Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War

• Publisher:   Nimble Books LLC
• Number Of Pages:   366
• Publication Date:   2007-01-01
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0978813820
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780978813826

Globalistan weaves three parallel and intersecting themes: globalization, energy wars and the Long War. It shows how globalization is not proceeding according to the myth of "everyone profits": instead, it is fragmenting the world into even more explosive inequality, into "stans" - some stans configured as fortresses, some stans at war with others. Energy wars, and the multiple intersections of globalization and war, only increase the polarization. Globalistan argues that the world is being dissolved into Liquid War - a natural consequence of "liquid modernity" , a concept formulated by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. The book is 80% based on reportage - from China to Central Asia and Russia; before, during and after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; in Iran and in the Middle East; in Western Europe, Western Africa and South America. Compounded with news analysis, it advances possible trends based on how geopolitics is developing now. It is also an Atlas - with maps - of the world in conflict.

Pepe Escobar's Globalistan is, in the author's words, "a warped geopolitical travel book" that aims to transform and politicize the reader's understanding of the interrelated processes which facilitate and perpetuate "globalization, energy wars and the Pentagon's Long War." The text, as much a work of abstract political theory as it is reportage, is a brief but overly complicated polemic that ultimately fails to present a practical alternative to the world views and socio-economic practices which the author clearly set out to challenge. The literary and theoretical references and allusions which riddle the text are sure to interest some (myself included), but Escobar's awkward phraseology and penchant for abstraction-for-the-sake-of-abstraction can at times be distracting. Ultimately, the book may be of value to students of sociology, political science and heterodox economics, but it is almost certain to tire and/or bore the average and relatively apolitical reader.

Globalistan provides a picture of present conditions and the likely future in India, China, Russia and the "stans" as well as Africa and the mid-east. The book contains names of people and places I was unfamiliar with. Far from confusing -- Mr. Escobar always gets his points across -- these essays made me realize how much is missed in the main stream or popular media. Whether by design or incompetence we Americans are kept ignorant of the extent to which the planet is affected by the greed and corruption of those who consider themselves citizens of the world, and thus indifferent to any suffering of the place-bound rest of us. This book helps dispel some of the ignorance and is therefore sobering. Be forewarned that reading it may permanently affect how you view even those sources you consider reliably informed.

There's such a different viewpoint. Even the US professors he quotes are people I've never heard of. And I thought I was well-read, at least by internet standards. And he's funny. I'm not sure I was expecting that. Perfect it's not. It reads as if it were written fast. With places that should have been edited. So read it the same way, fast. Stopping at passages that make you think. There are plenty of those, ranging from a discussion of how many suicide bombers are Islamic fundamentalists, (and what they are instead) to asserting that none of us is truly apolitical. Someone who is a committed neocon or globalist could gain a lot by reading it. And by checking Escobar's facts, reading the people he admires and quotes. Probably so could the rest of us.

This review is on the Kindle edition of this work. The book has been pulled in from PDF format to the Kindle and the publisher didn't bother to even look at the result. There is no working table of contents and the format is full of random line breaks and run together words on nearly every line. Unreadable. I can't speak to the content, which I was interested in reading just as a contrast to some of the other views on the subject, because the Kindle edition is unreadable (though sold at full price).

This book describes in apt detail the minimalist morality and crass materialism of the glitzy and high tech age of mass consumerism and "disposability" that has come to characterise the world since the world's second incarnation of "British" power, the US Imperium, won the cold war back at the end of 1991 and took on its final form which people commonly refer to as "neo-con". This initiated the present violent epoch of chaos characterised by the typical but merciless Anglo robber capitalism at its peak that can be summed up as a "dog-eat-dog" creed of selfishness, greed, apathy, cynicism and devil-may-care ignorance. Its policies have caused social decay and explosive upheaval and instability leading to breakdown of order in backward countries and cultures - as we are witness to here in Pakistan. The Anglo powers and the West in general support corrupt westernised ruling elites in Third World countries that suck the blood of their own people, but who maintain a local status quo favourable to the interests their Western patrons and masters. For this, these toady elites are awarded a place at their masters'grand table. The West once even supported militant Islam as a geopolitical tactic (against their Soviet rivals) - till 2001 that is, when it turned around and bit its master like some diseased dog on 9/11. That is why Al-Qaeda exists today. Nowadays, as a result of all these policies and actions, within a short span of just fifteen years, the world has ended up as a dangerous, explosive and uncertain place which is on the boil as never before in recorded Human history. It is a sad fact that nowadays the only effective opposition to Anglo-American "globalism" comes from raving Islamist fanatics. It is clear that globalism as it exists is destined for destruction. We only hope that it doesn't take the world, as well as modern (European) mankind's positive technological, scientific and cultural achievements along with it. This globalism is surely the forerunner of the future system of all mankind; but it is defective and will need destruction and replacement after the rapacious Anglo powers are defeated, shorn from it and done to the dust. Then only can a true Eurasian-African-American global dispensation of the whole of humanity replace it.
The summary on globalism which I have given above is fully documented in the book under review, Globalistan by Pepe Escobar. Escobar is an intrepid Latino globetrotter and reporter from the USA who not only has an accurate grasp of the regions he visits, but he has also employed a unique glossary of terms in his book with which to describe the idiosyncrasies of this topsy-turvy bad new American world. In the process of doing so, he leads his readers to accurate new insights. His contextual reportage and background information are highly accurate and well researched. His style is somewhat jocular, but that again is a "modern" trend in today's informal and casual world, that can be forgiven. As I noted above, the world has been reduced to "black and white" when dealing with opposing issues such as Anglo-American globalist capitalism and Islam, both of which are reprehensible with one being worse than the other. But Escobar falls in neither category, and this fact strikes one as refreshing. This book is not a hyped-up criticism-for-criticism's-sake account of the type that we are nowadays deluged with by the Anglo-American corporate media nexus; it is a quality analysis. It is an original and contemporary work on the current state of the world and should therefore be read by all. Aside from the content of the book, I also consider the quality of its cover, printing, type-setting and paper: I must say that this edition excels in this aspect too.

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