"The Ugly American"

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes "The Ugly American", examining both its literary and its foreign policy content and shows how the book is still relevant to today's world. The writer states that even though this novel was written in the Cold War period, the comments that "The Ugly American" makes on United States foreign policy and the citizens of the United States in general are still relevant.

From the Paper:

"The Ugly American is a novel about the fictional Southeast country of Sarkhan. Lederer and Burdick present Sarkhan as a thinly veiled amalgamation of several Southestern nations such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Sarkhan is a poor nation, and it is moving ever closer to revolution, prompted by a communist insurgency that is being supported by the Soviet Union (Discarded Advice). In the book, the United States is aware of the problem in Sarkhan, and feels compelled to stop this potential communist revolution, under the then-prevailing policy of containment, but are heavy-handed in their dealings with the nation, and are alienating the Sarkhanese (Discarded Advice). To make matters worse, the American officials that are stationed in Sarkhan are rude, arrogant, and incompetent (Discarded Advice)."

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