George Orwell - 1984

I’ll start with what I didn’t like because there wasn’t that much of it.  Perhaps it’s the speed with which Orwell constructs a whole world, complete with politics, economics, social customs and habits and some semblance of history, within a few hundred pages but I felt some parts of the narrative where left unsatisfactorily unexplained.  In learning about Winston Smith’s life in dystopian Oceania we encounter memories of his passionless, party fanatic wife.  Meanwhile he is currently in the throes of an illicit love affair with Julia.  I should say, I presume it to be illicit given the rigamarole involved in its execution.  However, this begs the question as to why it’s forbidden.  Is it because she is too young?  Or because he is married?  How did he meet his last wife? How does one court in a party approved manner?  How did they separate?  Where is she now?  Smith indicates that he knows she is alive but there is scant explanation of the means he uses to acquire this knowledge.  How did they part ways? Could he get a divorce?  Would there be a way of him meeting other women in a party sanctioned fashion after that?  Why does the party disapprove of his relationship with Julia so long as they both love Big Brother and are loyal party members? In short, the wife raises more questions than she merits given her importance as a character and I found this annoying.  In any case, the separation is problematic and clumsily handled insofar as it goes almost totally unexplained.  I almost expect a party maniac, as she is described, to take vengeance on Smith for the failure of their marriage.  The possibility is discussed and the wife is dismissed as too stupid to realise her husband’s dissent although this isn’t totally convincing.

As well as the topic of romantic love, the topic of familial love is treated in an unusual and radical way.  People still hold attachment to children, albeit in a nightmarish inversion of normality, and have not surrendered them to common ownership but are said not favour their children over the interests of others or the Party.  This strikes me as highly unlikely because you can see from the example of Communist countries that many people still favour their families even when it is strictly against their system of government; indicating it is a deeply held inclination.  Possibly to the extent it is genetically hard-wired.  Also, characters in the book express some tenderness or preference for their own children including Smith’s detestable next door neighbour who’s proud of his daughter for reporting him to the secret police! Another example might be the man Smith sees in prison who offers to kill children in exchange for not being taken to room 101, which seems to indicate the offer still held currency as demonstration of a last resort.

These are two very minor criticisms of an otherwise impeccably constructed nightmare!  Orwell’s wonderful, readable prose captures a dark, oppressive, anaemic impersonation of normal life and shows it to us in depressing, dystopian detail.  It is beautifully constructed, from the foundation of the political-economic functioning of the world, to the frightening familiarity of “newspeak” and “doublethink”.  If the under-explanation of love and family in Oceania stood out to me it is largely because so much is explained in such a lucid way.  Orwell has captured the feeling of being in a country like North Korea, China, Vietnam or Russia and reproduced it via amazing details like the smell of cabbage everywhere that may not literally be true but bring to mind the exact mental sensation one experiences even in the absence of that particular smell!  In this sense, it seemed to me to be quite a pro-capitalist novel.  Smith’s joy at purchasing items on the black market seems to be a strong endorsement of the beauty and happiness that can arise from capitalism especially when considered in comparison with Oceania.  

Underlying the political functioning and aesthetics of this New World, Orwell masterfully riffs on the seemingly infinite adaptability and changeability of humanity.  Most of the menace in 1984, for me, comes from the fact that it is all entirely possible!   Our link with the past and historical truth are very fragile and subjective and could easily be manipulated.  As O’Brien mansplains in such chilling detail, the past doesn’t exist in any location, only in memories and in historical records.  So if you can change these you can change the past.  As O’Brien says:

"only the disciplined mind can see reality Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you.  But I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else"

Or even more terrifyingly, during one of their sessions in Room 101 when they discuss how many fingers O’Brien is holding up in front of Smith:

"sometimes Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane"

We are what we believe and, in a very real sense, this must accord quite closely to what others think or else we risk exclusion from society as insane or, in the case of Oceania, re-education or death.  These are terrifying and interesting questions for anyone, in any society to ponder.  The explanation of how dissidents are ‘vapourised’ to avoid leaving any historical trace that could later be construed as a martyrdom is suitably ruthless and efficient.

The need to continually foster war and feelings of hatred seemed to me to capture very succinctly the necessary mental climate for successful oppression:

"fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph"

This phrase would be equally at home in descriptions of Nazi Germany, Communist China or ISIS governed Iraq.  The psychological strategy is the same and, if executed correctly, it can be remarkably effective.  On a slightly lighter note, the treatment of boot production statistics reminded me a great deal of watching Bloomberg TV while a stream of meaningless statistic are blabbered out in frenzied tones:

"62m was no nearer the truth than 57m, or than 145m. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared"

Although in our society, we DO care even though the statistics in question maybe almost as dubious. Does that make us akin to jibbering party fanatics because we aren’t questioning the source or purpose of what is being presented to us as fact?  Again, interesting questions for anyone, regardless of their beliefs about what type of society they inhabit!

At the end of the book, I felt an instinctive repugnance to the solution offered to Smith by O’Brien in Room 101.  If reality is simply perception, what’s the difference between choosing O’Brien’s perception over one that we held prior to that?  However, again, I feel an instant impulse to reject this and argue for the primacy of my own free, empirical experience even though I know this too could be defective.  Even though Smith’s decision to yield is rational and understandable.  I still feel sad, like something has been lost in a battle between truth and falsehood despite having no clear concept of who is fighting this battle or where it is taking place!  Rationally, I think it probably doesn’t matter what version of reality you choose to believe in as time will march on and it will all eventually signify nothing.  But then why does invoke such strong feelings to the contrary?  Perhaps that is some evidence of the power of Orwell’s story.

