A Red Line in the Sand
Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A longtime CNN columnist astutely combines history and global politics to help us better understanding the exploding number of military, political, and diplomatic crises around the globe.
The riveting and illuminating behind-the-scenes stories of the world's most intense “red lines," from diplomatic and military challenges at particular turning points in history to the ones that set the tone of geopolitics today. Whether it was the red line in Munich that led to the start of the Second World War, to the red lines in the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, Syria and the Middle East.
As we traverse the globe, Andelman uses original documentary research, previously classified material, and interviews with key players, to help us understand the growth, the successes and frequent failures that have shaped our world today.
Andelman provides not just vivid historical context, but a political anatomy of these red lines. How might their failures be prevented going forward? When and how can such lines in the sand help preserve peace rather than tempt conflict?
A Red Line in the Sand is a vital examination of our present and the future—where does diplomacy end and war begin? It is an object lesson of tantamount importance to every leader, diplomat, citizen, and voter. As America establishes more red lines than it has pledged to defend, every American should understand the volatile atmosphere and the existential stakes of the red web that encompasses the globe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
CNN columnist Andelman (A Shattered Peace) offers a lucid and concise examination of the recent proliferation of contested boundaries ("physical, diplomatic, military, all too often existential") around the world. A chapter on the Korean Peninsula illuminates the region's fraught political dynamics through an overview of its colonial history and Cold War era civil war and a blow-by-blow rundown of political brinksmanship by North and South Korea ever since. Andelman also examines how the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are threatened by the territorial aggressions of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine were met with economic sanctions that he has largely turned to his advantage. The book's most vivid and eye-opening chapter tracks the history of Africa's contested borders from European colonization in the 19th century, through U.S. and Soviet interference during the Cold War, to today's conflicts over political ideology, religious affiliation, and access to the continent's natural resources. Andelman moves briskly and confidently through these various hotspots, drawing on decades of experience reporting on international affairs. The result is a worthy introduction to a wide range of simmering regional conflicts that threaten global peace.
