David Christian: This Fleeting World - A Short History of HumanityPaperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Bershire Publishing 2008
"So, the chemicals from which we are made were manufactured in the death throes of large starts. Supernovae made chemistry possible. Without them, we would not exist, nor would the Earth." p. xxiii
Second Opinion: William Everdell / World History Connected ¶ 1/13/2010 01:33:00 ip.
David Brooks: Bobos in Paradise
Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2000
Funny and intelligent "comic sociology" study of the bohemian bourgeois. Most of the chapters are - even if it's been over ten years since publication - surprisingly relevant.
"In this new era you need to use the phrase 'We're moving from an age in which...' a lot. After all, we are moving from a power society to a knowledge society, from a linear society to a postlinear society, from a hierarchical sciety to a networked society, from a skim milk society to a 2-percent-fat milk society." p. 116
Second Opinion: Russell Mokhiber / Yes Magazine
¶ 1/11/2010 01:01:00 ip.
Henrik Meinander: Suomi 1944 - Sota, yhteiskunta, tunnemaisema
Hardcover: 428 pages
Publisher: Siltala 2009
"Kevään suuri uutuus oli kuitenkin Yrjö Kokon 'Pessi ja Illusia', lapsille ja aikuisille tarkoitettu satukirja, jota myytiin jo sen julkaisuvuonna 42 000 kappaletta. Idean tähän hyvän ja pahan keskinäistä taistelua kuvaavaan allegoriaansa Kokko sai toimiessaan rintamalla eläinlääkintä-upseerina ja pohtiessaan, millaisen viestin hän jättäisi lapsilleen siltä varalta, että hän sattuisi kaatumaan. Syntyi kaunis rakkauskertomus hourupäisen myönteisestä keijukaisesta Illusiasta ja synkän pessimistisestä Pessi-peikosta, jotka opettivat kärsivällisesti toisilleen, että maailmassa ja elämässä hyvä ja paha sekoittuivat merkillisellä tavalla." p. 155
Second Opinion: Jukka Tarkka / HS
¶ 1/01/2010 05:01:00 ip.
Victor Sebestyen: Revolution 1989 - The Fall of the Soviet Empire
Hardcover: 451 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books 2009
For millions of people the year 1989 became synonymous with freedom as the turbulent year brought about Europe-wide revolution and the capitulation of the Soviet empire. Sebestyen's book is a quick-read, lively journalistic account of a few of the key events.
"[Gorbachev's] dissertation for entry to the university was on the subject ' Stalin is our battle glory, Stalin is the Flight of our youth'." p. 115
Second Opinion: Tibor Fischer / Telegraph
¶ 12/25/2009 04:59:00 ip.
Paul Johnson: Modern Times - A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1990s
Paperback: 876 pages
Publisher: Phoenix Giant 1996
"Indeed the historian of the modern world is sometimes tempted to reach the depressing conclusion that progress is destructive to certitude." p. 699
To be honest, I was expecting a lot more text on the good stuff of modern times, like jazz, rock 'n roll, motorcycles or globalization... Nevertheless, Modern Times is an important book. Johnson's interpretation of the past century draws up nietzschean nightmare - a vision of strong men, obsessed with the "will to power", embarking on disastrous experiments with the humankind. Indeed, the chapter on the Bandung generation (stating from page 466) is the first to discuss anything else than war and destruction... And that chapter too ends with a sordid note on the plight of the Third World dictatorships and coups and genocide...
Second Opinion: Dan Geddes / The Satirist
¶ 12/24/2009 07:12:00 ip.
Egypt: Sharm El-Sheikh, Cairo, Giza, Pyramids, Luxor, Valley of the Kings, Karnak
Jordan: Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra ¶ 12/01/2009 03:01:00 ip.
R. Glenn Hubbard & William Duggan: The Aid Trap - Hard Truths About Ending Poverty
Hardcover: 198 pages
Publisher: Columbia Business School Publishing 2009
The provocating front cover of the book shouldn't discourage the reader. The Aid Trap is a rather mainstream account of the failures of development aid. The authors are on similar lines with Dead Aid author Dambisa Moyo.
The text itself is not overtly aggressive but raises important questions about the current structure of development aid. Refreshingly the book is written by business people and not by development experts versed in the bureaucratic difficulties of interntional politics - everything seems so simple and straightforward. Hubbard and Duggan argue that aid should, first of all, not stifle ecnomics development, and secondly should promote developing country SMEs and local businesses. The authors claim that a new Marshall Plan, focused on bettering the internal economic environment of developing countries would do much more good than doubling the resources squandered on corrupt regimes.
Second Opinion: The Enlightened Economist Blog
¶ 11/20/2009 05:37:00 ip.
Joris-Karl Huysmans: En Route (Kindle)
Joris-Karl Huysmans: Against Nature (Kindle)
Heini Welling: Narri vai sankari?
¶ 11/19/2009 12:27:00 ip.
Nina Laine: Luja Luottamus - Miten työpaikan luottamussuhteet saa toimimaan?
