Endless Enemies; The Making of an Unfriendly World

Description

In this well-documented account, the author shows how America intervened in the affairs of nations abroad inconsisently with rour foreign policy goals by manipulating the economies of developing nations often driving them to corruption and communism. It discusses the problems with American foreign policy, examining the ramifications and costs of current, fear-based policies and explaining how a refusal to take sides can benefit the United States. It asks if it is really necessary for the United States, the great democracy, to support tyrants around the world? Must we intervene in every conflict, laying our national pride on the line in places we’ve scarcely heard of? Why, decade after decade, are we in constant peril of war with a seemingly unending list of enemies? Addressed not to the foreign-policy “establishment” but to ordinary citizens with a sincere and practical concern, Endless Enemies shows dramatically that our behavior in the world, no matter who is president, is out of control. We waste billions and spend lives, and almost always our interventions work out badly. We ruin the countries we go to help— destroying the very values we intervene to secure—and we corrupt ourselves in the process. It is the same for the Soviet Union. Superpower intervention does not work. Let us learn from our mistakes... but also from our successes, says Jonathan Kwitny, noted correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. \n penetrating chapters that draw on his firsthand experience all over the world, he exposes the baneful consequences of fearbased foreign policy—in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, the Middle East, and at home. It reveals the way the giant corporations, the unions, the banks, and the CIA misbehave abroad. The author also shows how, when we keep our calm and act according to our nation’s fundamental principles, the results are often exceedingly favorable. Thus, our hope for the future lies in the strengths that have sustained us in the past. Endless Enemies is not some dry treatise. It is full of people and places and stories. It is written simply, humanely, with unassuming moral clarity. It is perhaps the most American book, in the best sense of the word, to come along in years, and potentially the most influential.