Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Splinterlands
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/16/1963
WEBSITE: http://www.johnfeffer.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.johnfeffer.com/about/ * http://www.ips-dc.org/authors/john-feffer/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 88292909
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n88292909
HEADING: Feffer, John
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100 10 |a Feffer, John
670 __ |a His Beyond detente, 1990: |b CIP t.p. (John Feffer)
670 __ |a The future of US-Korean relations, 2006: |b ECIP t.p. (John Feffer) data view (b. Oct. 16, 1963)
670 __ |a Out of Burma, 2007: |b t.p. (John Feffer, editor.)
953 __ |a bt07 |b lk25
PERSONAL
Born October 16, 1963.
EDUCATION:Haverford College, B.A., 1986; also studied in England and Russia.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, foreign policy adviser. Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC, current director of Foreign Policy in Focus, associate fellow; Asia Institute, Seoul, South Korea, senior associate. Provisions Library, Washington, DC, former Writing Fellow; Stanford University, former PanTech fellow in Korean Studies; World Policy Journal, former associate editor; American Friends Service Committee former international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia. Has lectured at Sungkonghoe University, New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University. Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation, former writer in residence.
AWARDS:Herbert W. Scoville fellowship.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Huffington Post and TomDispatch.com, among others. Author of plays The Pundit and The Politician, both performed at Capital Fringe Festival, Washington, DC, 2013.
SIDELIGHTS
John Feffer is a foreign policy expert and writer at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He serves as director for the Institute’s Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), which has been called a progressive think tank “without walls.” Its function is to connect the work of more than six hundred scholars, activists, and advocates working to make the United States a responsible global partner. Analyzing U.S. foreign policy, FPIF makes policy recommendations especially in the areas of peace, social rights, and environmental protection. Feffer has traveled widely throughout Asia and Europe and has written or edited a number of book on international relations as well as the 2016 novel, Splinterlands.
Beyond Detente
Feffer’s first book, Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options, published in 1990, was intended as a general overview of East-West relations at the time of major shifts in Soviet policy under Gorbachev. Indeed, the final revisions of this book took place as the Berlin Wall was falling. In the book, Feffer argues that continued improvements in relations between the two superpowers depends in large measure on U.S. response to overtures from Moscow. Thee author examines the domestic roots of Soviet foreign policy and its new thinking as regards relations with the West. Feffer also criticizes the concept of “detente” as a bi-polar holdover of Cold War politics.
Reviewing Beyond Detente in Soviet Studies, Ken Booth noted: “If the elements of the particular problem of international politics which Feffer addresses have altered beyond imagination over two years, the essence of the problem of relations between the most powerful states will remain with us for a long time to come. Though ‘East’ and ‘West’ no longer mean what they did, the discussion of options remains essential.” Similarly, Library Journal contributor Cleveland R. Fraser found this a “useful addition for larger international affairs collections,” despite the fact that events had “dated portions of the book.”
State of the Union and Europe's New Nationalism
Feffer serves as coeditor with Richard Caplan on the 1994 collection of essays, State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile. The fifteen essays are written by progressives and policy scholars such as Ralph Nader and Barry Commoner, and evaluate Clinton policies, finding them generally wanting in terms of progressive values. A Publishers Weekly reviewer thought that these essays “offer useful advice.”
Feffer and Caplan again team up to edit the 1996 collection, Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict, which gathers fourteen essays from scholars in the field to examine the rise of nationalism in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The essays look at the meanings and implications of the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent Balkan wars, the civil war in Georgia, rising xenophobia in France, and other trends. The various authors also have varying ideas about nationalism, some viewing it as a liberating force, others as an oppressive force, and still others seeing nationalism as a mixture of both. Writing in Political Studies, Kursheed Wadia felt that such diversity of opinion “is to be expected and welcomed.” Wadia added: “Indeed, it is the debate about nationalism that is acknowledged and further reflected here that adds to the book’s purpose and interest.” International Affairs contributor Joseph Llobera had a more mixed assessment, noting that the book is “not always free of prejudices, though on the whole it is a useful but not necessarily original, contribution to the subject-matter.”
North Korea, South Korea and Crusade 2.0
Feffer turn his attention to the Korean peninsula in his 2003 work, North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. A frequent visitor to North and South Korea as a representative of the American Friends Service Committee in Northeast Asia, Feffer provides a short overview of the history and complex situation in the Korean peninsula, offering alternatives to an aggressive American foreign policy toward North Korea. Instead, the author recommends reconciliation that might lead to reunification of the two Koreas. Writing in the Nation, Bruce Cumings termed this a “lucid, hard-hitting overview.” Cumings further commented: “[Feffer] has produced a perceptive, gracefully written book placing the nuclear crisis in a broader policy perspective that embraces the peninsula as a whole, all in 173 easily digestible pages.”
In his 2012 study, Crusade 2.0 : The West’s Resurgent War on Islam, Feffer looks at the resurgence of anti-Islamic sentiment in the West in the decade following the 911 attacks. Such Islamophobia threatens the very fiber of Western democracies, Feffer argues. The invasion of Iraq and the Global War on Terror make us less safe, he contends. It has distracted Americans from the loss of soldiers, money spent, and civil liberties abrogated. Feffer suggests that the term “Judeo-Christian” be substituted with a new term to refer to all three Abrahamic religions–Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He also argues for a cessation of the settlement of new territories by Israel, and the acceptance of Turkey’s membership in the European Union in order to make the Union more multicultural. Online Alternatives reviewer Lola Duffort found this work “ambitious.” Duffort added that though this study “may try to do too much in too little space, it nonetheless provides readers with more than a few invaluable insights into the implications of Islamophobia, particularly in the United States, but also in Europe.”
Splinterlands
Feffer turns his hand to fiction in Splinterlands, a dystopian novel that is set in 2050. In this brave new world, the European Union no longer exists, and in fact all the great powers–including the United Sates–have left the stage. Nationalism has replaced internationalism and global warming is taking its deadly toll. This political climate is the backdrop for a tale of disintegration on a personal level, as Julian West attempts to make sense of his own fractured family and life. In an interview on the Book Culture website, Feffer explained the genesis of this novel: “I’ve been writing and thinking about the European Union for the last couple years. The prospect of Brexit–and the chain of events it might set into motion–led me to write an essay about how resurgent nationalism … would unravel the international community.” That essay became popular and Feffer ultimately developed it into a novel focusing on a narrator who’s life has disintegrated in parallel with the international community.
A California Bookwatch reviewer had praise for Feffer’s “in-depth approach” in Splinterlands. Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: “This novel is not for the emotionally squeamish or optimistic; Feffer’s confident recitation of world collapse is terrifyingly plausible, a short but encompassing look at world tragedy.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
California Bookwatch, February, 2017, review of Splinterlands.
International Affairs, January, 1998, Josep Llobera, review of Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict, p. 22.
