Deng Xiaoping & Thatcher: Kindred Spirits

americans tend to have three preoccupations about the recent past: the rights revolutions of the 1960s; Ronald Reagan, his conservative movement, and its legacy; and American-led globalization.¹ Remarkably, to an American reader, Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century, the new book by the distinguished journalist Christian Caryl, does not explore any of these American preoccupations. America is itself a footnote to Caryl’s book, as are the Soviet Union and the European Union. Globalization may be Caryl’s subject, but he does not see it as a process advanced by American foreign policy and the American economy. Globalization reflects “the twin forces of markets and religion,” most vividly, the Chinese market and political Islam.