cover image Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century

Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century

Zbigniew K. Brzezinski. Scribner Book Company, $21 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19630-5

The United States's role as the number one superpower could be undermined by the global impact of America's own values, warns Brzezinski. A ``permissive cornucopia'' is his term for the advanced Western nations, and the U.S. in particular, where spiritual emptiness, addiction to television and superfluous consumption preoccupy a society given over to self-gratification without moral restraints. The former National Security Council director opens this blistering jeremiad with a trenchant analysis of the political mythologies that Hitler, Lenin and Stalin used to wield total control. If America is to reassert its moral legitimacy, he argues, it must address its basic dilemmas, including deepening poverty, inadequate health care and education, a greedy wealthy class opposed to progressive taxation, and the mass media's promotion of sex and violence. In the new world of rival global power clusters, Brzezinski urges a greater role for the United Nations and ``redistribution of responsibilities'' within the trilateral nexus of Europe, America and East Asia. First serial to World Monitor. (Apr.)