US foreign policy and the Middle East
Roger Cohen’s brilliant assessment of Middle Eastern
affairs –
An illuminating piece from NYU historian Greg Grandin on
the Kissinger-era American foreign policy blunders:
Grandin concludes:
“For all of the
celebration of him as a “grand strategist,” as someone who constantly advises
presidents to think of the future, to base their actions today on where they
want the country to be in five or 10 years’ time, Kissinger was absolutely
blind to the fundamental feebleness and inevitable collapse of the Soviet
Union. None of it was necessary; none of the lives Kissinger sacrificed in
Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, East Timor, and
Bangladesh made one bit of difference in the outcome of the Cold War.
Similarly, each of
Kissinger’s Middle East initiatives has been disastrous in the long run. Just
think about them from the vantage point of 2015: banking on despots, inflating
the Shah, providing massive amounts of aid to security forces that tortured and
terrorized democrats, pumping up the U.S. defense industry with recycled
petrodollars and so spurring a Middle East arms race financed by high gas
prices, emboldening Pakistan’s intelligence service, nurturing Islamic
fundamentalism, playing Iran and the Kurds off against Iraq, and then Iraq and
Iran off against the Kurds …”
International Affairs – Book Recommendations
http://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2015/09/international-affairshistory-reading.html