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Left Wing Book Club

THE ISRAEL LOBBY
By Mearsheimer & Walt

This is one of the most controversial books of the decade. Its proponents on the Left have declared it to be a brave bit of "truth telling" that provides the intellectual argument for reappraising one of America's less fruitful strategic alliances. Conservatives have castigated it as dangerous and even anti-semitic, casting it as little more than an intellectualized "Protocols," dependent on the blood libel that Jews are not to be trusted because of their dual loyalties. The authors - both are academics whose careers have focused on international relations and Great Power politics - earnestly profess surprise that their modestly argued book has caused such a fuss.

The argument of the book is well known and easily summarized. The authors argue that Israel is a nation with whom the US has a relationship that is as much emotional as it is strategic. While Israel once had a compelling moral reason for its existence, that animating cause has been lost as Israel has become an expansionist power that oppresses the Palestinian people. The authors believe that US foreign policy is dangerously tilted in favor of Israel, and that this tilt is the result of a loosely organized subset of proponents the authors charmingly call the "Israel Lobby" (at least they don't call it Big Israel). The authors believe that, but for the Lobby's pernicious influence, US Middle East policy would be much more balanced, and less dangerous.

That's the argument. As for the presentation, it is by turns conventional, disingenuous, and almost sublimely ridiculous. However, I think it is important to say at the outset that I take the authors at their word when they say they are not anti-semitic. For one thing, they don't question Israel's right to exist, which is the dividing line between being an Israel critic, and being anti-semitic. They even admit that Israel obtained its territory fair and square through a combination of UN mandates, conquest, and negotiation (although they don't like the settlements or the Occupation).

The authors follow the conventional Leftist critique of Israel: she is a nation founded on stolen land (although the authors admit that the post-WW2 Jews can be forgiven for seeking a homeland). The settlement policy is, of course, heavily criticized. The authors also describe Israel as the Middle East's greatest military power with little to fear from its neighbors. Whatever meritorious reasons Israel may have once had for its existence, she is held to have lost her moral basis thanks to its practice of aggression and apartheid-style social structure.

Israel's hostile relations with her neighbors, and with its many critics in the UN and the international community, form the most disingenuous parts of this book. M&W are "Great Powers" scholars who believe each nation acts in rational, predictable manner according in a sort of Metternichian Waltz of Nations. This may describe the rest of the world, but it does not describe the Middle East. Israel is not just facing enemies; she is facing enemies who would destroy her if given the chance and have said so repeatedly for decades. While the IDF goes out of its way to minimize combatant deaths, the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, and all the others deliberately target civilians, especially children and the elderly. Iran's leaders have expressed in terms both explicit and oblique that they intend to use their nuclear weapons against Israel. Many Palestinians, Arabs, and Iranians are Holocaust-deniers and lurid anti-semites. M&W mention not a word about this.

M&W also fail to mention the media and political double standards to which Israel is subjected. The world is filled with low-level violence that goes virtually unremarked. Two permanent members of the Security Council - Russia and China - have killed hundreds in Georgia and Tibet just in the last year. Russia has also destroyed Chechnya in a chaotic series of punitive wars. Central Africa has recently emerged from a continent-wide war that led to over a million civilian deaths. Sri Lankans have been killing each other for decades, with one side using terrorist tactics later perfected by the Palestinians. These stories are usually relegated to brief mentions in most media outlets. Meanwhile, every rock throwing mob and stubbed toe in the "Occupied Territories" has warranted wall-to-wall coverage on the world's TV's. M&W repeatedly say they want Israel to be treated "like any other nation." Unfortunately, she does not have this luxury.

The sections dealing with the Lobby are the heart of the book, but are also the most ridiculous. M&W describe a loose associations of scholars, think tanks, "conservative" magazines, pundits, and "neo-con" policy makers, all knitted together by AIPAC to direct US policy toward Israel and the greater Middle East. M&W find something untoward in all this without pausing to consider that the Lobby is just that: a lobby. It is hardly unique. There are lobbies for everything in DC, including foreign nations and their American supporters. What raises this to the level of ridiculous is the power that M&W credit the Lobby with exercising. M&W honestly believe that the Lobby is so powerful and pervasive that it alone is responsible for the US's favorable treatment of Israel. You know, I remember when Pat Buchanan was practically drummed out of polite society because he complained about "Israel and its amen corner in the US Congress." How times have changed.

