David A. Andelman

Thanks to Netgalley and Pegasus Books for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Tackling the history, background and development of many of the world's tensest stress points, Andelman guides us across the globe discussing amongst others the likes of China, Russia, Korea and Iran. The author is highly authoritative, experienced and knowledgeable and admirably able in depicting the underlying forces of military and diplomatic struggle preventing the diverse pressure points from exploding into all-out war. This book is also acutely topical and timely as the regular rotation of White House residents has yielded a new, but yet again familiar face, and returned a number of experienced diplomats to this administration. Their resolve undoubtedly is soon to be evaluated, just as their predecessors were. Repeated prodding for weaknesses in the resolved support for red lines across the globe will probably set the tone in 2021. As diplomacy quite evidently took a back seat during the last US administration, and the world's attention has over a year been diverted by the corona-crisis, the red lines described by the author will be no doubt again be severely tested and face being redrawn. Hard-going at times, but I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter.… (meer)

Andelman hopes to explain the history of the 80 or so years after the Treaty of Versailles and he tried valiantly, but he could not quite bring it off. This is a flawed book, not just in the howlers scattered through it--the caliph is the successor to Allah, for example--but in his attempt to explain major developments in terms of the Treaty: the rise of Mao, the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and even the rise of terrorism, which he seems to see as uniquely Muslim. Has no one mentioned the Tamil Tigers or other non-Muslim terrorist groups to him?

I am critical of this book, partly because Andelman himself names Margaret MacMillan's works on Versailles as his inspiration. Read her.… (meer)