Moderated by Los Angeles Times editor Alan Zarembo, the panel “Foreign Affairs: Systemic Cruelty, Diplomacy, and Existential Threat” explores the devastating consequences of failed policies, During LA Times’ Festival of Books event. Featuring acclaimed authors Barbara Demick, Annie Jacobsen, and Robert Malley, the discussion unites around a sobering central theme: how powerful institutions and accepted global strategies have fundamentally worsened the problems they intended to solve.
Annie Jacobsen introduces her book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, an extensively reported minute-by-minute breakdown of what would happen if nuclear deterrence fails. Reading a harrowing prologue about a thermonuclear strike on the Pentagon, she argues that the foundational military doctrine of mutually assured destruction has made the world increasingly perilous. Drawing on interviews with top defense officials, Jacobsen outlines how a strike could trigger a global nuclear winter in just 72 minutes, emphasizing the terrifying reality of “sole presidential authority” and the unpredictable danger of a “mad king” scenario.
Barbara Demick shifts the focus to China with Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, an indictment of the country’s draconian one-child policy. Through the heartbreaking story of identical twins separated by government officials, Demick exposes the systemic cruelty of forced family separations and a corrupt international adoption system. She highlights how a global push to curb population growth resulted in severe human rights abuses and ironically paved the way for China’s current demographic crisis.
Robert Malley, a former lead Middle East negotiator, reflects on decades of diplomatic missteps in Tomorrow is Yesterday, co-authored with Hussein Agha. Malley asserts that the long-sought two-state solution has functioned as a “dangerous gimmick.” He admits that American diplomats treated the deeply emotional and historic Israeli-Palestinian conflict like a sterile “laboratory exam” over territorial lines, ignoring the profound human yearnings for justice, security, and dignity.
