Taming the sovereigns: institutional change in international politics. By K. J. Holsti.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. 372pp. £45.00.  0 521 83403 1. Pb.: £17.99.  0 521 54192 1.

K. J. Holsti makes a good case for institutions as an insightful way to define significant change inInternational Relations. By institutions he follows broadly in Bull's understanding of evolved, organic, constitutive practices, not that of regime theorists who focus mainly on regimes and intergovernmental organizations. He suggests three useful criteria for identifying such deep institutions: patterned, recurrent practices; coherent sets of ideas and/or beliefs which frame the practices and make them purposive; and the presence of rules, norms and etiquettes that prescribe and proscribe behaviour. Within these he follows the distinction between constitutive (what he calls ‘foundational') and regulatory (‘procedural') institutions, with the former defining the actors and their relations, and the latter defining the conduct of relations. He rightly criticizes Bull's weak specification of institutions, and dismisses two of Bull's classic set (balance of power and great power management) as not qualifying under his criteria. He then offers eight of his own, four foundational (statehood, territoriality, sovereignty, international law) and four procedural (diplomacy, international trade, colonialism and war).

The eight central chapters each review one of these institutions, tracing its history, identifying changes and continuities, examining different degrees of institutionalization, and sketching in explanations for what changed, what didn't, and why. These are vintage Holsti: carefully done, with a good eye for detail and a clear and lively line of argument. This kind of explicit survey of institutions in the English School sense has not been done before, and provides a major service to the literature. He concludes that there is a great deal of continuity in the institutions of international society, and uses this to criticize transformationalist and deterritorializing views of the contemporary international system.

Oddly, Holsti does not try to relate to the English School debates despite the centrality of his topic to the concept of international society, and that he references many of its authors along the way. He nevertheless makes a significant advance on the English School literature on institutions, and opens an important agenda for further research. Each chapter could be a book and many other potential books lurk on the fringes. Holsti acknowledges the eight criteria surveyed to be not a complete set, but the key weakness is that he says little about the criteria for selection, or what the full set might look like. His failure to consider nationalism misses a crucial link to the English School work that lies closest to his project: Mayall's pioneering work on how the institutions of international society evolve and interact. The distinction between foundation and process is well established, but I remain unconvinced that it works for international institutions. War, for example, seems an odd choice for a procedural institution given the foundational, constitutive quality of Tilly's famous dictum that ‘the state makes war and war makes the state'. Inasmuch as it defines the status of many of the units in the system, colonialism also has constitutive implications, as does trade if seen through liberal theory and the link to demo­cratization. I also remain unconvinced that statehood should be classed as an institution. It does not seem to contain much other than sovereignty and territoriality, and its inclusion risks confusing the institutions of international society with its members.

It is interesting to try to place Holsti on the pluralist-solidarist spectrum. His state-centrism, and much of the discussion, suggest pluralism, but his conclusions about war, colonialism, the obsolescence of the right of conquest, and the rise of trade as an institution point more towards an understanding of international society that has moved well beyond mere coexistence. Holsti has not closed the book on the topic of the institutions of international society. But he has made a major contribution in drawing attention to the need to understand how such institutions emerge, evolve and sometimes die; giving the histories of some of them; and setting out many of the tools needed to conduct such analysis.

Barry Buzan, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

International ethics

Glimmer of a new leviathan: total war in the realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. By Campbell Craig. New York: Columbia University Press. 2003. 191pp. Index. £24.00.  0 231 12348 5.

The willingness of realist thinkers to make bold assumptions and controversial assertions has provided critics with abundant opportunities to criticize the dominant international theory of realism. Craig attempts to offer a novel critique of realist theory by providing an intellectual history of three extremely influential American realist scholars: Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans J. Morgenthau and Kenneth N. Waltz. Craig's historical account is most interested in how these three realist theoreticians, who were all writing after the dawn of the nuclear age and at a time when the United States had lost its ‘free security', dealt with the pressing problem of the possibility of global thermonuclear war. Realism, which Craig extracts from the writings of Weber and Nietzsche, depicts a world of autonomous rational states existing in a precarious condition of international anarchy. Without a superior source of authority above them (no global leviathan), states are forced to provide their own security. Given this environment, most realists argue that the pursuit of power and the periodic outbreak of war are two of the defining patterns of interstate relations. War, for realists, is often viewed as a rational undertaking where the use of force is considered to be the ultima ratio of international politics.

By the late 1950s, however, the possession of large-scale nuclear arsenals by both super­powers forced theorists and strategists alike to reconsider the issue of whether the use of force, possibly culminating in nuclear war, continued to have a positive utility. Craig maintains that in the case of his three American realist thinkers, they initially, and seemingly for the sake of theoretical consistency, maintained that nuclear weapons and their possible deployment in warfare with the Soviet Union did not render the use of force obsolete. After all, Craig notes that one of the core tenets of realism is that great powers, in order to advance their own national interests, are both able and willing to use force. To concede that nuclear weapons render the use of force absurd would represent a fatal admission that could potentially undermine the theoretical validity of realism. Yet by carefully surveying the written work of Niebuhr, Morgenthau and Waltz, Craig finds that their strong normative aversion to nuclear war gradually resulted in each of them making important theoretical revisions and modifications to their distinctive version of realism. But in doing so, Craig argues that inconsistencies and contradictions quickly surfaced that undermined the theoretical core of realism.

In the case of all three realists, Craig finds textual evidence to suggest that their normative aversion to nuclear war led them down the utopian path in search of solutions to the predicament of nuclear-armed international anarchy. In the case of Niebuhr and Morgenthau the solution increasingly appeared to be a world state, while for Waltz great-power war avoidance rested on a carefully managed spread of nuclear weapons. Craig argues that, for theorists who each gained a good deal of intellectual purchase with their critique of utopian and moralist thinking, this represents a glaring inconsistency in their realist political philosophy. While Craig's book is to be commended for shedding light on how three important thinkers dealt with one of the most important issues of international politics, his interpretation of Niebuhr, Morgenthau and Waltz's published writings is disputable. While often presented as an objective, positivist theory of International Relations, there is an underlying normative component of classical realism. Thus to detect a normative aversion to thermonuclear war on the part of realists should not be as damning as Craig makes it appear. To validate his interpretations more forcefully, Craig would have to probe deeper into the intellectual history of these three influential and controversial realist thinkers. Nevertheless, this book is an important contribution to the intellectual history of the field of International Relations.

Brian Schmidt, Carleton University, Canada

International law and organization

The politics of international law. Edited by Christian Reus-Smit. Cambridge: Cam­bridge University Press. 2004. 324pp. Index. £40.00.  0 521 83766 9. Pb.: £17.99.  0 521 54671 0.

The much-anticipated The politics of international law is an impressive volume that makes an important contribution to understanding the role that law plays in international political life. This volume brings together leading experts from the fields of international law and International Relations to explore the relationship between the two in a number of contextual settings. It comprises not only the articulation of an innovative approach to international law and politics based on constructivist precepts but also a series of well-researched case-studies which include issues related to the use of force, environmental protection, migration rights, and international trade and financial arrangements. In so doing, this volume contains something for everyone in International Relations and international law.

The theoretical approach is skilfully articulated in two introductory chapters by Christian Reus-Smit and is elaborated on in many of the case-study chapters, most notably those by Robyn Eckersley, Dino Kritsiotis and Nicholas J. Wheeler. Reus-Smit opens by challenging the prevalent idea that law and politics are separate domains of reasoning and action. Supporting this argument in his chapter on the International Criminal Court, David Wippman expertly demon­strates that the neat separation of legal and political argumentation is actively promoted by states and, Wheeler points out in his chapter on the Kosovo bombing campaign, is often encouraged by legal practitioners as well. In place of this separation, a constructivist account insists that world politics is both ‘rule-governed' and ‘rule-constitutive' (p. 23). In other words, while ‘inter­national law' (both its formal treaties and its customs) is framed by politics, this is not a one-way process as realists and others insist. In turn, international politics is itself shaped by legal procedures, reasoning and forms of argumentation. Thus, Reus-Smit endorses Philip Allott's view that law ‘presupposes a society [sic] whose structures and systems make possible the mutual conditioning of the public mind and the private mind, and the actual conditioning of the legal and the non-legal' (p. 277). This position stands in stark contrast to both realist and liberal views of international law, with the former insisting that the law is epiphenomenal (it rests on power but when confronted with the material interests of the powerful is weak and ineffectual, p. 18) and the latter viewing it in instrumental terms.

While the other eight chapters are ostensibly ‘case-studies' each one also contributes to the elaboration of constructivist views (for there are many) of the relationship between international law and politics. Some chapters, such as Richard Price's discussion of the prohibition of anti­personnel land mines and Amy Gurowitz's discussion of migration politics in Japan, further develop the idea that international law plays a key role in constituting politics and providing frameworks of legitimation at both the domestic and international levels. Taken together, the chapters on the use of armed force by Wheeler and Kritsiotis go a long way towards producing a comprehensive constructivist approach to understanding the role of law: Wheeler by developing the idea of ‘law as process' that constrains actors from conducting themselves in ways that cannot be plausibly justified and Kritsiotis by articulating the idea that some legal rules are more or less ‘determinate' than others. Each of the case-study chapters (on the use of force, the Climate Change Treaty, the anti-personnel land-mines ban, migrant rights in Japan, the International Criminal Court, the Kosovo bombing campaign, international financial institutions and international governance with a focus on trade) combines an interpretation of constructivist approaches to law and politics with detailed empirical surveys. In so doing, they span the range from empiricist conceptions of constructivism (most notably in Sandholtz and Sweet's chapter on governance) through to more critical and language-based conceptions (most notably in the chapters by Eckersley and Wheeler).

This is an important book and it is likely to provoke much debate. No doubt the realists and neo-liberals who come in for (what this reviewer regards as compelling) criticism will reject some of the basic propositions put forward by this volume, but that debate itself will advance understanding of the relationship between law and politics. Moreover, it is very likely that The politics of international law will stimulate more fruitful research in the future. Two issues in particular stand out to this reviewer as potentially fruitful avenues. First, although the volume calls for ‘bridge-building' between international law and International Relations, far more weight is given to the latter's perspective on the former than the other way round. While Reus-Smit, Kritsiotis and Wheeler in particular point towards lawyers' perceptions of politics, there appears a tendency within constructivist (and liberal and realist) approaches to buy into a conception of law which is essentially (legal) positivist: that is, something is considered ‘law' when actors point to it as law, when it is legislated, or when it is recognized as customary. This approach overlooks alternative theories of law such as naturalism, which was predominant until relatively recently. Naturalist-type ideas do raise their heads every now and again (such as in the ‘New Haven school's' use of ‘human dignity' as a criterion for interpreting the law (p. 193) and tacitly in Reus-Smit's argument that communicative ethics may produce decisions that we intuitively find problematic (pp. 288-9)) and the further exploration of the law-politics nexus may be enriched by insights from these different philosophies of law.

Second, several authors suggest that engagement in international legal discourse is constitu­tive. As Eckersley puts it, ‘the principle of equal sovereign rights of member states cannot ultimately be determined by states withdrawing and completely isolating themselves from inter­national politics' (p. 90). Gurowitz adds the caveat that states adopt international norms in order to become legitimate states (p. 148). While this is undoubtedly an important point, two elements need further exploration. On the one hand, isolationism may be a deliberate product of the exercise of sovereign rights. On the other, there is perhaps a need to distinguish between states and governments. A government that refuses to adopt core elements of international law or retreats into isolationism may be deemed illegitimate (one thinks of Burma today, or Albania during the Cold War) but that does not have the effect of rendering the state illegitimate (no one questioned the right of Burma or Albania to exist). A useful avenue of further discussion may therefore be in detailing more precisely the mutually constitutive relationship between law and politics, particularly the way that law constitutes politics.

In sum, this is a superb volume that makes an important contribution to the study of both International Relations and international law. It contains a skilful blend of theoretical innovation and high-quality empiricism and is sure to become standard reading in a range of different set­tings. In no small part because of this book it is likely that we will see a proliferation of university courses on the ‘politics of international law' and the continued flourishing of research and debate on this important issue.

Alex J. Bellamy, University of Queensland, Australia

International justice and the International Criminal Court: between sovereignty and the rule of law. By Bruce Broomhall. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 215pp. Index. £60.00.  0 19 925600 4.

International justice and the International Criminal Court deals first and foremost with the important dichotomy signalled by the book's subtitle-the tension between accountability or the rule of law in the international sphere and the enduring power of state sovereignty. The tensions within and limitations of various approaches to international accountability, whether through the International Criminal Court (ICC), the exercise of universal jurisdiction, or other mechanisms, all flow from this fundamental dichotomy. This is a problem well known to international lawyers and International Relations scholars alike-international law, whether customary or conven­tional, is a construct of sovereign states, yet those states will often be unwilling to support laws and mechanisms that constrain their freedom of action or put their own officials at risk of prosecution. While US objections to the ICC have been the most vocal and notable on this point, most sovereign states have had an interest in constraining the workings of international justice to a greater or lesser degree.

The book articulates four types of activities that have often been included under the rubric of ‘international justice': interstate or transnational criminal law, conventions on the suppression of certain activities (such as a number of terrorism conventions or the Genocide Convention), the conception or creation of ‘international crimes of state' and the ‘core crimes' articulated in the Nuremburg trials. Broomhall chooses to focus on only the last category, the core crimes, which attract individual criminal accountability, which may be addressed in a variety of fora, from domestic courts to the ICC. In so doing, he has rightly chosen to narrow the potentially wide scope of ‘international justice' to a manageable set of activities. However, in excluding the suppression conventions, he has perhaps narrowed the scope too much, and in fact his analysis, much like judicial activities in this arena, of necessity makes repeated reference to a category of tools that he has ruled out of analysis. To that end, their inclusion and analysis would have been of some utility.

That said, the core of the book is primarily devoted to an examination of the impact of the fundamental law-sovereignty tension on the shape of international justice, both in its construction and in its execution or effect. His analysis offers a sharp and important reminder to those who make maximalist claims about the duty to prosecute gross human rights violations of the limits to actually doing so in the current international legal system. He provides a useful account, then, of the ways in which law surrounding international crimes and accountability has expanded and hardened, but also of its very real limits. The sovereignty constraint necessarily means that accountability is often piecemeal, and that where more universal structures are sought, they are often constrained by compromises made in the pursuit of universality.

Broomhall examines a number of accountability mechanisms, but his core case is the ICC. He carefully describes the ways in which the twin goals of making the ICC statute as acceptable to sovereign states as possible and of devising stronger mechanisms for accountability were in conflict in the negotiation of the statute, and the resultant limitations of the compromise document. Such limitations, he argues, are reflected in the treatment of inter alia complementarity, diplo­matic immunity and amnesties. Nonetheless, his account offers some reason for optimism, as notwithstanding some of the shortcomings of the statute itself, many states' implementing legislation has if anything gone further than that statute.

This is a fine and thorough book, offering a useful survey of the core doctrines and activities of international criminal law, as well as offering a helpful reminder of the very real constraints placed upon it by state sovereignty.

Chandra Lekha Sriram, University of St Andrews, UK

Enemy aliens: double standards and constitutional freedoms in the war on terrorism. By David Cole. New York, NY: New Press. 2003. 315pp. Index. Pb: £16.95.  1 56584 800 4.

In Enemy aliens, David Cole presents a compelling case that alerts us to the dangers involved in denying civil rights and liberties in the name of protecting national security-a more than pertinent issue in the post-September 11 era. Cole's case exemplar is the United States itself. With all of the constitutional acumen one has come to expect of Cole, a professor of law at Washington's Georgetown University and renowned practising lawyer, he not only exposes the constitutional abuses to civil rights and liberties presently perpetrated by the Bush regime, but also makes the claim that this phenomenon is nothing new. Although essentially addressing a present and pertinent concern, Cole trudges through the depths of American constitutional history to present a legal and normative argument for the protection of human rights over the privileges of citizenship, albeit one that is strongly supported by historical evidence.

The historical narrative tells of forgotten or never before told stories of individuals and families who have been victims of the abuses of the American legal system in times of crisis. Starting with the 1798 Enemy Alien Act-which espoused that during wartime, it was possible for America to detain anyone from a country with which it was at war-Cole takes the reader through the Palmer Raids of 1920, the rounding up of over 110,000 Japanese Americans during the Second World War, the paranoid hysteria of the McCarthy era, as well as through numerous more recent case examples of which Cole himself has been involved in.

Broadly, Cole uncovers the ‘fuzzy nature of laws and new laws that are open to abuse', revealing a history of secret arrests, searches and detainments of non-US citizens, and how the ‘double standards' applied to these individuals are not initially applied to US citizens. Furthermore Cole argues that although initially applied to non-US citizens, these standards tend, more often than not, to be inevitably applied to US citizens also, writing that, ‘what we do to foreign nationals today often paves the way for what we do to American citizens tomorrow'.

Of all the examples Cole gives, perhaps none is more telling than the now notorious case of Jose Padilla, a native of Brooklyn, New York, detained without charge in 2002. Padilla was treated in the same way as the present-day Guantánamo Bay detainees (at Cole's conservative estimate they numbered over 5,000 in May 2003). Padilla was kept incommunicado, with no access to his lawyer or anyone else for that matter. Like many others he was declared an ‘enemy combatant', and was subjected to a draconian form of detention. When the government was asked what its reasoning was for denying him his right to legal representation, it answered that allowing him to speak to a lawyer would interfere with the ‘trust and dependency' the interrogators sought to foster.

Is this the way America (as well as its increasingly scant supply of allies) wants to act in times of crisis? In these ever-uncertain times, is this the democracy and justice that the present-day Anglo-American alliance so ardently advocates? Whether one agrees with the universalist principles underlying the moral foundations of Cole's argument, this book is not only a must read, it is a wake-up call. Enemy aliens provides a compelling and revealing argument that suc­ceeds in uncovering what lies behind the information that many of us rely upon, and comes highly recommended to students and practitioners of law and politics alike.

Mark Sivarajah, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

The UN Security Council from the Cold War to the 21st century. Edited by David M. Malone. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 2004. 746pp. Index. Pb.: £21.95.  1 58826 240 5.

This immense, well-planned and fascinating book marks David Malone's apotheosis at the International Peace Academy from which he explores many facets of the UN Security Council with a number of distinguished authors including, a few from the Third World.

The introduction discusses the overall pattern of the book. A second essay on Security Council decisions in perspective suggests both that overall conflict is on the decline and that in certain cases, the Council may well apply double standards to old conflicts because of the attitudes of some member states. This is followed by part one, which focuses on the new concerns of Security Council decision-making, with a series of useful essays on humanitarianism, human rights, democratization, terrorism, conflict prevention and armed non-state actors.

Part two, on enforcing Council mandates, covers the use of force (which, it argues, ultimately remains closely connected to law), authorization and Security Council Resolution 678, reforming sanctions, the Iraq Sanctions Committee, the Angola Sanctions Committee, weapons of mass destruction, Iraq (by a French diplomat) and, finally, virtual trusteeship.

Part three covers evolving institutional factors with essays on Council working methods and procedure, permanent and elected Council members, the UN Secretary General, international tribunals and courts, collaboration with regional organizations (the authors note that ‘reliance on regional solutions ... has been spurred by political concerns'). It also discusses groups of friends, special representatives of the Secretary General, pressure for Security Council reform (still no consensus) and working with non-governmental organizations. There is also a chapter entitled ‘The US in the Security Council: a Faustian Bargain?', which concludes that the US presence is not Faustian so far despite the lurch towards unilateralism.

Part four, ‘Major UN Operations on Four Continents', looks first at the Middle East peace process. The material on the mandate era needs some reworking; the first Security Council resolution on Palestine (No. 42, 5 March 1948) actually calls on the permanent members to make recommendations on the implementation of the General Assembly partition resolution (181 II) which many do not regard as null and void, see also General Assembly Resolution 303 IV. The section also includes chapters on Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda (three useful essays), Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East Timor (two essays), Ethiopia and Eritrea.

One omission is that, despite over 40 references in the book, the index does not include a category for the non-aligned whose summits in the post-Cold War era of change encompassed 1989 (Belgrade), 1992 (Jakarta), 1995 (Cartagena), 1998 (Durban) and 2003 (Kuala Lumpur). The former Nigerian representative to the UN in a chapter on Rwanda refers to the inward circle on the Council comprising the non-aligned ‘whose members meet fairly regularly and try, with sporadic success, to harmonize their positions on issues before the Council'. He also states that, on African matters, he began by consulting other African members (all of whom are also non­aligned members) followed by the other non-aligned on the Council, and finally all other interested members. A global outlook at the UN remains an important asset.

Part five is comprised of essays on the Security Council and international law, and the Council in the twenty-first century. The first (written by a US lawyer) suggests that the political Council will remain at the core of the international legal process. The second (by a US ambassador) notes that states (whether failing or not) will need to become flexible, juridical building blocks to deal with the transnational dangers ahead while David Malone concludes ruefully that the Council is fated to muster on under the beacon of the UN charter. The book is well worth reading.

Sally Morphet, University of Kent, UK

Foreign relations

An alliance at risk: the United States and Europe since September 11. By Laurent Cohen-Tanugi. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. 140pp. Index. £15.00.  0 8018 7841 1.

Friendly fire: the near-death of the transatlantic alliance. By Elizabeth Pond.

Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2003. 141pp. $16.95. Index.  0 8157 7153 3.

The US-led war and occupation of Iraq has triggered a major debate about transatlantic relations. Recent opinion polls suggest that the divide is increasing, rather than decreasing. For example, a Pew Research Center poll in March 2004 found that British, French and German favourability ratings of the United States have plummeted over the past two years. They have declined in Britain from 75 per cent in 2002 to 58 per cent in 2004, from 63 per cent to 37 per cent in France, and from 61 per cent to 38 per cent in Germany. But these findings still leave several questions unanswered: how serious are the fault lines? What has been the impact on diplomatic, economic and military relations between the United States and Europe? And what, if anything, can be done to bridge the divide?

Two recent books by long-time transatlantic aficionados attempt to shed light on these questions. The first is by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a Paris-based lawyer and columnist for Le Monde and Les Echos. His book, An alliance at risk, begins with the premise that there is a steadily widening rift between the United States and Europe, and a growing sense of anti-Americanism around the globe. These developments are not soley a result of policies adopted by the current Bush administration, as some argue, but have been festering underneath the surface since at least the end of the Cold War. They are caused by several factors: changing structural conditions triggered by the unipolar structure of the international system and the transformation of the EU into a global actor; divergence on a range of policy issues from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to steel tariffs; and differences in philosophical, ethical and social values. Cohen-Tanugi ultimately believes that US and European policy-makers can bridge the widening divide by taking at least two steps. The most important is for Europe to become a responsible and credible global power by developing a common foreign policy and defence capability. The other is to ‘rediscover' the mutual trust and cooperation that developed after the Second World War so as to advance shared democratic values around the globe, confront terrorism and tackle other common security challenges.

The second book is written by Elizabeth Pond, editor of Internationale Politik Transatlantic Edition and a correspondent for the Washington Quarterly. She offers a somewhat different explanation of the transatlantic divide. Rather than focusing on structural conditions, identity or strategic interests, she examines the impact of ideological and diplomatic factors on transatlantic relations-especially the clash between American neo-conservatives and Europeans. ‘In the beginning', she writes in the book's opening sentence, ‘were Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and their soul mates' (p. 1). She argues that while the potential for a transatlantic split was initially hidden by solidarity with the United States after September 11, 2001, there were ‘warning signals' in the writings and comments of increasingly influential neo-conservatives such as Wolfowitz and Kagan. The 2003 war in Iraq was a good test case. While the neo-conservatives viewed Saddam Hussein as an impending threat to US security, European governments and intelligence agencies did not share this assessment. Perhaps more divisive, she contends, was the unusually high incidence of personal pique involving US and European policy-makers. Ultimately, however, Pond argues that the transatlantic alliance will survive its ‘near-death' experience as long as NATO is able to find a suitable global role.

Both Cohen-Tanugi and Pond make interesting and cogent arguments. But readers should not expect to find analytically rigorous assessments of the transatlantic relationship in either book, since they are more journalistic accounts. They do not examine public opinion polls or compile comparative data on economic or security issues. Nor do they offer primary source insights into the minds of policy-makers à la Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward's recent books on the Bush administration, though Pond's account does rely on some interviews with US and European policy-makers.

Furthermore, there is a logical inconsistency at the core of both books. First, Cohen-Tanugi and Pond both argue that there are deep political, economic, military and cultural differences between the United States and Europe, and that they are widening rather than narrowing. Second, they also contend that European states should continue to aggregate power so that Europe can become a more competent international player. As Cohen-Tanugi writes, European states need to establish a legitimate military force and consolidate European defence industries so that Europe can ‘contribute usefully to the balancing of American power that it legitimately desires' (p. 89). And third, both assume that the transatlantic partnership will survive-and improve-over the coming years. Yet it is hard to square the first two conclusions with the last one. Is it possible to have major differences and an increasingly powerful Europe, and yet retain the close relationship enjoyed during the Cold War? The evidence thus far is not encouraging. Indeed, it seems more likely that a future Europe that has different values and interests from the United States, and is also a global power, will lead to more tension than cooperation.

Seth G. Jones, RAND Corporation and Georgetown University, USA

The Middle East's relations with Asia and Russia. Edited by Hannah Carter and Anou­shiravan Ehteshami. London: Routledge. 2004. 166pp. Index. £60.00.  0 415 33322 9.

The Middle East's relations with Asia and Russia, edited by Hannah Carter and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, is based upon papers presented at a conference held in 2001 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), organized by both the FCO's Middle East and North Africa Research Group and the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham. As such, this volume does an outstanding job of examining the detailed relationships between Asia and the Middle East from the academic as well as the policy perspective. More­over, this rich collection of essays serves a valuable role in addressing an increasingly vital area of regional studies, and will undoubtedly prove most useful to both regional specialists and policy analysts alike.

Carter and Ehteshami should be commended for producing a volume that strikes an important balance between pertinent policy questions and academic rigour. Crucially, the essays contained have been updated and expanded to take into account developments since September 11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism. The analysis ranges from Russian and Chinese relations with the Middle East, issues of political Islam in Central Asia, South Asian economic and military ties, to the under-studied events in Muslim South-East Asia.

Ehteshami, in the first essay, provides a very thorough overview of the issues to be discussed across the breadth of the collected essays, and should be applauded for properly setting the stage for the following chapters. Roland Dannreuther follows with a very engaging chapter on Russia's ties with the Middle East, one which left me wanting more. In the third chapter Michael Dillon takes a look at the Middle East's relations with China, and the myriad issues that these entail. Moving on to Central Asia, two essays address the current role of political Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia. Oliver Roy's chapter draws largely upon his previous work on the subject, yet does much to explain the multitude of often confusing Islamist factions within contemporary Afghan politics. As a complement to Roy's contribution, Shirin Akiner does an excellent job in placing Central Asian Islam within the appropriate context. She successfully dispels several myths, and brings her knowledge and experience to bear by noting the cultural identity aspects of Islam versus the purely political-religious understandings in the region.

On South Asia, Rodney Wilson presents a very useful historical overview of the economic ties, especially with regards to non-oil/energy sectors. Closely following this is Ben Sheppard's contribution on the military and security relations between South Asia and the Middle East. Focusing on regional security, Sheppard presents a detailed overview, including a particularly succinct synopsis of Israeli-Indian military cooperation. His enumeration of India's pre-9/11 anti-Taleban policies and actions is especially noteworthy. His analysis could only perhaps be improved by an increased incorporation of Pakistan's recent WMD proliferation led by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Islamabad's nuclear programme. C. W. Watson's chapter on the interaction between Muslim South-East Asia and the Middle East is an outstanding conclusion to the study. In addressing an area too often neglected and under-studied, Watson places the region in the appropriate context, while simultaneously not overplaying its role, as many analysts have done. He offers a key to understanding South Asia's ties to the Muslim heartland while thankfully not overloading the reader.

Carter and Ehteshami have succeeded in a very difficult task-relating in an intelligible and cohesive manner a multitude of policies and motivations of a diverse collection of regions and nations. The Middle East's relations with Asia and Russia would be a welcome addition to any understanding of this vital portion of the world, and will no doubt serve extremely well academic regional specialists, casual readers and policy-makers alike.

Christopher Boucek, Royal United Services Institute and School of Oriental and African Studies, UK

A dictionary of diplomacy. 2nd edn. By G. R. Berridge and Alan James. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2003. 312pp. £60.00.  0 333 76496 x. Pb.: £19.99.  1 4039 15369.

This dictionary provides descriptions, from single sentences to thumbnail sketches through to mini-essays, of the processes, places and personalities that represent modern diplomacy.

A British publication, the book concentrates on the mores of an Anglo-Saxon diplomatic world, though not to the exclusion of its francophone heritage or of other major players in the diplomacy game. Foreign ministries' sobriquets are explained, although a cross-reference from their country of origin would be helpful.

The authors reflect today's broadening diplomatic catchment area and explain major international organizations and regional groupings as well as the elaboration of ceremonial practices and economic terminology. History and anecdote feature strongly: a seventeenth-century Spanish ambassador Count Diego Gondomar, for instance, is accused of complicity in the demise of Sir Walter Raleigh. Documents and treaties, while alluded to, are not reproduced, with the exception of the pivotal 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is accompanied by a guide to its key articles.

The subject matter can hardly avoid being described as arcane. This volume, however, will demystify the language of diplomatic etiquette to students and casual readers alike.

Malcolm Madden, Library, Royal Institute of International Affairs, UK

Conflict, security and armed forces

Allies: the US, Britain, Europe, and the war in Iraq. By William Shawcross. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. 2004. 272pp. Index. $20.00.  1 58648 216 5.

Allies is political archaeology. It excavates the arguments over the Iraq war layer by layer as they were made. It's a deft encapsulation of the positions backed by each group, at each stage, and displays how the western alliance got itself into total disarray by the time hostilities began on 19 March 2003.

William Shawcross himself takes the American side. (At least he does in the run-up to the war. He's not hesitant about critizing the mess made of running postwar Iraq by a Pentagon too concerned with protecting its preconceived positions.) He is, however, fair-minded and it is entirely possible to read his account and come to a contrary conclusion. It's unlikely to change many minds.

The best bit is his explanation of the neo-cons-who they are and where they came from. Although a major influence on US foreign policy, in Europe they're the least understood group in American politics. Shawcross explains their logic, and lifts them out of the class of cartoon demons to which they are too often consigned. Their power lies in their high-minded ambition.

The book is worst when complaining that European leaders are ungrateful wretches who failed to offer America the loyalty it was due after the end of the Cold War. Leaders of old Europe, who get soundly berated, were following the election returns, and one thing that demo­cracy doesn't do very well is loyalty. Watch America in the coming months for more evidence.

There's some score settling towards the end-Shawcross is clear about who he thought misrepresented the arguments. But Allies is generally good at exploring the moral confusions about dealing with a whole new set of problems which have sprung up and frightened the world witless. Just as Mutually Assured Destruction took some accepting in the Cold War, getting one's head round the idea of pre-emptive war based on uncertain intelligence isn't easy.

I was left with the feeling that finding the right answers is never going to be easy-and those who are the most convinced they have them are those we should treat with the greatest scepticism.

It has always been easy to build a case for deposing Saddam Hussein. His record as oppressor and aggressor practically speaks for itself. So why did America and Britain fail to win over many of their allies? Allies offers some insights but doesn't explore them.

Part of the reason is the inadequate state of international law. Tony Blair and Kofi Annan are trying to start a sensible debate. But as long as the US regards international law as nothing more than a decoration for Mr Bush's decisions it won't make much progress.

And part is the way in which the US holds its decisions to be beyond debate or restraint.

Shawcross notes that the US thought it fine for France to disagree with Washington's policies-but completely unacceptable for it to attempt to implement its own.

At the UN last year I recall how American officials seethed with rage after Hans Blix dared to challenge the intelligence presented by Colin Powell. Even if Mr Blix was right they thought it scandalous that he should say so publicly. That ‘with us or against us' approach meant the US- British case was all but lost even before it got to the UN.

This is a shame because the case for involvement in Iraq now is both different and stronger than it was before the war. And yet the capacity to create international consensus remains crippled.

Brian Hanrahan, BBC News, UK

Politics, democracy and social affairs

Revolutionary and dissident movements of the world. 4th edn. Edited by Bogdan Szajkowski. London: John Harper. 2004. 576pp. Index. £95.00.  0 9543811 2 2.

This fourth edition appears 21 years after the first, and chronicles the activities of extra-legal, often violent groups whose legal analogues are covered in the companion volume, Political parties of the world. The trends and patterns of revolution and dissent are dealt with in the introduction, including the influence September 11 has had on perceptions and definitions of terrorism. The main body of the publication comprises authored entries on the political history and conditions of individual countries. The separate country entries continue, where appropriate, with descrip­tions and analyses of the dissident organizations themselves including detailed accounts of any major confrontations. The index allows the reader to track groups which cross national bound­aries (Al-Qaeda being the current obvious example) as well as organizations such as the Animal Liberation Front which have a discreet presence in a number of countries. Countries with minimal extra-legal activities, such as Panama (military interventions in the political sphere notwithstanding) and Switzerland, are also covered, and elements in the body politic that stray from the norm are noted. This compendium is more than just an alphabetical roll-call of revolutionary organizations: it places them in a geographical and political context and represents a well-researched reference tool for a topic that seems unlikely to dwindle in importance.

Malcolm Madden, Library, Royal Institute of International Affairs, UK

Ethnicity and cultural politics

The search for Arab democracy: discourses and counter-discourses. By Larbi Sadiki.

London: Hurst. 2004. 457pp. Index. £39.50.  1 85065 489 1. Pb.: £17.99.  1 85065 494 8.

The interaction between western-style democracy and the Muslim faith forms the basis of Larbi Sadiki's search for Arab democracy. The author has spent ten years researching this book and from the comments made by the range of distinguished Arab philosophers and politicians he has interviewed it is evident that this is a truly love-hate relationship. He shows how contested both the idea and practice of ‘democracy' are. Sadiki critically takes into account Said's Occidentalism, Huntington's cultural clash theory and much else when considering the relevance of western democracy for Middle Eastern countries. Arab critics call the sincerity of western leaders into question, those who preach democracy to Arab governments, but simultaneously turn a blind eye to less than democratic practices in the Middle East.

While religion is not the reason for an absence of democratic government in the Arab world, it is certainly highly relevant even in countries officially classified as secular. The relevance of secularism and democracy when applied to Arab society is looked at in depth; as Sadiki quotes a Jordanian interviewee, ‘Secularism is a concept rooted in a specific history, the history of Europe and Christianity ... Islam knows no absolute government by man, for man and to man ... here we differ' (p. 369). However, Sadiki's interviewees may criticize the shortcomings of democracy in the West, but they do not dismiss it out of hand. They want a greater say in how people are governed, especially a voice for women.

Sadiki's solution to the dichotomy between Arab reservations and both the history and realities of western democracy is to attempt to arrive at a synthesis of the two. He tries to make democracy more relevant to Muslims by, so to speak, setting it loose from its historical moorings: ‘The most pressing challenge is how to transcend anti-foundationalism, going beyond the foundationalism-anti-foundationalism binary and the hermeneutics underpinning them. This is pertinent to the debate of defoundationalising democracy and how to go about it. The implications, therefore, of foundationalism and anti-foundationalism to democracy must be elaborated' (p. 58). He is encouraged in his efforts by, ‘the hybridity that increasingly resonates through the discourses and counter-discourses of Islam and democracy' (p. vii). There is a constant dialogue going on between the two.

