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    At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
    At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
    At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
    Ebook313 pages3 hours

    At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention

    By David Rieff

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Veteran journalist David Rieff’s essays draw a searing portrait of what happens when the grandiose schemes of policymakers and human rights activists go horribly wrong in the field.

    Writing for publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to The Nation to France’s Le Monde, David Rieff witnessed firsthand most of the armed interventions since the Cold War waged by the West or the United Nations in the name of human rights and democratization. In this timely collection of his most illuminating articles, Rieff, one of our leading experts on the subject, reassesses some of his own judgments about the use of military might to solve the world’s most pressing humanitarian problems.

    At the Point of a Gun raises critical questions we cannot ignore in this era of gunboat democracy. When, if ever, is it appropriate to intervene militarily in the domestic affairs of other nations? Are human rights and humanitarian concerns legitimate reasons for intervening, or is the assault on sovereignty a flag of convenience for the recolonization of part of the world? And, above all, can democracy be imposed through the barrel of an M16? This is not an optimistic report, but the questions Rieff raises are of the essence as the United States grapples with the harsh consequences of what it has wrought on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9781476737485
    At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
    Author

    David Rieff

    David Rieff is a New York-based journalist and author. During the nineteen-nineties, he covered conflicts in Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Liberia), the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo), and Central Asia. Now a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, he has written extensively about Iraq, and, more recently, about Latin America. He is the author of eight books, including Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West and A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. His memoir of his mother’s final illness, Swimming in a Sea of Death, appeared in January 2008. Based in New York City, Rieff is currently working on a book about the global food crisis.

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. Rieff, a staunch supporter of the use of force to insure human rights reflects on its effectiveness. His conclusion, based largely on a look back at the outcomes of intervention in the Balkans in the 90's, the failure to intervene in Rwanda, and the disaster in Iraq, is that intervention, generally, is not successful in assuring human rights, or promoting democracy.

    Book preview

    At the Point of a Gun - David Rieff

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