Paperback: 148 pages
Publisher: Taurus Media 2009
ISBN: 978-952-92-6353-0
FT Nina Laineen väitöstyöstä tiivistetty kirja työpaikan luottamussuhteista on ajankohtainen lisä keskusteluun työyhteisöjen ja laajemmin yhteiskunnallisesta hyvinvoinnista. Laine selvittää luottamuksen luonnetta, sen suhdetta osaamiseen, riskin ottamiseen sekä vallankäyttöön. Luottamus näyttäytyy vaikeasti eriteltävänä ja alati muuttuvana, mutta onnistumisen ja työn mielekkyyden kannalta erittäin tärkeänä elementtinä. "Luottamus ei ole mikään absoluuttinen tila" - luottamus tuleekin nähdä jatkuvana vuorovaikutteisena sosiaalisena prosessina, jota tuotetaan jatkuvasti ihmisten välisessä viestinnässä ja kommunikaatiossa.
Hyvissä johtajissa sekä toimivissa yhteisöissä huomio kiinnittyy sosiaalisiin taitoihin, asenteeseen, tunteeseen, oikeudenmukaisuuteen, avoimuuteen, vuorovaikutteiseen oppimiseen sekä kokemusperäiseen tietoon. Laine purkaa myös työntekijän odotuksia esimieheltä ja esittelee miten alaiset voivat aktiivisesti pyrkiä parantamaan työilmapiiriä tarjoten konkreettisia neuvoja yhteisten pelisääntöjen luomiseksi ja innostavan työyhteisön mahdollistamiseksi. Neuvot kertovat miten voidaan välttää luottamuspulan, epäluottamuksen ja nihkeilyn noidankehä ja miten rakentaa pala palalta vahvistuvaa luottamusta.
Laine värittää tietorikasta analyyttistä tekstiä tosielämän esimerkein sekä kuvitteellisen esimiehen Eppu Koskisen ajatuksilla johtamisesta, joukkuetyöskentelystä ja reilusta pelistä. Kirjassa on myös, kirjaimellisesti, onnellinen loppu... Luja luottamus toimii hyvin myös työyhteisötaito-käsikirjana ja kuuluisi jo siksi jokaisen yrityksen kirjahyllyyn. Tsekatkaa myös Ninan luottamusblogi!
¶ 11/16/2009 02:33:00 ip.
Eric Ferrara: A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East Side / History Press 2009 / 191 pages
Lobell & Ripsman & Taliaferro: Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy / Cambridge University Press 2009 / 309 pages
Edward N. Luttwak: Strategy - The Logic of War and Peace / Harvard University Press 1987 / 283 pages
Paavo Kähkölä: Urho Kekkonen 1900-1986 - Kansanmies ja ruhtinas / Gummerus 2000 / 295 pages
Markku Kuisma: Suomen poliittinen taloushistoria 1000-2000 / Siltala / 240 pages
David Christian: Maps of Time - An Introduction to Big HistoryPaperback: 642 pages
Publisher: University of California Press (2005)
"On the cosmological scale, changes mostly occur at the stately pace of millions or even billions of years. In the biological realm, where natural selection sets the pace, significant alterations take place on scales ranging from thousands to millions of years. In human history, shaped increasingly by cultural change, the pace is more rapid. ... The extraordinary dynamism of the Modern Revolution has accelerated the pace of global historical change once more. Time itself seems to have been compressed in the twentieth century." page 441
"Colonization of other worlds may begin with the industrial exploitation of the Moon, nearby planets, and asteroids. It will continue with the planting of settlements on planets within our solar system. Both the industrial exploitation of asteroids and the initial colonization of Mars may be feasible within a century." p. 483
Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the WorldHardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Penguin 2008
Niall Ferguson ends his book by asking whether his book should have been titled The Descent of Money. The financial crisis of 2008- shook the basis of our economic system and has given finance and financiers a bad name and a reason for general pessimism about global economic development. The historical story that Ferguson cleverly explores is however very different. Most importantly, The Ascent of Money tells the story of remarkable development. This is a story of destructive and sometimes anarchic development with repetitive booms and busts. Most grand human endeavors would not have been possible without the invention of more sophisticated forms of financing, investing and insuring.
"...financial markets are like the mirror of mankind, revealing every hour of every working day the way we value ourselves and the resources around us. It is not the fauilt of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty. " p. 358
Second Opionion: Michael Hirsch / The New York Times
PBS documentary movie narrated by Ferguson can be found on the PBS website.
"Men on small islands would do well to avoid the pursuit of philosophy. The island illusion, that solitude and wisdom invented each other, is a very convincing one. Day by day I seem to grow more profound. Often I feel I am on the verge of some great philosophical discovery. Man. War. Truth. Time. Fortunately I always return to myself. I look beyond the white lace of the surf of my own unassembled past and I decide to let others stitch together the systems." Americana p. 137
Don DeLillo
Americana (1951) / Hardcover 388 pages
Cosmopolis (2003) /Paperback 209 pages
Falling Man (2007) Hardcover 246 pages
Justin Marozzi: The Way of Herodotus - Travels with the Man Who Invented HistoryHardcover: 348 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press 2008
"Bush's vision of the course of history was different [to Edward Gibbon]. 'We meet here during a crucial period in the history of our nation, and of the civilized world,' he told an audience of 1,400 at the black-tie dinner hosted by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on 26 February 2003. 'Part of history was written by others: the rest will be written by us.' ...
