the world as it is review

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. “We’d have to consider,” he advised in his new role as a deputy national security adviser, “what we would say if we choose not to do something.” A good point, especially with the Europeans and the Arab League (very briefly) urging action. Obama labels the foreign secretary as Britain’s Trump. Looming on the horizon is the 2021 expiration date of the Start Treaty, which limits each country’s nuclear arsenal. I wanted a hero,” writes Rhodes as he begins to explain why he left his creative writing education, instead turning his talent to speech writing. The president is moderate, never the humanitarian firebrand that his younger staffers are — thoughtful, sane and cool. Think Alabama’s Roy Moore, California’s Dana Rohrabacher and Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan. Obama calculated that any military action that would have an actual impact on Assad’s behavior might lead to a wider war. on Book review: The world as it is by Ben Rhodes. Right now, no talks are ongoing. July 22, 2018 by RachaelDewhurst 1 Comment. The former White House aide has written a memoir and a justification which is compelling but too much on Obama’s side, Tue 5 Jun 2018 05.01 BST Learn how your comment data is processed. Ben Rhodes is a charming and humble guide through an unprecedented presidency. The heavy moments were relieved by the moments of levity. Others are harder to leave behind; this was one such book. 450 pp. Obama’s willingness to be honest about the West’s imperial past led conservative critics to accuse him of conducting an “apology tour,” a meretricious dodge. The ups, downs, triumphs and frustrations of life-changing decisions were all documented. Rhodes recounts how Obama was disturbed by a New York Times column which posited that tribalism undergirds our politics and that the Democrats’ message sounded awfully like John Lennon’s Imagine, a pastiche of gauzy cosmopolitan bromides. In The World As It Is, Rhodes tells his side of the story. Furthermore, it was careful not to indulge itself in a dry (in my opinion) blow-by-blow of foreign policy. Last month, days before Donald Trump’s decision to junk the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Observer and Ronan Farrow reported on the efforts of Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence-gathering firm, to discredit Rhodes and other Obama administration officials – just as Black Cube abetted Harvey Weinstein in his attempt to silence his victims. decision to junk the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. As a result, his achievement is rare for a political memoir: He has written a humane and honorable book. But military intervention — and the eventual removal of Qaddafi — led to chaos. Meanwhile, American influence continues to erode. But that’s not the whole story. Obama’s job, coming to office, was to rectify relations with allies who had disapproved of the war and also with the Islamic world, which saw Iraq as the latest act of Western imperialism. Obama made mistakes of optimism. Rhodes quotes Obama complaining that negotiating with Benjamin Netanyahu was like dealing with the Republicans. His achievement is rare for a political memoir: He has written a humane and honorable book.”—Joe Klein, The New York Times Book Review “In The World as It Is, Rhodes shows no trace of the disillusionment that gave George Stephanopoulos’s tale of Bill Clinton its bitter, gossipy flavor, or of the light irony that came to inflect Peggy Noonan’s adoration of Ronald Reagan. They ignored the other half of his message, which gave it an elegant balance: “Islam has to recognize the contributions that the West has made to articulate certain principles that are universal.”. Ben Rhodes, who served Barack Obama as a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter from beginning to end, has written a book that reflects the president he served — intelligent, amiable, compelling and principled. To Rhodes’ credit, he also acknowledges that Obama’s “reset” with Russia did not work. THE WORLD AS IT IS A Memoir of the Obama White House By Ben Rhodes Illustrated. It did not blame others when it was clear that no other was to blame. “If it were up to him,” Rhodes reports Obama saying, “he’d prefer that the ‘Google guy’ run Egypt, referring to Wael Ghonim … who was helping to lead the protest movement.” Rhodes writes that Obama “didn’t mean it literally. “I was part of a cohort of younger staffers … who shared a distaste for the corrupt way in which the Middle East was ruled,” Rhodes writes. He never quite loses his idealism; in a crass political era, he impressively avoids becoming a cynic. … But his senior staff was in a different place.” Indeed, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were all counseling caution: Don’t be so quick to oust the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. The basic doctrine of American foreign policy in the modern age should be Hippocratic: First, do no harm. But Obama’s deliberative nature led, more often than not, to the right answers — or, at the very least, to positions that did not make an explosive world more dangerous. And there is something more: “The World as It Is” is a classic coming-of-age story, about the journey from idealism to realism, told with candor and immediacy. He drinks hard liquor, to the point of an occasional hangover. I lingered over the last line, feeling unusually emotional about a non-fiction book and feeling unduly sad that The world as it is belonged to the library, not to me. As someone whose interest is primarily in the people affected rather than the big global decisions in politics (my sister’s particular interest), I was relieved to find that the very readable tone of the prologue continued through the rest of the 400-page exploration. It … There were, Rhodes slowly realized, events in the world beyond America’s influence. ( Log Out /  Ben Rhodes is the Barack Obama speechwriter and national security staffer who helped drive the Iran deal and negotiated the thaw between the US and Cuba. By that virtue, this book advertised as Rhodes’ memoir was more recognisable as an intimate and humane look at the intricacies of White House decision making. He writes of how the late Richard Holbrooke, a former United Nations ambassador and Clinton confidant, reportedly kept “a list of everyone” who went to work for Obama, in the mistaken belief Hillary Clinton would have the opportunity to settle scores and Holbrooke would be named secretary of state. And he grows. He is aware of his historic role as the first African-American president, but not crippled by race or embittered by it. on Book review: The world as it is by Ben Rhodes, Book review: The world as it is by Ben Rhodes, Book tag: The (bit later than) mid-year book freak out. There are anecdotes galore, but they illuminate rather than scandalize. Random House. Obama may have won a Nobel peace prize for simply succeeding George W Bush, but he left his infamous “red line” promise in Syria in tatters and the once vaunted Arab spring as a bloody memory. Others are harder to leave behind; this was one such book. The dictator Muammar Qaddafi threatened to massacre his opponents in Benghazi. Others, such as the mental image of Obama singing Thrift shop by Macklemore in the ‘Beast’ on the way back from a presidential visit were so relatable that I couldn’t help but smile. He may well have been right, but he seemed weak at the time. Change ). Understandably, Obama and Rhodes are alarmed by Brexit, Trump and the erosion of the existing order. July 22, 2018 by RachaelDewhurst1 Comment on Book review: The world as it is by Ben RhodesBook review. $30. In a remarkable moment, in the midst of the deliberations over what to do about Syria, Obama completes his transition to realism by telling Rhodes: “Maybe we would never have done Rwanda. Indeed, Obama pursued this mission in rather grand terms: “We should begin with a history of colonialism,” Obama told Rhodes, as he began to write the president’s crucial Cairo speech in 2009. Indeed, he has the tire marks on his back to prove it. Rhodes tweaks Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s former president, as “spotlight loving” for initiating discussions of a no-fly zone in Libya. Rhodes’s portrait of Obama is affectionate and respectful. Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 17.58 GMT. Trump, by contrast, seemed strong, but the effect of his strikes appears to have been negligible. There are some books which are relatively easy to close the back cover on. Rhodes glosses over the fact that Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at state, met the Iranians in 2012 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in office.

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