God and gold

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

An illuminating account of the birth, the rise, and the continuing rise, of a global political and economic system that rested first on the power of Britain and rests today on that of the United States - and now faces a new set of formidable challenges. Walter Russell Mead, one of our most distinguished foreign policy experts, makes clear that the key to the world-shaping predominance of the two countries has been the individualistic ideology of the prevailing Anglo-American religion. Mead explains how this helped create a culture uniquely adapted to capitalism, which the two countries tended to like more than others did, try harder at, and generally do better with. We see how, as a result, the two nations were able to create the liberal, democratic system that still exerts the greatest economic and social influence around the world. With wit, stunning insight, and verve, Mead recounts what is, in effect, the story of a centuries-long war between the English-speaking peoples and their enemies. Sustained by control of the oceans that surround them, we see how first the British and then the Americans built a global system of politics, power, investment, and trade over the past three hundred years. Since Oliver Cromwell’s day, the English-speakers have seen their enemies as those who hate liberty and God, who care nothing for morality, who will do anything to win, and rely on a treacherous fifth column to assure victory. Those enemies, from Catholic Spain and Louis XIV to the Nazis and the communists and now to Al-Qaeda, held similar beliefs about their British and American rivals, but we see that though the Anglo-Americans have lost small wars here and there,they have won the major conflicts. So far. Mead makes clear that uncertainty is a defining characteristic of our time, as technological achievement has ensured the development and accessibility of increasingly powerful weapons of mass destruction. Where some see an end to history and others see a clash of civilizations, Mead views the current conflicts in the Middle East as the latest challenge to the advance of the liberal, democratic system, one that calls for active and determined diplomacy among civilizations. The United States, he explains, will have to combine a capacity for action and assertion with one for reflection and self-criticism. Mead’s emphasis not on the West but on the English-speaking world as the chief hero (and sometimes villain) of recent world history is less a refutation of the conventional interpretation than a refinement of it. Authoritative and lucid, God and Gold weaves history, literature, philosophy, and religion together into an eminently important work—a dazzling book that helps us understand the world we live in and our tumultuous times.