"Bush like Darius and Xerxes before him, like Nooteboom's Napoleon and every other wartime leader we can think of, dismissed all anti-war advice. He had his own trusted advisers who wanted war and they carried the day. Like the God of Genesis, they wanted to remake Iraq and the Middle East in their image. They wanted to break from the region's dictatorial past and forge a democratic future. They wanted to make history." p. 76-77
Second Opinion: Tobin Harshaw / The New York Times
James J. Sheehan: Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern EuropeHardcover: 284 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company 2008
I argued in my thesis that K. J. Ståhlberg transcended (or at least believed in the possibility to transcend) war and narrow-minded power-politics-realism and found the end of history for a small liberal republic. Peace that enabled the creation of prosperity explains the success story of contemporary Finland. My account showed how the trick was done for, what was then, a peripheral small power playing against extremely unfavorable geopolitical odds.
James J. Sheehan, in his brilliant book, shows how the Great Powers did peace Europe-wide. I found some interesting similarities. Where I write, in the context of Finland's foreign policy, that the primacy of domestic policy goals over ambition in international affairs is the most potent source for success, Sheehan writes that: "During the long peace of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century we can find the historical roots of the civilian policies and institutions that would eventually dominate European public life. These policies and institutions were directed inward, toward domestic goals; they sought to encourage economic growth, promote commerce, and provide new kinds of services for their citizens." p. xviii
(A nice review! Wheatcroft calls the book "a scintillating tour d’horizon — and de force" and shows sofisticatedly the differences in foreign policy thinking in contemporary US and Europe. One can agree with his final sentence describing Europe's attraction to peaceful politics: "To put it another way, soccer is not only England’s and Europe’s gift to all mankind. It really is a better game."
Max Boot: War Made New - Technology, Warfare and the Course of History - 1500 to TodayPublisher: Gotham Books 2006
Max Boot's latest book is a solid historical account of technological changes in warfare with a grand and elegant title - anything with "...and the course of history from 1500 to today" sounds like a good book to me.
Boot has an intelligent way of writing and has a catchy habit of spicing up his grand historical sweep with juicy details. The reader learns seemingly trivial but entertaining facts: that Albrecht von Wallenstein (Waldstein) hated noise so much to order all dogs and cats killed upon his arrival in a town, that Helmuth von Moltke, "the Great Mute", spoke seven languages, wore an ill-fitting wig, had a horror of shaking hands and married a sixteen-year-old and that [Colonel J.F.C. "Boney"] "Fuller, who titled his autobiography Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier, positively reveled in his reputation as a "heretic". Before the Great War, he had been a disciple of Alesteir Crowley, a cult leader who advocated drug use, sex rituals, Satanic worship, and the occult. Fuller even wrote a 327-page book expounding the principles of "Crowleanity"." p. 67, 123-124, 216.
"There were few more unlikely candidates in 1611 for Great Power states than Sweden. Even with its satrapy of Finland, the total population numbered no more than 1.3 million. They lived on the northern edge of Europe in an impoverished, barren, half-frozen country with almost no industry to speak of. So poor was Sweden that by winter's end peasants were often reduced to eating tree bark to survive. It was a society, writes historian Michael Roberts, "which was half-isolated, culturally retarded, and still in all essentials medieval." p. 61
"The U.S. has twelve aircraft carriers, nine of them Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered supercarriers that can carry more than seventy high-performance aircraft such as the F/A-18E Super Hornet. A tenth supercarrier is in the works. No one else has a single one." p. 421
Second Opinion: Josiah Bunting / The New York Times
The selected research method is a case study operationalized as a theoretically informed historical narrative. The first part of the thesis presents the international context of the intervention with a focus on World War I, great power politics and Winston Chuchill’s anticommunism. The second part analyzes Finnish foreign policy decision making in detail. The narrative is centered on the first President of the Finnish Republic K. J. Ståhlberg and his non-interventionist reasoning. The counterfactual is provided by an analysis of the interventionist politics of C. G. E. Mannerheim. The concluding chapter presents an overview of Finland’s strategic choices and forwards a new narrative for Finnish foreign policy.
The question for Finnish foreign policy during the first years of the Republic was: war or peace for Finland? Under the leadership of Ståhlberg, Finland chose peace over war. Ståhlberg’s vision was based on his conviction that military forces should be defence forces. Ståhlberg – the father of the end of history for Finland – created a realist liberal foreign policy tradition that was anchored in a belief of liberal democracy as the best form of human government valuing internal evolutionist development over international ambition. Ståhlberg’s vision was powered by liberal optimism heralding that political freedom renders future wars unnecessary. This belief in transcendencing crude power politics eschews the cyclical tragedy of international politics.
