Books for Obama

This is a sister thread to the "Books for Bush" thread. I myself think it's a little bit late to be sending books to Mr Bush. But, assuming Mr Obama becomes our next President, what should he have read?

My own take on it is that Obama's main weakness is that he is a nice guy, who has grown up in a leftist environment and therefore believes, or at least has been exposed to, all kinds of nonsense about the world: Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky gross distortions which paint the United States as a uniquely powerful and evil actor on the world stage.

So he probably believes we overthrew Mossadeq in 1953 in order to help out a British oil company, that we overthrew the popular Allende in Chile in 1973 because he nationalized the copper mines, that we overthrew a popular socialist government in Grenada in 1983, etc etc.

I would send him some books, and articles, which gave a less distorted account of these events.

And because, to understand American foreign policy since 1945, he would have to understand its context -- I would send him a few books on post-war Soviet expansionism: maybe I would start with one on the Czech coup by the Communist Party, along with one or two accounts of life in the gulags.

I would want to try to help him understand what a dangerous and unfriendly place the world is, and always has been. My fear is that he has a Quaker view of the world: any disputes are just misunderstandings which can be settled be reasonable people willing to see the other side's point of view and able to compromise.

I won't list any specific titles for the moment.

Solzehnitsyn or Anne Appelbaum?

One thing that would come to mind would be Michael Scheuer's Imperial hubris--another would be Kevin Phillips American Theocracy. I'm currently reading Phillips' Bad Money which kind of got panned by the NY Times book review last sunday but I generally like the direction it's going in. It would not do him any harm to read my selection for Mr. Bush either--The seven pillars of wisdom. One book that I haven't read which I plan on some time soon would be The shock doctrine--Naomi Klein.

As for fiction I understand that he's a Philip Roth fan. Any book by Roberto Bolano but especially The savage detectives.

I think Obama's well-read enough that he understands the nature of the beast called government as he's sometimes spoken in terms an anarcho-capitalist would understand (he recently used Max Weber's definition of government police having a "monopoly on violence"). So while I think I can take for granted that he's well-enough versed in the principles and definitions necessary, all that's probably left is his belief that government is still justified based on utilitarian grounds. For that reason, he should read Why Government Doesn't Work, by Harry Browne.

For any incoming President I would give them a copy of The Odyssey. All about the kinds of pitfalls one will face as President, from the Sirens (BushCo's downfall) to Polyphemous, using intelligence when war is all there is, to Scylla and Charybdis, navigating dangerous shoals without being sucked into the maelstrom.

I expect Obama has already read this poem, but it's obvious BushCo never did, or if any of them did, they just thought it was a 3,000 year old fairytale with no relevance to today. What a shame. This Epic Poem and it's brother The Iliad are musts for everyone who would "run the world".

My first book for Obama would be a quicky, readable in a few hours, written by a British diplomat, entitled The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century.

From a customer review:

"In this remarkable book of essays, Robert Cooper, former foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair, gives a brilliant analysis of the present state of international relations.

Since the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, modern European states have organized themselves according to two principles: empire and balance of power. This was known as the arena of the great powers and, in the 19th century, Japan and the United States joined the game. By 1945 most of the great powers were in shambles; there remained only the United States and the Soviet Union as two competing "imperial systems." And after 1989 there was only one, the United States as sole superpower. Many observers saw this as the global triumph of markets and democracy, and saw it as an end to the battle of ideas. Francis Fukuyama called it "the end of history." However, with the events of September 11, the world is again plunged into history and the battle of ideas, this time looking more like Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations."

In his analysis of the present-day world, Cooper divides nation states into three types: premodern, modern, and postmodern.

The premodern states are the "failed states." These states have lost their monopoly on the use of force; where governments have lost control to warlords, gangsters, terrorists, and other non-state actors (examples are Somolia, Liberia, and Afghanistan under the Taliban). These states have lost their sovereignty and chaos rules the day.

The modern states are sovereign states that pursue their own national interests. They fit into the traditional balance of power or hegemonic scheme. For them the world is a jungle and world government interests them only insofar as it furthers their national interests. Prominent among the modern states are Russia, China, Brazil, and India; and most prominent among them, the United States.

