Customer Reviews

The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

With the end of the Cold War and the growing globalization of the world marketplace there has been a marked increase in the last decade of terrorist activities, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, being just two of the more conspicuous examples. In his book "The New War", Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts lays out a complete picture of the international crime syndicates which now threaten America's security and way of life. Senator Kerry lays out a compelling argument for America to take steps to protect our infrastructure from outside threats.

A must read for anyone concerned about America's place in the world.

Hindsight, we all know is 20-20, but John Kerry does a pretty credible job showing foresight in this book. The central thesis is that failed stated threaten the international order and thus threaten the security of the United States. Kerry did not indeed connect all of the dots to AL Qaeda in this book, but that's not his specific target. Essentially, he argues that there must be far more international cooperation in stopping crime, as criminals often operate outside the nation which they are devestating. Anyone who has read about the impact of international criminal syndicates on state authority (in Burma, Kosovo, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nigeria, N. Ireland, Yugoslavia, and Russia, for a short list) knows that Kerry's call was common sense; not brilliant, but common sense that wasn't very common in the isolationist 90s. When GWB came to office, he worked against international conventions on money laundering and diamond smuggling right up to the time that the WTC was bombed. This book, on the other hand, shows clear evidence that Kerry was attuned to the international tenacles of terrorism and its links to organized crime. Given that he had earlier unraveled the BCCI banking scandal and the secret Iran-Contra network as a Senator, one can see a clear theme: Kerry has a prosecutor's nose for the behind-the-scenes networks that the US must go after to be successful in the war on terrorism. The prose isn't particularly compelling, but the ideas, on the other hand, showed a man asking the right questions. Indeed, a president who not only reads, but writes and asks questions; it's a far cry from the president who took a month's vacation in August, 2001, with what little work being done focused on killing stem cell research in the US. Don't take my word for it; read it for yourself. It is common-sensical, and indeed, has become something of standard thinking in the post-9/11 era.

Extraordinary book. It will give you chills. 5 years before
9/11 the author talked about the threat of terrorism. With prescience and intelligence he stated that "It will take only one mega-terrorist event in any of the great cities of the world to change the world in a single day." This guy is going to make a wonderful president.

Like Winston Churchill in the 1930's, John Kerry seems to have recognized the impending danger ahead of time, but no one listened. Now, again like Churchill, he looks like may be callled upon to save his country.

The New War was interesting to read. It mostly deals with drug cartels and how they have become more global and are becoming more like international corporations. The book is not about terrorism. It is about trends in global organized crime with a heavy heavy emphasis on the drug trade. After all the war on drugs was the big thing when this book was written.

According to Kerry there are five major groups which are the big players in crime. These are the Italian Mafia, the Russian Mafia, the yakuza, Chinese triads and Colombian drug cartels. From this assessment you can probably see that this book is a bit dated. Kerry describes each of these organizations and how it is adapting. Basically the trend is toward a more corporate structure: money and not ideology is the motivator and drug cartels are run like businesses and in conjunction with legitimate businesses. Kerry devotes a single chapter exclusively to terrorism. The issues he addresses, such as what may have happened to the USSR's nukes, are still significant but once again I feel that they were generally viewed as problems back in 1997, so the chapter feels dated. Today our concerns about terrorism have moved on due to the World Trade Center bombings.

In discussions of the changing face of international crime I didn't find much to scare me. Kerry points out campaign contributions given by drug cartels to political leaders in Colombia. As he points out these cartels also run legitimate businesses, so things are at least veiled. In the US private campaign contributions are influencing laws. Does anyone doubt this? As Kerry points out the desire to be seen as legitimate means that violent thugs are obsolete in the new international crime business model. Blood is out. Bribes are in. I'm having trouble sorting out crime syndicates from lobbyists here. They kind of go on the same continuum. As crime syndicates become more business like they are harder to differentiate from businesses.

More relevant is the connection between drug trade and finance for other branches of international crime. Drugs are good money and that money can be used to fund idealistic terrorist groups. The New War might be a good starting point for exploring this connection with its sections on money laundering and examples of not so kosher economic models.

The major major problem with The New War: Evidence to back up Kerry's views is based on specific examples and usually not based on collected statistics or figures. For example he will say this much was taken in one large drug bust in 1996 but he won't back up the dramatic example with figures on total drugs seized over the years to show a trend. This is pretty frustrating for me because statistics would put things in perspective. For example in a discussion of Chinese drug cartels it seems that certain advantages, like common language that outsiders can't penetrate and having little Chinese communities in different cities all over the world, would have existed and more so in the past prior to Chinese language programs in colleges and in the time of San Francisco's China Town (when every big city had a China Town and Chinese were really segregated out by law). I doubt that Chinese triads were less of a problem 100 years ago, although maybe we didn't pay as much attention to it since opium addicts and those killed in bad business deals would have tended to be Chinese and so second class.