Ta-Neishi Coates - Between The World And Me

The style is implacable but excellent and engaging.  Ranging from ubiquitous, almost humdrum scenes to high philosophy and metaphysics in the space of a few pages, paragraphs or sentences!  However, it’s highly readable and enjoyable.  It has a familiarity of subject and scene that established its appeal to me immediately.  It quotes rap songs from artists like Nas and Outkast that I knew and listened to growing up.  It deals with a world of poor, urban, African America, that’s at once alien to me, in terms of experience, but also familiar in terms of its position in popular culture and my own childhood.  It centered around recognisable aspects of life like interacting with family, hanging out with friends and going to school.  As I continued the narrative brought me feelings of warm curiosity.  Not necessarily because of the story’s content, albeit some of it is shocking and revelatory, but because of the insight the author brings to bear on that raw material of his own life.  These feelings of curiosity were warm because, despite the cruel and unjust episodes of Coates’ life, he seems to have escaped becoming angry and bitter about the segregation and racism he feels so sensitively and expresses so eloquently. The reasons for this are not spelled out in this letter / essay addressed to his fifteen year old son.  He acknowledges that he was angrier in the past, acknowledges the role of historical events like the American slave trade and the Civil War but stops short of providing a formulaic answer; either for his interpretation of racial culture in America or his response to it.  

Coates conveys a different perspective powerfully and eloquently.  There are great descriptions of childhood recollections like walking to school and getting beaten by his Dad, young adult experiences of university and getting pulled over by the police but, perhaps most arrestingly, experiences of casual strolls in NY once Coates has begun to venture out from the Baltimore he grew up in;

“They were utterly fearless. I did not understand it until I looked out on the street.  That was where I saw white parents pushing double wide strollers down gentrifying Harlem boulevards in T-shirts and jogging shorts.  Or I saw them lost in conversation with each other, mother and father, while their sons commanded entire sidewalks with their tricycles.  The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our children, I saw mastery communicated to others”

This passage brought home to me a perspective I never would have arrived at through my own thoughts as someone who had mastery communicated to them as a child and never endured the ubiquity of fear that Coates describes from his own youth.  In this manner, Coates simultaneously shows us something we know and a perspective or element of the familiar scene that we do not and herein lies the attraction of his writing for me.

One part of the book that made me stop and put the book down to reflect was the passage, or passages rather, concerning Saul Bellow’s quip, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?”.  I had never heard of Mr Bellow but considered the question on what I saw as its merits.  Tolstoy was a great writer whose works I have enjoyed and love.  Did the Zulus have any writers, or creators, of this calibre?  I wasn’t sure!  Probably they do, but it will be in a different form as it comes from a different, distinct culture.  But I still wondered to myself, but will it really be as good as Tolstoy if we could ever be objective about these things?  To be sure, I had treated it as a meaningful question.  A few pages later I was horrified to read,

“I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip.  ‘Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,’ wrote Wiley. ‘’Unless you find profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership’’ And there it was .  I had accepted Bellow’s premise”

And so had I! With all my pretension to being liberal, open-minded etc. etc. It is around then that some of Coates broader ideas about racism began to develop in my mind.  One, for example, was the idea of “believing that you are white”.  What was this? I thought when I first encountered it.  I am white.  I know I am.  I don’t allow it to make me think anything else about myself but I cannot escape it as a fact. I didn't understand how this could be construed as a belief.  However, after the Tolstoy incident I saw things differently.  I had identified with Tolstoy as Western and White, despite him being from a different country and period of history.  Furthermore, I had identified his works as something that ‘mattered’, to use Coates language, while not according that status to the Zulu culture!  It’s this kind of prejudice, concealed, or a least partially concealed, from even the person that holds it that seems to me to constitute a broader ‘belief in being White’ and the inherent ‘Whiteness’ of the world.

The ‘lack of control over your own body’, a phrase Coates uses to describe the African American experience, also gained in meaning and resonance as he shows us his own interactions with the police, those of his friends, including the tragically murdered Prince Jones, and contrasts them with those of wealthier, ‘whiter’ communities.  

“What I would not have given, back in Baltimore, for a line of officers, agents of my country and my community, patrolling my route to school!  There were no such officers, and whenever I saw the police it meant that something had already gone wrong”

This ‘lack of control over your own body’ amounted to constant subjugation to fear; fear of the streets, fear of the police, fear of failing school, fear of discrimination, fear of maltreatment, even fear of death.  This perennial fear expresses itself in different ways.  Fear as the rage of young men in gangs listening to rap “because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies”.  Fear as the excitement of running away from police or scrapping with rival gangs from different blocks.  Fear expressed as the gold jewelry and reinterpreted sportswear of ghetto fashion.  Fear as the violence of parents towards their own children, whom they feel incapable of protecting.

However, Coates does not allow this societally enforced fear to become a hatred of its most visible exponents.  Rather, he acknowledges the need we all have to use negative definition about ourselves in the face of our inability to say something more positive about ourselves, regardless of our identity:

“Hate gives identity.  The nigger, the fag, the bitch illuminate the border, illuminate what we ostensibly are not, illuminate the Dream of being white, of being a Man”

But this is scant cause for celebration for Coates because, he seems to feel, it would be better to have this repression foisted upon you by an unjust minority rather than a complicit majority?  Here, Coates demonstrates the bankruptcy of a model that holds the police culpable and places responsibility for its brutality solely in its own hands:

“But they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them.  The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority”

It is a credit to Coates deep understanding of the subject and to his powers of self-control that he doesn’t allow the brutality or injustice of what he has seen and experienced to dominate his thinking on these topics.  Rather he identifies racism and its effects in America more cerebrally:

“But race is the child of racism, not the father.  And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy.  Difference in hue and hair is old.  But the belief in the pre-eminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organise a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible - this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully to believe that they are white.”

However, this historical, cultural view of racism and its place in American history provokes both optimism and pessimism in response.  I’m heartened to know that racist attitudes do not emanate solely from people’s hatred of other races and the unknown.  Nonetheless, if the causes of prejudice and racism are rooted so deeply in America’s history of slave-trading, slave farming and construction using slave labour; what hope does the country have of escaping, or transcending, its own history?  Perhaps I have read him too pessimistically but I didn’t detect much hope in Coates' assessment of America.  Coming from such an intelligent and well educated voice on the topic, this is depressing although I sympathise with the determinism inherent in his argument.  

David Kilcullen - Blood Year

In the British comedy film Four Lions clueless wannabe jihadists discuss a strategy succinctly expressed as, ‘bomb the mosque, radicalise the moderates’.  It’s one of my favourite parts of the film, largely because, at the time I thought it was so outrageous and ill-conceived as to be ridiculous.  However, after reading this clear, concise and well reasoned summary of the ‘War on Terror’ and its aftermath in the region I recognised, with horror, that 9/11 had achieved almost exactly that on an international scale.  Al Qaeda’s attack on US soil had drawn such massive response it had thrown the whole region into turmoil, exacerbating sectarian grievances, precipitating huge numbers of  civilian deaths as collateral damage and radicalising tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.  As Kilcullen summarises in the book’s epilogue:

“The war in Iraq (commencing only 15 months after 9/11) alienated a host of potential partners and ultimately created AQI.  The disaggregation strategy, after 2005, atomized the terrorist threat, just as social media and electronic connectivity were exploding in such a way as to spread the pathogen throughout our societies, enabling remote radicalisation and leaderless resistance to an unprecedented degree.  The precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 revived AQI in the nick of time after it had been reduced to 90% and almost annihilated during the Surge.  The precipitate pullout from Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the AQ succession crisis that followed, and the failure of the Arab Spring - all in the same key year of 2011 - helped turn AQI into ISIS and gave it a global leadership role it proceeded to exploit with utter and unprecedented ruthlessness.  And complacency and hubris after bin Laden’s death, along with vacillation in the face of the colossal tragedy of the Syrian War, created the basis for a conflict that’s now consuming the Middle East and drawing regional and global powers into a hugely dangerous, and still escalating conflict”

I’ll attempt to summarise the main points of the narrative and analysis in what follows.The initial success of Afghan regime change and establishment of Karzai as new leader in 2001 lead to overconfidence about a new paradigm in warfare.  Most military advisors and professionals were more hesitant about this but political confidence was very high.  As a result, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was under-manned (200k should have been 400k) and left an incredibly dangerous power vacuum in the wake of Saddam Hussein's deposition.  The policy of de-Baathification alienated much of the middle class and disbanded much of the Iraqi army into ready-made insurgents and militia movements.

The ‘Surge’ and introduction of David Petraeus were, according to the author, positive and necessary developments in the effort to address the violent and chaotic shambles that emerged in the aftermath of the US invasion.  Obama’s election was less so as he equated leaving with the end of the war, which it certainly was not.  Kilcullen feels that Obama viewed the war as not of his making, which it wasn’t, and not really his problem, which it certainly was, and thought his approach was more politically focussed than practical.  He had campaigned on leaving Iraq and was dead set on accomplishing this aim.  However, when American influence, troops and attention left Iraq, between 2009-11, sectarianism drastically increased.  Iraqi PM Maliki who had been moderate whilst under American supervision became more of a Shia supremacist.  This encouraged more Sunnis to turn to AQI for help and protection whereas previously its power and influence had been dramatically diminished.  AQI was also adept in encouraging sectarian violence, sometimes even committing atrocities against other Sunnis themselves, in order provoke quid pro quo exchanges, which eventually forced Sunnis to accept AQI as their protectors for a seeming lack of other options.  The killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 also gave false hope that the War on Terror was coming to a conclusion.  It did present Al Qaeda with leadership and succession issues during the crucial period of the Arab Spring movement but did little to address the root causes of extremism and insurgency that, in many ways, benefitted from the Arab Spring.

Maliki seems like a definite cause of deterioration in Iraq, his pro-Shia sectarian approach after the US left appears to have been very divisive and disenfranchised Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis.  AQI may have been substantially weakened by the ‘Surge’, the tribal ‘Awakening’ and Maliki's government but ISIS, or its forerunners, appear to have found strength via relocation and collaboration in, post Arab Spring, war-torn Syria with other insurgents vs. Assad.  AQI / ISIS maintained excellent networks in Syria where many foreign jihadists had trained or transitioned on their way to fight in Iraq. It then returned to Iraq post 2011 far stronger than AQI had ever been and was a more attractive proposition for Sunnis who had been abused by Maliki.  This Iraqi-Syrian collaboration, or blurring of borders, was very difficult for Western policy as in Syria it was supporting insurgents against Assad while in Iraq it was supporting the government against insurgents.  However, in both cases ISIS was a major player on the side of insurgency.  Thus by helping Assad to defeat insurgents, including ISIS, it was actually helping a regime more brutal than the insurgents themselves; at least in a Syrian context.  Here Kilcullen compares brutality via number of civilian deaths.  This may have been the motivation behind some of the seemingly confused foreign policy in the region perhaps best exemplified by Obama declaring a ‘red line’ concerning Assad’s use of chemical weapons only to then do pretty much nothing when it was widely acknowledged they had been used.  Iran and Russia’s foreign policies in the region had the benefit of being consistently pro-regime / anti-insurgent although it would have been hard for the US to be so pro-Shia / Iran region-wide.

The original policy of the early 2000s, disaggregation, held that local jihadi movements were being aggregated by regional and global players into a global jihad.  The response was to attempt to destroy the overarching, supranational bodies and leave local insurgents disconnected allowing local authorities to deal with them individually.  This strategy was quite successful insofar as AQ’s influence, and that of its affiliates, was much reduced 2003-2011.  However, ISIS post-2011 appears to have a much more effective three tier structure: 1) State like central operation in Iraq and Syria occupying considerable territory including social services (courts, hospitals, utilities, food distribution etc.) advanced military (tanks, columns etc.), control of major urban areas and collection of significant revenues (taxes, oil etc.) 2) ‘wilayat’ or provinces loyal to the centre and operating on their command but separate from it.  These existed in both Iraq and Syria but also in other countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Caucuses etc.) and were deemed to be more dangerous that former AQ ‘aggregates’ because they were more formally controlled by the centre. 3) International individuals conducting terrorist attacks, mainly in the West, with little or no formal association with ISIS but claiming affiliation for their actions.  As such, ISIS acted as a powerful brand, attracting dissidents in a highly informal and disaggregated way, highlighting the drawbacks of the disaggregation strategy.  Furthermore, individuals with almost no connection to the centre, often radicalised entirely via electronic means, are far more difficult for police to monitor and identify than more formal cells.

