A
library for the price of a book.
Nation-building, or course, is the victor's terminology. I would
not be too surprised if Hitler used a similar phrase in defending his Vichy
government after he overran France. Others have coined alternative terms
for this phenomenon, including the hot button words of colonialism and
imperialism. The three books in this review purport to be examinations
of three
celebrated instances of nation-building, Western variety: making the
world safe for democracy. THE CONQUERORS describes the fierce competition
and subtle geopolitical chess games played by the Allies in their relentless
attacks on Nazi Germany, personalizing the story through the interacting
characters of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt (Truman). THE MAIN
ENEMY concerns the last decade of the CIA/KGB rivalry and the USSR's attempts
at nation-building in Afghanistan, a quixotic Soviet gesture that was followed
close on by the collapse of the USSR and the dissipation of the communist
threat. ALL THE SHAH'S MEN tells the story of the American-inspired
coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, and examines how
that early effort in nation-building (driven by fear of communism's spread)
still reverberates in the oil-rich Muslim states of Southwest Asia.
Beschloss, the telegenic presidential historian, uses THE CONQUERORS to demonstrate by the sheer volume of correspondence how intense were the debates and posturings that each world leader took in their attempts at Yalta, Potsdam, and in between, to come to agreement on what the post-war political geography would be. FDR and Churchill tolerated Stalin but senses he would be the next big enemy, so they also worked on their own, doing everything possible to prevent the USSR from occupying all of Germany during the Third Reich's last days, when the Allies were all sprinting to Berlin.
Bearden, primary author of THE MAIN ENEMY, comes at his subject from
a different perspective. A retired CIA counterintelligence officer,
Bearden spent a large portion of his career playing invisible chess against
his KGB counterparts with flesh-and-blood men as the moving pieces.
This culminated with Bearden directing the CIA's mujihadeen support activities
in
Afghanistan in opposition to the puppet Soviet government. His
unit was the first to unleash the scabrous power of Osama bin Laden and
effectively arm his mercenary band of nomads as they took on the Soviet
enemy.
Kinzer hones in on one of the CIA's first triumphs, the ousting of Mossadegh
after he had nationalized Iranian oil. Because this could not be
perceived as a colonial operation, the CIA's stalking horse was the Shah
of Iran, who was installed as a local replacement for the rule of Mossadegh.
The Shah's lust for American arms and fighter planes at the expense of
his constituents
led to the first Islamic upheaval, the Khomeini Revolution that, in
weakened form, still holds sway in Iran today.
If these three very different stories have one common theme, it is that the law of unintended consequences is a sneaky critter whose vagaries cannot be adequately predicted beforehand. Could the massive expense of the Cold War have been avoided is the clashing forces of two world systems, capitalism and communism, been better reconciled right after World War II, when both allies against Nazism? Would the CIA have committed hundreds of millions to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan if the USA had known that the very guerilla forces that the CIA funded would turn their enmity our way? Would the triumph over Mossadegh have become the prototypical covert operational success story had Iranian analysts been able to foresee the resurrection of the Ayatollahs? What unintended consequence lies ahead for the USA as it force-feeds democracy to Iraq? Let us hope that historians like these authors are taking careful and detailed notes about George W. Bush's current efforts to make "them" more like "us."
Dialogue on favorite books with Deane Rink before and during his latest trek to Antarctica, with a note from Bill Ransom and a digression about Frank Herbert (a.k.a Bookbabble 101) -- a very long and rapidly growing document:
Book reviews by Richard SeltzerA
library for the price of a book.
The
Middle East -- Context for Conflict: Iraq, Iran, Israel, Syria, Lebanon,
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf States. Historical
background and context for understanding today's news. This CD contains
the full text of 10 "Country Studies" published by the Federal Research
Division of the Library of Congress. Each country study is presented as
a single document, in plain text form -- easy to read, to print, and to
search (rather than as a collection of over 100 separate documents for
each book). The tables in the appendix of each book are presented as html
documents. In addition, we include: The 2003 edition of the CIA
World Factbook, an interlinked set of hundreds of HTML documents, with
detailed up-to-date reference information on every country in the world,
with images of maps and flags; and some classic works of history, literature,
and religion, including The Koran and books on the traditions of Judaism,
all in plain text form. Complete
table of contents Free sample: Iraq,
a Country Study.
What do Plutarch, Gibbon, Proudhon, Malthus, Houdini, Frazier, Jefferson,
Darwin, Veblen, Dewey, and Plato have in common? Their works are
all on the same Non-Fiction
CD, with over 1100 books.
Published by B&R Samizdat Express,
33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269 seltzer@samizdat.com
The Readers' Corner and
Writers Showcase
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
<
| Internet Business Showcase: | ||
|
|
|