M&W claim that the Lobby's influence is dangerous because it convinces the US government to favor Israel in ways that are harmful to US interests in the Middle East. They are among the many people on the Left who believe that we would have Peace in the Middle East, if only Israel would behave herself. That might be the case, but it would be the peace of the grave. M&W can't imagine any other reason why the US might favor Israel. The fact that Israel is culturally European, with many US citizens maintaining close family and business ties there does not seem important. Also unimportant in M&W's eyes is the fact that Israel is the Middle East's only representative democracy. And, they don't seem to consider the fact that Americans - when forced to choose between the disciplined dignified Israelis or the caterwauling suicide bombing Palestinians - find that there really is no choice at all. No, M&W say it's all the Lobby's fault. Those W$J op-eds and think tank white papers are more influential than I realized!

According to M&W, the Lobby's primary raison d'etre is defending Israel when she acts aggressively, whether in invading Lebanon, re-occupying the Gaza Strip, or what have you. It's second goal is to make sure that the US is always aligned with - if not actively carrying out - Israel's strategic interests. M&W go as far as to blame the Lobby for the Iraq War, saying that the drumbeat for war was facilitated and often driven by the Israeli government and the Lobby. Does that mean the Iraq War isn't George Bush's fault? M&W are dead serious about this, and so are this book's supporters. They really believe that, but for some US "neo-cons" and the Lobby, acting at the direction of the Israeli government, there would not have been an Iraq War. This is the most pernicious part of the book. Did Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and John Edwards (among others) vote to approve the use of force because of the Israel Lobby? Really?? The post-9/11 atmosphere when the decision to go to war was made is barel mentioned, nor is the long history of US-Iraq enmity. The possibility that Iraq might have WMD's - easily dismissed in hindsight, but not so back then - also goes unmentioned. And, the free will of US policy makers and military leaders is also given short shrift.

This is easily the most pernicious part of the book, and also the part that makes this such a landmark in leftist thought. Elements of the Left have been growing increasingly anti-Israeli for decades. At this point, you can't go to an anti-war demonstration in SF without seeing a wide array of anti-Israeli protesters. Progressive activists have made common cause with Palestinians protesting the Occupation. But, M&W represent the moment when the anti-Israeli attitudes of the Left's foot soldiers and extremists has entered the mainstream of progressive thought. This is a pure distillation of everything progressives have said against Israel, along with a rationale for ending the special relationship between the US and Israel by blaming the US's problems in the Middle East on a shadowy Lobby (of US citizens!), rather on the dysfunctional autocrats and murderous thugs who rule Israel's neighbors. Sadly, M&W's argument has only gained currency in Dc and elsewhere. As the "cycle of violence" continues, it is easy to imagine an increasingly impatient American Left abandoning Israel as it once abandoned Indo-China. If this comes to pass, this book would have been a major stepping stone on that path

Left Wing Book Club, pt 3

BLOWBACK

by Chalmers Johnson

I don't know if I would call this a "classic," but it's definitely a landmark in Progressive historiography. For a few years, you couldn't walk into a cafe in SF without seeing at least one nose-ringed college kid staring intently at its pages. Given its title, and theme of American "empire," I assumed it was some sort of breathless expose about CIA war crimes in Latin America, or some such. I have always been curious about its contents. Having read it, I am surprised at what this book does, and does not, contain.

From outward appearances, Chalmers Johnson would not seem to be someone who would end up being mentioned in the same breath as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomskey. Johnson is professor emeritus at UC San Diego, where he was a scholar of contemporary Asian Studies with an emphasis on Japan and China. All of his pre-Blowback books were scholarly tomes on Asian politics and economics. But, late in life he appears to have gotten religion and become an advocate of the "American Empire" theory of history, which holds that America is not a republic, but actually a globe spanning empire whose economic and military depradations threaten it with "blowback" from foreign populations radicalized by their oppression under the boot of Uncle Sam

That's the theme anyway. But, for all of Johnson's "imperial" rhetoric and radical credentials, this book only fitfully touches on the theme of "blowback." Johnson's discussions of Blowback begin and end the book. The middle portion (about 2/3 of "Blowback," by my reckoning) is actually a fairly interesting analysis of Asian development in the post-Cold War environment. This gives the book an odd hybrid quality. In fact, it gives every indication of being two books that were combined into one. 

