Your passport to global affairs

                    NCWA Foreign Affairs Book Club

The NCWA book club meets 

the first Tuesday of the month

from November to April

via Zoom from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

      Next date is April 7.

       All members are invited.

      Bill Korstad, Chair

The 12th year of the NCWA Foreign Affairs Book Club looks at a world in the throes of a quietly disintegrating global order that's been in place for the past three-quarters of a century. American supremacy is giving way to an array of regional powers, many of which are autocratic, and an alliance of these powers threatens our grip on international order. Our book selections this year have reflected that reality. 

On February 4, the NCWA Book Club discussed Eldridge A. Colby’s book The Strategy of Denial: America's Defense in the Age of Great Power Rivalry. The discussion will begin at 12:00 noon and end around 1:30 pm. The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84512910881

The Strategy of Denial discusses why and how America's defense strategy must change in light of China's power and ambition. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of the U.S. defense strategy in a generation. The most informed and in-depth reappraisal of America's defense strategy in decades, this book outlines a rigorous but practical approach, showing how the United States can prepare to win a war with China that we cannot afford to lose -- precisely to deter that war from happening. 

On March 4, we’ll discuss Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human, by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Craig Mundie.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more dynamic and ubiquitous, it is dramatically empowering people in all walks of life while also giving rise to urgent questions about the future of humanity—a historic challenge whose contours and consequences are revealed by three eminent thinkers in Genesis. As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality and might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe.

But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen—usurping our power of independent judgment and action, testing our relationship with the divine, and perhaps even spurring a new phase in human evolution. Whom will we choose to lead our species through this wilderness? Or have we, passively and unwittingly, already chosen? As a bonus, it's the subject of our seventh Great Decisions discussion of the year, "AI and American National Security," slated for late February or early March for most. It’s a good tie-in.

On April 7, we’ll discuss The Art of Diplomacy by Stuart Eizenstat.

In one readable volume, diplomat and negotiator Stuart E. Eizenstat goes inside the greatest diplomatic negotiations of the past 50 years and covers every major contemporary international agreement, from the treaty to end the Vietnam War to the Kyoto Protocols and the Iranian Nuclear Accord. Written from the perspective that only a participant in top-level negotiations can bring, Eizenstat recounts the events that led up to the negotiation, the drama that took place around the table, and draws lessons from successful and unsuccessful strategies and tactics. Based on interviews with over 60 key figures in American diplomacy, including former presidents and secretaries of state and major political figures abroad, Eizenstat provides an intimate view of diplomacy as today’s history. 

Dr. Eizenstat spoke at the Jewish Book Festival in Naples on January 10 and is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs February 11-13 at the USF St. Petersburg campus. His remarks will be delivered the evening of February 11 and then in a panel the following morning, February 12. More information and registration is provided on the Conference website, www.worldaffairsconference.org. At this point, he is not scheduled to speak at NCWA.

For more information, contact Bill Korstad at bkorstad@mac.com or 303-887-7116.

Join us for these interesting discussions!

PLEASE NOTE: Hackers may try to direct you to a different Zoom address. Don’t be fooled. If in doubt about the authenticity of an email, please call me at 303-887-7116 for verification. 

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Book Club Archives

2024-04-02 - The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar

2024-03-05 - The United States-South Korea Alliance: Why It May Fail and Why It Must Not by Scott Snyder

2024-02-06 - The Final Struggle: Inside China's Global Strategy by Ian Easton.

2024-01-02 - The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert D. Kaplan

2023-12-05 - Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China and Iran by Seth Jones

2023-11-07 - How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato

2023-04-04 - War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan

2023-03-07 - Military History for the Modern Strategist: America's Major Wars Since 1861 by Michael O'Hanlon 

2023-02-07 - Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis

2023-01-03 - America's Great Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition by Ali Wyne

2022-12-06 - Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China by Michael Beckley and Hal Brands

2022-11-01 - Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves

2022-05-03 - Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World by Scott Reynolds Nelson

2022-04-05 - Future War and the Defense of Europe by John R. Allen, Frederick Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French

2022-03-01 - A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crisis of "Global Order" by John Ikenberry

2022-02-01 - Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order by Kathryn Stoner

2022-01-04 - Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor 

2021-12-07 - The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace the American Orderly by Rush Doshi

2021-11-02 - What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam Is Not the Problem by Omar Taspinar

2021-10-05 - The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugees by Patrick Kingsley 

2021-09-07 - The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State by Declan Walsh

2021-08-03 - Invisible China; How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise by Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell 

2021-06-01 - Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Harira 

2021-05-04 - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

2021-04-06 - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

2021-03-02 - Five short articles supplied by Bill Korstad

2021-02-02 - The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Bergen

2021-01-05 - Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World by H. R. McMaster

2020-12-01 - China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia by Daniel Markey

2020-11-03 - Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion and Collective Memory in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas

2020-10-06 - The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell 

2020-04-01 - Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

2020-03-04 - Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media by Peter W. Singer and Emerson T Brookings 

2020-02-04 - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall 

2020-01-07 - The Hundred Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury 

2019-12-03  - The War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow  

2019-11-04 - Messing With the Enemy by Clinton Watts

2019-03-30 - In Deep: The FBI, the CIA and the Truth About America's Deep State by David Rohde. 

2019-03-02 - The Myth of Capitalism - Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper with Denise Hearn 

2019-02-03 - The Next America by Paul Taylor and Pew Research 

2019-01-06 - The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World by Robert Kagan

2018-12-02 - The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal by Bill Burns

2018-10-29 - The Perfect Weapon by David Sanger

2018-04-02 - The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel

2018-03-05 - How Everything Became War and Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon by Rosa Brooks

2018-02-05 - America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

2017-12-11 - The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News by Arkady Ostrovsky

2017-11-13 - Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? by Graham Allison