The views of educated Arabs are logically expressed and their criticism of how democracy works in the West is cogently argued. Some see western democracy as a sham because voters are manipulated by political parties. In fact Arab criticism of how democracy works in practice is no different from that in the West. Yet the sticking point seems to be that the Muslim cannot withdraw or even escape from Islam, assuming he might want to. He must remain a good Muslim as well as a democrat.

As has been established, the main impediment to the adoption of western-style democracy seems to be that it places a conflict of interests upon the adherents to Islam. But it seems to this reviewer that the real problem is still not addressed-the appalling state of education in some Middle Eastern countries, including of course the low status of women. This serves as a practical obstacle to a true understanding of western democracy for many, in addition to existing cultural obstacles.

Sadiki provides the reader with an invaluable work of reference for those seeking to understand Arab thought concerning democracy and reservations about accepting the western brand. It is worth noting, however, that owing to an uneven style the book is not always as accessible as it could be. But in the light of the current situation in Iraq, Sadiki's work is ever more valuable. It is worth bearing in mind Winston Churchill's reported quip: ‘democracy is the worst form of government we have, except for all the other ones.'

John A. S. Abecasis-Phillips, KIBI International University, Japan

International and national political economy, economics and development

Transatlantic economic disputes: the EU, the US, and the WTO. Edited by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann and Mark A. Pollack. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003. 626pp. Index. £100.00.  0 19 926172 5. Pb.: £35.00.  0 19 926173 3.

We are currently witnessing a seemingly endless series of ‘trade wars' between the two most important economies and the largest trade and investment partners on earth: the European Union and the United States. The Banana Case, the Beef Hormone Case and the dispute over the application of the Helms-Burton Act represent the most prominent disputes in the WTO era. Since transatlantic relations are based on multi-level governance and autonomous decisions by self-interested private economic actors, national governments, regional and global institu­tions, transatlantic disputes reflect conflicts among the diverse private and public, national and international interests involved. They also illustrate cultural, regulatory and democratic diver­gences intrinsically linked to domestic politics and have been termed ‘system frictions'. Even though such disputes concern only an estimated 1-2 per cent of the total value of transatlantic trade and investment, they could potentially spread to other areas of the transatlantic relationship and could poison not only bilateral EU-US relations but also the future evolution of global institutions like the WTO, the IMF and the UN system. Thus, the better understanding, prevention and settlement of transatlantic economic disputes is of utmost importance for our globalized and interdependent world.

Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann and Mark A. Pollack's impressive book-an excellent addition to the international economic law series of Oxford University Press-is a major contribution to the enhancement of the understanding of the interwoven and complex transatlantic relationship. It is the result of two international interdisciplinary conferences on Dispute prevention and dispute settlement in the transatlantic partnership organized by the European University Institute in Florence, which pursued three objectives: to analyse and to categorize transatlantic economic disputes from legal, economic and political perspectives; to examine the assumptions, relevance and weaknesses of the various legal, political and economic theories on prevention and settle­ment of international economic disputes; to offer policy recommendations for improving dispute prevention and dispute settlement in transatlantic relations. The editors have positioned 14 case-studies of recent transatlantic disputes at the heart of the book (part two). Each is prepared by an expert from one side of the Atlantic and commented upon by an expert from the other side. Owing to limited space, the variety of disputes assessed-detailed and interesting-can only be touched upon in this review. The case-studies cover transatlantic trade in goods, services, investments and intellectual property rights. According to the underlying conflicts of interest and the policy measures concerned, the disputes are classified into four major categories: traditional, discriminatory import restrictions (e.g. EC import restrictions on bananas) and export subsidies

(e.g. US tax treatment of foreign sales cooperations); the increasingly diverse new-style regula-tory disputes, resulting from behind-the-border domestic regulations in response to legitimate public concerns about the environment, consumer protection, food safety and data privacy (e.g. beef hormones, genetically modified foods, ozone depleting chemicals, aircraft engines, air transport regulation, telecommunications, competition policy); high policy disputes over trade sanctions imposed for foreign policy reasons (eg. in response to violations of core labour rights in Myanmar and expropriation of foreign property in Cuba); and intergovernmental disputes over the protection of individual rights (such as protection of personal data, investor rights and intellectual property rights). The case-studies illustrate the complex universe of transatlantic disputes with its enormous variety of contested measures. And they show that in the medium- to long-term future, the new-style regulatory disputes are likely to become the most important barriers in the transatlantic marketplace and impose the greatest strains on the EU-US relationship and the multilateral WTO system.

The rich material brought to light by each individual case-study is further examined in cross-sectoral analytical studies by lawyers, economists and political scientists in part three of the book-in line with the second project objective and in the best tradition of an academic compendium. On the basis of the concrete case-studies and the abstract analyses, the concluding part four brings together policy recommendations written from the diverse perspectives of six leading experts from either side of the Atlantic. The most far-reaching recommendations deal with initiatives for a transatlantic free trade area (TAFTA) and a transatlantic market court with jurisdiction to decide on private complaints of EU and US citizens. This ‘empowerment' of citizens and judges to defend the rule of law would offer, Petersmann argues, the most democratic means of preventing intergovernmental transatlantic disputes.

With its enlightening case-studies and its fruitful and well-tempered policy recommendations for the future development of the transatlantic partnership, Petersmann and Pollack's book is a must for anyone puzzling over the pressing questions connected to today's economic, political and legal developments. It serves to better understand the political and legal preconditions in order to avoid Europe and America-as EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten put it during a speech at Oxford University in February 2004-‘from running out of road'. ‘We have to be better at managing the partnership, a proposition that goes for both sides. We should try not to surprise each other, and should recognize that democratic pressures can bend and twist rhetoric and decisions from Kansas to Cologne'.

Wilm Scharlemann, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University, Greifswald, Germany

Behind the scenes at the WTO: the real world of international trade negotiations. By Fatoumata Jawara and Eileen Kwa. London: Zed. 2003. 329pp. Index. £36.95.  1 84277 310 0. Pb.: £12.99.  1 84277 311 9.

The investigative work conducted by Fatoumata Jawara and Eileen Kwa in this illuminating book shatters the illusion that the one-member, one-vote system of governance within the World Trade Organization (WTO) makes it the most democratic of all intergovernmental insti­tutions with a global mandate. The authors conducted research and semi-structured interviews with 33 Geneva-based missions to the WTO and with ten WTO Secretariat staff members between February and August 2002. Such detective work forms the basis of the book and gives lie to the claim that the current round of WTO negotiations represents a ‘Development Agenda'.

Much research has already been undertaken by Robert Weissman and the Australian academic Peter Drahos into how the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights agreement (TRIPs) was placed within the remit of the WTO by nefarious means. Readers familiar with that work will not be unduly surprised at the strong-arm tactics and bullying employed to secure compliance during the WTO negotiating process that is further elucidated here.

According to the authors, some of the strategies utilized to ensure compliance with the wishes and interests of wealthier WTO members include what they call ‘inducements in the form of a few crumbs to negotiators and governments'. In an explosive chapter entitled ‘The gentle art of persuasion', Jawara and Kwa highlight how several countries, which refuse to bend to the wishes of mightier powers, have been placed on a blacklist of unfriendly states and had their preferential trade agreements suspended. The bullying of non-compliant WTO ambassadors is also highlighted here, as is the dissemination of disinformation and threats used to pressurize delegates into consensus. The classic divide-and-rule scenario, which in the WTO consists of pitting middle-income members against lower-income countries, is also given due attention.

What the authors ultimately reveal is that the WTO, an organization ostensibly committed to the liberalization of trade, is instead being moulded into a latter-day mercantilist haven by a coterie of vested interests. It is curious then that Jawara and Kwa refer to a group of neo­colonialists expounding the virtues of Adam Smith when in fact almost every powerful country in the global trading system practises the antithesis of what the Scottish philosopher preached. Smith's name, however, is regularly, if infuriatingly, taken in vain.

The authors assert that while the process of globalization has the capability to ameliorate the world terms of trade and improve the lot of many developing countries, its manifestation in the WTO is to the detriment of poorer nations. Jawara and Kwa cite several examples to buttress their case. They point out that global markets in agriculture and textiles, i.e. areas where certain developing countries have a comparative advantage, are not liberalized. In the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) a similar scenario applies: liberalization has taken place in sectors where developed countries have a comparative advantage, such as financial services and information technology. Other areas where liberalization would result in benefits accruing to developing countries, such as maritime and construction services, have been forcibly kept outside the WTO. This is, the authors maintain, because international trade in services is dominated by a few large multinational corporations which are represented within the WTO by several powerful members.

Culprits-in-chief according to the authors are the group known as the ‘Quad', which com­prises the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union. Jawara and Kwa maintain that the Quad uses fora which are outside conventional WTO structures, such as ‘mini-ministerials' and the notorious ‘Green room', to promulgate their agendas. The Green room process was created during the Uruguay Round of trade talks (1986-93) and consists of a select group of members meeting unofficially but presenting their findings to other WTO members as a fait accompli.

To their credit, the authors use hard data to illustrate how developing countries are grossly under-represented at the mini-ministerials. While this is one of the book's strengths, one of its faults is that the interviewees quoted are almost always anonymous. Another minor gripe with the interview process is that the questions asked of WTO Secretariat staff are not presented here. Overall, however, Jawara and Kwa have done an outstanding job not only in describing the many problems inherent in the multilateral trading system but also in proffering their own solutions, some of which are highly constructive.

Nobody could be in any doubt at the book's end that the WTO, an organization whose procedures even the EU Commissioner Pascal Lamy referred to as ‘medieval', requires radical remedial work. One might also be filled with despair for the future of the multilateral trading system. However, the emergence at Cancun last September of the G-21 Group which consists of leviathans such as China (which only joined the WTO in November 2001) and India, means that the Quad will in future be unable to force its agenda onto other members with the impunity of the past. Jawara and Kwa have written the essential first chapter in what is sure to be the WTO's fascinating history.

Gerard Downes, University of Limerick, Ireland

In defense of globalization. By Jagdish N. Bhagwati. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004. 308pp. Index. £17.99.  0 19 517025 3.

La mondialisation et ses ennemis. By Daniel Cohen. Paris: Grasset. 2004. 264pp. €18.00.  2 246 66401 2.

Economic globalization may well be one of the most widely analysed phenomena of our times and yet there is no denial that with extended coverage there has not come wide acceptance. Voices have arisen in many quarters calling for a slowdown in the increase of cross-border flows of goods, services, capital and people. At a minimum, such pleas call for making globalization more ‘human' by throwing sand in a mechanism that is perceived to be too fast in its unravelling and unfriendly to poor countries, small firms and uneducated people, especially women. At its extreme, protesters group globalization together with economic liberalization, capitalism and imperialism and call for a different, albeit far from clear, model of economic management and development.

These outstanding books by two of today's most influential economic commentators respond to such broad concerns. Born in India, Jagdish N. Bhagwati of Columbia University is an authority in the economics of international trade, a prolific writer in both academic journals and influential newspapers such as the Financial Times and The Economist, and a former special adviser to the United Nations. Daniel Cohen of the Ecole Normale Supérieur in Paris is one of Europe's most respected economists, a Le Monde columnist and a special adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Centre. For both authors, developing countries suffer from too little, rather than too much, globalization. But this does not mean that the books are identical, much less that the authors coincide in their arguments and implications. While Bhagwati believes that increased interdependence has contributed to decreased economic inequality among countries, Cohen argues that globalization has so far failed to live up to the expectations of people who are now, much more than in the past, aware of what happens in the rest of the world.

In defense of globalization is a magnificent grand tour of all the issues that receive the attention of NGOs. First, however, Bhagwati goes into considerable detail in presenting the global NGO scene and exposing its views. This approach is very welcome, as very often the data, analyses and proposals of even the best reputed among NGOs are rapidly dismissed by the high priests of globalization. By not falling into this trap, Bhagwati adds credibility to his ensuing criticism of various NGO fallacies. In the ten chapters that constitute the core of the book, which are dense but enlivened by the author's witty style, Bhagwati examines the links between globalization and poverty, child labour, the status of women, democracy, cultural diversity, wages and labour standards, the environment, financial stability and migration. With an important exception, namely financial liberalization, the author invariably concludes that globalization has positive effects. Sometimes, and this is possibly the book's only major feebleness, dissenting voices from the research community are not given much credit, when their contribution is not cursorily dismissed. This, in particular, is the case in chapter five on poverty, which necessarily sets the stage for the rest of the analysis. If globalization increases growth and growth reduces poverty, as some economists including some at the World Bank have shown, then nothing that is done to increase globalization will ever be enough. If, however, others, including some at the World Bank, challenge these results, it is not fair to treat them as lunatics! (See p. 68 and footnote 38.) In the same vein, Bhagwati doesn't mention the work of Joseph Stiglitz, nor Dani Rodrik's devastating critique of the empirics of openness and growth. This controversy is instead briefly reviewed in Cohen's book.

The style and the structure of La mondialisation et ses ennemis are different. Here the focus is more on the mechanisms through which globalization works than on reviewing the outcomes it produces. Two related aspects, in particular, retain Cohen's attention, neither of which figure in Bhagwati's analysis. First, the role of geography, that is the impact that a given location has on the policy choices that countries make and on their different development prospects. While the spread of economic activity across the world was supposed to ‘kill distance', the evidence on the contrary is that agglomeration effects continue to play a key role and therefore to constrain the scope for income convergence. Second, Cohen highlights how the lower cost of technology does not make it easier for competitors to enter markets since incumbent firms react by erecting new endogenous entry barriers. The relationship between sinking costs and market structure is hence transposed from the industry to the global level.

Cohen also devotes considerable attention to the intra-OECD economic divide of the 1990s, between the United States, on the one hand, and Europe and Japan, on the other, and to the links between these dynamics and globalization. While acknowledging that Europe has partly failed in keeping the pace of its transatlantic rival, Cohen highlights how the dream of building the continent on the postwar ashes has allowed income levels in laggard countries and regions such as Spain and Ireland to converge. What is even more remarkable, in the context of the discussions on the alleged ‘massification' produced by globalization and policy convergence, is that Europe maintains its identity and preserves diverse cultural characteristics. Bhagwati also devotes an interesting chapter of his book to prove not only that culture is not imperilled by globalization, but also that there are non-economic goals that justify limiting market freedom in cultural goods such as movies and books.

Written in a lively and precise style, with many references to disciplines other than the dismal science, these books manage to add something new to a debate that is often stalled in the defence of ideological a prioris on both the anti- and the pro-globalization camps. While Bhagwati and Cohen share similar analytical frameworks and quite a few references, they still maintain different approaches. Already non-fiction best-sellers in Anglophone and Francophone countries respectively, it will be interesting to observe how well their books are received once they are translated, as it will certainly soon be the case.

Andrea Goldstein, The World Bank Group, USA

History

Britain and Europe since 1945: historiographical perspectives on integration. By Oliver J. Daddow. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2004. 252pp. Index. £47.50.  0 7190 6137 7.

As the title suggests, Oliver Daddow explores British European politics by trying to make sense of it using a historiographical approach. Although Daddow suggests that his book should be almost universally accessible (pp. 14-18), the methodological chapter and the conclusion in particular are highly complex in terms of style, language and content. The book is not likely to attract an audience beyond well-versed academics and advanced research students.

From a historiographical angle, the perception and handling of history is at least as important as the historical content (p. 12). Hence, instead of writing another history of European integra­tion Daddow explains the unfolding of the British relationship towards Europe through an analysis of the schools of historians who have written about it (p. 50).

He begins with the ‘orthodox school' in the foundation period of the European integration process in the 1950s. Daddow sees it very much in the federalist tradition of putting forward the myth of missed opportunities captured in metaphors of European buses or boats leaving without Britain (pp. 60-7). Miriam Camps emerges as the most prominent author here.

The ‘revisionist school' took over at some point in the 1980s (p. 19). It advocated rationality behind British foreign policy choices and the need to balance Europe against the Common­wealth and the special relationship with America (p. 29). In view of this wider angle, the revisionists argued that supranationalism could not be the right arrangement for Britain (pp. 116- 18, 134). Stephen George, John Young and Sean Greenwood figure as the prime representatives of this school.

A ‘post-revisionist school' is seen by Daddow as trying to unite both, insofar as it injects a ‘sense of messiness' and uncertainty about the final motivations and direction of British foreign policy (pp. 20, 172). The inability to decide whether to wreck or to lead Europe, and the doubt whether the government has ever been in control of its European policy (pp. 166, 174-5, 184), support the author's claim and main criticism against unquestioned historical truths (p. 191). Instead, he prefers to think of history as a variety of interpretations of primary sources which are contingent on the social environment and not least the historian. ‘Muddling through' is the most striking metaphor that this school suggests.

Daddow sees himself as coming from a philosophical perspective to judge the ways and means of the historical profession (p. 187). Admittedly, there might be some misapprehension between different disciplines, e.g. while ‘mystification in history' may be regarded as somewhat offensive by historians, it may have illuminating intent, as Daddow suggests, from the philosopher's per­spective (p. 199). However, it is inevitable that this perspective is judgemental: it resembles the business consultants telling the engineer how to build. The foundations of the historical pro-fession-which are the main concern of the philosophical critique (p. 33)-are not that unsafe. Among most historians it is accepted that all texts are contingent on time and circumstance. Therefore, historians do not normally aim for universal truth beyond those limits.

The book is in fact a rather good book review in itself, giving an overview of the most renowned historical works in the field of European studies. It presents the researcher with the opportunity to read concise information about the trend-setters, for which most will never have had time, because of-Daddow is well aware of this-their own teaching or research engage­ments. In terms of methodology, Daddow adds an alternative approach to structuring the analysis of European affairs. This in itself is an achievement; European Studies can use some new insights regarding British behaviour towards the European integration process (p. 32). Reporting the historical facts is, in this respect, definitely much easier than explaining the reasons why things have happened the way they have (p. 112).

Thomas Hörber, University of Cambridge, UK

Democracy and US policy in Latin America during the Truman years. By Steven Schwartzberg. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. 2003. 368pp. Index. £44.50.  0 8130 2664 4.

Steven Schwartzberg utilizes his study of the US stance towards the postwar democratic opening in Latin America during the Truman administration to extrapolate a boldly revisionist interpretation of the fundamental motivations behind US foreign policy over the longue durée; one which flies in the face of much recent scholarship on US-Latin American relations, whether it has pertained to more general attitudes of US condescension and racial superiority (as embodied, for example, in the work of Lars Schoultz and David Schmitz) or to specific instances of overt or covert intervention. Indeed, he calls on the reader, on the basis of his findings, ‘to have a greater measure of confidence in the legitimacy and viability of an American international leadership that genuinely holds itself accountable to the twin principles of democratic solidarity and respect for the national sovereignty of other peoples'. This leadership can make mistakes, but ‘it can also advance the general welfare by the coherence and decency of its endeavor' (p. xii).

US policy towards Latin America during the Truman years, Schwartzberg claims, was dominated by an intra-State Department rivalry between a group of officials, designated ‘Cold War liberals', who were largely responsible for the February 1946 memorandum espousing a policy of formal distance to be adopted towards dictatorships and disreputable governments, and the ‘Cold War conservatives', ascendant within the administration by the early 1950s, who were much more prepared to allow political events in Latin America to take their course in the name of the ‘Good Neighbour' policy's paramount principle of non-intervention, as long as issues of national security were not involved. The rivalry between these liberal and conservative ‘im­pulses', he asserts, ‘is a permanent part of American policy and of the interaction of the United States and other countries' (p. xiii). The transition from liberal to conservative ‘hegemony' in policy-making over the course of the Truman administration was marked less by changing attitudes towards the Cold War per se than by a shift in attitude from one of optimism to pessimism about the prospects for the development of democratic institutions, which could serve as viable bulwarks against the spread of communism.

Schwartzberg makes quite clear his preference for the policies of the Cold War liberals, epitomized by such figures as Spruille Braden, during his brief tenure as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American affairs; ambassador to Brazil, Adolf Berle; and long-time ambassador to Chile, Claude Bowers. He offers a much more sympathetic appraisal of Braden, whose reputation has long been overshadowed by his ostensible failure to prevent the election of Juan Péron in Argentina in February 1946 through the issue of the famous ‘Blue Book', than is normally accorded. Rather ‘Braden's policy did Latin America's democrats and American interests more good than harm' (p. 85). He also credits Berle's ‘intervention' through his Petrópolis speech of 29 September 1945 with ensuring a democratic outcome in Brazil. Schwartzberg also argues that a similar public statement by the US ambassador to Venezuela in November 1948 might have forestalled the military coup which toppled the Gallegos government.

Schwartzberg attributes a greater autonomy to Latin American politics than is customarily allowed and suggests that regional leaders exercised considerable influence on the shaping of US policy. To this end he attempts to show how the Latin American ‘democratic left' arrived at an accommodation with ‘Yankee imperialism' and at an awareness of its essential ‘civility' (‘the virtue of concern for the common good'). The chapters on the postwar democratic opening in Peru and Venezuela are prefaced by a lengthy consideration, reaching back to the 1920s, of the political trajectories of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana caudillo Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and of Acción Democrática leader Rómulo Betancourt, who over the course of their early political careers gradually moved from a strident nationalism towards the political centre. The views of Costa Rican social democrat José Figueres command much less attention. The political aspirations of these Latin American leaders could be looked upon favourably by the Cold War liberals because of their sound anti-communism.

Schwartzberg's book may be faulted on a number of specific counts. First, he overstates perhaps the ascendancy achieved by the Cold War liberals in 1945-6. His discussion of the debate preceding the adoption of the February 1946 policy memorandum fails to bring out fully the contrary arguments put forward by a not inconsiderable number of the US ambassadors to the region who were consulted; these were to form the basis of the conservative critique of ‘Bradenism'. There was also, as Braden acknowledged, intense opposition to the issue of the Blue Book. At Braden's confirmation hearing Senators Connally and Vandenberg put forward arguments about the need for pan-American solidarity regardless of regime complexion that were to be commonplace a few years hence. The vigorous debate between Braden and Am­bassador George Messersmith over the propriety of US arms sales to Argentina following Perón's election is indicative of the strength of pragmatism over idealism even at this early juncture.

Second, the proposed differentiation between liberals and conservatives seems a little artificial. Braden, as the author admits, was no less a fervent anti-communist than the conservatives. As ambassador to Cuba, he was concerned over the support President Fulgencio Batista was receiving from the communists. By 1952 he was praising, of all people, Anastasio Somoza, the archetype of the petty tyrant against whom the 1946 memorandum was directed, for having adopted a consistent anti-communist position.

Third, there is little consideration of the quality of postwar democracy in Latin America; it is raised only belatedly in the brief discussion of Auténtico rule in Cuba. The account of Brazil's transition to democracy fades away in almost celebratory fashion with Berle's departure as ambassador in 1946. As Leslie Bethell has cogently argued, Brazil's political transition was controlled by the forces that had sustained the Estado Novo; its newly established democracy bore the burden of state control of organized labour, restrictions on political participation, and the elimination of the communist left. For Schwartzberg, Chile is the quintessential democracy in Latin America, worthy of the disproportionate US assistance it was to receive during the Truman years. Yet he can obliquely praise Chilean President Gabriel González Videla's break with the communists in October 1947, while failing to mention their subsequent political proscription in April 1948 under the Ley Maldita and the crackdown on organized labour.

Fourth, the range of his ‘case-studies' is rather restricted. US policies towards Somoza and Trujillo, touched on only in passing, were markedly different from those pursued elsewhere. Washington was also unsupportive of the aims of the Caribbean Legion (strongly backed by José Figueres), which was particularly directed against these two despots. Finally, for the purposes of his argument, Schwartzberg engages in much speculation, often of a counterfactual nature, of dubious utility. As in the case of Venezuela in 1948, he argues that a US statement of disapproval and diplomatic non-recognition could have tipped the scales in favour of a democratic outcome following Batista's 1952 coup in Cuba. He also tentatively suggests that, if not for the US intervention in 1954, President Jacobo Arbenz and the Guatemalan communists, in time, would have pushed the country in an anti-democratic direction.

To this reviewer Steven Schwartzberg's work, while not without considerable merit, amounts to a less than convincing case of special pleading, a call in effect to make a leap of faith. The extensive work of many other reputable US scholars, whom he decries for their easy cynicism, suggests, however, the overall weakness of his underlying thesis of the beneficent motivation behind US policies towards Latin America over the course of the last century.

Philip Chrimes

Europe

Toward a European army: a military power in the making? By Trevor C. Salmon and Alistair J. K. Shepherd. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 2003. 239pp. Index. £40.50.  1 58826 236 7.

One of the major issues in western security affairs has in recent years been the shape and political potential of the European Union's defence systems. Some believe that the EU, with the French- British St Malo declaration of 1998 and the subsequent launch of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), is about to achieve superpower status. It may not be the Eurocentric superpower that Johan Galtung dreaded in 1981 but it will be an actor capable of influencing the behaviour of other actors through military means. Others, of course, find this optimism un­warranted and caution that the European construct is too fraught with internal contradictions for this superpower turn to happen any time soon. In this comprehensive overview of the ESDP, Trevor Salmon and Alistair Shepherd support the latter argument: ‘in this generation it [the EU] will not become a superpower' (p. 204).

The conclusion of the book offers no grand overview of a single dominating trend underlying the ESDP: rather, it considers a series of themes that will continue to mark ESDP affairs, such as armaments policy and defence spending, institutional flexibility, transatlantic commitments, and institutional enlargement. The authors note that significant advances have taken place in the area of institution building but also that difficult steps in respect of acquiring modern military means and defining a coherent strategic vision have yet to be taken. In their absence ‘the EU will have created another policy without substance' (p. 214).

The book is organized into eight chapters, with chapters 1 and 8 representing the introduc­tion and conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of defence in the context of European integration. We are told of the fear of German rearmament in the wake of the Second World War, the ill-fated European Defence Community, the search for a ‘European identity' in the 1970s-80s, and then finally the making of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the early 1990s. Chapter 3 argues that the Maastricht Treaty ‘was always an unfinished project with regard to CFSP and its defense component' (p. 55), and then guides the reader through the Amsterdam Treaty, the key role played by Britain and France in re-launching the defence debate in 1998-9 and the institutionalization of this debate notably with the Nice Treaty. The chapter ends with an assessment of ESDP achievements by 2002.

The stage is then set for the authors' thematic analysis in chapters 4-7, covering ESDP institutions; military capabilities; US and NATO policy; and arms and industry. The discussion of ESDP institutions provides a very useful overview of the many achievements that have been made within the EU and between the EU and its partners, concluding with a sobering note of caution on unresolved issues. The discussion of military capabilities does an impressive job to synthesize the national processes of military reform and provide an overall assessment of European-level capabilities. The conclusion is familiar, though: the European nations lack the capabilities for peace-making and combat operations. The discussion of the US and NATO covers familiar ground for observers of transatlantic affairs. The final discussion of arms and industry is informative but ends with the question mark that characterizes the other chapters as well as the title of the book: can the EU resolve its internal contradictions?

The authors are sceptical, as noted, and this then is the argument of the book. The argument is based on a first-rate empirical assessment, and chapters 5 and 7 (military capabilities and arms and industry) are particularly interesting to read. With these many insights into the ESDP mould it is a shame that the authors do not push their analytical argument further. If they are sceptical, it is because something is blocking ESDP integration, and they tell us that this something has to do with sovereignty, budgets and strategic cultures. But could we not get a bit closer to the heart of the matter and identify some type of pattern? Such a pattern should be based on the privileging of one or some of the problems blocking ESDP integration: it could be US policy; it could be industrial interests; it could be a combination of the two; or it could be something else.

The authors would likely be inclined to argue that no such pattern exists and that we must simply unravel the complexity of the ESDP as it presents itself. But the book actually builds on a pattern: chapters 2 and 3 bring us from ‘nothing' to ‘something'-a type of progressive movement so often associated with the history of the EU (the authors do emphasize that progress was painful, but it was progress nonetheless). Next we learn that progress has come to a halt- due to the complexities laid out in chapters 4-7. Why did the authors not apply the themes of chapters 4-7 to the entire history of European security cooperation to catch a glimpse of the engine behind their pattern? As it stands, the progress-but-now-problems pattern may be familiar to some, it will surprise others and it will be contested by still others. It would have furthered the ESDP debate and been simply of great analytical interest if the authors had addressed this issue of patterns head-on.

Sten Rynning, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Inescapable questions: autobiographical notes. By Alija Izetbegovic. Markfield: The Islamic Foundation. 2003. 560pp. Index. £19.95.  0 86037 362 2. Pb.: £13.95.  0 86037 367 3.

The demise of Yugoslavia: a political memoir. By Stipe Mesic. Budapest: Central European University Press. 2004. 422pp. Pb.: £15.95.  963 9241 81 4.

These two contrasting memoirs by leading political figures in the wars of succession in the former Yugoslavia make available in English fresh information about the conflicts that exercised western policy-makers in the first half of the 1990s. The two volumes are different in style and approach. Izetbegovic's book is broader in scope. It goes beyond the war years of 1992-5, when Izetbegovic headed Bosnia and Herzegovina's collective presidency, and also includes his recol­lections of significant moments in his 50-year-long career, including an account of his imprison­ment for his Islamic political and religious views during the communist era. Mesic, on the other hand, restricts his memoirs to a blow-by-blow account of a much shorter period: the six months in 1991 when, as Croatia's representative, he was formally the head of Yugoslavia's collective presidency, while the federation descended into war, first in Slovenia and then in Croatia.

Izetbegovic's memoirs are less episodic or impressionistic than their title might suggest: the war years, in particular, are dealt with in some considerable detail (220 pages). Yet in several respects this book is not an entirely coherent narrative. One reason for this is the author's decision to include in the body of the text lengthy quotations from his earlier speeches, statements and interviews. This may have been due to his age and frail health at the time of writing: Izetbegovic died a few months after the book was published. Nonetheless, the long citations break up the fluency of the text and in many cases they would have fitted in better with other documents that are reproduced in the appendices. They also create the impression that there was little to add to what the author had already said at the time the events were taking place.

Another difficulty with Inescapable questions is the author's tendency to gloss over some of the crucial events of the period with the briefest of references. How Izetbegovic emerged as the head of Bosnia's collective presidency, even though he came second in the popular vote in the elections of November 1990 is dismissed in one sentence. Much of the wheeling and dealing within his Stranka Demokratske Akcije ([Muslim] Party of Democratic Action) remains concealed from the reader. Often the author's account raises more questions than answers. For example, in his description of events before the fall of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, Izetbegovic notes that Naser Oric, the enclave's absent commander, refused to return to his post following his deputy's death in a helicopter accident. How Izetbegovic could allow Srebrenica to be left leaderless is never explained. Yet he expresses his surprise that the enclave's poorly armed and demoralized defenders did not use their anti-tank weapons or, in general, put up a stiffer resistance in the face of the final onslaught.

There are a number of similar inescapable questions relating to Bosnia's wartime history that Izetbegovic carefully avoids. He is more forthcoming on the subject of the various peace plans and negotiations that were designed to put an end to the fighting. But he does not add much of substance to earlier works by Lord Owen, Richard Holbrooke, Carl Bildt and other international mediators.

Perhaps the most valuable part of Izetbegovic's memoirs is the insight-or confirmation- they give into his personality. He emerges as a hesitant, indecisive individual, torn between the prospects of an unjust peace and an unwinnable war, who ‘felt crucified' (p. 290) before he decided to go to the Dayton peace conference in November 1995.

There is also a strong thread of fatalism running through this book. That is not entirely unjustified given the weakness of the (Muslim) Bosniacs' position, hemmed in, as they were, between an expansionist Serbia and Croatia. He repeatedly notes that after the departure of Croatia and Slovenia from the Yugoslav federation, Bosnia's choice was either to become part of a greater Serbia and accept ‘slavery' (p. 123) or face war. More unexpected is his description of Croatia's military action in August 1995 against Croatia's separatist Serbs as a ‘miracle' because it also relieved Serb pressure on the Bosnian government forces. ‘I saw in this a sign from God', writes Izetbegovic (p. 222) about the military offensive that others have attributed to Croatia's carefully prepared Blitzkrieg against the Serb forces.

Mesic's memoirs are less revealing of his personality. Their main purpose is to relate the course of events in the Yugoslav collective presidency-the arguments, bickering and brinkman­ship at the highest level of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)-as the feder­ation was falling apart in 1991. The book was first published in Croatia in 1994, and has since become an essential primary source for more systematic accounts of the SFRY's bloody collapse.

The demise of Yugoslavia is written from a Croatian nationalist perspective: the introduction (or ‘prologue', as it is called), in particular, sounds like a political speech on behalf of the Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union [HDZ]). Mesic subsequently left the HDZ and, as the current president of Croatia, has become one of the most prominent advocates of inter-ethnic reconciliation. It would be interesting to see how he would reformulate his ideas about the break-up of the SFRY with the benefit of hindsight.

Mesic's account reads like something of an instant book. It has many of the advantages that go with that format: the immediacy of the narrative which is often taken verbatim from his personal diaries, the ability to convey the sense of one crisis following another and the portrayal of making decisions on the hoof. Mesic is also good at describing his difficult balancing act between supporting Croatia's independence from the SFRY while presiding over the SFRY's executive presidency and repeatedly pledging to make the functioning of existing institutions as smooth as possible.

The book also has several shortcomings associated with instant books. There are factual errors and unnecessary repetition, while the absence of an index considerably reduces the book's usefulness. Although the English version provides some helpful footnotes, in other respects it compounds the failings of the original because of an apparent lack of proof-reading or checking of the translation. As a result, many students unfamiliar with the style of the original or the political background of the time may find it unclear or misleading in parts. Some of the more irritating mistakes include the repeated references to the (ethnic Croatian) prime minister of the SFRY as ‘Serbian Prime Minister Ante Markovic' (pp. 36, 72) and the walkout from the SFRY parliament of the delegation ‘from Albania' (p. 33) which presumably refers to ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

In spite of these weaknesses, Mesic's memoirs provide a valuable insider's story of the collapse of the SFRY. The amount of detail, the first-hand account of events and the portrayal of the key personalities involved in the political struggles of the time make this an essential contribution to understanding how and why the SFRY disintegrated in 1991.

Gabriel Partos, BBC World Service, UK

The future of Turkish foreign policy. Edited by Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2003. 354pp. Index. £30.95.  0 262 13402 0. Pb.: £15.95.  0 262 63243 8.

Turkey has been well served by American experts interested in its foreign policy. This useful volume is an updated version of 16 quality papers first presented at Harvard in 1998. Much of the value of this book lies in the preoccupation of its Turkish contributors with the dialectic between changes in Turkey and changes in its regional and international milieu.

Sencer Ayata sympathetically explains the conservative ethos of the governing Adelet ve Kalinma (Justice and Development) Party. He attributes its willingness to seek compromise as arising out of the experience of its leaders in dealing with hostile states, whether as mayors within Turkey or in dealings with West Europeans. He is even-handed in pointing out that as recently as 1996 Prime Minister Erdog"

an had an instrumental view of democracy, and yet he can reasonably claim to be more deeply representative of ordinary conservative and nationalist Turks than the secular parties. Kemal Kirisç

ci is equally undogmatic in discussing the variety of Kurdish experiences with the Kemalist state from the earliest days of the Republic. He explains why the Turkish public was hard line against the secessionist Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and yet how since the capture of Öcalan, the party leader, it has been possible for elements of the elite to contemplate American and European pressures to allow Kurds greater cultural self-expression. He presents a balanced assessment of the implications for Turkey of Kurdish political organization in Western Europe and northern Iraq.

Atila Eralp's chapter on the European Union is also preoccupied with the extent of elite disaffection with the European Union after the Luxembourg summit in 1997. He dwells on the difficulties faced by Turkey's democratic reformers in the absence of a clear date for opening accession negotiations. Even Feroz Ahmad's historical chapter is best read for its insight into George Kennan's appreciation that there was no danger of a Communist Party taking power in Turkey. American aid was driven by the Pentagon's desire to build airfields capable of attacking oilfields in the Caucasus and Romania, while the Turkish government was alarmed at a military concept which entailed a fighting withdrawal to the Iskenderun pocket (p. 30).

Ahmad contends that since 1967 Turkey has trod a middle path between the United States and Europe. For Cengiz Çandar this centuries-old western vocation was jeopardized by the Turkish Grand National Assembly's vote in March 2003 preventing the use of Turkish soil for the war on Iraq (p. 48). The strained American relationship took a further blow when the Americans arrested Turkish officers inside Iraq in July 2003. He blames these disasters on anti-western Islamists in alliance with the ‘nationalistic sections of the arch-secularist establishment', who distrusted US intentions in Iraq and therefore broke with the internationalists (p. 58).

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This nationalism is again the theme of Ilter Turan's chapter on water. He traces the dam-building programme to the industrialization ethos of import substitution, describing without justifying the state's refusal of international loans or conventions, which might involve commitments to neighbouring states affected by Turkish actions. One of the editors, Dimitris Keridis, implicitly sums up this common theme in his interesting reflections on the importance of the economy and of civil-military relations in understanding the new political alignment after the election of November 2002.

The American contributions are also of consistently excellent quality. Their common theme is of reassuring Turkey of its important regional role under America's strategic direction, remin­iscent of Henry Kissinger's 1973 ‘Year of Europe'. Turkey is flattered as a ‘pivotal state', with uncritical reference to its geopolitical importance in the vast formless Eurasia. Lenore Martin pays careful and well-informed attention to Turkey's ‘new activism' in the Middle East and to its bilateral relations, including with the Gulf states. Ian Lesser manages to be magisterial on six decades of Turkey-US relations, magnanimous in looking forward to Turkish participation in the American reconstruction of Iraq's economy and open-minded in contemplating Turkey's future economic and military relations with the European Union. Elizabeth Andersen's chapter on the impact of foreign relations on human rights in Turkey is much better on the dissonances in US and European policies than on the domestic impact within Turkey. She does not mention the absence within Turkey of any cooperation between secular and Islamic human rights organizations.

Finally, a quotation from Fiona Hill's chapter on oil and gas pipelines seems to me to encapsulate what is good about this volume. Her detailed account of the political and economic choices in bringing oil and gas out of the Caspian is set off by the section on the threat posed to Turkey by Iran. She tells us that Iran's growing assertiveness threatens Turkey's geopolitical goals because ‘experts have agreed ... [that the Iran route] is the cheapest, most efficient, and most secure route for the transport of Caspian oil to world markets' (p. 232). The contributors' expertise combines empathy with honesty.

Christopher Brewin, Keele University, UK

Russia and the former Soviet republics

Russia in search of itself. By James H. Billington. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Uni­versity Press. 2004. 234pp. £17.00.  0 8018 7976 0.

James Billington, the Librarian of Congress and one of the most erudite and subtle western scholars of Russian culture, has produced a slim but extraordinarily useful survey of the main currents in Russian thought and letters in the post-Soviet era. It is a phase in which, in Billing-ton's words, Russia has become ‘just a nation rather than an empire, and a democracy rather than an autocracy'. But the process has been traumatic and Billington suggests that this ‘uncertainty in a time of drastic change has produced a kind of cultural-psychological nervous breakdown'.

Through prodigious reading, he charts an intriguing course through some dark waters, many finding their source in the 1920s writings of émigrés. He probes some of the newly fashionable themes like ‘Eurasianism', the venerable idea that Russia was a uniquely bi-continental civilization. In a series of snapshots, treating ideas almost as if they were individuals, we get pen-portraits of concepts like the Vadim Tsymbursky thesis that Russia should ‘move its capital east of the Urals and develop a new counter-elite to that of the liberals in Moscow and St Petersburg', and Lev Gumilev's idea that Eurasianism can become a new ‘superethos' beyond race and tribe, blending ‘the virtuous Slavic ploughman with nomadic but daring Turanian (Turkic and Mongol) warriors'.

Billington traces the way such grandiose ideas enter the political arena, as the basis for an alternative Russian foreign policy in which China and Iran become ‘strategic fellow-travelers'. The last Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, took up this superethos idea, and called on Russia to become ‘the principal supporter of the Eurasian block against the hegemonic tenden­cies of the US and the great Atlantic space'. Eurasian Russia thus crafts an alternative to the ‘irresponsible consumer hedonism' and ‘comprador modernism' of the Atlanticists who see Russia's future linked to the ‘neo-pagan' West. This can take curious turns, as in the case of the Orthodox priest Viacheslav Polosin, who advocated in the Duma ‘an Eurasian-Orthodox-Muslim Union' to succeed the Soviet Union. He later converted to Islam and, renamed Ali Viacheslav, became editor of the Muslim Gazette.

Against such heady geopolitical themes, Billington explores the ‘little Russian' alternative of ‘the smaller homelands ... and the idea of everyday life' presented by Eleanora L'vova, ‘a veteran ethnologist from Tomsk'. Then Billington looks at the linguistic distinction between Rodina (motherland) and Otechestvo (fatherland). The émigré writer Georgy Fedotov saw this as embodying the tension between the male (meaning upheaval) and female (meaning suffering and endurance) principles and periods in Russian history. Billington notes that Sergei Glazev's new left-nationalist party did well in the 2003 Duma elections with the name Rodina while Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov failed in the 2000 elections with the fatherland party.

Billington sees an almost spiritual power in the concept of Matyushka-Rus, Mother Russia, citing the way that ‘the older women moved out to scold the crew-cut troops' ordered to suppress Boris Yeltsin's supporters during the 1991 coup. ‘The younger soldiers, lacking written commands from their superiors, were taking orders from their mothers, grandmothers, aunts and the selfless babushkas who had brought them up and kept alive memories of Russia as a motherland ... The fearsome Red Army seemed to dissolve into a band of 19-year-olds being cautioned against misbehavior. The older women of Russia had become for a moment "world historical figures" in a way that the Russian intelligentsia had never expected - and that Western historians have not yet recognized'.

Billington's romanticism about Russia is an endearing feature of this book and brings a fundamental optimism to his survey. He is clearly entranced by Olga Volkogonova and her colleague at Moscow State University, V. V. Serbinenko, who suggest that Russia may today be repeating that flowering of creativity that took place between 1905 and 1914. And he delights in the story of the medieval armies from Tver and Moscow who marched out to fight, got lost in the forest and settled down contentedly to cultivate the land. He also relishes the brisk futurologists of the ‘Club 2015' thinkers who see three likely scenarios for Russia's future. The first is ‘Lost Time', in which Russia remains liveable but increasingly backward. The second is ‘Megaserbia', an aggressive and authoritarian power, a local bully on its own dung heap. The third is ‘Eurorussia', a happy and good-neighbourly prospect of democratic prosperity.

Billington's conclusion is based on his profound conviction that ‘matters of belief and conviction are important determinants of major changes in history, and, particularly in the Russian case, that these matters are often decisive'. He maintains that Russia ‘will not return to the Slavophile, the Tsarist or the Soviet past. The struggle for the future of Russia is not between East and West in the legendary Russian soul but between very different syntheses of Eastern and Western elements in the emerging body politic'. But the final outcome, which remains un­certain, will depend on Russia's ability to combine ‘Western political and economic institutions with an indigenous recovery of the religious and moral dimensions of their own culture'.

Martin Walker, United Press International, USA

Russland und der postsowjetische Raum. Edited by Olga Alexandrova, Roland Götz and Uwe Halbach. Baden-Baden: Nomos. 2003. 521pp. €39.00.  3 7890 8392 5.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, several attempts have been made to create effective international organizations in the post-Soviet space, both on a regional (CIS, Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO]) and a sub-regional level (e.g. Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova Group, Central Asian Union, Union State Russia-Belarus). Despite the high level of economic, military and cultural interdependence among the newly independent states, so far little has been achieved.

This new and timely volume, edited by scholars of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin), is probably the most comprehensive account of international relations in the post-Soviet space in the German language.

The book's 24 contributions are subdivided into four sections under rather broad headings: Is Russian influence in the post-Soviet space expanding or contracting? How do the newly independent states react to Russian policies? Are the new international organizations merely a ‘post-Soviet comedy of integration'? And, finally, in which ways do international actors present a challenge to Russian ambitions in the post-Soviet space?

The first and most extensive part seeks to identify the main actors, their interests and instruments of Russian foreign policy towards its ‘near abroad'. While Roland Götz shows how intra-regional trade has been declining over the past twelve years, which makes a reassertion of Russian influence unlikely, other authors (Westphal, Shurubovich and Ushakova) contend that Russian companies and their capital remain dominant in the post-Soviet space.

In the section covering ‘responses of Russia's neighbours', special attention is devoted to relations with Belarus and Ukraine. Heinz Timmermann and Alexander Ott, two of the best-known German experts on the western CIS-states, analyse the current state of affairs in the Union Russia-Belarus and Ukrainian foreign policy towards Russia, respectively. Both come to rather surprising conclusions: Ukraine, which traditionally distanced itself from Russian-sponsored integration projects and proclaimed a ‘European choice' early on, has drawn closer to its eastern neighbour over the past three years. For Ott, western disillusionment of Ukraine's transition towards democracy and the Gongadze affair left Kuchma little choice but to seek a pragmatic partnership with Russia. On the other hand, despite the ratification in 2000 of a Russian-Belarussian Union State treaty, reunification seems a distant project as Putin and Lukashenko do not agree on the terms of integration. Moreover, the countries' economic systems keep drifting apart, with Putin pushing forward some important structural reforms and Lukashenko unwilling to relinquish central control over the economy.

Possibly the most intriguing part of the book is the third section, which analyses the ever recurring attempts to create some sort of regional integration in the post-Soviet space.

Irina Selivanova (Institute for International Economic and Political Research, Moscow) retraces the convoluted development of integration projects over the twelve years since the creation of the CIS. The author blames the initial failure of attempts to create a customs union on Russia's unenthusiastic policies towards integration. Similarly, ambitious projects in the field of security cooperation failed to materialize due to differing security perceptions and varying willingness among participant countries to invest resources. Yet, while stressing the need to reform the CIS, the author is cautiously optimistic about its future and claims to have spotted some positive signals for a more constructive approach by CIS leaders. However, Putin seems to view the strengthening of bilateral ties as a more effective way to achieve his objectives than ambitious multilateral projects (see Olga Aleksandrova's excellent article on Russian foreign policy). Likewise, the CSTO has yet to show its operational capabilities and its Rapid Reaction Force for Central Asia suffers from the absence of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and from the lukewarm commitment of its other participants.

One weakness of the volume is the fact that some of the articles are less analytical than others, which might partly be due to the fact that five out of the 24 articles had been translated from Russian into German. Moreover, a concluding chapter wrapping up the main arguments of the contributions and giving tentative answers to the questions raised in the introduction would have been helpful and could have given the volume more coherence.

These criticisms notwithstanding, this excellent book deserves credit for providing a measured and careful analysis of the development of the post-Soviet space without simplifying the complex processes by resorting to fashionable neo-imperialist or great game paradigms. Above all, it is a very in-depth contribution to the debate on international relations in the post-Soviet space.

Christoph Saurenbach, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Russian foreign policy and the CIS: theories, debates and actions. By Nicole J. Jackson. London: Routledge. 2003. 224pp. Index.  0 415 30577 2.

Nicole Jackson's book offers a fresh contribution to the analysis of Russian foreign policy between 1991 and 1996. The author's core argument, that certain key ideas and debates in Russia influenced the broad development of its foreign policy, grows from an analysis of the ways in which Russian policies were formulated and pursued with respect to three military conflicts: those in Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan.

The merit of the volume rests on its ability to unpick the influences of these ideas and debates, especially as this was one of the most complex issues in Russia's foreign policy during a very uncertain period. The author carefully identifies three periods of dominant ideas: the ascendancy of Atlanticists or liberal Westernists, August 1991-March 1992; the battle of ideas, March 1992-November 1993; and the emergence of consensus, November 1993-June 1996. The dominant ideas in each of these periods are examined in case-studies.

Pragmatic nationalism became dominant in Russia's foreign policy towards the CIS and particularly in the cases of the conflicts in Moldova and Georgia. In the case of Tajikistan, such debates played a much less significant role and then only between 1992 and late 1995. This is because, as the author rightly acknowledges, there was a consensus on Russia's interests in Tajikistan uniting those both inside and outside the government. Nevertheless, it should be noted that as Russia's political diplomacy gained further popularity and strength in early 1996, its militaristic policy in Tajikistan came under serious criticism by liberals, security experts and the Russian press, and subsequently such debates dominated the political spectrum.

Russia's foreign policy in the CIS during the 1990s, heavily influenced by the interaction of its domestic politics and international relations, represents an example of what Robert Putnam calls ‘double-edged diplomacy'. In her search for a theoretical framework, the author successfully provides theoretical insights into the analysis of the impact of ideas and debates on Russian foreign policy in the CIS. As she states, ‘an integrative approach which stresses the interaction between domestic and international level, and is more directly applicable to this study, is the "two-level games approach"' (p. 21). Epistemic communities (transnational groups of ‘believers' and professionals with recognized expertise, shared values and causal models as well as a common policy project) can influence state interests if they are able to gain access to the top echelon of the decision-making structure. The author admits that epistemic communities play a central role in shaping Russia's foreign policy and explaining its links and interactions with debates and politics towards the CIS (pp. 21-2). This is potentially a very promising line of inquiry, and therefore it is necessary to conduct a theoretically rigorous examination of such interactions. Nevertheless, the materials of the book adduced to demonstrate the process of influence of ideas and debates in Russia's policy and action in the CIS are not worked into a more specific conceptualization of the ‘two-level games' or ‘epistemic communities' in Russia's foreign policy. An examination of ‘epistemic communities', in particular, would have been very useful. The argument here is not whether the root of Russia's nationalism is indigenous or exogenous. Rather, in examining the sequences and effects of such ideas on Russia's foreign policy, there is a need to take a broad view of developments at the international level, which had a synergetic linkage with a number of Russia's domestic debates and policies towards the CIS.

The question, which remains open, is that if transnational epistemic communities played a critical role in the Gorbachev era, to what extent did they influence a wider political spectrum as well as specifically Russia's policies during the Yeltsin years, particularly with regard to its policy towards the CIS? In this context, it seems that transnational waves along with domestic dynamics in Russia and the CIS conflict zones played a role in softening and rationalizing Russia's aggressive policy towards the region from late 1995. Epistemic communities, comprised of Russian liberals and Atlanticists as well as regional security experts, fostered the adoption of political means. Tracing such efforts could have benefited this study. The Russian academic and scholar of foreign and security policy, Aleksi Arbatov, a key member of one such epistemic community, who effectively influenced the views and actions of Russian officials, called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the CIS and the use of political means to support the Russian-speaking population in the CIS. Of course, Primakov's appointment as Russia's foreign minister accelerated Moscow's political negotiations and diplomacy from 1996 onwards.

At the time, a coalition for peace emerged in Russia calling for an end to Moscow's military involvement in the CIS, offering the nationalist groups the opportunity to learn from the unsuccessful use of armed forces to resolve strategic dilemmas in the CIS conflict zones. The first outcome of this coalition in Russia crystallized in 1995 with regard to the Chechen conflict, and then spilled over into the CIS conflicts. The best example of such a division and shift in the nationalist view was that of General Lebed, who joined the coalition for peace in late 1995 and supported negotiation rather than the use of military force in Chechnya. Then, in 1996, liberals and pro-western groups once again achieved dominance in political debates in Russia. This was a critical period that needs to be carefully examined in depth to trace the influence of epistemic communities as well as international organizations in strengthening the Russian liberals. This gradually helped to bring reason to the decision-making process, led to peace agreements aiming at ending the conflicts in Georgia and Moldova in 1996, and subsequently encouraged further peace negotiations in the Tajik conflict, which were eventually finalized in the Tajik peace accord in 1997 under the auspices of the UN.

Jackson's book provides a very good overview of Russia's domestic political debates and actions over the CIS and succeeds in highlighting the dilemmas of decision-making in Russia's foreign and security policy in the region. The book's thoughtful insights deserve careful reading by those interested in understanding the Russian foreign policy of the period in question.

Hessam Vaez, University of Leeds, UK

Middle East and North Africa

Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: power politics in transition. By Faisal bin Salman al-Saud. London: I.B. Tauris. 2003. 181pp. Index. £45.00.  1 86064 881 9.

Anyone in touch with Washington policy-makers in 1968 could be left in no doubt about the frustration, amounting at times to fury, with which the Americans learned of the British intention to liquidate in the Gulf the remainder of what Elizabeth Monroe termed Britain's moment in the Middle East (Chatto & Windus, 1963). The United States, trapped in the Vietnam morass, was strongly indisposed to fill the power vacuum. In this short, accomplished study, Prince Faisal bin Salman of Saudi Arabia throws fresh light on the impact of the British decision on the region itself and on the emergence of Iran as a local claimant to fill Britain's role. The book is elegantly written without a trace of the jargon that too often calls attention to an origin in a Ph.D. dissertation.

The author has had access to the archives of the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia as well as to British documents but is obliged ruefully to reflect that, ‘Declassification rules do not exist for official archives in Iran and other states in the region'. Tiny Ras al-Khaimah was an exception and the author has made good use of memoirs, especially those of the Shah's court minister, Asadollah Alam, the private papers of Sir Denis Wright, the British ambassador to Iran, and extensive interviews with former Iranian, British and American officials.

As often happens once the blanket of colonial power is whipped away, ancient feuds and aspirations from pre-colonial days are revealed to have some life in them still. Iran, sensing in itself fresh surges of potency, asserted that Bahrain, which Britain was trying to cram, along with eight other smaller units, into a federation, was Iran's by historic right. ‘The British Govern­ment', declared the Iranian foreign minister, ‘cannot bequeath to others territories that it has-as history bears witness-severed from Iran by force and trickery'. That the King of Saudi Arabia should receive the ruler of Bahrain as if he were an independent head of state was occasion enough for the Shah of Iran to cancel a visit to Riyadh, where the processional arches had already been erected. However, with some technical help from American oil companies, but with the State Department following a deliberate policy of restraint, Saudi Arabia and Iran managed to complete the negotiation of an offshore boundary line to avoid ugly clashes over underwater exploitation. Faisal bin Salman cites this in support of his thesis that regional players showed themselves perfectly capable of settling disputes without outside intervention.

Still, Iran was rapidly developing a substantial military and naval presence, especially after the election in the United States of Richard Nixon. The object was to demonstrate who, from now on, was to run the Persian Gulf. All the same, the Shah, having discovered that Bahrain's pearls had run out and that its oil was running out, abruptly abandoned his claim under cover of ascertaining the Bahraini people's will through the agency of the UN. The author's dramatic account of how this happened is reminiscent of how the same monarch had acted 15 years earlier when he had personally decided to join the Baghdad Pact against the advice of all his ministers who promptly ducked out of sight. But while the Shah might decide that contemporary standards did not permit him to pocket Bahrain this did not apply to the Hormuz islands of Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb, which had no people, and Abu Musa which had 600. When told of the British ambassador's demurral he protested, ‘He's talking out of his ears. The islands belong to us' (p. 97). He was not greatly concerned about the feelings of Arab states. As his court minister said to Sir Denis Wright, ‘To hell with it. What have the Arabs ever done for us?' (p. 85).

One Arab standing in his path was Shaikh Saqar bin Mohammad al-Qasimi of Ras al-Khaimah who owned the two Tunbs and of whom Faisal bin Salman paints a part bewildered, part affectionate picture. ‘Frail-looking and small in stature, Shaikh Saqar is not a man who can easily settle for a compromise', the author writes. ‘Above all he believed he was a man of destiny who would prevail in the end' (p. 111). He was, however, entirely without resources. To the British who tried to work out a face-saving formula he opposed the belief that ‘protection of the land is an act of dignity which could not be compromised'. The Shah's men moved in on the last day of the British protectorate. Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with Britain as a consequence. Otherwise Baghdad has scarcely a walk-on part in the author's story.

There are two small slips: Goronwy Roberts was not foreign secretary (as in p. 30 of the text) but minister of state (as in p. 140 of the endnotes) and the prime minister, Harold Wilson, did not ‘announce the budget in Parliament' (chancellors do that), but made a ministerial statement on 16 January 1968 on the British withdrawal from east of Suez (p. 21), eating many words on the way.

Keith Kyle

Sub-Saharan Africa

Accounting for horror: post-genocide debates in Rwanda. By Nigel Eltringham.

London: Pluto. 2004. 215pp. Index. Pb.: £15.99.  0 7453 2000 7.

The goal of this interesting book is to expose the Rwandan ‘genocide [as] an absolutist exercise, one that seeks to ‘achieve complete clarity' (p. xiv). To this end, Eltringham illuminates and textures the ‘grammars of truth-essentialist ways of imagining social reality' (p. 4) of, among various others, two broadly drawn groups: Rwandan exiles and Rwandan nationals.

The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter one interrogates the epistemological assumptions of ethnicity as ‘a classificatory construct of social science', arguing quite persuasively that ‘[i]f social science and legal processes require actors to fall within "natural", "self-evident" categories then so do perpetrators of genocide' (p. 12). Chapter two explores the political impli­cations of discourses that place an emphasis on the genocidal events of 1959 rather than 1963. Chapter three meditates on the costs for Rwandans levied by making the Holocaust the ‘paradigmatic genocide' (p. 59). ‘Rwandese are pushed and pulled to draw analyses with the Holocaust'. Pushed to counter claims that would see 1994 as mere chaotic tribal massacre. ‘[P]ulled by the privileged place given to the Holocaust in Western public consciousness' (p. 67). Chapters four and five draw on a wide and sometimes fragmented selection of finer points. In terms of chapter four, it is, perhaps, most meaningfully read for its discussion on how ‘the epitaph "Hutu moderate" disguises great complexity' (p. 91). Chapter six is at its strongest in shedding considerable light on the nuances and complexities of the pre- and post-genocide relationships between the peoples of Rwanda and the Kivus, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Finally chapter six compares against a number of criteria the discourses of exiles and resident Rwandans. Interestingly enough, however, these take a backseat to the author's own unresolved struggle to justify an ‘appeal to history' as an appeal for moral truth. A struggle ensues between the political complexities thrown up by the admission that ‘[e]ven where there is no intention to distort the past for ulterior motives, historiography generates different interpretations' (p. 157), and a confusing (and contradictory) appeal to the ‘chronicle of events' (p. 152) and ‘processual time' (p. 153) as anchors for truth and meaning. Here, Eltringham betrays the central wisdom of the book: ‘All in all, one can argue almost any position ... and invoke a series of famous and not so famous social scientists to "prove" it' (p. 147).

Reading rather like a collection of essays, the chapters are of uneven accessibility and varying emphases, ultimately miring the core insights of the book in ambiguity. The digressions and compelling insights are often powerful, making the blind journey worthwhile-more often than not. At times, however, theoretical inconsistencies and facile recommendations give the im­pression that the author is ultimately unable to synthesize his fascinating material in a meaningful way.

Most problematic are Eltringham's lessons learned and recommendations. For example: ‘Accepting the allegations made by these bodies [transnational advocates] in one context and dismissing (or ignoring) them in another, may generate a perception that the international community does not respond impartially to all allegations of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, a perception that in the long term may "feed collective feelings of victimization and denial of justice, contributing to the cycle of collective reprisals and encouraging a belief in impunity"' (pp. 144-5). This seems trite, to say the least, when applied to a region where more than three million have been slaughtered and millions more raped, displaced and left to die of hunger and disease-under the international community's gaze-over the last ten years.

More odd still is the recommendation that: ‘Ending impunity should not be confused with simply finding people guilty. Rather it entails a consistent and coherent effort to respond to all allegations of human rights abuses in a dogmatic, tenacious and transparent way' (p. 146), a claim Eltringham repeats in his afterword (p. 181). Eltringham's repeated appeal for dogmatism is all the more curious given his critique of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's dogmatic primordialism on pages 28-9-the kind of absolutist exercise he credits with seeding genocide.

J. Zoë Wilson, Centre for Civil Society, South Africa

Politics in South Africa: from Mandela to Mbeki. By Tom Lodge. Oxford: James Currey. 2003. 314pp. Index. Pb.: £14.95.  0 85255 870 8.

Beyond the miracle: inside the new South Africa. By Allister Sparks. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2003. 370pp. Index. $32.50.  0 226 76858 9.

The government of South Africa (SA) complains that it receives negative, unbalanced coverage from the media. How do these well-informed authors assess its record since the transition to black majority rule in 1994? Tom Lodge is Professor of Politics at Witwatersrand University. Allister Sparks edited the liberal Rand Daily Mail under apartheid; the African National Congress (ANC) invited him to help restructure the SA Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

Both authors salute the ANC's commitment to SA's liberal new constitution and indepen­dent Constitutional Court (described by Sparks as ‘the world's most progressive constitution ... and finest judges'). They praise the ANC's skilful defusing of counter-revolutionary threats from the white right and of violence between supporters of the ANC and Buthelezi's Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party. Both authors praise the ANC's disciplined macroeconomic policies, which ensured stability during the recent international financial upheavals, and won for SA an active role in the international negotiations on the new global financial and trade architecture. They record SA's success in integrating its formerly racially divided education and health systems and in extending water, electricity, housing and other services to millions of blacks.

But while Sparks believes the ANC is ‘immeasurably more competent than the old regime', Lodge provides a more critical scrutiny of the implementation problems that dog many of the ambitious new schemes. Lodge also gives weight to charges of ‘creeping authoritarianism', and charts the evolving relationship between the centre and the new local and regional governments, and the increasing centralization of power in the executive, especially the presidency, at the expense of parliament. Sparks recognizes but defends this centralization as ‘shrewd political management of a tough transition' during which President Mbeki must reconcile the extension of democracy with the push for rapid economic growth. Lodge is good on corruption and shows how the struggle over defence contracts contributed to the weakening of the parliamentary portfolio committees and to the ANC's increasing friction with the media. Sparks does not refer to corruption, but he does provide an insider's account of the rapid Africanization of the SABC and the scramble for advancement and riches among the previously excluded black contenders, and he warns of the potential dangers for media freedom of the ANC's ‘hypersensitivity to criticism'.

Among the reasons for SA's negative image abroad are its policies on HIV/AIDS and on Zimbabwe. Sparks, who knows Mbeki well, attributes both these policies to Mbeki's defensive, touchy Africanism. Apparently, Mbeki believes that westerners blame AIDS on African social behaviour, and he regards this as ‘a calumny on African culture and sexual behaviour'. Mbeki also suspects western drug companies of exploiting the AIDS epidemic. With regard to Zimbabwe, Mbeki attributes the West's ‘extraordinary preoccupation' with Mugabe to racist concerns about the fate of a few white farmers, while it ignores humanitarian crises elsewhere in Africa. Mbeki's resentment drives his mission to combat global racism and to make SA a success so that it can, inter alia, refute racial stereotypes of ‘the hopeless continent'.

On economic policy, the ANC's priority is Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) which focuses on the creation of a black middle and upper class. Sparks chides whites for failing to recognize that BEE is politically necessary to ward off Zimbabawe-type instability. But Lodge highlights the contradiction between BEE and the post-apartheid principle of non-racism, as well as BEE's effect in driving abroad whites, coloureds and Indians whose skills SA needs. Both Lodge and Sparks rather uncritically accept the ANC's claims about the extent to which the economy has been ‘transformed'. For example, the significant narrowing of racial differentials in wages, and in state expenditure on education and welfare, did not begin in 1994, but during the early 1970s. Likewise, the liberalization of the agricultural Marketing Boards, and removal of subsidies to white farmers, was not, as Sparks enthuses, ‘introduced overnight' by the ANC; it was begun during the 1980s and almost complete by 1994. There has been more continuity than they recognize in economic policy-and in the underlying economic problems. Both authors also too readily accept the view that SA's continuing problems of poverty and inequality can be solved by measures such as increased expenditure on welfare and public works. But these remedies, while desirable, are an inadequate response to the huge task of reducing SA's unemployment rate of 30-40 per cent. Both the ANC, and what it dismisses as its ‘ultra-leftist' critics in the trade unions, dream of a quick high-tech path for SA, instead of recognizing that, in the medium term, they need to stimulate productive, labour-intensive, even if low-paid work, while building up the skills and investment necessary to compete in the global economy.

Both books are informative and well-written, but somewhat unanalytical. Neither provides much insight into the interaction between race and class that will drive SA's political dynamics, particularly how far the ANC might push an affirmative action policy shaped in the interests of the black elite, nor how long this might be tolerated by the ‘masses', who have gained less from the ending of apartheid but remain quiescent, and whether, if this changes, the ANC will play the race card to deflect attention from the class issue. These uncertainties contribute towards that continuing wariness among observers and investors that puzzles the ANC, despite the significant achievements of post-apartheid South Africa.

Merle Lipton, Africa Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs, UK

Asia and Pacific

Le voile et la bannière: l'avant-garde féministe au Pakistan. By Christèle Dedebant.

Paris: CNRS. 2003. 344pp. Index. Pb.: €29.00.  2 271 06165 2.

One of the many unfortunate consequences of the events of September 11, 2001 has been to narrow our understanding of Pakistan as little more than an outpost of geostrategic importance, in the service of the US-led war against terrorism. To judge by the recent spate of literature, it would seem that there is no escape from yet more scrutiny of Pakistan's benighted history of military rule; its susceptibility to Islamic extremism or the imminent danger posed to world stability by its development of nuclear weapons. Though no one would wish to minimize the significance of any of these factors, least of all for Pakistan, they offer merely a partial image of a hugely complex society, which demands the telling of a fuller story.

This is precisely what this admirable French study sets out to do by focusing attention on the history of Pakistan's women's movement. Its author, Christèle Dedebant, is clear about her remit. The focus is not on the condition of women in Pakistan but on the priorities of a predominantly urban and western-educated group of feminists, whose singular engagement with the state since independence has kept alive the cause of women in Pakistani politics. This, she suggests, has been made possible by their partaking in a set of shared values, espoused by the Indo-Muslim gentry (the sharif classes), which until the late 1970s dominated the social and political establishment in Pakistan. A key tenet of this culture was an implicit understanding that women from sharif families were entitled to a role in public life, provided of course that they subscribed to their quadruple ‘vocation' as good Muslim, good woman, good wife and good mother (in that order).

Drawing on a substantial corpus of historical scholarship, the author shows how this collective culture, forged by the Indo-Muslim reform movements of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, has left a lasting imprint on Pakistan's increasingly well-organized feminist leadership. Nowhere was this more in evidence than in its response to General Zia's Islamization programme in the 1980s. Admittedly this was in part a rearguard action on the part of sharif Pakistani women, who were outraged and inconvenienced by the restrictions on the enjoyment of privileges accruing from access to elite education, class and social connections. At the same time, it is clear that the clout of this elite band of sharif feminists also accounts in large measure for the resilience of the women's movement. In recent years a younger generation of Pakistani feminists, of solid sharif pedigree, have become sensitized to new varieties of socialist ideology and a regional discourse that has encouraged rapprochement with India. These feminists, Dedebant suggests, now stand poised to engage with politics in ways that could dramatically recast the role of Muslim women in South Asia from guardians of an all too ‘essentialized' Islamic community to guarantors of peace.

Sadly this rosy prospect, however compelling, underestimates the social and political changes that have recently transformed the dynamics of power in Pakistan. Like many post-colonial states, Pakistan has undergone a process of ‘indigenization', involving the political ascendancy of non-westernized (if not non-sharif) social forces with a claim to economic and intellectual resources. More significant still is the emergence of an unregulated social order quite dismissive of public virtue. Given this, it is far from certain that the mere ‘re-imagining' of the feminist enterprise in Pakistan will be enough to ensure the survival of sharif culture, and even less the larger involvement of the women's movement in national politics.

Farzana Shaikh, University of Cambridge, UK

China's techno-warriors: national security and strategic competition from the nuclear to the information age. By Evan A. Feigenbaum. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2003. 368pp. Index. £38.95.  0 8047 4601 x.

This book is a welcome addition to the strategic studies and political economy literature on the People's Republic of China (PRC). The author argues that China has a military approach to economic development comprising two components, a developmental doctrine called ‘techno­nationalism', and an organizational style, based on networks, non-hierarchical management and competition. Techno-nationalism is defined as ‘the notion that technology is fundamental to both national security and economic prosperity, that a nation's development policy must have explicit strategic underpinnings, and that technology must be indigenized at all costs and diffused system wide' (p. 14).

Two key questions are investigated. The first asks why the Chinese military came to play such a dominant role in China's economic development. The second asks why the military's techno-nationalist approach, developed during the period when China faced severe threats (1950-69), has remained dominant even though China has entered, arguably, its most benign strategic environment in more than 160 years. The author argues that the answer to these questions lies in the fact that since the founding of the PRC, its top leadership has had an acute sense of its relatively backward technological base, and sees advanced technology as a way to rectify that deficit. Evidence is cited to demonstrate that both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were sensitive to China's relative weakness, and this sensitivity was magnified by their perception that China belongs in the ranks of the great powers.

Working within this context, the leaders of China's strategic weapons programmes were able to persuade first Mao (pp. 29-31) and then Deng (p. 142), about the efficacy of a techno-nationalist approach. At critical turning points, the author shows how strategic elites pitched their arguments for political and financial backing for high-technology projects by appealing to the Chinese leadership's instinctive desire to advance up the international hierarchy. This happened in mid-1961 when Marshal Nie Rongzhen sought Mao's support at Beidahe (pp. 29- 31); it was repeated in March 1986 when strategic weapons elites approached Deng for approval of the 863 plan (pp. 141-2); and occurred again in the spring of 1992 when backing was required for an expansion of the 863 programme (p. 189).

Looking to the future, the fate of Chinese techno-nationalism is uncertain. In the penulti­mate chapter Feigenbaum observes that as the reform era has evolved, for three reasons Chinese techno-nationalism has, in his words, ‘foundered' (p. 191). First, state-led technology develop­ment has fallen short in terms of spurring innovation in the Chinese economy. Second, the goal of indigenization of technology has run up against the empirical reality of China's continuing dependence on foreign technology. Third, notwithstanding the strategic planners' ambition of constructing a competitive market for high technology via the breaking up of monopolies and encouragement of new entrants, politics rather than the logic of technocratic rationality has prevailed.

