Product Description

The United States will confront a series of fundamental challenges through the middle of the twenty-first century. Using a theory of economic systems to gauge present and future global conflicts, Steven Rosefielde and D. Quinn Mills see the challenges as posed sequentially by terrorism, Russia, China, and the European Union. In the cases of terrorism, Russia, and China, Western leaders appreciate aspects of these perils, but they are crafting unduly soft policies to deal with the challenges. The authors believe that "globalists" notwithstanding, such views are myopic in an era where nuclear proliferation has invalidated the concept of mutually assured destruction. What America requires is a new security concept that the authors call "strategic independence" to enable keeping the peace in dangerous times and foster new generations of leaders capable of acting sanely despite a current public culture addicted to wishful thinking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126540 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-01-05
• Released on: 2007-01-05
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Review
"While too many writers offer the public mixed cocktails, Rosefielde and Mills have given us a cold glass of pure spring water. Numerous sacred cows are slaughtered with relish and many idols of the tribe are gleefully smashed. On every page readers will be delighted, provoked, aroused, or enraged, but most of all stimulated to think. This truly iconoclastic work is a book that will provoke what hopefully will be a long lasting debate here and abroad."
Professor Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College

"Government think tanks around the world are working on policies how to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Professors Rosefielde and Mills' book addresses the need for a new American agenda for strength and security for the beginning of this century. It is provoking and challenging, and necessary to read!"
Jan Rylander, Chairman of Research and Technology of WEAO, Western European Union

"Masters of Illusion is an exceptional achievement and a fascinating read. It presents a compelling analysis in depth of world affairs and political-economic-strategic trends that greatly challenge the security and well-being of the United States. It also contains a cogent critique of American leadership and certain illusions that often misdirect policy. This is the best single book on international trends that I have read in a long time."
William Van Cleave, Dept. of Defense & Strategic Studies, Missouri State University

"Coming from outside the mainstream of conventional political-science discussions, Rosefielde and Mills offer what might be called a post-neoconservative book: Rejecting both the Bush Administration's neoconservative foreign and defense policies and the liberal alternatives, the authors advocate a strategic posture which they argue is 'best in future prospect for ourselves and the world.'"
J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University, The National Interest

About the Author
Steven Rosefielde is Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Adjunct Professor of Defense and Strategic Studies, Center for Defense and Strategic Studies, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield. The author or editor of eleven books on Russia and the Soviet Union, including Russia in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2005), he is also a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Science. Professor Rosefielde has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and advised several directors of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US National Intelligence Council. Professor Rosefielde has also worked with the Swedish Defense Agency and the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute (Moscow) for more than a quarter century and with the Center for Defense and Foreign Policy (Moscow) for more than a decade.

D. Quinn Mills has held the Albert J. Weatherhead, Jr. Chair in Business Administration at Harvard Business School since 1976. He was previously a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Professor Mills is the author of more than 25 books on leadership and management, including the forthcoming Human Resources Management (2006), Principles of Management (2005), Wheel, Deal, and Steal: Deceptive Accounting, Deceitful CEOs, and Ineffective Reforms (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2003), and Buy, Lie, and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2002). He has been a corporate or executive education consultant to more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies and in nearly 20 countries, as well as to the US Government's Fannie Mae program.

Customer Reviews

A rigid, narrow vision
The title refers to two illusions that the authors claim are embedded in America's "public culture." One illusion is the notion that people and nations are generally well-intentioned and fair-minded, so that conflicts must result from misunderstanding. The other is that all economic and political systems are converging on Western-style capitalist democracy. Certainly some Americans believe these things, but are these beliefs as pervasive and strongly held as the authors claim? Central to the book is the claim that these illusions have the American mind in a tight grip. Are the authors right? You don't need to read the book to judge for yourself. If you think (as I do) that the authors have oversimplified American attitudes, one major thesis of their book collapses. There is a deeper problem with the book. The authors claim to see the world clearly, without illusion. Yet never, ever, do they display any uncertainty (or sense of humor) about anything. The future, especially the long-term future, is too uncertain for anyone to have confidence about how things will play out. The authors do not seem to recognize any possibility they could be wrong--for example, about the permanent superiority of the US economic system. Yet their own table on page 176 (intended to show the inferiority of Soviet economic performance) shows that Japan did better than the US in growth of per capita GDP for 1973-2001, and West Europe did just as well. Who knows what the statistics for 2002-2030 will show? Furthermore, they have tunnel vision: they see only threats of a military or quasi-military nature. Their four key threats are (1) terrorism, (2) Russia, (3) China and (4) Europe. To meet those threats they espouse a concept of "strategic independence." They are overconfident about the ability of the US to cope with such threats all by itself. Never, ever, do they see a need for a Plan "B." And it does not seem to occur to them that other sorts of threats might turn out to be more important. They are blind to the possible necessity of long-term allies and treaties to face non-military threats. For example, a pandemic may well kill far more Americans in the next fifty years than terrorists armed with a few nukes could possibly kill. Dealing with possible pandemics requires good international cooperation (as does dealing with terrorism). Pandemics are just one example; any reader can easily imagine other such examples. Finally, people who claim to be free of illusions had better get their facts right. The authors often get facts wrong. For example, they claim that unemployment in the US "is lower than in any of the other developed great powers." (p 138) According to the CIA Factbook, unemployment in the US in 2006 was 4.8%, whereas in Japan it was 4.1%. They show faulty judgment on other issues. On page 289 they take seriously the idea that Saddam had WMDs just before the war but moved them to Syria. This is of course theoretically possible; it's also theoretically possible that Dick Cheney machinated the US into war with Iraq so as to enrich Halliburton. Only committed ideologues would entertain either theory. I could give more examples of the authors' errors and misjudgments, but this review is already too long. The book does set forth provocative opinions that are worth thinking about, some of which might turn out to be right, which is why I give it more than one star.