Library Journal, May 1, 1990, Cleveland R. Fraser, review of Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options, p. 99.
Nation, June 7, 2004, Selig S. Harrison, “The North Korean Conundrum,” p. 23.
Political Studies, September, 1998, Khursheed Wadia, review of Europe’s New Nationalism, p. 820.
Publishers Weekly, November 1, 1993, review of State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile, p. 73; September 26, 2016, review of Splinterlands, p. 72.
Sojourners Magazine, November-December, 2002, Molly Marsh, “Books for Giving and Receiving: a Holiday Collection,” p. 44.
Soviet Studies, Vol. 44, no. 2, 1992, Ken Booth, review of Beyond Detente, p. 356.
ONLINE
Alternatives, http://www.alterinter.org/ (July 1, 2012) Lola Duffort, review of Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam.
Book Culture, http://www.bookculture.com/ (February 7, 2017), “Q & A with John Feffer.”
Foreign Policy in Focus, http://fpif.org/ (May 23, 2017), author profile.
John Feffer Website, http://www.johnfeffer.com (May 23, 2017).*
John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. In 2012-13, he was also an Open Society Fellow looking at the transformations that have taken place in Eastern Europe since 1989.
He is the author of several books and numerous articles. His latest book is the dystopian novel, Splinterlands. He has also produced six plays, including three one-man shows, and published a novel. He is a senior associate at the Asia Institute in Seoul and has been both a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has also worked for the AFSC on such issues as the global economy, gun control, women and workplace, and domestic politics. He has served as a consultant for Foreign Policy in Focus, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, among other organizations.
He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia.
He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo). He’s been widely interviewed in print and on radio.
He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.
John Feffer is available to give lectures and class presentations on topics including U.S. foreign policy, the Korean peninsula, and the politics of food. For more information, please email him at: johnfeffer [at] gmail.com
John Feffer
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John Feffer
Education Haverford College
Website http://www.johnfeffer.com/
John Feffer is an author and currently co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.[1] He is a fellow at the Open Society Foundations.[2] His books include Crusade 2.0, (City Lights, 2012), a description of contemporary attacks on Islam, North Korea/South Korea: US Policy and the Korean Peninsula, a description of current U.S. policy towards Korea and its limitations, Power Trip, a narrative of American unilateralism during the George W. Bush administration, and Living in Hope, a description of creative responses by local communities to the challenges of globalization.
Feffer is a contributor to The Huffington Post. He has written the plays The Pundit and The Politician,[2] both of which were performed at the 2013 Washington's Capital Fringe Festival.[2]
John Feffer is director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been an Open Society Foundation Fellow and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee.
He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).
John has been widely interviewed in print and on radio. He serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.
QUOTE:
I've been writing and thinking about the European Union for the last couple years. The prospect of Brexit -- and the chain of events it might set into motion -- led me to write an essay about how resurgent nationalism, would unravel the international community.
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Q & A with John Feffer
John Feffer's new book, Splinterlands, was released late last year, and in the current political climate feels very relevant. We're so excited about it we asked him to do a Q & A with us. And don't miss his event at the New School on February 16th!
1) How did you come to write Splinterlands?
I've been writing and thinking about the European Union for the last couple years. The prospect of Brexit -- and the chain of events it might set into motion -- led me to write an essay about how resurgent nationalism, led by such figures as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen, would unravel the international community. The narrator of the piece is looking backward from 2050 at how the great geopolitical entities like the EU became extinct and the world fractured along ethnic, economic, and political lines.
The essay, which was published at TomDispatch and picked up by The Nation, Salon, and many other publications, proved quite popular. TomDispatch suggested that I turn the essay into a book. I decided to turn the essay into a short novel. I gave the narrator a family that has fractured in much the same way that the international community has. The book follows his journey to understand why his wife left him, his children became estranged, and his life fell apart. This mystery is also gradually revealed in a set of footnotes that provide a literal subtext.
2) What are you currently reading?
I'm reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant.
3) Do you have a personal favorite book of all time? If so, can you share it and tell us why?
The book that was probably most influential for me was Point Counterpoint by Aldous Huxley, which I read as a teenager. It was the first time that I could see into the clockwork of a novel and understand how it was put together.
4) What’s next? Any upcoming book projects in the works that you can tell us about?
I'm now finishing a manuscript about the backlash against liberalism in Eastern Europe. It's based on 300 interviews I conducted in the region in 2012-3, many of them with the same people I talked to in 1990 (which I turned into the book Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions). The expected publication date is some time in 2017. But all of the interviews have been transcribed and introduced here: johnfeffer.com/full-interview-list/
QUOTE:
in-depth approach John Feffer takes in his novel.
Splinterlands
California Bookwatch.
(Feb. 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Splinterlands
John Feffer
Haymarket Books
PO Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618
9781608467242, $13.95, www.haymarketbooks.org
Splinterlands is a dystopian novel set in 2050, a time when the European Union has ended and great powers are gone. Even the United States has
lost its luster and is great in name only. Against this backdrop of a post-apocalyptic failure of all major nations in the world is a haunting look at
what such disintegration actually involves on a social and personal scale, with the analysis of events using a round-the-world trip to consider the
process and signs of change. Readers who enjoy dystopian stories that hold more than a light look at political structures and their downfall will
more than appreciate the in-depth approach John Feffer takes in his novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Splinterlands." California Bookwatch, Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA486641900&it=r&asid=f3b9088da1c24ec3cf742931e1e1f1b1. Accessed 31 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A486641900
---
QUOTE:
This novel is not for the emotionally
squeamish or optimistic; Feffer's confident recitation of world collapse is terrifyingly plausible, a short but encompassing look at world tragedy.
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Splinterlands
Publishers Weekly.
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Splinterlands
John Feffer. Haymarket, $13.95 trade paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-60846-724-2
In a chilling, thoughtful, and intuitive warning, foreign policy analyst Feffer (Crusade 2.0) takes today's woes of a politically fragmented,
warming Earth and amplifies them into future catastrophe. Looking back from his hospital bed in 2050, octogenarian geo-paleontologist Julian
West contemplates his fractured world and estranged family. West is writing the follow-up to his bestselling 2020 monograph, Splinterlands, in
which he analyzes the disintegrated international community. By 2050, the refugee-saturated European Union has collapsed; the countries of
Brazil, Russia, India, and China have splintered; and Washington, D.C., is gone, destroyed by Hurricane Donald in 2022. There are water wars,
imitation foods made from seaweed, inequality, disease, and sleeper terrorists. On a virtual reality trip to make amends, West visits his children--
professor Aurora in a deteriorating Brussels rampant with kidnappings; wealthy opportunist Gordon in Xinjiang, no longer part of China; and
freedom fighter Benjamin in prosperous Botswana. His ex-wife, Rachel, lives in a commune in a snowless Vermont, now a farming paradise.
Lending credibility to his predictions, Feffer includes footnotes from West's editor written around 2058. This novel is not for the emotionally
squeamish or optimistic; Feffer's confident recitation of world collapse is terrifyingly plausible, a short but encompassing look at world tragedy.
(Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Splinterlands." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558219&it=r&asid=15012546cacc6e19a9394eb6c01a833d. Accessed 31 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558219
---
QUOTE:
offer useful advice
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State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the
Nation in Profile
Publishers Weekly.
240.44 (Nov. 1, 1993): p73.
COPYRIGHT 1993 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Calling the first year of the Clinton administration a profound disappointment" for progressives, a group of policy scholars associated with the
Institute for Policy Studies offer useful advice in 15 essays. While some of the book is already dated - and most essays aren't long enough to be
solid and nuanced - there is much trenchant criticism. Robert Borosage argues for much greater cuts in military spending, and Marcus Raskin
calls for a transformation of the "national security state," ending, for instance, the covert operations of the CIA. Barry Commoner proposes; both
realistic environmental steps like federal procurement of electric cars and more ambitious actions like restructuring of the chemical industry to
reduce the Production of hazardous waste. Other analysts tackle issues such as poverty, gender, race and community. In a stimulating roundtable
discussion, Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg argues that crities should give the president more than a year to deliver. Caplan is the New York
director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; Feffer is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile." Publishers Weekly, 1 Nov. 1993, p. 73. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA14528478&it=r&asid=b0765b972add30c627e85f9733984a87. Accessed 31 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A14528478
---
QUOTE:
lucid, hard-hitting overview,
has produced a perceptive,
gracefully written book placing the nuclear crisis in a broader policy perspective that embraces the peninsula as a whole, all in 173 easily
digestible pages.
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The North Korean conundrum
Selig S. Harrison
The Nation.
278.22 (June 7, 2004): p23.
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Nation Company L.P.
http://www.thenation.com/about-and-contact
Full Text:
NORTH KOREA: Another Country.
By Bruce Cumings.
New Press.
241 pp. $24.95.
THE NORTH KOREAN REVOLUTION: 1945-1950.
By Charles K. Armstrong.
Cornell.
265 pp. Paper $19.95.
NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA: A Debate on Engagement Strategies.
By David Kang and Victor Cha.
Columbia.
265 pp. $24.50.
CRISIS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA: How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea.
By Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki.
McGraw-Hill.
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173 pp. $19.95.
NORTH KOREA, SOUTH KOREA: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis.
By John Feffer.
Seven Stories.
197 pp. Paper $9.95.
In the prevailing American stereotype, North Korea is a failing Stalinist dictatorship held together only by the ruthless repression of a mad ruler
who dreams of firing nuclear weapons at Los Angeles. Sooner or later, in this imagery, the Kim Jong II regime, strangled in its Communist
straitjacket, will crumble economically, and the only issue is whether its collapse will come in the form of an implosion or an explosion.
For George W. Bush, who says he "loathes" Kim Jong II and wants to "topple" his regime, the assumption that Kim's power rests solely on
repression has shaped the current US policy response to the much-discussed North Korean nuclear weapons program. Given patience and enough
pressure on Pyongyang, Bush and his advisers appear to believe, the Kim regime will fall. Thus, it is neither necessary nor desirable to reward
Kim for denuclearization with economic quid pro quos and security assurances that would merely help to keep him afloat.
What accounts for the emotional intensity of the Bush Administration's desire for "regime change" in Pyongyang? More broadly, does the
conventional wisdom in the United States about the nature of the North Korean system, reflected in US policy, rest on an informed assessment of
what enables Kim to survive?
The President's own explanation is that Kim is loathsome because he presides over an Orwellian totalitarian system. But one can agree that the
North Korean system is indeed Orwellian while disputing the wisdom of a policy of confrontation. Moreover, there are other reasons why
Pyongyang is demonized in Administration policy. North Korea challenges two American articles of faith: that the United States is entitled to be
treated with deference as the "only superpower," and that Western-style democracy, together with economic globalization based on market
principles, is now the natural, universal order of things.
Pyongyang refuses to defer to the United States and seeks to deal with Washington on a basis of sovereign equality despite its inferior power
position. Although eager to obtain foreign capital and technology, it is seeking to do so selectively, on its own terms, resisting pressure for
wholesale political and economic reforms, all at once, that might weaken the control of the Korean Workers Party regime. Above all, what
exasperates many Americans about North Korea, no doubt including the President, is the very fact that it continues to exist at all and has not gone
the way of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Communist states, thus finally confirming the ideological victory of the West in the cold
war.
Media coverage of the nuclear negotiations with North Korea generally places Pyongyang in the position of the defendant at the bar in a judicial
proceeding, with the United States in the role of judge, jury and executioner. Rarely does a journalist go beyond what is spoon-fed at State
Department or White House briefings to examine the assumptions underlying US policy or make a serious effort to present the North Korean side
of the story. This is partly because North Korea often smothers its position in a flood of crude anti-imperialist rhetoric that is painful to wade
through and difficult to evaluate even for the journalist seeking to be objective. But it is also because most journalists facing a deadline are not
given the time necessary to seek out elusive North Korean diplomats, or to read books about North Korea.
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In any case, even if they did do their homework, much of the literature on North Korea has until recently reinforced simplistic, negative
stereotypes. Most of the authors writing about North Korea have never been there and have had to base their assessments on interviews with
defectors who were generally beholden, during the cold war, to South Korean intelligence agencies, or by working within the parameters defined
by North Korea's propaganda output, much as Kremlinologists did in earlier decades. One of the more carefully researched books of this genre--
North Korea Through the Looking Glass, by Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig--advertised its limitations with its title.
The media hype generated by the nuclear negotiations has now led to a spate of new books about North Korea and how to deal with it. Two of
these, North Korea: Another Country, by Bruce Cumings, and The North Korean Revolution: 1945-1950, by Charles K. Armstrong, make
powerfully clear why the Kim regime is not on the verge of collapse.
Cumings, the doyen of US historians of contemporary Korea, is best known for his definitive two-volume study of the origins of the Korean War.
To understand the nationalistic ethos that gives North Korea its political cohesion and staying power, he writes, it is necessary to recognize the
traumatic impact of the US role in the war. In September 1950, Harry Truman made his fateful decision to enlarge the conflict, even though North
Korean forces had been successfully pushed out of South Korea. The proper response to North Korean aggression, Cumings argues, would have
been to "reestablish the 38th Parallel and claim a victory for the containment doctrine." Instead, Truman and Dean Acheson "decided to transform
their undeclared war into a campaign to liberate North Korea."
