A security-oriented reading list for insecure times
As a nation, we’re finally coming to grips with the reality of what the coronavirus pandemic means for our fragile public health networks. Our months of denialism have squandered valuable prep time. And we’re now being forced to confront the reality of what weeks — or longer — in self-isolation will entail. It’s frightening, and it’s uncertain.
But it can also be a time to build solidarity with friends and neighbors. We can experience a profound new sense of community (albeit at a safe distance). We can also reap a cultural and intellectual dividend. At SPRI, we’ll be using the coronavirus lockdown to care for ourselves and each other, and to revisit our reading lists (and add to them) as we continue to develop new ideas to build a foreign policy for the left.
We’re facing a crisis of human security. Lives are being upended — and lost. Jobs have disappeared. Savings have been obliterated. Like it or not, we’re facing the consequences of a multi-generational, bipartisan failure to invest in the healthcare, social infrastructure, and communities that constitute our most urgently needed sources of security. Collectively, these readings explain how we got to this point, how this system works (and for whom), and how so large a portion of our finite resources was misspent on the pursuit of empire.
U.S. overseas territorial possessions and exclusive economic zone / Public Domain via NOAA
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
By Daniel Immerwahr
What does it say? At almost no point in U.S. history has the national map accurately reflected territorial possessions. (Colonies, territories, and occupied zones have almost always been excluded — except in rare moments of outward colonial zeal.) Using that reality as his jumping-off point, Immerwahr traces the history of U.S. imperialism from the founding to the present.
Why read it? Spoiler alert: the U.S. is still an imperial power. Immerwahr’s history shows how legal and technological innovations have concealed this fact — including from Americans themselves.
Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power
By Inderjeet Parmar
What does it say? With a class-based analysis of the philanthropic giants, Parmar traces the role played by the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations in shaping the U.S. foreign policy pipeline for the purpose of projecting U.S. power abroad.
Why read it? As calls grow for the use of ’soft’ or ‘smart’ power as an alternative to Trump’s naked imperialism, Parmar’s conclusions about the liberal establishment are as relevant as ever: “For American foundations, the construction of global knowledge networks is almost an end in itself; indeed, the network appears to be their principal long-term achievement.” Sounds a lot like the American military empire to us.
Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion that Opened the West
By William Hogeland
What does it say? Hogeland relates the history of how the blunders of United States military forces in the Old Northwest provided the rhetorical and emotional ammunition needed to raise a standing army to crush indigenous resistance to white settler expansion.
Why read it? Hogeland links the imperial conquest of the American continent to the military formation that has become the fighting force needed for wars of empire that are still being fought today, and in the process showcases the ‘securitization’, racism, territorial expropriation, and capital formation that lay at the heart of U.S. imperialism — then and now.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
By Shoshana Zuboff
What does it say? Zuboff’s massive work lays out a convincing argument that we’ve entered a novel economic era: one in which the technologies we depend upon are merely interfaces allowing massive tech corporations to scoop up, repackage, and commodify the data points that increasingly define our lives.
Why read it? The work is a wake-up call for techno-optimists. Zuboff’s clear thinking is more urgently needed than ever as our employers double-down on video-conferencing, and we find ourselves driven toward platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Facebook to survive life under lockdown.
Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History
By Eric Foner
What does it say? The through lines in this diverse collection of essays written for The Nation between 1977 and 2017 are the overlapping politics of history and race.
Why read it? Foner’s work is a clarion call. With the foresight to call out the obscenity of Confederate monuments as early as 1999, Foner offers a subtle reminder that political action can require years — even decades — of hard civic activism before on-the-ground political realities catch up. Don’t lose heart.
The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
By Richard White
What does it say? White uses the post-Civil War period as a backdrop to tell the story of America’s development from a parochial nation at war with itself, to the world’s richest industrial economy — at the cost of its democratic bona fides.
Why read it? In addition to its colorful depiction of the nexus of congressional-corporate greed and sweetheart deals to railroad tycoons, the work paints a vivid portrait of the profound racial violence that underwrote America’s ‘second founding’ in the period from postwar reconstruction to the Gilded Age.
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
By Eric Schlosser
What does it say? Schlosser explores the development of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and its repeated brushes with (nuclear!) disaster through mismanagement, accident, human error, and the simple reality that no system — not matter how critical, or dangerous — is safe from breakdown.
Why read it? The work is a critical study of the command and control systems for the nuclear arsenal, and it shows how the costly defense systems that are deemed crucial to our safety are, in fact, sources of incalculable danger to our communities, our species, and the planet itself.
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
By Greg Grandin
What does it say? Grandin’s work traces the role a unique frontier mythology has played in the American consciousness — and in concrete policy — from the founding to the present.
Why read it? Grandin’s work reminds us that the frontier has continually advanced, from a nearby battlefield of genocidal violence to an overseas theater of colonial expansion. With manufacturing in decline and physical conquest (mostly) over, we’re no longer capable of relying on the (now-closed) frontier as a safety valve for unresolved domestic challenges related to race and inequality.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
By Ursula K. Le Guin
What does it say? Part The Lottery, part The Matrix, Le Guin’s dystopian short story is a work you’ve heard about ad nauseam; now is your chance to read it (emphasis on short!).
Why read it? The story exemplifies the moral imperative of what Nathan J. Robinson has called the ‘socialist ethic’ — the simple belief that a better life is possible, and that unlimited prosperity for some is unconscionable so long as others experience needless suffering.