In this reviewer's opinion, three points merit comment. First, this book could have been further strengthened if the author had placed China's techno-nationalism in a comparative perspective. A section, or better still, a chapter that sought to do this would have made this work directly relevant to a larger spectrum of theorists in the field of International Relations and comparative politics. China's attempt to leverage technology in a bid to catch up with its perceived strategic competitors would appear to be another case of a late developer seeking to bolster state power in the competitive world of power politics. Thus, Feigenbaum's account of Chinese techno-nationalism could easily be contrasted and compared with that of the United States, Germany and Japan during the nineteenth- and the first half of the twentieth-century. How is China's experience similar or different from these states? Has the accelerated diffusion of technology in the era of the computer allowed China to catch up at a faster rate than previous late-developer states? Relatedly, and from a public policy perspective, what are the implications of the author's discussion of Chinese techno-nationalism for the debate since the mid-1990s on China's rising power position in international politics?

This brings us to a second point. What in fact are the likely prospects for Chinese techno-nationalism? As a concept, techno-nationalism is arguably more appropriate in describing the PRC's first half-century or so (1949-90s) than its future. The author himself expresses concerns about the future of Chinese techno-nationalism. He observes that techno-nationalism, as exemplified in the 863 model, faces significant obstacles as a developmental strategy (pp. 220-5). These obstacles might be overcome by a concerted commitment from the apex of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet, as the CCP leadership introduces wide-ranging economic reforms and integrates China ever more into the international system, it is increasingly unclear whether techno-nationalism will suit the country's requirements as a comprehensive develop­mental strategy.

A third and final point concerns the intricacies of social science methodology. Despite the author's political science training, the book comes across more as a work of history than as a work of social science. If the intention was the latter, then the author's causal theory could have been made explicit and the variables operationalized in a way that makes the argument falsifiable. These points aside, China's techno-warriors is an important work that is recommended for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China's grand strategy in the second half of the twentieth-century and beyond.

Nicholas Khoo, Columbia University, USA

Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader. By Michael Breen. Chichester: John Wiley. 2004. 200pp. Index. £16.99.  0 470 82131 0.

North Korea: another country. By Bruce Cumings. New York, NY: New Press. 2003. 241pp. £13.95. 1 56584 873 x.

The news media present North Korea as one of the weirdest countries on earth: its people starving as East Asia prospers, its military locked in a Cold War time-warp, its major exports weapons of mass destruction, and its leader a pudgy movie freak and party animal who wears elevator shoes and sports a bizarre pompadour. But there may be much more to it than media-driven images of this modern hermit kingdom suggest. Michael Breen and Bruce Cumings, two long-time Korea observers, have tried to partially lift the veil covering the last thoroughly Stalinist state.

Breen seeks to explain North Korea by focusing on its ‘Dear Leader', Kim Jong-Il, and his quasi-religious personality cult. In a chatty, catty survey of the leader's life, Breen illustrates three major themes, i.e. the North Korean nation is built on lies, its socioeconomic system depends on pervasive fear, and Kim Junior is not the evil man seen in the West but an ‘active-positive' leader with a slightly bent artistic ken. The first two themes are not new, but Breen provides much enjoyable anecdotal and second-hand information to support them. Breen's telling of the stories of Choi Eun-Hee and Shin Sang-Ok, the South Korean film couple whom Kim kidnapped to help build up his movie industry and the harrowing summary of the lives of innocents caught up in the North's gulag are highlights.

The third theme, built on Breen's notion of Kim as a psychologically sympathetic figure, is a bit hard to swallow. Some of the strongest chapters show Kim's development as a ‘wounded' and somewhat spoilt young man who, at a tender age, lost both his mother and brother, and then had to fight his half-brother and uncle for the succession to his father, the ‘Great Leader' Kim Il-Sung. Later, Kim built an odd, but perhaps occasionally tender, extended family with the off­spring of his lovers and their relatives. Even so, such front porch psychoanalysis does not explain the persistence of a monstrous regime. The problem is more systemic, and had the succession gone to one of Kim's competitive relatives, things probably would not have turned out much differently. Also, this is a game anyone can play. Whole bookshelves are dedicated to the political psychology of Hitler and Stalin, to pick the most obvious examples, but are we really any closer than in the 1930s to understanding these demons? The field of political psychology has been struggling with such questions for over 60 years, and perhaps Breen ought to familiarize himself with it before his next book.

The difficulty throughout the book is Breen's alternately cynical and serious tone. This gets in the way of his limited efforts to analyse North Korea's predicament. Does he mean to merely mock Kim and his regime, or is he trying to state something more profound? Breen's over­reliance on personal observations occasionally borders on tastelessness such as in his discussion of Kim Il-Sung's health problems. A similar, but less grating, tone infuses Cumings's book. More an extended essay, its central theme is that the wilful refusal of the US to consider North Korea on its own terms (thus the title) has made relations with the West extremely difficult. Perhaps that point needs to be made, at least as a counter to the goose-stepping film clips and references to wacky Kim Junior on nearly every CNN piece about the country, but Cumings distracts from it with continual ideological commentary. He brings out various pet arguments from previous work: that the Korean War was actually a civil war, that the US backed a gang of thugs in the South of the 1940s, that American saturation bombing during the war bordered on war crimes, that racism informs much American coverage of the Koreas, and that life in the North was pretty good until recently (in fact, better than in the South until the late 1970s). He argues that the northern gulag isn't as bad as commonly reported, and even compares the Korean War to the recent Iraq War. Such posturing mars an otherwise interesting discussion of the North's nuclear programmes, which suggests that the same political processes drove both the early 1990s and recent crises. The book would have been much stronger as a straightforward account of life and politics in the last Stalinist outpost.

Despite his leftist slant, Cumings presents compelling personal sketches of both elder and younger Kims, and an examination of the upbringing of Kim Jong-Il's son Kim Jong-Nam and his cousin, Li Nam-Ok. He also provides a good overview of shifts in North Korean society since the 1970s. His fascinating critique of other North Korea scholars, such as Helen-Louise Hunter and Nicholas Eberstadt, could start useful dialogue on how to study and analyse the North. Nonetheless, as with Breen, the reader is left wanting. Perhaps the two could get together and produce a more complete work next time.

Joel R. Campbell, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan

Latin America and Caribbean

Latin American and Caribbean foreign policy. Edited by Frank O. Mora and Jeanne

A. K. Hey.Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2003. 419pp. Index. $75.00.  0 7425 1600

8. Pb.: $29.95.  0 7425 1601 6.

This is an extremely ambitious volume, which aims to provide a survey of foreign policy issues in over 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It seeks to analyse the position of the region in the post-Cold War world, and to examine whether the idea continues to hold of dependence on the United States.

In their introduction, Frank O. Mora and Jeanne A. K. Hey outline the premises of the book, which takes a three-tiered approach grounded in international relations research, focusing on individual idiosyncratic leaders, the state and the international system. Following this relatively brief first chapter, there are 17 case-study chapters which cover all of the major and an impressive number of minor countries of the region. The volume is divided into three parts, ‘Middle America and the Caribbean Basin', the ‘Andean Region and Brazil' and the ‘Southern Cone'. Each chapter follows a relatively uniform structure, beginning with a historical overview of foreign policy issues, which inevitably tends to concentrate on relations between individual presidential administrations and their US counterparts. An analytical section follows this, in which the three-tiered conceptual model is used, and in which issues such as the role of the military, the drugs trade and relations with other regions of the world are developed.

The volume has the structure and tone of a textbook, with discussion questions at the end of each chapter, an extensive and useful glossary at the end, and a section of suggested readings for each country case-study, along with a comprehensive bibliography. As a textbook it will undoubtedly be an invaluable resource to students of a number of disciplines, including history, political science, International Relations and Latin American studies. It is easy to read, and accessible in approach and style, while maintaining a degree of analytical rigour that is impressive for such a wide-ranging work. The fact that such a broad range of material is included in a single volume will also make it an indispensable source of reference.

While it is clearly important that a book such as this one should avoid being excessively long, a number of possible additional chapters could have been added at the end of the book to tie together the strands of the discussion. Firstly, it is rather surprising that there is no concluding chapter that draws together the key theoretical and empirical issues raised across the case-study discussions. The editors do provide ‘introductory concluding remarks' in the introduction, in which they emphasize the difficulty of generalizing about the foreign policies of such a large and diverse range of countries. However, one is left with a feeling that there is a need for a chapter at the end of the book to tie the strands of the discussion together.

Indeed, a number of the book's chapters raise a number of salient themes, which could have been developed through a conceptual section, which could have served as a broader conclusion. In particular, there was scope for discussion, from a regional perspective, on relations with the United States, Asia, the Soviet Union/Russia, the EU, and possibly inter-regional relations. An examination of the relationship between Latin America and Asia would be particularly salient given the increasing importance of China both as a trading partner for the major economies of the region, and a competitor in the export market.

A volume such as this will inevitably become out of date relatively quickly, and there are a number of issues that are currently timely, which are either discussed in passing or overlooked. In particular, there would be scope for greater discussion of the relationship between the government of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro, and the impact of this relationship on US policy towards Latin America, and radical politicians in the region. Indeed, further examination of the coca growers as a political pressure group in Bolivia, and their implication in terms of relations with the United States, while less salient when the book was being written than it is now, would have been welcome.

Nonetheless, these points of detail should not detract from the importance and usefulness of this volume both as a textbook for students of modern Latin American history and politics, and a potentially invaluable ‘one-stop' source of reference on foreign policy issues in the region.

Neil Pyper, Oxford Analytica, UK

On global order: power, values and the constitution of international society. By Andrew Hurrell. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 354pp. Index. £50.00. isbn 0 19 923310 6.

In this very ambitious book, Andrew Hurrell aims to update Hedley Bull's The anarchical society for a new century. In his recent foreword to the second edition of Bull's book (Palgrave, 2002), Hurrell describes Bull's work in terms that set the agenda for On global order. For Hurrell, Bull provides both ‘a powerful vantage point from which to analyse and assess the possibilities of order in world politics' and ‘a fundamental teaching text' because of its ‘capacity to unsettle established and comfortable positions' (p. vii). He also suggests it is attention not to history so much as to the history of political thought that defines Bull's version of the English school (p. xiii). Following this agenda, On global order provides a wide-ranging overview of contemporary world order, which will make a superb (if challenging) teaching text. At the same time, it is a serious academic research monograph, arguing for a rethinking of the relationship between normative reasoning (particularly contemporary political theory) and political practice in international relations.

Hurrell argues that the ‘Grotian tradition' Bull claims to be a part of potentially covers a very broad spectrum of views. In practice, Bull's position shares much with classical realism: the centrality of the balance of power, war as a permanent part of the international system and the inevitably limited nature of international law under anarchy. The main distinction is that Bull's vision was always more collective and social, seeing war and the balance of power as intersubjectively shaped institutions, rather than as ‘natural' givens. Hurrell adroitly brings out the ways in which this vision rests not simply on an acceptance of flawed reality, but also on an active normative preference for state independence, providing space for a variety of forms of state and society.

Hurrell argues that although Bull's pluralism continues to hold an important place in the theory and practice of international relations, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed greater institutionalization and rule-making, which have altered understandings of sovereignty. While these developments are contested, and the ‘liberal solidarist' project stands in need of significant revision, a retreat to Bull's narrow pluralism is no longer possible. In prudential terms, the growing complexity of international relationships and the interrelationship between different issue areas mean that the old pluralist framework simply cannot manage international relations in a way that separates the internal pursuit of the good life from external questions of security and survival. Security is no longer independent of growing natural resource constraints or global inequality (for example) which, in turn, are shaped by the whole range of international economic regulation.

Concerns for global justice and for the legitimation of international political power structures, then, cannot be bracketed from questions about global order but are central to them. We are therefore compelled to negotiate questions of international justice and coexistence if we are to create sustainable institutions with the political bite to implement rules and policy. Negotiate is a key word here. Although Hurrell's discussion largely draws on a sophisticated collection of Anglo-Saxon ethical and political philosophy (including writing well outside the normal international relations canon), he concludes with a call for a pragmatic, morally accessible global discourse about how to shape global

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Book reviews

coexistence that owes a good deal to the Habermas of Between facts and norms. However, in keeping with his tendency to unsettle familiar positions, Hurrell also criticizes Habermas for being too evasive about the ways in which unequal power positions undermine the prospects for effective deliberation, in the absence of what is likely to be long-term political struggle for material and deliberative equality.

Sandwiched between the introductory section on approaches to global order and his normative conclusion are two further sections, one of which reviews particular international issue areas (with chapters on nationalism, human rights/democracy, war and violence, economic globalization and inequality and the environment) and one which considers regionalism or empire as alternative structures of global order. These empirical chapters, too, are interesting, well written and worth reading in their own right. However, the connections between them and the more theoretical parts of the book are not drawn out as clearly as they could have been. That can, at times, leave the book feeling more like a very sophisticated and interesting ‘teaching text' than a fully worked-out ‘vantage point' for understanding international relations (if such a thing can exist in the contemporary world).

In a sense, Hurrell's problems are created by his laudable refusal to separate normative reasoning from an empirical understanding of political practice, but that is also the great strength of the book. Hurrell is at his strongest when dealing with theoretical questions, and the conclusion to the book is as good a short discussion of global justice as you will find anywhere, but his theoretical sophistication is built on a long-standing engagement with the empirical realities of international relations. It is that holistic outlook that enables him to provide an account that ‘unsettles established and comfortable positions within the IR discipline'. However, the attempt to maintain nuanced and sophisticated positions on such diverse questions inevitably hampers attempts to create a core, coherent argument running through the book. The challenge of trying to include a cutting-edge discussion of global justice and a sophisticated account of the empirical politics of most key issue areas in international relations has created a book that is not fully satisfying as a research monograph. Nonetheless, On global order is the best single introduction to contemporary academic international relations currently available, while also seriously challenging established thinking across a broad swathe of the international relations discipline.

Ben Thirkell-White, University of St Andrews, UK

Between war and politics: international relations and the thought of Hannah Arendt. By Patricia Owens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 215pp. Index. £25.00. isbn 0 19 929936 2.

Political theorists, even great ones, do not necessarily have interesting things to say about international relations. Lesser minds, whose focus has been more concentratedly international, have often made the more valuable contribution. The notion that political theorists must also to a significant degree be international theorists is a product of the assumption that International Relations (IR) is a branch of Political Science and/or Political Theory. But it is not. Politics is but one branch of international life, albeit generally its most important.

There can be no doubt that Hannah Arendt was a great political essayist. Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), based on a series of essays for The New Yorker, is a classic of the genre. Whether she should be considered a great political theorist and ‘one of the most important and original thinkers of the twentieth century' (p. 2), however, may be doubted. As this volume demonstrates, she had interesting things to say about the meaning of politics, the nature of political power, the connections between imperialism and totalitarianism, the meaning of freedom, and the difficulties, philosophical as much as practical, in using violence to advance it. The originality, however, seems to reside more in the form than the content. It is the power of Arendt's pen more than the sustained originality of her mind that truly impresses. Her contentions of the 1950s and 1960s on the nature of political power and the need to separate it conceptually from violence do not seem to add anything to what Morgenthau had already laid down in the 1940s. Indeed, the common ground between these two fascinating German-Jewish émigrés is so striking (see, for example, pp. 2, 5, 14-15, 23, 25, 120, 123) that it is surprising that this volume did not explore them more fully. Similarly, one struggles to find anything substantial that

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Arendt added to thinking about nineteenth-century imperialism and its connections with twentieth-century total war over and above what had already been said by inter alia Hobson, Brailsford and Luxemburg. Indeed, her understanding of the initial (economic) impetus for late nineteenth-century colonial expansion and the (multifaceted) reasons for its continuation could have come straight from the pages of Leonard Woolf (and it suffers from the same conceptual and empirical defects-as revealed in the subsequent historical scholarship of Robinson, Fieldhouse, Etherington and Cain). Further, one suspects that many of Arendt's reflections on imperialism were based on generalizations from the German colonial experience, especially in South-West Africa-hardly a microcosm of that vast and heterogeneous phenomenon we conveniently label ‘nineteenth-century empire'.

Yet Arendt's description of Eichmann's deeds as ‘the banality of evil' was a masterstroke-at once stripping away the romanticism of the Nazi connection (more accurately pseudo connection) with de Gobineau, Nietzsche and Spengler, and conveying an altogether more depressing Weberian image of everyday bureaucratically designed and implemented acts of mass cruelty. In reaction to the fixation with death in western political philosophy, Arendt coined the memorable notion of ‘natality'-the idea that ‘men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin' (p. 43). The capacity to begin again, of imaginative reinvention, was the most characteristic feature of human beings, Arendt asserted, and the bedrock of political action. Arendt was a staunch defender of political pluralism, a notion which went to the very heart of her understanding of politics. Yet Arendt was also a realist whose outlook was often bleak (see, for example, p. 54). She rejected violence as an anti-political act, yet recognized, paradoxically, the role of violence in generating new patterns of social relations. Part of her realism involved recognition, contra Morgenthau and the ‘classical' realists, of the perennial human fascination with war. This was owing to the fact that war ‘compresses the greatest opposites into the smallest place and the shortest time' (p. 149).

While she was not a systematic thinker, these and other telling phrases and insights have ensured that Arendt has always had her admirers. In line with the growing interest in the nexus between Continental political thought, especially that of Weber, Schmitt and Aron, and international relations, her fan base has recently spread to IR. A systematic study of what Arendt has to offer is therefore timely, and this well-researched and fluently composed volume fills an important gap in the IR and political theory literatures. The book is not, however, an intellectual history. There is no general overview or biographical introduction-this the author has valuably provided elsewhere (in Lang and Williams, eds, Hannah Arendt in international relations, Palgrave, 2005). One aim of the book is to demonstrate that Arendt's political theory was ‘fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance' (p. 3). So it is perhaps wrong to see Arendt as a closet IR theorist. She had little to say, for example, on sovereignty, diplomacy, international organization, alliances, the balance of power and national self-determination. Her value to IR scholars resides, as Owens implicitly accepts, in her reflections on war. Indeed, the main aim of the book is to demonstrate that Arendt offers ‘the beginnings of a sophisticated and original political theory of war' (p. 5). In what follows Owens applies Arendt's ideas to such areas as the relationship of imperialism to war, the role of law in war, human rights crusading, neo-conservatism and the Iraq War, and the idea of creating a ‘global public'-here skilfully using Arendt against the strange bedfellows of neo-conservatism and Habermas. While offering an antidote to the modern tendency to conceive war instrumentally and abstracted from its social context, one wonders whether the result is sufficiently substantial to justify the term ‘political theory of war'. But the task that Owens set herself was always going to be difficult given that Arendt's lively thoughts on the subject are also, as she acknowledges, ‘irregular', ‘dispersed' and ‘disparate' (pp. 3-4).

Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

William E. Connolly: democracy, pluralism and political theory. Edited by Samuel Chambers and Terrell Carver. London: Routledge. 2008. Index. 335pp. £21.99. isbn 0 415 43123.

William Connolly is one of the most innovative thinkers working in political theory today. Connolly continues to trespass across the boundaries of what constitutes ‘normal' political theory, political

Book reviews

science and international relations. He challenges the standards by which political life is conducted in his community, in this case the United States. Even more importantly, however, he provides resources to those outside that community to think differently about their notions of the political.

As a result, the choice by Samuel Chambers and Terrell Carver to launch their book series on Innovators in political theory with Connolly's work is an excellent one. In this volume can be found chapters from a number of Connolly's books, along with a few other pieces. Chambers and Carver structure the book around three themes: the theory of pluralism; agonistic democracy; and the terms of political theory. In their introduction, the editors also make the case for the innovative nature of Connolly's work and offer some mild critical reflections on his work, although also demonstrating their broadly sympathetic approach to his oeuvre.

As this book demonstrates, by reprinting what appears to be an unpublished essay on pluralism, Connolly began his career engaging some of the central ideas of American political theory. The terms of political discourse (1993), a chapter from which is included in this volume, drew upon linguistic philosophy to challenge some of the standard categories of American political science by demonstrating that the choice of terms is not a neutral exercise but reflects pre-existing assumptions about political life. This challenge to standard modes of thinking reflected a turn to non-standard sources for thinking about political life, something he continued with his turn to Continental political thought, particularly Foucault, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Identity/difference represents the high point of that turn, two chapters from which appear in this volume. This work pushed further his conceptions of democracy by engaging Foucault and Nietzsche in a more sustained way, leading American political theorists in some exciting new directions. His engagements with pluralism in different guises constitute his later works, although it would be unfair to limit his writing in this way, as Connolly's notions of pluralism are not simply the political or even sociological ones, but deeper ones of ontology and even theology.

Indeed, it is his notion of what it means to have respect for, tolerate and live with those of other views and faiths that differentiates Connolly from so many other critical political theorists. But he is not a Lockean liberal, who will tolerate religion only up to a point. Connolly challenges those who profess a secular position to acknowledge that their notions of tolerance and pluralism include a kind of ‘faith' that they refuse to admit. While this is a standard reply from religious believers to those who are not, Connolly critically engages anyone who begins from a point of certainty to critically reflect upon their own commitments and refuse easy labels and categories-reflected in the title of one of his books, Why I am not a secularist (1999).

Readers of this journal might be surprised to find a book such as this being reviewed. Connolly has spent his career in the US, and the disciplinary structures of American political science in which he writes keep political theory away from the dominant political scientists. As the selections from this volume demonstrate, Connolly draws upon debates, both political and more broadly cultural, that take place in the American milieu. One might assume that such a theorist would have little to contribute to scholars of international relations working within the UK.

To make such an assumption would be a mistake. As suggested above, Connolly provides resources for thinking about and with those who focus on the role of religious life and belief in politics. In the current international order, Connolly provides a radically different way of understanding how Islamic political actors should be understood. He has also engaged International Relations (IR) theory, particularly in the early stages of the post-positivist moves in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His work critically assessed the dangers of territorially based democracy, some of which appears in this book.

In light of this relevance for issues at the global level, I might have included some other sections in this volume. Perhaps the first would be ‘rethinking faith and politics' which would include material from all his books, but certainly his work on what Connolly calls the ‘Augustinian Imperative'-the assumptions about political life that arise from what Connolly believes is an Augustinian-derived set of assumptions about the interior life and the public realm. The second would be ‘knowledge and the political' which would include some of his material from Neuropolitics (2002), a fascinating book that combines neuroscience and political theory in what I read to be (although Connolly may not have intended as such) a direct challenge to behaviourist assumptions about the materialist bases of political

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life, assumptions that structure the neo-realist and neo-liberal conceptions of international order. The third would be ‘territoriality and political life' which would include his wide range of works on IR theory and political theory, particularly his attempts to think about the role of boundaries in global political life. These alternatives, however, should not be read as critiques of the categories picked by Chambers and Carver, but should be seen as a demonstration of the fecundity of Connolly's thought.

Finally, let me suggest a couple of format changes for the series editors (who are also the editors of this book). The bulk of the material is drawn from Connolly's published books. While these are excellent selections, it would be better to have incorporated articles from scholarly journals that he has written, things that are not as easily accessible to everyone. Following from this, it would have been nice to have a new article by Connolly engaging their selections. While there is an interview with Connolly, I would prefer to see how he responds to the way in which the editors structure his work.

I would strongly encourage those who do not know Connolly's work to buy this book. Even more, for Europeans who think every American wants to convert or buy the world, an even better buy would be his forthcoming title, Capitalism and Christianity, American style (2008). With works like these, Connolly continues to be a truly innovative political theorist, one who speaks to both an American and a global audience.

Anthony F. Lang, University of St Andrews, UK

The realist tradition and contemporary international relations. Edited by W. David Clinton.

Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. 2007. 260pp. Index. Pb.: $40.00. isbn 0 8071 3241 8.

The enduring relevancy of the realist tradition for understanding the daily practice of international relations remains a puzzle for those who mistakenly believe that realism's ascendancy in the academy was tied solely to the particular circumstances of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The notion that the insights of realism were limited to the peculiarities of the Cold War was what helped give rise to the false expectation that the post-Cold War period would usher in a completely new era of international politics that did not correspond to the principles of realism. One of the main purposes of David Clinton's edited book is to demonstrate that the core concepts and insights of realism are in no way limited to, or bound by, the Cold War. A second and closely related purpose is to make the case that realist theory continues to offer valuable lessons for understanding the timeless features of international politics that persist in the twenty-first century.

By focusing on the writings of Thucydides, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hume and Burke, as well as the early work of Carr, Morgenthau and Niebuhr, which collectively span 25 centuries, it quickly becomes self-evident that the core concepts and central concerns of realists were articulated well before the start of the Cold War. The interpretative essays devoted to each of these thinkers do an excellent job of elucidating the basic elements of what is generally considered to be the realist tradition. Given the increasing number of distinctive realist positions that have recently been put forth, it is important to point out that classical realism is the overall focus of the book. Consequently, the authors devote a good deal of attention to discussing a common set of themes including human nature, the role of morality and ethics in politics, the balance of power, the causes of war and peace, and the role and responsibility of statesmen in protecting the interests of the political community.

Yet, while the focus of the book is on classical realism, the essays reveal a fair amount of diversity among the individual thinkers on a range of different topics. In recognition of the indeterminacy of ‘realism' or the ‘realist tradition', each of the authors was asked to consider how his or her particular thinker can be considered a realist. This is an extremely interesting question and unfortunately not all of the contributors provide an answer. In the very insightful conclusion, however, Clinton deduces that based on the interpretations provided by the contributors, there appear to be two fundamental concerns of classical realists that roughly correspond to two strands of the realist tradition. The first is a concern with ascertaining human nature and examining the implications this has for politics. Classical realism is often associated with a tragic view of man and the essays on Thucydides,

Book reviews

Augustine, Niebuhr and Morgenthau all demonstrate that what can be achieved in politics is greatly constrained by the inherent flaws in human nature. The second concern is that given the nature of man, how can political leaders achieve the best political outcome for their own political community? Prudence is held by realists to be the highest political virtue and the essays on Carr, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hume, Burke and Niebuhr all reveal how prudent decision-making is highly dependent on a realistic assessment of the limits of the human condition.

With respect to the question of the relevance of the realist tradition, the overall message of the book is that realism continues to help us understand that contemporary international politics is not all that different from when Thucydides and the other classical realists were writing. This is because the same central dilemmas continue to confront political actors who all possess a similar set of human characteristics. Thus realists counsel that it is best that we accept the world as it really is rather than how we might want it to be and that we recognize the inherent flaws and limitations of all human beings. It is only by recognizing the tragic condition of human beings and that prudence is the best means for coping with it that we may avoid the highly seductive, yet terribly destructive, urge to transcend the principles of realism and usher in an era devoid of conflict. Given the political dynamics and rhetoric that have followed the end of the Cold War, this is a message worth repeating and one that makes this book extremely relevant to understanding contemporary international relations.

Brian Schmidt, Carleton University, Canada

Nations, states and violence. By David D. Laitin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 162pp. Index. £14.99. isbn 0 19 922823 2.

To constructivist accounts of the nation, Laitin adds a rational choice perspective to argue that nations are not only imagined but the product of interdependent choices influenced by signals received from other individuals. His analysis concentrates on the past, present and future relationship between the state and the nation in order to question both its naturalness and the assumed affinity between the search for the nation and ethnic violence. Laitin's analysis has important policy and normative recommendations to accommodate cultural heterogeneity within and across states. His rejection of policies tending to coerced assimilation and ethnic cleansing is welcome at a moment when ethnic diversity is equated with violence in support of xenophobic policies.

Regarding the past, Laitin identifies four different ways in which national and ethnic groups have been led to resort to violence: when the nation has a state of its own but seeks to redeem territory occupied by fellow nationals living in a neighbouring state (irredentism); when the representatives of an internal nation smaller than the state seek to have a state of their own (secession); when an indigenous population react to the danger of loss of historic homeland (sons-of-the-soil-movements); and when militias of one ethnic group attack civilians and/or militias of another ethnic group (communal violence). In analysing the present, he uses empirical data and the results of his previous research to conclude that ethnic fragmentation is not an important consideration in explaining the onset of civil war; this holds true for Africa, a continent seen as prone to ethnic violence, and for India, characterized by its religiously heterogeneous cities. The weak state is identified as the main cause of contemporary violence, as the state is ‘unable to provide the basic services to its population, unable to police its peripheries, and unable to distinguish law abiders from lawbreakers' (p. 21). The solution to this problem is a ‘strong state capable of effective counterinsurgency' (p. 136).

In Laitin's view the main problem with ethnic heterogeneity is lack of solidarity, undermining the public sphere and hindering economic growth. He correctly contends that the solution is not ethnic homogeneity but multiculturalism. He proposes the promotion of cultural zones within states to foster growth and reduce poverty; he defines them as ‘homogeneous islands with cosmopolitan centers' (p. 137). These cultural zones would be promoted through political participation using liberal democratic mechanisms where ‘citizens will have a right to mobilize support for a language community or language policies that it considers a collective good' (p. 115).

Although Laitin centres the analysis on the post-colonial states and their cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, he does not incorporate the history of colonialism. As a result he ignores the weight

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that the colonial past has on present and future choices; on the normative side, the analysis overlooks liberalism's justification for the use of despotism and violence for dealing with difference. His solutions are centred on liberal managerial policies that provide continuity with past exclusions, not directed to their transformation.

As it has been broadly documented, colonial violence takes different forms and varies historically. Of special interest for the present analysis is the colonial partition of the world and the distribution of the population into a hierarchy of places and roles which allowed domination based on racial and cultural difference. This partition was central to a liberal form of rule which promoted freedom for those with the capacity for self-government and authoritarian types of government, including force, for those perceived with less capacity, generally on the basis of racial, gendered and historicist categories. There is an element of continuity with the past in Laitin's partition of the world between strong and weak states and his call for indirect rule over the latter either through international aid or ‘neotrusteeship' under the United Nations or NATO.

Equally limited is Laitin's call for a managerial strategy centred on a liberal notion of multiculturalism to transform present conditions of inequality. One of the consequences of the colonial partition of the world was the lack of an appropriate place and hence of voice for certain groups of the population. Liberal multiculturalism's call for a process of rational negotiation of interest takes place among already recognized partners. For those historically excluded, the political struggle is to be recognized as legitimate partners, for which purpose the excluded question liberal principles of partition such as individualism, lack of capacity for self-government, and hierarchical ontological differences.

Cristina Rojas, Carleton University, Canada

Human rights and ethics

Killing civilians: method, madness and morality in war. By Hugo Slim. London: Hurst. 2007. 319pp. Index. £20.00. isbn 1 85065 881 8.

This valuable book concludes with a strong argument for our responsibility to protect civilians even in the messy conflicts that constitute our age's version of war. But most of the book is devoted to understanding the reasons for, and causes of, the mayhem regularly visited upon the unarmed. In part by providing examples from all sides in many wars, Slim convincingly shows that civilian slaughter is not the special province of any particular nation, religion or continent but is the work of ordinary people-people like you and me-who have crossed a line in a manner that is comprehensible even if not excusable. Thus the intentional starvation of Portuguese peasants through the scorched earth tactic in the Peninsular War against the French by the Duke of Wellington (as he was to become) and Churchill's infamous ‘suspensionist paradox', arguing that we ‘are bound in duty to abrogate for a space some of the conventions of the very laws we seek to consolidate and reaffirm', find their respective places in the catalogue along with murderous American conduct in Vietnam in the 1960s, murderous Japanese conduct in China in the 1930s, genocide by the Nazi state and the Hutu state, and suicide bombers in today's Middle East. Slim meticulously surveys the varieties of ideologies and motivations that lead to the intentional killing (and rape and wounding) of civilians, insisting that the perpetrators are, for the most part, not monsters but typical human beings in atypical situations. While it is clear beyond dispute that no group can claim to have a clean record, the appalling universality of calculated anti-civilian behaviour makes one sometimes doubt whether much can be done to limit it. Without sensationalism, Slim shows humanity at its worst.

And he argues further that it is not only false but counterproductive simply to insist that civilians are all ‘innocent' in any meaningful sense. In fact, one of the book's contributions is to face- indeed, to emphasize-‘civilian ambiguity': the economic, social, political and even military respects in which civilians are complicit in the war in which they find themselves. The argument for the protection of civilians is not that they have clean hands, but that even among people with dirty hands, some are dirtier than others. One can still distinguish armed fighters with blood on their hands from supportive civilians who are far from neutral or indifferent but are not armed. Slim's fundamental

Book reviews

goal is to establish a limit to war, which requires drawing a line somewhere. He admits, in effect, that precisely where the line is drawn is somewhat arbitrary. It is not a line between clean and dirty. It is between this dirty and that dirty. But it is still an intelligible and recognizable line, marked by carrying arms or not. Enforcing the line permits limiting the slaughter.

In a powerful 20 pages on ‘Reasons for protecting civilians' Slim maintains that while international law can guide us, moral reasoning provides us with grounds. All human life is precious but vulnerable, it has sanctity and fragility. War wreaks havoc on human lives. But if we are willing to tolerate the ambiguity of civilians-to recognize that while they may hate us, they are not directly harming us-we can maintain a firewall that protects some precious human life on both sides. ‘It is hard being human. Because it is hard, we should not kill each other easily' (p. 262).

Slim has drawn on his considerable experience in the field, illustrating points with tales told by beer-swigging, reality-denying murderers now resting in the shade of a tree, but he has enriched it with research from a wide variety of sources. Without blinking at the grim reality he manages to offer hope and practical steps towards enhanced protection from violence for the most vulnerable.

Henry Shue, University of Oxford, UK

Purify and destroy: the political uses of massacre and genocide. By Jaques Semelin. London: Hurst. 2007. 443pp. Index. £25.00. isbn 1 85065 817 x.

In this outstanding contribution to the field of genocide studies, Jaques Semelin produces a truly transdisciplinary work of ambitious theoretical and empirical scope. Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on the genocides in Nazi Germany, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, Semelin conducts a lucid comparative analysis of the dynamics of group violence, aiming to emphasize not only their fundamental differences, but most significantly the overlapping processes of social crisis, ideological radicalization, dehumanization of constructed ‘enemy' groups, and intensification of strategies of targeted violence against them.

The result is an impressive achievement, drawing together insights and methods from political science, historical sociology and social psychology to make sense of the seemingly irrational descent into extreme mass violence. While emphasizing their distinctive origins and trajectories, he establishes a theoretical framework that reveals a common structural dynamic to his historical cases.

He begins by underlining the critical role of a prior context of entrenched social, political and/ or economic crises in generating deep-seated anxieties throughout an entire society. Such anxieties are not imaginary, but are rooted in very real conditions that undermine the social fabric (p. 14). Such crises mean that conventional points of reference begin to crumble, both for political leaders increasingly challenged by circumstances beyond their control, and a public afflicted by an incurable sense of impotence. In response to these reality-driven anxieties begins a process of ideological radicalization, an attempt to impose a new kind of order and influence on what is otherwise beyond control, constructing new group identities based on the stigmatization of differences (p. 49).