The postmodern world consists of nations that have relinquished much of their sovereignty to international governmental bodies, the primary example of this, of course, is the European Union. In Cooper's words it "is a highly developed system for mutual interference in each other's domestic affairs." European states gain their power from being completely vulnerable and transparent to each other. They operate on mutual security and rule of law. War between postmodern states would be next to impossible. Cooper believes this to be a higher level of civilization, but also sees the problem when not all states are postmodern.

Cooper also rightly notes that the development of the European Union from the Treaty of Rome (1957) to the present day was underwritten by American power, without which it would not exist today.

What is most interesting in Cooper's theory is the difference between how a postmodern and a modern state confront terror or genocide in the premodern world. Postmodern Europe failed to respond to genocide in the Balkans nor could it respond to terrorist attacks originating in premodern states. The postmodern outlook prevents them from building up a unified military capable of intervening in a time of crisis. Their primary tools are diplomacy and legal action. The response of the United States, the pre-eminent modern state, of course, is overwhelming military force. This, however, is insufficient and so unsettling to the rest of the world that is counterproductive and destabilizing.

According to Cooper, the key ingredient needed is legitimacy. Yes, military force is needed but it must be done in a multilateral way to bring along the rest of the world for a successful outcome.

Cooper's argument is much more complex than just described. I highly recommend this book for those who are concerned about the dangers of the present and those on the horizon."

The current liberal/conservative debates on foreign policy look very shallow in the light of this book (and of some others I am going to recommend).

Any thoughts on the U.N. "Peacekeeping" mission being given some real teeth, a standing army.

I have long been in favor of this, but I wonder whether or not the UN is the right vehicle? Russia and China are reliable friends of monster-regimes, and would veto action against anyone they are supporting -- for example they (and the corrupt leaders of the African Union) are happy to see the gangster Mugabe remain in power.

I am interested in, but know little about (at the moment), an idea that has been floating around in certain liberal and conservative circles, namely, for a "League of Democracies".

The individual states of the United States have "relinquished much of their sovereignty" to a larger governmental body. While not technically an international governmental body it *is* interstate. So, could Georgia be considered a postmodern state?

I think the author is talking about the same phenomenon that Phillip Bobbit (whose books I am also going to recommend) calls "the market state", which he sees as the successor to the "nation state" which followed from the "princely state".

What they are really talking about, I think, is the phenomenon which we see most strongly in Western Europe among the post-1945 generation, where people's self-identity no longer centers around membership of a particular national group, and national leaders have begun to think centrally in "non-zero" terms. (The linked book is also going to go onto his reading list.)

You could argue that this is what happened in the United States, as the colonies united to pursue a centrally-important common interest that they could not pursue separately, being willing to take the risk of subordinating their particular aims to majority rule. (Except in the case of the South over the issue of slavery, of course.) But things were very easy here because the colonists were all essentially from one culture.

My intuition tells me that our species is approaching a historical cusp like no other we have ever been on, and that the outcome, over the next few decades, could be very bad indeed, or very good.

So I hope the next President is a reader and thinker and is able to transcend his particular political environment and background.

I think Obama is naive, but not at all in the way #1 describes. Obama is by instinct a centrist. He thinks he can transform political dialog in this country by inspiring a new consensus. There ain't no way that can happen, frankly -- the current Republican party is ideologically unified and utterly intransigent, and gerrymandering and the right wing media will keep it that way.

So, first, he should understand the threat inherent in American conservatism, as described in The End of America. He should also understand the inherent dynamics of the contemporary military-industrial complex, as described in Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson. It would be very good for him to read The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism to explain the inherent failures in the US's consistently militaristic approach to the world.

It would also be a good idea to read Barnett R. Rubin 's two books on Afghanistan. 20,000 more US troops there won't change the country into a nation, and should not be put there. Descent into Chaos also looks educational. (I have not read these.)

I have read Jeffrey Sach's Common Wealth and Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0 and they should be on the required reading list. Brown's book, in particular, describes the changes that are urgently needed to make a fundamental transition to sustainability.

Then, he should read The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, to understand just why the Republican Party is intransigent, and Conservatives without Conscience as well.

That might be enough to cure naivete.

The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World by Rupert Smith, a retired British general, is excellent for describing the uses of force, and its limitations.