2015 appears to have been a very troubling year in terms of the strength and sophistication shown by ISIS and AQI across all levels of its three tier structure.  The ISIS capture of Ramadi, in central Iraq, was apparently textbook in military terms and demonstrated how advanced the organisation had become.  Also, the capture of Palmyra, in Syria, made many civilians far more well disposed towards ISIS.  The Assad regime had destroyed water, electricity and sewage facilities before fleeing the city in convoys prior to  ISIS’ arrival.  The regime also made it hard for ordinary citizens, many of whom had been helping the government troops, to leave the city despite their own retreat.  Furthermore, they bombed the city with little regard for civilians as ISIS arrived having failed to attack them during their approach over the open landscape surrounding the city.  However, when ISIS arrived they reestablished basic services, distributed food, provided clothing and made medical care available in Raqqi via a safe road.  As such,  many locals, unsurprisingly, had a very dim view of Assad’s government troops and saw themselves as having been rescued by ISIS!  This view may have changed following ISIS’ exploitation and destruction of the ancient ruins near the town that had been the lynchpin of the area's tourist driven economy.

The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, July 2015) agreement between US-EU-Iran had interesting and far-reaching consequences for the foreign policy environment in Iraq-Syria.  While the US was anti-Assad and pro non-ISIS insurgents in Syria it was also lifting sanctions on Iran via the nuclear deal, giving them vastly increased access to capital and weapons.  Both Iran and Russia had been active in supporting an otherwise failing Assad regime in Syria.  As such, many moderate, anti-Assad, anti-ISIS rebels in Syria felt that the US had sold them out by agreeing to such a deal with Iran, which they saw as an acceptance that Assad’s regime could not be overthrown.  Furthermore, traditionally US friendly countries in the region, such as Saudi, Turkey, Egypt, Gulf States and Israel, were critical of the deal.  Egypt and Saudi launched a military force to counter Iranian backed Houthis in Yemen in the deal’s aftermath, representing an increase in proxy tensions in the region.  Turkey’s concerns centred on Iranian influence in the region, partly via an Assad regime it detested, and the risk of increasing Kurdish separatism within its own borders.  As such, it was probably less concerned about the nuclear aspects of JCPOA and more on the scope it gave Iran to increase its proxy war in Iraq-Syria.  After the treaty it entered the conflict by allowing the coalition access to its airbases and attacking Kurdish positions itself in Syria and Iraq.

At around the same time, huge numbers of refugees began overflowing from Middle Eastern ‘safe havens’ like Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon into Europe causing a humanitarian crisis and bringing the effects of events in the region 2011-2015 into mainstream media focus.  While this was on-going, coalition troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan, which allowed Taliban units that had been hiding in Pakistan to regroup and, eventually, attack and capture the city of Kunduz in September 2015.  Following this ISIS groups from Pakistan and Afghanistan also conducted attacks in the Afghanistan / Pakistan region and ISIS vs Taliban power struggles intensified, perhaps partly owing to a knowledge of Mullah Omar, the erstwhile leader of the Taliban’s, death.

Russia’s increased presence in the Syria-Iraq region was inaugurated by Putin’s speech to the UN in September 2015, which contains some thought provoking, albeit hypocritical, remarks (pp185-6):

“We all know that after the end of the Cold War - everyone is aware of that - a single centre of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that if they were so strong and exceptional, they knew better and they did not have to reckon with the UN...We also remember certain episodes from the history of the Soviet Union.  ‘Social Experiments’ for export, attempts to push for changes within other countries based on ideological preferences, often led to tragic consequences and to degradation rather than progress.  It seems, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called “democratic” ones continues...I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realise now what you’ve done?...Tens of thousands of militants are fighting under the banners of the so-called IS.  Its ranks include former Iraqi servicemen who were thrown out into the street after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Many recruits also come from Libya, a country whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973.  And now, the ranks of radicals are being joined by members of the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition supported by Western countries.  First, they are armed and trained, and then they defect to the IS”

While the coalition had attempted to fight against ISIS, Russia’s strategy was very much to fight for Assad against all types of insurgents.  Their approach was far more heavy handed, providing much heavier air support, materiel and troops, and far less focussed on reducing civilian casualties, in keeping with Assad’s own style.  While most of the US-led coalition efforts had concentrated on ISIS, only around 10% of the Russian efforts focussed specifically on ISIS with the rest directed towards any and every enemy of Assad.  For all its shortcomings, Russia’s policy does have the advantage of being more consistent than the coalitions.  It is against any kind of insurgency and will back dictators, like Assad, or democratically elected governments, like in Iraq, in order to suppress them.  The US-led coalition, however, finds itself pro some insurgents, anti others and, in the case of Libya, arming some only to lose confidence in them and withdraw support.

This lack of leadership from the US has seriously compromised its position and credibility as the global police force and, in many ways, JCPOA has handed that role in the Middle East to Iran cooperating with, and supported by, Russia.  If Bush’s invasion demonstrated the error of maximalist policies and over-reaction then Obama’s muddling light-touch and overly hasty withdrawal has shown the error of under-reaction, hesitation and timidity.  The situation now is worse than it was immediately post 9/11 as the West now faces two (ISIS and AQ) far better organised, better armed, better trained and internationalised extremist organisations in a region riddled with sectarian conflict, violence and weak governance.  In a gruesome, morbid way you have to look at the actions of 9/11 as a huge success strategically for AQ / ISIS.  It catapulted them onto the international stage, garnered new recruits for its cause, encouraged new allegiances, inspired new insurgent organisations, drew a massive, destabilising response from the enemy, brought arms and money to the region, radicalised vast swathes of the population and has ultimately led to growth and proliferation of its world view and proponents who espouse it.  

