Ouroboros

Looking at partisan groups such as the FLN, the Vietcong, and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism assesses how they convert their knowledge of self into tactical and strategic advantages that nullify the Clausewitzian advantages in the distribution of military power. Reynolds argues that liberalism has a global transformative mission that requires an ideologically democratic core and an illiberal periphery. By assessing the ouroboros, which sees action as definitive and final, the book explains how it powers the new strategy of preemption that intervenes in the periphery, ostensibly to set up democratic, security-centered adjuncts.

With Ouroboros: Understanding the War Machine of Liberalism, Phil Reynolds lays bare Liberalism’s inherent penchant for war. In a robust and ultimately scathing critique of Liberal strategies of preemption, Reynolds helps us think through this unfolding contradiction. Why does such incongruity arise? What drives this apparent paradox forward? By answering these questions, Reynolds encourages us to see Liberalism as serpentine, twisting and contorting as it swallows its own tail. Ouroboros is an important book that brings clarity and conviction in an age of doublespeak and deception., “Reynolds has written a thoughtful and challenging work that reinterprets recent US foreign policy. Through his utilization of European critical philosophers, Reynolds provides a fresh lens through which we can make sense of the recent peripheral wars with which the United States and its allies have struggled.”

Phil W. Reynolds is visiting scholar at the Center for Future Studies, Hawaii.