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Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World
Two leading authorities on international affairs project the political, economic, and technological landscape of the 1990s, envisioning a postmodern era in which four or five powers will hold sway
258 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Robin Wright
46 books53 followersRobin B. Wright is an American foreign affairs analyst, author and journalist who has covered wars, revolutions and uprisings around the world. She writes for The New Yorker and is a fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Wright has authored five books and coauthored or edited three others.
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May 23, 2011
So, listening to a recent interview on NPR on one of the nuances of the current "Arab spring", I hear discussion with a clearly learned individual named Robin Wright. When I look up her bibliography, I find this book written some 20 years ago and figure to give it a try. I was surprised the ability to track this down was pretty quick, which I wondered if it meant it was a mass-market flop of the time. Actually, I still cannot be certain, but nonetheless, I was impressed with the book.
This collaborative work comprising, and this is the secret to their success, 100s of interviews with a ridiculously broad-range of disciplines from religion to science, from politics to sociology, parses the views of said interviewees into a grand narrative of significant events of the time, most notably of course the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this book is far more than a post-Soviet we-got-them. The thesis ultimately was that a pluralistic future was in store for a tumultuous world under crisis from ethnic diversity clashing, ideological difference, and global contagion. To be sure, it was a safe bet, but not necessarily common wisdom of the time.
Really, the thesis is not the interesting point to this book, moreso the nuanced reporting from nuanced points on the globe is much more productive. The authors were reporting on hot-spots that just were not in the mainstream consciousness of the time and were very forward-looking. The most interesting point in retrospect is the mirroring of today's events in so many ways. To some degree, this book reads like something out of today's headlines. Crisis in Afghanistan (which was predicted and reported as CIA-funded militants with a grudge against the West), crisis in the Baltics (multi-ethnic tensions centuries under repression ready to boil over), crisis in Africa (OK, that's a give me :/), crisis in China (Uighars?!), crisis in Russia/USSR (rise of oligarchy/mafia), crisis in the Middle East (decades of foreign-based repression leading to an urge for Islamic-styled democracies, including lengthy discussions on Libya and Iraq), on and on and on.
Besides learning that Ms. Wright was amazingly insightful and prescient, I more importantly find that nobody took seriously finding solutions to the post-modern crises of a pluralistic world. Instead the US resources (the only ones being coherent and organized enough to address these problems) and interests being unilateral, selfish, and antithetical to global success at best ignored them and in many cases intensified them. I wont go into whether it was intentional or not, but one thing is certain, it appears this selfish exercise of maintaining (the virtual) American empire has not only failed for the American people and questionably for the American masters who designed it, but certainly for the global village amassing on its fringes.
This collaborative work comprising, and this is the secret to their success, 100s of interviews with a ridiculously broad-range of disciplines from religion to science, from politics to sociology, parses the views of said interviewees into a grand narrative of significant events of the time, most notably of course the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this book is far more than a post-Soviet we-got-them. The thesis ultimately was that a pluralistic future was in store for a tumultuous world under crisis from ethnic diversity clashing, ideological difference, and global contagion. To be sure, it was a safe bet, but not necessarily common wisdom of the time.
Really, the thesis is not the interesting point to this book, moreso the nuanced reporting from nuanced points on the globe is much more productive. The authors were reporting on hot-spots that just were not in the mainstream consciousness of the time and were very forward-looking. The most interesting point in retrospect is the mirroring of today's events in so many ways. To some degree, this book reads like something out of today's headlines. Crisis in Afghanistan (which was predicted and reported as CIA-funded militants with a grudge against the West), crisis in the Baltics (multi-ethnic tensions centuries under repression ready to boil over), crisis in Africa (OK, that's a give me :/), crisis in China (Uighars?!), crisis in Russia/USSR (rise of oligarchy/mafia), crisis in the Middle East (decades of foreign-based repression leading to an urge for Islamic-styled democracies, including lengthy discussions on Libya and Iraq), on and on and on.
Besides learning that Ms. Wright was amazingly insightful and prescient, I more importantly find that nobody took seriously finding solutions to the post-modern crises of a pluralistic world. Instead the US resources (the only ones being coherent and organized enough to address these problems) and interests being unilateral, selfish, and antithetical to global success at best ignored them and in many cases intensified them. I wont go into whether it was intentional or not, but one thing is certain, it appears this selfish exercise of maintaining (the virtual) American empire has not only failed for the American people and questionably for the American masters who designed it, but certainly for the global village amassing on its fringes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review