For the author, leaving the region to look after itself or be overseen by Iran is a not a sensible option.There are two large, well armed and well organised extremist groups (ISIS and AQ) both with perhaps 35-40k troops.  They are attracting disaffected people in the region, many of them young, and motivating them to destabilise and do harm to more moderate and inclusive regimes, as well as to do harm to their allies and supporters in the West.  As such, a strategy of active containment appears to him as the best of a bad lot of strategic options given the fractured political landscape in the region. Will moderate insurgents in Syria fight against ISIS if it has no support from the West and the Assad regime it ultimately wants to dislodge is strongly supported by Iran and Russia?  Will any Iraqi government be inclusive enough to persuade Sunnis and Kurds to prefer it to their own separatist movements? Will the reduction in troops and presence in Afghanistan lead to a loss of territory and urban areas to AQ and ISIS as has happened in Syria and Iraq?  Whatever the case, the political and religious landscape in the region is so complex any solution or movement towards improvement will take a long time and there will  be no quick, easy solution to the problems.

The attacks in Paris during November, 2015 are particularly worrisome as they were of considerable sophistication and coordination.  Well drilled and resourced guerilla teams with access to military weapons, explosives, safe houses, vehicles and forged documents point to the existence of extensive underground networks existing in European cities like Paris and Brussels; perhaps even a IS Wilayat in an EU country.  In turn, this also raises the possibility that ISIS / AQI will use tactics similar to those used to escalate violence between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq; using violence to divide the population along Muslim / non-Muslim or White / Arab lines to encourage radicalisation.  The French response was to deploy an aircraft carrier, conduct extensive airstrikes on Syria and ask its fellow EU member states to join it in a ‘pitiless war on Islamic State’.

As someone who knows little about this complicated area of geopolitics, I found this book to be happily clear and methodical.  It introduces the main players, events and themes of the historical narrative without delving into the kind of detail that would make it five times longer and ten times less comprehensible to the non-specialist.  The author expresses views, and I’m not well informed enough to comment on their merit, but they’re all supported by reasoned argument and do not seem needlessly partisan or biased.  Indeed, Kilcullen isn’t afraid to apportion blame to everyone declaring at one point that there is more than enough of it to go round.  The language and style are clear and analytical.  There is, inevitably, some Australian American-style military jargon, e.g. “getting out in front of the imagination curve” but this is mercifully rare given the author’s background! All in all, I found it an enjoyable and informative read on what is, undoubtedly, a hideously complex topic but one that, sadly, may continue to grow in global significance over the coming years.

Bryan Burrough & John Heylar - Barbarians At The Gate

Barbarians at the Gate relates the story of a huge, and achingly complex, private equity / leveraged buyout mega deal.  The cast of major figures in this saga runs to  hundreds, if not thousands, and the two journalists who authored this book do an admirable job of conveying a sense of these figures alongside the broad narrative of the deal itself.  The book is extremely thoroughly researched in terms of the personnel involved; the pair have conducted extensive interviews with all the major movers and shakers.  Indeed, the book, for me, was at its best when describing and portraying the main characters involved. Background and context for each character is rich, informative and engaging including summaries of their childhood, education and family life, brief business biographies and anecdotes exemplifying their manners and modus operandi.  These include many of the titans of the, now vast, private equity business in the US; Henry Kravis (pp130-1), his cousin and partner George Roberts (pp132-3), their former mentor Jerry Kohlberg (also chapter 5, pp128 onwards) and Ted Frostmann (pp235-6). Investment banking bigwigs like Bruce Wasserstein (First Boston then Wasserstein Perella) and Peter Cohen (p155, Shearson), corporate high flyers like Ross Johnson (RJR Nabisco) and Jim Robinson (p186-7, American Express) and countless other lawyers, advisors and board members.  The cast is really too numerous to be able to keep a clear picture of the anyone apart from the recurring lead roles but this can hardly be blamed on the authors and the book is well indexed for anyone wanting to make reference to particular individuals.  Indeed, the vast army of people involved amply demonstrates the grotesque fee orgy that went on around this deal!  Total fees are estimated at one point at close to $1 billion for a $25 billion deal.  Corporate cultures are also skillfully described and colourfully rendered including Standard Foods, Nabisco, RJ Reynolds, KKR, Shearson, Drexel, Salomon and many others.

However, while there is undeniable merit in the portraits of both individuals and institutions the book does sacrifice clear detail about the mechanics and chronology of the deal in favour of more dramatic, albeit more enjoyable and readable, material.  Corporate shindigs, the opulence of boardrooms, the fabulous art collections of private residences and confidential drinking sessions are all described in minute detail with great relish.  Private meetings and the home lives of the major players are imagined and dramatised with regularity but the nuts and bolts of the deal never receive the same exhaustive treatment.  To be sure, there can be justifications for this; the subject matter is dry and difficult to summarise, most readers are probably more interested in a semi-dramatised account, the authors are journalists not financial professionals and for this last fact I’m very grateful as the book was readable!  Nonetheless, I often found myself wishing there was a section dedicated to explaining the financing, and other technical aspects of the deal, in pellucid detail.  This is missing from the book and I feel it would have benefited from a section briefly dissecting the three offers in terms funding and the breakdown of equity, leverage and types of debt employed.  For example, Forstmann finds his ‘$3 billion sandwiched between layers of junk bonds’ which to me is incomprehensible as debt, to my mind, is put on top of equity so that it is never quite clear what kind of capital structure this bid has.  Furthermore, discussion of the Frostmann bid mentions his firm ‘receive[ing] senior debt rather than junior debt’ but it’s not clear why the acquirer is receiving any debt at all from the firm it has acquired.  I imagine that as well as contributing equity Frostmann also agrees to buy some of the debt issued to pay for the acquisition but it is precisely these kind of details that the book leaves unexplained and unattended.  Equally, the ‘reset’ clause on the debt offered to RJR shareholders as part of the KKR bid seems to amount to a guarantee that it will never trade below a certain level, which, in practical terms, seems to remove many of the advantages of using debt as large amounts of capital would have to be raised or set aside to fulfil this promise.  In the end, it seems KKR do have to put more capital into the deal because of this clause but the workings of this are never clearly or satisfactorily explained for me.  The epilogue and afterword, while making some interesting points about the operating fates of RJR subsidiaries post acquisition, raise even more questions about the financial engineering of the deal.  KKR ‘ran up the white flag, swapping its RJR stock for shares in another company it controlled, Borden’ - I have simply no idea how this would work and this is all the explanation offered!  Did they sell the stock and then buy more Borden?  Did a minority at Borden swap their stock for RJR?  It must a have been a sizeable minority stake to be worth what I assume must have been the majority of RJR?  No clues are offered in the book!  Also, after KKR’s unexplained exit when the company is being run by Goldstone, a former lawyer for the management group’s buyout, there is mention of RJR’s stock ‘rising 20%’ following an interview he gives on legal liabilities in the tobacco business.  This indicates the group must have been relisted, which it was in 1991, but this is the only mention made of it! This seems an extraordinary omission not to cover the group’s reentry to the stock market but, again, no further information is offered.             

