All 15 reviews in alphabetical order by title
Contents
"The Audacity Of Hope" "The Changing Face Of China: From Mao To Market" "Counterknowledge" "The Crisis Of Islam" "Don't Get Fooled Again" "Globalisation And Its Discontents" "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World" "Jihad vs McWorld" "Murder In Samarkand" "The No Nonsense Guide To Globalisation" "People Who Live In The Dark"" "Stepping On White Corns" "The Storm" "Taliban" "Why Do People Hate America?"
“The Audacity Of Hope” by Barack Obama
When this bestselling book was first published in 2006, Barack Obama had spent just two years as a United States Senator, the only African American in the upper chamber; by the time I read it in the summer of 2008, he was the presumptive Democratic nominee in the presidential election and the favourite for the White House. The title comes from a sermon by Obama's then pastor Rev Jeremiah Wright whom the politician was forced to repudiate in the course of the Democratic primary, while the sub-title is "Thoughts on reclaiming the American dream".
Whereas Obama's first book "Dreams From My Father" was biographical and written almost in the style of a novel, this later work is essentially a set of nine political essays - over 360 pages covering Republicans and Democrats, values, the US Constitution, politics, opportunity, faith, race, the wider world, and family - although there are many personal anecdotes and the style is remarkably fluent. The overall impression is of a thoughtful, perceptive, measured and caring politician who in American terms is refreshingly liberal and empathetic. This is a man who life experiences ensure that he understands poverty in the USA and in the world and sides with the dispossed and the powerless.
He sees government more as part of the solution than the problem, favours provision of healthcare and abortion rights, backs affirmative action for minorities and trade union representation for workers, wants greater investment in education, science and technology ,and energy independence, and believes than America should be less autocratic abroad and more willing to talk to opponents as well as allies. But he supports the death penalty in limited circumstances, understands the cultural meaning of guns in rural communities, and generally shows respect for the views of his political opponents. There is little detail to his policies but he sets out his principles very clearly and eloquently. His main theme is "the gap between the magitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem".
For a top level politician, his frankness is astonishing - he admits at different times in his life to "a chronic restlessness", "self-indulgence and self-destructiveness", and a "style of communicating that can be rambling, hesistant and overly verbose", and even acknowledges that "of all the areas of my life, it is in my capacities as a husband and father that I entertain the most doubt". What drives him? "My fierce ambitions might have been fueled by my father - by my knowledge of his achievements and failures, by my unspoken desire to somehow earn his love, and by my resentment and anger toward him".
“The Changing Face Of China: From Mao To Market” by John Gittings
Gittings was China specialist and East Asia editor for the "Guardian" newspaper from 1983 to 2003 and in 1996 wrote a book titled "Real China: From Cannibalism To Karaoke". A decade later this latest similarly-titled work is an up-date on a nation in which more people are experiencing more change at a faster rate than at any other time in the history of humankind. The subject is fascinating and the book ought to be similarly so, but Gittings - who describes himself as "a semi-academic journalist" and provides a bibliography of almost 100 works - manages to make rather dull so much of his review of the changing political and economic policies of post-war China.
The best chapters are the last three and the first. The last chapters begin with a more personal account of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989 when several hundred protesters were shot down by the People's Liberation Army, at least 3,000 were injured, and subsequently thousands were arrested. The next chapter looks at economic change, social change, urbanisation, rural developments, the workers' plight, the environmental threat, and the challenge of HIV-AIDS. Finally China's place in the world is examined as problems like Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang remain unresolved, human rights become of more concern, and the country joins the WTO and experiences globalisation. In a sense, China is becoming less different from the rest of the world - a process Gittings calls "de-sinicisation" - and an American adviser is quoted as rightly asserting that "managing China's emergence as a great power could well prove to be the defining foreign policy effort of this era".
Strangely the most interesting chapter is the first where Gittings poses four immensely challenging questions:
“Counterknowledge” by Damian Thompson
Thompson credits crime novelist Stav Sherez with coining the term "counterknowledge" which Thompson himself defines as follows: "The essence of counterknowledge is that it purports to be knowledge but is not knowledge. Its claims can be shown to be untrue, either because there are facts that contradict them or because there is no evidence to support them. It misrepresents reality (deliberately or otherwise) by presenting non-facts as facts."