Key words
Finland, foreign policy, K. J. Ståhlberg, liberalism, neoclassical realism, peace, war
Download War or Peace for Finland. (.pdf)
George C. Herring: From Colony to Superpower - U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776
Hardcover: 1035 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press 2008
George C. Herring's 1000-page narrative on the foreign relations of the United States since independence in 1776 until the Iraq War is a formidable achievement. Herring's sweeping historical account is filled with generalizable insights and interesting details on foreign policy. A must read for anyone interested in US history or the development of the world order.
"The fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration for Independence on July 4, 1826, also brought forth talk of a rededication to freedom. The remarkable, coincedental deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on that very day seemed to President John Quincy Adams a "visible and palpable" sign of "Divine favor," a reminder of America's special role in the world." p. 158-159
"When advised that if he was too conciliatory he [Woodrow Wilson] might be destroyed politically, he retorted that 'I am willing if I can serve my country to go into a cellar and read poetry for the remainder of my life'" p. 417
"Of all the world's nations, only the United States emerged stronger and richer at war's [II WW] end. An economy recently devastated by depression soared to new heights from the demands ofwar. The gross national product skyrocketed from $886 million in 1939 to $135 billion in 1945." p. 597
"The key proof, in the national security adviser's [Kissinger] mind, was the appearance of a soccer field, presumably to built for Russian sailors. 'These soccer fields could mean war,' he ominously informed White House chief of staff Bob Haldeman. 'Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer.'" p. 773
Second Opinion: Howard French / The New York Times
¶ 12/07/2008 12:43:00 ip.
Hardcover: 466 pages
Publisher: Basic Books 2008
"Survival kits of the 1860s, packed in wooden barrels and deposited on tropical islands for use by the shipwrecked on their way to New Zealand, contained, as well as the predictably useful knife, matches, rope, and fish-hooks, a three-piece tweed suit - presumably to allow any latter-day Robinson Crusoe to welcome his rescuers with appropriate decorum." p. 24
Philip Blom's book is near perfect. The Vertigo Years is an elegant yet robust narrative of the turbulent pre WW I years, an era traditionally described as the belle epoque. Blom pays witness to beauty - in the sentimental, intentional lapses of memory - beauty only to those who wished to stay blind in the face of the modernizing and rapidly changing, increasingly austere world. This was a time when social, moral and economic fundamentals were overturn - time of people visioning "society as a great collective dream designed to force people into being useful instead of enjoying themselves"... and where "man was nothing but a mass of highly unstable perceptions creating the impression of personality"... Epoch of 1904-1914 made peoples head spin - everyone was forced to realize that "there was, in fact, nothing stationary in the world at all"... (Quotes from pp. 55, 59, 79)
"Indeed, there seemed to be no end to the beneficial properties of this new, mysterious substance. Soon the cosmetics industry seized on the public interest and produced balms and creams containing traces of thorium and radium, such as Tho-Radia, a supposedly miraculous cream produced in France. 'Stay ugly if you want to!' trumpeted the slogan of the manufacturer, whose products were wont to lend altogether new meaning to the idea of radiant beauty." p. 87
Second Opinion: Juliet Nicolson / The Guardian
¶ 11/24/2008 03:54:00 ip.
Paperback: 293 pages
Publisher: Picador 1997
"The driver pushed open the door and shoved me through into a narrow passage with another door at the end. I tapped on this and a growl came from the other side which I took to be an invitation to enter. I did so and found myself in a bedroom. Hemingway was seated on a bunk bed. He hauled himself to his feet and turned to face me. He was in his pyjamas and I was bewildered by what I saw. Hemingway had remained for ever young in my imagination, boisterous and vigorous - a moving spirit in the never-ending fiesta of life. This was an old man, slowmoving, cumbersome and burdened with flesh. The room was lined with bookshelves, and many bottles were stacked within reach of the bed. He mumbled a belated welcome and went to find the drinks, moving slowly under the great weight of his body. To my great surprise he poured himself a tumbler of neat Dubonnet, half of which he immediately gulped down. Above all it was his expression that shocked, for there was an exhaustion and emptiness in his face: the corners of his mouth were dragged down by what might have been despair, and his eyes gave the impression that he was trying to weep." p. 171-172
Parag Khanna: The Second World - Empires and Influence in the New Global Order
Hardcover: 466 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane 2008
"The world's most compelling ideology is neither democracy nor capitalism nor any other ism, but success." p. xxiv
Parag Khanna's travels around the world have given him a chance to witness the effects of globalization. The new global order that is taking shape will be decided upon the rise of the second world. Echoing Fareed Zakaria, Khanna claims that the "rise of the rest" will eventually switch our focus from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
According to Khanna, the peacefulness of the search for the equilibrium in a non-American world will depend on the mutual understanding of China, the EU and the US.
"China feels it upholds the burden of maintaining the tenets of international law such as sovereignty and noninterference, while Europe's approach to world order transcends the interstate system altogether." p. 335
Second Opinion: William Grimes /The New York Times
¶ 10/20/2008 12:51:00 ip.
