by James Peck ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2011
A prodigiously researched, provocative critique.
From the Cold War to the War on Terror, a historian and foreign-policy analyst charts the rise of human rights and the U.S. government’s appropriation of the doctrine for its own ends.
In the immediate wake of World War II, when America busied itself reorganizing a good portion of the globe, human rights played little role in the nation’s foreign policy. Notwithstanding the noble words adorning the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, American policymakers rejected rhetoric deemed simultaneously too airily sanctimonious and too dangerous, given the nation’s own persistent civil-rights problems. Instead, the country flew the banner of anticommunism, emphasizing the virtues of freedom and modernization. By Jimmy Carter’s administration, after the disastrous Vietnam War, the government sought a new mantra and seized upon human rights, in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s phrase, as “a globally resonant message of a great power.” Relying on decades of documents from the CIA, NSA, the Defense Department, think tanks, government-development agencies and a variety of human-rights groups and NGOs, Peck (Washington’s China: The National Security World, the Cold War, and the Origins of Globalism, 2006) traces the growth and utility of the doctrine though five more administrations, as each has used human rights (and other idealistic rationales like “democratization” and “humanitarianism”) to justify American interventions. The author identifies two currents of the human-rights movement—one concerning itself with individual civil and political rights and another focused on cultural, educational and economic issues—and demonstrates how the United States, while conveniently ignoring embarrassing chunks of its own history, has nimbly highlighted the first at the expense of the second. This clever statecraft has placed the two currents at odds, hamstringing various human-rights organizations insistent upon their own objectivity or subtly manipulating them in service of Washington’s ideological purposes. Peck calls for a broader understanding of human rights, one that doesn’t inoculate leaders against charges of human-rights abuses simply because they head democracies, one that takes collective rights every bit as seriously as individual rights.
A prodigiously researched, provocative critique.Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8328-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
Share your opinion of this book
More by Sirin Phathanothai
BOOK REVIEW
by Sirin Phathanothai with James Peck
BOOK REVIEW
edited by James Peck & by Noam Chomsky
by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Clavin
BOOK REVIEW
by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
More by Steven Levitsky
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.