A Savage Order
How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, corruption, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places—from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia—have been able to recover.
In this powerfully argued and urgent book, Rachel Kleinfeld examines why some democracies, including our own, are crippled by extreme violence and how they can regain security. Drawing on fifteen years of study and firsthand field research—interviewing generals, former guerrillas, activists, politicians, mobsters, and law enforcement in countries around the world—Kleinfeld tells the stories of societies that successfully fought seemingly ingrained violence and offers penetrating conclusions about what must be done to build governments that are able to protect the lives of their citizens.
Taking on existing literature and popular theories about war, crime, and foreign intervention, A Savage Order is a blistering yet inspiring investigation into what makes some countries peaceful and others war zones, and a blueprint for what we can do to help.
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While wars and terrorist acts grab most of the headlines, homicides claim about three times as many victims globally. Kleinfeld, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and founding CEO of the Truman National Security Project, examines the causes and solutions of murder, focusing particularly on Colombia, Sicily, and the Bihar province of India, as well as Georgia, El Salvador, and Tajikistan. She notes the prevalence of "privilege violence... in which political and economic leaders... consciously enable violent groups to proliferate in order to protect their perks and maintain control" or even engage directly in violence and corruption. In 2015, for example, two-thirds of state legislative candidates in Bihar faced criminal charges, 38% of which were for such serious charges as murder, kidnapping, and extortion. She also analyzes "dirty deals" between governments and guerilla groups and gangs; one economist found that such deals, which often involve allowing powerful perpetrators of crimes to go unpunished, yield, on average, eight years of significant reductions in violence. Kleinfeld devotes the last third of her book to efforts to combat these situations, offering proposals such as training anti-crime leaders, establishing provisions that significantly reduce the assets of entrenched criminal groups, and providing governmental warnings to tourists considering booking hotels owned by those with "blood on their hands." Kleinfeld does an excellent job of balancing the anecdotal and the analytic in this well-researched, clearly written study.