This process is neither automatic nor haphazard, but largely driven by specific political actors, who may already be rooted in particular ideological traditions, and who become increasingly radicalized in response to intensifying social crisis, which they exploit (consciously or otherwise) to secure self-consolidation. Anxieties are deflected by projecting the purported origins of social crisis onto a newly constructed ‘other', whose destruction thus provides the means of a society's salvation. Through this process, violence against a specially defined group becomes legitimate as a rational strategy to secure social stability (p. 91).

But how such processes of ideological radicalization culminate in differential trajectories of mass murder depends on the distinctive structures of their respective socio-political contexts. Drawing on a wide-range of relevant secondary literature, Semelin expertly identifies these distinctions. In Nazi Germany, Hitler and his bureaucrats relied increasingly on industrial technologies to enable the purging of the German body-politic of enemy groups, particularly Jews, in order to purify their lebensraum (living space). Germany's recognition since 1941 of the inevitability of impending defeat in its colonial war against the Soviet Union, combined with Hitler's ideological conceptualization of

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

the Jews as an imaginary extension of Germany's external enemies (the ‘fifth column'), culminated in the resort to increasingly efficient industrial techniques of mass murder to finally ‘resolve' the ‘Jewish question' (p. 227).

Just as the decision to exterminate the Jews wholesale thus emerged cumulatively, so did processes of extreme violence in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, albeit in quite different ways. In both cases, local political leaders actively encouraged violence against newly identified enemies through imminent economic incentives, the resolution of long-standing civil grievances, massive peer pressure backed by threat of death for sympathizing with the enemy, among other diverse means. Some of Semelin's most compelling analyses integrate psychological studies (such as the famous Milgram and Zimbardo experiments) with case-studies of genocide to uncover how ordinary people with no history of inclination towards murderous violence can be systematically absorbed into a vortex of extremism from which there is no easy escape (pp. 258-67).

Where Semelin's work falls short is in his theoretical conclusions. He argues correctly that there has been an over-emphasis on legalistic conceptual approaches that privilege the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, at the expense of Raphael Lemkin's original broader historical sociological definition. The emphasis on legalism means that genocide as a category of social scientific analysis is under-theorized (p. 310). Semelin's insightful solution is to retain respect for genocide as a legal category while simultaneously developing it as an independent sociological concept concerned with the dynamics of group violence. Yet in practice Semelin completely ignores Lemkin's own substantial unpublished historical sociological writings on genocide as explored in preliminary fashion in the Journal of Genocide Research (7: 4, 2005), fundamentally undermining his attempt to provide a definitional solution.

Despite the weakness of these overall theoretical findings, the significance of this book should not be understated. Semelin has indisputably contributed to a more precise understanding of the concrete dynamics of genocidal processes common to exceedingly different historical cases, furthering our knowledge of what makes genocide not only possible, but actual, and thus bringing us closer to the elusive possibility of its prevention.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, University of Sussex, Brighton

Human rights and the WTO: the case of patents and access to medicines. By Holger Hester-meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 369pp. Index. £60.00. isbn 0 199 215 201.

This book-a prize-winning legal study-is not only readable but also insightful and thought-provoking in its treatment of the conflict between patent law and access to medicine. This highly controversial political issue gained the world's attention during the discussion about the affordability of AIDS medication in Third World countries. Recent examples of the issue are the drug Tamiflu, the World Health Organization's recommendation for treatment of bird flu, and Bayer's antibiotic Cipro, the only medication approved in the United States for treating Anthrax. The demand for the drug skyrocketed when citizens prepared against biological attacks after 9/11.

These examples show that the availability of medical treatment does not imply its accessibility. Patents on pharmaceuticals-the public debate claims-raise prices, thereby reducing the accessibility of the drugs. Hestermeyer's study treats the conflict between patent law obligations under the Agreement of Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and access to medicine, a conflict that lies, at its core, between WTO law and human rights law.

Access. Is access to medicine a human right? Hestermeyer approaches this topic by portraying the evolution of international human rights law and its different sources. The study demonstrates that today, access to medicine is guaranteed by several sources of international law. However, the scope of this right varies: one instrument protects access to essential medicine, another guarantees access to life-saving medicine, and general international law protects access to life-saving medicine in pandemics. Regarding the content of this right, Hestermeyer shows that a vital part is the economic accessibility, thus the affordability, of pharmaceuticals. It is mainly states that are under an obligation to respect, protect and provide such accessibility by either ensuring a comprehensive health care system or by guaranteeing an adequate price level.

Book reviews

Conflict. The conflict, particularly for Third World countries, is clear: the TRIPS Agreement obliges WTO member states to grant patents on pharmaceuticals, but doing so would violate their human rights obligations. Two bodies of law are in conflict here: patent protection and the right to health. Fundamental to the further study is the author's highly readable presentation of international patent law and its rationale: patent law is an instrumental legal order that is meant to provide the necessary incentives for further research and development. However, throughout history countries have tried to tailor patent laws to their development agenda, often deciding not to grant patents for pharmaceuticals. This has changed radically with the establishment of the WTO and its TRIPS Agreement, setting standards and obligations for national patent laws and the patentability of pharmaceutical products and processes.

Balance. How to find a balance between the exclusive rights of innovators and public demand for access to their innovations? Hestermeyer analyses the interference of the two legal regimes, covering such issues as conflict and hierarchy in international law. In order to tackle the complex topic of overlapping regimes, he introduces the concept of factual hierarchy: the factual hierarchy of international regimes favours the WTO system with its enforcement mechanism and with its utilitarian goal of enhancing free trade for the well-being of mankind. Human rights law is fundamentally different from world trade law: it is moral and it is an end in itself. While the claim of superiority of human rights law has a strong emotional appeal, state behaviour is largely dominated by WTO law. WTO law shapes global society.

The book would have been enriched by a discussion of the legitimacy of the TRIPS Agreement, especially since the content of the Agreement has been heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical lobby (see Jeremy Rifkin, The biotech century, 1999).

The last part of the study investigates ways to make human rights count within the WTO system. Since the WTO system is growing more and more into the role of managing the interplay between the collective and the individual, the international and the domestic, shaping the legal architecture for the interconnected global societies, Hestermeyer argues that it is up to judges applying world trade law-namely the members of the WTO Appellate Body-to courageously hold member states to their legal obligations under human rights law.

Wilm O. Scharlemann

International law and organization

The Oxford handbook on the United Nations. Edited by Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. Index. 810pp. £27.50. isbn 0 19 92751 7.

Whatever one thinks of its performance, the UN has undoubtedly made an indelible mark on world politics. In this outstanding handbook, 49 contributors reflect upon the UN's first 60 plus years, a period in which the organization's membership has grown from the original 51 to the current 192. Given the vast range of the subject matter no single volume could hope to catalogue the UN's activities, let alone provide a detailed analysis of them. Consequently, Weiss and Daws define their task as being ‘to contextualize the world organization's role in helping to realize international achievements that, by the standards of previous centuries, have been unprecedented' (p. vi). They also note at the outset that ‘this is a handbook on and not of the United Nations', written by a group of ‘critical multilateralists' (p. vii).

The handbook opens with an introductory essay written by the editors. Here they emphasize that the period since 1945 has been marked by both continuity and change. In terms of continuity, they observe that the UN has modified but not transformed international society. Moreover, state sovereignty remains central to the conduct of international relations. On the other hand, they also discuss four key changes. First, they highlight the prevalence of new threats such as environmental degradation, HIV/AIDS and civil wars. Second, they explore the increasing role of non-state actors both within and outside the world organization. A third important change has involved the reformulation of state sovereignty, especially with regard to what is now commonly labelled the ‘responsibility to

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

protect' principle. As the editors put it, ‘the four characteristics of a sovereign: territory, authority, population, and independence-spelled out in the 1934 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States-have been complemented by another, a modicum of respect for human rights'

(p. 8). Finally, they observe that the UN era has witnessed the emergence of a single ‘hyper-power'. Depending on the political currents dominating Washington, this has presented the UN with both opportunities and challenges. In recent years, however, there seem to have been more of the latter. This leads the editors to liken debates at the UN to the Roman Senate's attempts to control the emperor. Weiss and Daws also draw attention to three important analytical problems that readers should keep in mind as they journey through the rest of the handbook: how to define the nature of change; how to determine the nature of success and failure; and how to situate the UN's activities in the ups and downs of world politics.

The following 39 chapters are divided into seven parts. These discuss theoretical frameworks for understanding the UN; the seven principal organs; the organization's relationships with other actors (specifically regional arrangements, the Bretton Woods institutions, civil society, the private sector and the media); how the UN has dealt with matters of international peace and security, human rights, and development; and the prospects for reform. The handbook also contains appendices covering suggested further reading, the UN system, the Charter of the UN, the Statute of the International Court of Justice and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Overall, while none of the individual chapters represent the final word on their subject areas, without exception they provide an excellent overview and discussion of the issues. As debates about reform rumble on, the participants would be well advised to consult this handbook for it sheds considerable light on both the organization's track record and the areas where we might realistically expect improvements to be made.

Paul D. Williams, George Washington University, USA

Defending the society of states: why America opposes the International Criminal Court and its vision of world society. By Jason Ralph. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 244pp. Index. £47.00. isbn 0 19 921431 0.

The loudest knock on the door of 10 Downing Street just prior to the 2003 Iraq War was from Admiral Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff. He was seeking assurance with regard to the legality of the military operation. Press reports indicated that he was not willing to go to war if there was a chance he might end up in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Boyce's request captures the realization in the minds of practitioners that universal jurisdiction had become a reality in contemporary international society.

Jason Ralph's immaculately researched book Defending the society of states traces this tipping point from a normative order created by states and for states, to the development of an emergent world law. He grounds his analysis of the ICC in English School theory for the reason that it is well placed to bridge the fields of international law and international relations. Following Barry Buzan, Ian Clark and Richard Little, Ralph intelligently works with categories of international society and world society in order to normatively track the possibility that the ICC represents a tipping point away from a framework of rules established by states and for states.

Readers interested in the legal basis of international order will find the analysis in Chapters 2 and 3 to be of great value. With admirable clarity, Ralph examines contrasting legal doctrines in theory and in practice. At one end of the spectrum is the ‘law of nations' which is founded upon, and limited by, the will of sovereign states. The legal interventions by the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration built their arguments on this narrow reading of the function of international law. At the other end of the spectrum, the ruling in the House of Lords over how to deal with former Chilean leader General Pinochet signifies a different reading. Here, ‘the majority ruled that in contemporary international society the obligation to prosecute those charged with the crime of torture prevailed over the obligation to respect such immunities' (p. 67).

Book reviews

Chapter four is a detailed examination of the negotiations around the Rome Statute-the treaty which underpins the world's first permanent and independent criminal court. Ralph again teases out the tension between the interstate normative order and the wider cosmopolitan world society. The former is in some respects reproduced by the treaty, not least because of the key role played by sovereign states in bringing it about, but also the centrality it accords to national courts which have primary jurisdiction over war crimes (though not exclusive jurisdiction). Set against the ongoing pull of sovereignty norms in defining the international legal order, the ICC includes key transformative principles including an independent Prosecutor who can initiate investigations into alleged war crimes without receiving a specific mandate from the Security Council or from a sovereign state. ‘The process of criminal justice is in this respect', Ralph argues, ‘a "world" and not an "international" institution' (p. 102).

In addition to the careful tracing of the emergence of the ICC, the book has a second guiding question: why did the United States oppose the treaty? Chapter five delves deeper into the unprecedented decision on the part of the Bush presidency to ‘unsign' the Treaty of Rome on 6 May 2002. In so doing, the United States was reaffirming a positivist view of its international legal obligations: jurisdiction for individual crimes cannot be delegated to a supranational court. Cultural reasons, the author argues, are doing a great deal of work in shaping US government attitudes towards the ICC. The act of opposing international criminal justice ‘is a means of reaffirming national consciousness'

                        (p. 143). Chapter six highlights the contrasting political culture that was shaping the attitudes of EU governments towards the ICC. Indeed, the negotiation and ratification of the Rome Statute should be seen as a challenge to the numerous EU sceptics who pour scorn on the idea that the EU can play a positive role in world affairs.

                        The final substantive chapter and conclusion give further consideration to the identity of the United States in relation to the wider society of states. In contrast to some who argue the US has, in certain respects, set itself up in opposition to the UN order, Ralph claims that ‘the UN system merely codifies the privileges of the suzerain power by notionally legitimizing judicial intervention into the affairs of other communities while shielding the greater powers from similar forms of accountability'

(p. 206). It is hard to read the diplomacy in the UN Security Council prior to the Iraq War as a codification of the privileges of US power. Furthermore, Ralph's position is undermined by the diplomatic and institutional opposition to the legal casuistry deployed by the United States in order to justify the capture, detention and ill-treatment of so-called unlawful combatants.

Overall, Defending the society of states is an ambitious and impressive book. The manner in which Ralph connects detailed empirical exposition with sophisticated theoretical analysis puts the work alongside the very best recent scholarship in the English School. This is not to imply that the relevance of the book should be restricted to a particular paradigm in IR: there is a richly textured argument here that will be of lasting value to international legal scholars and specialists on US foreign policy.

Tim Dunne, University of Exeter, UK

Reparations for indigenous peoples: international and comparative perspectives. Edited by Federico Lenzerini. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. 650pp. Index. £70.00. isbn 0 19 923560 5.

The recent apology offered by the Australian parliament to the country's Aborigines for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country was an important event in the world of reparations. The apology was proposed as one of several forms of remedy for the pain, suffering and hurt of these ‘stolen generations', their descendants and their families. This incident brought into the limelight the rights of indigenous populations in particular to remedy for past injustices inflicted upon them.

This latest development on the international front, indicating the interest of modern societies in coming to remedial terms with their past, is also reflected in the evolution of scholarship devoted to the very same issues. With an exclusive focus on the rights of indigenous populations to reparations, the present book hits the market only a few months after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September 2007.

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

But, as the book affirms, the existence and rapid expansion of a body of laws and instruments codifying moral claims and rights to remedy injustices does not mean justice is being operationalized and attained. A vast number of hindrances and loopholes in the body and application of the laws exist, as the chapters focusing on legal analysis inform us. In addition to considering the right of indigenous peoples to reparations for breaches of their individual and collective rights, the book also attempts to assess what lessons can be drawn from best practice in the search for remedy to indigenous populations. It is important to note though that, in line with much of the generic scholarship on reparations, which has increased in recent years, this volume is primarily of a legal nature. The practical part of the book, looking at comparative cases in different parts of the world, is used to inform the legal debate. Hence, reparations here are very much the focus of legal analysis rather than being addressed from a conflict resolution perspective.

An important premise of the book, which may sometimes be overlooked in discussions of reparations, is to stress the fact that there is no pre-fixed formula for reparations. This implies that the form of remedy is a product of the particularities of each case and, more importantly, of what the indigenous group seeking remedy perceives as adequate.

Here, what the specific analysis of reparations to indigenous populations draws attention to is the centrality of land to the reparations process. Much like reparations to displaced populations, restitution of land and property becomes an integral form of the remedies provided and essential to the identity of the victimized group. Identity of indigenous populations in fact directly affects the search and perception of reparations and the link with land illustrates this. Such a factor may not be as important in other remedy cases not involving indigenous populations as parties seeking redress.

The book's main contribution to the field stems from its specific attention to the rights of indigenous populations. So far the literature has focused on debating and pondering various issues of remedy on a general level. Narrowing the focus, as this volume does, is a significant development in the field, denoting growing concerns necessitating more specific analysis.

Shahira Samy, University of Oxford, UK

The international judge: an introduction to the men and women who decide the world's cases. By Daniel Terris, Cesare P. R. Romano and Leigh Swigard. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. 344pp. Index. £24.99. isbn 0 199 23873 6.

Who decides the world's cases? Who are the men and women who are not only the builders of international institutions but also the guardians of an international law that has developed through treaties, custom and the evolution of general legal practice? The most familiar answers to this question tend to generalize; international judges are either viewed as toothless or omnipotent. Reading The international judge makes it clear that generalizations will not suffice. This book, based on a series of interviews with international judges, tries to answer these questions by giving a comprehensive portrait of this new breed of individuals who form the basis of an emerging global profession. What transpires is a book that manages to mix the anecdotal with the objective and thus captures a true essence of individual achievements and grants a new perspective in a time of institutional innovation.

As its base, insights from judges at the four basic genera of international courts which have emerged are utilized: classic state-only courts, like the International Court of Justice; human rights courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights; courts of regional economic and/or political integration agreements, an example being the European Court of Justice; and finally the international criminal courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia being a good example.

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a different facet of the development and work of international courts, from judges' own backgrounds, their career development, the processes by which they were nominated and elected to the courts upon which they serve, the routines of their work, the relationships among colleagues, their thoughts on some of the key cases decided by their courts, the way judgments are crafted, the relationship between law and politics and issues of character and ethics.

It is a wonder that, with differing nationalities, languages and legal backgrounds, as well as vastly differing personal circumstances, there is actually any progression in the field. However, despite the

Book reviews

seemingly disparate nature of the international legal system, what emerges from this book is the collective spirit and camaraderie felt by the judges. There is evidently a shared belief or faith in the verity and applicability of particular forms of knowledge or specific truths which they possess. A strong sense of a collective identity that led one judge from the International Criminal Court to say that these circumstances meant that they had to ‘start working together and reconcile their differences in order to form a united approach to justice'.

The authors take the time to give the unaccustomed reader a foundation in international law, but by using the judges' collective experiences to do this, the book is also informative to those with more than a basic knowledge of the subject.

While there are many books that analyse and criticize international law, there are few that perform such an in-depth examination of the individuals who are so fundamental to its success or failure. Interspersed among these chapters on the functioning mechanics of the courts are profiles of five judges from differing international courts. These profiles serve to truly differentiate this book from others. It is here that the authors use the true eccentricities provided by the judges to their advantage and provide a real insight into the lives of these robed individuals. Much like a nosey neighbour at the garden fence, we are afforded a peek into life in chambers. Meetings in an abandoned bathhouse, entangled in battles for window screens and air conditioners, and the question ‘Est-ce-que vous parlez francais?' followed by a tentative Anglophone ‘oui' are among some of the things that mark The international judge as different to other legal tomes.

H. L. Mencken made the caustic comment that The international judge acts as ‘the law student who marks his own examination papers'. However, it is evident by the end of this book that often the judges are those who are most acutely aware of the weight upon their shoulders. Much like Titus, these individuals can at times struggle under the mighty weight of the expectations upon them. As the judges themselves are all to keen to point out, they are only at the very beginning of this new profession within international law. Asked what judges think their institutions are for, the most popular responses were the establishment of a community of law, the preservation of the dignity of the individual and the prevention of violence and war. Despite criticisms levelled at the judges such as pride, inconsistency, self-interest and occasionally, as was evident with the incident of the ‘sleeping judge', just plain incompetence, these men and women are the stewards of international justice and by the end of the book, there was a genuine feeling that they were and are up to this task. However, as one judge pointed out, ‘I have never considered the International Criminal Court as instant coffee'.

Amelia Jarvis

Foreign policy

China-India relations: contemporary dynamics. By Amardeep Athwal. London: Routledge. 2007. 176pp. Index. £75.00. isbn 0 415 43735 6.

Will the continued economic growth of China and India draw the two countries into conflict or cooperation? This is the question posed in the latest addition to Routledge's Contemporary South Asia series. The author confronts this question by constructing an analysis that focuses on the positive, cooperative and stabilizing aspects of the China-India relationship, in order to challenge neo-realist accounts that the relationship is driven by competition, security dilemma and inevitable conflict. Declaring such neo-realist arguments to be simply overstated, Athwal focuses on the more positive aspects of the China-India relationship-namely their growing and burgeoning economic interdependence ($13.6 billion in trade in 2004 rising to a projected $30 billion by 2010, p. 5), an emerging convergence concerning the acquisition of energy resources and the increasing normalization of elite-level dialogue. Portraying relations between the two countries through the theoretical frameworks of neo-liberalism and constructivism, the author successfully shows ‘how emerging economic interdependence creates dependable expectations of peaceful change' (p. ix).

The use of such theoretical underpinnings successfully allows for the analysis of China-India relations from a variety of comparatively understudied research perspectives. These perspectives

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

largely focus on maritime security and the increasing significance of the Indian Ocean region for energy security and energy transportation. However, the control of this region and maritime capabilities are recast by the author as a bridge to India's and China's joint pursuit of national energy needs. By placing these arguments in the context of shared vulnerabilities such as international piracy and terrorism, Athwal adds credence to neo-liberal arguments that justify cooperation in the fields of economic and energy dependence. When seen in the context of the emerging convergence between maritime and energy security, as shown by rising military expenditures and rising energy needs (in conjunction with the geo-political positions of China and India), such arguments are further bolstered. The volume's extremely detailed overviews of the Indian Navy and People's Liberation Army Navy, along with extensive detailing of their size, capabilities and arms specifications, confirm the importance of such an analysis and are a feature that will be of notable value to foreign policy and military practitioners.

The empirical strengths of the book continue with Athwal's analysis of the China-India economic relationship, which helps to draw out more areas of synergy-particularly over their institutional bonds and how these have played a critical role in joint bids for Central Asian oil and gas resources. Again, such an approach underscores how traditional security concerns can be successfully weaved with non-traditional concerns, enabling a fuller and more nuanced account of an important relationship in contemporary international relations. While the author notes how he is complementing rather than challenging neo-realism, this new account of the China-India relationship successfully enables the enunciation of new forms of analysis and new conclusions concerning the future trajectory of their relationship. Less positively, despite highlighting emerging empirical as well as structural/ functional discrepancies in the China-India relationship, at times the author fails to fully integrate his theory with the empirical analysis. Theoretical arguments are often only briefly reinstated at the end of chapters and this serves to undercut the author's analytical insights, resulting in a weakening of any conclusions made. Nowhere is this more evident than in the author's treatment of constructivism: central arguments that states learn and that the China-India relationship is moving from conflict to cooperation would have certainly benefited from more references to works on norm formation, convergence and development.

Overall, these shortcomings serve to underscore the nature of this book as essentially a primer for understanding the contemporary dynamics of the China-India relationship (primarily through an analysis of maritime and energy security) rather than being a theoretically driven text. Notwithstanding the chapter on the historical foundations of their relationship, it is analysing the interaction between China and India, and the future trajectory of this interaction, that are this book's central aims and they are amply achieved by the author. In this regard, the book is an excellent work for any reader concerned with maritime, economic and energy relations between the two countries, and provides a wealth of data, information and analysis on a relationship which, for better or worse, will shape Asia's future.

Chris Ogden, University of Edinburgh, UK

Conflict, security and armed forces

Culture in chaos: an anthropology of the social condition in war. By Stephen C. Lubkemann.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2008. 401pp. Index. $63.00. isbn 0 226 49641 2.

Can war be a ‘way of life'? This is the conundrum Lubkemann addresses in this intriguing, but arresting, book on the anthropology of what he calls the social condition in war. Based on a detailed case-study of the effects of conflict in a district of Mozambique that abuts Zimbabwe, this book is far more than ethnography of war. It is in fact nothing less than an attempt to reinterpret the political, social and economic factors that condition people who find themselves caught in protracted violence. It is at the cutting edge of a new approach to the question of war, which is making it easier for us to begin to understand parts of the world, particularly Africa, where violence seems endemic.

At its core, the book's argument is that what is most important about war is not the fact that it brings violence but that it begets a new social matrix within which people continue to live, work and

Book reviews

die according to the norms that have always regulated their existence. For the author, therefore, the key question in the anthropology of war is not the apparent condition of ‘victim' but the deeper and more subtle ways in which social norms are altered in the face of force and arbitrariness. Hence, what marks this book out is not so much the case-study in itself but the approach to the questions it raises. The originality lies in thinking through processes that are usually taken for granted.

Culture in chaos is a study both of people who were forced to move because of the effects of the Mozambican civil war in their district and of those who stayed behind. For this reason, the author's research has taken him to Zimbabwe and South Africa. It is this juxtaposition of the social history of the migrants/refugees and of those who remained in situ that makes the analysis of this case so compelling. Indeed, Lubkemann is able in this way to provide convincing evidence that the issue here is not so much movement as the alteration of social norms. Outsiders remain linked to their region of origin; insiders have a vision of their social world that encompasses the other settings.

The book opens with an impressively clear Introduction, which sets out the thesis in all its complexities. It is then divided into four main sections: migration and social transformation before the war, the social conditioning of war, the social condition of war, and war as a socially transformative condition. The very organization of the volume shows that the author advances a historical as well as a sociological argument: historical in that it is necessary to identify the roots of social life before the conflict; sociological in that it is best to study the impact of war through the mutation of the norms that regulate society. Although the book is perhaps overly long and could have done with the cutting of some repetition, the development of the line of reasoning is persuasive. Those who know the area will immediately recognize the validity of the argument. Those who do not will instantly seize on the relevance of the thesis to the study of contemporary violence.

This is an innovative book on war, which has relevance well beyond Mozambique or even Africa. It advances a thesis that ought to change the ways in which scholars, as well as non-specialists, approach the question of conflict-particularly in non-western societies. It is certainly a must-read book for those who are interested in the consequences of war in southern Africa and for those who want to come to an understanding of conflict that eschews comfortable concepts and facile explanations. For this reason, it is a matter of some regret that the book should be so dense: more terseness and greater focus would have made its reading easier and would have facilitated its access to a wider readership. For all that, and because the argument is undoubtedly of relevance, it is hoped that the book will reach the audience it deserves.

Patrick Chabal, King's College London, UK

UN peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo: operational and legal issues in practice. By Ray Murphy. 2007. 392pp. Index. £55.00. isbn 0 521 84305 8.

This book documents some existing knowledge as well as more recent developments regarding UN peacekeeping experiences in three particular operations-Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo. The book does not, however, limit itself to these three operations but also tackles the broader debates surrounding peacekeeping, and accordingly examines and makes references to other UN peacekeeping operations.

The book has a proper structure and addresses the three case-studies from three perspectives: the legal framework, command and control; the use of force; and international humanitarian law and human rights law. This method and structure make sense as most of the problematic issues in the evolution of UN peacekeeping have arisen from these three perspectives. The legal mandate for, and the limitations on, the use of force have often been found to be problematic for commanders on the ground who may wish to take a robust approach in addressing urgent necessities in a hostile environment. The relevance of international humanitarian law and human rights law, although recognized on paper, has not always been observed in practice. And accordingly, some violations of these laws by UN peacekeepers have left a shameful record.

Historically, the literature on UN peacekeeping has attempted to be as holistic and global as possible, to weave together multiple concepts and to offer case-studies from different continents. This

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

book instead attempts to take a more in-depth look at the issues, attitudes and perspectives arising in three selected operations. They are chosen from various continents and with various specifics, so that in its totality this is neither a regional approach nor a thematically limited approach.

The book could have benefited from making greater use of comparisons between the three case-studies, but this is not its main problem. More significant is the fact that the narrative is largely descriptive, with very few analytical insights. The problem does not lie with any lack in the author's capacity; rather, there is little new that such a book can add to the already extensive literature on the topic. The debates-for example, the definitional debates about peacekeeping, peace enforcement and all other peace terminologies-that the book tries to address at the beginning seem tired and exhausted having been debated for at least ten years, and there is little more to say on them. The topic of UN peacekeeping operations may still find some fresher analytical opportunities: after the 2005 World Summit the discourse shifted to the connections between UN peacekeeping and the concept of the ‘Responsibility to Protect', and there may well be a need to reflect more thoroughly on the development of standby regional capacities in Europe and Africa, and on other suggested emergency peace services, and to look at and learn from the shortcomings experienced in Darfur.

Although the author attempts initially to undertake a comparative study, by the end of the book there is little clarity as to why these three UN operations have been brought together in one book. There is no listing of similarities or differences between the three in the Conclusion, and in fact, little comparative analysis unfolds in any of the preceding chapters either. It is a pity that the description of the UN operation in Lebanon ends exactly at a time when it would make a lot of sense to revisit it from a new perspective and draw some fresh lessons, namely, after the war in August 2006.

The book would be useful to satisfy some general curiosity about what the UN, and the participating states, did in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo. Those who would like a general survey of the three UN operations will therefore find some information here. Undergraduate students will find it beneficial to have such a well-documented bibliography classified in one book. However, more established scholars may question why this book was written. For such scholars, it may well serve them better to read an older, but more academically challenging, book on UN peacekeeping operations. For UN practitioners, again, another look at the 2000 Brahimi Report would probably be more useful. There is little original in Murphy's book for those who have spent long years in peacekeeping, whether in studying or practising it.

Murphy refers to almost all the existing literature on the topic, but rarely analyses it critically, and at a number of points leaves the reader to wonder why two or three books are cited to support a very obvious and well-known statement. Some books are quoted just for the sake of being quoted-and some not even at the right time and place. The references and bibliography are extensive and could be useful to orient a student of the topic. But any other more established scholar will find little to learn from this book, particularly little from the opening two and the closing chapters which are, at best, a repetition of what is already known. Some paragraphs just list in a newspaper-style very well-known criticisms of UN inefficiencies, with intellectual reflections on these issues lacking. Instead, it is more about what the author read or heard, rather than what he makes out of such opinions. Even the final part of the Conclusion, ‘Lessons for the future', are not the author's own-they are again quotations from other sources, and, like the rest of the book, the author's own opinion is often missing. All in all, there are too many pages which merely give one the impression of reading old newspapers.

Vesselin Popovski, United Nations University, Japan

Biosecurity in the global age: biological weapons, public health and the rule of law. By David

P. Fidler and Lawrence O. Gostin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2008. 294pp. Index. £20.50. isbn 0 8047 5029 7.

In January 2008 there was a protracted debate about the meaning of ‘global health security' at the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO). Brazil, in particular, led the charge in challenging the term-arguing that it did not agree that the definition was clear or applicable to any of the work of WHO. Thailand argued that it preferred the term ‘public health security' as

Book reviews

opposed to ‘global health security'-as there was no need to link ‘health' to the broader peace and security issues dealt with by the United Nations. Why is such a debate important to international relations? Because it demonstrates that while a coordinated response to shared health concerns such as pandemic influenza is widely seen as important, it is not yet clear how this can be achieved given wide variance in attitudes and public health capacity. Biosecurity in the global age addresses this debate and takes it forward by arguing that naturally occurring microbes (such as SARS) and the manipulated, weaponized kind, require new global public health governance mechanisms.

Biosecurity in the global age argues for the introduction of the concept ‘biosecurity'. Fidler and Gostin define biosecurity as: ‘society's collective responsibility to safeguard the population from dangers presented by pathogenic microbes' (p. 121). They argue that public health and security experts need to step beyond their respective fields to appreciate how combined efforts at the global level can protect everyone from the impact of an infectious disease outbreak or a biological attack. The key, Fidler and Gostin argue, is to ensure that the securitization of health contributes to strengthening the capacity of public health infrastructure to respond to either scenario and that the balance of protecting the state is met by the need to protect the rights of individuals.

The argument put forward by Fidler and Gostin is that the best biosecurity policy will be one that encourages states to act in concert with each other and under a rule of law approach that encourages transparency, distributive justice, non-discrimination and due process. The key is to sustain the interest of wealthy donors (both state and non-state actors) and investment in biosecurity, so that global mechanisms in the areas of surveillance and response can be developed and embedded within nation-states. Fidler and Gostin account for how the rule of law-biosecurity governance model has already shown promise through the introduction of biosecurity matters into the Security Council, amendments to the Biological Weapons Convention, and revisions to the International Health Regulations (IHR), accepted in 2005. These three areas of governance are the ‘centers of gravity' (p. 260) for a concerted global response to biosecurity concerns. While they are concerned with the overt privileging of surveillance over response in the past few years, they argue that there is evidence of an attempt to encourage the strengthening of response capacity in developed and developing countries, as evidenced by the reform to the IHR.

The book charts how the rise of manipulated and naturally occurring microbes will pose a risk to all states-either through deliberate attack or incapacity to contain an outbreak. Fidler and Gostin evaluate the national, regional and global forms of governance that have developed in response to the potential for infectious disease outbreak and biological weapons attack. They then trace how a rule of law approach can be applied at the global level to encourage collective action-that can both protect and improve national public health. There are at least three important contributions that this book makes. First, Fidler and Gostin promote a combined definition of health and security-biosecurity- which seeks to move beyond the ‘national' versus ‘international' versus ‘global' approach to health security that has dominated the debate for some time outside the WHO and, as demonstrated above, within WHO. Fidler and Gostin move the debate forward by arguing that the question is no longer who is at risk (for we all could be), but how we can best respond (because we all have a responsibility/ interest). Second, the authors acknowledge that securitization is problematic. Seeking to securitize health could create more nationalistic responses, making it more difficult to secure the genuinely collective response that they are seeking. Stressing how rule of law can overcome the potential nationalistic response is thus their third important contribution to the field of global health governance. Critics may argue that this book is either a utopian vision or an advocacy of self-interested responses through collective means. But it is a critically important contribution to understanding this new and vital field within international relations. David Fidler and Lawrence Gostin are leading scholars in the field of ‘global health governance' and their work on health and international law is long established and highly regarded, and with good reason. For those who have read their previous articles and books, this new book will not disappoint.

Sara Davies, Griffith University, Australia

846

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Uniting against terror: cooperative nonmilitary responses to the global terrorist threat. Edited by David Cortright and George A. Lopez. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007. 352pp. Index. £16.95. isbn 0 262 53295 2.

War on terror, inc.: corporate profiteering from the politics of fear. By Solomon Hughes. London: Verso. 2008. 262pp. £16.99. isbn 1 84467 123 6.

The events of September 11 divided the world community on the issue of how to respond to the terrorism threat. The two camps championed, respectively, countering terrorism by taking the battle to the enemy and using only non-military responses. This book highlights the non-military ways of dealing with terrorism and rogue states. The main argument is that nations are more vulnerable to terrorism if they act unilaterally. The authors emphasize the role of the United Nations in strengthening international law and global implementation, and suggest that improvements are needed in terms of the legitimacy and effectiveness of UN counterterrorism policies. Another important message is that if the international community wants to increase the effectiveness of the UN and regional systems in the area of counterterrorism, it should focus on increasing the capacity of states.

The chapter dedicated to the unilateral and multilateral strategies employed against Libya for its sponsorship is particularly interesting. It illustrates how the united action of the international community helped to bring Libya to justice for its terror attacks across Europe, and stop its sponsorship of terrorist organizations. It also shows how a balance between sanctions, incentives and the threat of force worked well. The authors suggest that the US should return to its thinking during the Cold War, when it successfully cooperated with allies, built trustworthy relations and did not heavily depend on military action. The lessons that the US learnt during the Cold War could help with the new ideological struggle against terrorism. The last chapter discusses the preventive non-military policy options that could be employed to counter terrorism. The authors state, ‘the struggle against terrorism is not a military campaign but ultimately political battle' (p. 267).

As noted above, the authors relay the shortcomings of US foreign policy. They do not, however, see any problems for the US in terms of actively engaging with multilateral actions against terrorism. They ignore many factors, for example that the US has never been a team player, even during the height of the Cold War. It has always relied on its own resources and power and less on its allies. But most importantly, the book ignores the role of lobbying organizations and the arms industries that have flourished because of the war on terror. Their roles cannot be underestimated and War on terror inc. sheds light on the relationship between these industries and the government.

