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there are books whose fusion of factual inaccuracy and moral sophistry is so total that they can only be written by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell’s decades-long shtick has been to launder contrarian thought and corporate banalities through his positions as a staff writer at The New Yorker and author at Little, Brown and Company. These insitutitions’ disciplining effect on Gladwell’s prose, getting his rambling mind to conform to clipped sentences and staccato revelations, has belied his sly maliciousness and explosive vacuity: the two primary qualities of Gladwell’s oeuvre.

By now, the press cycle for every Gladwell book release is familiar: experts and critics identify logical flaws and factual errors, they are ignored, Gladwell sells a zillion books, and the world gets indisputably dumber for it.

while supporting the development of its nuclear technology, America is insisting that Jordan purchase its reactor fuel on the nuclear market (it will “allow” Jordan to mine the uranium ore, but not convert it into fuel).  The Obama administration stresses that it will refuse to help Jordan if it makes use of its own uranium, and intends to model any deal with Jordan on the USA's recent nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates, who agreed to purchase their uranium on the international market, but reserve the right to renegotiate this deal if another country concludes an agreement on more favourable terms. Pursuing its right to enrich uranium without America's agreement would prove difficult for Jordan: the USA plays a powerful role in the Nuclear Supplier Group which monitors the sale of nuclear technology.  Moreover, many reactors from countries outside the USA contain American components which would require Jordan to gain America's approval to purchase.  But the USA's insistence that the country give up the right to use its own uranium seems to be a strategic miscalculation with the potential to alienate one of America and Israel's key Arab allies.  While the Jordanian government under reformist King Abdullah can certainly be criticised for its benign and even not-so-benign authoritarianism, it remains a positive presence in the Israel-Palestinian peace process (and the strongest ally of the USA in the Arab world). In fact, it was its willingness to 'help' in the war on terror that caused concern for human rights campaigners. Undermining the country's nuclear intentions when Jordan has done more than it is required to do in terms of tranparency and negotiation gives the impression that America will always treat Middle Eastern nuclear projects with suspicion, and that there's little incentive to cooperate.

To knowingly alienate Jordan by undermining the country's right to energy independence would be an act of masochism by Israel, particularly when the country's nuclear programme presents an opportunity to develop a model of transparency in nuclear energy development, and a chance to strengthen a more moderate presence in the region at a time when it is sorely needed.

Charles Kenny is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. This article is adapted from his new book Close the Pentagon: Rethinking National Security for a Positive Sum World.

the Pentagon a potent symbol of America’s foreign-policy infrastructure in general, which is dominated by a massive, increasingly inefficient military machine better suited to the challenges of the mid-20th century than the early 21st. It is a machine that carries considerable direct economic costs but, more important, overshadows other foreign-policy tools more effective in confronting the global problems that the United States faces today. And just as the Pentagon is no longer fit for its backup purpose of records storage center in an age of cloud computing, nor is the Department of Defense well-placed to readjust to new roles, such as anti-terror or cybersecurity, let alone responding to climate change, pandemic threats or global financial crises.

interstate conflicts are going away. The last great power war began eight decades ago, and battlefield conflict has been on a declining trend since 1945. Battle deaths per 1 million people worldwide since World War II peaked at above 200 during the Korean War, reached about 100 at the height of the Vietnam War and plateaued at about 50 during the Cold War conflicts of the 1980s. In 2018, the number of deaths was around seven per 1 million people. Journalist Gregg Easterbrook reports that the last major naval engagement was in 1944, the last large air battle was in 1972 and the last major tank engagement was in the early 1990s.