The way things are presented Kerry could find stories to illustrate either side of an issue, so most of how he is presenting ideas makes his points unconvincing.

I don't recommend The New War, because it doesn't go anywhere. Stories about exotic mob killings may be interesting to read, but so are many books and novels. It would be better to find a book about international crime that backed up what it was saying with statistics as well as anecdotal evidence. If you are looking for a better understanding of terrorism, it would be better to find a book written more recently because trends in terrorism have changed as has our concern with it.

As one person who has continued to mention this book in the blogosphere, I would like to expand on the comments. The best companion book for this is Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies". In 1996, when this book was being finished, Clarke and the Counter-Terrorism Security Group were still trying to figure out for sure what role "the terrorist financier, Osama bin Laden" actually played in terroism by Islamic groups. There were many other figures involved and bin Laden intentionally kept away from the planners and doers. Clarke and the DOJ did not have enough information about bin Laden to indict him until the spring of '98. Kerry probably knew bin Laden's name and the suspicions about him; revealing them in the book would have exposed the investigation - rather stupid even if bin Laden had reason to suspect it.

Although bin Laden is now considered the mastermind financier founder of al Qaeda, there are many cells and more groups out there, working independently. It is just as blind to ignore them now, as the Bush administration ignored the warnings from the Clinton administration and all the intell agencies about al Qaeda in 2001.

The primary point of the book is to explain how groups of violent people, who recognize no law and have no national affiliation, are the most difficult to catch. In reality, the organized crime groups are many times bigger and more advanced than the terrorists could hope to be in 20 years. In the FIRST HALF of the '90s: "Today's transnational criminal cartels use high-speed modems and encrypted faxes. They buy jet airplanes three or four at a time and even have stealth-like submersibles... They hire the finest minds to devise encryption systems and provide complex accounting procedures... They engage the ablest lawyers.... the craftiest spin doctors [aka: public relations firms]... the most persistent and generous lobbyists...retain retired intelligence officers....[and] highly educated and well-trained scientists...in the production of narcotics [and the development of designer drugs].

As the London plot indicated, Kerry was right: if you are after a mob member, you don't bomb a Manhattan business he might be at. To follow the money, you have to find it. That is crime work, cooperation with other jurisdictions and diplomacy.

Although some aspects of the book are dated, there is still much to learn and understand about the problems and ways of uncovering criminals or terrorists, plus the issues we face in getting them into courts. As far as that discussion goes, it is clear to me Kerry was still looking for the best ideas, nor does he have a history of presenting my-way-or-the-highway ideas.

One of the most important points of the book is in the preface, pp14. Kerry raises the combination of new technology plus the global changes that were started by the end of the Cold War, creating "extraordinary and complex forces" that raised new threats to international stability and should have changed foreign policy far more than it did.

"The prime challenges lie in five areas, all of which threaten our national security and all of which are vitally affected by the forces of the new global economy:
1) nuclear **and** conventional [weapons] proliferation.
2) environmental degradation and crisis, with the attendant issues of resource allocation and depletion.
3) fundamentalism **and nationalism** asserting themselves in combination through conventional conflict and terrorism.
4) the struggles of the human condition exacerbated by refugee, food and population concerns with transboundary dislocations unprecedented in history.
5) exploitation of all of these phenomena by powerful new international criminal enterprises that threaten the stability of whole nations and challenge our standards of civilization.

That is classic Kerry writing and speaking. If you really find it difficult to understand, you need to stretch your mind a little. I don't give the book 5 stars because he is not a superb writer, the content more that makes up for that. Some of the comments and quotes here indicate the reviewer did not grasp the content of the passage.

My only problem is that in identifying the new extraordinary and complex forces that have been created, Kerry did not say much about the one they joined: the national and international banking hoax. It is far beyond the scope of the book. Go study the Federal Reserve Board, the history of money and it's relation to war on earth. The mobs are a little scarier - just because they shoot first.

What this book brought to mind (aside from some very uncomfortable adjustments to my perceptions of what is wrong with the world) is one of the most common mistakes people have made through out history - at terrible cost. Ignoring the real problems while putting excess attention (effort, money) on issues that are less dangerous or probable.

I am frankly amazed at just how effective a political ad can be. Bush starts running an ad criticizing this seven year old book for having the "wrong" focus for international terrorism, and not knowing things that the Bush admin itself has claimed not to know before Sept 2001.
Within a week of the ad running, we've got half a dozen people posting here, quoting the ad. Did any of you even read the book first? Or are you really that blindly led by, not even a television program, but a television advertisement.
Simply amazing. I really thought people were more sophisticated today than 50 years ago when TV ads were new. Obviously, I was wrong.

