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"Damned if you do; damned if you don't" voices the strategic impasse the USA finds itself in today. Liberal interventionism and globalization-the two pillars of the international system-seem not to work. Explaining the inability of Western powers to enact wise initiatives, Corradi explores the de-coupling of political systems: we are connected with each other but disconnected from policy makers. The paradox of increased connectivity and collective disengagement sets a perverse dynamic between publics and elites, with a serious impact on world affairs. Corradi analyzes the social bases of present dilemmas and how incipient decline can be managed, and paralysis overcome.
List of contents
Chapter 1 We Have a Problem. Chapter 2 Running Amok, or the End of Capitalism as We Know It. Chapter 3 The Failure of Alternatives. Chapter 4 The New Ancien Régime. Chapter 5 The Mindless Mind, or the New Wiles of Propaganda. Chapter 6 Another Rubicon? Reflections on Defeasance in the West. Chapter 7 Behemoth Lite: National-Populist Democracy and Its Impact on Strategy. Chapter 8 When Nobody Minds the Shop. Chapter 9 Geostrategic Rivalries in a Period of Potential Deglobalization. Epilogue. Postscript: After Pax Americana: Ten Theses on Geopolitical Disarray.
About the author
Dr. Juan E. Corradi is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of the book, South of the Crisis: Latin American Perspectives on the Late Capitalist World (Anthem Press, 2010). As a native Latin American teaching in the USA, his work in cultural sociology has informed his scholarship on world affairs for four decades.
Summary
"Damned if you do; damned if you don’t" voices the strategic impasse the USA finds itself in today. Liberal interventionism and globalization—the two pillars of the international system—seem not to work. Explaining the inability of Western powers to enact wise initiatives, Corradi explores the de-coupling of political systems: we are connected with each other but disconnected from policy makers. The paradox of increased connectivity and collective disengagement sets a perverse dynamic between publics and elites, with a serious impact on world affairs. Corradi analyzes the social bases of present dilemmas and how incipient decline can be managed, and paralysis overcome.