Solomon Hughes discusses the trafficking of weapons by international arms companies. The executives of these companies are not interested in seeing wars end as this would affect their profits and influence. Hughes stresses that throughout history wars have been profitable businesses. They have enriched mercenaries, soldiers and marauders, and those clever enough to reap the fruits of other dimensions, for example the supply of necessities during wars. In this gripping and shameful account Hughes shows that there will always be a private company willing to pitch for this fabulously lucrative business, whether providing the additional soldiery which made the invasion of Iraq seem realistic, or creating vast, minimally validated databases of people deemed to be a threat to national security. The Iraq War became a new Klondike for many security companies which rushed for the contracts using their lobbying power, connections and networking.

In 1992 David Osborne and Ted Gaebler wrote a revolutionary book entitled Reinventing government in which they championed the idea of mixing business and public policy. They argued that contracting out some public services would help to end endemic mismanagement. Hughes does not oppose privatization, nor does he challenge the neo-liberal concept that privatization is better than anything any government could do. However, he did not expect ‘reinvention' to touch areas that should remain the prerogative of states.

Hughes explains how subcontracting some services to private companies allows the government to look innocent in instances where something goes wrong. For example, Homeland Security uses private jets to fly prisoners overseas so they can be tortured by private interrogators. This is done to protect the US or British government from future law suits. A special place in the book is given to

Book reviews

mercenaries and their close connections with various private oil companies (pp. 100-102). Hughes vividly describes a plot intended to topple the president of Equatorial Guinea by a group of mercenaries connected with South African Tactical Meteoric Solutions. The company was a frequent contractor of the British Department for International Development (pp. 164-6).

The last section of the book gives the reader a clear picture of how the war on terror has shaped international relations. Rather than focusing on whether or not a state is democratic, relations now depend on whether or not a state is loyal to the war on terror. Thus, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia-with their horrible human rights records-are members of the coalition, while Palestinians, Iranians and Iraqis are lumped together with Al-Qaeda (p. 224).

In writing books on these issues it is very difficult to abstain from rumours, conspiracy theories, shallow facts or journalistic sensations. Hughes, however, has refrained from such fallacies. His book is very informative and based on solid research. Written with an in-depth knowledge of the situation, it will be of interest to academics, policy-makers and journalists.

Anar Valiyev, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Politics, democracy and social affairs

What democracy is for: on freedom and moral government. By Stein Ringen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2007. 334pp. Index. $39.50. isbn 0 691 12984 6.

Stein Ringen, professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, believes that because it is now clear that ‘democracy is better than nondemocracy', our focus should shift to getting more out of democracy. Which is why he asks: ‘what is democracy for?'

In six separate but related essays, flanked by an introduction and conclusion that tie together their major themes, Ringen gives us his answer. The core purpose of democratic government is preserving its citizens' freedom. But the true exercise of freedom requires having enough material resources to live a ‘life of one's own making'. So if democracy is about providing freedom, and if poverty is inimical to freedom, then the purpose of democracy must be to eliminate poverty-‘the ultimate social ill'.

By this rigorous standard, the world's democracies, in particular Great Britain and the United States, have failed to secure the freedom of all their citizens. Ringen blames political inequality, which in turn results from economic inequality, for this failure. Ringen calls for ‘economic democracy' to rectify these inequalities: in other words, redistributing wealth.

Ringen insists that redistribution hinges on the middle class wresting political power from the rich. Political power will become truly democratic when it is separated from economic power, which can be done primarily by setting strict limits on political spending. Then ‘outrageous or outrageously used income and property' can be taxed in order to be redistributed to the poor.

At this point, I worried that Ringen's initial defence of ‘democracy' was merely rhetorical cover for an argument in favour of a path back to socialism and a massively powerful, redistributive state. So I was quite relieved to read that he had more to offer. His agenda for democratic reform does not envision ‘collectivizing economic power' to create a more powerful democratic state that could then end poverty. On the contrary, he is quite sympathetic to the concern, also voiced by Adam Smith, that government officials in positions of authority have the power to ‘deny individuals practical liberty and infuse their lives with fear'.

The solution is instead to move economic power from government authorities to people. ‘Much more than before', he writes, ‘citizens are capable of autonomy'. In this spirit, for instance, parents- ‘rich and poor alike'-should be able to spend their share of the school budget to decide for themselves how to pay for the schooling of their own children. He similarly recommends that university-age students who are pursuing higher education should receive direct grants for it, and that social security be replaced by an insurance scheme because with the latter ‘you get what you pay for and what you buy becomes your property'. And so on.

Once you get past Ringen's occasional rhetorical bullying (if you do not share his opinion of social security you are not ‘in touch with reality'), his proposals bear a striking resemblance to the

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Political economy, economics and development

ideas of two Americans of the political right-the famed economist Milton Friedman and the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray. Friedman came up with the idea of school vouchers 50 years ago. He, like Ringen, believed that it was better that parents, instead of government, have control of the funds that would be used to pay for their children's education. Murray recently proposed an admittedly radical plan to replace the American welfare state with yearly cash payments to all non-incarcerated American citizens over the age of 21; it would empower citizens at the expense of bureaucratic authorities.

Where Ringen parts ways with his unacknowledged American predecessors, however, is on this question of economic democracy. But the beauty of Ringen's basic concept of individual empowerment is that it makes his rather ambitious and unrealistic ideas about reapportioning political power largely irrelevant. For Ringen, the key to improving democracy is weakening the authority of government. And the less government authority matters, the less political influence matters. If democratic government regulates less, taxes less and shrinks its welfare provision role to the provision of economic transfers, then what citizens get out of democracy will in turn depend less on policy decisions that can be affected by political influence.

Therefore, one need not agree with Ringen on the relationship between poverty and freedom, or even on the obligation of the state to eradicate the former in order to guarantee the latter, in order to find his ideas for policy reform quite worthwhile. At heart they are based on the novel idea that empowering citizens directly, instead of empowering government to administer to them, just might be a better way for democracy to work.

Adam Fleisher

Political economy, economics and development

Escape from empire: the developing world's journey through heaven and hell. By Alice H. Amsden. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007. 224pp. Index. £16.95. isbn 0 262 01234 8.

The premise of this latest book by the distinguished MIT professor Alice H. Amsden is straightforward: countries that have followed an interventionist development strategy have fared better than those adopting a more liberal approach. The evidence comes from both a cross-sectional comparison of Asia and Latin America and from the divergence in performance in many developing countries between the golden years of postwar growth and the relative stagnation since the early 1980s.

According to the author, while Latin American governments outsourced the responsibility for development to foreign firms from Europe and North America, Asian countries emphasized building indigenous manufacturing capacity. As a direct result, Latin America has fallen steadily behind in world economic rankings while Asia has become a manufacturing powerhouse. This same duality, Amsden argues, can be seen in the performance of individual countries over time. The advent of more liberal economic policies after 1980, under pressure from the United States, has caused the economic performance of many developing countries to deteriorate.

The empire described in the title refers to American hegemony in multilateral rule-making since 1945. It is divided into the First American Empire, which lasted until 1980 and allowed countries relative freedom in pursuing their own development in exchange for support against world communism, and the Second American Empire, which was introduced under President Reagan and sought to impose liberal economic orthodoxy-the Washington Consensus-on all developing countries.

The facts behind these assertions are generally beyond dispute: Asia has tended to outperform Latin America over the past 60 years; and economic growth in many countries was better before 1980 than since. But Amsden never makes a convincing case that the root cause of these divergences is a direct result of economic policy choices. The author herself admits that ‘the First and Second Empires have more in common than meets the eye' (p. 4). The US government has a fairly uninterrupted record of pushing for greater freedom for its exports and investments abroad, and multilateral liberalization has been proceeding at least since the 1960s. In addition, the phenomenon of declining

Book reviews

economic growth is not limited to developing countries: many developed countries have also grown more slowly since the oil crises of the 1970s.

Even the comparison of Asia and Latin America leaves more questions than it answers. Hong Kong hardly fits under a dirigiste label, and many countries in South-East Asia have done well out of export-led development orchestrated by foreign-owned firms. Latin America might well have converted to a more liberal orientation since the debt crisis in the early 1980s, but it was also falling behind Asian growth rates in the prior period when import substitution was the order of the day.

These issues are complex and fit uneasily into the logical straitjacket imposed by the author. Amsden clearly has a wide-ranging knowledge of many developing countries and of their recent history, particularly in Asia, and the evidence she provides cannot be dismissed lightly. But the breadth of the research is matched by a frustrating lack of depth.

Stephen Thomsen, Chatham House, UK

Everyday politics of the world economy. Edited by John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. 254pp. Index. Pb.: £18.99. isbn 0 521 70163 1.

The advent of International Political Economy (IPE) as a field of political science and international relations may be one day counted as one of the signal events of late twentieth-century scholarship. Dedicated to delineating the core elements of the multi-faceted government-business and economy- society nexus, IPE scholars have updated traditional political economy by providing much fruitful theory and explanations of how the globalized and regionally integrated world economy and politics work. Nonetheless, however excitingly IPE has jumped forward in only four decades, there has always been a disquieting sense that it remains embryonic, if not half-baked, and that it really is little more than a repackaging of musty Cold War ideology for an age that has moved far beyond the twilight struggle of the early postwar years. By addressing a major omission of IPE theory, Hobson and Seabrooke give us one of the best contributions to the field in several years.

The introductory chapter by the editors is a neatly written, well-argued summary of the need for a new ‘heterodox' approach to ‘everyday IPE (EIPE)', as opposed to the dominant ‘conventional', especially ‘regulatory IPE (RIPE)'. Their approach is simplicity itself, i.e. ‘how everyday actions transform the world economy' and how the ‘agency' of everyday actors ‘provides avenues to emancipation'

(p. 4). Everyday actions are worthy of study, regardless of whether they are successful. Regulatory IPE has concentrated on questions of who governs and who benefits, and within these has generated only limited debates on ‘cooperation and conflict' (constructivists vs. neo-liberals) and core-periphery relations (dependency vs. world systems). The essential problem is that such scholarship ‘select[s] winners' and ‘deselect[s]' any others as ‘losers' (p. 10), i.e. everyone who is not a ‘power-maker'. Everyday actions mean that those who are usually considered ‘subordinate' in a power relationship are able to use ‘negotiation, resistance or non-resistance' to affect the political and economic situation in which they find themselves. Hobson and Seabrooke suggest four ways that everyday actors work, i.e. ‘defiance', ‘mimetic challenge', ‘hybridized mimicry' and ‘axiorationality'. The first two involve overt or covert resistance, the third the adaptation of a ‘dominant discourse' filtered through the subordinates' points of references and used to take on the dominant system, while the latter has to do with how habitual behaviour and ordinary knowledge inform everyday economic and political decisions. These seem very close to what most people would consider common sense, so having to name and analyse them may be an indictment of the current state of the field.

The contributors are separated into three topical areas: ‘agency' of the weak, economic change ‘from below', and the rise of non-European capitalism (through ‘Eastern agents'). The first considers labour, small states' tax havens and female migrant labour. Particularly interesting is Sharman's article on small states' tax havens, which were made possible in large part by international reforms pushed by the US and EU during the 1990s. Several G7 initiatives have been altered into ‘more consensual, bottom-up exercises' (p. 48). The second examines activities of supposedly powerless actors. Morton's study of Latin American peasants dismisses the expected demise of peasantry in modern society, and illustrates the successes of agrarian-based political movements in Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador.

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Political economy, economics and development

He suggests that the very existence of hegemonic power engenders a response from peasants, while reinforcing the class basis of societies and the importance of locality in driving defiance. The third considers the Middle Eastern and East Asian origins of global capitalism, as well as the recent rise of East Asia as an economic power centre. Wilson's examination of Asian diasporas focuses on the Overseas Chinese and their key role in the development of Thailand's economy.

Hobson and Seabrooke end with a theoretical meditation on ‘IPE puzzle sets' and policy agendas facing the field. They present a new teaching agenda that combats the limitations of RIPE by including units on EIPE within general IPE courses. They suggest that major EIPE issues, such as compliance with economic liberalization programmes or resistance to WTO agreements, could provide excellent fodder for point/counterpoint discussions. The EIPE puzzle sets are ways to initiate discussion of EIPE-relevant policy, such as the spread of particular policies around the world, forms of global governance, and the actual mechanisms of US hegemony.

A solid contribution to development of IPE, the book has only a few weaknesses. To begin with, the state is still at the centre of conventional IPE for very good reasons: it is the most important actor and locus of political economic activity, and it holds pre-eminent power in any political economic system. The book advances fruitful theoretical challenges for the field, but is far too weighted down with jargon and arcane terminology. For instance, if the third section deals with non-European IPE actors and the rise of Asia, then why can't the authors just say that? Also, why must most recent political science or international relations works overuse the word ‘agency'? (The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as ‘active operation', so is that all there is to it?) Hobson and Seabrooke need to explain better why the ‘agents' selected for study are the best examples. The collection would usefully consider other ‘sites' and ‘agents' of everyday political economic activity, e.g. consumption patterns in developed countries, spontaneous market arrangements in developing nations, networks linking actors in developing and developed economies, through not only the fair trade system, but also global civil society.

Joel R. Campbell, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan

Global governance reform: breaking the stalemate. Edited by Colin I. Bradford, Jr and Johannes F. Linn. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2007. 142pp. Index. Pb.: $22.95. isbn 0 8157 1363 0.

There is no more important global political economy topic that can possibly be covered in a book than reform of major international institutions. This is a long overdue task, made more urgent by the financial disasters of the last 25 years, as the world has stumbled from the Latin debt meltdown to the Asian financial crisis, and now to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. This thoughtful volume includes contributions from several key actors who have held key positions at or consulted for the World Bank and IMF, as well as leading academic thinkers. The volume covers a range of vital topics, centring on the reform agenda and its possible adoption by an international summit. Bradford and Linn begin by laying out clear first principles, i.e. that the different reform agendas are definitely linked, that reform cannot happen in ‘one domain alone', that reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN must involve rebalancing of votes and weights of membership, and that a summit-level forum is essential to break the political deadlock that has held up reform since the Asian crisis.

The articles are divided into two major concerns, international institutional reform and global governance reform. Contributions in the first part are particularly strong. Assessing the possibilities of IMF reform, Boorman stresses the importance of establishing baseline ideas for assessment of change, i.e. fairness in representation, settling issues ‘as close to the ground as possible' (or subsidiarity), fixing the tradeoff between shareholders (national politicians) and institutional technocrats, and assignment of organizational responsibility. Boughton examines the IMF historically, noting that performance depends on both the type of economy served and the time period in question. Birdsall's short piece notes that the World Bank's role changed from ‘credit club' to development agency, and will continue to shift with the rise of India, China and middle-income countries. Florini and Pascual provide a neat overview of UN reform efforts, but the relationship of the UN to the foregoing discussion of the Bretton Woods institutions is never fully developed.

Book reviews

The second group of articles is not as impressive but offers intriguing proposals that deserve further study. Linn and Bradford advocate replacing the G7/8 Summit with a G20 meeting that includes an equal number of leading developing and developed economies. It would serve as both ‘global steering mechanism' and ‘forum for discussion and networking' among the key countries. Waldman wants to enhance the work of the WHO with public-private partnerships to improve global healthcare governance. Esty suggests consolidation of the various international environmental programmes into a single streamlined agency having a more focused mission.

A serious contribution to literature on international institutional reform, the work nonetheless has obvious drawbacks. First of all, the contributors are far too dominated by representatives of the Bretton Woods, UN and academic elites, who think too technically about the problems at hand. Inclusion of other voices would have made a stronger collection. Let us hear from IMF critics in the developing world, anti-globalization campaigners, anti-poverty activists (an article by Bono would have caught my attention), developmental economists such as Amartya Sen, or leftists such as the eloquent Walden Bello.

Second, a fuller discussion of the Asian financial crisis and its messy aftermath would have shown the apparent weaknesses of the current global financial system better than any theoretical articles. The IMF's one-size-fits-all prescriptions, disastrous structural adjustment programmes and inherent democratic deficit were laid bare for all the world to see. Asian governments fortunately realized the crying need for regional mechanisms, such as the Manila Framework, Hanoi Actions Plans and Chiang Mai Initiative. These could not, of course, help the rest of the world, especially chronic problem countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Turkey. Perhaps we need several regional variants of the Chiang Mai Initiative, along with more flexible policies from the Bretton Woods institutions. Third, maybe only radical surgery can save the UN. It is an extremely creaky organization that has changed little since 1945, and perhaps its entire mission needs to be rethought.

Fourth, a number of issues left out of the book need to be taken up along with institutional reform. We need a better understanding of globalization, and an international consensus on how to ensure that the ‘making globalization work' idea of Joseph Stiglitz or ‘selective globalization' of Iyanatul Islam and Anis Chowdhury can come about. We need to adjust the Euro-American financial hegemony of the twentieth century to the likely Asian and Indian/Chinese-centred world of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the famously dubbed BRICs) herald an economic, financial and political earthquake with aftershocks for decades to come. We must deal better with periodic commodity instability and panics, from oil to grain. Bradford and Linn were right to state that their issues are linked, but they are also linked to these other concerns. One hopes that their next edited volume will deal with these issues and more.

Joel R. Campbell, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan

Ethnicity and cultural politics

The politics of Englishness. By Arthur Aughey. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2007. 256pp. Index. Pb.: £15.99. isbn 0 7190 6873 7

With the end of the Cold War international politics witnessed the inexorable rise of identity politics and its all too frequent violent ramifications. Throughout the 1990s the bipolar grand narrative was replaced by the politics of the particular. Resurgent nationalisms that in Europe saw the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, the fracturing of the Soviet Union, and the sundering of Czechoslovakia were graphic exemplars of this sometimes dangerous phenomenon.

One imagines few, if any, international relations scholars in Britain considered the problems of identity politics as having much bearing closer to home. But bear down they have, most suggestively in the paradoxes of Englishness, characterized in recent years by the increasing conspicuousness of the Cross of St George, the vocalization of resentment against the post-devolution settlement, and calls in some quarters for an English parliament or even English separatism. What all this signifies is something that Arthur Aughey seeks to address. Does it represent an attempt to rediscover something,

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

to reconnect with a sacred tradition and to recover a national identity that has been lost within the British imperium? Is it a desire to become something, to achieve renewal and national self-awakening? Just idle moaning? Or something else?

These are complex questions which intellectuals have explored in the past. Their explorations, as the author points out, have often produced erroneous, though always interesting, ‘misreadings', frequently the result of exaggerated anxieties about the nature and existence (or perceived lack) of that most elusive of notions: English national identity. Despite the complexity, if not impossibility, of discerning exactly what Englishness is ‘does not mean that we cannot know of it', discuss it, and understand how people have thought of it (p. 7). What is certain is that Professor Aughey's own readings of this complexity are inspiring.

The framework for Aughey's sublime analysis is located in the understanding of Englishness as a conversation, a constant dialogue between tradition and modernity; a commonplace that is always temporary and ever changing, but where nothing is arbitrary or invented. To be of this tradition is not to be determined by it. In a profound observation, which in itself explains much about an English sensibility, Aughey describes how this understanding has endowed the English with the idea that they are ‘freeborn', not ‘trueborn' as others might feel themselves (p. 44). This produces a very different concept of nationality from those based on ethnic particularity, cultural symbolism, or-frequently questionable-foundational myths.

Against this background various narratives of Englishness that give rise to competing visions (and anxieties) are examined, along with the ambivalent working out of these conversational tensions in political praxis. In so doing, Aughey succeeds in teasing out the content of Englishness that reveals itself to be a remarkably subtle, open and sophisticated form of national self-expression. He considers England from the point of view of an ‘absorptive patria' that is-or at least was-capable of encompassing the Irish, Welsh and Scots into a British consciousness that relieved the English of the need to base their identity on ‘blood, soil or flag' (p. 27). It was, in this respect, an ‘exemplary exception', something that wanted to be practically reproducible, yet at the same time regarded itself as unique

(p. 32).

For these reasons English identity can be seen as modernist avant la lettre. This condition was not necessarily always admirable. The freedom from worry about romanticism, abstraction and symbolism could make Englishness seem ‘spiritually indolent', insufficiently concerned with principle, and bothered only with political convenience (p. 43). Empiricism as a national habit could too easily engender the view that nationalisms and provincial sensibilities in others were mere misunderstandings to be cleared up rather than evidence of different mindsets: a disposition that could enrage Ulster Unionists, and certainly explains why English politicians often had such difficulty comprehending Northern Ireland's politics, and all the worse for that.

If an English sense of ‘we don't need an identity' could occasionally come across as arrogance, in a post-imperial epoch such insouciance could more often disguise a loss of self-confidence. Other nationalisms, like the lovable Irish and Italians, were perceived as cuddly in a way that the pragmatic English could never be. Perhaps Englishness did not even exist as such and was merely a hollow feeling of living nowhere special in a homogenized culture of global consumption? As Aughey notes, the desire to fill a sense of national void and reach out for a beautiful vision of a future England was something encouraged by the left and right, though their desired outcomes differed markedly.

For some, such anxieties provoked the reaction that England could only discover, or recover, itself through an escape from Britishness. On the right this anxiety could give rise to a despairing belief that England had been forbidden, if only to preserve a wider British identity and to spare the feelings of the Celtic fringe, now well rewarded with their devolved parliaments. It suggested a need to rejuvenate the patriotic spirit and could exhibit an elegiac quality that hankered after some mystical golden age. Even if this despair for a supposedly long-lost England was a necessary prelude to the recovery of a robust Englishness, it could also intimate that England, too, should play the politics of identity, grievance and separatism.

On the left, however, the anxiety of England as the exemplary exception all too often leads to self-loathing. England has been exceptional in its backwardness and exemplary only for its historical

Book reviews

crimes of empire, along with racism and insularity. The challenge felt by the left was to modernize the constitution and recover/discover a radical patriotism that would find expression in England as an egalitarian, multicultural, internationalist, and quite possibly post-British, role model. However, Aughey devastatingly cuts this vision down, arguing that cosmopolitan nationalism represents only incoherence. This is ‘nationalism without tears' and nationalism ‘without passion' (p. 109). For much of the left the English are only permitted to have an identity if it is, well, identityless. It is a nationalism that is not worth having.

Aughey offers no solace either to those narcissists of small differences who feel that England is the new victim which should cast itself off into a separatist existence, or to those who wish only for the English to abolish themselves into a vacuous regional or European non-identity. Instead, he resolves the paradoxes of Englishness in an entirely original and satisfying manner, reiterating Englishness in the context of a Britain that should celebrate its success as an absorptive patria in all its complexity and sophistication, where the ‘English are half British and the British are half English' (p. 213). Englishness is, as Aughey observes, not a fixed idea, but an impression, a ‘house of thought', that may be unique among national identities, which does not put much store in demonstrative national sentiment or set itself against other nationalities, but asserts many different ways of belonging to England and of being British.

Pleasingly, readers looking for a bunch of positive or negative clichés about the English character will be disappointed. Yet this superb book is one that should be read by those looking for a bunch of clichés about the English national character. For those who engage in stereotypes that want to see England as the source of vice, read this book and find out why you are wrong. For the more discerning and intelligent who want to explore what Englishness means to them, read it and find out who you are.

M. L. R. Smith, King's College London, UK

Cultural contestation in ethnic conflict. By Marc Howard Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. 384pp. Index. £17.99. isbn 0 521 69032 4.

Does culture matter in ethnic conflict? Although there have been many rhetorical references to the subject, few systemic and comprehensive analyses of the features and roles of culture in ethnic conflicts have been presented. Marc Howard Ross's book, in dealing with psychocultural narratives and dramas, makes a contribution to this shortfall. Though this book is ‘a long answer to a short question' (p. xiv), his conclusion can be summarized very briefly: psychocultural dynamics play significant roles as reflectors, exacerbaters or inhibiters of conflict; in addition, manipulating the inclusiveness of cultural narratives can help de-escalate conflicts. Although his arguments are not exactly new, the details that he demonstrates are noteworthy.

After clarification of the definition and conceptual features of cultural narratives and their roles in ethnic conflicts, Ross scrutinizes six country cases covering issues of parades, festivals, language, archaeology (holy sites), flags, monuments, museums and clothing. In relation to Northern Ireland, Spain, Israel-Palestine, France, South Africa and the United States, he presents the case of how and why certain cultural narratives become emotionally powerful elements of conflict to the players, as well as how the narratives change the direction of conflict. In addition, he displays how cultural narratives are constructed and reconstructed based on current political needs.

Ross achieves his major goal: identifying and conceptualizing the dynamic aspects of how cultural factors impact on the processes and consequences of ethnic conflict. As he compares the internal perceptions of competing groups, the context of how conflict could not be avoided is well explained. He also pays attention to internal diversity and historical changes and how various political and militant actors manipulate the interpretations of various symbols. After depicting the competing claims for Jerusalem of the Jews and the Muslims, for example, he reveals why archaeology should be ‘central to competing political claims' (p. 167) and demonstrates how extreme ‘distrust and vulnerability' lead both parties into the spiral of violence.

In addition, Ross demonstrates a few interrelated arguments which have been widely asserted but have not been supported by evidence among epistemic communities. First, he points out that

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‘because present needs and challenges shape the narrative's relevance, specific events in it shift in importance, elaboration, and emotional significance over time' (p. 37). For him, there can be major changes in emphasis over generations, even in the same generation and each sub-group may have different interpretations of a certain narrative. In particular, his descriptions of the contestation over wearing Islamic headscarves in France and the memorial sites in South Africa successfully show how people's perceptions of cultural symbols are subject to change.

Next, he discusses the wider role of cultural dynamics in ethnic conflict, confirming that cultural dynamics can either exacerbate or inhibit conflicts. Ross goes further than many studies which are content to focus on the ‘negative effects' of cultural issues on violent conflicts, and places strong emphasis on its positive potential. In his analysis of loyalist parades in Northern Ireland, for instance, Ross argues that the inclusiveness of cultural narratives that acknowledge each other can enlarge the possibilities of compromise by comparing parades in Portadown and Derry/Londonderry. Moreover, he demonstrates-using the cases of Canada and Spain-how contestations on language issues can be solved without violence.

Despite his achievements in describing the significance of psychocultural narratives in ethnic conflict, it must be noted that his research leaves a few core concepts and underlying factors unclear. First, although definitions of key concepts are presented in initial chapters, they do not provide a frame of analyses. For example, ‘inclusiveness' of performances, policies and strategies in Northern Ireland, Spain and South Africa were immensely varied, but are simply categorized as ‘inclusive narrative' when a more sophisticated categorization might have better reflected the depth and variety of these narratives.

Moreover, while showing that cultural symbols can be redefined to become more inclusive, he neglects to explain what made such transformations possible. For instance, questions such as: ‘how did the leaderships in Derry/Londonderry create cross-community dialogues and why has this been impossible in Portadown?'; ‘why was there peaceful resolution of language issues between the Spanish central government and Catalonia, and why did this not occur in the conflict with the Basques?'; ‘why did most black Africans who had suffered from discrimination accept the inclusive policies of the Mandela administration over apartheid symbols?' are not answered. Thus, failing to find out the common factors of transformation is a missed opportunity.

However, these weaknesses do not spoil his contribution, providing considerable resources to fill a gap in conflict studies.

SungYong Lee, University of York, UK

Energy and environment

Peace parks: conservation and conflict resolution. Edited by Saleem H. Ali. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007. Index. 432pp. Pb.: £18.95. isbn 0 262 51198 3.

Peace parks are recognition of the complex interconnections between nature and social systems. These interconnections have already been described in many accounts of war that discern tensions over scarce natural resources among the root causes of conflicts. Based on this insight, many commentators have asked whether fragile or badly managed natural resources may lead (or contribute) to future conflicts. The current crisis in Darfur is one of many examples of conflicts that have been traced back to environmental factors. In this case desertification contributed to competition for arable land, which in turn led to conflicts between farmers and pastoralists that were quickly expressed in ethnic terms.

A corollary of this argument is that better management of natural resources may help head off conflicts. This is a very difficult goal to achieve, however. Although it is often possible to point to inadequate management of environmental resources as a source of conflict, the general failure of governance that prevailed prior to the conflict makes better resource management difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, environmental resources can provide new opportunities for shared governance, precisely because they offer an alternative entry point to situations of potential conflict that can be less well defined by entrenched positions.

Book reviews

Peace parks is a collection of essays and case-studies that examine the potential role that shared environmental resources can play in conflict prevention and conflict resolution. In this volume the term ‘peace parks' refers to transboundary protected areas-areas that involve a degree of cooperation across one or more boundaries between or within countries-that are intended to play a role in conflict resolution and especially in the period following the cessation of conflicts. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature is an enthusiastic backer of peace parks, which it sees as protected areas that can promote peace while safeguarding biological diversity and natural and cultural resources. The number of peace parks rose from 59 in 1988 to 188 in 2005. The volume is forward-looking and is mainly concerned with the potential contribution of peace parks to the resolution of existing conflicts or the prevention of potential conflicts in the future.

The case of the Mesopotamian marshes provides a topical example of the potential contribution of peace parks. The plight of the Marsh Arabs attracted international media attention prior to and during the Iraq War. The al-Ahwar marshes of southern Iraq and Iran-the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East and western Eurasia-historically covered 15,000 to 20,000 square kilometres of interconnected lakes, mudflats and wetlands and are a source of biological diversity of global importance. They have also supported the traditional lifestyles of approximately 500,000 indigenous people and are a major source of agricultural production. The marshes are a no-man's land between Iran and Iraq-countries that have frequently been in conflict over the past four centuries-and they have suffered many environmental disasters, most recently the deliberate desiccation of 90 per cent of the wetlands as part of the Iraqi government's campaign against the region in the late 1990s. Steps are now jointly being taken by Iran and Iraq to designate the marsh area as a Ramsar site (an international convention that would designate it a Wetland of International Significance) and a World Heritage site. The fact that restoration projects in the al-Ahwar marshes have continued despite the ongoing insurgency in Iraq suggests that there is a strong respect for conservation among local Sunnis and Shi'is that could provide scope for building trust and cooperation between disparate communities. Moreover, bilateral negotiations at the highest level between Iran and Iraq on the joint management of the marshes, e.g. at a conference in Tehran in 2005, give further weight to the argument that environmental management can sometimes provide a context for a less hawkish stance.

Peace parks is not unduly sanguine about the win-win possibilities offered by shared areas of environmental protection, and it lists many examples of peace parks that have stalled because they were perceived as too elitist by local stakeholders, or because of the failure of cooperation on water resources between adversarial states like India and Pakistan or Jordan and Israel to translate into broader reconciliation. One article points to the possibility that protected areas can actually instigate social conflict or play a strategic role in sustaining ongoing military conflicts, for instance by serving as refuges for military groups (guerrilla groups in Colombia, Sierra Leone and other countries have established bases in protected areas) or providing natural resources that help finance military operations.

These caveats notwithstanding, the book makes a coherent case for the use of peace parks as a plank of conflict resolution in many settings around the world. It appeals for the environment issues to be understood in international relations as more important than an issue of ‘low politics'. There has been much discussion in academic literature of environmental security, and this volume makes a valuable contribution by bringing in the perspective of ecologists and conservation managers, thereby taking the discussion of peace parks to a new level of detail about the practicalities of implementation.

Thomas Legge, Chatham House, UK

Greening Brazil: environmental activism in state and society. By Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2007. 283pp. Index. Pb.: $23.95. isbn 0 8223 4031 7.

Greening Brazil traces out the history of Brazilian environmental policy over the past 35 years, in the light of environmental sociology and public policy analysis of state and society. This political history analysis speaks directly to a large debate on green governance, a subject that has being increas-

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ingly discussed in the context of social, political and economic changes and democratic environmental management since the 1990s. Green governance studies look at a new analytical framework to explain how the state reacts to both transnational forces and to citizens' movements in environmental management, access and control over natural resources.

In this book, Hochstetler and Keck use a conceptual framework focused on the role of social networks to explain how environmental policy is implemented in Brazil. The authors portray a multilayered environmental governance in Brazil: in different levels of transnational, national and local scale where different kinds of actors (state, political parties, organizations of civil society, individuals and other stakeholders) form alliances, and contribute to and participate in the implementation of environmental policies.

Considering the relationship between transnational environmentalism and domestic factors, the authors argue that the domestic factors have more strongly shaped governance outcomes than is often assumed in other literature. To understand the relationship, Hochstetler and Keck identify five mechanisms of interaction: diffusion, persuasion, leverage, payoffs and coercion (p. 9). In addition, to understand the distinct characteristics of Brazilian politics, they highlight three features: the development of environmentalism in the context of a democratizing transition from military to civilian rule; the impact of federalism; and the continuous interplay of formal and informal (pp. 11-18).

This book has five chapters. In the three initial chapters, the authors trace the history of state development and societal environmentalism from 1972 to 1992. First, they analyse formal national-level state actors, discussing specifically environmental legislation and agencies, during the military regime. Then, they focus on the rise of environmental activism and organizations during both civilian and military governments, highlighting three periods: (i) from 1950 to 1970, the first-wave conservation movements, that gave birth to Brazil's oldest conservation organizations (scientific research institutions); (ii) from 1974 to the mid- to late 1980s, a period of political liberalization that gave rise to activist organizations; (iii) from the mid 1980s to the present, a wave of environmental activism, a period marked by an exponential increase in foreign contact, focusing on how environmentalists responded by professionalizing their organizations and by adopting a discourse of socio-environ-mentalism. In the last two chapters, the authors present two case-studies based on their ethnographic field research in the early 1990s: one case looking at environmental policies in the protection of the Amazon forest and another case focusing on the anti-pollution movements and policies in São Paulo's metropolitan area.

The vast bibliography on environmental policy and social movements in Brazil used by the authors is notable. The ethnographic material is rich, including interviews with key actors, and helps us to understand the effort at the individual level to build an intricate mosaic of environmental policies in Brazil during the 1990s. But we are still left wondering what sort of path these actors have taken outside the period studied. With this book, the reader can envision the role of individuals and institutions in the formation of social networks and how these networks have mobilized and facilitated the adoption or implementation of environmental policies through dialogue, activism and participation.

One of the highlights of the book is when the authors present some of the ambiguities during the implementation of environmental policies. On the one hand, the authors affirm that the democratization process improved the conditions under which environmentalists could persuade politicians and promote better legislation and environmental policy; on the other hand they also say that there was no guarantee that the legislation would be implemented (p. 226). The authors affirm that problems are related to the bureaucratic culture of the state and the fragility of institutional instruments, with the frequent changes in institutional design and procedures, and explain the difficulties of implementation of well-agreed decisions. In addition, Hochstetler and Keck claim that it makes little sense to study institutional development purely in terms of formal structure, policies and procedures. Instead, studying the role of institutions regarding a particular issue requires identifying the constellation of linkages that sustain or undermine a particular policy or set of policies, both inside and outside government, and the mechanisms through which this process occurs (p. 225).

The complex interactions between state and society are the basis for what is described in the book

Book reviews

as networks of individuals. This book provides a valuable contribution to the debate on environmental policy and governance in the context of democratization and decentralization of environmental management in Brazil. This book is strongly recommended for graduate-level students and scholars from diverse social science backgrounds interested in studying public policy and environmental planning and management.

Luiz Fernando Macedo Bessa, Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil

History

The Reagan diaries. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. London: HarperCollins. 2007. 767pp. Index. £30.00. isbn 0 00 726305 9.