Of course, the authors can hardly be expected to cover each and every aspect of such a mammoth and byzantine deal.  It is popular book and not a technical dissertation on the financial structures employed.  Equally, I feel they do a fine job of describing the characters involved, the cultures of the institutions and the huge amounts of ego and greed involved in the deal.  However, if these are the strengths of the book then I feel that a lack of detail on the financial structures involved and a slightly unclear technical narrative are the weaknesses.  Other corporate histories I have read authored by two people have also suffered from some of these same perceived faults so I wonder if, in the process of dual authorship, some of these grittier, less glamorous topics get lost between the two.  I also wondered if, reading this book at some 30 years removed from the events, I simply need more explanation than a contemporary reader to whom the events would have been current.  The authors were clearly deeply involved in the contemporary coverage of this rigamarole and, perhaps, as such didn’t share my historically detached perspective.  

It was an incredibly thoroughly researched and highly readable account dealing with a hugely complex topic.  Strong on anecdotes, opinions, the character of individuals and the culture of institutions but a little weak on the financial technicalities.

Ian McEwan - Enduring Love

Someone told me that the opening passages of this book contained the most beautiful prose they’ve ever read.  This wasn’t the case for me and, reflecting on this idea, I thought that perhaps the most potent passages come further into a book when the ideas or characters have been more fully developed.  Nonetheless, the author’s ability to conjure up powerful and instantly recognisable scenes, sensations and emotional landscapes is undeniable.  This first struck me at the end of chapter nine, where an argument is described between the two main protagonists, Clarissa and Joe.  It is vivid and recalls much of the chaotic, visceral immediacy of verbal sparring with those close to you.  Thoughts, threats and accusations seems to be formed and spoken simultaneously without any conscious reflection or planned strategy. Nevertheless, despite this lack of planning, they can often be more hurtful than considered comments.  As if you’re responding instinctively, like closing your eyes or putting up your arms when physical objects fly towards you.  It’s a reflex and can be all the more apposite because of this.  Another example of his skill is the crescendo of suspense that is built up in chapter nineteen by throwing the reader’s attention forward to a crucial event that has yet to happen before returning to the chronology of the narrative.  For instance, “a day or so later it became a temptation to invent or elaborate details about the table next to ours” where the reader is aware that something seismic is about to happen but is left wondering what it could be.  Juxtaposed with the smooth, finely rendered description of a birthday celebration in a busy restaurant it creates a powerful feeling of anticipation and anxiety.

The characters are depicted with more intellectual detail than physical.  I felt close and connected to the scientific musings of Joe and his crisis about abandoning his career as a popular science writer and returning to ‘real science’.  The flowing prose was occasionally inlaid with captivating ideas that inspired the character with greater vivacity and brought me closer to them.  Joe opines, “so the meanderings of narrative had given way to an aesthetics of form, as in art, so in science” or “if you lived in a group, like humans have always done, persuading others of your own needs and interests would be fundamental to your own well being.  Sometimes you had to use cunning.  Clearly you would be at your most convincing if you persuaded yourself first and did not even have to pretend to believe what you were saying.  The kind of self-deluding individuals who tended to do this flourished, as did their genes”.  In other places the details and specifics are less convincing.  I often found these clumsier touches to be physical.  The grieving widow of the hot air balloon hero looks “a long way off, out on her own in unspeakable weather, like a lone Arctic explorer”.  The mien of someone facing extreme weather rarely looks detached in my experience and imagination it is more a countenance of resolve and determination.  The phrase certainly didn’t aid the depiction and actually jarred somewhat.  Again, the physical description of the same character’s house provoked more confusion than animation.  “Facing the poisonous fire, set opposite the sofa were two chairs”, how can the chairs both face the fire and be opposite the sofa, I thought?  The fire must be contained by a wall and short of the sofa being beside the fire, against the wall, or in front of the fire meaning the fire was largely obscured. It seemed to me the chairs must face the sofa perpendicular to the wall where the fire’s located.  

