Ian Bremmer
3.0 out of 5 stars Rooted in State Paradigm, Ignores Non-State World, January 5, 2014
I made a mistake buying this book. I let the marketing hype get to me. As soon as I got the book in my hands and saw that it had jacket blubs from Fareed Zakaria and Larry Summers, the sinking feeling in my stomach was plapable.
I've gone through the book, which is double-spaced without a single chart or map or table. This is a long essay by someone who is out of touch with the latest thinking, still in the nation-state / banks rule the world mode.
For someone that reads very broadly, as I do, virtually every page in this book is irritating. The author's treatment of water, something I looked into for UNESCO (see my easily found review of fourteen books on water and water wars, < Water: Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls >) the author considers the privatization of water and charging more for water to be a solution, never mind that fracking and Nestle-Coca Cola and all other predations on water by unregulated idiot practices (both individual and corporate) are wiping out hundreds of thousands of years worth of fresh water.
My sinking feeling grew stronger and stronger to the point of great dismay. This author clearly gets along with the powers that be, and he has a facile patter that suggests he has a very high elite social IQ, but from my point of view, that of an ethical 21st Century intelligence professional for whom transparency, truth, and trust are the bottom line, this book is lacking a holistic analytic model and not truly helpful to the public interest.
Most irritatingis the recognition that comes with the a reading of the author's conclusions. It just makes me sick to my stomach to read any endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partership (Trade) Agreement. The author is a smart man, so I have to conclude that he has chosen to embrace evil. The Trans-Pacific (Trade) Partnership Agreement is the most secretive, most convoluted, most unethical, most anti-public trade agreement in the history of modern civilization. The 15 Asian nations meeting in November 2012 kicked Obama's ass out of town with good reason. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States). The same thing is happening in South America (CELAC) and I expect it in Africa as well as South and Central Asia as well. Afghanistan has not signed the Bi-Lateral Security Agreement (BSA) in part because the US has blown the past twelve years, and in combination, a variety of non-ISAF nations are ready to step in with a focus on real trade instead of false terrorism (China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, among others).
This is a disappointing book that can be used as a measure of the elite hypocrisy, idiocy, and betrayal of the public trust as of today. In terms of substantive analytics and plausible sustainable solutions helpful to the 99% as opposed to the 1%, this book is not satisfactory.
Here are ten books whose summaries alone are worth more than this book (and free as well) — they are drawn from my broader collections of lists that are easily found at the Book page of Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (“the truth at any cost lowers all others costs”):
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
The Leadership of Civilization Building: Administrative and civilization theory, Symbolic Dialogue, and Citizen Skills for the 21st Century
The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up
Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution
Designing a World that Works for All: Solutions & Strategies for Meeting the World's Needs
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
