Stanford University Press Blog

What is Cheney Defending?

Shirley Anne Warshaw was interviewed by the Rorotoko blog about her new book, The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney.

"In the past month or so, we have seen former Vice President Cheney aggressively respond to charges by President Obama that the Bush administration exacerbated America’s friends and foes with its policies of torture, prisoner abuse, and inadequate trials."  Warshaw argues that this is because the policies of the Bush administration were very much Cheney's policies so it is only fitting that he is defending them.

Not only did Cheney have major influence over foreign policy but he also had all the legal arenas stacked with his supporters in order to push his agenda through the Justice Department. According to Warshaw, Cheney "had his hand in almost every area of domestic policy" by stacking the White House with his own staff of trusted insiders. The Bush/Cheney working relationship came to work so well because George Bush was focused on creating a moral and civil, faith-based society, leaving Cheney to take care of everything else.

Cheney staffed the administration with pro-business executives and "shaped the Bush administration’s energy, environmental, pro-business, and national security policies." From environmental regulations to government outsourcing, Cheney was bent on creating a business-friendly society.

Warshaw remarks, "I hope that The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney sheds new light on the limited agenda that George W. Bush had as president and the far larger agenda that Dick Cheney had as vice president – as well as the tools Cheney employed to move that agenda forward."

Assessing the Bomb

Lawrence Wittner has taken his vast knowledge of the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament and put it into a more conscise and updated book. His previous trilogy on the bomb, The Struggle Against the Bomb, is a long and detailed account of the movement to restrict the use of nuclear weapons. His new book, Confronting the Bomb, distills that information into a comprehensive account of the worldwide nuclear disarmament campaign. 

In a recent post on The Page 99 Test, Wittner applies the “page 99 test” to his new book, describing what the reader will find on page 99 and putting that in the context of the entire book. From the relatively obscure battles to those that are known across the globe, Confronting the Bomb recounts the history of the worldwide campaign against nuclear proliferation and its remarkable impact.

The book is based on massive research in the files of peace groups and in previously top secret government records, as well as on interviews with peace movement leaders and government officials: from Albert Einstein to Harry Truman to Mikhail Gorbachev. With this extensive base of information, several questions arise: How has the world avoided nuclear war since 1945? Why do nuclear countries adopt policies of nuclear restraint? If nuclear deterrence works, why bother with nuclear test bans or treaties?

Wittner attempts to answer these questions in Confronting the Bomb. The nuclear bomb–both its use and nonuse–is a subject that is fraught with difficult moral, political and diplomatic questions. Wittner’s new book makes the history more accessible, and in turn, may help to answer some of the questions that surround such an explosive subject.

Palestinian Identity in the Israeli Army: Fighting on the the wrong side?

Surrounded, by Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, takes a close look at the Palestinians who choose to serve in the Israeli army. It takes up the question of why they join and how it reflects the cultural interaction between the Israelis and Arabs in Israel . In the last week, the book was reviewed in both  Jordan Times and the Jerusalem Post in Israel. It is a statement of the social and political implications of Arabs in Israel as a whole, even though it focuses on a small percentage of Palestinians who choose to fight for the Israeli army.

Surrounded contains over 70 interviews with soldiers and provides a unique perspective on their experiences in acceptance and integration into the Israeli military. Kanaaneh not only provides insights into how nationalism factors into wars and why they are fought, but provides an interesting viewpoint by which to view the ethnic tension and relations between Palestinians and Israelis. She first gives the reader a sense of what it is to live as an Arab in Israel and the identity issues that Arabs struggle with when living there. With the many different categories that Israeli Arabs identify with (Muslim, Druze, Christian), how do these soldiers view their relationship with a volatile and fractured state?

Kanaaneh grapples with these questions of identity as she assesses the status of the Arab soldiers in their own communities and compares the situation of the Palestinians in Israel not only with other Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza strip but with other colonial situations around the globe: Indians who served in the British army, Buffalo soldiers in America, and, more recently, the US speeding up citizenship processing for green card holders who served in Iraq. Throughout the book, questions of conflicted identity are highlighted, as are the relationships between ethnic discrimination and military conflict -- issues that are not just pertinent to Arabs and Israelis but of truly universal interest.

California - A nation-state within a state?

In a recent broadcast of the radio show Which Way, LA? Stanford University Press authors Jim Flanigan - Smile Southern California, You’re the Center of the Universe - and Abe Lowenthal - Global California, Rising to the Cosmopolitan Challenge -  share their insights on the current and future prospects for California. Can the most prosperous state in the US , the hub of agriculture, industry and innovation be regarded as a nation-state?

For Abe Lowenthal the answer is a resounding "Yes." Lowenthal’s ideas focus on the fact that California has all the qualities of an internationally active nation-state but lacks the ability to use them in order to further their international interests. Even though “California was born with international DNA" as he put it, it is inwardly focused.  The state has the opportunity to influence the federal government, has a large congressional delegation, and has the most internationally diverse population in the country, and has not harnessed the tools to become an actor on the international stage.

Although Flanigan’s book is focused on southern California, he makes the point that global trade is central to California’s economy in particular (the state is the country’s largest exporter and importer of goods and services) and that the state is crucial in developing US trade links with Latin America and China. With a growing population due to second generation immigrants, an entrepreneurial economy, and the largest university research complex in the country, California is primed for interacting at an international level. 

Both Flanigan and Lowenthal agree that the political elites of California should come together to leverage the state’s global clout rather than remaining partisan and focused on local issues only. Even in the current recession, California has the capacity to yield a lot of influence.

Flanigan leaves us with a reassuring note, in light of the current economic downturn. He admits that trade may be down and deficits high, but China and other Asian developing countries are not going to stop development. They’re going to continue to develop, and we’re going to have a role in it. Flanigan assures us that the economy and trade of California flourished wildly in the past and even though it’s at a standstill now, “you know it’ll come back.”

Shanghai's History opens up to the West

Marie-Claire Bergere’s book Shanghai, China’s Gateway to Modernity, is scheduled to be released in December of this year but is already generating discussion in academic circles.

In a recent  post in The China Beat, Jeffrey Wasserstrom commends Bergere on the first English language book of this topic.

Shanghai, China's Gateway to Modernity is the fist comprehensive history of Shanghai in any Western language. Bergere’s tale takes readers back to when Shanghai first opened up to the world as a trading hub. She narrates the city’s beginnings as a treaty port in the mid 1800’s, the capitalist boom after the 1911 revolution, the fifteen years of economic decline after Japanese invasion in 1937, and the city’s years under communism. Her account shows that Shanghai is in a sort of evolutionary process that was set into motion a century and a half ago.

Eclipsed for three decades by socialism, Bergere’s account vividly shows how Shanghai  is once again  a symbol of China’s quest for modernity. Her book describes the city’s long and fascinating cultural history. 

Look out for reviews and more news related to this book as we moved closer to publication.