Colin Thubron: Shadow of the Silk RoadPaperback: 363 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial 2006
It is almost as Colin Thubron is one of us. A hobo, a tramp, a bum. For us there is no difference. However, Wikipedia explains rather convincingly that there is one: "Hobos differentiate themselves as travelers who are homeless and willing to do work, whereas a tramp travels but will not work and a bum does neither."
Of course, Thubron is none of the above and is a clear-cut genius in his approach to travelling and writing. His style can be judged in his beautifully crafted sentences about people, current affairs and relevant abstract topics in far-away places. Most importantly, everything happens now and in history - regarding China and the Silk Road in a time span of some odd thousands of years.
"Sometimes you feel yourself weightless, thinned. You draw back the curtains (if there are any) on a rectangle of wasteland at dawn, and realise that you are cast adrift from everything that gave you identity. Thousands of miles from anyone who knows you, you have the illusion that your past is lighter, scarcely yours at all. Even your ties of love have been attenuated (the emergency satellite phone is in my rucksack, and nobody calls). Dangerously, you may come to feel invulnerable. You fear only your failure to understand or to reach where you are going. Sometimes you are moved by a kind of heartless curiosity, which shames you only on your return home. At other times you are touched, even torn; but you move on." p. 114-115
Check out: Colin Thubron @ The New York Review of Books
Second Opinion: Lorraine Adams / NY Times
¶ 10/02/2008 01:33:00 ap.
Fareed Zakaria: The Post-American World
Hardcover: 292 pages
Publisher: Allen Lane 2008
"I don't believe that war has become obsolete or any such foolishness. Human nature remains what it is and international politics what it is." p. 9-10
Fareed Zakaria could well be the next Henry Kissinger-like theorist-turned-practitioner in American foreign policy. Zakaria's robust academic work combined with his journalistic vision in seeing the relevant makes his ideas very attractive. Zakaria is very much a realist studying the overall distribution of power in the international system but he is also very much in sync with global cultural trends.
The Post-American World is a book about the eventual relative decline of the United States vis a vis the other great powers. Actually it is not so much a book about America as it is about the "rise of the rest". China and India will be the new trendsetter-players in a multipolar and economically highly interconnected international-political arena.
"Over the last fifteen years, the United States has placed sanctions on half the world's population. We are the only country in the world to issue annual report cards on every other country's behavior." p. 47
"Legitimacy is power. The United States has every kind of power in ample supply these days except one: legitimacy. In today's world, this is a critical deficiency." p. 247
"In an increasingly empowered and democratized world, in the long run, the battle of ideas is close to everything." p. 248
Check out: http://www.fareedzakaria.com/
Second Opinion: Michiko Kakutani / The New York Times
¶ 9/26/2008 10:50:00 ip.
Rebecca Moore: NATO's New Mission - Projecting Stability in a Post-Cold War World
Hardcover: 210 pages
Publisher: Praeger Security 2007
Rebecca Moore's book is a concise and informative account of the transformation of NATO since the end of the Cold War. NATO's military mission of deterring the Soviet totalitarian threat has changed into a political mission of extending liberal democratic values.
The story of NATO after 1990 and the disapperance of the Soviet threat, as narrated by Moore, is a convincing criticism against political realism. Mearsheimer et co. who argued against NATO enlargement and viewed it as useless predicted the return of instability and great power rivalry in Western Europe. What in reality happened was that the peace zone was extended towards East. Now the European Civil Space encompasses former Soviet satellites in Europe that is increasingly becoming "whole and free".
NATO transformed itself from a military balance of power tool designed to sustain the status quo into an political apparatus designed to create a liberal democratic security order. Only time will tell whether NATO will develop into a global alliance of democratic states. Moore quotes more than once Javier Solana's insight: "Security... is what we make of it."
Second Opinion: Patrick Stephenson / NATO Review
¶ 9/11/2008 05:01:00 ip.
Michel Houellebecq, the "pop star of the single generation" and the l'enfant terrible of contemporary French letters, is the best guide to the mental landscape of the post-modern.
The landscape is troubled. Houellebecq's post-structural world is nihilistic, cruel and obnoxious. Technological change and globalization have devastated many of the old belief systems but offered little instead. All Houellebecq's characters are detached and alienated from the everyday hubbub of work and consumption. Alas, Houellebecq's world is an absurd sad place where humans struggle to find meaning for their lives.
Books reviewed:
Whatever (1994) /Paperback / 155 pages
Atomised (1998) / Paperback / 379 pages
Lanzarote (2000) / Paperback / 92 pages
Platform (2002) / Paperback / 320 pages
Possibilities of an Island (2005) / Paperback / 423 pages
Fareed Zakaria: The Future of Freedom - Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
Paperback: 295 pages
Publisher: W.W.Norton 2004
Fareed Zakaria's brilliant book is by his own words a "call for self-control, for a restoration of balance between democracy and liberty". Zakaria maps the future of freedom by researching the past. He disginguishes between constitutional liberalism and democracy and his conclusions are rather surprising:
"Liberty led to democracy and not the other way around." p. 31
Our democratic age is witnessing the advance of what Zakaria describes as illiberal democracy.Examples, dictator-like leaders who pay lipservice to elections but rule like tyrants are abound: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Putin's Russia and lots more. Zakaria also takes issue with the democratization and commercialization of politics, economics and culture in the US and visions a troubled future for her...
