This book is a joke. It’s a joke on how demented and caustic American mainstream media has become that you only read opinion pieces on how evil the bad guys are (Trump, Putin, Xi, Elon being in the lead). It’s also a joke on how nobody engages with the public on how to de-escalate the situtation with Russia. It’s also a joke on how simple yet practical the suggestions by the author are which can result in somewhat less animus relations. It’s also a joke, however, on the book itself because most of the suggestions are backed by hearsay like “I heard this…”, “I read this…”. Wish it was slightly more academic in its research. The book is more of a rebut than a refute.
Weisberg himself joined CIA but from what one can gather reading the book, he hardly worked there as went away for a year to take care of his ill father and then resigned after coming back. Still he doesn’t shy away from repeatedly stating “when I was at CIA…”. Well, everyone deserves a chance to pat one’s back for sure. He has brought together several suggestions on how US – Russia can normalize their relations, but they are more oriented towards the extremely biased, and hand-in-glove left-illiberal media. He also counters many famous, standardized narratives which have been paraded long enough to paint Russia and Putin as evil of the highest order. He does refer to few reports here and there but majorly to anecdotal evidence. One interesting postulate he brings forward is of that even the harshest Russian critics of U.S.S.R felt bad when U.S.S.R collapsed because it was their region. They were critics of the communist rulers and politicians but not of the region in itself because there was absolute mayhem after the collapse, a manifold increase in corruption and cozying up to the powers.
A book which is different than the league but not serious enough to garner any major support from anyone whatsoever. Intent is good though not backed by hard work.
Right now, as we speak in 2023, there are four major ‘bad actors’ in the whole world as per the inward-looking, sycophantic, illiberal, left-leaning Western media: Trump, Putin, Xi, and, latest addition to the list, Elon Musk. If these paranoid, leftist ecosystem is somehow able to de-fang these four people, then the world would be a heaven until time’s end. The others in the list include, of course, Modi, Erdogan, Boris Johnson, Kim, Orban, and Lukashenko.
Reading Bill Browder’s book felt as if he is the centre of Putin’s and Russia’s attention. Nothing else matters except Browder, his fights for ‘truth’, his ‘sufferings’, his paranoia, his travels to the U.S. (especially to New York and Aspen, Colarado) and Europe. He was operating Hermitage Capital in Russia and made a good buck, but then had to pull out due to the Russian State coming after him after the death of Magnitsky. Surely Putin and his cabal hated Browder and what he was trying to do alongwith several Russian dissidents. Surely Putin is no saint and neither is FSB a love-spreading agency. But Browder surely has an imagination that’s gone a little too wild, and often his facts converge into far-stretched mind-games.
This surely is an interesting book to understand to what lengths Browder had to go to, to bring Magnitsky act being enacted. Surely he and his family and his several associates have suffered (with many ending up dead). Poisons and falls are the favourite methods of FSB, followed by assassinations. The book itself is fast paced, and there is not one chaptre which will not leave you gawking at the enterprising Russians and the evil machinations of how law works around the world. But in many places you are also left with a bad taste when Browder goes on venting about Trump and how, despite the fact that the Trump Russiagate has been found to be not only lacking and even a disinformation campaign by Democrats and left-leaning media and probably Russian funded sources too, he just concludes, because he feels so, that Trump was colluding with Putin. He does not even spare judges in the U.S. who don’t side with him. Browder is the only and the sole upholder of truth, and anybody disagreeing with him is either incompetent, evil, or both. That’s it. That’s it.
He comes up with a number of $1 trillion based on guesstimates as the amount of money laundered through Russia since 2007. He says various estimates peg Putin’s wealth at $200 billion or even more (yes, billion with a ‘b’). But he does not care to give any sources or calculations. Nothing. He says, and you better believe it. If you don’t, you are dumb. I was glad that I happened to read Spooked which rubbishes the Trump dossier by Steele. But I guess that does not suit Browder and the publisher.
The icing on the cake is epilogue of the book, where Browder goes on a tangent so self-suiting that one would laugh out loud reading it. His hypothesis is that Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022 because he wanted to increase his approval ratings and save himself from being persecuted by the Russian system or even being killed after losing power because he (i.e. Putin) is akin to a thug in a jail and if he loses power, he’s just going to end up being overpowered. He (i.e. Browder) makes it clear in no simple terms that “we need to say to the “neutral” countries of the world – China, India, Turkey, nations in the Middle East and Africa – that they have a choice. They can do business with the West, they can do business with Russia – but not both”. That’s surely a nice “choice” with such soothing words.
Browder surely has suffered and and is right to some extent in his pursuit against Putin and Russian State, but he surely is hallucinating as well when he extends all evils in Russia to Putin’s feet and makes him the ultimate embodiment of all things evil. Never trust just one side of the story. Do read the other side as well where Browder himself has been accused by the Russians of embezzlement. Of course that happened as retribution for Browder’s diligent actions to get Magnitsky enacted.
Interesting book for sure, but don’t take all of it at face value. Because Browder surely has a grudge against whom he doesn’t like, which surely includes Putin and Trump.
I was quite surprised that Edward Snowden wrote this book. Because he had categorically stated, when he had exposed spying by American agencies like NSA, CIA etc., that he wanted the focus on the various programs of surveillance and spying and not on him. He had purposefully kept himself out of spotlight by giving very few interviews. The writing of this book may have been motivated by financial reasons because Snowden’s assets had been frozen by the US authorities.
Snowden is not only intelligent but also courageous. He exposed the evil ways in which NSA and the likes went unhindered in their assault on freedom of regular citizens like you and I.
This book provides details of Snowden growing up and being a computer geek right childhood due to his dad. And then he decides not to continue his education beyond high school. However he did get a job as a security guard and due to lax intake requirements back then and the overwhelming open positions, he was taken in later in a technical position. Snowden exposes not only the various different programs used by the government to spy, but also how embassies worldwide have become only spots for surveillance and nothing more. He writes how he went to Switzerland and Japan to strengthen the data collection practices. He also is unabashedly critical of the main stream media (not as much as Greenwald though).
Towards the end, Snowden recounts his escape from Hong Kong and how, while at Moscow airport, is interrogated by the Russian agents and asked to cooperate with them so they could take care of him. Ultimately he refused and stayed there for many months. Finally, because he was attracting too much attention at the airport, he was given permit to exit the Moscow airport. He has lived in Russia since then.
‘Permanent Record’ is a must read book. It should be made mandatory in schools and colleges and I wish it becomes a manifesto of sorts for our freedom and tyranny of governments and technology.
It has become fashionable to appear anti-Trump to sell anything, from t-shirts, to Netflix shows, to books, to magazines, to newspapers, to news shows, to slogans, and even politicians. There only rallying point? Anti-Trump-het. Credence? Anti-Trumpism. Validity? Anti-MAGA. I am surprised that people in US have become so dumb that they can be sold any potion with ‘anti Trump’ properties and it will instantly become a best-seller.
This book is no different, even though it is somewhat balanced in its criticism of newspapers, journalists, even agencies of all kinds. However the cast of central characters in this book is as spooky as it can get: ex-spies working as spies-for-hire, journalists using these spies as sources, weak primary sources being presented as gospel of truth. They say that there are lies and then there is journalism and this book proves that.
The central theme of this book deals with the Steele dossier which was released when the Democrats were trying their best to pull down Trump. All media houses covered it as if that so-called dossier had the ultimate truth within it. Yet none even issued an apology when years later it was discovered that the primary source of the that dossier was unreliable and the author Christopher Steele never even bothered to meet his primary source.
However, this book is not just about that, but covers way more breadth than one can comprehend in one reading. It is astounding to see the underbelly of journalism and I am surprised that this book hasn’t gained that kind of traction it deserves. I have consistently lost confidence in today’s journalism, but after reading this book, there is no way I am ever going to trust all these mainstream newspapers and their so-called “exclusives” and “expose”. It is mind-numbing to read about the politicking that goes behind lobbying and how journalists collaborate with private spies to dig out dirt on politicians and political parties they don’t like. And you thought journalists ought to be neutral? Good luck with that.
This is a must read book for anyone out there who is trying to form an opinion about the kind of world we have created, and especially those who espouse journalists as the beacons of truth (whatever ‘truth’ means). The kind of sordid and murky details that are covered by the author, and the extensive references (in terms of books and articles and even documentaries) make this a great read and no amount of praise would be enough, notwithstanding the fact that Meier was himself associated or maybe still is with New York Times whose bias is as clear as the sky on a starry night. Yet, despite of Meier’s own inclinations, this book will reward you by making you believe in often quoted CIA agents’ supposed famous line: welcome to the real world.
I was chatting on some group chat on Yahoo messenger around 2000 / 2001. Then some argument ensued and one person (probably a guy) started sending some messages like ‘this port accessed’, ‘that port accessed’ in an attempt to scare me away and move out of that room. I having no idea of what those things meant, restarted my computer without bothering to rejoin that group chat. Then I heard about Stuxnet in 2010 / 2011 and how the Iranian centrifuges were destroyed. Andy’s book is quite entralling if you restrict yourself to the technical details and the jaw-dropping skills the hacker community has honed over decades. I use the word ‘community’ with a pinch of salt because how would club a Iranian hacker with an American hacker? The book talks about Stuxnet, WannaCry, Petya, notPetya and few others. My own experience, of having absolutely no work in 2014 when working for a big film studio which was hacked due to a controversial movie, gives me a smile.
However, that’s where the good part of this book ends. Andy is a typical leftist woke-type American who says Trump had so little understanding of computers that he never bothered to issue a critique of Russian ‘interference’ in U.S. elections of 2016. However, this theory is so unworthy that any person believing in the narrative of these leftist wokes deserves to be jailed. The political bias of the baldhead author is clear. I wish the author had stuck to writing on the stories of the hacking operations rather than ignoring the lack of skills of Obama when it came to computers. That’s the problem with all these publishers and authors nowadays. They have hijacked the complete narrative by taking over major publishers, news channels, magazines, blogs, and whatever else you can name.
I would read this book for the mayhem various cyberhacking operations have caused, but wouldn’t trust this author and this book even for a second when they just go on and on with blaming Russia / GRU / Putin without any evidence whatsover, except rudimentary statements like ‘the coding patterns matched’ and the ‘design looked similar’. I would rather stomp on this book and trash it in the bin for the political naivety and amateurish conclusions in this book.
Russian Woodpecker is a very original and courageous documentary. Cold War led to many technological breakthroughs, some creative and some destructive. In the erstwhile USSR, the Chernobyl disaster stands out as a sore thumb, igniting memories of shame and failure. Fedor Alexandrovich, a survivor of the aforementioned event, sets out investigating a relic of the old times – the Duga Radar, which was built as a warning system, given the paranoid state in which the two superpowers were.
Fedor’s line of investigation is however focused on connecting the lose tracks between Chernobyl and Duga Radar. Was the Chernobyl leakage effected by linked to the Duga Radar? Was the radar a failure? Was someone powerful enough connected with the radar and the catastrophic leak?
Fedor, with his childlike antics, but persistent dirt-digging, reaches a conclusion dreary enough to give chills. His playfulness in the rubble of still radioactive rubble is not stupid, but norm-defying.
To consider Stalin, for most historians, anything other than a monster would be a crime of large proportions. In fact so much so that he is often deprived of all feelings and emotions he might have had when alive. Whether these feelings and emotions actually existed or not would never be known, but still voices of denials of their existence are more powerful than which claim otherwise. Khlevniuk writes, “in today’s Russia, on the other hand, Stain’s image is primarily being shaped by pseudo-scholary apologias. Most of these authors blend a lack of the most elementary knowledge with a willingness to make bold assertions”.
The book begins with events of March, 1953, when Stalin was critically ill and his closest comrades were around him, or were trying to be around him, perpetually in fear of arousing his wrath lest he accused them of interfering in his daily activities. They were: Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin. The flow of the book is sequential, with dropped-in scenes from this March of 1953, when most awaited the vozhd’s death, or rather wanted his death. Ioseb Jughashvili was born on 6-December, 1878 – a fact rather hidden in the official Soviet biography of that time.
The author has diligently dug in the archives to bring out a clearer picture of the power struggle behind Stalin’s back. From Stalin’s school days to his rebellious youth in the religious church, the portrait drawn is neither dry nor garnished with unnecessary facts. Though now Stalin is being written about through this lens of hindsight, sometimes this leads to too narrow an approach. It seems no matter what Stalin did, he was always wrong. Or always plotting against someone or the other. His various affairs and the terror of repression and kulaks are written about in much detail. Of all the leaders after Lenin’s death, why could only Stalin become the vozhd? The author gives ornate descriptions of the mindset of various comrades and their actions, but it was only Stalin who had this insatiable zeal to come out at the top.
The later events of World War II, his meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, his efforts during Cold War to race ahead in arming USSR with nuclear-heads, his orders of shooting people close to him just to upset the balance of power, and his quirky behaviour with people associated with cinema – it’s all covered in this one. The analysis of Stalin when Hitler attacked USSR is nothing short of brilliant – the tension, the pressure, and the failure of the leader to lead. His transition to a ‘Generalissimo’ in eyes of his ‘followers’ is a tale worth remembering. The failures of Soviet leaders in terms of economic policies, wrong war-time decisions, strategic mistakes, political maneuvering are analysed in great detail by Khlevniuk.
This is a definitive biography of a man who cannot be just ignored or forgotten. A must read for anyone interested in Soviet history.
Zerkalo has been hailed as of one of the top ten or so of art movies of all time. The film is autobiographical in large parts and Tarkovsky’s father’s poetry is over laid onto the film. It deals with different phases of Tarkovsky’s life: childhood, youth, his mother, the children, war, communism and the Russian countryside. The shots are the standard Tarkovsky slow panning ones. The use of the effect of strong winds on grass and plants is used strikingly well. The scene where the disappearance of the mist from a window glass is shown makes one reflect upon the temporal existence of life.
The film is complex and very difficult to understand as the same actors portray multiple roles over different periods of time. This has described on a forum on IMDB as the director’s way of narrating the continuity of the past into the present and together into the future. The film had generated enough controversies as it was construed as depicting the Russian state of affairs negatively.
Arseny Tarkovsky’s poetry transcends the beauty of words. The complete poem can be read on All Poetry.
“ We celebrated every moment
Of our meetings as epiphanies,
Just we two in all the world.
Bolder, lighter than a bird’s wing,
You hurtled like vertigo
Down the stairs, leading
Through moist lilac to your realm
Beyond the mirror “
The movie begins with a distant shot of a couple of women standing on a verdant ground near a lake or by the riverside along with a dog and a horse. Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovskiy) is a poet and wanting to write about the life of a Russian musician, Sosnovsky (fictitious), and travels to Italy where the musician had spent considerable amount of time. Andrei is accompanied by a translator Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano) who helps him out by traveling with him to places of interest. They meet a madman Domenico (Erland Josephson) who was infamous in the region for having kept his family indoors for several years together for the fear of unknown. Domenico has the belief that the world is coming to an end and to save it he needs to cross a pool nearby with a lighted candle in his hand.
Eugenia leaves Andrei when she discovers that he has no interest in sexual relations (even though she is aware that Andrei is married) and vents out her frustrations on him by opening her heart out to him. In a surreal mix of events, Andrei keeps dreaming and in one of them thinks of himself as Domencio. He decides to go back to Russia to meet his wife and children abandoning the research which he embarked upon. The film ends with a masterful sequence of events: Domencio delivers a speech in the city and immolates himself in the end; Andrei crosses tries crossing the pool with a candle and is successful but dies right after.
The film, as is widely written about Tarkovsky and his creation, reflects his own longing for his motherland Russia after his exile. That the musician Sosnovsky chose to go to Russia and be a slave rather than being free in Italy mirrors his own longing for home. The heart rendering performance by Erland Josephson in the momentous no-cuts-climax emphasize the metaphysical undertones of the screenplay combined with Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony and his self-immolation. The slow but timeless shot marking the end is of Andrei sitting by a lakeside with Domenico’s dog on a lush green land, which is shown as if existing amidst the nondescript Italian church which was visited by Andrei and Eugenia at the start of the research trip. Death of Andrei after crossing the pool signifies the withering away of one’s life when fighting the ills.
Only those who can appreciate almost motionless shots and lacking expressions should watch this one. Erland deserves a standing ovation and Tarkovsky a bow.
Thanks to IMDB that I have discovered movies from different regions of the globe which otherwise I would have never heard of. An year and a half ago I came to know of a movie whose title was tongue twister. And it had got good reviews. The brief of the story was that the story is about two young brothers and their father who returns after 12 years to meet them. The description wasn’t very exciting but nonetheless kept it in my ‘to watch’ list. And finally on a cloudy Sunday afternoon I watched it, after spending the morning watching ‘Devi Ahilya Bai‘ – a historical movie but little slow even for me who wouldn’t get bored watching a dead fly for hours.
The movie is Russian and has won many awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It starts with four young kids jumping off a tall tower over a lake and brandishing their courage in doing so. The last one – Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) is unable to for the fear of heights. He is mocked by being called a chicken by his friends and his elder brother Andrey (Vladimir Garin). The two brothers start fighting and rush home to complain about each other to their mother, who asks them to be quiet as their father is sleeping inside. They are surprised as Otets (Konstantin Lavronenko) has come to meet them after 12 years. Though it isn’t apparent whether Ivan or Andrey have ever met him or not. He takes them on a trip which would include fishing but somehow he gets busy with a ‘business deal’ in the middle and drags along his two children with him.
Ivan finds his father not too friendly and remains distant from him while Andrey is comfortable. Till now the brothers have lived a very protected life with their mother. It is Otets who teaches them to fight to protect their right (though unsuccessfully), move a thing that ain’t moving by putting branches under it (a stuck up car), row a boat that’s lost in the middle of nowhere with a faulty propeller and how to anchor a boat on a beach side (again unsuccessfully). Otets hits Ivan and Andrey lot of times depicting his dominant side but also worries and cares about them by fishing and making tents for them.
Towards the end, before starting their return journey from an island where Otets digs up a small wooden box as a part of his dealing, the brothers get quite late while returning from a fishing trip and anger him. Otets slaps Andrey around four to five times and upsets Ivan who runs away and climbs a tall tower in the forest by the beach (and trust me those slaps are for real and very very hard!). Once on the top, Ivan shouts that he is not a chicken and not afraid to jump off it. Otets while trying to dissuade him from jumping catches hold of loose plank of wood and falls to his death. The brothers drag his body somehow to the boat (using the skills taught by their father), cross the huge lake in boat by rowing and arrive at the point where they had left their car earlier but forget to anchor it. The boat swerves away because of the intermittent waves and the boat sinks along with Otets’ body leaving the two brothers alone.
The direction by Andrey Zvyagintsev is focused on the details with hundreds of beautiful shots throughout the movie. The one towards the end where the boat is showed with Otets’ body and later sinks is beyond words. As with American Beauty in which Thomas Newman‘s music amplifies the hold of the movie on you, in this one Andrey Dergatchev‘s music magnifies the dark shades of the movie combined with the overall glum feel of the movie. ‘Final Titles‘ by Dergatchev is soulful to say the least.
There are movies which move you. This one shakes you up!!
(As a sad ending, Vladimir Garin, who played Andrey, got killed when he jumped off a tower by a lake side when challenged by his friends to do so. It was same tower showed in the opening scene. A haunting return indeed.)
(Wikipedia, though is probably the first source for us to know about many a things, is hugely biased in favour of ‘Western topics’. You search for Andrey Dergatchev and get nothing. Similarly, a few days ago I was searching for Yuri. V. Gankovsky – a Russian scholar – and I got nothing!)
Ruchir Sharma has been a regular contributor of long and detailed articles in the Economic Times. I do read those, but a lot of times skip them for my lack of interest in macro economics and for the lack of time. Nevertheless, his articles are good and always have something new for me to learn. Given that this book got published only some months ago, I issued it immediately upon spotting it in the library. After reading Taleb’s Black Swan, my view has become more critical of predictions and the sub-title ‘In the Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles’ stood out as an eyesore. I picked up this book, after a quick read up of the contents and few pages, not for any predictions but only for gaining a precursory understanding of the economic situation prevailing in various countries. I read this one as a reference to the past than as a crystal ball.
He begins with an experience of attending a swanky ‘farmhouse’ party in Delhi, where the “valets were juggling black Bentleys and red Porsches” and Kobe beef had been flown in from Japan and white truffles from Italy. Ruchir rattles off lots of facts – “over the course of any decade since 1950, on average only one-third of emerging markets have been able to grow at an annual average of 5 percent of more“, “only four companies – P&G, GE, AT&T and DuPont – have survived on the Dow Jones index of the top-thirty U.S. industrial stocks since 1960s“, “a Bellini costs a fortune in Rio” and many more (all of these, to remind you, are all facts based on what has happened and that is what I was more interested in when I picked up this book). By the term ‘Breakout Nations’ he means “the nations that can sustain rapid growth, beating or at least matching high expectations and the average growth rates of their income class“. He predicts a slowdown in China’s growth in the next 2-3 years, because China has become so large now that to maintain the same momentum of growth it needs greater absolute increase. He also gives a peek into problems in China: of exorbitant real estate prices, of crumbling rail networks (especially during holiday season), aging demography and rising wages.
The author also uncovers some interesting points about a forever favourite debate amongst the superpowers – about economic growth and political system. Ruchir states: “in 1980s, 32 nations were growing at a rate faster than 5 percent, and 59 percent of them were democracies; in the 1990s, 59 percent of the thirty nine high-growth nations were democracies; and in the 2000s, 43 percent of the fifty three were democracies. The total for the three decades: 52 percent of the 124 high growth countries were democracies“. And with this sword he cuts the imaginary umbilical cord between political systems and economic success – though not completely, because the rest, the 48 percent, were democracies. He calls this the 50/50 rule.
On India, he writes: “lot of young people and favourable demographics – but they are in the rural countryside which doesn’t mean anything for growth; corruption is high; points to the growth in South India owing due to technology and in North because of corrective actions; compares India and Brazil culturally and cites the example of why Orkut did better in both these countries (that’s the most ridiculous reason you would ever hear!); MGNREGA is pushing rural wage inflation upwards; points to hereditary politics (I loved the facts here); compares performance of Congress and others (this also I loved); how aspirational goods are being bought even in small towns but has only 6 cities in the explosive growth category compared to 23 in China“.
In the subsequent chapters he covers various nations – Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Hungary, Poland Czech Republic, Turkey, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, South Africa, Nigeria, Qatar, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and a couple more (some of the nations are covered only briefly). For Brazil, he says: its economy is one of the most costly and over hyped, restaurants in Sao Paulo are pricier than in Paris; it is world’s leading exporter of many raw materials; is a trade partner of China (the leading importer); spends too little on roads, seeks a secure ‘stability at any cost’ philosophy; productivity is very low; invests too little (again) in schools resulting in poor labour quality, shortage of engineers and technical workers and even high end hotels struggle to get hotel rooms cleaned. In Russia, he writes, there is no organized taxi service; millions of tons of meat and poultry is imported for consumption; the government spends very little – around 20 percent; roads are falling apart; more than half of Russians now depend on the state for a living; small and middle sized enterprises form a much lower percentage than in other emerging nations; has no global brand despite so many Nobel Prize winners; is home to 100 billionaires, the third in the world and does not make it even to the top 15 of BCG’s list of maximum millionaires’ countries – that’s a huge gap – no middle ground!; most of the billionaires are a result of crony capitalism. On Turkey, he writes: it has broken away from radical Islamists and offered a much moderate vision of Islam; debt and inflation have fallen and that Turkish exports are increasing in the Middle East. I feel for Turkey the author has been unnecessarily exuberant just based on cultural openness. And on South Korea he writes: the economy is very well balanced with a diverse set of industries (but so does India); services sector is missing there; research and development is very high on priority (which shows from Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Kia); exports in large numbers to China; has high school enrollment; banking sector is not innovative. The gold medal, finally, does go to South Korea though.
The Breakout Nations identified by Ruchir Sharma are: South Korea, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Poland and Turkey. My suggestion is that for people who are interested in economics, working in financial markets and those wanting to get the basics of economic scenario in various countries should read this. Treat this as a record of past performances and it will surely impress you. For the general reader, this book will not do because lot of technicalities of economics is discussed and I myself wasn’t able to comprehend some of them. Combining Pax Indica with this will be a good thing to do as it will result in a holistic view of diplomacy (as a tool for betterment of one’s own country). This has been less of a review and more of a brief of what is covered in the book – owing to the facts mentioned earlier.
Withered Papyrus 
