from Al Qaeda training manuals, one portion of which make it clear that the “sleepers” now in the US are specifically forbidden to go to mosques or appear Islamic in any way.

Bottom line, totally consistent with the other two books I recommend: the US needs to meet Bin Laden’s reasonable demands, and redirect its focus from occupying Islamic countries toward cleaning up its own homeland. [I realize that calling Bin Laden's demands "reasonable" in going to infuriate many people, but I have to say, based on all three books taken as a whole, that all three authors agree on this point, and they have persuaded me. We cannot win if we persist in supporting 44 dictators, occupying Muslim lands, demanding cheap oil at the expense of the Muslim populations, and supporting an Israel that is racist as well as terrorist in nature toward the Palestinians. It is what it is--the sooner we stop deceiving ourselves, and demand that our government get back to the ideals of moral capitalism and truly representative democracy, the sooner we have a chance to avoid this "nuclear hellstorm" that I believe this book credibly documents as a very real possibility.]

See also, with reviews:
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack
America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It

August 13, 2004

Mahmood Mamdani

This is an inspired, disciplined, nuanced, Nobel-level book, and if it ends up saving America from itself, then it would surely qualify the author for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is the first of three “must read” books that I am reviewing today, and it is first because the other two are best appreciated after absorbing this one. The other two books are “IMPERIAL HUBRIS” and “OSAMA’S REVENGE.”

The main weakness of this book is the author’s lack of strong criticism of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and of other states that are corrupt, repressive, and therefore a huge part of the problem. Having said that, here are some of the key points:

- “West” pioneered genocide, expulsions, and religious wars, with Spanish genocide of Indians in Americas, and Spanish expulsion of first the Jews and then the Muslims as critical starting points in understanding Muslim rage today
- America adopted terrorism as a preferred means of fighting proxy wars in both Central America and Africa, when Reagan began “rollback” with the same neo-conservative advisors that guide Bush II today.
- West has four dogmas as summed up by Edward Said (who is admired by the author): 1) that Orient is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior; 2) that Orient is inflexibly tied to old religions texts, unable to adapt; 3) that Orient is inflexibly uniform and unable to do nuances; and 4) Orient is either to be feared (Green or Yellow or Brown Peril) or controlled.
- Fundamentalism actually started in the US among the Christians seeking to insert religion into the state’s business and ultimately demanding faith and loyalty as the litmus tests for acceptance.
- Earlier generations of Islamic reformists disavowed violence, but ended up adopting violence after being in state prisons (e.g. Egypt).
- Earlier incarnations of a Muslim revival were in the open literature in the 1920′s and then in the 1960′s, and lastly in the 1980′s to date–our national “intelligence” agencies appear to have missed the importance of all three
- Viet-Nam, Africa, and Central America all fostered extremely unhealthy connections between CIA covert operations and the drug trade, with CIA routinely condoning and often actively enabling massive drug operations and related money laundering, as the “price” of moving forward on covert operations.
- The obsession with winning the Cold War at all costs essentially destroyed U.S. foreign policy and set U.S. up as the enemy of the Third World [see Derek Leebaert's "The Fifty-Year Wound"].
- Morality in the US has been perverted, as the extreme right, joining with extreme Zionists, has “captured” the U.S. government in both Congressional and Executive terms. Orwellian “spin” together with the labeling of all dissent, made possible by media corporations “going along”, has destroyed any possibility of informed, objective, or actually moral dialog.
- The Central American campaign pioneered the privatization of terrorism and proxy war by the US, with secrecy and deception of the US public being the principal role of the US government.
- The US Government is explicitly accountable for introducing bio-chemical weapons into the Iraqi arsenal, and thus accountable for the genocide and war crimes attendant to their use.
- US (AID) sponsored textbooks, such as those created by the University of Nebraska, routinely used terrorism against Russians as examples in the mathematic and other textbooks being distributed in Afghanistan.
- CIA’s main contribution to the destabilization of the world has been in its Afghan-related privatization of information about how to produce and spread violence, and its training of tens of thousands of jihad warriors from all over the world who have now returned home and are teaching and leading others.
- Under US leadership, Afghanistan has gone from providing 5% of the global opium production in 1980, to 71% in 1990, and even more today–much of which comes to the US.
- America not only accepts massive drug activities as part of the “cost of doing business”, but also ignores human rights in its rush to cozy up to corrupt dictators.
- From an Iraqi point of view, the 1.5 million or so children that died in Iraq due to the sanctions, must be seen as a major war crime and a form of terrorism, together with the air war with its indiscriminate murder of thousands if not tens of thousands civilians including women and children. The US has killed more civilians in Iraq than it did in Japan with two atomic bombs. Napalm and depleted uranium are disabling US troops as well as Iraqi civilians long after their use in the field.
- Economic sanctions, when they have the impact they did in Iraq, must be considered weapons of mass destruction, their application terrorism, and their results war crimes.
- The US Government’s general disdain for the rule of law, but the incumbent Administration’s particular focus on ignoring treaties and refusing accountability (e.g. for war crimes) sets a new low standard for immoral behavior by nation-states.
- The UN Secretary-General was forced by the US to ignore the Rwandan genocide because of a US desire to keep everyone focused on Sarajevo, and continues to us its veto power to prevent UN from being effective against racist Zionism, which is routinely committing crimes against humanity with its Palestinian campaign.

The author concludes, without sounding inflammatory, that America was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of the Native Americans, and the enslavement of African Americans. His point: the US is in denial over this reality, while the rest of the world is completely aware of it. He agrees with Jonathan Schell, concluding as Schell does in “Unconquerable World,” that the challenge of our times is in “how to subdue and hold accountable the awesome power that the United States built up during the Cold War.” The last sentence is quite powerful: “America cannot occupy the world. It has to learn to live in it.”

November 30, 2003

Mark Palmer

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links and new comment,

New Comment: In my view, this is the single most important work of the century with respect to American moral diplomacy. I note with concern that under Bush-Cheney “Failed States” have increased from 75 in 2005 to 177 in 2007. We’ve lost our mind, and our morals, as a Nation.

Ambassador Mark Palmer puts to rest all those generally unfair stereotypes of Foreign Service Officers as “cookie pushing” softies who fall in love with their host countries and blame America for any flaws in the bi-lateral relationship. With this book he provides an inspiring model for precisely what every Foreign Service Officer should aspire: to understand, to articulate, and then to implement very great goals that serve democracy and help extend the bounty of the American way of life–moral capitalism and shared wealth–to every corner of the world.

This is a detailed and practical book, not just visionary. It is useful and inspiring, not just a personal view. It is also a damning indictment of fifty years of US White House and Congressional politics, where in the name of anti-communism and cheap oil America–regardless of which party has been in power, has been willing to consort with the most despotic, ruthless, murderous regimes in the history of mankind. Still alive today and still very much “friends” of the U.S. Government are dictators that think nothing of murdering millions.

There has been some improvement, offset by an increase in partly free countries. From 69 countries not free at all in 1972 we now have 47. From 38 countries partly free in 1972 we now have 56, many of those remnants of the former Soviet Union. Free countries have nearly doubled from 43 to 89, but free and poor is quite a different thing from free and prosperous.

The level of detail and also of brevity in this book is quite satisfying. On the one hand, Ambassador Palmer provides ample and well-documented discussion of the state of the world, on the other he does not belabor the matter–his one to two-paragraph summative descriptions of each of the dictatorships is just enough, just right.

He distinguishes between Personalistic Dictatorships (20, now less Hussein in Iraq); Monarch Dictators (7, with Saudi Arabia being the first in class); Military Dictators (5, with US allies Sudan and Pakistan and 1 and 2 respectively); Communist Dictators (5); Dominant-Party Dictators (7); and lastly, Theocratic Dictators (1, Iran).