On the evidence of these diaries, Ronald Reagan was as advertised: a genial and uxorious old buffer of limited imagination and some devout convictions. These seem to have been acquired at the rate of one per decade. From the 1930s he took a devotion to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, and a sense of what presidential leadership could be. From the 1940s, as well as a blithe faith in the goodness of American motives and the power of American leadership, he took the visceral anti-communism he developed in battling the left in the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild. From the 1950s, when his income depended on General Electric's sponsorship of his Red River Days TV role, he took a belief in the importance of corporate America and the good sense of the corporate audiences to whom he gave remunerative inspirational speeches. From his time as governor of California in the 1960s he took a loathing of the New Left who ducked the draft, disrupted his state's campuses and made cruel mock of him and of the wholesome, patriotic movies that had been his Hollywood. And from the 1970s he took an abiding suspicion of the foreign policy realism of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon and their policies of detente.

Only four presidents have kept regular diaries: George Washington, John Quincy Adams, James Polk and Rutherford Hayes. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower kept sporadic ones, but Reagan dutifully wrote each day except for his time in hospital after the assassination attempt. Douglas Brinkley has boiled them down by more than two-thirds for this single-volume edition. They can be tedious and repetitive and reveal little that is new or unknown, but some gems emerge and the odd flash of humour. ‘Last night watched NBC special on our first 100 days. If only Bobby Burns had waited for TV he would never have written "If only we had the gift to see ourselves as other see us"'.

In his second month in office, Reagan recorded ‘Intelligence reports say Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying'. The theme of Armageddon recurs. On 15 May 1981, during some fairly routine Lebanese crisis, he noted ‘Sometimes I wonder if we are destined to witness Armageddon'. The next month, he writes ‘Got word of Israeli bombing of Iraq-nuclear reactor. I swear I believe Armageddon is near'. (Ten days later he discovers that his predecessor Jimmy Carter had discussed the reactor with the Israelis and agreed it was a threat. There was a thick file on the matter in the State Department but no word of this came to Reagan until the attack.) He dislikes the State Department, which tried to censor his speeches and letters, and when he finally gets rid of his Secretary of State, Al Haig, he notes ‘Actually, the only disagreement was over whether I made policy or the Sec. of State did'. Despite his Evil Empire speech, and a ‘D-n those inhuman monsters' entry when he hears that Natan Sharansky was down to 100 pounds in the Gulag, he was surprised to be told by the CIA that the Soviet leadership believed he was planning a pre-emptive war against them.

There is no sign in his second term of fading powers or approaching Alzheimer's, and his growing respect and even affection for Mikhail Gorbachev are apparent. Three of his core convictions, his loathing of the ‘demagogic' and ‘lynch-mob' liberal press, his ideological devotion to Margaret Thatcher and his personal devotion to Nancy Reagan, remain unchanged. This can be touching: ‘Saw "Mommie" off for London & the Royal Wedding. I worry when she's out of sight 6 minutes. How am I going to hold out for 6 days. The lights just don't seem as warm & bright without her'.

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Reagan bore the burdens of the presidency lightly, complaining at spending full days in the Oval Office, taking many massages and early nights with dinner in front of the TV or watching movies. His greatest pleasure seems to have been in parties with Hollywood friends, or recording little personal triumphs: ‘Got the most applause of any US presidential address to the UN'. ‘Japanese P.M. said no other head of state had ever received such applause ... Billy Graham called me a Pastor to the Nation'. Governing has seldom seemed so easy.

Martin Walker, Woodrow Wilson Center, USA

From bloodshed to hope in Burundi: our embassy years during genocide. By Ambassador Robert Krueger and Kathleen Tobin Krueger. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. 2007. 334pp. Index. $26.00. isbn 0 292 71486 1.

The history of Burundi is one of the most violent of anywhere in the world, and it is a history that could well be told through the milestone occurrences of genocide. In the past years in Burundi an incalculable number of people have been murdered simply and exclusively because they were perceived as belonging to one or another ethnic group. The circumstances of each and every massacre is largely lost to history and while thousands upon thousands of people have lost their lives in these terrible years there has been almost nothing reported in detail in either the local or the international media. And a culture of impunity ensured that the killing continued.

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the world's first truly universal, comprehensive and codified protection of human rights. When it came to Burundi the Genocide Convention was cited in 1972, but this was only in the US State Department where classified information showed how in the recent violence there had been an attempt to kill every Hutu male over the age of 14. During these massacres an estimated 200,000 people, all belonging to the Hutu ethnic group, were murdered. The history of neighbouring Rwanda is similar, where genocide is cited in 1959, 1963 and 1972. There are similar patterns of killing; this would begin with the extermination of political opponents, the use of propaganda and then the encouragement of the peasants themselves to do the killing. In Rwanda in 1994-when up to one million people were killed-the genocide was planned and perpetrated safe in the knowledge that the members of the Security Council-central to the application of the 1948 convention-would fail to intervene.

It is the failure to acknowledge the brutal killing in neighbouring Burundi that is a principle theme of Robert and Kathleen Krueger's passionate book, From bloodshed to hope in Burundi. Ambassador Krueger, a President Bill Clinton political appointee, held the post at a particular and terrible time. He had arrived in Burundi in June 1994, when genocide was under way in Rwanda. There were some 300,000 Rwandan refugees in Burundi having fled their own country, and living in refugee camps. In the absence of international action to defend people at risk, Krueger writes that the international press was Burundi's last resort, the only hope to get some sort of action for the defenceless citizens. But international press coverage was virtually non-existent. Krueger cabled Washington in 1995 that he believed genocide was under way in Burundi and estimated that in the space of three weeks some 3,000 people had been killed. This is an intimate and first-hand account of atrocity, for Ambassador Krueger conducted his own research and the book, a personal memoir, shows how he toured the country to make his own enquiries and, while witnessing the most terrible atrocity, how he is sustained by some remarkable missionaries along the way and by courageous citizens who believed in change and justice. The book is enhanced with sections by Kathleen Krueger who describes her own experiences and that of her two young daughters. Ambassador Krueger, blaming the army of Burundi for the brutal human rights abuses, despaired of the clichéd and racist press coverage which had generally described tribal and ancient hatreds. This was nothing of the sort. The trouble stemmed from a violent colonizer-in this case Belgium and a deadly fault-line-just like in Rwanda-with the creation of political parties along ethnic lines. Ambassador Krueger describes how power in Burundi had for years been wielded by a series of unscrupulous and brutal military officers who used ethnicity to subjugate the people, and by greedy politicians who used the divisions in society for their own ends. In every sphere-political, economic, social and military-life was

Book reviews

dominated by racist divisions and the ideologies which underpinned genocide were widely broadcast to susceptible citizens.

Linda Melvern

Europe

Europe's global role: external policies of the European Union. Edited by Jan Orbie. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008. 267pp. Index. £55.00. isbn 0 7546 7220 3.

Europe's global role focuses specifically on what might be termed Europe's ‘soft power'. Thus, it discusses and details the ability of the EU to project its interests, norms and aims outside the territory of the European Union through the use of instruments other than military means. As such, it speaks to a flourishing literature within contemporary EU studies that looks at the extent to which the EU is a ‘normative power', ‘civilian power', and/or a ‘soft' power, and as such might complement (or potentially challenge) the ‘hard power' of the United States. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is its ability to go beyond some of the more general statements regarding EU ‘soft power', and to provide rigorous empirical detail of what this actually means in practice-both in terms of the institutions and instruments that have been developed and deployed beyond the EU's borders, and in terms of the effect that such ‘soft power' has had where it has been implemented. To my knowledge, this book provides the most up-to-date and detailed documentation in print at present of EU foreign policy from a ‘soft power' perspective.

The book begins with an introductory conceptual chapter by the editor, which traces the development of the concept of ‘normative power Europe' as associated today with the work of Ian Manners, back through its earlier (and somewhat different) manifestation as ‘civilian power Europe' as coined by François Duchêne. Based on this discussion, Orbie outlines a research agenda that forms the basis for the remainder of the book. This agenda seeks to study the means of power, its objectives and the impact, exerted by the European Union upon third countries, in a non-military capacity. The remaining chapters adopt this approach as a framework through which to study EU ‘soft' foreign policy in areas such as trade, development, social policy and the European Neighbourhood Policy.

The common thread linking each chapter is clearly the empirical focus upon the non-military external influence of the EU. Nevertheless, there are some common theoretical arguments that stand out in the book. In particular, there is reference made by a number of the authors to the overly liberal, technical and, as such, apolitical and undemocratic nature of EU external relations. Thus, Orbie's chapter on trade notes that, while mention is often made by the European Union of the need for developmental goals and the promotion of labour standards, in practice these have little substance and should rather be considered ‘a normative dressing over a free trade agenda' (p. 62). Similarly, in discussing the external aspects of EU immigration policy, Steven Sterkx highlights the way that the EU proclaims in its rhetoric the importance of a development agenda as a preventive measure against immigration into the EU, while in reality ‘the Union's externalisation strategy does not seem to strive for the development of third countries, poverty alleviation and the consolidation of democracy', but rather seeks to shift the policing of immigration flows into the territories of the third countries (p. 135). As such, the book provides an excellent and at times insightfully critical evaluation of EU external relations.

There were, however, two areas that I would like to have seen developed more fully. First, there was little attempt to identify more fundamental or ‘deep' explanations for some of the criticisms that were directed at EU ‘soft' foreign policy. Thus, while, as noted, there was often criticism of the purely rhetorical nature of the ‘values' used to legitimate EU external goal promotion, there was less analysis of the question of why the EU sought to promote the goals that it did, or why it was unable to provide more substance to the values that it used to legitimate them. Second, and related to the previous point, despite many of the authors being critical about the actual content of EU external relations policy, there seemed to be, nevertheless, the assumption that the EU was, at its core, a ‘force for good' (p. 28). Thus, the assumption for many of the authors seemed to be that, ceteris paribus, the

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EU would act to promote ‘European' values such as democracy, human rights and improved social, working and environmental conditions. The fact that this was not always the case was therefore either left unexplained or explained in what were (sometimes implicitly) presented as countervailing factors such as economic or security interests. Perhaps greater exploration of the counter-hypothesis-that the European Union might be a coercive and dominating institution per se (as, indeed, intimated in the discussion of John Galtung's notion of a European superpower)-might have provided an interesting alternative line of inquiry.

David J. Bailey, University of Birmingham, UK

Democratic politics in the European Parliament. By Simon Hix, Abdul G. Noury and Gérard Roland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. 242pp. Index. £15.99. isbn 0 521 69460 5.

Debates about democracy in the European Union (EU) frequently centre on the role of the European Parliament (EP). While its legislative and executive control powers have increased dramatically in the last two decades, voter interest, as indicated by turnout, has declined. But if the growing powers of the EP have not inspired greater electoral participation, they have had a substantial effect on politics inside Europe's parliament, as Hix, Noury and Roland's very readable book shows. Using a dataset of all the roll-call votes (RCVs) in the EP from 1979, when it was first directly elected, to 2004, the authors examine transnational party group and individual voting behaviour. Some may object that RCVs are an unrepresentative minority of votes taken in the EP but they still constitute the best information we have for assessing the state of party politics in the parliament. In short the authors show that the main party groups have become more cohesive in their voting behaviour over time, and that politics in the EP is increasingly similar to that found in national parliaments with conflict structured principally along a left-right spectrum. The authors argue that party politics has become more competitive and less consensual and that this party-based competition on a left-right dimension provides the basis of democratic politics in the EP.

Previous research has used RCVs to assess the effects of greater EP powers on the party system and coalition formation, but it has tended to rely on samples of votes often covering limited time periods. The authors' data allow for an assessment of changes over 25 years from the first direct elections. The theoretical approach tested in the book posits that national parties and individual Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a better chance of realizing their policy preferences by working together in cohesive transnational groups in the EP. Larger groupings reduce the costs of establishing separate coalitions on every vote, promote more stable decision-making and allow parties to develop policy expertise through a division of labour. The authors argue that parties should compete on a left-right rather than territorial basis in established federal systems because policies made at the central level mainly concern conflict between different economic sectors and professional interests, rather than between territorial units.

These approaches are supported in much of the book's rich empirical analysis. For instance, the authors find that cohesion increases with the size of a party group, supporting the contention that bigger groups have a greater chance of influencing a vote so are more likely to work cohesively. Similarly, greater ideological diversity within groups does not lead to lower cohesion, suggesting that party groups have an independent effect on voting discipline. But the picture is complicated by national party influences and government-opposition effects. Given their control over candidate selection, national parties are in a stronger position than groups to enforce voting discipline. The authors show that if positions conflict, MEPs are more likely to vote with their national party than their transnational group. Furthermore, voting is influenced by whether national parties are in government or not, with governing parties pressuring their MEPs to support deals reached in the EU's Council of Ministers. The authors' analysis of the Takeover Directive, one of two case-studies in the volume, shows that this government-opposition dynamic sometimes overcomes ideology in influencing national parties' voting decisions.

Some things in the book require further explanation, like the puzzling finding that participation and cohesion declined after the Single European Act, and the authors' use of expert judge-

Book reviews

ments in some chapters and Manifesto Research Group data in others as exogenous measures of party positions. In addition, their conclusion that granting the EP more powers would serve European democracy might be convincing in terms of the politics within the parliament but, on the basis of growing legislative powers in recent years, seems unlikely to be borne out in the EP's relations with voters. One way out of this impasse, as Hix suggests elsewhere, is to give the EP a much clearer role in choosing the Commission President and College of Commissioners, and another is for voters to be given the opportunity to elect the Commission President directly.

This book answers many questions about the presence of democratic politics inside the EP and raises others about how to further democracy in links between citizens and EU institutions. This is a highly significant book for our understanding of the European Parliament and deserves to be read not only by those interested in European Union politics and democracy but also by scholars of parties and legislatures elsewhere.

Richard Whitaker, University of Leicester, UK

Middle East and North Africa

Der unerklärte Weltkrieg: Akteure und Interessen in nah und Mittelost. By Bahman Nirumand. Berlin. 2007. 254pp. isbn 3 940153 01 2.

Nirumand's book is a fervent rejection of Huntington's Clash of civilizations, but argues in much the same vein when analysing the-predominantly Muslim-problem states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main thesis of this book-that in all these states the same, or closely related, actors and interests are at work-only scratches the surface of the real issues.

In the chapter on Afghanistan, Nirumand rightly reproaches the US for supporting in the past the very extremist forces they are fighting today, although his focus is somewhat blurred when it comes to distinguishing between the mujahedin (later Northern Alliance) and the Taleban. He observes that the Taleban are at once victims-in the struggle against occupation-and persecutors of their own people

(p. 37), a situation typical of a country ravaged by civil war and often judged as a failed state. This means very weak central governmental authority (p. 38), efforts to maintain law and order widely defied, and a crippled economy. The international opium trade, thriving as it does most notably in Afghanistan, vividly illustrates the impotence of those wishing to bring tranquillity to this part of the world (p. 43).

Saudi Arabia is clearly more stable. However on the one hand, it is the repository and the guardian of the holiest places of Islam. On the other, it is America's leading ally in the Gulf region. Despite its western alignment, Saudi Arabia has supported Islamist organizations all over the world, contributing considerably to their ability to unleash the terror attacks of 9/11 and beyond (p. 132). It is also one of the main suppliers of oil to the West (p. 120). The wake-up call to modernity for the Saudis could not have been sounded more clearly than with the attacks of 9/11, raising the whole question of only thinly disguised domestic absolutism as a viable form of rule in the modern age (p. 121). Adding the stationing of hundreds of thousands of American military on Saudi soil and the invasion of Iraq, one can see that the House of Saud is under pressure. Could, then, the Saudi rulers face an Islamic revolution such as that which led to the downfall of the Shah in Iran in 1979, the author provocatively asks (p. 141). This goes well beyond the limits of caution necessary for the topic. The circumstances are clearly very different in Saudi Arabia today. The author is inclined, here as elsewhere, to take his analysis to the extreme.

The Palestinian conflict has often been seen as the key to the problems in the Middle East. It is not acceptable that in this circle of violence different criteria are applied, with regard to, for example, basic human rights and the right to statehood, which the author sees infringed on the Palestinian side (p. 187). It almost goes without saying that the creation of Israeli settlements on the West Bank is in open conflict with the fundamental principles of public international law (p. 199). He also sees Israel acting as the alien outpost of the West, thus exacerbating tensions with its neighbours in the region (p. 189). And he adds that Hamas became a sizeable Palestinian force only after it became clear that peace would not

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

be achieved through the promises the West made in Oslo and at Camp David (p. 205). Another glimpse of the author's somewhat utopian perspective comes through in his idea that Israel might withdraw to the borderlines of 1967, making room for a Palestinian state (p. 211). If the Palestinian conflict has shown one thing, it is that what is fair is not necessarily a viable solution in the Middle East.

In the epilogue on the Islamic danger, Nirumand's expertise is evident. He explores the reasons behind the fanaticism that nihilistically leads people to despise human life itself, their own as much as that of others, for example in suicide bombings. He rightly criticizes the black and white pictures of good versus evil which have become commonplace in the West (p. 238). He poses the critical question of whether there is a direct link between terrorism and Islam. And he offers decisive insight when he argues that Islamic countries, however far they lag behind the developed countries of the West, have an indisputable right to seek their own place in this world. Their dilemma lies in the manifest development shortfall, inviting critical comparisons, and here he argues that there is a strong case for a progressive interpretation of Islam.

Unfortunately, one final step of abstraction is missing. The emphasis on Islamic countries is not coincidental, because what his conclusion and indeed the whole economy of the book shows is that the world is faced not so much with a new threat of terrorism as with the old enemies of mankind: nationalism fuelled by ideology, itself nurtured by deprivation and generating contempt for others. In this case the ‘others' are the West, therefore this could mean the rejection of western values. However, more often than not, the ‘others' are in fact neighbouring-Muslim-states in the Middle East, a phenomenon which accounts for the almost inextricable network of tensions in the region. The suffering caused by the threat and the false promise of this nationalism is, then, indeed a bitter lesson, one which Europe has learned at no small cost. Leaving cultural self-determination indisputably untouched, here Europe might act as an example that moderation and cooperation ought to be pursued with greater determination.

This book is written as an analysis of the Middle East through western eyes. Considering the author's roots in Iran, one can feel the abyss between pity for his fatherland and the almost helpless claim to a culturally unique answer to the questions of modernity which could free countries such as Iran from the tormenting comparison with western superiority. An increasing cultural gulf, as a result of an Islamic third way, is therefore the picture the author gives of an overdue emancipation process, rather than a clash of civilizations. Here is a reason to hope that the future will not bring a cataclysmic confrontation.

Thomas Hoerber

Sub-Saharan Africa

Big African states. Edited by Christopher Clapham, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 2006. 310pp. Index. 180 Rand. isbn 1 86814 425 9.

After the party: a personal and political journey inside the ANC. By Andrew Feinstein. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. 2007. 287pp. Index. 160 Rand. isbn 1 86842 262 3.

The authors of the clear, concise Big African states challenge the assumption that, when it comes to state size, ‘bigger is better'. They argue that, despite the natural resources most possess, Africa's big states have lower per capita incomes than the African average, dismal rankings on the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), and among the worst records of misgovernance. They are thus examples of diminishing returns to scale, and their failures are evident both in their domestic affairs and in their usually negative impacts on the regions in which they are located.

Case-studies provide useful overviews of the six states concerned (regrettably, Kenya was omitted). Clapham notes the failure of Ethiopia's highly centralist regime to raise mass living standards, despite its huge agricultural potential, and its framing of a constitution that allows the right to secede to ethnically defined regions, thus stimulating ethnic separatism while failing to provide outlets by genuine devolution. He also illuminates the close, usually malign, interaction between domestic, regional and international factors. Likewise, on Sudan, Kalpanian stresses the deadly interaction between internal

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divisions and external interventions. Nigeria's acute problems are more domestically rooted. Apart from the familiar story of misgovernance and corruption, Bach describes the deadlock emerging from Nigeria's extreme ‘consociationalism'. This not only mandates representation in all federal institutions of people from each of the 36 states, but accords priority to ‘sons of the soil' within each state,

i.e. to locals over other Nigerians in access to jobs, land, education, etc. This seems calculated, as in Ethiopia, to further ethnicize a deeply divided country, or what Bach terms, in view of the paralysis of central government, a ‘country without a state'.

Even worse is the plight of citizens in that stereotypical failed state, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Endowed with huge potential in minerals, agriculture and hydropower, its people are, as Kabemba relates, neither governed and provided with minimal services, nor left in peace to get on with their lives. He believes a viable state can still be created from this chaotic condition, but most other contributors maintain the DRC has never been, and is unlikely to become, a state and that its long-suffering ‘carcass'-currently being devoured by greedy neighbours and foreigners-is likely to be carved up among the latter. Morally, the worst big state is surely Angola. As Mills relates, its small elite has grown wealthy from the revenues of offshore oil and diamonds and its government fields Africa's largest, best-equipped army. But despite this wealth and capacity, its relatively small population of 13 million is among the world's most wretched: ranked 164 out of 175 on the HDI, below poorer countries such as Zambia, Malawi and Nepal.

These case-studies of ‘dysfunctional' and ‘failing' states are supplemented by thematic chapters. Inter alia, Ottaway, while not dismissing the importance of ‘lootable commodities', challenges Collier's thesis that Africa's most intractable conflicts are driven by greed rather than by political or ethnic grievances and the sheer difficulties of state formation. Van de Walle and Abraham discuss the role of international norms in maintaining unviable states and Herbst the military dynamics that make large states prone to protracted violent conflict. The study concludes that reasons for the failures of these states include the cost of consolidating huge, diverse territories with sparse infrastructure; the difficulty of reorienting allegiances from local level to remote capitals whose governing elites are ignorant of and indifferent to local needs; and the fact that, in a globalizing world, the economic advantages of large size are being outweighed by international trade.

Clapham urges the international community to cease treating these ‘lame leviathans' as natural leaders and benign stabilizers of their regions, and to recognize that they are part of the ‘complex of interconnected predicaments' hindering Africa's development. Breakaways or challenges should not be supported; but unviable states should not be shored up against secessionist threats, which might open the way for new, more effective social formations and polities.

A refrain of Big African states is the exceptionalism of South Africa. As Hughes argues, South Africa is not a failed state by world, let alone African, standards. However, he points to some ‘paradoxical' policies and implementation difficulties, which have since become more prominent (delayed publication is a weakness of this book, evident in the sparse references to China's impact). Some of these problems are illuminated by Feinstein's book, which reveals much about growing ‘dysfunctionalism' in Africa's model state. Feinstein was a prominent ANC MP, and provides an insightful insider's account of Mbeki's policies on HIV/AIDS and Zimbabwe, and his creeping erosion of the effectiveness of parliamentary and other checks on executive power. Much of this was connected to the exposure of corruption in South Africa's 1998 arms deal, which saddled the South African National Defence Force-despite its protests-with costly, inappropriate equipment. When parliament's Public Accounts Committee (Scopa), chaired by Feinstein, stumbled upon this evidence, it initially received support for its investigation from influential ANC officials, including Deputy President Jacob Zuma. But this changed abruptly after direct pressures from Mbeki. Feinstein was isolated and, reluctantly, driven to resign from parliament and leave South Africa. He attributes the undermining of parliament's independence to Mbeki's ruthless use of patronage, facilitated by an electoral system that makes the selection-and retention of office-of MPs dependent on the party bosses rather than local constituencies. Feinstein does not cover other aspects of dysfunctional governance that were warned of by critics (who were dismissed by Mbeki as white racists and their black lackeys) and have recently been confirmed by the crisis in the electricity supplier, Eskom. There are warnings of similar

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problems in areas such as water, transport and education, crucial for the functioning of South Africa's sophisticated economy. These trends raise questions about the assumption that South Africa will serve as Africa's model economy and engine of development.

Feinstein rightly stresses that misgovernance and corruption are not special to Africa, and highlights the prominent role of foreign companies and governments in lobbying for the arms deal which poisoned South African politics. The failure of western governments to confront their own policy blunders and corruption, while preaching and hectoring about transparency and good governance, certainly undermines their capacity to help resolve Africa's problems, strains relations with its governments, and diminishes their credibility as responsible members of the international community.

Merle Lipton, Chatham House, UK

One hundred days of silence: America and the Rwanda genocide. By Jared Cohen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2007. 272pp. Index. $70.00. isbn 0 7425 5236 4.

Jared Cohen's book provides a highly scholarly, historical and chronological narrative of the Rwandan genocide, and what the US government knew, did or failed to do about it. The author flags off the discourse by underscoring the endless blame game in most relevant literature that essentially tries to explain the Rwandan genocide on the basis of the multiple failures of the international community, notably the UN. However, against the backdrop of the fact that the US (the world's most powerful state) dominated the UN decision-making on Rwanda and, coincidentally, had a foreign policy position opposed to peacekeeping in Rwanda, the author tries to unravel the reasons for the US position. He further explores why the US used its hegemonic role in the UN to discourage, lobby against and suspend UN peacekeeping in Rwanda when the ‘perfect opportunity' arose, namely, the despicable killing of ten Belgian peacekeepers on 7 April 1994-a day after the outbreak of genocide. Unlike most other studies that tend to put the burden of blame on the UN for failing to prevent the Rwandan genocide, Cohen casts the greatest blame for non-intervention and culpability on the US for the simple reason that despite having ‘the capacity to end the atrocities, the US government not only chose to play a bystander role, but also ensured that no other country or peacekeeping body could effectively intervene in Rwanda' (p. 2). The author, however, acknowledges the instrumental role played by ex-colonial masters (Germany and Belgium) in laying the historical foundation for political violence in Rwanda, as well as the substantial financial and logistical (arms supply) support that countries like France provided to the genocidal regime.

Cohen argues that even though the US was leading the Arusha Peace Process conceived to end the Rwandan civil war which had lasted for four years before the descent to genocide, US foreign policy-makers had a tacit understanding that on no account would the US government intervene militarily in Rwanda. ‘The US decision not to intervene in Rwanda', according to the author, ‘was predetermined and made six months before the genocide began' (p. 3). The reason for the ‘unspoken decision' not to intervene in Rwanda was the October 1993 peacekeeping catastrophe in Somalia in which 18 American Army Rangers were killed by Somali militias. The international media reported graphic images of American casualties in Somalia, including scenes of the mutilated corpse of one of the American soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by his assailants. The hysterical media broadcast instigated a widespread public and congressional campaign for withdrawal of American forces from Somalia-a country in which the US perceptibly has no strategic interest. President Clinton caved in to domestic public opinion and congressional opposition and announced the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia, leading to the failure of UN humanitarian peacekeeping intervention in the war-torn country. The Somali incident was a redefining moment for the foreign policy thrust of the new Clinton administration originally based on ‘assertive multilateralism' and which ‘stressed the importance of humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping' (p. 47).

Using copious empirical evidence (interview comments of key players, government documents, intelligence transcripts, suppressed memos of policy-makers, etc.), Cohen demonstrates with analytical rigour that a considerable number of members of the US foreign policy establishment had suffi-

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cient information of (looming) large-scale killings in Rwanda both before and during the genocide, but chose to underplay and, in some cases, trivialize it, in order to justify the predetermined pragmatic policy position of non-intervention. The result was ‘the unwillingness to discuss Rwanda at senior levels' of the US government and the repeated disacknowledgement by top US foreign policy-makers during the massacre that anything on the scale of genocide was happening in Rwanda (pp. 175-7).

More than any officials in the US government, Cohen blames President Clinton and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake who had the power and influence to make Rwanda a priority but chose not to because they did not consider it a serious enough matter from the standpoint of strategic interest (p. 5). However, the author did not present any evidence to show that both President Clinton and his National Security Advisor were provided with sufficient information about the genocide by those who had it in the US foreign policy establishment, which could have strengthened his case about their failure to act. Moreover, by narrowing down the blame to two of the most powerful persons in the US government, Cohen tends to trivialize the institutional context of a powerful imperial state such as the US-its composite parts and power distribution, its sprawling bureaucratic machinery and complexity, and most significantly, its tenacity to positively or negatively coalesce around certain foreign policy goals defined from the narrow standpoint of ‘strategic national interest' at the expense of whoever is hurt by such a realpolitik predilection. Further, Cohen's blame tends to overly pander to America's perceived role as the world's policeman.

The foregoing observations notwithstanding, there is no gainsaying the fact that Cohen has produced a highly significant book. This book is the most up-to-date and well-researched publication on the Rwandan genocide, American pragmatism and UN peacekeeping challenges in contemporary international politics.

Kenneth Omeje, University of Bradford, UK

Asia and Pacific

Reconciliation: Islam, democracy and the West. By Benazir Bhutto. London: Simon & Schuster. 2008. 328pp. Index. Pb.: £8.99. isbn 1 847 37273 2.

Benazir Bhutto had to fight against heavy political odds and social prejudices to become the first female prime minister in a Muslim state, Pakistan, in December 1988. Her two returns to Pakistan after years in exile-in April 1986 during the days of General Zia-ul-Haq's rule and in October 2007 while another general, Pervez Musharraf, was in power-facilitated Pakistan's slow transition to democracy. The first transition was disrupted in October 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf assumed power. The latest transition that began in 2007 is in its early stages.

Benazir Bhutto faced suicide attacks within hours of her return to Pakistan on 18 October 2007 and she was killed in another such attack on 27 December 2007. These incidents underlined the twin challenges of extremism and terrorism to political order and stability in Pakistan with implications for the rest of the world.

In Reconciliation, published posthumously, Benazir Bhutto addresses these challenges in Pakistani and global contexts with reference to two conflicts, one between Islam and the West and the other within Islam. She argues that the most critical conflict is not between Islam and the West but within Islam. The latter relates to the competing interpretations of Islamic scriptures and history and the use of Islam as a vehicle for advancing partisan political agenda that may not have anything to do with the principles and teachings of Islam. ‘The debate [within Islam] is between different interpretations of Islam, different visions for the Muslim Ummah. It is about the lack of tolerance that some interpretations show for other interpretations within Islam or other religions outside Islam' (pp. 272-3). The resolution of this conflict will go a long way, she argues, in shaping Islam's relations with the West and the direction of international relations.

The book covers five major themes. First, Bhutto presents a detailed account of her return to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, the unprecedented welcome by her supporters and the suicide attack on her motorcade. Second, a narrative of Pakistan's political history, with a focus on her two terms as

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prime minister (1988-90 and 1993-6), and what she described as conspiracies to discredit and dislodge her governments. Third, she offers a spirited defence of Islam as a champion of tolerance, moderation, equality and socio-cultural pluralism. She argues that there is no conflict between Islam and modern democracy and that there is no incompatibility between Islam and science and technology. Fourth, she categorically rejects the notion of a clash of civilizations as advocated by Samuel Huntington and others and does not accept the inevitability of conflict between the West and Islam. Fifth, she offers views on how to promote reconciliation between Islam and the West as well as within Islam. She repeatedly argues that the resolution of the conflict within Islam facilitates reconciliation between Islam and the West.

Benazir Bhutto provides a detailed account of her homecoming on 18 October 2007 and two bomb attacks on her motorcade that resulted in 170 deaths and over 100 people being injured. The most chilling aspect of the narrative is her claim that the bomb was strapped around a baby, carried by a person who tried to hand the baby to her. She complained about the government's poor security arrangements and accused elements in the Musharraf government of wanting to eliminate her. She also claimed that she had information from different sources that suicide bombers could be sent to kill her by Baitullah Mahsud (leader of the Pakistani Taleban based in the tribal areas), Hamza bin Laden (one of the sons of Osama bin Laden) and the militants from Islamabad's Red Mosque that was stormed by Pakistan's security forces in July 2007.

Bhutto also offers a narrative of Pakistan's political history since 1947 with a brief reference to the earlier period. Focusing on why democracy could not take root in Pakistan, her historical narrative is very laudatory of the political role of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and she hardly admits any flaws during her own two tenures as prime minister. She provides an account of the machinations of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to support her political adversaries and destabilize her government. She claims that Osama bin Laden provided funding to her political adversaries (p. 201) to dislodge the government in 1989. While highlighting her government's role to rein in Islamic extremists in Pakistan she makes a startling claim that if Pakistan's president had not removed her government in November 1996, it would have been ‘difficult for Osama bin Laden to set up base in Afghanistan in 1997' (p. 207). She also shies away from admitting her government's support to the Taleban movement in 1995-6.

The most interesting part of the political narrative pertains to her contacts with the Musharraf regime, which started soon after Pervez Musharraf came to power in October 1999. The interaction was mainly through the ISI and she had a telephone conversation with Musharraf in August 2006 (p. 225) followed by the first face-to-face meeting in January 2007 in the United Arab Emirates

(p. 226).

Benazir Bhutto's spirited defence of Islam as the harbinger of moderation, equality and sociocultural pluralism looks like a Master's level dissertation pulling together supporting evidence from the traditional Islamic scriptures, writings of scholars and history. She argues that there is no conflict between Islam and democracy or between Islam and science. She makes a long and winding argument to reject the well-known ‘clash of civilizations' perspective and underlines the need for ‘dialogue among civilizations' as advocated by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and others.

She returns time and again to the theme that the most serious challenge to Islam is the conflict between different interpretations and visions of Islam. It is between extremism and moderation and between divergent interpretations of the notions of jihad, governance and the relationship between the individual and the state. Muslims generally lack tolerance of diversity of perspectives and interpretation and many individuals and groups use violence to advance their religio-political agendas.

Bhutto argues that the resolution of intra-Muslim conflicts and promotion of ‘Islamic pluralism and compatibility with other religions' are key to advancing democracy, weakening extremism and militancy, and removing tensions between Muslims and the West.

She thinks that the West, especially the United States, can help in addressing these problems among Muslims. It must try to understand why Muslims have cultivated a negative perception of the West and why they view the global war on terrorism as a ‘global war on Islam'. The West must also take into account ‘the residual damage of colonialism' on the Muslim world and ‘its support for

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dictatorship during the Cold War' period (p. 301). It should also address the problems of Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya to mollify Muslims.

She attributes the Muslim world's predicament mainly to poverty and underdevelopment and argues for addressing these problems. She proposes a strategy for coping with these problems that comprises a plan for economic reconstruction of the Muslim world along the lines of the Marshall Plan, establishment of a global association of democratic nations to support the promotion of democracy, and a reconciliation corps, modelled on the Peace Corps, comprising young Muslims from western countries who could be trained in some important skills and posted in Muslim-majority nations for imparting these skills and promoting modernization.

The main discourse of the book on the relationship between the West and Muslims as well as internal problems of the Muslims is not entirely new. Others have written on these issues and a large number of seminars and conferences have also focused on them. However, coming from a female leader of international repute and the chief of Pakistan's leading political party, these issues draw more attention and show that the leaders of the Muslim countries are conscious of the challenges ahead. Her proposals on promotion of reconciliation offer useful guidelines to policy-makers across geographical and cultural divides. Her assassination in a terrorist attack, however, underlines the hazards involved in such efforts.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Dancing in shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the United Nations in Cambodia. By Benny Widyono. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2007. Index. 356pp. Pb.: $29.95. isbn 07425 5553 4.

