Mission Failure: America And The World In The Post-Cold War Era, Mandelbaum - B +

                                               The end of the Cold War coincided with America's victory in the first Iraqi War. Thereafter, America chose to stay involved internationally and the form of our involvement, projecting our military strength around the world, remained the same. The problem is that the content of our foreign policy changed dramatically. "The main focus of American foreign policy shifted from war to governance.." America went from containment to transformation and failed on every front.
                                               The author takes to task the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. He faults Clinton for introducing human rights considerations into our China policy and for expanding NATO into eastern Europe, thus assuring the ongoing enmity of both China and Russia to the US. It should also be noted that he quotes George Kennan in the lead into the chapter, "..expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era." One of the lessons of the two world wars was that conciliatory policies toward the vanquished succeeded, whereas animosity did not. NATO expansion totally turned Russia away from the west, lost the advantage of winning the Cold War, and was one of  "the greatest blunders in the history of American foreign policy." Next, Clinton intervened in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, "places that had no significance for global peace and American well-being." Projecting American values was now a policy. In each instance,  our mission of transforming these places for the better failed.
                                                The Bush administration's response to Sept 11 was the declaration of war on terror, an attack on  Islamic extremism.  The first response in Afghanistan was successful, as Al-Qaeda was crushed in weeks and with very little effort. The Taliban were vanquished and the country returned to peace, and almost, prosperity.  However, the government we established in Afghanistan was not competent, and in 2005, a Taliban insurrection began. Assisted by Pakistan, the Taliban were quite effective against the corrupt Karzai regime.  Obama campaigned on the basis of Afghanistan being the 'good war' and doubled the number of American troops. Soon thereafter, while approving of a counter-intelligence plan, he also put an end-date on the operation. In essence, his policy was a head feint. He said one thing and did another. He didn't believe in nation-building in Afghanistan and was comfortable walking away.  Our longest military engagement accomplished virtually nothing after its initial success in scattering Al-Qaeda.
                                                 The Bush invasion of Iraq, however misbegotten, was successful in removing the Hussein regime. Anarchy quickly followed and a America, without an occupation plan, watched helplessly. An eight-year attempt at nation-building totally failed. America, under a timetable set up by the Bush administration, departed in 2010 only to return in Obama's second term when ISIS almost overran the country.  Thirteen years after the senseless invasion, neither Iraq nor America are better off for the effort.
                                                 The quarter-century of post- Cold War major power tranquility ended in 2014, when both Russia and China returned to their traditional roles in the world. And that is where we now stand. A key take-away here is the obvious, i.e., no matter how well intentioned, the US cannot do the impossible. It can't build nations out of tribal Rubik's cubes of hate and religious intolerance. It cannot make peace in the Middle East by making the Arabs accept Israel.  It cannot make Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, China, Iran, Russia or North Korea into Denmark. They are not enlightened, educated, tolerant societies with a foundation ready to adopt what we perceive to be good ideas. He suggests that the best we can do is to try and cultivate, not impose, western values. All in all, railing against our messianic over-reaching foreign policies is music to my ears. His most assertive statement though, is that the expansion of NATO was and will be the most significant mistake we have made in a very, very long time.  That is something I need to absorb and consider and am not sure I agree. Not expanding NATO  would have been based on the hope that the Russians would be less intransigent than they historically have been, that they would have been cooperative team players in the global world. Would a petro-state with a centuries long tradition of aggression and autocracy made that adjustment? I tend to think not.

The Verdict, Stone - B +

                                               This novel is best described as a London-based Scott Turow-like legal thriller.  The interesting plot point is that the narrator, Terry Flynt, is the clerk on the defense team for the fabled Vernon James, his once best friend and the man who, twenty years earlier, had ruined his life. Add in a crooked lead partner at the law firm, two girls in a green dress, faulty memories, liars, killers and a bunch of dodgy characters, and you have a pretty fun read.