Erudite Zakaria is one of my favorite journalist-academics. His writing is fluent and entertaining. His eye for a catchy phrase and for new ways to organize our thinking on traditionally accepted "wisdoms" is invaluable. Zakaria, a (neo-)classical realist in academics, teaches us to see the world in the complex colors it is painted. Above all, Zakaria is honest.
"The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal." p. 32
"Although the creators of blogs think of themselves as radical democrats, they are in fact a new Tocquevillean elite." p. 254
Second Opinion: Robert Kagan / Powell's Books
¶ 8/07/2008 09:47:00 ip.
Thérese Delpech: Savage Century - Back to Barbarism
Hardcover: 210 pages
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment for Peace 2007
Thérese Delpech has written a convincing book on 21st century strategic landscape. Her brilliant historical narrative of the savage 20th century originates from the year 1905. Here one can find the starting point for the century of unconscious - as manifested in the works of Freud and Einstein. Delpech warns us that the crimes against humanity, that make up most of the horrible history of the past century, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and totalitarian China have not been properly analyzed and judged. The political pathologies that were resolved in historic tragedy, are still very much alive in the collective lies about history. Finnish political history is no exception. Delpech warns us that if these problems are not acknowledged and solved, the advancement of human freedom that Europe and the world has enjoyed since 1989 will cease and that we will be pushed back to barbarism.
"Historians know, however, that major wars, using all the weapons available in the various arsenals, are a permanent possibility, as long as there are states and balances of power, and that world government is a utopia, attractive but absurd. The Third World War - an alternative to the Cold War - never happeneed. But who can assert that it never will happen?" p. 24-25
According to Delpech, Europe should not and can not afford to retire from history. Her message is a dire warning to the West:
"In strategy as in politics, European thought is primarily reactive. Europe has nothing to say... While European s sleep, others become aware of the power of ideas. But the ideas that are spreading most widely are very much contrary to European values... Europe is at once too much toward the past to be a major actore in the twenty-first century and too cut off from that past t ofind its inspiration there." p. 44-45
"In the struggle, Europe ought not to forget that the strength of America is its own, whereas its weakness is shared by the West as a whole." p. 166
Second Opinion: Jeremy Black / Journal of Military History
¶ 8/03/2008 05:11:00 ip.
Alan Greenspan: The Age of Turbulence - Adventures in a New World
Hardcover: 531 pages
Publisher: Penguin 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59420-131-8
Jazzy Alan Greenspan is the renowned champion of laissez-faire capitalism and a staunch defendor of free market economy. Intellectually Greenspan follows in the footsteps of grand capitalist thinkers like Adam Smith and Ayn Rand but also lets the reader understand his surprising sympathy for the "new" and mitigated versions of Fabian socialism and the social equality / social justice that it targets.
Greenspan's memoirs are a superb snapshot of the conundrum of economy and politics in the highest echelons of the world's mightiest power. Greenspan's views on China and Russia (pp. 294-310 and 323-333, respectively) are worth taking note of. His realistic historical account of the expansion of freedom, not just economic, after the fall of the wall is lucid (pp. 123-141). His delphic view of the future world (pp. 464-505) seems plausible.
"Federal outlays on national defense, which in fiscal 2000 hit a sixty-year low of 3 percent of GDP, jumped back to around 4 percent in 2004 and have since flattened out - they were 4.1 percent in 2006. (By comparison, national defense spending at the height of the Vietnam War absorbed 9.5 percent of GDP, and during the Korean War more than 14 percent)" p. 243
"And whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction", American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. Thus, projections of world oil supply and demand that do not note the highly precarious environment of the Middle East are avoiding the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that could bring world economic growth to a halt." p. 463
The title of Greenspan's memoirs pretty nicely sum up his thesis: Greenspan views the post-Cold War world and its fluid capitalist economic system as a development in world history. Greenspan values the world economy as more reliable and more growth-generating than previously even if the turbulence created by the destructive verve of the free market system will stay with us. Future adventures will be played out in an increasingly turbulent if increasingly affluent world.
Second Opinion: David Leonhardt / NY Times
¶ 7/30/2008 10:19:00 ap.
I had always felt a naive romantic urge to vagabond my way across Europe on a motorcycle. To feel the wind in my face, to fall in love with the sun every sunrise and to leave it unnoticed when it sets. To use a flea market leather jacket as a pillow, duvet or a raincoat - whatever is needed. To follow the road wherever it might take me. Simply put - to experience freedom. To forget, to remember and to feel. Yeah, I know. Silly inspiration from Che (The Motorcycle Diaries), Easy Rider and The Wild One.
Anyway, I realized my long-time dream by taking my Triumph Bonneville (2006) on a 13 000 kilometer trip, driving alone from Finland to the UK via central Europe. I left Finland right after Easter holidays. The bitterly cold weather of North Europe was a challenge that contrasted nicely with the warmth of my friends I met on the way. Thank you everyone, I hope I can repay you sometime.
