Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN (Voices & Visions - New Thinking for the New Century Series) - Softcover

Bennis, Phyllis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566562066 ISBN 13: 9781566562065

Publisher: Olive Branch Pr, 1995

Synopsis

The United Nations remains a favorite scapegoat for U.S. and allied failures in places like Rwanda, Iraq, Kosovo, and East Timor. Few look beyond the headlines to the primary responsibility of the United States for what are all too often called "UN failures".

Filled with tales of UN intrigue and diplomatic carrots and sticks, Calling the Shots exposes how U.S. financial and political bribes are backed by threats and punishments for recalcitrant nations who refuse to toe the U.S. line. The new edition examines U.S.-UN relations at the close of the 20th century: now $1.6 billion in debt to the UN, Washington increasingly undermines or even ignores the world organization, seeking to replace the UN's authority with that of favored military alliances such as NATO.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. Her earlier books include Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader and Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order. She is a long-time analyst and frequent commentator on UN and Middle East affairs; she recently accompanied a group of congressional aides to Iraq to examine the impact of UN sanctions there. Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday was the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, who quit his job to protest the impact of sanctions on Iraq's civilian population.

From Library Journal:

Bennis's trenchant and provocative, if at times hyperbolic, indictment of U.S. policy at the United Nations follows the crusading tradition of her previous works, From Stones to Statehood (LJ 11/1/90) and Beyond the Storm (LJ 12/91), which assailed Israeli practices in the occupied territories and U.S. actions during the Gulf War, respectively. Eschewing any pretense of objectivity and unabashedly anti-Western, Bennis, who covers the United Nations for Pacifica Radio, nonetheless makes a compelling argument in support of her contention that "the United Nations was created, and continues to exist ... in order to consolidate and strengthen ... the global reach of its most powerful member-states, most especially that of the U.S." Her ardor, however, is eclipsed by the book's beguiling and tendentious logic. Although it may make for engrossing reading, such journalistic license is clearly no substitute for unbiased scholarship, making this book a questionable purchase. For a dispassionate analysis of this subject, see Robert W. Gregg's About Face: The United States and the United Nations (Lynne Rienner, 1993).
David Ettinger, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Olive Branch Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1566562066
• ISBN 13: 9781566562065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288