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- iHaveNet.com: Book Reviews
by Sherard Cowper-Coles
Vali Nasr is a good man, but this is not a good book. In early 2009, Nasr, one of America's greatest experts on Shia Islam in general, and Iran in particular, was asked by
Nasr spent nearly two years with Holbrooke, until his untimely death, in harness, in December 2010. This book is the fruit of Nasr's time working with and for one of the greatest American diplomats of recent times.
The first, and better, half of the book is a partial account of Nasr's rollercoaster ride in the 'creative chaos' of Holbrooke's SRAP shop, squeezed into a suite of offices beside the
Nasr paints a persuasive picture of Holbrooke's anarchic style, of his conviction that, on its own, a military-heavy strategy could not work (as Holbrooke knew from his time as a junior diplomat working in and on Vietnam), and of the good relations between Holbrooke and
Where this part of the book strains credulity, however, is in its Manichean depiction of Holbrooke and Clinton as all good, and of Obama and the
The two chapters Nasr devotes to Afghanistan, followed by one each on Pakistan and Iran, offer plenty of genuine insights about the Obama administration's fumbling conduct of what the presidential candidate had called 'the good war'.
On the fundamentals, Nasr's instincts are surely right. But the account still comes across as thin and somewhat selective, full of assertions supported only by Nasr's black and white view of relations between the
The same theme dominates the even less satisfactory second half of the book. In a sharp change of gear, Nasr shifts from an insider account of Af-Pak policy to a more general download of his views on the Obama administration's performance in relation to the wider Middle East.
Here too the tone is highly critical. In Nasr's view, Obama's failure satisfactorily to end the war in Afghanistan has combined with his failure properly to engage on other issues -- Iraq, the Arab Spring, Israel/Palestine, the challenge of China -- to speed up America's retreat from the world.
Nasr makes virtually no allowance for the domestic political and economic pressures on the President. For him, it is only the lack of political will in Obama's
If only the Middle East, if only history, if only the
Available at Amazon.com:
The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat
Article: Copyright ©, Tribune Content Agency.
Book Review - Unfair Obama Bashing - The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat