66 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Realism meets Classic Liberalism in International Affairs, January 18, 2005
This review is from: Future: Tense: The Coming World Order? (Paperback)
Gwynne Dyer is an excellent example of a person with tremendous experience of international relations and an uncommon grasp of the broad sweep of history. When he turns his sights on events in Iraq his clear and clean non-ideological logic sees some pretty harrowing things:
1) The war on terror was never part of the agenda in Iraq. It was all about a small clique of neo-conservatives ideologues in the Bush administration that, for the first time had the ability to inflict their vision on universial American dominance on the world, irrespective of the needs and analysis of other countries and contrary to the norms of international law developed since WWI.
2) The Bush administation played directly into the hands of Al Queada by invading a sovereign nation that was no direct threat to the US (iraq), making America the bogeyman of international politics and the perceived oppressors of the Arabs.
3) That Americans have little ability to see that their place in the world has changed: it is no longer the dominant economy and it is no longer the shining beacon of freedom. New countries Russia, and Indonesia and even China are finding the path to a rough democracy. They all are doing it by themselves, they have had no help from America, nor do they require it -- why is Iraq different.
4) That unilateral action of the US undermines the norms of international order build up since WWI and central to any notion of stability in the new century. It is this future stability that is directly threatened by the actions of the US in Iraq.
Since the US economy cannot support a war of Pax Americana for a long duration and the US electorate can only tolerate small casualties, the US will inevitably be forced from this unilateral stance in the long run to either isolation and withdrawal from international institutions.
The only real question Dyer admits is how much damage will the US and its quest for Pax Americana do to the system of international laws before they are forced to either be isolated or allow themselves to be taken more within the international order of nation states supporting the UN and the rule of law? Sooner is better than later -- hence American needs to lose this war in Iraq.
Dyer says that it is in the interests of the world that the US lose the war in Iraq sooner rather than later. It is up to the world to help bring the US back into the international order by offering her a way out of Iraq with inducements and an expanded role for the UN in Iraq, and other hot spots around the world.
Dyer is really spot-on much of his analysis, but there is a really troubling point about this book: his cold lucid, non-ideological analysis is something that the rest of the democratic world considers a norm, but it is a style that is absent from the name calling, paranoid world of US Political Culture (if you disagree with me you must be a liberal of a conservative. This is a society where these two honourable terms have been turned into profane names by the polular media --- remember that there are people such as Rush Limbaugh & Anne Coulter, Fox News, etc. whom people actually listen to in the US! -- just across the border in Canada one would be laughed at if one were to cite one of these people or media outlets as an authorative source on just about anything). But this culture of ideology, bad manners, selfishness and paranoia is what passes for debate in the press and the airwaves of the US. That culture excludes the kind of analysis that Dyer brings!
Dyer accurately points out that the ability to constrain the neo-conservatives was bi-partisan. Reagan, Bush and Clinton all repressed an urge to implement Pax Americana on the world. Bush Sr. specifically after Gulf War I. But 9/11 was the trigger that allow the neo-conservatives to seize foreign policy. Terrorism was a means towards an ideological end and they were ready to stoke the ever burning fires of US paranoia to further their agenda of Pax Americana.
In this sense both the terrorists and the neoconservatives served each others' ends... it seems ironic --- Pax Americana was extended, and Al Queada got the "Great Satan" to be in Iraq as a symbol of US oppression over Arabs -- both furthered their ends with 9/11.
The task now is for the rest of the world to help the US out of Iraq before it runs roughshod over what is left of international order. We must save the US from themselves or at least hope some sane international leadership comes to the for within the Bush Administration. The longer the logic of Pax Americana rules, the worse off the whole world.....
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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear, concise, and very helpful, March 20, 2005
This review is from: Future: Tense: The Coming World Order? (Paperback)
Ever since 9/11, I've been wondering what went wrong. Obviously, we did something to really anger somebody. Shows how naive I was, I guess. I subscribed to a few American leftist magazines, hoping for an insight, but I have to say the answers I was looking for are all right here in this book. Why did we attack Iraq? Why were the World Trade Center and Pentagon (and nearby me here in Pennsylvania) attacked? Who did it, and why? Is it really just about oil?
Screeds by the likes of Michael Moore are funny and fun to read, but they don't answer the bigger questions. We know Bushco is doing terrible things to our economy, the environment, he's working hard to roll back every inch of the New Deal...but what's he up to in Iraq? The answer is in this book.
I'm very grateful to the author for publishing this insightful analysis. Note, however, that when I ordered this book, Amazon told me it would be weeks before it shipped. After a month went by, they said it would be a while, was I still interested? At this point I cancelled the order, and ordered it from Amazon.ca (Canada). It seems that, as of a few months ago, this book was VERY hard to come by in the US. Published by a Canadian publishing house only, this book should be on everybody's reading list. I don't know why it's not a bestseller, quite frankly. But it is in the top 200. Quite an achievement for a book that you can't order!
If you can get your hands on it, please read it. It will clear up a lot of confusion and misinformation for you. At least, it did for me.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Putting the Iraq War Into Perspective., January 18, 2005
This review is from: Future: Tense: The Coming World Order? (Paperback)
I'd love to hear this book read by the author, one of my great heroes http://mindprod.com/heroes.html#DYER When I read it, I relish imagining his dry delivery. This would be great book to issue on cassette. It is a frustrating book if you want to use it for debating others, since it has no index and no footnotes to back up what he says. It is an overview of how the Iraq war fits into history, past and future. It gives a convincing argument why Bush invaded Iraq. It explains why Bush's jihad against the U.N. is so dangerous for us all. It also explains why the USA is overreacting to the threat of terrorism.
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