The Fix: A Book Review

The Fix By Jonathan Tepperman

The idea behind this book is simple, there are several problems in the world today, ranging from Islamic Terrorism to the resource curse, the question it sought to answer is what country is solving this problem? And how has it done that?

What a brilliant idea.

The author is a journalist, he tracked countries that have solved such problems and told their stories. The list of problems is as diverse as the list of countries. What is truly surprising is the countries that have solved certain problems. Can you imagine that Brazil is the best model that has solved the problem of inequality? Well, I was surprised myself. For religious terrorism, Indonesia is an example. Botswana is an example of natural resource management. Singapore is an example of corruption handling. Rwanda is the model of outliving a terrible conflict!

One thing this book does is to shift away from the American myth. There is a subtle acceptance of anything American. It seems that the world has a consensus that whatever America does is what the rest world should do. Sometimes, countries have copied these models to some dangerous results. For instance, the idea for a DSS, SSS, and other secret agents was copied from the western world at a time when many African countries did not even need them. We were threatened by any external force or internal subversion, however, because we saw that the west had these elite units, we copied them. A result is a form of terrorization by state powers all because they have an elite unit and didn’t know what to do with it. Not all things American are good! Of course, not all things foreign are good in general. Even some examples in this book cannot work.

The real achievement of this book is that it shows that it can be done. The problems we are facing as a country are manmade. It is a problem that humans can solve. We don’t need angels to come down and fix our roads, our security, or anything. We can do this! I cannot forget to mention that in each of these cases, there was a strong leader that led the efforts, hence, our leadership problem is still a big problem.

When we get serious about fixing our nation, this is a book we will read.