Carroll Quigley, in the course of his examination of the failure of most Latin American / South American nations-states, delivered an astonishing analysis of what he believed to be the root cause of these failures in the first edition (1966) of his renowned Tragedy and Hope. Here, in almost an aside, he defines what he calls the "Pakistani-Peruvian axis" - a combination of Asian despotism and Arabic outlook (key word, that - outlook), both of which have their roots in Bronze Age antiquity, that pervade what Quigley calls the shattered cultures that dwell on its axis from Pakistan to the...