The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order

In this controversial new book, Mark Curtis uses original research into recently 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 abuses, 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 the Second World War, 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 UN initiatives, impoverishing and destabilising Third World countries under the guise of development and democratisation, and protecting corrupt client regimes it has acted to ensure its own continued access to strategically important resources - particularly oil. In this rigorously researched study, Curtis tackles head-on the great deceptions of the foreign policy establishment, and offers a radical and much-needed reappraisal of the complex 'special relationship' between Britain and the US.