Book suggestions for modern geopolitical understanding?

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ktz
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Joined: November 9th, 2018, 12:21 am
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Book suggestions for modern geopolitical understanding?

Post by ktz »

Hello friends,


I would understand if this topic pigeonholes me into agitator status among the compos mentis residents of this forum, but I don't know if there's been a similar thread and thought I would share since it's come back on my mind recently.

A few years ago I encountered a reading list by an ex-semi-famous Redditor claiming that he had put together a reading list for the purpose of demonstrating how the world is run by "appointees, ambassadors, field agents and mid-level bureaucrats who care very little for congress, presidents, or anything on the Hill so long as they continue to get their money." https://hubski.com/pub?id=112127

I never got further than the first book he suggested, the Howard Zinn book, as well as the movie version of Charlie Wilson's War -- both of which I found to be eye-openers, but I was thinking of taking up the list again. The thing is, it's been 5 years and now I'm curious if there's anyone on this forum interested in geopolitical machinations who has read any more recent books, papers or documentaries that they would recommend to cover some the most recent geopolitical developments, especially with all the recent super compelling/absurd occurences like the Arab Spring/Syrian Civil War, Trump/Brexit, etc. Also, since I've only read the first book so far, I'd also be interested if anyone is familiar with any of these books and could recommend or discourage me from reading them.



For reference, I'm copy pasting the list below.
kleinbl00 wrote: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Not just for Good Will Hunting. Zinn is definitely an agitator but he makes a point to outline all the failed rebellions crushed by the establishment in the name of the American Dream: Why we celebrate MLK Day instead of Malcolm X Day, the Socialist movement of Washington State, how racism created the San Fernando Valley.

The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. Gaddis lays out the basic fact that the past 100 years were about two warring ideologies that ground themselves to nubs against each other while the rest of the world picked something in the middle. It's not that the US won the Cold War, it's that we lost last.

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War and its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. Hoffman won a Pulitzer for this one. It's not just about Perimeter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war) ), the Soviets' still-functioning suicide switch on Armageddon. It's the first book to really explore the Russian decline from world power to kleptocracy, from the ascension of Andropov to the shelling of Yeltsin's Kremlin (and Western roles in it).

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. Hawaii is a state because of a coup. The Panama Canal isn't the Nicaragua Canal because someone rich had land to sell. Why, exactly, the Iranians are 100% in the right for hating the **** out of the United States. And more!

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. This was an mk recommendation and I wholeheartedly second it. Basically outlines, in gripping terms, how a calcified alliance system and the crumbling remnants of the Hapsburgs brought about unconditional European annihilation despite everyone's best intentions. On a related note -

Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour also by Barbara Tuchman. If you've ever wanted to know "why Israel" this book will tell you. It's not what you think.

Similarly, Paris 1919: 6 months that changed the world. You learned the Treaty of Versailles. You took a test on it. And you didn't realize that it was a British-American ploy to remake the world in their own image, for their own advantage, and that every Western conflict since traces its roots to what was or was not settled when Germany was beat back and the Ottomans expired.

Speaking of "Ottomans" and "Palestine", let's bring this back to current adventures:

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA paints an incomplete but fascinating portrait of everything we've done in the world since WWII that you don't know about. The Cold War was a Hot War for a select group of Americans, and a lot of them are dead. Tim Weiner's book ends shortly after 9/11 and paints a portrait of a stumbling, incompetent, overbureaucratized agency left castrated and defenseless by an angry Congress, which, thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know is complete ********. Along those lines, See No Evil by Robert Baer is a great inside perspective on how secret wars are conducted, and illustrates pretty cleanly the point that we hate Iran because the CIA **** the Iranians over so the Iranians got back at the CIA (not exactly the United States) through Hizbollah through much of the '80s. Seen Syriana? Robert Baer was played by George Clooney.

Excellent companions to See No Evil are Charlie Wilson's War and Ghost Wars Charlie Wilson's War explains how we threw gasoline on the spark of global jihad in order to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan while Ghost Wars documents how the spark turned into a conflagration. The larger contexts of this particular pickle are laid out well in

The Fight for Jerusalem and Hatred's Kingdom by Dore Gold, paired with How to Win A Cosmic War and No God But God by Reza Aslan. Dore Gold is the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. He's published by Regnery. He does not **** around and lays out the case that Wahabi Islam, as practiced in Saudi Arabia, is the direct cause of global jihad and terrorism. To quote Bernard Lewis,

"Imagine that the Ku Klux Klan gets total control of the state of Texas,” Lewis told Princeton’s Alumni Weekly. “And the Ku Klux Klan has at its disposal all the oil rigs in Texas. And they use this money to set up a well-endowed network of colleges and schools throughout Christendom, peddling their peculiar brand of Christianity. You would then have an approximate equivalent of what has happened in the modern Muslim world.”

Reza Aslan, on the other hand, is an Islamic apologist. He makes the point that the entire muslim world isn't crazy but there is a lunatic fringe (that will eventually die out as the world becomes more modern). Of course, Robert Baer disagrees "Sleeping with the Devil" and "Hatred's Kingdom" dovetail to a disturbing degree.
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Fooloso4
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Re: Book suggestions for modern geopolitical understanding?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by Jane Mayer
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ktz
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Joined: November 9th, 2018, 12:21 am
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Re: Book suggestions for modern geopolitical understanding?

Post by ktz »

Fooloso4 wrote: December 1st, 2018, 3:12 pm Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by Jane Mayer
Looks to be very interesting in the wake of Citizens United and such. Thanks for the recommendation.
You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg.
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