blindmanbaldwin 's review for:

World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century by Dmitri Alperovitch, Garrett M. Graff

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Oddly first-person for this kind of book. The author steeps his political analysis of tripartite US/China/Russia relations in his personal story as a post-Soviet migrant to the United States. Not necessarily a bad angle — I always appreciate a novel spin — but it does create a lack of seriousness when combined with the book's lighter, surface level tone. Perhaps more designed for a mass audience.

All in all, a frustrating read in that it creates a lot of conclusions without much support. Opening on some fanfiction of a hypothetical election eve 2028 attack on Taiwan did, admittedly, sour me on the book for the remainder of it but even looking past that the author has a contradictory ideology. In his framework: the United States must maintain, or expand, hegemonic power while also increasing social support for the domestic population (implicitly: to maintain votes) and leaving a lax business regulatory environment to encourage innovation. This is, of course, not possible due to cost to support 1 and 2 will undercut 3. His hand waving away of rising nativism, or at least efficacy of nativism in elections, also weakens his arguments due to him saying immigration drives US power (true!) but ignoring that the voters are opposed to immigration.