War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence

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Good readAwesome bookGood quality print and paper

I never expected to pick up a non-fiction book on this topic and have it read like a novel. Farrow's writing is nuanced, fluid and full of first person anecdotes that bring color and immediacy to all the situations he describes.Combining careful research and analysis with first person interviews, Farrow illustrates the direction the United States government has taken over the past few decades in valuing militarism, devaluing diplomacy, and the disappointing and dire consequences for having done so.His accounts of where diplomacy has worked are realistic, not overly rosy. He portrays diplomacy as a messy, difficult, process, carried out by flawed human beings, and fraught with compromises that often do not leave the parties involved fully satisfied. And yet, the alternative--force--is clearly worse and, in the long run, does not seem to work to make either the US or any other place in the world safer. In fact, the opposite is mostly true.From reading this book, I got the impression that diplomats are often forced into positions of having to tolerate and even condone a certain amount of militarism. Farrow can't help but wonder if Democrats and Republicans valued diplomatic efforts more than these Pyrrhic proxy wars (and if the State Department and USAID were fully funded so as to be staffed with experienced and dedicated career diplomats, with a deep knowledge of the part of the world they were addressing, combined with their having sophisticated negotiating skills), if conditions here and abroad would not be so much better. Instead, over the years, and especially now, the State Department and USAID are being gutted of skilled, career professionals in favor of militarism and "might makes right."According to Farrow, this gutting of State, while seeming to reach its apex with Trump, was moving in that direction under other heads of state, such as Clinton, Bush and Obama. Farrow implies that Obama somewhat redeemed himself during his second four years with the Paris Accord, Iran Deal, and rapprochement with Cuba, all of which might be reversed under Trump. Farrow quotes Secretary John Kerry, who worked tirelessly on the Iran deal, as saying about Trump's threat to kill it, "If that's the art of the deal, you can see why this guy went belly up seven times."A quote by Cicero in the Epilogue sums up this thoughtful read: There are two types of military dispute, the one settled by negotiation and the other by force. Since the first is characteristic of human beings and the second of beasts, we must have recourse to the second only if we cannot exploit the first.Farrow's tone is measured but left me wishing that my country could move away from the direction of beasts.

Plus journalistique que je ne m’attendais. J’esperais une approche d’avantage historique et analytique. Néanmoins intéressant et prouve bien à partir des exemples choisis l’influence de plus en plus marquée des militaires sur les diplomates.

Livre très bien rédigé, pertinent et lequel je recommande à tous ceux qui s’intéressent de près ou de loin à la politique américaine, à l'histoire des relations internationales et de la diplomatie. Un incontournable à avoir dans sa bibliothèque.