Essential reading for anyone concerned with America’s future on the world stage.
An eye-opening look at the state of strategic balance between the United States and its rivals, large and small.
Drawing on his experience in counterinsurgency both as an adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a consultant in counterterrorism measures, Kilcullen (Global Security/Arizona State Univ.; Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism, 2016, etc.) provides lessons on how America’s rivals have adjusted their strategies to effectively take on the global superpower. After the quick and overwhelming victory in the 1991 Gulf War, it became obvious that no conventional military force stood a chance against the sort of power the U.S. could unleash on the battlefield. At the same time, the Cold War was ending, and with it the threat of nuclear Armageddon—or so it seemed. That did not mean an end to challenges to American power, and as the Vietnam War had shown, there was more than one way to fight. Kilcullen looks at the strategies used by several adversaries, from the Islamic State group and Hezbollah to Iran and North Korea, which have achieved various degrees of success. In many ways, the most provocative parts of the book are the author’s discussions of Russian “liminal warfare,” which deploys a large array of tactics, pushing the boundaries to just short of battle. Equally challenging is the Chinese doctrine of “conceptual expansion,” which expands competition to include not only trade and economic warfare, but ecological, regulatory, and media warfare—and perhaps even smuggling and other criminal activities, many of which are deniable. A running theme is the idea of evolutionary change, as nations and nonstate actors adapt to the “fitness landscape” they inhabit. As Kilcullen points out, America’s adversaries have adapted more quickly than the U.S., and the result may well be the end of the American empire. The author delivers a detailed and unsettling analysis of how America’s rivals have adapted to the modern strategic landscape—and how they hope to defeat us.
Essential reading for anyone concerned with America’s future on the world stage.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-026568-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anthropologist Kitzinger's (Women as Mothers, 1979) dreary picture of the current state of motherhood in the West leaves one wondering why anyone bothers anymore. New mothers, she says, are devalued by society and perhaps by themselves, prey to the exhortations of the medical establishment and so-called parenting experts, and plied by the media with images of unattainably perfect motherhood. She contrasts the West, where medicalized birth is ``depersonalized,'' with traditional cultures, where childbirth remains a ``social act.'' No doubt a society, such as ours, that still views motherhood as a deviation from the norm needs some attitude adjustment. But the question still seems open as to whether a woman would rather have prenatal care in the form of regular, if alienating visits to the obstetrician or in the form of exhortations, made to Jamaican women, not to drink soursop juice to avoid excessive labor pain. Kitzinger provides an unusual and enlightening tour of mothering practices around the world, from India to Zambia, Israel, and China. She is suggesting that we combine the best of mothering traditions from pre-and post- industrial societies—but how to accomplish it must be the subject of another book.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-40776-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that...
New York Times columnist Rich delivers a savaging sermon on the US government’s “rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of ‘compassionate conservativism,’ the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts”—and so much more.
Anyone who knows his work will know that Rich is no fan of either George Bush, a man “not conversant with reality as most Americans had experienced it,” or the Bush administration. In this blend of journalism and mentalités-style history—that is, the study of the mindsets that underlie and produce events—Rich looks closely and critically at the White House’s greatest hits, from the 2001 defense of gas-guzzling as essential to the American way of life to “Heckuva job, Brownie” to the ongoing morass of Iraq. By Rich’s account, of course, that parade of missteps is organic; Bush and company cannot help but err. In an effort to disguise that track record, the Republicans have exercised single-minded control of the grand narrative of the last five years, at least in part because they have exercised quasi-totalitarian control over the news media. (They are nearly forgotten already, but one needs to remember Judith Miller, Jeff Gannon, Karen Ryan and various columnists and commentators paid off to repeat the party line.) Not for nothing did a White House adviser reveal to one journalist that his bosses were set on creating their “own reality,” one that all Americans were expected to share; not for nothing did that reality include spinning amazing lies about everything from the death of football- and war hero Pat Tillman to the kidnapping of Jessica Lynch to the government’s preparedness for Katrina. And yet, and yet . . .
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that Rich had explored that particular mentalité along with the others he so fluently discusses.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2006
ISBN: 1-59420-098-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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