I would do injustice to the trip by merely describing the events, places or people I enjoyed the best. However awesome they were: wandering in misty and spooky Verdun in the middle of the night studying the incomprehensible cruelties of World War I trench warfare, or picking up a champagne bottle from Epernay and riding with it to downtown Paris to meet a friend, or cruising the winding roads of amazing Welsh countryside, or enjoying crazy nights in Lithuania, or drinking single malt whiskey in the barren islands of Islay and Skye. All truly unforgettable events that I will cherish. But, I feel that travelling is more than events. Travelling is about learning and understanding. I hope I did some justice to this ideal on my seemingly last longer trip... (in a while at least...)
After finishing my studies and finalising my master's thesis at Aberystwyth, I drove a big loop around the UK and finally across northern Europe back to Finland. Coming back - towards home - is always different and this time I was travelling with a friend too (forming the infamous "Triumph Ratpack"! see Mikko's pics) Yeah, come to think of it, that's just what you need wherever you are: friends.
Seymour M. Hersh: Chain of CommandPaperback: 404 pages
Publisher: Penguin 2005
ISBN: 0-141-02088-1
Legendary The New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is a mastermind in mapping trail of events: from cabinet meetings of foreign policy decision making elites into practices on the ground by political blue collar workers - soldiers.
From the White house to the infamous Abu Ghraib, Hersh shows how the Bush Administration turned the United States, victor of the Cold War and the leader of the Free World, into a, if not the, pre-eminent human rights violator. Apart from the mishandling of the unnecessary Iraq war, Hersh remembers to remind us also of the "other war", Afghanistan:
"The U.N. worker added that among Afghans President Karzai was perceived as "a weak leader with very little street credibility." He told me that, again and again, when he met with village elders as part of his work, "the old people say, 'Hamid is good man. He doesn't kill people. He doesn't steal things. He doesn't sell drugs. How could you possibly think he could be a leader of Afghanistan?'" p. 161
Second Opinion: Michael Ignatieff / The New York Times
Paperback: 489 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press 2007
ISBN: 978-0-521-54317-0
Ken Booth, not to be mistaken for Ken Boothe, is a political scientist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who has worked to develop a theory of critical security studies. Theory of World Security can be regarded as the attempt at a magnum opus of CSS, where Booth advances his emancipatory realism.
"...every person faces the existential challenge of having to live a life" p. 352
The concept of transcendence (of power politics) is, I'd argue, useful in evaluing foreign policies. What states try to transcend crude realism, how and why they do it? These questions could well be researched more in-depth and the answers might give us a hint towards a better world.
¶ 5/07/2008 09:40:00 ip."But realism never really went away. Some mistook the power politics of the Bush/Blair push for war against Iraq for a revival of realism, though the fact is that leading academic realists in the United States opposed the war. Good realists do not allow themselves to become embroiled in unnecessary, unwise, illegal, and unpopular wars. The commitment of good realists to the prudent use of state military power is by no means always contrary to the political orientation of critical security thinking." p. 33
The World Crisis - The Way Forward After IraqPublisher: Constable 2008
ISBN: 978-1-84529-870-8
IR experts on both sides of the Atlantic have got together to write a book that analyses the crisis that the intervention to Iraq has brought about and try to show a way forward. The most interesting articles are from the tough-talking realists Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft.
Kissinger's article The Post-Westphalian World tackles the most important changes in the international system. The nation state as we have come to understand it is changing and new security threat emerge. Naturally, new consensus must be created onto which the new security infrastructure - international institutions and the balance of power - must be constructed. Realism offers a common language to use in building a reciprocally beneficial dialogue in absence of common values.
Brzezinski's article Uniting Our Enemies and Dividing Our Friends offers some harsh, if realistic, analysis:
"Although the Russians may be drunk with dollars right now and call themselves a great energy world power, they're missing a very important point - they occupy a huge space that is becoming increasingly empty. They're dying. They're getting drunk. Their lives are getting shorter. And they're leaving the Far East." p. 99
"But we are in a critical struggle in Afghanistan and if we fail in Afghanistan, NATO is very likely not to survive in any meaningful form. Militarily we are doing reasonably well, but NATO is not fighting at its best." p. 112
Second Opinion: Christopher Hirst / The Independent
Jeremy Black: Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony - The World Order Since 1500Paperback: 273 pages
In his latest (of seventy books) Jeremy Black re-reads world history and offers a new narrative for changes in the world order. The picture Black constructs of international politics is deeper and more realistic than any monocausal or systemic fable we have learnt to appreciate in contemporary IR. Black uses and highlights the importance of perceptions and self-perceptions in achieving and sustaining great power status thus criticizing sole focus on military power or systemic imperatives for action.
