The Great Deception

Anglo-American Power and World Order.

Debunking some of the myths of post-cold War power, Mark Curtis demonstrates how Britain remains the key supporting player in US domination, and how far from benign that domination is in its impact on the rest of the world.

The special relationship between Britain and the United States has concealed a powerful complicity: a “great deception” of the foreign policy establishment. Drawing on recently declassified government files, Mark Curtis makes a controversial and radical critique of British and US foreign policy since 1945. By exposing the formerly secret planning record, Curtis sheds important new light on topical issues such as Anglo-American policies on the UN, the regimes of the Middle East, the Rwanda genocide, British foreign and aid policy under Blair, and US foreign policy under Clinton. Curtis reveals the extent to which governments on both sides of the Atlantic share responsibility for human rights abuses, poverty and insecurity in the Third World and assesses the collaboration of the media and academia in their support of foreign policy decisions.

Buy this book

“Curtis is a brave reporter of truths which the powerful would rather not have told.” – Victoria Brittain, The Guardian

Contents

Part One: Foreign Policy
1. Postwar foreign policy and the special relationship
2. Foreign policy under the Democrats and Labour

Part Two: Development
3. The “development” system
4. The prevention of development

Part Three: The Middle East
5. Controlling the modern Middle East
6. The Gulf

Part Four: The United Nations
7. The US, Britain and the UN in history
8. Current policy, intervention and the case of Rwanda

Buy this book