No Shred Of Evidence, Todd - B

                                   This is the 18th book in this series about Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard.  The series is one of the best expositions I've read of the depth of despair that cloaked England in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. This time, there are five young woman under the microscope. Their world was shattered as brothers, friends, fiancees and husbands failed to return. In their 20's, they had long lonely lives to look forward to. One theme that struck me here was a focus on the English class system. There are two gentlemen, certainly not aristocrats, but more like landed gentry, who treat Rutledge with the utmost disdain. There is also some class resentment from the poor that I haven't sensed before.  The actual crime story is a bit weak, but all in all, this remains a wonderful series. 

The Waters of Eternal Youth, Leon - B +

                                               As this is the 25th book in the series and the 4th post on the blog, there isn't much more to say. Guido remains the perfect gentleman, family man, Venetian and Commissario.

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Wachsmann - B

                                               KL stands for 'Konzentrationslager' and this is their history. "Terror stood at the center of the Third Reich, and no other institution embodied Nazi terror more fully than the KL." The first incarcerations were of politicals, primarily communists.  Intitially, the camps were impromptu and set up on any  available site. Dachau, the only camp to operate from 1933-1945 was established on the grounds of a deserted munitions plant.  It was at Dachau that Himmler and his SS took over and began their campaign to run the entire KL system. A year later, the purge of Rohm and the SA was determinative in the eventual ascension of the SS. "It helped to clear the way for a permanent system of lawless imprisonment in the SS concentration camps." Soon Himmler was supervising the KL, run by Eicke and the Gestapo, run by Heydrich. The state prison system remained separate, but all policing power was now in Himmler's hands. Recruitment and training of the guards became systematized, as did the physical layouts of the camps and the uniforms of the prisoners. The KL's of the late thirties featured the imprisonment of hardened criminals, asocials, unemployables, the dim-witted, homosexuals, gypsies and religious opponents of the regime, necessitating an expansion of the number of camps. Only after Kristallnacht in Nov. 1938 did Jews arrive in the camps in meaningful numbers and as the sworn enemies of the Reich, they were met with ferocity and brutality. On the eve of the war, the combined headcount at Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Mathausen and Flossenburg was just over 21,000. The existence, staffing and philosophy of the camps may have foreshadowed what was to come. But, it was not a certainty.
                                                War brought foreigners into the system and led to construction of new facilities beyond the borders of the Reich. The first new camp, in Upper Silesia, was at Auschwitz, where one million would eventually die. Around the system, casual, unofficial and extra-judicial murder quickly became the norm. Prisoners could be murdered without anyone asking questions. And murdered they were, particularly Poles and Jews. The pace picked up so much that the SS camps built their own crematoria. "The transition from mass death to systemic mass extermination did not take place until spring and summer 1941, when Nazi leaders took the next steps on the road to genocide in the KL." The killing of the weak and disabled had begun before the war and accelerated in 1941, the same year that saw the SS Einsatzgruppen dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews as the army rolled into the  USSR and began the starvation of Soviet prisoners that eventually led to millions of deaths. It was Soviet commissars who were the first victims of the Zyklon-B experiments at Auschwitz. "Systemic mass killing turned to genocide in 1942 as the Holocaust entered the KL."
                                                  Beginning at the camps at Belzec*, Sobibor*, Treblinka* and Birkenau, the Jews, who were held in ghettos throughout Poland, were led to the gas chambers. It was at Auschwitz, though, that the Holocaust reached it peak. "The Nazis murdered almost one million Jews here, more than in any other single place. And, only in Auschwitz did they systematically kill Jews from all across the continent, deported to their deaths from Hungary, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Norway."  Auschwitz resonates throughout history because there were survivors who told of their experience.  At Treblinka, there were only three known survivors. The difference is that Auschwitz was also a work camp, where Himmler housed tens of thousands in a vain attempt to build an economic empire on the backs of the downtrodden. Death is what we associate with the camps, but they equally excelled in forced slave labor. Throughout the Reich and right up to the end, prisoners worked in inhuman conditions, often until their death.  And right up to the end, the KL camps were packed. There were over 700,000 prisoners in January 1945. It is believed 40% died during the death throes of the Reich. Outright murder, starvation, typhus, and an endless litany of diseases and cold were the contributors. Soviet, British and American soldiers liberated the survivors.
                                                "The memories of the camps was far more torturous for the survivors, than for the perpetrators,who often settled into quiet lives and forgot about the KL..." Survivors were never free of the memories and carried them to their graves. To have been a victim of and an observer of such a vast genocide was not something one could move on from. Many were irretrievably broken. Many of the KL perpetrators, particularly the commandants and senior staff, were found, tried and executed by the Allies. The majority of evildoers escaped what can only be characterized as erratic revenge, retribution or justice.
                                                 A reunified Germany has acknowledged its past with memorials to the murdered dead around the country. Wachsmann chooses to close the book where it began - at Dachau. Today there is a museum, and the roll call square is just behind the entry gate with an arch with the words Arbeit Macht Frei.
                                                                                                                                                       