The book devotes a chapter each to four main targets:
Perhaps surprisingly, Thompson is editor-in-chief of the "Catholic Herald". His writing is clear and sharp, his targets well-chosen, and his assertions well-evidenced but, except for a final reference to "guerilla attacks from the blogosphere", he exhbits little faith in our ability to counter counterknowledge. This short (162 pages) and elegant work would have been strengtheed by the addition of a brief toolkit on critical thinking.
Link: book's web site click here
“The Crisis Of Islam” by Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis was born in Britain but he is now emeritus professor at Princeton University and widely regarded as the world's leading Islamic scholar. In November 2001, he wrote an extended essay for "The New Yorker" magazine which he has now developed into this short, but immensely informative and perceptive, book published in March 2003. Essentially the message is that Islam has a rich and honourable history but now suffers from "a failure of modernity" and, if we are going to combat the terrorism emanating from fundamentalist Islam, we need to understand much better both the past and the present of the Muslim world.
What is Islam? Lewis puts it succintly: "The word Islam .. denotes more than fourteen centuries of history, a billion and a third people, and a religious and cultural tradition of enormous diversity" and he emphasizes that: "Islam is not only a matter of faith and practice; it is also an identity and a loyalty - for many, an identity and a loyalty that transcend all others".
He reminds us that: "Under the medieval Arab caliphate, and again under the Persian and Turkish dynasties, the empire of Islam was the richest, most powerful, most creative, most enlightened region in the world and, for most of the Middle Ages, Christendom was on the defensive". This history is known and remembered by Muslims today and "References to early, even to ancient, history are commonplace in public discourse".
In 1918, the Ottoman sultanate - the last of the great Muslim empires - was defeated. Today - as Lewis demonstrates - on a wide range of economic, industrial and social indicators, Muslim countries are an underdeveloped backwater, compared not just to Europe and America but also to thriving Asian economies such as Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. There are 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference but, except for Turkey, democratic institutions are unknown these nations. Hence it can be concluded that sadly: "Almost the entire Muslim world is affected by poverty and tyranny".
So, is Islam a threat to the West? Lewis's examination of this question is both lucid and balanced and he concludes: "Islam as such is not an enemy of the West, and there are growing numbers of Muslims, both there and here, who desire nothing better than a closer and more friendly relationship with the West and the development of democratic institutions in their own countries. But a significant number of Muslims - notably but not exclusively those whom we call fundamentalists - are hostile and dangerous". He is clear that the kind of horror we saw on 9/11 "has no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history".
“Don't Get Fooled Again” by Richard Wilson
The author of this work - subtitled "The Sceptic's Guide To Life" - has a degree in philosophy and works for Amnesty International and his commitment to logic and evidence and his passion for human rights imbue every chapter in a highly readable book which represents a refreshing gale of common sense and rationality. Wilson critiques a wide range of contemporary nonsense including:
Link: author's web site click here
“Globalisation And Its Discontents” by Joseph Stiglitz
This critique of globalisation is not particularly original and the prescription for reform is not very well developed, but what has rightly made this work an international bestseller and led to its translation into more than 25 languages is its authorship. Joseph Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton, he then became the Chief Economist at the World Bank, and he is a Nobel Prize winner for economics. If he states that globalisation is failing, then the world's politicians and financiers should take note.
Stiglitz points out that, since the Second World War, close to 100 countries have faced financial crises. Today 1.2 billion people around the world are living on less than $1 a day and 2.8 billion people are living on less than $2 a day. In the face of such enormous challenges, the so-called Washington Consensus of the 1980s and 1990s promoted financial austerity, privatisation and market liberalisation. The consensus over-emphasized inflation and financial market liberalisation and under-emphasized land reform and financial sector regulation.
Above all, the IMF adopts a policy of market fundamentalism and pursues the interests of (American) financial institutions. The catastrophic result of excessively rapid privatisation in Russia was a fall in GDP by 54% and a collapse in industrial production of 60%.
The book examines in some detail how the International Monetary Fund - the chief butt of Stiglitz's criticisms and indeed anger - handled the transition of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe from centrally planned to free market economies and how it responded to the East Asia financial crisis of 1997. His central argument is that those countries that followed the IMF's policies - such as the Czech Republic, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and most especially Russia - experienced a collapse in output, employment and living standards - while those countries that pursued a more independent economic programme - such as Uganda, Botswana, Malaysia, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Vietnam and most especially China - fared much better in terms of transition or recovery.
Stiglitz favours changes to the governance of the IMF and the World Bank to give developing countries a stronger voice, more transparent policy formulation and decision-making by bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, more consultation with countries about their development strategies, more attention to the sequencing and pacing of economic reforms, greater provision of bankruptcy and standstill arrangements, and interventions to reduce excessive short-term capital flows.
Stiglitz is frank: "Globalisation today is not working for many of the world's poor", But he is clearly an optimist: "I believe that globalisation can be reshaped to realize its potential for good and I believe that the international economic institutions can be reshaped in ways that will ensure that this is accomplished". Sadly, however, he does not explain how this is going to be achieved practically, given the powerful forces at work in the American political and financial establishments. It is going to require a massive and sustained social movement.
"How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World” by Francis Wheen
I enjoyed this book enormously because it reflects so well my own mode of thinking and it is written with such erudition and panache. The varied samples of 'mumbo-jumbo' attacked by Wheen include the neoliberalism of Reagean and Thatcher, the blandness of too much of Blairism, the exuberance of the 1980s stock market and the dot com bubble, the current version of globalisalisation, the dominance of the miltary-industrial complex, the popularity of self help manuals and motivational gurus, deterministic views of history, creationism, astrology, complementary and alternative medicine, unidentified flying objects, Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and the excess reaction to Princess Diana's death. The whole thing is eloquently written (his vocabulary is huge) and eclectically sourced (his reading is immense).
I do have some reservations though. First, the whole thing reads like an extended essay (very extended since it runs to over 300 pages) with a seemingly endless series of targets and the work would have benefited from tighter organisation and focus. Second, we know that, in contradiction to all this 'mumjo-jumbo', Wheen stands for the values of the 18th century Enlightenment - especially scientific empericism - but it would have been a better-balanced book if he had spelt out more the practical tools and positive benefits of a rational way of thinking. Third, the title and tone of the work is too defeatist - 'mumjo-jumbo' has not conquered the world, although rational thought may be in (hopefully temporary) retreat, and we need to celebrate the causes of science as well as condemn the absurdities of mysticism.
“Jihad vs McWorld” by Benjamin R Barber
My friend Catherine Waters advised that I read this book originally published in 1995. It’s not a particularly easy read because it’s long – 370 pages, of which 60 are notes – and the style is somewhat academic – Barber is an American professor of political science. But it is definitely worth the effort.
Probably deliberately, Barber never defines the terms “Jihad” and “McWorld”, although he uses them from the second page and on almost every page from then on. “Jihad” is shorthand for tribalism and intolerance, whether of the religious or political kind, and represents opposition to technology, markets and modernity itself. “McWorld” is a metaphor for free markets and mass consumption plus the global players who exploit the former and create the latter.
Barber regards the two as not simply in opposition to one another, but interactive with each other, and he is incisive with his criticisms of both as antipatheic to civic society and democratic institutions. This is an enormously erudite analysis with an astonishingly eclectic range of sources and the standpoint is profoundly liberal and libertarian.
However, in my view, Barber is overly pessimistic about the ability to choose and reject elements of McWorld in particular, fails to appreciate the transforming effects of the Internet and electronic commerce, and offers too little prescription as to how countervailing forces – like the trade union movement and social democratic political parties – could arrest the apparent juggernaut of global markets.
"Murder In Samarkand" by Craig Murray
Craig Murray had already been a career diplomat with the British Foreign Office for 20 years when he obtained his first ambassadorship in 2002. Uzbekistan had only recently gained its independence from the former Soviet Union and was still ruled by the former Communist hardman Islam Karimov, but it was now on the 'right' side in the 'War on Terror', offering base facilities to the Americans for their operations in Afghanistan. So this was a sensitive appointment and one can only wonder why the Whitehall mandarins put such a character in such a place at such a time.
Murray had valuable experience in Poland and Ghana, but his flamboyant style included plenty of drinking and leering, blunt language, and a direct and unorthodox 'can do' approach to issues. Although married with two children, he admits to a string of earlier liaisons and in Taskent fell hopelessly in love with a women half his age on first sight. This is not your conventional ambassador and, at some point, his career was bound to implode.