American soldiers marched northward toward the Yalu River border with China, provoking Chinese intervention, and the US Air Force rained
destruction on North Korea until the armistice was concluded, in 1953. To escape from American planes, any one of which, in North Korean
eyes, might have dropped an atomic bomb, most of the population lived and worked in hastily excavated underground caverns complete with
their own schools, hospitals and small factories. The South suffered brutal but relatively brief anguish from air attacks during the latter part of
1950, with Pyongyang using little close air support in its operations there. The North, by contrast, endured three years of heavy US bombing in
addition to the Yalu offensive. This unremitting assault from the air, plus a bloody US-South Korean occupation, left a deeply rooted siege
mentality in the North that persists today.
Appealing for support in the name of a continuing US threat, North Korean leaders point to the many reminders that the Korean War is not yet
over: the maintenance of most of the economic sanctions imposed during the war; the presence of US forces in the South, still operating under the
same UN command structure used during the war; and above all, the legal reality that the armistice has not been transformed into a peace treaty.
It was John Foster Dulles's threat of using nuclear weapons that broke the impasse in the armistice negotiations, Cumings reminds us, and in the
decades thereafter the United States "has consistently based its deterrence on threats to use them ... in Korea," threats backed up by the presence
of US tactical nuclear weapons in the South until 1991. The invasion of Iraq and the explicit US assertion of the right to take pre-emptive military
action elaborated in the Bush Administration's National Security Strategy of September 17, 2002, is progressively hardening support within North
Korea for nuclear weapons--not to strike Los Angeles, which would invite US retaliation, but to deter a US attack.
Many Western historians writing about North Korea during the cold war depicted Kim Jong II's father, the late Kim II Sung, as a supine puppet
installed by Soviet forces, likened the new North Korean state to Eastern European Communist satellites and belittled North Korean accounts of
Kim II Sung's role as a guerrilla hero who fought Japanese forces in Manchuria during the Korean anticolonial struggle.
Cumings shows that Kim did in fact earn legitimacy as "a classic Robin Hood figure" who helped poor Korean farmers in the Kapsan area
bordering Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period and as a fervent nationalist who led guerrilla attacks against Japanese forces in southern
and southeastern Manchuria from 1933 to 1940. His extensive citations from the latest scholarly research include recently unearthed Japanese
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intelligence reports describing Kim as the "most famous" and a "particularly popular" leader of Korean emigres in Manchuria, with "a great
reputation and a high position," a "Korean hero" in the struggle against Japan.
As for Kim's installation by Soviet forces, Cumings establishes that the Russians had "no clear-cut plan or predetermined course of action" during
the early months of the occupation and had someone else in mind to head the new Pyongyang regime. However, precisely because Kim had such
a tight-knit following among the guerrilla cohort who had fought with him in Manchuria, "after the guerrillas returned, they pushed [him] forward
as first among equals." Kim was no mere stooge of the Russians, in short, and he began playing off Moscow and Beijing against each other to suit
Korean nationalist purposes as soon as Soviet forces departed.
Charles K. Armstrong demolishes the analogy between North Korea and the erstwhile Communist regimes of Eastern Europe with incontestable
evidence drawn from 1.6 million pages of declassified North Korean documents captured during the Korean War.
Instead of "working through a small, elite vanguard party in the typical Leninist fashion" exemplified in Eastern Europe, Armstrong shows, Kim
II Sung built a "powerful support base ... among the poor and marginal elements of [Korean] society," especially the poor peasant majority,
workers and women, as he had done in mobilizing popular resistance in Manchuria. During Japanese colonial rule, the number of landless farm
laborers had multiplied. Rapacious landlords oppressed their tenant farmers, who were forced to pay crushing rents that often exceeded 60
percent of their total crop and lived on a bare subsistence diet. In March 1946, just a month after emerging as the leader of the Provisional
People's Committee, which later evolved into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim II Sung pushed through sweeping land
reforms that gave the Workers Party its strong rural foundations.
Although the new state initially called itself Communist, Communism in Korea was soon "absorbed and transformed" by the hierarchical
structure and Confucian social values that had characterized Korea over the centuries. "Communism took root in North Korea," Armstrong
concludes, precisely because Korean society was so conservative. On the one hand, "the possibility of breaking down old hierarchies was deeply
attractive to many at the bottom of the social ladder," while at the same time, Korea's Confucian heritage enabled Kim II Sung to create "new
hierarchical structures even more rigid than the old, and just as resistant to change." Or, as a South Korean scholar cited by Cumings puts it,
North Korea became "a new Confucian society or family-state that is well integrated as an extension of filial piety, expressed through strong
loyalty to its leader."
"An odd aspect of the DPRK's belief in the family as the core unit of society," Cumings observes, is that prisoners are generally sent to labor
camps together with their families, and mutual family support enables many to survive the ordeal. Cumings does not minimize the ugly horror of
North Korea's gulag. Indeed, he accepts the higher estimates of the number of prisoners, citing a South Korean intelligence figure of 150,000, half
criminals and half political cases. The gulag symbolizes the dark side of a repressive system that stifles unrest resulting primarily from continuing
economic failures, especially in agriculture. Although only 14 percent of North Korea's mountainous terrain is arable, the government has made
matters worse with collective farming; the floods of 1995 and 1996 led to near-famine conditions in many provinces. As the New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof has observed, "The best metaphor for North Korea is the medieval church. Much of the population consists of genuine
believers, and no one pays enormous attention to the minority of heretics who are tortured and killed, the way witches or Christians of a dissident
sect were killed during the Middle Ages."
Like most advocates of accommodation with Pyongyang, Cumings suggests that external pressure on the Kim regime will only reinforce internal
repression and delay the liberalizing trends now being stimulated by growing contacts with the outside world.
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Both Armstrong and Cumings present evidence relevant to the current policy debate about how to deal with North Korea. But Armstrong's book
is specialized academic fare, too rigorous and detailed for the general reader. Cumings, by contrast, resting on his long-established scholarly
laurels, writes in a lively, readable, argumentative, often delightfully irreverent style. His book should be read by anyone seriously interested in an
authoritative antidote to the bias and superficiality in most of what is written about North Korea.
North Korea: Another Country indicts not only the Bush policy toward North Korea but also the entire US role in Korea dating back to the USSoviet
division of the peninsula in 1945. Significantly, however, Cumings questions one of the key arguments made by some other critics of US
policy: that Kim Jong II would move toward sustained economic reforms as the result of an accommodation with Washington. "North Korea is
neither muddling through toward some sort of postcommunism, the way other socialist states did after 1989," he argues, "nor is it seriously
reforming like China and Vietnam.... Any kind of coordinated reform seems difficult for the regime to accomplish." In addition to the "paralysis
and immobilism" resulting from warfare between bureaucratic and provincial fiefdoms, the drag of a vast party apparatus, the privileged position
of the armed forces and intense generational conflict, he finds the leadership "deeply frightened by the consequences of opening up the economy."
This assessment, made with little elaboration, is challenged effectively in a detailed analysis by Professor David Kang of the Dartmouth Business
School, who presents the case for accommodation in Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, written with Victor Cha. North
Korea has already come "very far" from its command economy of 1989, Kang says, citing the upsurge of private markets since the 1996 famine, a
package of economic reforms enacted in July 2002, including a new pricing system, and an overall growth of the private sector in the past five
years from less than 4 percent to perhaps 25 percent of the economy. Continuing signs of reform are accompanied by "growing evidence that
North Korea is serious about opening to the West," notably its efforts to provide a legal framework for foreign investment. Significant reforms
cannot succeed without such an opening, Kang emphasizes, and "a hardline policy of pressure and threats from the United States will not start a
war but will jeopardize" the gains that have been made.
In contrast to Kang's empirically based argument, Cha is didactic, relying on doctrinaire assumptions and fancy political science jargon. An
advocate of what he calls "hawk engagement," he spells out in revealing detail why the Bush Administration refuses to deal directly with North
Korea and what it hopes to gain through multilateral negotiations like those recently conducted in Beijing. Rejecting Kang's contention that Kim
Jong II no longer poses a military threat and wants to open up to the West, Cha maintains that Pyongyang, desperate for a way out of a systemic
crisis, is likely to use "other forms of violence short of all-out war," such as a "limited but forceful frontal assault into the South" designed to
strengthen its bargaining position with Seoul. A cold war-style policy of "containment and isolation" in response to this danger, he says, might
lead to an undesired war. "Conditional engagement" would be less provocative. It would "make clear to ... regional powers that the U.S. [has]
exhausted all efforts at cooperation" and would "rally the coalition to coerce the regime through force and economic sanctions into
nonproliferation compliance and/or regime collapse." Such a policy can only succeed, he concedes, with the cooperation of China, Russia, Japan
and South Korea.
"Hawk engagement," he tells us frankly, is not designed to achieve a diplomatic settlement but is rather "an exit strategy that builds a coalition for
punishment," "an instrument to reveal the DPRK's true, unchanged intentions" and a way to exacerbate tensions within the North Korean elite,
"contributing to possible ... clashes or coup attempts that might precipitate the regime's crumbling from the top." If North Korea continues to
develop its nuclear weapons program, the United States and those allies willing to help would "intercept any vessels suspected of carrying
nuclear- or missile-related materials in and out of the North."
Far from building a coalition to isolate North Korea, however, "hawk engagement" is increasingly damaging US relations with China, Russia,
South Korea and Japan, all of whom, to varying degrees, put much of the blame for the impasse with Pyongyang on US rigidity, as they have
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made clear in recent weeks. All of them are opposed to the interdiction of North Korean vessels and other coercive measures proposed by Cha,
because they recognize that such muscle-flexing could trigger a chain reaction of escalation, leading to another Korean war.
If John Kerry is elected and reshapes Korea policy next January, he should carefully consider some of the ideas in Crisis on the Korean Peninsula:
How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea. Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki propose a "grand bargain" in which North Korea would get $2
billion in aid per year for a decade, mostly from Japan but including some $300 million from the United States. In return, it would agree to
complete and verifiable denuclearization over "a course of years"; an end to the testing, production, deployment and export of medium- and longrange
missiles; and sweeping cuts of at least 50 percent in all major types of its heavy weaponry, as part of a broad arms control agreement in
which the United States and South Korea would also cut their conventional forces in Korea.
O'Hanlon and Mochizuki's arms control proposal is their most valuable contribution, though the terms suggested would have to be modified to
make the deal equitable and acceptable to North Korea. For example, it is the qualitative superiority of US air power based in Korea that makes
North Korea vulnerable to a US pre-emptive attack, and explains its massive forward deployment of tanks and artillery as a deterrent. Yet the
proposed cuts in aircraft are frankly designed to retain this superiority. "For allied forces," they suggest, "the net loss in capability as a result of
the arms control proposal would be less in percentage terms" than that of the North. This is calculated to make their proposal more palatable to
the Pentagon, but it makes it a nonstarter in Pyongyang.
As described by O'Hanlon and Mochizuki, their "grand bargain" goes beyond "carrots and sticks" to what they call "steaks and sledgehammers."
But this approach is simply a new and more sophisticated variant of US efforts for the past decade to use the normalization of relations with
Pyongyang as a reward for the cessation of its nuclear program. After repeated failures, it is clearly time to reassess this approach, which is what
John Feffer does in his lucid, hard-hitting overview, North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. Feffer visited both North Korea
and South Korea frequently and represented the American Friends Service Committee in Northeast Asia. He has produced a perceptive,
gracefully written book placing the nuclear crisis in a broader policy perspective that embraces the peninsula as a whole, all in 173 easily
digestible pages.
The United States should uncouple normalization and denuclearization, Feffer concludes, and "immediately begin the process of establishing
diplomatic relations with North Korea. Rather than a bargaining chip, normalized relations thus become a framework for addressing all
outstanding U.S.-North Korean issues." My own visits to North Korea, eight since 1972, support his view that "North Korea will not likely feel
secure enough to relinquish its nuclear deterrent if it forever remains an outlier, and normalization is an important step toward a future in which
North Korea is unlikely to use whatever weapons of destruction it possesses." The idea of uncoupling the nuclear issue from normalization has
also been suggested by an influential Japanese security expert, Masashi Nishihara, director of the National Defense Academy in Tokyo.
With six other Americans, including two former US ambassadors to South Korea, I recently participated in a three-day dialogue with a high-level
North Korean delegation headed by Jo Sung Ju, American Affairs director in the Foreign Ministry. Repeatedly, the North Koreans emphasized
that "coexistence" is the key to resolving the nuclear crisis. What North Korea wants above all, they said, is a formal security guarantee that
would not only revoke the threat of a pre-emptive US attack but would also pledge to "respect the sovereignty" of North Korea by abandoning the
often-stated goal of regime change.
"Why would we need nuclear weapons if we no longer feel threatened?" asked one. "Why would we give up our right to have them if you keep
talking about regime change? It's as simple as that."
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Selig S. Harrison, author of Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and US Disengagement (Princeton), is director of the Asia program at
the Center for International Policy. He has visited North Korea eight times and met the late Kim II Sung twice. Korean Endgame won the 2002
Association of American Publishers award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Government and Political Science.
Harrison, Selig S.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Harrison, Selig S. "The North Korean conundrum." The Nation, 7 June 2004, p. 23. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA117419727&it=r&asid=0e2a8d3edcea414b9b6becfc72dbadd1. Accessed 31 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A117419727
---
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Books for giving and receiving: a holiday collection.
(Culture watch: books art music film)
Molly Marsh
Sojourners Magazine.
