On The Shelf

The Threatening Storm
By Kenneth M. Pollack (Knopf)

If you want to survey the logic that holds sway in Washington, DC, these days, this is the book for you. For Pollack, who in 1990 was one of a handful of analysts at the CIA to predict Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, there can be no room for diplomacy with the Iraqi dictator, no question of containment. For him, there is only one route to sanity: military intervention. In a thick tome, he makes his case.

Of Paradise and Power: America Vs Europe in the New World Order
By Robert Kagan (Knopf)

Brussels-based Kagan is a key member of a group of conservative foreign policy analysts whose newspaper and magazine columns are setting the tone of most debates these days. A few years ago, in a seminal essay, Kagan predicted that Europe and America were diverging sharply in their respective visions of a new world order. Current events, as Old Europe and America battle it out in the Security Council, only confirm his prediction. So it’s just as well that he’s expanded that essay into a full-fledged book.