Ambassador Palmer makes several important points with this book, and I summarize them here: 1) conventional wisdom of the past has been flawed–we should not have sacrificed our ideals for convenience; 2) dictatorships produce inordinate amounts of collateral damage that threatens the West, from genocide and mass migrations to disease, famine, and crime; 3) there is a business case to be made for ending U.S. support for dictatorships, in that business can profit more from stable democratic regimes over the long-term; and lastly, 4) that the U.S. should sanction dictators, not their peoples, and we can begin by denying them and all their cronies visas for shopping expeditions in the US.

The book has an action agenda that is worthy, but much more important is the clear and present policy that Ambassador Palmer advocates, one that is consistent with American ideals as well as universal recognition of human rights. Ambassador Palmer’s work, on the one hand, shows how hypocritical and unethical past Administrations have been–both Democratic and Republican–and on the other, he provides a clear basis for getting us back on track.

I agree with his proposition that we should have a new Undersecretary for Democracy, with two Assistant Secretaries, one responsible for voluntary democratic transitions, the other for dealing with recalcitrant dictators. Such an expansion of the Department of State would work well with a similar change in the Pentagon, with a new Undersecretary for Peacekeeping Operations and Complex Emergencies, my own idea.

This is a very fine book, and if it helps future Foreign Service Officers to understand that diplomacy is not just about “getting along” but about making very significant changes in the world at large, then Ambassador Palmer’s work will be of lasting value to us all.

Also recommended, with reviews:
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America’s Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik

Forthcoming on Amazon in February and also free at OSS.Net/CIB:
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, edited by Mark Tovey with a Foreword by Yochai Benkler and an Afterword by the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada. I have high hopes for all of us finally getting it right (Winston Churchill: “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.”) Now is our time to get it right. We can start by electing Senator Barack Obama as our forward-thinking always listening open-minded President.

September 13, 2003

Mark Hertsgaard

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links.

This review has been edited (giving up 14 votes) to eliminate an inappropriate and premature designation of Howard Dean as “the one”. Regardless of who helps America to regain its balance, this book is 1 of a handfull utterly brilliant contributions that everyone should buy and read and discuss.

As the only reviewer for Amazon who focuses exclusively on national security non-fiction, across the categories of information; intelligence; emerging threats; strategy & force structure; blowback, international relations, and dissent; and US political, leadership, and the future of life; I want to say quite clearly that I regard this book as one of the three “must reads” for every American between now and November 2008. The other two are #1 William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, and #2, Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.

This book is solid, serious truth-telling. Those reviewers, including the so-called professional editorial reviewers, who demean this book are simply revealing their narrow self-centered arrogance–precisely the quality in many Americans that is most distressing to the rest of the world. I find it of considerable importance that this book is favorably considered by the major intellectual newspapers and magazines across Europe and in the US, and including The Economist, the Christian Scientist Monitor, and Salon.com.

Easy to read, well-organized, this is a story, not a documentary, and it should be appreciated in that light. On page 10 the book’s main argument is perfectly captured by a quote from a South African: “we know everything about you [Americans] and you know nothing about us.” Therein lies the problem. As the author notes later in the book, after a review of the decrepitude of both our media and our educational systems in relation to foreign affairs and national security, “Ignorance is an excuse, but it is no shield.”

Although I have reviewed many other books that have much more detail and are more documentary in nature, I give this author credit for telling a story that is comprehensible and compelling to the normal citizen, one already disadvantaged by a mediocre news services and functionalist schools that do not teach, as I do, that the world has 32 complex emergencies (failed states), 66 countries distressed by tens of millions of displaced persons, 33 countries with massive starvation as a daily fact of life, 59 countries with plagues and epidemics this very day. There are also 18 genocide campaigns that everyone is ignoring, this very day, massive water scarcity, energy scarcity at the poverty level, and corruption and censorship across 80 and 62 countries. America has no clue….it is not only the average citizen that is ignorant, but the average elected official and the average federal bureaucrat as well. This book helps remedy that situation.

The author does a fine job of distilling both a broad literature and a broad survey of foreign views through direct interview, and it is a job good enough to put this book into my “top three” for the year.