31.6 (November-December 2002): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Sojourners
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.home
Full Text:
The season of giving approaches, and in that spirit we offer words and images we've found meaningful and helpful--books for making the earth
greener, for managing the "deadly" sin of anger, and for talking with your Jewish and Muslim neighbors. We've looked at devotionals on "the
duet of love" (as the Glenstal monks describe prayer), depictions of Jesus and Mary by artists throughout the years, and reminders to appreciate
the sweetness of simple things like laundry on the line and soft dry towels. We've even added some appallingly bad limericks for impressing your
holiday guests, alongside inspirational stories about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American Indians on Alcatraz Island. In short, it's a collection of
words and images to carry with you, or to share with others, in this rich, mysterious season of waiting, anticipation, and celebration.
Icons or Portraits? Images of Jesus and Mary from the Collection of Michael Hall
This is a stunning collection--originally an exhibit at the Gallery at the American Bible Society in New York but displayed here in book form,
with full color illustrations of sculptures, paintings, and other depictions of Mary and Jesus that range from the 12th through the 20th centuries.
The book's five chapters cover images of the Madonna and Child, illustrations from Mary and Jesus' lives, narratives of the Passion, and images
of the body of Christ. The fifth chapter looks at representations of Jesus and Mary considered to be miraculous.
Each illustration includes descriptive information as well as details about its style, the culture from which it originated, and the artist. Starting in
September, the exhibit "Icons or Portraits?" will travel to Mobile, Alabama; Evansville, Indiana; and Sacramento, California. (American Bible
Society)
Greening Congregations Handbook: Stories, Ideas, and Resources for Cultivating Creation Awareness and Care in Your Congregation, compiled
and edited by Tanya Marcovna Barnett
`I am the breeze that nurtures all things green," said Hildegard of Bingen, speaking in the voice of God. It is a voice we don't always heed--or
understand--when it comes to caring for the earth. Greening Congregations is a "how-to" manual for cultivating an awareness in ourselves and in
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our congregations of caring for God's creation. It's also highly practical and useable, with readings, worksheets churches can use to develop a
"greening" mission, questions for reflection, educational resources, and more. (Earth Ministry)
Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson
If you've wondered how to communicate tough concepts like child labor, global sweatshops, and wealth inequality to your students, here's your
book. Geared toward educators (Bigelow and Peterson teach high school and elementary school, respectively), Rethinking Globalization is
chock-full of ideas for helping students understand the many layers of globalization. It includes readings, lesson plans, role plays, handouts,
interviews, poems, cartoons, and teaching ideas--all of which can he adapted for varying levels (including college and adult education courses).
Lists of resources are extensive. (Rethinking Schools Press)
For a more detailed look at globalization's effect in particular regions--and what people are doing in response--check out Surviving Globalization
in Three Latin American Communities, by Denis Lynn Daly Heyck (Broadview Press) and Living in Hope: People Challenging Globalization,
edited by John Feffer. (American Friends Service Committee)
Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, by Bruce Feiler
What is it about Abraham? Why did God choose him? Feller visits Christians, Jews, and Muslims and travels through the Middle East to
determine why Abraham remains a key figure for half the world's believers. Great armchair traveling for the religiously inclined. The book's
publishers are sponsoring "Abraham Summits" (www. brucefeiler.com)--in which religious, political, and academic folks meet to conduct
interfaith dialogues--and organizing two weeks of national interfaith dialogue (Nov. 8 to 24) during which "Abraham Salons" will run
simultaneously across the country. (William Morrow)
Living on Purpose, by Tom and Christine Sine
The premise of Tom and Christine Sine's new book is that you want to live a less stressful and more satisfying life--a way of life "that counts for
something." Don't we all? Designed to be used by small groups or Sunday school classes, the Sines direct you through various activities,
including developing your own mission statement, to help you refocus your life--not on what you want, but on what God wants. (Baker Books)
The Enigma of Anger: Essays on a Sometimes Deadly Sin, by Garret Keizer
When is it okay to be angry, especially in a religion that glorifies meekness?, Keizer asks. He rejects the idea that anger has no place in the life of
a Christian, saying, "I am unable to commit to any messiah who doesn't knock over tables." This accomplished essayist writes about anger in the
church, in ourselves, in the house, in God, and in the world. Now's a perfect time to reflect on this "sometimes deadly sin." (Jossey-Bass)
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Sanctuary, by Thomas Roma
From shabby storefronts to soaring cathedrals, from Iglesia Pentecostal Apocalipsis to St. Joseph's Roman Catholic, this photo book documents
the churches of Brooklyn. In gentle black-and-white, against the trash and light of the city, Roma's pictures capture all the ways immigrants and
citizens, rich and poor have made homes for God in the urban landscape (John Hopkins University Press)
RELATED ARTICLE: Prayerful reading.
The Old Testament and the Apocrypha in Limerick, by Rev. Christopher Goodwins
For folks who wouldn't otherwise go near the Bible, 733 funny, cheesy, and sometimes appalling five-line verses that cover major themes from
the Old Testament. A follow-up to The New Testament in Limerick Verse. (John Hunt Publishing)
Daniel 7:15-18 Interpreting dreams wasn't easy In fact, it made Dan feel quite queasy: "Four kingdoms remain, But the Most High will gain The
Whole World--which for Him's easy peesy!"
Psalm 144 Defend Me! In You, Lord, I trust! My armour for battle won't rust With You at my side! I sing now--though I cried--My friendship
with You is a must!
Speaking of limericks, the media-savvy monks at Glenstal Abbey near Limerick, Ireland, have produced The Glenstal Book of Prayer: A
Benedictine Prayer Book. Its slim 100 pages are divided into four sections: daily prayers, familiar prayers (Hail Mary, the Lord's Prayer), prayers
for specific events, and psalms and readings from the Rule of St. Benedict. A beautiful volume. (Liturgical Press)
"Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise," wrote Henri Nouwen. Watch for the
Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas contains daily meditations for this season of waiting and hope. Authors include Gail Godwin, William
Stringfellow, Thomas Merton, and Kathleen Norris. Look also for Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. (Plough Publishing)
Marsh, Molly
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Marsh, Molly. "Books for giving and receiving: a holiday collection. (Culture watch: books art music film)." Sojourners Magazine, Nov.-Dec.
2002, p. 44+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA93700159&it=r&asid=b1104332400140f3aafa18e095f3d52d. Accessed 31 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A93700159
QUOTE:
is to be expected and welcomed. Indeed, it is the debate about nationalism that is acknowledged and further reflected here that adds to the book's purpose and interest.
Wadia, Khursheed. Political Studies. Sep98, Vol. 46 Issue 4, p820. 2p.
Richard Caplan and John Feffer (eds), Europe's New Nationalism. States and Minorities in Conflict (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997), xi + 241 pp., £30.00 ISBN 0 19 509148 5, £14.00 pbk ISBN 0 19 509149 3.