Yet on the substantive issues at the heart of Murray's differences with the FCO - that Uzbekistan was making no genuine moves to liberalise the economy or respect human rights and that political prisoners were being tortured and the tainted evidence that resulted given to MI5 and the CIA - he was right. Of course, the Foreign Office chose to tackle him more on procedural than substantive issues and he was charged with a list of 20 misdemeanors. Ultimately, 17 of these were dismissed with no case to answer, two were judged to be unsupported by the evidence, and the one substantiated charge was Kafkasquesly that he spoke to embassy staff about the allegations. In 2004, he was compelled to resign.
Murray's book - like his career - is not what one would expect of a former senior diplomat. It is written like a novel with lots of reported conversations, making it very readable but overlong (its 383 pages could have been trimmed by a third). Also the bluntness and even profanity of his language are certainly unorthodox in what is really a political memoir. Indeed one suspects that he would have been a better Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament than an ambassador in Central Asia.
Murray repeatedly makes clear that his book has been censored and that he was not allowed to quote key documents. He professes to have circumvented this restriction by posting the said material on his web site but, when one accesses the site, one finds that most of the documents have had to be removed following a threat of prosecution from the Treasury Solicitor. However, all the documents can still be seen on the Blair Watch site. A few comments by Murray on his own site since publication of the book make one wonder about the balance of his judgement, but his book does raise sharply some important issues about how democratic countries fight terrorist forces that threaten our lives and our liberties.
Links:
Craig Murray site click here
Blair Watch site click here
"The No Nonsense Guide To Globalisation" by Wayne Ellwood
The advocates of globalisation argue that it prevents the protectionism and economic collapse that we saw in the late 1920s/early 1930s, that it promotes economic efficiency and therefore economic growth, that it maximises the creation of wealth, that it promotes world-wide communication and technological advance, and that ultimately economic freedom leads to political freedom.
The opponents of globalisation insist that at best it accentuates the gap between rich and poor and at worse lowers overall living standards, that it promotes gender inequality through its adverse impact on women, that it undermines human rights by damaging trade union and worker organisations, that it massively strengthens corporate - especially multinational - power, and that it damages and even destroys the local and world environment.
Canadian writer Wayne Ellwood, in this contribution to the "New Internationalist" [click here] series of "No Nonsense Guides", is clearly in the latter camp. In this short but informative review, he starts by summarizing the colonial history of globalisation and explains the nature of its current institutions:
Ellwood explains the nature and impact of the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed on debtor countries by the World Bank and the IMF and reminds us that in the 1990s most years debt interest paid by developing countries actually exceeded new loans to those countries. He traces the five-fold increase in the debt of the non-oil producing Third World between 1973 and 1982, the melt-down of the Russian economy in the early 1990s, the 1997 collapse of Thailand, Taiwan, Malalyia, Singapore & South Korea, and the Brazilian crash of 1999.
The figures are mind-blowing: total Third World debt is now around three trillion (million million) dollars, while every day an estimated 1.5 trillion dollars is traded on global currency markets. Today some 50 of the top 100 economies of the world are not those of nation states but of multinational corporations, while average income in the very poorest countries is less than one dollar a day.
In the face of this compelling evidence, it is impossibe not to draw the conclusion that globalisation is in crisis and needs serious reform. Ellwood himself does not offer a cohert and comprehensive programme; instead he hands over the final chapter of his book to five activists who each set out one particular reform:
Link: Trades Union Congress globalisation site click here
“People Who Live In The Dark” by Andrew Blick
The sub-title of this work is "The history of the special adviser in British politics" and the odd title is a quote from a critic of such advisers who believes that they operate surreptitiously. I approached the book with a personal interest and somewhat subjectively because I served as a Special Adviser at the Northern Ireland Office (1974-76) and the Home Office (1976-78), in both cases when Merlyn Rees was the Labour Secretary of State, while at the beginning of 2005 my son Richard became a Special Adviser at the Department for Education and Skills, working for the Labour Secretary of State Ruth Kelly.
In his 'note on historiography and sources', Blick states that "There is no comprehensive history of the special adviser". Well, now there is because his work is a careful and chronological account of the use of such advisers by successive British governments over the last four decades. While the governments in power in both the world wars used outside advisers, effectively the system of special advisers - or political advisers appointed to give temporary and partisan support to senior ministers - was introduced by Harold Wilson in his governments of 1964-1970. Although the Heath administration made modest use of such advisers, the system really came into its own with the Wilson/Callaghan governments of 1974-79 when I spent four years in Whitehall. The Thatcher and Major administrations continued the practice, but the Blair governments have made the most extensive use of special advisers in terms of both numbers and influence.
The system has worked well overall and it is now a permanent feature of British politics. Critics argue that the system is now too large, but Blick points out that, even under Blair, the total number of special advisers is only around 80 compared to 3,500 senior civil servants and a professional civil service of 400,000 in all. The same observers frequently claim that such advisers are too powerful, but their influence has been grossly exaggerated by a sometimes hysterical media and, in so far as they do achieve some authority, this is because their democratically-elected ministers want then to.
Blick's book is not a racy read, since he is scrupulously cautious in his judgements and prodigiously comprehensive in his sourcing. There are over 1,500 footnotes, including ones referencing articles I wrote for the "Times" in 1974 and 1978. If the whole thing looks and reads somewhat academically, then this is clearly because it started life as a PhD dissertation, but it is a fascinating insight into the nature of government in the last half of the 20th century.
“Stepping On White Corns” by Jim Moher
Two years after I moved to the London borough of Brent (where I still live), in 1986 the borough became politically infamous for bitter racial divisions sparked by the suspension of Maureen McGoldrick, the headmistress of Sudbury Infants School, for an alleged racial remark. At the time, my son was a pupil at Sudbury Junior School which was located on the same site (since 1999, the two schools have been combined) and suffering from the chronic teacher shortages that were a major feature of the chaotic education policies of the borough.
Two decades later, the episode and its wide ramifications have been written up by a local Labour politician who played an active role in many of the debates at the time and whom I have known since moving to to the borough. Jim Moher obtained his PhD with a thesis on the history of the millwrights and he has brought to this political history all the research and forensic skills that he deployed on that thesis.
“Stepping On White Corns” is a formidable work: almost 300 pages of close text representing a meticulous chronicling of events, a diligent noting of comprehensive sources, and a genuine attempt to present different viewpoints, although he admits that it is “somewhat subjective”. It is an account enlivened by a vast cast of characters, colourful in both senses of the word, and some – like Ken Livingstone, Paul Boateng, and Trevor Phillips – still around the political scene.
The spark for the traumatic events was an angry and unrecorded telephone conversation between McGoldrick and a junior town hall official called Shelagh Szulc. Moher's personal conclusion is that “she [McGoldrick] may have said something which was capable of misunderstanding or misinterpretation in a heated telephone conversation” but he is very clear (as I am) that the headmistress was not racist and had not made a racist remark.
Sadly for McGoldrick and many others, the potent mix of politics and race – combined with personal ambition and many misunderstandings – of that time exploded into what Moher calls Brent's “nervous breakdown”. Of course, the borough was not alone – especially in the capital – in acting with possibly good intentions but often political obsessiveness. He writes: “Those were looney days in Brent and London in many ways. People caught up in these events acted strangely and, in most normal people's eyes, were quite mad to be involved at all in such activities”.
Reading “Stepping On White Corns” is a sobering and often disturbing reminder of a dreadful time for politics and education in Brent. Fortunately my son managed to secure good examination results and the borough now is what Moher describes as “a model of social and multi-racial, multi-cultural cohesion”.
[The book has been published privately and is available from the author at 51 Medway Gardens, Wembley, Middlesex HA0 2RJ price £11.50 including postage & packaging.]
If there were a coalition government in Britain, a prime candidate to be Chancellor of the Exchequer would be the Liberal Democrat economic spokesman since 2003, Vince Cable. First of all, he has the knowledge: he was Chief Economist for Shell from 1995-1997. Second, he has the reputation: up to and during the global economic crisis which started in 2007, he has been an impressive voice of reason. So this book - his take on the crisis - has to be welcomed. It is commendably short (just 170 pages), no doubt mainly because he is an active politician who wrote it "in some haste in the gaps left in a very busy few months in the summer and autumn of 2008". It is lucid and balanced but ultimately somewhat disappointing in not providing a clear set of policies to avoid such 'boom and bust' in the future.
Cable puts the current 'credit crunch' into perspective in two important respects. First, he shows that it is only the latest, if one of the largest, in a succession of economic crises over several centuries - arguably the sixth since the Napoleonic Wars - and therefore should not have been as surprising as it was to most politicians and financiers. Second, he demonstrates how this perfect economic storm is in fact a set of interlocking failures in the global financial system which makes a solution neither obvious or easy.
