How to Make Love to a Despot

An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century

By: Stephen D. Krasner

Narrated by: David de Vries

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Since the end of the second World War, the United States has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign economies in the hope that its investments would help remake the world in its own image - or, at the very least, make the world "safe for democracy."

So far, the returns have been disappointing, to say the least. Pushing for fair and free elections in undemocratic countries has added to the casualty count, rather than taken away from it, and trying to eliminate corruption entirely has precluded the elimination of some of the worst forms of corruption. In the Middle East, for example, post-9/11 interventionist campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved to be long, costly, and, worst of all, ineffective.

Witnessing the failure of the utopian vision of a world full of market-oriented democracies, many observers, both on the right and the left, have begun to embrace a dystopian vision in which the United States can do nothing and save no one. Accordingly, calls to halt all assistance in undemocratic countries have grown louder.

But, as Stephen D. Krasner explains, this cannot be an option: weak and poorly governed states pose a threat to our stability. In the era of nuclear weapons and biological warfare, ignoring troubled countries puts millions of American lives at risk.

©2020 Liveright Publishing Corporation (P)2020 Kalorama

A Sober & Rational Take

Krasner presents a sober take on the different regime types around the world & how consolidated liberal democracies are not the norm. He asserts that "Good Enough Government" in despotic regimes is not a policy that the U.S. should settle for, but rather, should strive towards.

Krasner illustrates this main point with many many real world examples of countries with different polity types; Nigeria, S. Korea, Colombia, Afghanistan, Denmark, Brazil, & Botswana are but a few of the different states he uses to ultimately build the case for a new type of U.S. foreign policy based in Rational Choice Institution theory.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK for anyone interested in fragile states, historical storytelling, new national security strategies for the 21st Century, and for anyone looking to go past all the basic analysis of cable news, social media, and Youtube punditry.