Alfred W. McCoyRezensionen

Alfred McCoy's book. "To Govern the Globe" is a magnificent book. To cover the rise and fall of the great empires, to write about their interrelationships, the cause of their rise and fall, and to create an engrossing narrative is a cause for celebration.
He started with the changes in Europe after the Black Death and the invasions of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. These events forced changes on Europeans and forced them to go out in search of income. Thus started the age of global trade, empire, colonialism, and genocide.

We are in a state of flux. America is plateauing, if not declining; China is rising, and climate change is creating its own challenges.

Alfred McCoy's analyses of the past empires, America, China, and the forces shaking the world now, are impeccable.
On top, the book is readable.

I can't stress enuf how important this bk is to me. While the early edition that I refer to here focuses primarily on the US & Southeast Asia, particularly in the Vietnam War era, its extremely well-researched information is clearly applicable to explaining the covert machinations of ALL GOVERNMENTS. If you want to understand in detail how heroin is used to both control & destroy domestic populations AND 'foreign' ones AND how its production & sale is a major source of war-mongering funding, READ THIS BK.

Took me over a week to get through about the first third of this 320-page book. That section was mostly about what McCoy calls the Iberian Age (allegedly, when Spain and Portugal ruled the world). McCoy's prose is so academic and lifeless, it was hard to follow; reminded me of Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Fortunately, things picked up when he dived into the "British Imperial Era", "Washington's World Order", and "Twenty-First Century and Beyond". Because I live in the present, I was more into the latter half of the book. And I found his prediction interesting that China will be the world leader around 2030 but its time of the world stage will last only about 20 years because of Climate Change.

The other book I read by McCoy, IN THE SHADOWS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY OF U.S. GLOBAL POWER, was much better. More focused and I don't remember the prose being so bone-dry.

One cool thing about TO GOVER THE GLOBE is that it reminded me of a book review I read years ago, IMPERIAL TWILIGHT: THE OPIUM WAR AND THE END OF CHINA'S LAST GOLDER AGE by Stephen R. Platt (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/books/review/stephen-r-platt-imperial-twilight.html). I reserved that book at the library.

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An exhaustive history that traces the growing, processing, transporting, and distribution of narcotics since the end of World War II. A landmark book of investigative reporting and history.

The first account of the CIA’s decades long research and investment in violent coercive interrogration.

The first docuemented account of CIA and US government involvement and support of the heroin business.

Alfred McCoy, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, has long been a thorn in the side of the CIA. In the pages of this brief book McCoy traces the history of modern torture techniques as developed and used by the CIA. The book demonstrates that the Abu Ghraib abuses have roots far beyond the Bush years. The techniques used there are standard operating procedure.

Sensory deprivation, self-infiction of pain, and assault on the cultural mores of the victim are the hallmarks of the techniques. Read this book and then take one look at the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures and you will understand with certainty that the responsibility goes well beyond Lynndie England and the prison guard grunts. They did not come up with these techniques.

McCoy briefly relates that the US historically engaged in systematic torture in the Vietnam Phoenix program and taught Central American governments the CIA methods, to name just two examples. This history was largely ignored in discussions of Abu Ghraib as some commentators simply refused to believe that Americans would do such things.

But does torture work? And if it does, should we use it?

With respect to the efficacy of torture, McCoy quotes a 4th century C.E. Roman legal scholar Ulpian: "the strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain." McCoy also destroys the silly hypotheses about the atomic bomb in Times Square used to justify torture.

McCoy has explained why we, in whose name this torture is performed, should oppose it:

"There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal, and once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control."

Highly recommended.

An exhaustive history that traces the growing, processing, transporting, and distribution of narcotics since the end of World War II. A landmark book of investigative reporting and history.

An exhaustive history that traces the growing, processing, transporting, and distribution of narcotics since the end of World War II. A landmark book of investigative reporting and history.