A hard-edged study in geopolitical miscalculation on all sides.
Vladimir Putin made the decision to make war on Ukraine. But, this study posits, the West helped push him to that brink.
Haslam, a specialist in Soviet studies, analyzes why Putin took it upon himself to invade Ukraine in a war that is approaching three years old. “To focus purely on Vladimir Putin and his psychology is not enough, tempting as it is,” writes Haslam. Instead, he names as one important proximate cause the expansion of NATO following the Cold War—whose end, he suggests, was met with untoward triumphalism on the part of the U.S., humiliating Russia in the bargain. Russia made approaches to the West to enter into more cooperative agreements, including, perhaps, the possibility of joining the European Union; rebuffed, Putin took on something of a siege mentality. Visibly weakened by the loss of its former constituent territories, the Russian Federation sensed its increasing vulnerability even as it witnessed NATO’s entrance into former Eastern Bloc countries and military intervention in former Yugoslavia. This encroachment grew ever closer to Russia’s “near abroad,” as Russia, by Haslam’s account, was increasingly slighted by being seen by the U.S. “as a defeated power of little or no account.” Countries so positioned can be dangerous, as Putin demonstrated by attacking Ukraine—which, Haslam reminds, was top on the U.S. list of NATO expansion, a country without which “Russia could never re-emerge as an empire, which Russia had invariably been.” These historical and political contingencies all have great explanatory value, though too often Haslam seems to suggest that the war in Ukraine is largely the fault of the U.S., when of course Putin could have decided to take another tack. Whatever the case and the causes, Haslam does conclude that “the Russian war has demonstrably failed in its objectives.”
A hard-edged study in geopolitical miscalculation on all sides.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780674299078
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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