Despite a US-centric metanarrative, Suskind does succeed in shedding a dark light on the motives and ideologies of Bush and Dick Cheney, through a careful deconstruction of the pre-Iraq war espionage saga. Here, the full deceit unfolds under the reader’s eyes: how British and US intelligence was rejected by a US executive in martial mode, how Tony Blair was deceived by the falsity of his “allies”, and how a forgery mission ordered by the White House attempted to “invent” WMD (weapons of mass destruction, the author’s favourite abbreviation) in post-invasion Iraq. Suskind does succeed in proving a point here, bemoaning an immoral approach to war that amplified the terms of the conflict. Because of its betrayal of its own values, he says, America has opened the door to a nuclear terrorist attack. Ironically, Suskind’s fear tactics only succeed in mimicking the administration he is attacking, an example Michel Foucault would have relished.
More interesting to subcontinental readers will be the description of events in Pakistan — Bhutto and Musharraf are depicted as engaged in a (dubious) Manichean struggle between good and evil which is supposed to echo the struggle facing Bush’s disillusioned America. That it does, as Suskind expounds that it reflected the dissensions within the US political establishment — Condoleezza Rice supporting Bhutto and democracy; Cheney backing Pervez Musharraf and authoritarianism. Thus, The Way of the World is the American way, a bleak portrayal from within of a fragmented but determinedly imperialist US, almost too surreal to be believed.