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58 reviews for:
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
Stephen Kinzer
4.06 AVERAGE
58 reviews for:
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
Stephen Kinzer
4.06 AVERAGE
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
dark
informative
medium-paced
We think people lead the world but even the upper echelon dance upon the strings of culture
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
Having recently read David Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard" about Allen Dulles and the early decades of the CIA, I found Kinzer's dual biography of Allen and his older brother John Foster Dulles a slightly different but equally deep look at the creation of America's post-WWII global foreign policy of interference - both overt and covert - in the governments and politics of other countries. The Dulles, and the inner circle of economic and political power of which they were leading figures, helped lead the United States into the Cold War mentality that insisted that there were no "neutral" countries: each had to choose sides between "Communists" and "the Western alliance" and suffer the consequences. The results, as we now recognize, were a series of corrupt dictatorships, economic destruction, and military coups in places like Indonesia, Guatemala, Iran, the Congo, with long term damage to the countries and their people. Not a very productive or constructive foreign policy, and leading to decisions like the American war in Vietnam.
challenging
challenging
dark
informative
fast-paced
Barely three stars, for its wealth of information about geopolitics and spookery in the 50s. But this book has serious flaws, lacking balance and nuance and indulging far too much in facile psychoanalysis.
I picked this up after finishing Kinzer’s book about Sidney Gottlieb and MKULTRA. This book is another hard look at US policy failures and how American exceptionalism has blinded our people and government. It does drag a bit in the middle as all of the stories start to seem the same - Allen and Foster Dulles see a nationalist leader rise, assume he is a communist in the pocket of China/USSR, refuse to listen to any viewpoint other than “communism is bad and must be destroyed before it destroys us”, and convince the president to let them overthrow and/or kill the leader. But overall a really enlightening look at the problem of groupthink in government and how we make our worst fears a reality. I especially enjoyed the conclusion, where Kinzer makes his case that American exceptionalism and its mistakes were not limited to the Dulles brothers, and our failure to learn from these mistakes has major geopolitical implications.