The Republic of God
Publisher
:
Jacob-Duvernet
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782847241839
Number of pages
:
229
Description
The United States’ relationship to the Arab world is increasing complex. We have never been more in need of a clear-headed, knowledgeable, multifaceted perspective of this time and of a people in perpetual turmoil. Inspired by Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, The Republic of God is part history, philosophy, theology, and geopolitics; and all based on front-row participation.
The material in The Republic of God spans Cogan’s 37 years as an officer with the CIA and his later career at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Cogan witnessed many crucial events of a changing world, including the American intervention in Lebanon and the British incursion in Jordan and the international crisis that was imminent; he was in Khartoum during the Six-Day War and stationed in Morocco during the Yom Kippur War. Cogan was the chief of the Near-East South-Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from 1979 to 1984; his division directed the covert-action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was involved in the handling of three hostage crises—in the Congo, in Lebanon, and in Iran. Wherever important events in the Arab world were happening, he was there, he was part of it.
Cogan infuses The Republic of God with his theological and philosophical reflections on how we reached extreme alienation with the Middle East and why our policies failed. As he struggles personally with the notion of God, he acknowledges the primordial place religion occupies in the Muslim world and how it compares and contrasts with our sense of the United States being a nation blessed by God.
Author
Charles G. Cogan : Dr. Charles Cogan is now a historian and an associate of the Belfer Center’s International Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. In 2007 he was made an officer in the French Legion of Honor. He is the author of several books, including French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with “La Grande Nation” (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003), which was published as part of the Cross-Cultural Negotiations Project of the United States Institute of Peace. A French-language version also exists, with an update: Diplomatie à la française (Éditions Jacob-Duvernet, 2005). In recognition of the latter work, in November 2006 he was awarded the Prix Ernest Lémonon of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institut de France. A second printing of the French edition, with an epilogue as an update, was published in November 2008.
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