However, the worst aspect of the book was some of the character’s behaviour in the story.  Clarissa, who is depicted as a caring, compassionate and intelligent woman, transforms from a loving partner into a suspicious, dismissive narcissist  when Joe acquires a stalker.  Her behaviour seems unlikely, unbelievable and unreasonable in equal measure given the previous information we have been given about her.  Her actions are so strange it made me think that Joe has gone mad and that it would turn out that he had invented the stalker, as Clarissa seems to suspect.  One could argue this tension is part of the plot but the this line of thinking strikes me as full of gaping holes.  Clarissa was at the accident and would have seen Parry, the stalker, herself.  Joe also could have shown her Parry standing watch outside their house.  Joe, inexplicably, deletes the 30 answerphone messages Parry leaves and never presents Clarissa with this type of evidence for no apparent reason .  She dismisses the extremely numerous letters as possibly written by Joe on the pretext that the handwriting is the similar, which seems very odd and summarily dismissive for a caring partner not to mention improbable from a purely technical perspective.  Furthermore, where is Joe finding the time to write such voluminous missives!?  Equally, if he was in fact writing himself hundreds of letters wouldn’t Clarissa be more seriously concerned about his mental health and therefore take more concentrated actions to find out if Parry did in fact exist?  Her position is an inconceivable one for the character we are presented with earlier:  She cares about Joe, sees that something is having a very profound effect on him but can’t be bothered to conduct even the most precursory investigation into its veracity and decides he is mad but not actually mad enough to get him to talk to a psychologist or doctor!  However, and in my opinion conclusively, the fact that Parry does exist makes this entire portion of the plot weak and only supportable in a very flimsy and half-hearted way.  The letter of justification that Clarissa writes in chapter twenty-three represents an incredibly generous self-assessment. Again, it was not in keeping with her presentation as a character earlier in the book, and was, for me, the nail in the coffin for this portion of the storyline.  It is simply too unreasonable and far-fetched to warrant any real interest.  Another problem I had with the plot is Joe’s acquisition of the gun and its subsequent use.  Again, good, convincing prose and description is diluted by wholly unbelievable narrative developments on Joe’s trip to buy a gun from some retired coke dealers.  Why would he break down in uncontrollable fits of laughter halfway through the deal?  It spoils the otherwise well-crafted depiction of their living environment and conservation needlessly.  Finally, Joe’s shooting of Parry when he has kidnapped Clarissa also seems unlikely and melodramatic.  Would he have such confidence in his aim after one practice shot that probably wasn’t accurate given it took him a long time to find the hole in the tree trunk?  I think not, especially given the proximity of Clarissa to the target.  Why not just attack him without a gun?  Parry has already been described as small and, at the time of the shooting, was only going to stab himself and not Clarissa!  The whole episode struck me as forced and unnecessarily melodramatic and, combined with Clarissa’s incongruous and scarcely credible behaviour, it ruined the other considerable merits of the book.  It also formed a stark contrast with the other parts of the plot.  The ballooning incident, its aftermath for Clarissa and Joe and the story of the hero’s widow were all sensitively and believably handled throwing the more pantomime themes into garrish relief.

I found the book engaging and beautifully written in parts but the weak narrative and issues I have with the behaviour and actions of the protagonists considerably reduced my enjoyment of it as a whole.

Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza

The story jumps around a lot chronologically so it is quite hard to establish the characters definitively, especially the peripheral ones.  However, it’s also quite powerful in highlighting how huge swathes of our lives pass without much of note remaining in our memories, while other passages are remembered in pellucid, excruciating detail.  In this respect it is effective.  The chronological gaps between the two can be huge or very short and what is remembered ranges from the obviously significant to the seemingly irrelevant, which all lends yet more mystery to the chimerical and ethereal character of memory!  The negative, for me, was that I felt that most of the peripheral characters are a bit redundant as I didn’t really have a clear idea of their histories or characteristics.  They’re sort of shadowy, half characters who occasionally come into focus but remain largely blurry.  In some ways I feel the story might be more powerful if told in a more traditionally chronological way; however, given I found the end very moving this may be an unfair, and inaccurate, criticism to make. A bit like having a good plate of pasta in a restaurant and then thinking it might have been better to have had pizza!  I suppose one could read the chapters in chronological order rather than in the order they’re presented in order to compare.  Another, far more minor, criticism is the lack of translation of Latin, French, Italian and perhaps another couple of languages in the Vintage Classics edition I read; just how erudite does this publisher expect their readership to be!?  It’s not like they’re in a footnote and I was just too lazy to look them up; they’re not included at all! Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book more and more the further into it I got as I felt there was more depth to the characters and more narrative context in which to locate them.  The individual chronological pieces combine and crescendo together to create a very powerful ending, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  

The prep school scenes are extremely well documented and realistic, presumably drawing on Huxley’s own experiences at Hillside School, Malvern.  The scenes depicting sex and sexual desire are also very vivid but encompass a range of appetites and dispositions.  From ravenous, insouciant man and woman eaters, to ever-ambivalent Anthony to the, scarcely believable, chastity of Brian Foxe who reveres his lover so much he doesn’t want to defile her by the act of copulation!  For me this range of characters and emotions says a lot about Huxley’s ability to observe and portray very different characters believably.

Anthony is an intriguing character with a development that includes the despicable and delightful.  Initially, I felt so sorry for the poor boy left with only his peculiar, unemotional father after the death of his mother.  However, his behaviour towards his old friend Brian, wooing the woman he loves for a bet and then shirking his duty to admit this, made my stomach turn.  I found myself enraged at him and Mary Amberly, his lover with whom he makes the bet, for treating the emotions of others with such disregard.  Especially Anthony, who perpetrates the crime against his oldest friend and must have some premonition of the hurtful consequences.  Brian’s suicide note is heart wrenching to read:

“It’s as if a broken statue somehow contrived to hold itself together….A statue at one moment, and the next a heap of dust and shapeless fragments.”.

We cannot even claim love or infatuation in his defence; he does it to show the worldly-wise Mary how he too can be flip about sex and relationships.  Later, I despise his cowardice for not confessing his crime.  However, at the same time, I feel I can understand how terrible actions emanate from confused feelings that are nowhere near as awful as the acts themselves.    

I really like the dichotomy Huxley draws between Anthony, a boy who hasn’t been loved enough, and Brain, a boy who has been loved too much.  Both end up emotionally retarded in very different ways but with the ultimate consequences that they are broadly unsuited to meaningful relationships.  Brian because he is too idealistic and places his lover on an impossible pedestal and Anthony because he seems scared of commitment, probably on account of the loss he has suffered earlier in his life and never properly come to terms with.  I feel like what happens between the two is sickening and disgusting but in some way it is also understandable and almost familiar. In the end, my anger and hatred of Anthony subsided into a feeling of hopelessness and loss at the tragedy of Brian’s suicide and the dreadful feelings of guilt that must haunt Anthony in the aftermath.  