The blowback sections of the book set out a catalogue of sins - both of commission and omission - that the US has engaged in over the course of the Cold War and the Nineties. At the outset, it's important to remember that this book was published in 2000, so Johnson does not discuss 9/11 or the War on Terror, although he does mention Osama bin Laden as being an exemplar of blowback. The actual examples of US depredations are not what you think. He begins the book describing an accident in Italy when some Top Guns flying through a ski valley sliced through a ski gondola's main cable, killing 20. A stupid accident, yes, but I don't think anyone is worried that Italians are going to don suicide vests any time soon. 

The biggest surprise in this book is the countries where Johnson looks to find most of his examples of US sins leading to blowback: virtually his entire discussion relates to American activities in Asia. His thickest dossiers are in Okinawa and Korea. In Okinawa, the complaint has been that the US military has made Okinawa a de facto colony by the placement of a number of military bases, which were used as staging areas for the Korean and Viet Nam Wars. Okinawans don't like the fact that the US military has taken some of the best land in Okinawa. Johnson also hammers the US military for the sexed up atmosphere around the bases, and the sex crimes that occasionally occur there. I would agree that the rapes Johnson describes are indeed disturbing and disgraceful, but (1) they are infrequent and (2) they hardly reflect official US military policy. 

Johnson is also scathing on the subject of Korea. These are actually the most interesting chapters - one for the South, one for the North - in the book. Information about US-Korea relations is very hard to come by in the US (but for M*A*S*H, the Korean War would be virtually forgotten, despite 40,000 combat deaths and its status as the only time we have faced China on the battlefield). There have always been rumors of US atrocities during the Korean War, although none have ever been confirmed. It is also clear that many people in South Korea are virulently anti-American. This chapter gives some indication why that might be. South Korea was, for decades, a military dictatorship, and the government was never shy about cracking down on dissent and protest. As there were also thousands of US troops in Korea during that time, our military and the local dictators were easily conflated in the Korean popular mind. Funnily, Johnson blames the Carter administration (really!) for some of the worst moments of US-South Korea relations, including a brutal crackdown in the city of Kwanju. Predictably, Johnson is a proponent of unification and "bringing the North in from the cold." Johnson is probably right that our record in Korea is an ambiguous one, and one that is too little discussed in our political discourse. 

Johnson also has chapters on Japan and China. These are much less relevant to his theme of blowback. In the Japan chapter, he writes that the US set up post-WW2 Japan to be a model exemplar of the sort of good life a US ally could lead if it abandoned communism and military rule. Johnson goes as far as to state that the LDP was originally funded by the CIA, and that the US gave the Japanese favorable trade concessions that allowed Japan to "hollow out" America's once-proud manufacturing sector. Johnson forgets to mention that America's manufacturing sector did a lot to hollow itself out with crappy, expensive products. Johnson also repeatedly states that Japan was actually a socialist planned economy. which would probably come as a surprise to the Japanese. Johnson is also incorrect about mainstream Japanese opinions about America. We are considered an ally there, and most Japanese seem to hold a positive view of America and American pop culture. Johnson provides little evidence to indicate otherwise. 

The China chapter is a fairly conventional description of China's economic awakening, although Johnson does note that America did not win itself many Chinese admirers by backing Chiang Kai-Shek in the Forties. These chapters are so focused on describing their subject countries that the theme of blowback takes a back seat, and even disappears at times. Johnson also spends some time discussing Indonesia, where he tries to  blame the US for every political murder carried out by Suharto. 

Johnson brings it all together in his chapter on the famous 1997 "meltdown" of the Asian tiger economies, an event that - until last year - was half-forgotten in this country. In Johnson's telling, the meltdown arose after the US aggressively sold Asia on globalization and open markets, and then pulled the rug out from under them with capital outflows. The IMF, which Johnson describes as little more than an arm of the US, then imposed austerity measures that plunged millions into poverty. Johnson that alleges that, following the collapse of the "tigers," US businesses came in and bought Asian companies at fire sale prices, which - he says - was the plan all along. Yes! It was all a plot! 

Throughout the book, Johnson is scathing as to the behavior of successive administrations in DC. Thus, it's amusing that much of his ire is directed at Democrats from JFK and LBJ to the Carter administration to the Clintons, Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke and others. Reagan and Bush 41 receive the "cowboy imperialism" insults, but the specific instances of US behavior leading to chaos in Asia is almost always the result of Democratic approaches to foreign policy. Johnson doesn't really try to figure out why this is, but I would say the Dems are much more likely to think they can influence events in societies half a world away, while Republicans tend to take a hands-off approach (with occasional military displays). Dems are also inheritors of the gassy Wilsonian ideal of a US-led activist international community. And, for all the Dems' claims at being the party of the common man, the Clinton administration was very friendly to business and finance. Its efforts during the 1997 meltdown were meant to protect the US economy from the "Asian contagion." The famous "committee to save the world" was directing the response that Johnson complains of here. 

