New Books in World Affairs

When she was chosen as the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) in 2009, Catherine Ashton admits she "felt no exhilaration", fearing she had "few obvious credentials and lukewarm support".On leaving office five years later - 19 months before the Brexit referendum - this former British minister had confounded her inner doubter. A new European External Action Service had been built from scratch and the HR/VP had become a pivotal global player - brokering what had seemed an impossible settlement between Serbia and Kosovo and performing the role of closer in the multi-party Iranian nuclear negotiations.Ashton's memoirs of those five years - And Then What?: Inside Stories of 21st-Century Diplomacy (Elliott & Thompson, 2023) - go behind the scenes during critical moments in recent diplomatic history including Egypt's excruciating transition from dictatorship to uneasy democracy, the Iranian nuclear deal, the fragile Serb-Kosovan talks, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and its aftermath.She writes: "Success is rarely the effect of one moment but of thousands of interlocking actions over a sustained period; and tiny details, especially in difficult negotiations, can make the difference between success and failure even if they seem arbitrary or inconsequential".*Her book recommendations are Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by Graham Allison (Longman, 1971) and Never by Ken Follett (Macmillan, 2021)Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Climate change and war have flung millions of people on the move, who often seek safe harbor in the very countries responsible for their displacement. But despite the lofty ideals and supposed simplicity of international refugee law, it turns out borders are not really the fixed lines on a map we imagine them to be.Guests:  Deborah Anker is Clinical Professor of Law and Founder of the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC). Celeste Cantor-Stephens is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, writer, teacher and activist. Chowra Makaremi is an anthropologist and tenured research scholar at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. Adrian Rennix is a writer and an immigration attorney practicing near the southern border. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

From the 1940s to 1960s, Iran developed into the world's first “petro-state,” where oil represented the bulk of state revenue and supported an industrializing economy, expanding middle class, and powerful administrative and military apparatus. In Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2022), Gregory Brew outlines how the Pahlavi petro-state emerged from a confluence of forces – some global, some local. He shows how the shah's particular form of oil-based authoritarianism evolved from interactions with American developmentalists, Pahlavi technocrats, and major oil companies, all against the looming backdrop of the United States' Cold War policy and the coup d’état of August 1953. By placing oil at the center of the Cold War narrative, Brew contextualizes Iran's pro-Western alignment and slide into petrolic authoritarianism. Synthesizing a wide range of sources and research methods, this book demonstrates that the Pahlavi petro-state was not born, but made, and not solely by the Pahlavi shah.Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

For many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a series of little-known regulations that have aimed to protect the global north from epidemic threats for the last two centuries, starting with International Sanitary Conferences in 1851 and culminating in the present with the International Health Regulations, which organize epidemic responses through the World Health Organization. Unlike other equity-focused global health initiatives, their mission—to establish "the maximum protections from infectious disease with the minimum effect on trade and traffic"—has remained the same since their founding. In Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease (Stanford UP, 2023), Alexandre White reveals the Western capitalist interests, racism and xenophobia, and political power plays underpinning the regulatory efforts that came out of the project to manage the international spread of infectious disease. He examines how these regulations are formatted; how their framers conceive of epidemic spread; and the types of bodies and spaces it is suggested that these regulations map onto. Proposing a modified reinterpretation of Edward Said's concept of orientalism, White invites us to consider "epidemic orientalism" as a framework within which to explore the imperial and colonial roots of modern epidemic disease control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

