MixedForeign AffairsThere’s a reason Rice isn’t more forthright. In her prologue, she announces, \'Tell-all books, which sell copies at the expense of others, are tacky and not my style\' ... Unfortunately, [her] good manners come at the reader’s expense ... The problem isn’t that Rice shade[s] the truth to make [herslef] look good. To the contrary, [she] is admirably frank about [her] mistakes. The problem is that by refusing to reveal what happened behind closed doors, [she] fails to help readers understand what lessons to draw from the Libya debacle...By not explaining Libya’s lessons, liberal internationalists like Rice make[s] it easier for nativist bigots like Trump to proffer a lesson of their own: that Washington should care less about people overseas, especially if they are not Christian or white ... Even more striking than what Rice say[s] about Russia is what [she] doesn\'t say about China.
Samantha Power
MixedForeign AffairsPower is polite. Unfortunately, their good manners come at the reader’s expense ... Power’s talent as a writer comes through most eloquently in the book’s opening chapters, when she describes her relationship with her magnetic, alcoholic father ... At times, it’s frustrating that Power isn\'t as self-reflective about American foreign policy as she is about herself ... The price of entry for continued public service is discretion. The price of entry for serious policy discussion is honesty. Both are legitimate choices. But there’s a tension between the two. Power chose discretion, which undermines the quality of her analysis ... Perhaps it is fitting that in a memoir that describes the many constraints under which the Obama administration labored, Power manifests those constraints herself by failing to challenge one of the most politically treacherous, and least morally defensible, aspects of American foreign policy. This too, evidently, is part of what Power, in her book’s title, calls \'the education of an idealist.\' One can only hope that in the future, it’s an education that able and decent policymakers like them will feel comfortable doing without.
Jason Stanley
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewStanley’s a lumper. And that leaves him vulnerable to \'splitters,\' who would object to cramming together Trump, Victor Orban, Hitler, the Confederacy, the Rwandan genocidaires and the current government of Myanmar, among others, into a one-sentence definition of fascism: \'ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural) with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf.\' Stanley’s approach has its costs. He emphasizes the similarities between myriad \'fascist\' parties and regimes without adequately acknowledging their differences. Nor does he adequately distinguish between conservative or right-wing politics and fascism ... But if Stanley’s lumping is sometimes a weakness, it also accounts for his book’s conceptual power. By placing Trump in transnational and transhistorical perspective, Stanley sees patterns that others miss ... By calling Trump a \'fascist\'—a word that strikes many Americans as alien and extreme—Stanley is trying to spark public alarm. He doesn’t want Americans to respond to Trump’s racist, authoritarian offensives by moving their moral goal posts. The greater danger, he suggests, isn’t hyperbole, it’s normalization. And 20 months into Trump’s presidency, the evidence is mounting that he’s right.