Given all of the above, you would think Johnson would get a clue and realize that the liberal-progressive approach to foreign policy is probably the cause of more world-wide resentment than anything else. As we will see in his next book Johnson will go in the opposite direction in placing blame.  


Left Wing Book Club, pt 2

THE LIMITS OF POWER: The End of American Exceptionalism

by Andrew Bacevich

From outward appearances, Bacevich gives every indication of being a liberal/progressive author. He writes books about the US that make copious use of the word "Empire." He wrote an essay excoriating Bush's conduct of the Iraq War. He publishes books with the same publisher as Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson. And, he has been a vocal critic of the War on Terror virtually from its inception.

The reality is much more interesting. Bacevich is no liberal. He is a devout Catholic, a scholar of Reinhold Niebhur, and a conservative. He lacks the anti-US and anti-military posture that so many critics of US foreign policy always seem to use as their default position. The obvious comparison is to Pat Buchanan, but Bacevich lacks Pat's fiery rhetoric. His view of the US as a fallen nation, seduced away from its republican form of gov't for the short term wealth of empire, is also a Buchanan theme. While you might not agree with everything Bacevich might say (I certainly don't) his ideas are provocative and worthy of your attention. 

This book is a short, but intense look at what Bacevich sees as the three intertwined crises facing America: the crisis of profligacy, the political crisis (no argument here), and the military crisis. These crises are the result of an American foreign policy dedicating to improving the economic conditions of Americans at the expense of the rest of the world, but which require the gov't to spend untold trillions to maintain the military commitments that support our commercial empire. Bacevich sees the US rapidly hurtling toward a moment when it will overreach and be forced to "live within its means," the dream of many critics of the  US.

The crisis of profligacy is Bacevich's least satisfying discussion. Not that I disagree that America has a crisis of profligacy! However, Bacevich is one of those people who think the US's economic problems can be summed up by the letters "O"I""&"L," and that our overseas "empire" is predicated on keeping the taps flowing, and the engines of trade spinning to benefit the US consumer. I don't disagree that we import too much of the stuff, and that we rely on hostile regimes for our most basic resources, but that is not the be all and end all of the US's economic troubles. Bacevich spends little time on the US's worse habit of repeatedly blowing investment bubbles, for example. He also may be the only person who has read Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech and found in it a visionary call for Americans to change their energy use, rather than a grim jeremiad against the American way of life. Bacevich also fails to note the essential hypocrisy of greens like Carter who demand changes in US energy use, but then refuse to allow reasonable alternatives like coal and nuclear, but instead pursue unproven solar and wind technology. Still, Bacevich's central point - that the US has spent too much and is in grave danger of economic collapse, even as it frantically spends even more to prop itself up - is a sound one that our political class is refusing to consider. 

The political crisis is the congress' abdication of its co-equal status in  favor of an "imperial" presidency directing the spread of empire, first during the Cold War and now during the War on Terror. In Bacevich's view, the American republic ended when FDR mobilized for WW2, and Truman failed to stand down, but maintained US defense spending to counter the Soviet Union. Bacevich focuses on the political crisis in terms of its effect on foreign policy, where a complaisant Congress has allowed successive US presidents to "run" an empire with little or no oversight. 

By "empire," Bacevich does not mean a bunch of colonies paying tribute, but rather the US's empire of military bases. Honesty, I have heard this "empire of bases" rhetoric before. I agree that our military commitments are vast, and often irrational, inasmuch they are based on the implied promise that American soldiers will die to protect, for example, Romania. They will?? But, calling it an "empire" is a stretch because it does not meet the traditional definition of an empire. Really, much of the world is a protectorate of the US with the wealthy countries of Europe and Asia, essentially freed from looking to themselves for their defense. Language aside, Bacevich correctly diagnoses this as a product of WW2 and the Cold War, when the US had rational reasons to want to contain the Soviet Union. Bacevich sees the "empire of bases"as a needlessly expensive relic of a by-gone age, and that the US needs to "stand down". Given the undercurrent of hostility with which even our allegedly most friendly "allies" seem to view the US military presence in the world, I would say that's a discussion worth having, but I'll bet a lot of them would just as soon continue to rely on US military protection even as they rail against the "dumb" flat-footed policeman off the world.

