The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West

A counterintuitive examination into how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict.

Just two decades ago, observers spoke of the US as a "hyperpower"—a nation with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes...