Synopsis
A journalist's account of how the United States backed mass anti-communist killings, especially Indonesia's 1965 slaughter, as a model exported across the Cold War world.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workThe mass extermination of suspected leftists was not an excess of the Cold War but a deliberate, repeatable method of building a pro-Western order.
It reframes Cold War 'victory' as resting on organized atrocity, forcing a darker accounting of how the postwar order was secured.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.
Reading note
It is reported history with a clear argument; weigh its framing while taking its evidence of the killings seriously.
Best paired with
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom