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The New World
A Review by Alan Wise

Packaged like a rip-off of the Disney movie yet overflowing with detailed footnotes, Tariq Ali's Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope provides a political history of South America and a none too subtle warning that American power and influence there is rapidly waning.

Between references to U.S. imperialism, bloated economies and exploited workers, Ali, a long-time liberal critic of U.S. foreign policy, argues that U.S. policy makers are so blinded by the threat of Islamic terrorism and partisan bickering that they're missing a larger and potentially more radical threat down south: the rise of populism. If the U.S. doesn't wake up from its Iraqi nightmare soon, Ali warns -- at least long enough to check in with its neighbors below the equator -- tough, unstable times could be ahead.

Fringe as Ali's views may be, they do provide a warning. And warnings, in a world as unstable as ours, deserve a second look. If we are headed toward a world increasingly indifferent to U.S. concerns, now may be the right moment to move beyond our assumptions and begin asking a few questions of our own.

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