This edited volume of articles brings together analyses and commentaries from scholars, journalists and politicians on the resurgence of nationalism in Europe since the end of the Cold War. It considers a number of different nationalisms inspired, on the one hand, by the collapse of the former Communist states of Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, by the perceived need of majority communities, in Western Europe, to preserve respective cultural identities constructed according to dominant ideologies of race, ethnicity and gender. The authors, separately and from different positions, pose questions about the relationship of nationalism(s) to democracy and human rights and to issues of peace and security. Nationalism is thus variously presented as either a liberating or oppressive force or even both; it is seen, by some, as inherently divisive, hence unable to offer peaceful solutions whereas an opposite argument is that it fulfils a `good and necessary function' as a `state-building and state-maintaining' ideology That this diversity of approaches produces disagreements about the responses to current nationalism(s) is to be expected and welcomed. Indeed, it is the debate about nationalism that is acknowledged and further reflected here that adds to the book's purpose and interest.
(C) Political Studies Association, 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
~~~~~~~~
By Khursheed Wadia, University of Wolverhampton
QUOTE:
If the elements of the particular problem of international politics which Feffer addresses have altered beyond imagination over two years, the essence of the problem of relations between the most powerful states will remain with us for a long time to come. Though `East' end `west' no longer mean what they did, the discussion of options remains essential.
Booth, Ken. Soviet Studies. 1992, Vol. 44 Issue 2, p356.
John Feffer, Beyond Detente. New Options on East- West Relations. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1990, xviii + 238 pp., £ 14.95
THE FINAL REVISION of Beyond Detente took place as the Berlin Wall was collapsing. In the short time since it was published the Kremlin Wall has now fallen, politically speaking. Given this, can a book on `East-West' relations still have any relevance? The is `yes'.
Beyond Detente was written by a liberal American journalist. The book is not, the author asserts, `intended for scholarly study' (p. xv) but rather is addressed to the general reader. Appropriately, it is clearly and persuasively written, and it summarises large amounts of information and argument in an effective manner. One of the useful functions of this book is its challenge to some of the developing myths about recent history, such as the argument that the Gorbachev revolution was simply the result of the tough-minded stance of the West. Feffer successfully argues that the reality was more complex.
Chapter I deals with the domestic roots of Soviet foreign policy, discussing Gorbachev's programme (as it was up to 1989) and those of rivals (conservative critics, republican nationalists and independent socialists). Chapter II examines the characteristics of Soviet `new thinking' about foreign policy, in terms of both topics and issues. There then follows an interesting chapter on the phenomenon of detente (the historical cycles of detente, US `myths' about the Soviet Union, North-South relations, and a critical section on arms control). The final chapter, `Beyond detente' addresses the title of the book, discussing policies and how to get from `ideas to results'.
The author is critical of detente: it `does not work', he argues (p. 141), because it is a manifestation of a mindset which sees the world in bipolar Cold War terms. Detente is also said to be ambiguous: it preserved the alliance system as it pointed beyond it, while related arms control negotiations ensured superpower domination even as they diffused superpower rivalry. Consequently, the author argues, detente was not ambitious enough, and it is therefore necessary to go `beyond' it. In considering how this can be done, he is more critical of his own country than of the Soviet Union. He argues that since 1985 Gorbachev adjusted to the new trends in domestic and international affairs while many US policy makers were clinging on to the global strategies of a previous era. In their place he suggests that a number of alternative policies be placed the centre of a post-detente strategy: economic conversion, alternative defence, human rights, non-intervention and multilateralism. In order to achieve these he identifies some tasks for governments, and some for citizens. The role of the latter is of growing importance. Social movements have increasingly set the agenda of world politics, and Feffer argues that progressive coalitions should think not only of `influencing but of producing policy makers' (p. 160).
If the elements of the particular problem of international politics which Feffer addresses have altered beyond imagination over two years, the essence of the problem of relations between the most powerful states will remain with us for a long time to come. Though `East' end `west' no longer mean what they did, the discussion of options remains essential.
~~~~~~~~
By KEN BOOTH, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
John Feffer, Beyond Detente. New Options on East- West Relations. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1990, xviii + 238 pp., £ 14.95
THE FINAL REVISION of Beyond Detente took place as the Berlin Wall was collapsing. In the short time since it was published the Kremlin Wall has now fallen, politically speaking. Given this, can a book on `East-West' relations still have any relevance? The is `yes'.
Beyond Detente was written by a liberal American journalist. The book is not, the author asserts, `intended for scholarly study' (p. xv) but rather is addressed to the general reader. Appropriately, it is clearly and persuasively written, and it summarises large amounts of information and argument in an effective manner. One of the useful functions of this book is its challenge to some of the developing myths about recent history, such as the argument that the Gorbachev revolution was simply the result of the tough-minded stance of the West. Feffer successfully argues that the reality was more complex.
Chapter I deals with the domestic roots of Soviet foreign policy, discussing Gorbachev's programme (as it was up to 1989) and those of rivals (conservative critics, republican nationalists and independent socialists). Chapter II examines the characteristics of Soviet `new thinking' about foreign policy, in terms of both topics and issues. There then follows an interesting chapter on the phenomenon of detente (the historical cycles of detente, US `myths' about the Soviet Union, North-South relations, and a critical section on arms control). The final chapter, `Beyond detente' addresses the title of the book, discussing policies and how to get from `ideas to results'.
The author is critical of detente: it `does not work', he argues (p. 141), because it is a manifestation of a mindset which sees the world in bipolar Cold War terms. Detente is also said to be ambiguous: it preserved the alliance system as it pointed beyond it, while related arms control negotiations ensured superpower domination even as they diffused superpower rivalry. Consequently, the author argues, detente was not ambitious enough, and it is therefore necessary to go `beyond' it. In considering how this can be done, he is more critical of his own country than of the Soviet Union. He argues that since 1985 Gorbachev adjusted to the new trends in domestic and international affairs while many US policy makers were clinging on to the global strategies of a previous era. In their place he suggests that a number of alternative policies be placed the centre of a post-detente strategy: economic conversion, alternative defence, human rights, non-intervention and multilateralism. In order to achieve these he identifies some tasks for governments, and some for citizens. The role of the latter is of growing importance. Social movements have increasingly set the agenda of world politics, and Feffer argues that progressive coalitions should think not only of `influencing but of producing policy makers' (p. 160).
If the elements of the particular problem of international politics which Feffer addresses have altered beyond imagination over two years, the essence of the problem of relations between the most powerful states will remain with us for a long time to come. Though `East' end `west' no longer mean what they did, the discussion of options remains essential.
~~~~~~~~
By KEN BOOTH, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
QUOTE:
not always free of prejudices, though on the whole it is a useful but not necessarily original, contribution to the subject-matter.
Llobera, Josep. International Affairs. Jan98, Vol. 74 Issue 1, p226-226. 3/4p.
Subjects: EUROPE'S New Nationalism (Book)
Europe's new nationalism: states and minorities in conflict. Edited by Richard Caplan and John Feffer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997. 241pp. Index. £30.00. ISBN 0 19 509148 5. Pb.: £14.00. ISBN 0 19 509149 3.
