Recommendations based on "Destined For War"

Grand strategist and founder of modern Singapore offers key insights and controversial opinions on globalization, geopolitics, economic growth, and democracy.When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee's voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format.Lee offers his assessment of China's future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States' position as the world's sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India's future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader—including the one who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

A New York Times Bestseller!2019 was the last great year for the world economy.For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it.America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about our interconnected world - from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all - is about to change.In customary Zeihan fashion, rather than yelling fire in the geoeconomic theatre, he narrates the accumulation of matchsticks, gasoline, and dynamite in the hands of the oblivious audience, suggesting we might want to call the fire department.A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.

A counterintuitive examination into how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict.Just two decades ago, observers spoke of the US as a "hyperpower"--a nation with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict. Applying a combination of evolutionary theory and detailed field observation, he explains what happened to the "snakes"--non-state threats including terrorists and guerrillas--and the "dragons"--state-based competitors such as Russia and China. He explores how enemies learn under conditions of conflict, and examines how Western dominance over a very particular, narrowly-defined form of warfare since the Cold War has created a fitness landscape that forces adversaries to adapt in ways that present serious new challenges to America and its allies. Within the world's contemporary conflict zones, state and non-state threats have increasingly come to resemble each other, with states adopting non-state techniques and non-state actors now able to access lethal weapon systems once only available to governments. A counterintuitive look at a vastly more complex conflict environment, this book both reshapes our understanding of the West's adversaries and shows how we can respond given the increasing limits on US power.

'one Of The Most Original And Talented Young Writers We Have.' Sathnam Sanghera 'a Must-read.' Elizabeth Day 'a Beautiful, Searingly Personal Account Of A World Defined By Money, Full Of Courage And Truth Telling.' Owen Jones

SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR The term “Libor” is obscure, but it determines a good deal of our financial lives-the interest rate on our credit card; our student loans; our mortgages; our car payments. How did a math genius, a handful of outrageous confederates, and a deeply corrupt banking system conspire to pickpocket you? They were in your wallet to already.  In 2006, an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the world’s largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor—the London interbank offered rate, which determines interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide—was set daily by a small group of easily manipulated functionaries.  Tom Hayes, a brilliant but troubled mathematician, became the lynchpin of a shadowy team that used hook and crook to take over the process and set rates that made them a fortune, no matter the cost to others. Among the motley crew was a French trader nicknamed “Gollum”; the broker “Abbo,” who liked to publicly strip naked when drinking; a Kazakh chicken farmer turned something short of financial whiz kid; an executive called “Clumpy” because of his patchwork hair loss; and a broker uncreatively nicknamed “Big Nose.” Eventually known as the “Spider Network,” Hayes’s circle generated untold riches —until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion. Praised as reading “like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller” (New York Times), “compelling” (Washington Post) and “jaw-dropping” (Financial Times), The Spider Network is not only a rollicking account of the scam, but a provocative examination of a financial system that was warped and shady throughout.

'An essential read to understand the times in which we live' - Lea Ypi A revelatory exploration of how today's rightwing authoritarianism emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism, but from within it After the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. Communism had been defeated - and Friedrich Hayek, the spiritual father of neoliberal economics, had just about lived to see it. But in the decades that followed, Hayek's disciples knew that they had a problem. The rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading. Neoliberals needed an antidote. In this illuminating new book, historian Quinn Slobodian reveals how, from the 1990s onwards, neoliberal thinkers turned to nature, in an attempt to roll back social changes and to return to a hierarchy of gender, race and cultural difference. He explores how these thinkers drew on the language of science, from cognitive psychology to genetics, in order to embed the idea of 'competition' ever deeper into social life, and to advocate cultural homogeneity as essential for markets to truly work. Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they forged the alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists that would become known as the alt-right. Hayek's Bastards shows that many contemporary iterations of the Far Right, from Javier Milei to Donald Trump, emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism, but within it. As repellent as their politics may be, these supposed disruptors are not defectors from the neoliberal order, but its latest cheerleaders.

Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders--but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.

The British military confronted significant challenges during the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Adhering to the principles and doctrines of previous campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence. By juxtaposing the deterioration of these cities against Britain’s celebrated legacy of counterinsurgency, this investigation identifies both the contributions and limitations of traditional tactics in such settings, exposing the gap between the ambitions and resources, intent and commitment, that proved so disastrous to the operation. In its detailed account of the Basra and Helmand campaigns, this volume conducts an unprecedented assessment of British military institutional adaptation in response to operations gone awry. It calls attention to the effectiveness of insurgent tactics and the danger of ungoverned spaces shielding hostile groups and underscores the need for the British military to acquire new skills for meeting irregular threats in future wars.

Traditionally, Americans have viewed war as an alternative to diplomacy, and military strategy as the science of victory. Today, however, in our world of nuclear weapons, military power is not so much exercised as threatened. It is, Mr. Schelling says, bargaining power, and the exploitation of this power, for good or evil, to preserve peace or to threaten war, is diplomacy—the diplomacy of violence. The author concentrates in this book on the way in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. He sees the steps taken by the U.S. during the Berlin and Cuban crises as not merely preparations for engagement, but as signals to an enemy, with reports from the adversary's own military intelligence as our most important diplomatic communications. Even the bombing of North Vietnam, Mr. Schelling points out, is as much coercive as tactical, aimed at decisions as much as bridges. He carries forward the analysis so brilliantly begun in his earlier The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (with Morton Halperin, 1961), and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on modern war and diplomacy. Stimson Lectures. Mr. Schelling is professor of economics at Harvard and acting director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs.

This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis. In a new Foreword, Francis Fukuyama assesses Huntington's achievement, examining the context of the book's original publication as well as its lasting importance."This pioneering volume, examining as it does the relation between development and stability, is an interesting and exciting addition to the literature."--American Political Science Review"'Must' reading for all those interested in comparative politics or in the study of development."--Dankwart A. Rustow, Journal of International Affairs