Stephen Kinzer talks with Christopher Lydon on Radio Open Source
I found those two episodes most interesting. First, the President of the US announced… he was going to bomb Syria, but many in Congress and in the country were against it, and he called it off. I can’t remember any episode like this in my lifetime, where a president of the United States announced he wanted to bomb a country — but the American people were against it? This is something quite remarkable. We’ve always supported military action when presidents decide to launch them. Then came the telephone call between President Obama and the president of Iran. This is another supreme violation of another basic Dulles principle. The Dulles brothers believed you should never have dialogue with your enemy. They were strong against, for example, any summits between American leaders and Soviet leaders. They felt that this would only destroy the paradigm of conflict. It makes the other person seem possibly sane and rational, and then you can no longer portray them as evil and threatening. So these two episodes — the refusal to bomb Syria and the contact with Iran — make me ask this question: did the Dulles Era just end?
The Brothers reviewed by New York Times and Wall Street Journal
Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. “The Brothers” is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world.
– New York Times [read full review]
Q&A with Stephen on C-SPAN
Stephen Kinzer talked about his most recent book, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War on C-SPAN. Watch the interview
Interview on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ with Terry Gross
When they were making a decision about carrying out some earth-shattering operation; they never had to consult anyone else. … They served as a reverberating echo chamber for their own shared certainties.
– Stephen Kinzer on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ with Terry Gross