The components of the crisis - as he identifies them - are:
“Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil And Fundamentalism In Central Asia” by Ahmed Rashid
Rarely can a book have been so timely and so topical. Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has been writing about Afghanistan for over 20 years. His book was published in 2000 to critical acclaim but a limited readership. Then, on 11 September 2001, there came the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the book became required reading for anyone wanting a better understanding of the complex politics of Afghanistan and the wider region. I was only able to start reading the work as the American bombing commenced and the collapse of the regime proved so surprisingly swift that I was struggling to finish the text before the Northern Alliance finished the Taliban.
Rashid describes the history of Afghanistan as "one of the greatest tragedies of this century” and reminds us several times that the invasion by the Soviet Union and the subsequent civil wars have cost some 1.5 million lives in a desperately poor country of some 20 million where life expectancy is just 43 years. The Taliban appeared almost out of nowhere when they took over Kandahar on 5 November 1994. The capital Kabul fell to the Taliban on 26 September 1996 and, if it had not been for American intervention, who knows how much longer the reign of terror would have lasted.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is its position – surrounded by many neighbours with their own agendas – and its ethnic mix – providing plenty of proxies for the adjacent states to use to their own ends. The Taliban would never have arisen, but for the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – supported by the US – who wanted to use the Pashtun ethnic group to block the influence of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen who eventually formed the Northern Alliance, backed by Iran, Turkey, India, Russia and most of the Central Asian Republics.
The Americans created a Frankenstein regime that later harboured Osama Bin Laden, because the USA forgot about Afghanistan once the Soviet Union withdrew and was content to leave matters to its Pakistani and Saudi friends. As Rashid puts it: “The pipeline of US military aid to the Mujaheddin was never replaced by a pipeline of humanitarian aid that could have been an inducement for the warlords to make peace and rebuild the country”.
Rashid’s book is particularly fascinating in explaining how this regional stand-off has at its heart the issue of access to the oil and gas riches of land-locked Central Asia, the last untapped reserves of energy in the world today. Indeed I learned so much from this articulate and well-informed book, including the meaning of the term ‘Taliban’ (students of Islam) and the proper interpretation of the word ‘jihad’ (the inner struggle of a Muslim to become a better person).
If we want lasting peace in Afghanistan, we have to be prepared for a long haul: “Ethnicity is the clarion call of the modern era. Trying to resolve ethnic problems and keep states together needs persistent and consistent diplomacy rather than virtual bribes to keep various warlords quiet”.
“Why Do People Hate America?” by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies
After the horrific events of 11 September 2001, Americans and non-Americans alike have struggled to understand the reason for such an all-out assault on the USA and this international bestseller - published in 2002 - has proved to be one of the most thoughtful and influential contributions to a debate of profound importance. Significantly it comes from two British-based Muslim writers - Pakistan-born Ziauddin Sardar, a writer and broadcaster, and Welsh-born Merryl Wyn Davies, a writer and anthropologist.
Many Americans will find this an exceptionally difficult book to read because it challenges so many beliefs which are central to the American psyche but, if they are open-minded enough, they will find it illuminating if disturbing. This is in no sense a 'balanced' analysis, since there is no effort to delineate what is 'good' about American society - that is taken as understood. Equally this is not a prognosis for change, since it does not attempt to set out specifically what needs to be done to address and resolve the hatred - the reader is left to infer this from the analysis, but I think that this is a serious weakness in the work.
So, just why do so many people around the world hate America with such a passion? As one would expect from intellectuals like Sardar and Davies, the answer is not singular or simple.
Sardar and Davies argue that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, America has become not simply the only super power but a "hyper power" without historical precedent in its wealth and strength. If their criticisms could be reduced to a single charge, it would probably be that this immense power results in overweening arrogance which in turns results in a blind belief in the superiority of all things American and an inability to engage openly with other countries, cultures and opinions.
The authors conclude:"To avoid a clash of civilisations, the USA must accept that all civilisations have the same right to exist, the same freedom to express themselves, and the same liberty to order their society guided by their own moral vision. Moreover, all other people of the world have the right and the freedom to disagree with America".
All reviews by ROGER DARLINGTON
Last modified on 29 December 2008
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