This book is an interesting, but incomplete work. Shows first of all that
Kerry thought it to be a very important problem in 1997, before
the US embassy bombings, and before Yemen. Remember, Osama
bin Laden had not caught our national attention until the Kenyan and Tanzanian
embassy bombings in August 1998. This shows pretty deep forethought and knowledge, and not ignorance on the topic.

Now, we have a few in the current administration that refused to talk about
terrorism in 2001, for heavenssake, even after PDBs
were flying around talking about potential disasters waiting to happen. The Islamic
brand of fundamentalist terrorism was largely ignored, after the current
administration came in - just the same way, this great team considered
most issues important to the prior administration as "irrelevant" and "perverse
obsession"s of a liberal whitehouse. There is clear evidence of this in the early
days' behavior of the current administration.

Terrorism has roots in desperation, poverty and extreme ignorance.
Terrorism and Islam are not really connected. It just gets used
to justify some extremely criminal brand of behavior. To keep hiphenating
them and treating them as collaborative is offensive, and incorrect.
From the Basque separatists, to Checen rebels, to Serbian militia,
Arab killers in Darfour, to Islamic fundamentalist criminals onward to American militias such as supportive of
Timothy McVeigh - all use terrorism as a tool. A "war on terror"
first needs to attempt to understand the places where it is born. Terrorists
everywhere are common criminals, who are a lot smarter than
your average bank robber. The only thing that gets them going
is a fanatical hatred which is perpetuated by the mullahs and priests
about how the west has deprived them of all that this rightfully theirs.
Their grievances have nothing to do with the western way of life, or
"our freedoms" as our President puts it. They have serious
grievances with the foriegn policies of this country over
the past decades in the treatment of Islamic countries. Now,
that is worth seriously looking at and starting to make amends, for
it would be a good start to combating terrorism. Look at Israel,
they haven't won their fight by militant means. Consider the IRA
and the British/Northern Ireland problem. Problems get solved
by a combination of policy methods. Not with stupid cowboy stances.

By the way, this guy - "wiseguyrunj" is completely ignorant, as is
clear from his reviews. He cannot think for himself, he gets
his reviews from silly soundbites from the likes of Rush Limbaugh
or Sean Hannity. His review of "what's the matter with Kansas"
exposes his lack of consistent thinking. Please let that review
not cloud your judgement about this book.

Excellent book ...While this book was written long before 9/11 and Islamic terrorism was not yet as deadly a threat as it is today, it is clear Kerry is extremely knowledgeable on international issues. His experience in Vietnam and after, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committe and background running a District Attorney's office combined with his deap knowedge of history make him the foremost expert on terrorism in America.

America truly needs John Kerry to lead us out of the Iraq abyss and to renew the hunt for bin Laden. I GUARANTEE this: If 9/11 happened on Kerry's watch, bin Laden would be dead years ago.

While Bush was sitting in Texas messing up their economy, John Kerry was working in Washington D.C. getting a deep understanding of terrorism and it's threats. This book is a broad look across the world at organizations of terror. It includes the major terror organizations that were prominent and most active during the early 90's and also includes sections on the early trade center bombings.

Most critical about this book, is that it talks about the border crossing nature of terrorists and their funding. John Kerry in the campaign has repeatedly said we need more alliances. What he might say, based on the evidence in this book, is that a war on terrorism is actually a race to build alliances.

Go after terrorists with an army and they will cross the border into another country. No more relevent evidence of this is available than Afganistan and Pakistan. When the US came into Afganistan the terrorists bought up all the gems and precious materials that they could and then sent them across the border. Then, the terrorists went across the border. Pakistan, a country that has not allowed American military forces within their borders, now has all the terrorists and all the funding we were trying to stop. Terrorists are free to cross somewhere else later if they want to because we did not get them all.

Next, John Kerry's book mentions the Poppy fields in Afganistan. Most people do not understand the significance of those fields. Terrorism is funded by the fields of poppys that are sold as Heroin and Opium. This provides nearly 75% of the worlds supplies of those drugs. Bush has ignored the poppy fields and thus, we may have gotten some terrorists, but a major funding source for terrorists across the world has been left in place. Terrorists have money and they can regroup.

Lastly, I repeat. This book was published in 1997. This means it was being written for a long period of time before the book came out. John Kerry saw the fight we faced, wrote a chapter on the process of the globalization of terror. Finally, the last chapter called the Plan for Victory is a tool that people have already been using for its ideas to fight our current threat.

John Kerry is a global terrorism expert and nobody is talking about it. Please, tell your friends John Kerry is such an expert that he even wrote a book on global terror. We need a man who can get it right, in the Oval Office.

I ask you to vote John Kerry. For a Safer America.