The Logic of World Power [antikvár]

foreword The making of this book began on February 7, 1965, when American planes began the continuous bombing of North Vietnam. The experiences that have shaped it came from the antiwar movement. The knowledge came from countless discussions with people who sought to know why America chose the path of barbarism in Indochina. I owe much to periodic visits 1 made to the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. While actively involved in the struggle against the war, at considerable risk to its survival, the Institute was also virtually alone among educational institutions in the 1960s in carrying out critical and systematic analysis of the war and its roots. My debts, personal and intellectual, to Richard J. Barnet are particulariy great. Stimulated and supported by IPS, 1 became a participant in setting up a comparable though much more modest institute in San Francisco, the Bay Area Institute. Few experiences have taught me so much as working with an organization that started from seed. That it has had to survive independently without the succor of university or bureaucratic support made it clear what an organization really is—a group of people who believe in certain goals or causes working together with some degree of effectiveness and efficiency. The cause was opposition to the war and, in a much broader sense, to imperialism. Without the continuing if often erratic thought and action that went on in the Institute, I would not have wanted to write this book. My gratitude goes to Elaine Elinson, Tom Engelhardt, Martin Gellen, Steve Hart, Joan Holden, Alan Miller, Orville Schell, Nancy Strohl, Ruth Tebbets, Barry Weisberg, and others. Jon Livingston was always willing to discuss Asian and particularly Japanese matters. Some of my greatest pleasure and learning came from the never-ending seminar that Jim Peck, Dave Milton, Nancy Milton, and I kept going for so long. Starting from a common focus on China, it usually roamed over the whole world ending somewhere in America's politics. Not long after February 1965 1 came to work with Peter Dale Scott and Reginald Zelnik on writing a small "citizens' white paper," The kii