School's summer reading: a few quick reviews

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done about It.

Collier, Paul.

Oxford, 2007

My favorite of the summer readings, and the only one I would go out of my way to suggest to anyone wanting a quick glimpse at the world of poverty. Collier clearly lays out how countries fall into four main traps (resource curse, landlocked, bad governance, conflict) that create a perfect political and economic environment for poverty to persist. Informative, great examples, well thought out: this was the first book I read for graduate school and it could only go downhill from there. It was like eating dessert first and then told I couldn't leave the table until I finished my cold, soggy peas.

The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All

Evans, Gareth.

Brookings, 2008.

I read it so you wouldn't have to. Gareth Evans worked on a paper/policy idea termed "Responsibility to Protect" or R2P, basically stating that all nations have the responsibility to protect their citizens from horrible things, and should a nation fail, the onus falls to the international community to step in. Great on paper, really hard to make a global policy. I just saved you hours of your life that could be better spent attempting to implement this idea than reading about one man's frustration.

A World of Nations: The International Order since 1945.

Keylor, William R.

Oxford, 2nd Edition. June 2008

This is a textbook. Handy if you want a quick description of any political conflict after WWII, not so much fun to read from cover to cover. I tried. I did. I kept falling asleep just after the Korean War. Keep it on your desk to reference when writing papers, but take a modern history course if you really want a knowledge base.

The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New World Order.

Khanna, Parag.

T Random House 2008

I'm pretty sure I liked this better than most of my classmates. Perhaps not as informative, and definitely more subjective than some of the other reading, but the "second world" countries are often overlooked in "pop" writing favor of the "third world." Unless you are an emerging economy or have a headline-making war/crazy leader/weather issues, the non-LDCs/non-OECDs are easy to miss. How often does one think, "I wonder how Kyrgyzstan is doing these days?" (The fact that Google Chrome just thought that Kyrgyzstan wasn't a word may be further proof). This book goes region by region, country by country updating the reader and pointing out what failures, opportunities and successes he thinks contributed to the current state of each.

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One.

Kilkullen, David.

Oxford 2009

Great argument for counter-insurgency instead of counter-terrorism. Kilcullen takes a common sensical approach to modern warfare and how worse the situation becomes when the population of an invaded country isn't taken into account. They aren't fighting us because they want to destroy our country, they are fighting us because we are invading theirs. COIN ideas have been getting a lot more press now, so some of his writing may seem a bit obvious to those who have been paying attention. A quick guide to COIN is Kilcullen's "Twenty-Eight Articles" (click here to download the 11-page pdf). If you want more, his book is a good read that really fleshes out his ideas.

Squandered Victory

Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq

By Larry Diamond

© Times Books 2005

For my "Middle Eastern Politics and Diplomacy" class I gave a presentation on Squandered Victory, a book focusing on our failed efforts in Iraq. I was tasked with answering two questions: why did we do so poorly and how could've we done better? Below is an outline of those answers. I encourage anyone to read this book if you want not only a look from outside the government at our goings-on with and in Iraq from 2001-2005, but also for Diamond's stories about his involvement as an academic advisor to the CPA.

I. Why did the US effort in Iraq fail?

1. We invaded in the first place

2. No plan before the war for turning power back over to the people

3. Designated Pentagon as lead agency in postwar reconstruction

a. First time since ww2 that state dep didn’t do transition

b. People chosen to deploy for rebuilding by General Garner were vetoed by the Pentagon as “soft”

c. Arrived with no Arabic speakers

d. Didn’t use exiled Iraqis input

4. Didn’t pay civil servants

5. Created colonial-like occupation

a. Redrew district boudaries

b. Announced we’d be out by August 2003

6. Lack of knowledge of customs

a. Refused to meet with religious leaders

b. Uninterested in Iraqi violence against other Iraqis

7. Formed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)

a. Gave all power (executive, legislative, judicial) to adminstrator: Ambassador Paul Bremer

b. Made Iraqi got nevervous of occupation

c. Disbanded Iraqi army, banned Baath Party from gov employment

d. Appointed constitutional assembly, ignoring calls for an elected body

e. Refused to consider earlier elections

8. Insist on 180 days to produce and vote a provisional constitution in face of mountains of evidence against.

a. Preferred to preserve the timeline at the cost of governence

9. Constant refusal to engage with Ayatollah Sistani, Shiite religious leader

10. Slow on Washington side

11. Slow to react to Sadr’s Mahdi Army growing strength and attack

a. Dismissed as bandits

II. What would it have taken to succeed?

1. Understand that democracy only occurs in special environments

2. Understand history and political situation

3. Use one of the many transition plans constructed before invasion

4. Follow plans created after occupation

a. Train and assist transitional politics

5. Accept more help from non-US led organizations

6. Trust Iraq to self-govern

7. Put state dept in charge, bringing in experts earlier

8. Did I mention not go in the first place?

9. Insist on strong legislative branch to ensure legitimacy

The Host: A Novel

The Host: A Novel
By Stephanie Meyer
Published by Little, Brown and Company
May 2008

I began this post in November 2008, after finishing The Host for the second time. Something in it reflected whatever pain I was living through right then enough to leave me crying. I just read it a fourth time and it still moved me to tears, which may be praise enough.

Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame came out with a novel for an older crowd and instead of vampires, we get aliens. In a twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Host looks at a post-invasion world through the eyes of a newly landed alien. When all goes according to plan, the aliens, or souls as they call themselves, happily inhabit a human's body (aka a host). However, when our protagonist (the Wanderer) is placed in her host, she finds that she isn't alone.

What happens next is a touching look at what it means to be human. Comparable perhaps to Edward E. Hale's The Man Without a Country, Meyer presents us with an introspective look at what we take for granted. A surprising shift from the teenage angst found in her earlier series, I look forward to more soulful writing like The Host.

Oh dear, no pun intended.