I will end by saying that this book persuaded me that the US has become a Third World nation, a lower-tier disadvantaged nation, in many respects. Apart from the critical infrastructure, which has not been refurbished in a quarter century because of the fraud perpetuated on the public by deregulation, and the massive poverty, prisons, poor health, and so on, what we have in America today is massive injustice and a massive concentration of wealth so outrageous that in any other country it would have led to a violent revolution.

This book has persuaded me that America needs not one, but two Truth & Reconciliation Commissions. We need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, ideally managed by Colin Powell, to investigate the perversion of both capitalism and democracy in the US, and to outline a way forward such as William Greider discusses in “The Soul of Capitalism.” We also need, even more desperately, a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, ideally managed by Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew, to catalog and acknowledge, and apologize to the world for, the war crimes, the unethical behavior, and the enormous political, social, cultural, economic, demographic, and natural resource costs we have imposed on the world through our ignorance and arrogance.

There are six billion people out there, waiting to see how America handles the emerging Reichstag known as the neo-conservative Cheney-Bush regime. We cannot kill them nor contain them with force–as Jonathan Schell notes in “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People,” there is one path and one path only toward a bright future: non-violent cooperative collective power.

If every American reads this book, and every American votes in an informed manner in November 2008, we can save the world and in the process save America.

Other recommended recent books:
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions – and What to Do About It

September 13, 2003

Jonathan Schell

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links

This book, together with William Geider’s The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, and Mark Hertsgaard’s The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, in one of three that I believe every American needs to read between now and November 2004.

Across 13 chapters in four parts, the author provides a balanced overview of historical philosophy and practice at both the national level “relations among nations” and the local level (“relations among beings”). His bottom line: that the separation of church and state, and the divorce of social responsibility from both state and corporate actions, have so corrupted the political and economic governance architectures as to make them pathologically dangerous.

His entire book discusses how people can come together, non-violently, to restore both their power over capital and over circumstances, and the social meaning and values that have been abandoned by “objective” corporations and governments.

The book has applicability to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places where the US is foolishly confusing military power with political power. As he says early on, it is the public *will* that must be gained, the public *consent* to a new order–in the absence of this, which certainly does not exist in either Iraq or Afghanistan, no amount of military power will be effective (to which I would add: and the cumulative effect of the financial and social cost of these military interventions without end will have a reverse political, economic, and social cost on the invader that may make the military action a self-inflicted wound of great proportions).

Across the book, the author examines three prevailing models for global relations: the universal empire model, the balance of power model, and the collective security model. He comes down overwhelmingly on the side of the latter as the only viable approach to current and future global stability and prosperity.

A quote from the middle of the book captures its thesis perfectly: “Violence is a method by which the ruthless few can subdue the passive many. Nonviolence is a means by which the active many can overcome the ruthless few.”

Taking off from the above, the author elaborates on three sub-themes:

First, that cooperative power is much greater, less expensive, and more lasting that coercive power.

Second, that capitalism today is a scourge on humanity, inflicting far greater damage–deaths, disease, poverty, etcetera–that military power, even the “shock and awe” power unleashed against Afghanistan and Iraq without public debate.

Third, and he draws heavily on Hannah Arendt, here a quote that should shame the current US Administration because it is so contradictory to their belief in “noble lies”–lies that Hitler and Goering would have admired. She says, “Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.”

Toward the end of the book the author addresses the dysfunctionality of the current “absolute sovereignty” model and concludes that in an era of globalization, not only must the US respect regional and international sovereignty as an over-lapping authority, but that we must (as Richard Falk recommended in the 1970′s) begin to recognize people’s or nations as distinct entities with culturally-sovereign rights that over-lap the states within which the people’s reside–this would certainly apply to the Kurds, spread across several states, and it should also apply to the Jews and to the Palestinians, among many others.

On the last page, he says that we have a choice between survival and annihilation. We can carry on with unilateral violence, or we the people can take back the power, change direction, and elect a government that believes in cooperative non-violence, the only path to survival that appears to the author, and to this reviewer, as viable.

This is a *very* important book, and it merits careful reading by every adult who wishes to leave their children a world of peace and prosperity. We can do better. What we are doing now is destructive in every sense of the word.

Other recommended books with reviews:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship