The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order by Mark Curtis (Paperback) (9780745312347)

Curtis uses original research into recently declassified government files to produce a critique of Anglo-American foreign policy in the 1990s. The author focuses on the areas of the UN, development and the Middle East, and shows how the US manipulates the international foreign policy to ensure it has access to strategically important resources.

In this work, Mark Curtis uses original research into declassified government files to produce a scathing critique of Anglo-American foreign policy in the 1990s. Focusing on three major areas - the UN, development and the Middle East - he details the extent to which Britain and the US, to different degrees, share considerable responsibility for human rights abuse, poverty and insecurity in the Third World. Curtis frames an understanding of British and US foreign policies in the 1990s by tracing the development of those policies since the end of World War II, demonstrating that the priorities have remained virtually unchanged over the last 50 years, particularly in terms of military and economic policy. The US, with Britain clinging at times unceremoniously to its coat-tails, has systematically manipulated the international foreign policy agenda in its own interests. By blocking UK intitiatives, impoverishing and destabilizing Third World countries under the guise of development and democratization, and protecting corrupt client regimes it has acted to ensure its own continued access to strategically important resources - particularly oil.

Foreign policy in the 1990s - the economic and military priorities
the United Nations 1 - Anglo-American control
the United Nations 2 - peacekeeping and military intervention in Somalia and Rwanda
North-South development 1 - the myth of development and the real agenda
North-South development 2 - aid in the 1990s and the myth of democratization
the Middle East 1 - repression, intervention and oil
the Middle East 2 - arms sales and defence pacts
conclusion.