The Dust Of Empire: The Race For Mastery In The Asian Heartland

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PublicAffairs, 2008年8月5日 - 288 頁
When Charles de Gaulle learned that France's former colonies in Africa had chosen independence, the great general shrugged dismissively, "They are the dust of empire." But as Americans have learned, particles of dust from remote and seemingly medieval countries can, at great human and material cost, jam the gears of a superpower.

In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the present and past of the Asian heartland in a book that blends scholarship with reportage, providing fascinating detail about regions and peoples now of urgent concern to America: the five Central Asian republics, the Caspian and the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and long-dominant Russia. He provides the context for America's war on terrorism, for Washington's search for friends and allies in an Islamic world rife with extremism, and for the new politics of pipelines and human rights in an area richer in the former than the latter. He offers a rich and complicated tapestry of a region where empires have so often come to grief—a cautionary tale.

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FOREWORD by Richard C Leone
82
PROLOGUE
215
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
235
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第 23 頁 - To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.
第 5 頁 - They sleep, and they rise up, and they find' themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia ; they see visions of great cities and wild regions ; they are in the marts of commerce, or 'amid the islands of the South ; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes ; and nothing, which meets them, carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation ; nothing has a history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes...
第 26 頁 - States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a Government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba.
第 v 頁 - All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express.
第 xxxiii 頁 - In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others — the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
第 xvi 頁 - We, my dear Crossman, are Greeks in this American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans - great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. We must run AFHQ as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.
第 102 頁 - To sum up their character in a few words," concludes the same judicious author; " their vices are, revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity, and obstinacy ; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependents, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious, and prudent; and they are less disposed than the nations in their neighbourhood to falsehood, intrigue, and deceit.
第 215 頁 - States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient — that we are only six percent of the world's population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.
第 xxi 頁 - The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward ; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness ; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man.
第 xix 頁 - And. as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

關於作者 (2008)

Karl E. Meyer, a Princeton PhD, served on the New York Times editorial board, and previously was a foreign correspondent and editorial writer on the Washington Post. He is author of a dozen books including Dust of Empire, and is emeritus editor of the World Policy Journal.

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