How do ideas manifest outside of their place of origin, and how do they change once they do? The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949–1979 (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Matthew Galway examines how ideological systems become localized, both in the indigenization of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong and, more significantly, the indigenization of Maoism by the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Galway carefully investigates how Maoism was received, adapted, utilized, and ultimately rejected in Cambodia, examining in particular the different ways Paris-educated CPK leaders Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim approached and interpreted Mao's writings and ideas. This intellectual history is wonderfully rich, theoretically grounded in Edward Said’s "traveling theory" model and filled with close readings of little-known, complex texts. The Emergence of Global Maoism is a necessary read for those interested in the history of modern China, Cambodia, and global Maoism, as well as for anyone who has ever wondered what a historian might do with an economics dissertation (the answer: see chapter four).In addition to seeking out The Emergence of Global Maoism, interested listeners should also have a look at “Peasant Worker Communist Spy: A Chinese Intelligence Agent Looks Back at His Time in Cambodia,” a portrait of a CCP intelligence agent in Cambodia, as well as Experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Cold War Southeast Asia (ANU Press, 2022) edited by Matthew Galway and Marc H. Opper, with chapters on the adoption of Marxism in the Dutch East Indies, Maoism in the Philippines, and the Chinese Communist Party in Laos, among other fascinating case studies of experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Southeast Asia.Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard. She works on Manchu language books and is interested in anything with a kesike. She can be reached at sbramaoramos@g.harvard.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Should Japanese Americans be moved from the west coast to prevent sabotage? Should the German people be made to starve as punishment for launching the war? Should America drop atomic bombs to break Japan's will to fight? Surprisingly, despite wartime anger, most Americans and key officials favored mercy over revenge, yet a minority managed to push their punitive policies through. After the war, by feeding the hungry, rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, and airlifting supplies to a blockaded Berlin, America strove to restore the country's humanity, transforming its image in the eyes of the world. A compelling story of the struggle over racism and revenge, This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue (Cambridge UP, 2023) asks crucial questions about the nation's most agonizing divides. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953, the Iranian oil crisis was a crucial turning point in the global Cold War. The nationalization challenged Great Britain's preeminence in the Middle East and threatened Western oil concessions everywhere. Fearing the loss of Iran and possibly the entire Middle East and its oil to communist control, the United States and Great Britain played a key role in the ouster of Mosaddeq, a constitutional nationalist opposed to communism and Western imperialism. U.S. intervention helped entrench monarchical power, and the reversal of Iran's nationalization confirmed the dominance of Western corporations over the resources of the Global South for the next twenty years.Drawing on years of research in American, British, and Iranian sources, David S. Painter and Gregory Brew provide a concise and accessible account of Cold War competition, Anglo-American imperialism, covert intervention, the political economy of global oil, and Iran's struggle against autocratic government. The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951-1954 (UNC Press, 2023) dispels myths and misconceptions that have hindered understanding this pivotal chapter in the history of the post–World War II world.Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Microchips are both important and in short supply. So how important? And what can be done to make them more plentiful? Also, what are the geopolitical implications of having the production of microchips concentrated in relatively few hands. Owen Bennett Jones talks microchips with Julian Kamasa of the Centre for Security Studies in Zurich.Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In April 1988, after years of failed negotiations over the status of the Northwest Passage, Brian Mulroney gave Ronald Reagan a globe, pointed to the Arctic, and said "Ron that's ours. We own it lock, stock, and icebergs." A simple statement, it summed up Ottawa's official policy: Canada owns the icy waters that wind their way through the Arctic Archipelago. Behind the scenes, however, successive governments have spent over a century trying to figure out how to enforce this claim and on which legal basis to assert Canadian sovereignty over Arctic waters. In Lock, Stock, and Icebergs: A History of Canada's Arctic Maritime Sovereignty (UBC Press, 2016), Adam Lajeunesse, a Professor of Public Policy and Fellow of the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University, guides readers through the evolution of Canada's Arctic sovereignty, showing how the Northwest Passage and the surrounding waters became Canadian. Listen to this engaging podcast to understand what inspired Lajeunesse to write the book, what are the main points of his argument, and how its insights are still relevant today.Lavinia Stan is a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power (Bombardier, 2023), Washington insider Daniel Runde makes the case for building a new global consensus through vigorous internationalism and the judicious use of soft power.Daniel F. Runde is Senior Vice President and the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs