The Global Gamble: Understand what 1990’s were all about
Before starting my new course at Monash I wanted to finish all my readings left from previous courses I took. One of the last remaining books was Peter Gowan’s The Global Gamble. I just finished it today and I can’t simply pass over it, I need to share some thoughts here.
This book was published in 1999 and some of the articles precede it by couple of years. It is concerned with economic power of US and its imperial tendencies, war in Iraq I and about half of the book is about politico-economic aftermath of the 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
To those of you that know my political opinion on these events is obvious that the take on these events must be far from the mainstream accepted explanations. And it is. In fact, Gowan manages to describe the issues and struggle of the early 1990’s with such a precision and insight that I must say that I will never think about our post-revolutionary development in Czech Republic and other countries ever the same.
Maybe I was a sceptic before, but now I understand three things:
1) We got screwed and we are still paying for it.
2) There was not much else we could have done in those days because we lacked the power and awareness.
3) The right-wing parties in countries like Czech Republic should be the one redeeming themselves now, not the Communists.
The last comment might seem extreme, pushing my opinions even more left then they have been before. Don’t be alarmed, but seriously after reading this book you will think twice about voting for your friendly right-wing ODS which in light of recent elections in Czech Republic and electing a “hero” of the privatization era as a president once again is an eye-opening experience.
But then again, maybe you won’t like Gowan’s fact heavy, a bit repetitive and leftist style as much as I did (or should I say tolerate it as much as I did), but I really recommend getting this book if you want to understand the world we STILL live in and what forces are shaping our future.