                                                  This book is very well written and is as thorough an examination of the KL's as I can imagine. It is, however, very hard slogging. The topic is debilitating and simply wore me out, as is obvious by the almost two weeks it took to complete. And to be frank, I started skimming early and skipped a few chapters. It is not for the faint of heart.


*These three camps were not part of the KL, nor were they operated by the SS. They were under the jurisdiction of the General Government, Poland and staffed by the Reich's Chancellery in Berlin.
                                             

Razzle Dazzle: The Battle For Broadway, Riedel- B

                                             This book is a charming review of the NY theater during the 20th century. The story is dominated by the Shuberts, three bright, aggressive brothers from Syracuse, NY, who came to dominate live theater, not only in NY, but around the country.  By the time of the Depression,  they owned almost all of NY's theaters and dozens elsewhere. They lost their organization to a bank, but were able to buy it back at auction. The Shuberts were on top of the world throughout the 'Golden Age' of Broadway in the 50's and 60's. When the last of the three brothers died in 1962, he left the organization to the Shubert Foundation. Broadway went into a deep dive a decade later under the onslaught of rock 'n' roll, the departure of the middle-class for the suburbs, the city's legendary decline and the mismanagement of a hard-drinking Shubert nephew.
                                               The two attorneys for the family ousted the nephew, withstood a politically-motivated onslaught from Louie Lefkowitz and backed the show that began the turnaround for Broadway. 'A Chorus Line' began its 15-year run in the spring of 1975. The blockbuster era had begun. By the end of the decade, attendance was back to late-60's levels. 'Cats' brought to Broadway the era of the global spectacle".  In the '90's and in the new century, Broadway boomed with 'LeMiz', ''Phantom', 'Mama Mia' and the Disney productions 'Beauty and the Beast'  and 'Lion King', reasserting itself as one of the city's most important industries. Various public and civic organizations achieved the impossible - they helped clean up  Times Square. Broadway contributes 11% of the city's economic output. The Shuberts are still a force. This has been a fun read. But, this is an industry with more mean-spirited, egomaniacal, despotic, womanizing, back-stabbing SOB's than any I know of.  "Naughty, bawdy 42nd Street"

The Cartel, Winslow - B +

                                               In this sequel, Adan Barrera gets himself transferred to a Mexican prison, from which he escapes, thus prompting Art Keller to come in out of the cold and re-join the DEA. Game on.  Adan slowly re-establishes control of the drug business in Mexico. The key is the 'plazas', the cities with access to the north. They are Tijuana, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. Controlling the flow of coke, heroin and marijuana requires teamwork and in order to succeed, Adan establishes an 'alliance of blood' - only people from Sinoala, his home province. The Federal government, though, has actually re-organized and significantly improved its anti-drug efforts and they have help from Keller.  Adan faces some stiff competition, especially in the eastern part of Mexico, and eventually goes to war with the Zetas.  Around and around the wars go, an endless cycle of deceit, treachery, torture  and murder. It ends dramatically in a jungle in Guatemala. Keller walks away the winner; but, there is no prize, or even peace of mind. These two books have been a fun read and on a topic I've never come across. Interestingly, they also offer perspective that I've never considered. That is, that the problems that we associate with Colombia, Mexico and other centers of the drug world would not exist were it not for America's appetite for drugs.