Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke

Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke is a discussion of why big ideas as opposed to nuanced policies are so dangerous in American foreign policy and how they can be fixed. Naturally the media goes in for a lot of criticism but think tanks and various academics such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington and Noam Chomsky are criticized for selling out. The concluding section of the book discusses China and how it must be dealt with on a rational basis or else there could be war. Some of the scenarios were interesting such as increasing strain on Chinese aquifers requiring China to by grain on the open market thereby making it unstable. Unfortunately occasionally the authors say they're not going to do something like attack the media for how to use experts then proceed to do it for the next 15 pages.

Recommended.

Is available through Abebooks.

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