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Summary
Summary
US foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America's place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America's deals and protect its citizens around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We're becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later.
In an astonishing journey from the corridors of power in Washington, DC, to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth--Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Korea among them--acclaimed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His firsthand experience as a former State Department official affords a personal look at some of the last standard bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan.
Drawing on newly unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with warlords, whistle-blowers, and policymakers--including every living former secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton to Rex Tillerson--War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, shortsightedness, and outright malice--but it may just offer America a way out of a world at war.
Author Notes
Ronan Farrow is an American investigative journalist, lawyer, former government advisor, television anchor, writer, and makes documentaries for HBO. He was born in New York City in 1987. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His reporting helped The New Yorker win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service, along with The New York Times. His other awards include the George Polk Award, and the National Magazine Award, among other commendations. He is the author of War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
War has eclipsed diplomacy as the main instrument of U.S. foreign policy with dire consequences, according to this searching exposé of a crumbling State Department. New Yorker journalist Farrow, a former State Department official, examines the decadeslong waning of the department's clout as its budgets were slashed and its diplomatic counsels ignored by presidents who pursued military solutions to global crises. The results, he argues, were disastrous. The U.S. backed brutal warlords in Afghanistan and rejected possible settlements with the Taliban; sponsored a counterinsurgency that killed countless civilians in Colombia; in Somalia supported warlords and an Ethiopian invasion against a relatively innocuous Islamic regime, sparking Islamist terrorism; and, in the Trump era, struggles with the damage from presidential policy-by-tweet. Farrow blends analysis with vivid reportage (his portrait of Afghan warlord Ahmed Rashid Dostum, in a palace furnished with reindeer, shark tank, and Christmas lights, is classic); his firsthand recollections of State Department icons, such as the brilliant, blustering Richard Holbrooke, make diplomacy feel colorful and dramatic rather than gray and polite. Farrow doesn't quite demonstrate how diplomacy would succeed in quagmires like Afghanistan, but his indictment of the militarization of American foreign policy is persuasive. Photos. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Mahogany Row Massacre | p. ix |
Part I The Last Diplomats | |
1 American Myths | p. 3 |
2 Lady Taliban | p. 7 |
3 Dick | p. 15 |
4 The Mango Case | p. 21 |
5 The Other Haqqani Network | p. 32 |
6 Duplicity | p. 38 |
7 The Frat House | p. 46 |
8 Mission: Impossible | p. 53 |
9 Walking on Glass | p. 68 |
10 Farmer Holbrooke | p. 78 |
11 A Little Less Conversation | p. 84 |
12 A-Rod | p. 99 |
13 Promise Me You'll End The War | p. 111 |
14 The Wheels Come Off The Bus | p. 126 |
15 The Memo | p. 137 |
16 The Real Thing | p. 144 |
Part II Shoot First, Ask Questions Never | |
17 General Rule | p. 155 |
18 Dostum: He Is Telling The Truth and Discouraging all Lies | p. 164 |
19 White Beast | p. 203 |
20 The Shortest Spring | p. 222 |
21 Midnight At The Ranch | p. 237 |
Part III Present at the Destruction | |
22 The State Of The Secretary | p. 257 |
23 The Mosquito And The Sword | p. 268 |
24 Meltdown | p. 279 |
Epilogue: The Tool Of First Resort | p. 295 |
Acknowledgments | p. 311 |
Notes | p. 315 |
Index | p. 377 |