Bacevich spends little time on domestic politics, but I would argue that the real political crisis is here at home where Congress has given every indication of being a slightly mad institution, lurching from feather-bedding the rich and powerful to populist "outrage," even as it spends and borrows trillions in a mad attempt to prop up the welfare state and the international financial system. Bacevich's book came out before the Crash of '08, and the subsequent Age of Bailouts. I would say the broken nature of our political class has been on full display for six months now with no end in sight. 

The military crisis is Bacevich's most sobering chapter. He sees the American soldier as a noble, well trained highly motivated warrior, but bluntly states that this is not enough. Bacevich sees a military that has failed at the jobs it has been given - pacify Afghanistan and Iraq - and also failed at its most basic mission: defend the US from attack on 9/11. Predictably, Bacevich faults politicians from both political parties who have sent US troops into undeserving locales such as Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia. He also faults the strategic decisions that led to the War in Iraq. However, Bacevich reserves most of his scorn for the military itself, especially the generals in the Army, who seemed clueless as to how to come to grips with the insurgency in Iraq. Bacevich sees an officer corps that has simply forgotten how to fight and win wars, and the performances of Gens. Abizaid, Sanchez, and Casey in Iraq certainly support this thesis (at the time this book was published, Petraus' Surge strategy had just started paying fragile dividends. I have no idea how this has changed Bacevich's views). Many times, the brass comes across as products of a graduate school seminar who would look askance at a Patton or a Sherman. Certainly, there is still an extreme aversion against the loss of life, and a bias in favor of overly expensive weapons systems that strain our resources, and are easily defeated by cheap IED's. This is a fascinating discussion and the best part of this book. While we can all "support the troops," I think Bacevich's critique is a fair one, and one that the military's civilian supporters are often reluctant to consider or even acknowledge. 

This book is a broad based critique of America's conduct of its foreign affairs over the last 50 years, and especially the last 8. While I don't often agree with some of Bacevich's choice of targets and rhetoric, I think his point that we are approaching a moment where we need to make fundamental changes in the allocation of our military resources is a sound one. Certainly, it makes no sense to maintain military presences in countries for which there is little rationale for doing so. And, rather than creating weapons systems that are tremendously expensive, yet vulnerable to cheap dangers like IEDs and suicide bombers, it might make more sense to downsize to meet the enemies that we actually have, rather than some mythical Red Army that no longer poses an existential threat. 

Left Wing Book Club, pt 1

POST-AMERICAN WORLD
by Fareed Zakaria


Fareed Zakaria's book came out to universal acclaim early last year, and no wonder. Zakaria has been a prominent fixture on cable news shows, editorial pages, and assorted symposia for several years now. He has a magnetic charisma and a charming mien that translates well on television and in person. His ability to flit from one big picture topic to another is perfect for both CNN and the Davos Forum. That this book would become a best-seller, and that Candidate Obama would be photographed holding it as a talisman of his international thinking, was inevitable. 

Zakaria, like Thomas Friedman, is an enthusiastic apostle of globalization and transnational institutions. But, where Friedman usually adopts the perspective of the American abroad in the world, Zakaria often casts himself as the International Sophisticate explaining the attitudes of the world toward Americans. 

This book's theme - which you can guess from the title - is that we must be prepared for the imminent arrival of the moment when the US is no longer the dominant economic superpower. This is an ambitious undertaking for any book. Thus, I was surprised when I saw how short and slim this book is. At 250+ pages, you could easily read it in one plane ride. 

Zakaria's thesis has, in many ways, been overtaken by events. He opens the book by arguing the US's economic pre-eminence is rapidly becoming a thing of the past because of the "rise of the rest," meaning former backwaters like Brazil, China, Russia, India, and others are joining the global economy and growing at a rapid clip that will soon cause them to eclipse the US. Oops. Zakaria lacked a crystal ball to tell him the world financial system would come apart just a few months after his book was published with, so far, unknown consequences for "the rest," whose rapid growth depended on ever-growing first world markets for their exports. 

Zakaria spends the bulk of his book discussing China and India, the greatest of the "rising" powers. His China discussion is little more than a conventional recitation of China's development in the last 20 years. Did you know that China has rapidly urbanized? And that many western countries have outsourced their production there? And that there has been an explosion of consumer spending in China? And that China runs a trade surplus with the US? Well, if you somehow didn't know any of that, Zakaria clues you in. 