"Why bother with Napoleon? He was a failure, not only in hindsight but also in his own lifetime. If there was no perverted Götterdämmerung (twilight of the gods) equivalent to the Berlin bunker in which Adolf Hitler was to commit suicide in 1945, Napoleon discovered Hell in his own terms when imprisoned from 1815 by the British on St Helena, an isolated island in the storm-tossed South Atlantic. Furthermore, as a military figure, Napoleon failed totally." p. 93-94
"The impact of environmental pressures and changes invites the question whether the effects of humans' actions on the context in which they operate may not be more direct in the sense of activity in outer space. This opens up the prospect not simply of exploration but also of enhanced military capability, mineral extraction and possibly settlement. Whether that would offer a solution to problems on Earth possibly belongs t the field of science fiction, but consideration of the issue reflects not so much utopianism as a reaction to the grave problems of the human condition." p. 229
Richard Little: The Balance of Power in International Relations - Metaphors, Myths and Models"...Politics Among Nations can be viewed as a proto-constructivist text that focuses on how international politics has undergone seismic changes as result of fundamental shifts in the dominant beliefs of the age." p. 93
Michael C. Williams (ed.): Realism Reconsidered -The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations
Paperback: 232 pages
Publisher: OUP Oxford 2007
ISBN: 0199288623
Political realism is more often quoted than read and more frequently criticized than understood. Michael C. Williams of Aberystwyth University has opened up the legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau and the normative side of realism.
Realism is correctly understood as a counterforce to the political thinking of Carl Schmitt and to his "concept of the political". Realism can be viewed as a normative project of making the world function better. I've tried to use this, in my view, correct reading of realism in my master's thesis.
¶ 1/29/2008 12:10:00 ip."For [Morgenthau] theories are devised to serve normative ends." p. 208
Paperback: 365 pages
Publisher: Vintage 2007
ISBN: 978-307-27883-8
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's new book is a colorful story of the "boys in the bubble" - the Coalition Provisional Authority that took control of Iraq after the ousting of Saddam. The CPA was led by Lewis Paul Bremer III from April 2003 until June 2004.
Chandrasekaran's book is written in style and is solid in facts. All in all, the story that unfolds is a stunning display of American ignorance and arrogance.
"On [Bremer's] desk was a wood carving that looked like a large nameplate. It read SUCCESS HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS. When a visitor noted, during his first weeks on the job, the second line of the aphorism - "failure is an orphan" - Bremer tensed. "There won't be a failure.", he said." p. 76
Second Opinion: Michael Goldfarb / Washington Post
¶ 1/25/2008 05:47:00 ip.
Clive James: Cultural Amnesia - Necessary Memories from History and the ArtsHardcover: 876 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company 2007
ISBN: 0-393-06116-7
Clive James' Cultural Amnesia is a remarkable book to remind us of the importance of common sense and moderation in politics and culture. James constructs with short 15-20 page biographic essays (not all of them are on humanists) a narrative for the 20th century European cultural experience. Nazism and communism - the totalitarian twins appear in almost every essay.
James' book - dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Sophie Scholl, among others - is aptly titled, the word amnesia (partial or total loss of memory, blackout) is used to portray the vast amount of wisdom we lose even without knowing it. Our understanding is limited to only partial aspects of history. James' massive 800 odd page book that took him 40 years to write is here aiming to correct that even if a bit; hence the lightbulb on the cover.
"No ideology can tolerate a full historical consciousness. Only realism can..." p. 44All in all, James manifests a strong and humane plea for all of us to defend liberal democracy and humanism against any threats. Surprisingly he writes against multiculturalism. My favorite essays were on Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, Paul Celan, Marcel Proust, Miguel de Unamuno and the great Sophie Scholl.
Second Opinion: Michiko Kakutani /International Herald Tribune
My first but definitely not the last trip to north Africa featured a short spurt to magical Marrakech, to the Atlantic coast to Agadir and to the outskirts of the Sahara desert: Tiznit, and Guelmim. Morocco is a cool mixture of Europe, Africa and Arabia: a perfectly enjoyable hassle!
Norman Podhoretz: World War IV - The Long Struggle Against IslamofascismHardcover: 230 pages
Publisher: Doubleday 2007
ISBN: 0385522215
"Nothing, however - neither the polls nor the antiwar forces nor the cconservative defeatists - could or would weaken George W. Bushs own resolve to stay the course - not only on the Iraqi front but in World War IV as a whole. But could he, in the two years he had left as president, carry the American people with him?" p. 197
"Not, to say it again, that I for one have any doubts about the leadership of George W. Bush. In fact, I believe that on top of the ways in which he already resembles Harry Truman will come the belated recognition of him as a great president." p. 205
The 1st and 2nd world wars are universally accepted. 3rd world war - Cold War - not so. It would seem commonsensical that the Cold War could and maybe should be read in that way: as an ideological battle between democracy and Communism - the post-1945 version of Nazist totalitarian utopias. World War 4, especially the Iraq front of it, on the other hand seems to be a more elusive case. Saddam Hussein, of course, was not a radical religious fanatic and did not plan the 9/11. My long-term guess is that history might play a trick on us all and these little facts might just be forgotten by the common memory: there is no arguing that Iraq has become (or that it has been constructed as) a front in the battle between Iranian backed terrorists and Allied figthing for democratic Iraq.
"I ask, who today either remembers or cares about Truman's domestic policies?" p. 205