As I mentioned, the end of the book is by far the most powerful section to me as Huxley, and the characters, try to make some sense of their lives and the experiences that have lead them to this point.  Dr. Miller is an intriguing, semi-prophetic character who speaks didactically in almost parabolic language; short sentences, lots of repetition, sweeping, unqualified observations that challenge conventional wisdom or seem unrelated to the topic at hand.  He is a figure from the society Anthony knows, appearing in a strange land at a time when he desperately needs help and he provides it to him while simultaneously reflecting on the metaphysical nature  of the universe!  There is more than a little of the saviour about him and what he says and does.  It strikes me there’s also a lot of wisdom in what he says and that this is his purpose in the book for Huxley, to be a demagogue for Anthony and help him to develop and reach greater understanding.  I hear what I imagine to be Huxley’s opinions in a mixture of what he says and what the mature Anthony says at the end to Helen, which I’ll include later. I have a feeling he makes a very brief appearance earlier in the book but cannot be sure of it.  His other worldly quality reminds me of the dog that falls out of the sky while Anthony is lying on the roof with Helen.  As far as I’m aware this remains totally unexplained but seems to be the totemic image of the horror and pain of the world for both Anthony and Helen; recurring in both of their narratives over long periods of time.

One piece of the novel I loved was Hugh Ledwidge’s letter to Helen about the passage of time.  Apart from this missive and some very vivid depiction of him as socially and sexually awkward I would put him in the category of ‘shadowy, half characters’ that I mentioned in the first paragraph.  I never feel I’ve got to know very well owing to their scanty appearances and a personal narrative that is, at best, loosely sketched.  The letter is wonderful though and can probably justify his whole inclusion as it’s not something Brian, Anthony or Helen could really say:

“‘Midsummer Day, Helen.  But you’re too young, I expect, to think much about the significance of special days.  You’ve only been in the world for about seven thousand days altogether; and one has got to have lived through at least ten thousand before one begins to realize there aren’t an indefinite number of them and you can’t do exactly what you want with them.   I've been here more than thirteen thousand days, and the end’s visible,  the boundless possibilities have narrowed down.   One must cut according to one’s cloth; and one’s cloth is not only exiguous; it’s also of one special kind - and generally of poor quality at that.  When one’s young, one thinks one can tailor one’s time into all sorts of splendid and fantastic garments - shakoes and chasubles and Ph.D gowns; Nijinsky’s tights and Rimbaud’s slate-blue trousers and Garibaldi’s red shirt.  But by the time you’ve lived ten thousand days, you begin to realize that you’ll be lucky if you succeed in cutting one decent workaday suit out of the time at your disposal.  It’s a depressing realization; and Midsummer is one of the days that brings it home.  The longest day.  One of the the sixty or seventy longest days of one’s five and twenty thousand.  And what have I done with this longest day - longest of so few, of so uniform, of so shoddy?  The catalogue of my occupations would be humiliatingly absurd and pointless.  The only creditable and, in any profound sense of the word, reasonable thing I’ve done is to think a little about you, Helen, and write this letter…’”

I feel the conclusion of the novel, consisting of Brian’s death, Anthony’s trip to South America and encounter with Dr Miller and his final monologue with Helen is very powerful.  For some reason, Helen’s experience with the Communists where she loses her lover didn’t have such a profound effect on me except as an exemplification of the kind of hate politics that Anthony later criticises in his exposition on how to live life.  This portion is, for me, presaged by Anthony’s conversation with Mark in Chapter 13 (1934) when he says:

“But, after all, if you had enough love and goodness you could be sure of evoking some measure of answering love and goodness from almost everyone you came into contact with - whoever he or she might be.  And in that case almost everyone would really be ‘dear’.  At present, most people seem more or less imbecile or odious; the fault is at least as much in oneself as in them.”  

But reaches its fullest expression in Chapter 54 (1935).  It’s also perhaps because I was better placed by this point to appreciate his philosophy knowing more about his experience and narrative:

‘It begins,’ he answered, ‘with trying to cultivate the difficult art of loving people.’

‘But most people are detestable.’

‘They’re detestable, because we detest them.  If we liked them, they’d be likeable’

‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘I’m sure it’s true.’

‘And what do you do after that?’

‘There’s no “after,”’ he replied.  ‘Because, of course, it’s a lifetime’s job.  Any process of change is a lifetime’s job.  Every time you get to the top of a peak, you see another peak in front of you - a peak that you couldn’t see from lower down.  Take the mind-body mechanism, for example.  You begin to learn how to use it better; you make an advance; from the position you’ve advanced to, you discover how you can use it better still.  And so on, indefinitely.  The ideal ends recede as you approach them; they’re seen to be other and more remarkable than they seemed before the advance was begun.  It’s the same when one tries to change one’s relations with other people.  Every step forward reveals the necessity of making new steps forward - unanticipated steps, towards a destination one hadn’t seen when one set out.  Yes, it lasts a lifetime,’ he repeated.  ‘There can’t be any “after”.  There can only be an attempt, as one goes along, to project what one has discovered on the personal level on to the level of politics and economics.  One of the first discoveries,’ he added, ‘one of the very first one makes, is that organized hatred and violence aren’t the best means for securing justice and peace.  All men are capable of love for all other men.  But we’ve artificially restricted our love.  By means of conventions of hatred and violence.  Restricted it within families and clans, within classes and nations.”  

I really like the idea of life’s purpose being a constant, never ending process of improvement and it resonates with what I have experienced in life so far.  I also like the idea, probably more present in the first quote than the second, that what we think of the world is at least as much a reflection of our own internal lives than it is any objective reality.  

The final passages of the book, where Anthony expounds a meditative philosophy of peace, contain some very beautiful passages:

“Frenzy of evil and separation.  In peace there is unity.  Unity with other lives.  Unity with all being.  For beneath all being, beneath the countless identical but separate patterns, beneath the attractions and repulsions, lies peace.  the same peace as underlies the frenzy of the mind.  Dark peace, immeasurably deep.  Peace from pride and hatred and anger, peace from cravings and aversions, peace from all the separating frenzies.  Peace through liberation, for peace is achieved freedom.  Freedom and at the same time truth.  The truth of unity actually experienced.  Peace in the depths, under the storm, far down below the leaping of the waves, the frantically flying spray” - my highlights

At the beginning, I didn’t think I’d enjoy this book nearly as much as I did at the end, which is much better than the inverse!