Zakaria's China discussion is definitely meant to be favorable to the Chinese, and to the idea that the rise of China will not be a threat to the US or to the Pacific Region. Zakaria repeats the Chinese gov't's repeated statements that they intend to have a "peaceful rise." He touches on the fact that the Chinese have demonstrated themselves to be virulently nationalist, but convinces himself (but not me) that the gov't will not use this to its own advantage. He mentions that one of China's great advantages is that it can order vast projects into being at a drop of Beijing's hat - if a neighborhood must be raized for an Intel plant, it shall be done. Zakaria doesn't seem to wonder how China would treat its rivals, if this is how it treats its own citizens. Zakaria's see-no-evil approach reaches its zenith when he talks to the German architect who designed many of the Olympics sites. The architect speaks approvingly of the gov't's willingness to move people and materials on his behalf. The architect's name is (I kid you not) Albert Speer Jr. Yes, he is the son of the Third Reich's Speer.

Zakaria's discussion of India, on the other hand, is excellent. Zakaria is obviously much better equipped to deal with India, as it is his birthplace. He gives a detailed history of India since 1948, both in its approach to economics and foreign policy. He gives a good accounting of Indian society, which can encompass both biblical poverty and spectacular entrepreneurship. He argues persuasively that America should regard India as a future ally. I hope that the hip NPR types who are his fanbase - as well as Obama - listen to this advice, as it is Zakaria's at his best. 

The rest of the book is dedicated to persuading us Americans to accept our lot in life, and refrain from resisting our economic eclipse. This part of the book was incredibly weak. Zakaria says we must prepare for a "post-American world," but doesn't grapple with what that world might be like. He clearly sees China as the next superpower, which is also the conventional wisdom in most parts. But he is reluctant to wonder what kind of superpower it might be. I would say that China would not be nearly the benign superpower that the US has been. China is not shy about aggressively securing commodities to itself, going as far as to support the Sudanese and other dubious gov'ts. It has been a nuclear weapons proliferator to some of the world's least deserving regimes. And yet, Zakaria breezily assures his readers that a world with a strong China and weaker US would simply be a richer, safer world. I doubt it. 

Zakaria is also willfully blind about the possibility of aggression from other corners. He treats Russia as little more than a rising power, without acknowledging its repeated aggressions - including invasions and energy blockades - towards its neighbors. On the topic of Islamic terrorism, Zakaria is almost contemptuous of those who would orient US foreign policy towards preventing another 9/11. Why Osama and his boys are just a bunch of ragamuffins now! Right, because the US aggressively acted to disrupt them, rather than sit around the office jawboning about what a shiny happy world we live in. Sadly, just 7 years from 9/11, I would say this is the prevailing attitude in most sophisticated circles. 

Zakaria's book is fine as a conventional apologia for China, excellent for its depiction of India, and weak in its lack of acceptance of world aggressors. Zakaria is also a little too eager to usher in a post-American world without wondering whether that world would be one in which he, or any of us, would want to live. But, as a record of what the educated liberal elite thinks of America's prospects, I would say this book is invaluable.

The Left Wing Book Club

The failed Charles Freeman nomination made me realize that we have four years of foreign policy "fun" to look forward to from the practitioners of "smart power." To better understand where what direction this might send the US, I'm thinking of doing a series of analyses of different progressive or liberal foreign policy "classics" from the last few years. These are books known to have influenced Obama's foreign policy team, or the progressive left that is the backbone of "smart power's" political support. 


Pursuant to this idea, I am in the middle of reading "The Post American World" by Fareed Zakaria, which Candidate Obama was famously seen clutching (if not reading) on an airport tarmac. Other books I'm thinking of reading are: 

1. the "Blowback" Trilogy by Chalmers Johnson
2. "A Problem From Hell" by Samantha Power
3. "Chasing The Flame" by Samantha Power
4. "The Israel Lobby" by Walt and Meirsheimer
5. "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein
6. "The Secret History Of The American Empire" by John Perkins
7. "The Corporation" by Joel Bakan
8. "Hot Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman
9. "Limits of Power" by Andrew Bacevich
10. "The Dark Side" by Jane Meyer
11. "Failed State" by Noam Chomsky

I chose the above based on one of two criteria: 

a. whether a book had been specifically associated with the Obama administration, or
b. whether I'd observed large numbers of local progressives reading them at coffee shops.

If you can think of others I should read. Let me know.

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