While many of these events were reported in the daily news at the time, the fresh, direct and uncompromising style, and the overarching perspective from which they are presented, makes Benny Widyono's book on Cambodia's recent past engaging.

Widyono tells it from the inside as a participant and a fellow South-East Asian, as well as from the outside as a non-Cambodian and a representative of the United Nations. He dances between firsthand accounts of political events and personalities and analysis of what motivated them in his memoir of two critical periods in which he was posted to Cambodia.

Fascination and empathy with his subject enabled him to gain access to and the confidence of the Cambodian political elite, making this book possible, and to enliven his depiction of the endgame of Cambodia's 30-year civil war. His text is punctuated with character portraits of those he encountered, from the seafood seller and the cyclo driver, his landlord and fellow officials, from the Khmer Rouge and UNTAC military commanders up to the co-prime ministers and the king.

The book is divided sharply into his two mandates: in 1992/3 as provincial director of UNTAC in Siem Reap, at the time one of the most volatile provinces where the Khmer Rouge was still a force to be reckoned with; and in 1995-7 as the Political Representative of the Secretary General in Cambodia during the unravelling of the first coalition government established during the UNTAC-supervized elections.

In his earthy style, Widyono characteristically relates the genesis of his assignment as a senior member of the nascent UNTAC to a wash-room encounter on the 31^st floor of the UN headquarters with Yasushi Akashi, the newly appointed head of UNTAC. Widyono was keen to escape the narrow confines of work as an economist, to be a part of the newest-and at that stage the largest-UN operation and to have a chance to work in the field in his beloved South-East Asia.

Widyono holds no bars in his exposé of UNTAC's bumbling and bureaucratic behaviour and the negative image it quickly developed in local society due to excesses of expenditure and incompetence, often flagrantly displayed. In this regard the book echoes stories and situations told before, most notably in Emergency sex and other desperate measures (Cain, Postlewait and Thomson, 2006), which includes several chapters on Cambodia.

What is different about Widyono's account is that he goes beyond the personal experiences, for all their shock value and hilarity, placing the whole UNTAC experience within a historical and political

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context. His story begins with and is grounded in a thoroughly researched account of the role of the UN, the major powers and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in maintaining the official recognition of the Khmer Rouge, even sustaining its military and political power for over a decade after it was overthrown in January 1979 and its crimes exposed. It is estimated that over 1.7 million people (perhaps one-third of the population) perished during the three years, eight months and 20 days that they held power. The immorality of the continuing recognition of the offenders while isolating and boycotting those trying to rebuild Cambodia is drawn sharply in Widyono's text.

He goes further still, to show how the Paris Peace Agreements of 23 October 1991 and UNTAC itself, which was established to implement those agreements, were imbued with and embodied the same immorality: first, by legitimating the Khmer Rouge as valid actors in the Cambodian polity, and second, in failing to take action when the Khmer Rouge refused to implement any of the commitments it had undertaken in signing the Paris Peace Agreements, instead maintaining its separate military zones, and eventually withdrawing from the peace process altogether. Widyono calls the voluntary Khmer Rouge withdrawal ‘a blessing in disguise' for otherwise the Paris Peace Agreements would in all likelihood have reached their logical conclusion in a coalition government including the Khmer Rouge.

The UNTAC mission concluded in September 1993 but Widyono returned just a few months later in a new role as the Political Representative of the Secretary General. As such, he was able to see the first three years of the emerging post-UNTAC Cambodia with all its unresolved political tensions, a period that has not yet been much analysed.

Widyono was there when over one-third of the remaining Khmer Rouge troops rallied to the government in September 1996. In July 1997 the first coalition government collapsed in armed conflict. In contrast to many other reporters of this story, who usually use the term coup d'état, Widyono (and the UN at the time) saw the cause of the collapse as both sides trying to take advantage of the political and military disintegration of the Khmer Rouge. The final sting in the tail of the Khmer Rouge was felt in the fighting of July 1997 and the subsequent international reaction: suspension of aid to Cambodia, once again holding vacant the Cambodia seat in the United Nations General Assembly, and a delay in the admission of Cambodia to ASEAN.

Many of the key figures he describes are still active, albeit in new roles. Sihanouk has retired but, as the King Father, still comments on his website on political developments as they unfold. The remaining senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge are now in detention, facing trial in a hybrid court established jointly by the United Nations and the Cambodian government (still led by Prime Minister Hun Sen in a coalition government re-established after the 1998 and 2003 elections). Widyono's sharp insight into Cambodia of ten years ago, and his identification of the Khmer Rouge as a significant force throughout that period, albeit in the shadows, considerably help one's understanding of Cambodia today.

Helen Jarvis, Chief of Public Affairs, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Cambodia

Rivals: how the power struggle between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade. By Bill Emmott. London: Allen Lane. 2008. 314pp. Index. £20.00. isbn 1 846 14009 9.

Just as the rest of the world is striving to come to terms with the dizzying rise of China and, more recently, of India, a new Asian challenge is taking shape before our eyes. It is posed less by those countries' rapid economic development than by the fractious political power play that it threatens to set off between them and also Asia's third (but increasingly overlooked) giant, Japan.

That is the central thesis of Rivals, which argues that managing relations between the trinity of Asian powers will be one of the twenty-first century's most critical tasks, with ramifications extending far beyond Asia. Indeed, it suggests that the shifting power balance in the region brought about by rapid growth may turn out to be of greater long-term global importance than the war on terror and the much-discussed ‘clash of civilizations' between Islam and the West.

Those are bold claims-and Emmott backs them with solid, thoughtful and well-documented arguments. Until recently, he says, pursuit of national prosperity has kept Chinese and Indian policy-makers' attention focused primarily on priorities at home, rather than on grand designs abroad. At the

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same time, expanding trade and investment flows in Asia have helped underpin regional stability by fostering the increased economic interdependence that has deterred Asian governments from aggressive actions that might derail the gravy train.

However, the book contends, economics and politics cannot remain compartmentalized indefinitely. As the quest for resources leads India and China to look increasingly beyond their own borders, and as their ambitions for superpower status encourage more assertive foreign policies and jockeying for national advantage, the two countries cannot avoid impinging increasingly on each other's interests and spheres of influence, and on those of Japan.

The biggest danger is not that they will actively seek confrontation, but will rather be sucked into it by miscalculations and over-reactions that will bring into play their steadily more powerful military forces. In a region riddled with potential flashpoints, historic mistrust and acute feelings of national victimhood-well illustrated by the author's guided tour of military memorials in China, Japan and South Korea-there is plenty of tinder available. Although published just before China's recent crackdown on Tibet, the book presciently includes the region in a list of Asia's biggest potential flashpoints.

Emmott does not conclude that the worst will necessarily happen, nor does he presume to predict outcomes with certainty. (He is wise enough to acknowledge that much about Asia's future, above all China's political direction, is unknowable.) At every turn, he includes optimistic scenarios, based on the hope that self-restraint and good sense will prevail. But in each case he also spells out starkly the dire consequences-for the region and for the world-if they do not.

Interspersing the analyses of regional trends are separate chapters on China, India and Japan. These offer few startling insights, being more ‘new-readers-start-here' summaries of the countries' recent economic and political history, spiced with personal anecdotes. Nonetheless, they are observant and well put together, and the judgements in them are astute. At the least, they offer an excellent primer on the forces and, equally important, the obstacles shaping the three countries' economic fortunes.

Curiously, the least convincing chapter is on Japan, the Asian country Emmott knows best (he was Tokyo correspondent for The Economist, before becoming its editor). He insists cumulative reforms instituted by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will progressively restore Japan's political direction and economic momentum. That arguably underestimates the need for strong and sustained government leadership to drive the changes through and the danger that a relapse into Japanese politics-as-usual will now rob the effort of vigour. Still, Emmott is surely right in saying that Japan has gone too far in opening up to the world simply to retreat into its shell and ignore international pressures to adjust.

But these are minor quibbles. Rivals is a highly readable book that both gives a concise and penetrating account of the complex changes sweeping across Asia and advances debate on their impact beyond familiar western lamentations about trade deficits and competition from cheap manufactured imports and offshore out-sourcing. While identifying emerging issues that should be of even greater long-term concern to the rest of the world, it scrupulously avoids the near hysterical stridency and Manichaean approach that characterize too many western books on the region, and particularly on China. It also punctures many common myths and misconceptions about contemporary Asia. Emmott does not pretend to have all the answers about the region's future course: nobody could. But he poses some good questions.

Guy de Jonquières, Chatham House, UK

The battle for China's past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. By Mobo Gao. London: Pluto Press. 2008. 270pp. Index. £18.99. isbn 0 7453 2780 x.

A frequent debate in Chinese intellectual life, in the wake of the acceleration of the country's economic reforms, has focused upon the interpretation of the early years of the People's Republic and especially the legacy of Mao Zedong. This book argues that the history of Maoism in China is in danger of being excessively denigrated both by intellectuals within China who have become too enamoured of the current era of reform and too quick to criticize the past, as well as by historians and

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

analysts outside the country who have published pieces on Mao's regime which rush to vilify it at the expense of rigorous historical analysis. Although not dismissing the violence and despair found in China under Mao, and especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Gao's work is a pointed polemic aimed at specific recent works about the first leader of the People's Republic which, it is argued, distort much current thinking about this tragic time in China's recent history.

Within China today, intellectual debates about the country's past and its political and socioeconomic future have produced two distinct schools of thought. These include liberalists who support the current paths of post-1978 reform and are quicker to reject that which took place before the grand experiments in market liberalization began, and the so-called ‘New Left' movement which questions conventional wisdom about the reforms while expressing concerns about their toll on China's society and identity. This work is clearly sympathetic to the latter school as well as presenting a warning that misinterpretation of China's past can and will have negative effects on both the reforms and the country's overall future. As the author notes, ‘On a deep level, it is about liberalism versus revolution and about continuity versus change' (p. 8). The differing interpretations of the Cultural Revolution are, it is argued, one example of the history of the PRC now being thrown open to debate, not all of it healthy or productive.

Making extensive use of recent debates about the Maoist era and electronic media, Gao seeks to demonstrate to what extent conventional wisdom about the Cultural Revolution and the manner in which it has been viewed in the West are often the result of distortion of historical data. Much of the book's rancour is aimed towards two popular political histories of the Maoist era, namely Mao: the unknown story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday and Li Zhisui's The private life of Chairman Mao, the former being referred to as ‘an intellectual scandal' (p. 65). Both works, it is argued, contain arguments which run counter to historical evidence, and the author also expresses much frustration at scholars who were thought to be too quick to praise the books.

This critique of how the Cultural Revolution has been analysed in the West, as well as the problems of the pro-modernization liberalist schools of thought in China, succeeds in underscoring the assertion that studies of this rampageous period are far from complete. The final section describing how disagreements over interpreting Chinese history are affecting Beijing's political and economic development today could have been more fully developed, and there are occasional grammatical errors which are problematic. However, The battle for China's past does succeed in calling attention to the existence of the still strong links between China's Maoist past and to its reformist present as well as the need to understand them better.

Marc Lanteigne, University of St Andrews, UK

China rising: peace, power and order in East Asia. By David C. Kang. New York: Columbia University Press. 2007. 274pp. Index. £14.95. isbn 0 2311 4188 2.

The growth of Chinese power has arguably been felt most keenly in the country's immediate neighbourhood, especially in East and South-East Asia. Beijing's economic power is swiftly being transformed into expanded diplomatic capabilities, and a power shift has been under way in the Pacific Rim for at least the past decade. However, there is the question of why, unlike in previous occurrences of rapidly rising great powers, China's growth is not viewed by most of its neighbours as a potential threat. This book addresses this question, and suggests the case of China runs counter to traditional realist theory that a developing great power will often trigger balance-of-power behaviour in the form of countering alliances. ‘The East Asian states tend to share a view of China that is more benign than conventional international relations theories might predict' (p. 6). Great power development has also occasionally led to regional destabilization; witness Europe in previous centuries. Yet in East Asia, with some outlying cases, stability is the norm. With the possible exception of Taiwan, the possibilities of a border conflict involving a rising China are viewed by many as extremely remote.

Starting with a brief overview of Asian regionalism and noteworthy strategic events, this book examines the major actors in the East Asian region and determines how each one has responded to China's new diplomatic and economic challenges. Not all actors have engaged China equally. Some

Book reviews

South-East Asian states such as Vietnam and Malaysia are seen as in favour of accommodating China while others such as Japan are more wary. However, Kang argues that overall there is little hard evidence of a counter-alliance composed of China's neighbours appearing in the near future. Instead, the development of institutions in the Pacific Rim has been greatly influenced by regional trade and these groups are often inclusive of China, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum and the newer ASEAN-plus-three regime. While the book argues nationalism does play a role in China's foreign policy thinking, it is not sufficient to deter Beijing from developing its ‘peaceful rise' strategies and calling for greater regional cooperation.

The main body of this work is a study of the modern bilateral relationships between China and its major East Asian neighbours in the context of what issues could lead to cooperation or conflict. Especially interesting and increasingly relevant in current studies on China's regional policy are the chapters on Beijing's warming relations with South Korea and South-East Asia. However, the book does not ignore some difficult case-studies in China's peripheral diplomacy, not only Taiwan but also Japan. In the wake of political and security issues including the strengthened US-Japanese alliance, territorial disputes, and interpretations of Second World War history, ‘Tokyo has chosen to embrace China economically and hedge against China militarily' (p. 181). There is also the intriguing argument that although the United States is cognizant of China's rise, it too is not seeking to balance Beijing's growing power directly.

There are some editing issues with the book, and at points its conclusions could be more fully developed, expanding upon the significance of Asia's approach to regionalism and how it is challenging many long-held realist views on cooperation and conflict. However, the book does make strongly supported arguments that taking a realist, power politics approach to China's rise in East Asia greatly distorts the emerging diplomatic realities in the region.

Marc Lanteigne, University of St Andrews, UK

Reluctant restraint: the evolution of China's nonproliferation policies and practices, 1980-2004. By Evan S. Medeiros. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. 2007. 357pp. Index. £42.50. isbn 0 8047 5552 3.

The expansion and modernization of China's foreign policy, following the more open practices of the Deng Xiaoping era, often resulted in significant reversals of many of Beijing's previously held views on international cooperation. One of the most obvious examples of this change has been in the areas of nuclear and missile proliferation policy. Prior to the 1980s, Beijing regarded international efforts to deter the spread of such weaponry with both derision and suspicion, reflecting concerns that arms control initiatives were merely ploys by the Great Powers to keep such technology from other states. China's first test of a nuclear weapon in 1964 clearly reflected its desire to strike a blow for security (and nuclear prestige) in the developing world.

The 1980s and early 1990s, however, saw a dramatic shift in Beijing's thinking, illustrated by its decision to sign on to several major global arms control agreements which it had previously shunned, including the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (1992), the International Atomic Energy Agency (1984) and the Zangger Committee (1997). While the evolution of China's thinking on proliferation has been sporadic and at times ‘reluctant', the end result is that Beijing is now one of the world's largest supporters of international non-proliferation regimes and a frequent advocate of arms control. This is a key development in the wake of current international concerns about the nuclear policies of North Korea and Iran. The question of why Beijing chose to throw its support behind international non-proliferation efforts, despite its previous thinking, is an important one in nuclear weapons political studies. In this volume, Medeiros argues that the American factor, namely concentrated engagement by Washington via a series of carrot-and-stick policies over the past two decades, contributed significantly to Beijing's current views on non-proliferation. ‘China moved', it is argued, ‘from refusing to take a seat at the non-proliferation table to being one of the hosts'. Medeiros also states that ‘US policy played a central role in this evolution, especially by increasing the speed and depth of key changes' (p. 20).

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Showing a keen eye for detail and professionally constructed arguments, this work outlines the evolution of China's views on nuclear weapons proliferation and missile technology sales, arguing that these two issues were often approached separately by Beijing. Much attention is given to US negotiations with China over specific attempted weapons technology transfers to Iran and Pakistan, and the need to bring Beijing further into international norms stigmatizing such actions. However, it is also argued that the US began to undermine its own progress by seeking to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to develop missile defence capabilities by the late 1990s, policies which ‘pushed China in the opposite direction-towards disdain for non-proliferation and arms control efforts' (p. 208). Of particular concern to China has been the possibility of Theatre Missile Defence being deployed to American allies Japan and Taiwan. It can be argued that this work may weigh the US role too heavily and that other factors such as the greater professionalism of Beijing's foreign policy and defence agencies and the fact that China is getting closer to established Great Power status, adapting a more pro-status quo thinking in line with this evolution, are also strong motivators. Nevertheless, the arguments presented here contribute a great deal of essential material to those with an interest in Sino-American security relations and the state of non-proliferation endeavours today.

Marc Lanteigne, University of St Andrews, UK

Frontier of faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan borderland. By Sana Haroon. London: Hurst. 2007. 256pp. Index. £25.00. isbn 1 850 65854 2.

Sana Haroon makes an important and timely contribution to our understanding of the Pak-Afghan borderland. She writes about religious organization and mobilization in the North West Frontier Tribal Areas by examining the roots, rise and dominance of the mullah in the social and political fabric of the Pukhtun tribal belt. Through laborious and meticulous research she seeks to substantiate her argument-of the centrality and authority of the mullah in the Pukhtun society of this unadministered territory, challenging the conventional wisdom and anthropological literature that have situated the mullah outside the Pukhtun social code and provided him with power and influence either in the absence of alternative centres of power or during times of jihad. Haroon further extrapolates from this argument, creating a narrative along a historical trajectory to illustrate the means by which the mullah on the Afghan frontier has been responsible for the perpetuation of what is an autonomous tribal zone first created out of the colonial cartographic project of the Great Game.

This is quite an undertaking considering, as she herself admits, that the ‘study of the evolution of Islam in the Tribal Areas is hampered by the absence of literary production by which to trace religious interpretations or the precise nature of religious practice in the Pukhtun areas'. Yet she provides a ‘template' for religious organization in the tribal areas by first situating the mullah in a Sufi religious order implemented through the pirmuridri system that she asserts is prevalent in the Pukhtun tribal areas. Over time she traces the evolution and change of Islam in the tribal areas to a more hard-line Deobandi school following the rise of the mullah in the armed movements that eventually ousted the colonial government, and the continued role of the mullah in the early years of the creation of Pakistan-finally ending her book with a generalized epilogue on the Afghan jihad and the Talebanization of tribal territory.

Her strength of understanding and analysis clearly lies in the colonial period. From there onwards her examination is driven by her premise of the predominance of the mullah in the tribal areas which undermines a more sophisticated exploration of the Pukhtun borderland. Like much of the literature on this elusive borderland, her examination becomes one-dimensional and not without conjecture and at times even subject to an ‘inaccurate representation of the Pukhtun highland communities'. One such example, among others, is her interpretation of the Kashmir jihad. She oversimplifies the motivations of the tribes and exaggerates their aptitude for independent and spontaneous action, without considering the role of the Pakistani state in this movement.

Sana Haroon begins her book by putting the point across that ‘this study of Islam in the Tribal Areas is situated with reference to its unusual administrative situation in order to free the study of

Book reviews

the Pukhtun tribes from the straitjacket of debate centred on cultural disposition and fanaticism'. Her excellent opening chapter bodes well in defence of her argument, where she deconstructs the Pukhtun ethnography of Yaghistan and defines it only as a colonial construct with cartographic intentions. Yet by the time one reaches the end of her work, one cannot help but be disappointed that, despite her good intentions and excellent research skills, her narrative carries echoes of the colonial intelligence information that has perpetuated the myth of the ‘Hindustani fanatic'. Nevertheless, she makes an important point about the audacity and clout of the mullah in fighting for, protecting and even securing the autonomy of the tribal areas. We are, once again, witness to history repeating itself, as this theme is played out along the Pak-Afghan border today. Despite this it would be a grave mistake to interpret the current insurgency through this one perspective as this might lead to misplaced policies.

Ayesha Khan, University of Cambridge, UK

North America

The long war: a new history of US national security policy since World War II. Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich. New York: Columbia University Press. 2007. 586pp. Index. £44.00. isbn 0 231 13158 2.

This new history of American security since the Second World War has an admirable goal: to rethink the role and purpose of American security and its institutions outside the confines of Cold War periodization, especially in the light of events post-Cold War. It is particularly intended to debate the merits and legacies of the security system that developed in the ‘shadow of World War II'. The goal is pursued through a series of essays on themes related to security, from more traditional examinations of security policy, through analyses of contested notions such as the ‘military industrial complex', to discussions of culture and security.

For students of international affairs and US foreign policy, the first half of the book will be fairly unsurprising, even with its mild revisionism, dealing with various aspects of US military and security policy. Chapters examining the ideology of national security (Arnold A. Offner), the American way of war ( James Kurth), conventional war (George H. Quester) and a broad overview of security policy (Tami Davis Biddle) all give a solid sweeping overview of the period in question. These chapters are followed by more institutionally oriented analyses of civil-military relations (Andrew J. Bacevich), national security institutions (Anna Kasten Nelson) and intelligence ( John Prados). Finally the book investigates a number of themes that are not as common for students of international affairs, covering the military industrial complex (Alex Roland), defence budgets, the economy and politics (Benjamin

O. Fordham), the evolution of military service ( James Burk), dissent and protest (Charles Chatfield) and cinema and national security (William L. O'Neill).

Overall the book attempts to present a revisionist reading of American security policy and history since the Second World War, and in this goal it is really only partially successful: for the already initiated, there is not much that is new here that one would not gain from reading Bacevich's own recent work or works such as Michael Sherry's In the shadow of war (1995). A core problem of the book is that it really longs for a more unified perspective, and some kind of synthesis (though to be fair Bacevich does argue in the introduction that the essays were intended to stand alone). It essentially gives a revisionist view of the Cold War and beyond, but through different thematic lenses. Individually many of the chapters are excellent, and they all have at the very least fulfilled the mandate of the editor. But it would have been useful to have had further interconnections between the chapters, as very few even refer to one another, despite many overlapping issues and discussions.

On the other hand, the volume can also be read as an introduction to these various issues and themes, and here it is highly successful, as many of the chapters do provide concise introductions to sometimes disparate areas of American security history. Additionally, the lack of systematic synthesis or dialogue between the chapters can also be a strength in seeing individual themes highlighted that are not always given a detailed overview or discussion in single-author volumes. For example,

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Roland's chapter on the military industrial complex is a real standout in terms of analytic clarity and engagement with the issue. Fordham's chapter on military budgets is also highly illuminating, looking at the relationship between military expenditure, economic growth and regional politics within the US.

In the end, a key point of the work is to raise the issue of the role of the national security state, and especially the role of the military, in American political life as something to be part of national debate. Both Bacevich and Nelson in their essays point to how the development of a national security state partially amounted to withdrawing discussion of national security matters from the public realm. In this regard, the highlighting of the impact of the ‘shadow of World War II' on the present is certainly extremely useful, and seeing American security in this broader context is surely worth repeating and revisiting.

Bryan Mabee, Queen Mary, University of London, UK

The mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America. By High Wilford.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2008. 342pp. Index. £18.95. isbn 0 674 02681 0.

‘One day in late October 1940 ... two hunters were making their way home through the woods'. It is not often you find a book on CIA operations opening like a novel, drawing you into the narrative. The quotation above refers to how the discovery of a body ultimately revealed a figure, Willi Münzenberg, at the centre of a string of front organizations, ‘committees superficially devoted to some undeniably benign cause, such as anti-imperialism, peace, or antifascism, whose real purpose was to defend the spread of the Bolshevik revolution'.

Wilford's fascinating book is a history of the CIA counterpart that began to unravel with a 1967 exposé in the US press. The string of ‘fronts' operated by the CIA, which permeated US and European societies and spread further afield into Third World areas during the 1950s, was characterized as the ‘mighty Wurlitzer' by CIA operative Frank Wisner. The title itself echoes other work conducted in the field, especially Francis Stoner-Saunders's Who paid the piper? (2000), but Wilford's thesis is different. While Wisner likened these organizations to the musical instrument on which he could play any tune to further his propaganda, Wilford argues that many of the people in these organizations were not just the innocent objects of CIA agendas but actually joined with personal objectives and frequently played a significant role in shaping the outcomes of the operations. That is to say, this was not a one-way dialogue. CIA agendas were augmented and shaped by the protagonist's ambition. Wilford makes the clear distinction between the ‘witting' and ‘unwitting' members of such organizations in what turns out to be a fascinating account of an array of life, art, journalism, faith, labour and a range of other areas during this period.

Apart from the policy of containment, George Kennan is credited with reviving the idea that American citizen groups have had a long tradition in banding ‘together to champion the cause of freedom for people suffering under oppression'. Kennan proposed reviving the tradition to advance the US national interests at a time of the ‘present crisis' of the late 1940s. The work reveals the depth of CIA involvement, integration and cooperation first by working with émigrés, often characters with extensive experience and ‘terrible records as war criminals', who were secreted out of Germany to contribute to a range of US covert activities. The psychological warfare that they and others engaged in is not a completely new story-Stoner-Saunders and William Scott Lucas have covered some of the ground-but Wilford's narrative demonstrates the depth of witting cooperation and the range of celebrities, authors, intellectuals and others involved.

The work is therefore structured around various groups associated with social and cultural strata from émigrés, labour, New York intellectuals, writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers, to the student campuses, women's groups, Catholics, African Americans and journalists. Despite some unwitting participation, the rich depth of investigation provided by Wilford provides an understanding of how this activity was seen, within its context of widespread cultural consensus, as quite acceptable. Though, for instance, certain writers insisted on their independence, they saw nothing wrong in working with the CIA to further their legitimate goals. Others simply enjoyed the funding.

Book reviews

Of course by the late 1960s, as the revelations first unfolded, US culture had moved away from the ideological certainty of the Cold War era of consensus.

Though much intelligence still remains classified and access to the records of the groups is always difficult and incomplete, this study goes to great lengths to provide fairly comprehensive accounts of both CIA objectives and its client organizations; the book represents a sophisticated integration of intelligence history with social and cultural history. Above all it is very well written; it engages the reader from the outset through clandestine operations to the heights of culture and celebrity.

David Ryan, University College Cork, Ireland

Latin America and Caribbean

Panama lost? US hegemony, democracy, and the canal. By Peter M. Sánchez. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. 2007. Index. 264pp. $59.95. isbn 0 8130 3046 3.

In Democracy in Latin America (2005), political scientist Peter Smith tentatively suggested that there was a correlation between the late development of democracy in the circum-Caribbean, in contrast to South America, and the preponderant influence of the United States in the region: ‘the greater level of US involvement', he wrote, ‘the later (and probably less durable) the appearance of electoral democracy'. The ‘unnaturally close relationship between Panama and the United States' (p. 112) since the mid-nineteenth century represents a fertile terrain in which to test this general proposition.

Peter Sánchez, in a work that appears to be based largely on the secondary literature as well as a smattering of interviews, seeks to demonstrate how US policies ‘promoted conditions non-conducive for the development of polyarchy in Panama' (p. 38): support for continued Colombian sovereignty over the isthmus before 1900 ‘weakened the Panamanian elite's efforts to achieve independence and financial viability' (p. 46); the Hay/Bunay-Varilla treaty (1903), the legal foundation of the US Canal Zone, abridged the new nation's sovereignty and also constrained its economic development; the introduction of West Indian workers to build the Canal served at the time to increase racial divisions; and the preponderant US presence limited the political elite's options. He also shows in some detail how, during the course of the twentieth century, the US frequently intervened in Panama's internal affairs to forestall political instability in an area of paramount strategic and economic importance. The US thus connived at the ouster of Arnulfo Arias in 1941 on account of regional security concerns, thereby restoring the oligarchy to power. It lent its support to the Remón dictatorship in the early 1950s because ‘Colonels, like oligarchs, were good for US business and security needs' (p. 120). It accepted ‘with alacrity the anti-polyarchic military regime' (p. 145) of Omar Torrijos after 1968 because the latter offered stability in the face of the purported communist threat. It tolerated the fraudulent election of Nicolás Ardito Barletta in 1984 because US strategic interests in Central America at the time took precedence over the restoration of competitive politics and the retroactively declared ‘thug', Manuel Antonio Noriega, initially proved to be a useful ally. Both Noriega and the Panamanian Defence Forces could be removed from power by means of the full-scale invasion of December 1989 since by the late 1980s both had become liabilities, rather than assets, in the quest to maintain US power on the isthmus. Only in the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, did the United States become fully supportive of procedural democracy in Panama.

One of the other principal themes of Sánchez's work is the internal factors both favouring and militating against democracy on the isthmus. Although a weak state, ethnic and racial tensions, a low level of socio-economic development, and an oligarchy resistant to broader contestation participation undermined democratic development during the early republic, Panama was not burdened, like many other countries in Latin America, by the existence of an entrenched landed elite. Nor has militarism been an abiding characteristic of Panamanian politics: ‘It was not until the rise of a stronger National Police under [José] Remón, aided by Washington, that the police/armed forces became highly politicized and a decisive political actor' (p. 116). The October 1968 coup by the National Guard was Panama's first military takeover, in marked contrast to the regional pattern. Panama's experience with liberal democracy since 1990 conforms to the Latin American norm: competitive elections coupled with ‘financial troubles,

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs

persistent poverty, high unemployment, protests, and government corruption' (p. 194).

Sánchez makes a fairly strong case for the very negative role played by the US in Panama's halting democratic development, though the evidence he marshals seems at times somewhat circumstantial. The theoretical construct of an asymmetric power relationship so profoundly conditioning a country's moves towards liberal democracy would appear, however, to translate less readily to the rest of the circum-Caribbean, where endogenous factors were far more significant. The US relationship with Panama, though it bore obvious similarities with those of the other countries in the region that had experienced intermittent US intervention, was very much sui generis. Nowhere else in Latin America did the US have such an important economic and strategic asset as it did in the Panama Canal, the justification for its all too frequent meddling in isthmian affairs.

One particular parallel that the author attempts to make with contemporaneous developments elsewhere in the region appears overdrawn. The authoritarian Remón regime in the 1950s cannot gainfully be said to fit into the same mould as the ‘sultanistic regimes' of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. He is closer to the mark in comparing the Torrijos regime with the reformist military governments in Peru and Ecuador rather than to the later bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes of the Southern Cone.

Sánchez does have a tendency to make statements without being able to present any corroborative evidence. For instance, he declares that the US ‘most likely even pushed for [the] change' of the National Police into the National Guard in 1953 (p. 120). ‘US agencies', he further suggests, ‘most likely accepted and even promoted Noriega's seemingly anti-US activities because it gave the general a nationalist veneer' (p. 164). Such assertions need to be fortified by some primary research in the documentary record.

The narrative, moreover, is occasionally burdened by maladroit syntax as well as by inapposite expressions (‘on the isthmus, where political decay could emerge at any moment' (p. 121) and ‘the middle sectors that clamoured for nationalism' (p. 142), for example). There are also a fair few typographic errors, in particular regarding dates. Such problems could have been obviated by more diligent copy-editing. These, though, are relatively minor blemishes in a work that otherwise succeeds in conveying the reasons why the self-proclaimed ‘world's greatest democracy' has failed until quite recently to promote its cherished ideals in a part of Latin America where it has most brought its influence to bear.

Philip Chrimes

Warfare in Latin America. Volumes 1 and 2. Edited by Miguel A. Centeno. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2007. 533pp and 599pp. £280.00. isbn 0754624868.

There has been a notable profusion of works in English over the last couple of decades on Latin America's wars. Foremost among these, at least for sheer scope, has been Robert Scheina's ambitious two-volume 2003 opus on wars large and small, inter-state and intra-state, since the early nineteenth-century. The continent's major conventional wars have also commanded renewed attention: the first part of Thomas Whigham's study of the Paraguayan War appeared in 2002; William Sater produced a new history of the War of the Pacific in 2007; and Bruce Farcau authored an account of the Chaco War in 1996. The development of the military as an institution has also received careful scrutiny in fine analytical works from Robert Holden (on Central America) and Frank McCann (on Brazil), both published in 2004. Rebellions, guerrilla insurgencies and counter-insurgency operations have been analysed at length and the literature on civil-military relations has, of course, been abundant. Paradoxically, there has also been a body of work arguing that in the twentieth century Latin America, in contrast to other parts of the world, constituted a veritable ‘zone of peace' and that defence policy, as a consequence, has been a distinctly low priority for civilian politicians, concerned more with regime defence than with existential foreign threats.

Warfare in Latin America is a reflection of this overall scholarly output rather than an original contribution to it. It is an anthology of previously published articles from learned journals and a few chapters drawn from multi-authored books. It is part of a series entitled The international library of essays

Book reviews

on military history; of the 34 tomes published so far, only one has been published in two volumes. This has given Miguel Centeno more latitude in his selection of articles than that accorded to his fellow editors. The reason for this largess is not explained. All the essays have been reprinted in their entirety in their original format, down to the previous pagination alongside that of the present compendium. The overall impression is that of a superior form of student reader. One unfortunate consequence of this strict adherence to the original format is that today's reader learns nothing that is current about the authors of the various articles; either the author's position at the time of publication is given on the first page following journal practice or no information is given because other journals have chosen to provide this elsewhere in the issue. The editor, in short, ought to have compiled an independent and up-to-date list of contributors to the volume.

The choice of articles for inclusion has been constrained by considerations of length and availability in English; this is clearly a major limitation on the whole exercise, not any dearth of scholarship in the field. The earliest article, on the 1969 ‘soccer war' between Honduras and El Salvador, was published in 1970 and the most recent in 2004. Quite a large number of articles originally appeared in some of the leading journals in the field of Latin American studies and will be familiar to area specialists. Some represented cutting-edge research at the time of publication and were to form the basis of book-length works in subsequent years. While a number of the articles still seem fresh, vibrant and relevant, others, especially those dealing with contemporaneous issues of guerrilla insurgency and particular bilateral relationships, appear decidedly dated.

The collection is broken down into five parts: pre-Conquest and Conquest; independence; international wars, of which only the soccer war and the Falklands war of 1982 took place in the second half of the twentieth century; civil wars, containing the largest selection and with eight out of 13 contributions dealing with the post-1960 period; and, finally, a disparate grouping of essays under the rubric ‘strategies and institutions', over half of which deal with current issues.

Many of the articles address concerns wider than those associated with traditional military history. Neil Harvey's piece on the Zapatista rebellion of January 1994, for instance, is in fact a socio-economic and political analysis of the factors that lay at its root during the preceding decade.

The selection criteria mean that the essays present a rather episodic picture of armed conflict in Latin America. Readers seeking a detailed and more coherent account of events would do well to complement this volume with Robert Scheina's Latin America's Wars. Some better choices might also have been made when seeking texts that adequately explain the fundamental dynamics of certain conflicts: for example, political scientist Nazih Richani has written a number of incisive articles on the political economy of the ‘war system' operative in contemporary Colombia.

Centeno's anthology will assuredly find its way onto the shelves of specialist libraries, though they will need to be endowed with healthy acquisition budgets. It will appeal primarily to students of military history, helping to extend the discipline's gaze beyond its hitherto largely Eurocentric focus. From the perspective of Latin American studies, however, the book constitutes a missed opportunity to have commissioned some original essays from the growing pool of authors who have shown themselves to be early exponents of the new Latin American military history.

Philip Chrimes

International Affairs 84: 4, 2008 © 2008 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs