Bøger af Jeremy Kuzmarov

During the 2016 presidential election, many younger voters repudiated Hillary Clinton because of her husband's support for mass incarceration, banking deregulation and free-trade agreements that led many U.S. jobs to be shipped overseas. Warmonger: How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the Trajectory from Bush II to Biden, shows that Clinton's foreign policy was just as bad as his domestic policy. Cultivating an image as a former anti-Vietnam War activist to win over the aging hippie set in his early years, as president, Clinton bombed six countries and, by the end of his first term, had committed U.S. troops to 25 separate military operations, compared to 17 in Ronald Reagan's two terms. Clinton further expanded America's covert empire of overseas surveillance outposts and spying and increased the budget for intelligence spending and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA offshoot which promoted regime change in foreign nations. The latter was not surprising because, according to CIA operative Cord Meyer Jr., Clinton had been recruited into the CIA while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and as Governor of Arkansas in the 1980s he had allowed clandestine arms and drug flights to Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries (Contras) backed by the CIA to be taken from Mena Airport in the western part of the state. Rather than being a time of tranquility when the U.S. failed to pay attention to the gathering storm of terrorism, as New York Times columnist David Brooks frames it, the Clinton presidency saw rising tensions among the U.S., China and Russia because of Clinton's malign foreign policies, and U.S. complicity in terrorist acts. In so many ways, Clinton's presidency set the groundwork for the disasters that were to follow under Bush II, Obama, Trump, and Biden. It was Clinton--building off of Reagan--who first waged a War on Terror ridden with double standards, one that adopted terror tactics, including extraordinary rendition, bombing and the use of drones. It was Clinton who cried wolf about human rights abuses and the need to protect beleaguered peoples from genocide to justify military intervention in a post-Cold War age. And it was Clinton's administration that pressed for regime change in Iraq and raised public alarm about the mythic WMDs--all while relying on fancy new military technologies and private military contractors to distance US shady military interventions from the public to limit dissent.

"Many academics consider Obama to have been a master foreign policy strategist and shrewd practitioner of the art of realpolitik. This book demonstrates, however, that Obama in reality helped to institutionalize a permanent warfare state that resulted in gross human rights violations and contributed to America's strategic decline. His perpetuation of the War on Terror created more enemies and prompted the United States to lose influence in the Middle East. His Pivot to Asia policy intensified prospects for regional war while his unnecessary and willful military intervention destroyed Libya and drew the Russians in to protect Bashir al-Assad who won Syria's civil war. The Obama administration's heavy-handed interference in Ukraine led to effective Russian counter-moves, promoting a strategic alliance with China and regional integration that is moving the world towards multi-polarity. Obama's Unending Wars provides the first comprehensive critical history of the foreign policy of America's forty-fourth president - the drone king who ordered the bombing of seven Muslim countries, backtracked on a pledge to reduce America's nuclear arsenal, and helped fuel a new Cold War with Russia. Obama during his years in office provided billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia as it assisted in the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain and invaded Yemen. He sanctioned a coup in Honduras which plunged that country into chaos, perpetuated a failed drug war policy and contributed to the recolonization of Africa. As many in the time of Trump now glance nostalgically back to the Obama presidency, this book will help them to see the continuity -- and continuous failure -- of American foreign policy irrespective of the party or figurehead representing it"--