A career intelligence officer reflects on the uses and abuses of intelligence and the agencies that gather it.
Contrary to general belief, Pillar (Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2003, etc.) declares that “however important the contributions of intelligence in executing policy at the tactical and operational levels have been, its contribution to major strategic decisions has been almost nil.” If only policy were made according to an ideal model under which leaders come to an issue with open minds, digest apolitical intelligence reports and decide what best serves the national interest. Instead, decisions are made by senior policy makers on the basis of untested mental images “reflecting their sense of history, their personal experiences, and the political and strategic perspectives that they had brought with them into office.” The leaders later seek justification for their policies in intelligence reports, which may first be distorted by political expectations and then used more to generate public support for a predetermined policy than to shape that policy. Pillar deplores such “politicization” of intelligence and presents examples of its deleterious effects going back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, with special emphasis on the Vietnam and Iraq wars. When policies fail, the intelligence agencies then become convenient scapegoats, ripe for “reform.” The author briefly describes why Congress and the press are poorly situated to expose or counteract these problems. Finally, he offers some forlorn suggestions for effective intelligence reform, which he concedes have almost no chance of enactment, and some worthwhile recommendations for adapting our foreign policies to accept the inevitability of uncertainty. Along with this thoughtful analysis, however, much of the book is given over to two additional topics: in-depth denunciations of how intelligence was first ignored and then misused in the run-up to the Iraq war, and of the reorganization of the intelligence agencies that came out of the deliberations of the so-called “9/11 Commission.” Pillar’s disgust with the Bush administration and the Commission is palpable, and he goes into more detail than necessary to make his case in these sections; the noise of axe-grinding sometimes overpowers his generally well-supported positions. A thoroughly documented, cogently argued work by an author with vast personal experience of his topic, but perhaps too wide-ranging to be effectively pulled together into a single volume.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-231-15792-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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