It is not surprising that the media have had such a field day with the ethnic violence that has festered over certain former communist countries. Since 1989, 'nationalism', in its variety of interpretations, has been of great concern to those dealing with European issues. We live, we have been told, in a new era of tribalism: the demons of nationalism are at large once again. One would not expect the academic community to distance itself from such reflections in the nationalist quagmire, but one expects a more serene and enlightened approach from detached scholars. However, the growing literature on the topic is of uneven quality, reflecting perhaps how sensitive we all are to issues of nationalism.
The book under review is not always free of prejudices, though on the whole it is a useful but not necessarily original, contribution to the subject-matter. At a general level, the rationale of the collection is not clear. To the naive reader, the text will appear as a hotchpotch of articles: some case-studies (McMillan on Scotland, Vos on Belgium, Nodia on Georgia, Schopflin on Slovakia and Fijalkowski on Germany), some regional comparisons (Tishkov on the former Soviet Union and Grigorievs on the Baltic countries) and some politico-philosophical disquisitions (by Michnick, Kaldor, Milic, Smith and Ignatiev). The contributors come from a variety of national backgrounds and have a variety of professional affiliations. An interesting and valuable feature of the collection is that the majority of the empirical chapters are written by native scholars on their respective countries or areas.
Authors tend to pass opposed value-judgements on nationalism. For Ignatiev, nationalism is essentially intolerant, while Vos and McMillan emphasize its inevitability and plasticity. Anthony Smith and Schopflin, and to a certain extent Tishkov, look at how ethnic and national tensions and conflicts can be contained, managed or solved. Only Fijalkowski's paper considers, in relation to Germany, how ethnic violence against immigrants is related to the issue of citizenship.
Many of the papers make use of the dichotomy (first introduced by Liah Greenfeld) between civic and ethnic: nationalism, which I find rather dubious from an empirical point of view. It excludes moralism and, more importantly, when used as an explanatory tool, is totally inappropriate.
In conclusion, the book contains some interesting, though hardly novel material. I found Michnik's letter about ex-Yugoslavia particularly enlightening and moving. The prize, for originality, however, must be given to Mastnak's piece. In spite of its cantankerousness and outlandishness, it is a contribution that forces you to rethink the 'received' conceptualization of the war in Bosnia. For Masmak, nations are self-governing, civic territorial units--and Bosnia was a good example of that. The Serbian war of aggression was 'anti-nationalist' in that it tried to destroy the Bosnian state. However, the most worrying thing about the new Serbian fascism is that it operated in a quasi liberal-democratic regime and with the connivance of the international community, including the Western powers.
~~~~~~~~
By Josep Llobera
QUOTE:
dated portions of the book
useful addition for larger international affairs collections.
Library Journal,
May 1, 1990, p. 99
Library Journal
This is a report prepared for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. Aimed at the informed general reader, the book argues that the recent shifts in Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev result from domestic imperatives. Whether or not this positive trend in the cycle of detente is sustained depends on timely American responses to Soviet overtures. A generally balanced treatment; readers will especially benefit from Feffer's concise and informative discussion of domestic sources of Soviet external relations. Rapidly transpiring events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have dated portions of the book--an occupational hazard for works of this type. Still, a useful addition for larger international affairs collections.
- Cleveland R. Fraser, Furman Univ., Greenville, S.C.
QUOTE:
ambitious
ay try to do too much in too little space, it nonetheless provides readers with more than a few invaluable insights into the implications of Islamophobia, particularly in the United States, but also in Europe.
Crusade 2.0 : A Book Review
Dimanche 1er juillet 2012, par Lola Duffort
There is little extensive Western journalism or academic work done on Islamophobia, and certainly no authoritative text on the matter, which is perhaps why John Feffer’s project in Crusade 2.0 : The West’s Resurgent War on Islam is such an ambitious one.
Feffer attempts, in under two hundred pages, to cover nearly a thousand years of antipathy between Europe and the Middle East, the geopolitical reasons for and the consequences of Islamophobia in both Europe and the United States today, and, finally, to outline concrete solutions. While Crusade may try to do too much in too little space, it nonetheless provides readers with more than a few invaluable insights into the implications of Islamophobia, particularly in the United States, but also in Europe.
Feffer’s treatment of election-year Islamophobia in the United States is his most complete narrative, as it offers readers an understanding of why and how Islamophobia has been carefully cultivated in an anxious American public toward specific policy goals. On Feffer’s account, Islamophobia has recently served two primary political purposes in the United States. First, George W. Bush warned of the threat of “Islamofascism”—a term coined in the 90s, and reintroduced into the public discourse by Bush in 2005—to the American way of life, giving the Bush administration a renewed justification for a war with dwindling domestic support. With “Saddam Hussein gone and the 9/11 attacks retreating into memory”, Feffer argues that the Bush administration attempted to develop a political climate which distracted Americans from the “soldiers lost, money spent, civil liberties abridged, and critical issues […] ignored”.
Second, Islamophobia has allowed the political right in America to channel racist anxieties about Obama’s election as the first black American president into the “politically correct” fear that Obama is a Muslim, or, at the very least, has Islamist sympathies. In a recent survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, more than one in six Americans believe that Obama is Muslim, while only one in four believe that Obama is Protestant (Obama was officially baptized in the United Church of Christ). These false beliefs are perpetuated by a misinformation campaign spearheaded by organizations such as the Clarion Fund, a pro-Israeli organization connected to John McCain’s presidential campaign, which “decided to distribute the DVD [Obsession : Radical Islam’s War with the West] in swing states prior to the 2008 election”. This video implies that politicians like Obama would please Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda. Ironically, Obama would oversee the assassination of Osama bin Laden three years later.
Feffer proposes three remedies to Crusade 2.0. First, he discusses how the term ‘Judeo-Christian’—which emerged “from the theological debates in the late nineteenth century as a way of incorporating and belittling through hyphenation the Jewish contributions to Christian civilization”—suggests that so-called ‘Judeo-Christian values’ are not shared by Muslims. Feffer suggests abandoning this ‘Judeo-Christian’ construct altogether, or developing a new term to refer to the Abrahamic religions (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) that does not misleadingly exclude the latter. The second remedy to Islamophobia that Feffer recommends is ending Israel’s practice of settling occupied Palestinian territories, since he believes that true reconciliation between the West and the Islamic world can only occur if Israel participates. Finally, Feffer proposes that the European Union accepts Turkey’s application for membership, which will help Europe come to terms with the fact that it is not a unitary culture, but rather a multicultural center of many religions and ways of life.
However, Feffer’s last two recommendations seem unlikely remedies to Islamophobia, since both the Palestinian occupation and Europe’s insistence that it is a unitary culture are a direct result of the West’s distrust of Islam. Only once this distrust subsides will the West be prepared to embrace the world’s second-largest religion ; as such, it seems necessary for comprehensive solutions to Crusade 2.0 not to presume that Islamophobia is on the decline.