International Affairs

Book reviews
International Relations theory

The evolution of International Security Studies. By Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen. Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009. 384pp. Index. Pb.: 17.99. isbn 978 0 52169 422 3.
In this important new contribution to International Security Studies (ISS), Barry Buzan and Lene
Hansen provide the fields first disciplinary history. ISS is defined, they argue, not by its theoretical
and methodological preferences, or even by a distinctive empirical field (such as the application of
military force), but by a shared endeavour to discuss four central questions, namely: What is the
appropriate referent of security? What are the principal threats to that referent (are they internal or
external)? Does security extend beyond the military realm? And is security inextricably linked to the
dynamic of threats, danger and urgency? For Buzan and Hansen, therefore, it is the questions that
define the field and not the methods, theories and empirics mobilized to answer them. As a result,
the book offers a very broad approach to the field that incorporates traditionalists, those who call for
the widening and deepening of security on the one hand, and those, such as peace researchers and
advocates of critical security studies, who have sometimes criticized the whole endeavour of ISS
or its associate, Strategic Studies, on the other. This approach helps capture and contextualize the
field and identify some surprising elements of continuity and overlap. For example, getting beyond
the sometimes vitriolic denunciations that have been thrown across the ideological divide, Buzan
and Hansen skilfully demonstrate that during the Cold War, traditionalist security studies operating
within a positivist framework had much in common with mainstream peace studies: they both
focused on military threats and employed similar methodologies. Indeed, while traditional security
studies has borne the brunt of criticism over the past two decades for its positivist and statist orienta
tions, the authors show that, if anything, peace research has tended to be more uniformly positivist
than its traditionalist counterpart.
As one might expect from a book penned by Buzan and Hansen, this is not simply a narra
tive account. Instead, the authors set themselves the much more challenging task of accounting
for disciplinary change. To do this, they organize their account around five driving forces (great
power politics; technological imperatives; events; internal dynamics of academic debates; and insti
tutionalization) and identify the work being done by each within a given period. The result is a
comprehensive, sophisticated and compelling account of the field. The book is packed with impor
tant insights and necessary correctives to academic fashion. Two that struck this reviewer were: first,
that it is important to remember that the widening and deepening of security studies was not a
product of the end of the Cold War, but began much earlier with the opening up of Third World
security studies by such pioneers as Caroline Thomas; the recognition of the role of culture given by
figures as seemingly diverse as Ken Booth and Colin Gray; the widening of security to new sectors
by Buzan himself in the early 1980s; and the deepening of security led by feminist scholars and
activists from the 1970s onwards. The second was that although events are important disciplinary
drivers, they exert much less direct and immediate influence than might be thought: the end of the
Cold War neither terminated the work of traditionalists nor propelled entirely new approaches (as
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2010 The Author(s). Journal Compilation 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Book reviews
noted before, the groundwork for widening and deepening was done before the end of the Cold
War), and although 9/11 brought forth a pile of new literature on terrorism and counter-terrorism,
much else in the discipline has continued as beforeincluding the traditionalist focus on the Great
Powers and the non-traditionalist on human security and emancipation, neither of which is much
concerned with 9/11 and the war on terror. In the end, the authors conclude that ISS is a broad
church, which is strengthened by the diversity of its debates. Some readers might be disappointed
that, ultimately, the authors remain relatively agnostic on the questions of what ought to be valued
and studied by the discipline. But it is this agnosticism that gives the volume its weight and results in
a thoroughly comprehensive, unerringly balanced and sophisticatedly argued account of ISS that is
essential reading for newcomers and old hands alike.
Alex J. Bellamy, The University of Queensland, Australia
International law and organization

Escaping the self-determination trap. By Marc Weller. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. 2008. 230pp.
45.00. isbn 978 9 00417 488 7.
Following the declaration of independence by Kosovo and Russias recognition of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, self-determination has again become a topic of debate in international affairs. Was
Kosovo a unique case or did it set a precedent? Did Russia break international law when it recognized
Georgias breakaway regions? Because of questions like these, Marc Wellers timely book represents
a much-needed and very welcome addition to the literature, which deserves a wide audience, both
in academia and beyond.
Weller sets out with a poignant observation: self-determination kills. Self-determination conflicts
are persistent and destructive, and the books main argument is that the classic, highly restrictive
doctrine of self-determination actually contributes to this. The rigid insistence on territorial integrity
has not served the proclaimed goal of securing international peace and stability, and Weller conse
quently welcomes the more subtle, flexible and complex application of the rule of self-determination
that he has observed over the past few years.
Escaping the self-determination trap is roughly divided into two parts: the first part is based in interna
tional law and analyses the doctrine of self-determination in its classic, colonial sense as well as more
recent developments, such as constitutional and remedial self-determination. In the second part of
the book, Weller puts on his International Relations hat and offers an empirically rich examination
of the variety of ways in which self-determination claims are now being settled: from autonomy, to
deferred self-determination, to de facto statehood.
As Weller argues, outside the colonial context, the international system has been rigged to ensure
that the state prevails; self-determination is seen as an exceptional right and in its absence separatist
groups can be engaged with a minimum of international legal restraint. International law is conse
quently often seen as largely irrelevant to secessionist conflicts. Conflict parties use and abuse it in
their rhetoric, but beyond some general references to territorial integrity and self-determination,
international law is frequently ignored by conflict analysts, myself included. But I was engrossed
by this book and the powerful arguments presented in it. The notion that we see greater flexibility
when it comes to self-determination conflicts has been made elsewhere, but Weller argues that the
spectrum of solutions now extends to secession, specifically linking it to an analysis of the doctrine
of self-determination, whichto my knowledgeis new.
One of the books main strengths is that it combines international law with political analysis, yet
remains accessible to people without a background in both disciplines. However, at times I would
have liked a better integration of the two parts of the book. Weller concludes that it is still too
early to say if the new practice of self-determination will affect the right to self-determination, but I
cannot help but wonder if anything has actually changed. I was hoping for some more discussion of
this. We have seen greater flexibility when it comes to resolvingor rather trying to resolveself-
determination conflicts, but the principle of territorial integrity still prevails in the majorityofcases.
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International law and organization
Central governments are, as Weller points out, very reluctant to accept solutions that fudge sover
eignty even when they have lost effective control over breakaway territories, and independence
remains very rare indeed. Do Kosovos independence and Russias actions in the Caucasus point to a
changed doctrine of self-determination or do they merely suggest that recognition depends on Great
Power politics? Weller convincingly argues that international involvement is often needed in order
for the new practice of self-determination to provide an effective answer to these conflicts, but this
implies a need for a further discussion of the politics surrounding such involvement: what are the
stakes involved if the right to self-determination undergoes a significant change? Also, what will
the changed practice mean for conflict behaviour: will it make secessionist attempts more likely?
Will central governments choose compromise at an earlier stage? Will separatist leaders become
more intransigent? For example, in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Weller also refers to, the
independence of Kosovo and the war in Georgia have seemingly led to a rethinking of strategies
and an emphasis on preserving the status quo, rather than pursuing international recognition. The
changed international practice, therefore, potentially alters the dynamics of conflict; this is clearly
Wellers argument but further analysis would have made it even more convincing. Unanswered
questions are of course inevitable when analysing ongoing developments, but this relatively short
book could have done with a few more chapters to explore some of these issues in more detail. As it
is, the book ends on what is almost a cliff hanger and with an implicit promise of a sequelone which
I very much hope Weller decides to write.
Nina Caspersen, Lancaster University, UK
Punishment, justice and international relations: ethics and order after the Cold War. By
Anthony F. Lang Jr. Abingdon: Routledge. 2009. 192pp. Pb.: 22.50. isbn 978 0 41557 031 2.
Since 1945, and more so since the end of the Cold War, the international community has been making
the glacial journey towards becoming a true political society, governed by a complex framework
of law, sophisticated law-making bodies and a respected international judiciary. The international
community is, however, without an effective enforcement arm. The failure of states to honour their
obligation under the Charter of the United Nations to provide the Security Council with a perma
nent standing army has undermined the progress otherwise made in the development of universal
norms. Enforcement is left to states. States may act alone, they may act in concert, or they may act
under the collective security provisions of the Charter, but they act ad hoc. Without a strong Security
Council, there can be no other way. It is with the enforcement actions of the international commu
nity that Punishment, justice and international relations is concerned.
It is Anthony Langs central contention that while the international community engages in
punitive measures, and has been doing so with greater frequency since the end of the Cold War, these
measures have become increasingly unjust. The skewed balance of power in global institutions, the
piecemeal enforcement of norms and the lack of judicial involvement cause more than merely moral
harm; they endanger international peace and security, and can cause and prolong conflicts.
Punishment, justice and international relations is more a work of political theory than political science.
Lang draws on traditional political philosophers such as Locke, Hobbes and Foucault in conjunction
with a broad spectrum of contemporary writers to establish in the first three chapters his theoretical
framework. The subsequent three chapters take three punitive practicesmilitary intervention,
economic sanctions and counter-terrorist operationsand assess their justice from the perspective of
Langs analysis of punishment, authority and agency.
The final chapter brings together his conclusions regarding the absence in the international
enforcement order of overarching constitutionalism or robust judicial involvement and sets out a
practical solution, using international criminal law as a case-study. Lang proposes what is essentially
an international super-court: a tricameral international criminal court with separate chambers dealing
with cases against states; non-state actors and multinational corporations; and individuals. A single
prosecutor would determine which chamber is best placed to hear each case and the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) would act as an umbrella appellate chamber.
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Book reviews
One ought not to make too much of this proposal: Lang does not introduce this idea until the
very end of his work and deals with it in a relatively cursory manner, acknowledging its limita
tions. The court would suffer from two fundamental defects: ratione personae, the terribly problematic
concept of criminal responsibility of both states and groups; and ratione materiae, the proposed vague
jurisdiction of the court over international political crimes. It is the failure to set out these crimes
that makes the whole project seems superfluous. After all, states and non-state actors alike act through
natural persons who can be held criminally responsible, and state involvement in criminal acts can be
dealt with non-penally through the law of state responsibility.
The real value of Langs work lies not in his analysis of the particular punitive practices, or his
unusual international criminal justice solution, but in the analytical framework he builds in his first
three chapters. Most important of all is his analysis of authority and the reminder that leaving states
to engage in enforcement actions as they deem appropriate is problematic. This state-led enforcement
regime is deficient in three ways: oversight, frequency and coordination. Oversight can be solved
through ex post facto reviews by the ICJ in combination with vigorous independent reviews such as we
have recently seen for the Gaza and Georgian conflicts. The related issues of frequency and coordina
tion need a more fundamental solution. The seeds of that solution already exist: the international
community is not missing an enforcement coordination body; the Security Council retains the global
monopoly on the use of force, the right to impose economic sanctions and, through the establishment
of tribunals and International Criminal Court referrals, the ability to hold individuals accountable
for international wrongs. It is its composition that prevents it from fulfilling its potential. Punishment,
justice and international relations is not only a reminder that we have a void at the heart of the global
political order; moreover it provides us with valuable principled thoughts to assist us with the most
pressing problem faced by the international community today: how to reform the Security Council
and what to do about the veto.
Maziar Jamnejad
Foreign policy
Perceptions and policy in transatlantic relations: prospective visions from the US and Europe.
Edited by Natividad Fernndez Sola and Michael Smith. Abingdon: Routledge. 2009. 216pp.
Pb.: 20.99. isbn 978 0 41545 488 9.
Although published in 2009, this volume is based on a research project geared to transatlantic relations
during the period of the George W. Bush administration, and so is best understood in that light.
The chapters were originally written to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Robert Jerviss
classic work on perception and misperception in international affairs (Perception and misperception in
international politics, Princeton University Press, 1976), with a particular focus on how they influence
relations between allies. Those chapters that stay true to this original premise, including Jerviss own
contribution, are the highlight of the book and offer a variety of insights into why allied decision-
makers, most of whom know each other well and interact with each other so closely, can so often
misunderstand each others motives and interests.
Robert Jervis sets the bar with his insightful chapter. Most work on perception and mispercep
tion, he notes, deals with actual or potential adversaries; much less attention has been paid to how
allies perceive or misperceive each other. Yet democracies can be as noisy as they are transparent.
Sometimes the very closeness of the EuropeanAmerican relationship can lead to misunderstandings,
as one transatlantic partner may take the other for granted; believes it knows clearly what the partner
intends; or expects its own message to be understood as originally intended, and then is unpleasantly
surprised when it is not. Jervis reviews familiar structural reasons for inter-allied differences, but then
helps the reader reach beyond such explanations by exploring interactions among beliefs, perceptions
and power.
Robert Lieber usefully dismantles some persistent myths about the loosening of Atlantic ties
since the end of the Cold War. Atlantic partnership was never defined by a single threat; other bonds
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of values and interest endure. Moreover, both sides of the Atlantic continue to face shared threats as
well. He points out that obstacles to effective transatlantic coordination often have less to do with
American reluctance than with the limits of European capability, consensus and political will. Lieber
has less to say when it comes to the more relevant issue, at least in my mind, and that is not transat
lantic divorce, but transatlantic dysfunction: the tendency, time and again, to block each other rather
than to aggregate and harness the vast potential of the North American and European continents in
service of common values and interests.
The editors of the book, Natividad Fernndez Sola and Michael Smith, build on the contribu
tions by Jervis and Lieber. Smith expands on Liebers argument by reviewing the dense institutional
networks that frame the transatlantic relationship today. He then argues that greater appreciation of
the role of perception and misperception in transatlantic relations must include historical considera
tions across several dimensions, from the growth of complexity and uncertainty to shifts in structure
and issues of generational change. He contrasts the respect Europeans generally accord to the limits of
power with the revolutionary ambitions harboured by the utopian radicals who occupied the Bush
administration. While there is a good deal of truth in these contrasts, liberal American Democrats
have also been known to reject the limits of power in pursuit of idealist aims. Smith then goes on to
assert basic differences in the ways Europeans and Americans think about sovereignty and security as
well as hard, soft and normative power. There is of course something to such differences, but the
easy temptation to contrast European and American views tends to belie differences, often acute,
among Europeans and among Americans themselves.
Fernndez Sola focuses her attention on how these interactions affect the European Unions role
as an international actor, pointing to the ways in which the EUs lack of strategic credibility and
capabilities commensurate with its potential exacerbate inherent American tendencies to seek unilat
eral solutions to global challenges. She calls for a more effective strategic partnership between the
European Union and the United States, and offers some useful ways forward.
All in all, this volume offers a useful examination of relations between the US and Europe during
the George W. Bush years. As in most edited volumes, contributions are uneven. And if there is one
theme running through such distinctive chapters, it is a tendency to downplay the disputes of the
day in favour of a narrative seeking to place the administration of George W. Bush within broader
mainstream traditions of US foreign policy. I wonder. It is perhaps useful to ask, if Al Gore had won
the 2000 election, whether the US would have behaved differently, particularly after the attacks of
2001. While any answer must be speculative, and certainly in some ways any US administration would
have reacted as the George W. Bush administration did, it is hard to believe that the US would have
rejected early allied offers of engagement in Afghanistan; invaded Iraq; threatened pre-emptive war;
issued a challenge of with us or against us; tolerated enhanced interrogation techniques; rejected
mounting scientific evidence regarding the effects of climate change; or a host of other policies, all
with compound effect on relations with Europe. But perhaps that is just a matter of perception.
Daniel Hamilton, Johns Hopkins University, USA
Avoiding trivia: the role of strategic planning in American foreign policy. Edited by Daniel
W. Drezner. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2009. 190pp. Index. Pb.: 17.99. isbn
978 0 81570 306 8.
This book has its origins in a conference organized in 2007 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary
of the creation of the State Departments policy planning staff. Richard Haasss chapter offers an
inside view of the post of policy planning director from a recent holder. It combines criticism of the
second Bush administration combined with a how to guide, which should probably be read by any
aspiring director of policy planning. As he notes, all sorts of difficult balances have to be struck, not
least finding a position close enough to have an impact but distant enough to have perspective and
an ability to connect the immediate with something larger (p. 24). In finding such a position, much
depends on the relationship between the director and the secretary of state, though Haass does not
say anything about his own relationship with Colin Powell. There is also the importance of timing.
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Book reviews
Apart from crises such as the 11 September attacks making policy-makers more receptive to certain
types of policies and ideas that would have received little or no support before, timing within an
administration is also important. Haass feels that serving at the beginning of the second Bush admin
istration was an advantage in principle (p. 25), when all new administrations feel a certain pressure
to invent (p. 26).
As for the challenges faced by the Obama administration, though, it is quite remarkable to read a
former Bush administration official assert that, were President Obama to continue on the course of
US foreign policy much of the time, he would risk squandering a still-considerable opportunity to
build a significant degree of world order (p. 28). Haasss advice to future directors of policy planning
focuses mainly on bureaucratic infighting and networking, including the importance of trying to
forge an important interagency role, not least seeing officials outside the State Department when it
enables policy planners to introduce ideas into the interagency process. The opportunities offered
by interagency products, such as the National Security Agency and presidential speeches, leads to
another barbed commentary on the administration in which Haass served. While he and a colleague
managed to gain influence over the first draft of the National Security Strategy, he regrets that they
had little influence over the final draft (p. 32).
Thomas Wright, meanwhile, attacks with iconoclastic relish what he regards as the myth that the
1940s were a golden age for policy planning. He notes the declining influence of George Kennan and
is fiercely critical of Franklin Roosevelts excessive concessions to the Soviet Union during the Second
World War, all of which he sees as mistaken products of a plan for a postwar order. The Truman
administrations policies, including the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO (opposed, Wright
notes, by Kennan), were, by contrast, ad hoc responses to Soviet aggressiveness. Wright is wary of
placing too much faith in international institutions and instead calls for much more emphasis on
bilateral relations between the US and countries such as China.
Writing on the limits and opportunities for strategic planning, Amy B. Zegart notes the sheer
amount of information relating to foreign policy, and the way in which policy planning has lost out
in Washington turf wars. Between 1991 and 2001, for example, 48 foreign policy commissions were
created, the vast majority of which performed exactly the same kinds of analysis the policy planning
staff is supposed to perform (p. 118).
With a wealth of detail and a variety of perspectives, Avoiding trivia offers a timely overview of the
issues and challenges surrounding strategic planning in US foreign policy.
Richard Briand
India and the United States in the 21st century: reinventing partnership. By Teresita C.
Schaffer. Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. 2009. 264pp. Pb.: $22.95.
isbn 978 0 89206 572 1.
Teresita Schaffers study of Indo-US relations is a competent and wide-ranging review of the
major issues on which the two states interact, but it is low on analytical depth and scholarly
rigour. The book slots neatly into a subject area occupied mainly by the writings of retired diplo
mats, think-tank reports and policy-centric edited volumes, adjacent to more academic studies
(like those of Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagerty). Eleven chapters cover economics, energy,
security, nuclear cooperation and Indo-US interaction with different parts of the world. Schaffer
covers an admirable quantity of material, writing about the history of the Indo-US entente;
its emergence proper in 2005 with the inauguration of the deal on civil nuclear cooperation; and
the prospects of its growth in the years ahead. The tone is cautious, emphasizing Indias desire
for strategic autonomy (pp. 16, 146, 221) and the enduring differences between Indian and
American priorities, including Iran, the proliferation regime, Burma, trade and climate change.
The book is most useful as an introductory survey to the relationship, without offering much
original information or insight. Some of the books weaknesses are its occasionally unconvincing and
vague analysis; its lack of roots in the available literature; and insufficient nuance in understanding
the formation and nature of Indian foreign policy.
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Foreign policy
Schaffers arguments are often weak, in two senses: first, her policy claims are sometimes
non-sequiturs, uncoupled from the facts that precede them. On global governance, the author asserts
confidently that several of the issues that will preoccupy both countries in the next decade, including
climate change, epidemic disease, refugee flows, the global financial meltdown, and the spread of
nuclear weapons, cannot be seriously addressed without Indias participation (p. 214). I cannot see
how this is true. Refugee flows last impacted India seriously in 1971. On the question of finance,
inflows of US foreign direct investment during 20089 were a modest US$35 billion, a fraction of the
Chinese equivalent. India is not a participant in the non-proliferation treaty, has been carefully lifted
and placed outside its strictures by the Bush administration, and has an impeccable proliferation
record. Second, Schaffer is prone to generalitiesinforming the reader that the character of Indias
leadership will shape how it operates internationally (p. 220)as well as to the pervasive habit of
using the term multipolarity as if it were a policy choice rather than a description of the distribution
of capabilities across states.
The footnotes contain few peer-reviewed publications, and many websites. This is not intrinsi
cally a problem, but the neglect of academic literature leaves Schaffers analysis somewhat slight. In
her concluding chapter, the author stresses the need for Indo-US cooperation to proceed on multiple
tracks so as to exploit unexpected opportunities (p. 218). Yet she ignores the established institu
tionalist writings on issue linkage and the determinants of successful interstate cooperation. Schaffer
highlights the need for contact between elite political and economic actors to foster small, select
leadership groups to energize the partnership (pp. 21718), but without mentioning the burgeoning
literature on when socialization does and does not occur (see, in particular, Iain Johnstons excel
lent Social states: China in international institutions 19802008, Princeton University Press, 2007), or on
the causes and consequences of transnational linkages. As such, there is a sense that the conclusions
drawn from the laundry list of initiatives, summits, meetings, exercises, declarations, trade figures and
acronyms are ad hoc. There are some Indian sources, but often these are Indian government websites.
More worryingly, the book contains some omissions: Schaffer says nothing on the Chinese
quashing of an Asian Development Bank loan for Indian development of the disputed province
of Arunachal Pradesh, despite this precipitating the deployment of two full Indian divisions and
four fighter aircraft to the region in the summer 2009. There is almost nothing on the Indo-Russian
production of the highly capable BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, other than a brief note on a joint
venture (p. 174), despite the (distant) possibility of its deployment against NATO states. Surely these
are both relevant to Indo-US relations; the sheer number of topics covered seems to preclude Schaffer
from delving into any one too closely.
It is worth noting the treatment given to the Indian foreign policy process. Schaffer argues that
Indias political and policy leadership is ambivalent about how Indias commitment to strategic
autonomy and taste for global balancing fit in with its ties with the US (p. 210). Yet who comprises
this leadership? How does policy in India get made, and how might the USand other states
thereby influence it? What is the impact of civil-military relations on security policy? None of these
questions are discussed. Most disappointing is the vagueness with which attributions are made to
Indian strategic thinkers, as if they constituted a monolithic bloc with consensual views of foreign
and security policy. They do not, and the minuscule attention given to contestation in Indian strategic
thought is political rather than intellectual. This is a shame, as it is practitioners rather than academics
who have hitherto shed the most light on the crystallization of a foreign policy community and its
various cleavages.
Shashank Joshi, Harvard University, USA
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Conflict, security and armed forces

The new counterinsurgency era: transforming the US military for modern wars. By David
H. Ucko. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. 2009. 258pp. Pb.: 20.75. isbn 978 1 58901
488 6.
By the time the surge began to turn the tide of events in Iraq, a marked shift had already taken place
within the US military. The United States had developed an expertise in conventional warfare by
the end of the Cold Wardemonstrating this prowess with great success in the first Gulf Waryet
the many lessons of low-intensity conflict from Vietnam had to be relearned the hard way with
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This shift from a conventional preparedness to counterinsurgency
(COIN) was reflected most notably with the publication of the counterinsurgency field manual FM
3-24, followed shortly by a host of new books on the subject written by a new generation of military
thinkers. The COINdinistas, as these warrior-scholars have been called, have in a relatively short
span of time come to dominate the national security discourse in the United States. Sharing qualities
of both the academic and the practitioner, people like David Kilcullen, H. R. McMaster, John Nagl
and Andrew Exum, among others, have shed new light on this old form of warfare, and with their
insights the US military has begun to change both its vocabulary and its ethos as it attempts to secure
stability in Iraq and defeat a resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan.
It is this sea change in both theory and practice that David Ucko chronicles in The new counterinsur-
gency era. At times a historical account of the militarys adaptability to conditions in Iraq and at times
an analysis of the change in doctrine, Uckos work attempts to capture this latest chapter in the US
militarys history as it is still being written.
Ucko, an adjunct fellow at RAND in Washington and a transatlantic fellow at the German Insti
tute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, is a fresh voice on stability operations and
counterinsurgency, and the book may indeed come to serve as a place marker at this critical juncture
in American military history. The dominant question that follows from Uckos work is whether
the newfound fad of counterinsurgency is just that, a temporary response to the current wars being
fought, or if these lessons amount to a lasting transformation of the US armed forces.
The author first sets out to contextualize the reorientation by providing a brief history of
the US approach to counterinsurgency, highlighting the misconceptions of counterinsurgency
doctrine that appeared as late as the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review; giving an overview
of the leaders who pioneered the transition in the face of the deteriorating situation in Iraq; and
looking at the effect that the release and implementation of FM 3-24 had on Operation Fardh
al-Qanoona joint CoalitionIraqi security plan implemented in Baghdada limited-scale appli
cation of the population-centric approach that was later replicated with the surge. Ucko shows his
strong command over the events in Iraq as they transpired, the reaction those events produced in
Washington and the subsequent doctrinal changes that resulted, though at times it is confusing that
he peppers this academic undertaking with quotes from pundits like Ralph Peters that cheapen the
otherwise high-quality analysis.
Given the inherent inertia of the US militarys institutional learning, Ucko remains sceptical that
the lessons of the surge in Iraq will not face the same fate as the lessons of Vietnam; as Colonel
Douglas Macgregor argues: Many in the senior ranks ask why the United States would ever
willingly seize control of another Muslim country (again), occupy it (again), and then fight a rebellion
(insurgency) against the U.S. militarys unwanted presence in that country (again)?. And if not, why
they should retool the Army and Marine force structure, doctrine, training and modernization to
repeat the folly of Iraq, especially when doing so comes at the expense of the ability and prepared
ness to fight future conflicts against far more capable adversaries.
It remains to be seen whether the hard-fought lessons of the past six years in Iraq and Afghani
stan will be institutionalized or if a fear of fighting the last war will prevail. Uckos account is
sympathetic to the shift towards a counterinsurgency capability, but one wonders if such a history
might need a bit more distance and perspective in drawing out the lessons learned to the maximum
effect. In compiling the developments of this latest chapter in the US militarys doctrinal history,
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Ucko provides a useful and timely analysis, though whether this transformation will endure certainly
remains to be seen.
Richard Bennet, Council on Foreign Relations, USA
Under a mushroom cloud: Europe, Iran and the bomb. By Emanuele Ottolenghi. London:
Profile Books. 2009. 278pp. Index. Pb.: 9.99. isbn 978 1 84668 282 7.
Since 2003, the Iranian nuclear programme has been a hot item in international politics. Emanuele
Ottolenghis Under a mushroom cloud is a useful and well-written contribution, providing a general
overview of the issue at hand. The book does not contain footnotes and the analysis is very much
policy-oriented. This is not surprising as the author is not from the academic world but from a think-
tank, the Transatlantic Institute, which Ottolenghi directs. The institutes homepage indicates that it
was established with the support of the American Jewish Committee, which might explain why the
Israeli nuclear weapons programme is not mentioned, although it may have been at least one of the
driving factors behind the Iranian nuclear programme. This could also explain why Ottolenghi finds
a nuclear Iran highly problematic: he regards Iran as an expansionist state that wants to establish its
hegemony over the Gulf (p. 11). Even more, a nuclear Iran would become the ideological counter
weight of America, much as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War (p. 13). While most other
experts, including myself, would also prefer a non-nuclear Iran, they will focus less on the nature of
this specific political regime, and more on the risk of proliferation in general and in the Middle East
in particular.
Apart from this criticism, Ottolenghi argues convincingly that Iran is working on a secret nuclear
weapons programme. While not precluding a military attack on Iran, he sees many risks involved in
this solution.
The major contribution of this book is that it explains at length the economic relationship between
European Union member states and Iran. Iran is a market of 70 million people with the second-largest
reserves of natural gas and the fourth-largest reserves of oil in the world. European exports constitute
40 per cent of Irans imports. Ottolenghi cites dozens of European firms by name doing business in
Iran. On the other hand, only 3.7 per cent of European energy imports come from Iran, although
this percentage is much higher in states like Greece and Italy. In short, Iran is economically more
dependent on Europe than the other way round. This makes the author believe that the best way to
tackle Iran is a smart sanctions regime, concentrating on a few specific sectors of the economy (like oil
refineries, liquid natural gas and spare parts for the energy industry and the petrochemical complex),
as well as on human rights.
Ottolenghi admits the generally weak reputation of sanctions, but argues that they may also
have indirect effects, like social unrest resulting in possible regime change. To the extent that the
protests after the June elections were partly caused by socio-economic discontent, the author is right
in assessing the opportunity for political protest (the book was published before the demonstrations).
On the other hand, the underlying assumption behind this reasoning seems to be that a nuclear Iran
under a democratic regime is much less problematic: Proliferation is something to be avoided, but if
Iran were committed to genuine democracy, its nuclear ambitions would evoke far fewer anxieties (p.
204). This is to a certain extent true. But such reasoning will not prevent further nuclear proliferation,
including to non-state actors like Al-Qaeda. It is unfortunate therefore that the most fundamental
questions about nuclear weapons are not raised in the book: to what extent is proliferation a natural
trend as long as there are nuclear weapon states? What is the link between proliferation and (the lack
of ) disarmament? To what extent can those states that currently hold nuclear weapons legitimately
prevent prospective nuclear candidateseven those which have signed the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty (NPT)from going nuclear, given that they do not fulfil their obligations under the NPT
either? The answers to these questions may also explain why European governments have difficulties
in living up to their public stance of being tough on Iran.
Tom Sauer, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
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Book reviews
Old and new terrorism: late modernity, globalization and the transformation of political
violence. By Peter R. Neumann. Cambridge: Polity. 2009. 218pp. 14.99. isbn 978 0 74564 376 2.
Terrorism: how to respond. By Richard English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. 178pp.
12.99. isbn 978 0 19922 998 7.
The post-9/11 boom in scholarly and popular literature on terrorism has already been well documented,
as too has the variable quality of the work that followed this newly invigorated interest in unconven
tional large-scale violence. For, despite the intellectual advances made by contemporary contribu
tions to our understanding of terrorism, the aggregated research in this field continues to be marked
by two significant limitations. The first concerns the widespread and unproductive recycling of estab
lished truisms in lieu of either critical reflection or new primary analysis; a recycling of truisms
frequently underpinned by very particular ideological assumptions about the purposes of scholarship
(Richard Jackson, Knowledge, power and politics in the study of political terrorism, in Richard
Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning, eds, Critical terrorism studies: a new research agenda,
Routledge, 2009). The second, the excessive attention recently afforded Al-Qaeda and other Islamist
organizations without sustained contextualization of these within broader patterns of precedents
and/or equivalents (Andrew Silke, Contemporary terrorism studies: issues in research, in Jackson,
Breen Smyth and Gunning, Critical terrorism studies). Against such a background, it is refreshing to
review two books that resist each of these temptations and, in so doing, contribute to advancing our
understanding of terrorist violence in different ways.
Peter R. Neumanns Old and new terrorism, as I read it, interweaves two themes. First, the book
presents a sustained engagement with the dichotomization of terrorism into old and new, which
pervades much of the recent relevant academic work. Second, it attempts to locate terrorist violences
squarely within the concrete socio-political contexts of their emergence. To fulfil the latter of these
aims, Neumann points to a series of contemporary transformations in the global political system. In
so doing, he appeals for locating the ideas of violent political actors within the radical ideological
currents of the time: noting the shifting fortunes of Marxist/Leninist and religious fundamentalist
views among communities far beyond the practitioners of terrorist violence. By tracing the signifi
cance of recent technological, social and cultural transformations, Neumann further points to the
import of new media, transnational migration and newly hybridized identities for the organization
and manifestation of contemporary strands of terrorism. And, in discussing the comparatively recent
emergence of mass casualty terrorism, Neumann links this, in part, to the enhanced popularity of
particularist political ideologies and the desensitization of viewing audiences.
Neumanns argument that all terrorist violence requires positioning within its underpinning
socio-polical context prepares the ground for the books more explicit theme: by pointing to the
unevenness of the above dynamics, and resisting the temptation towards blanket generalizations,
Neumann convincingly argues the need for an evolutionary rather than revolutionary understanding
of contemporary political violence. In his words, it would be misleading to conceptualize the new
terrorism in relation to before and after because it has resulted from trends and developments that
have started at different points and evolved over a considerable period of time (p. 151).
The analysis running through Old and new terrorism will interest advocates and critics of this
popular conceptual dichotomization alike. By punctuating his argument with appropriate and often
interesting examples, the books scope reaches far beyond the obvious ideal types Neumann employs
in illustrating his argument: the Provisional IRA and Al-Qaeda. The leaderless resistance sought by
the Earth Liberation Front, for example, will offer a refreshing and relatively unknown case-study
for students of terrorism to ponder. The books real value, however, lies in Neumanns far more
nuanced engagement with the old/new terrorism distinction than is often the case. By stressing that
the movement towards new terrorism has been neither uniform nor universal, and unfurling concrete
historical examples to support this assertion, Neumanns argument that it may be more profitable to
speak of older and newer types of terrorism merits considerable attention from analysts. At the same
time, however, this strength may also be its weakness. If old and new terrorism are little more than
ideal types, what value resides in our maintaining them? With Hamas and the Tamil Tigers but two
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of the highest-profile organizations explicitly positioned by Neumann as problematizing this distinc
tion, why should we not fall back on a still more particularistic approach to individual terrorisms in
order to avoid these inevitably inadequate headings altogether?
Where Neumanns book concludes with the problem of responding to newer terrorisms, this issue
takes centre stage in Richard Englishs Terrorism: how to respond. With an emphasis on the practical
problems posed by terrorism for those charged with responding to unconventional violence, English
calls for an enhanced understanding of the historical conditions and particularities of specific terror
isms; a call grounded, in part, on the failures characterizing the frequently myopic and counter-
productive war on terror of recent years. To get readers to this point, English negotiates a sophisticated
path through the questions of definition and explanation that have long dominated this field (Lee
Jarvis, The spaces and faces of critical terrorism studies, Security Dialogue 40: 1, 2009). Pointing first
to the familiar problems of analytical precision, political interests and so forth that render definitional
agreement so difficult, English settles on an understanding of terrorism that emphasizes the heteroge
neity of this phenomenon; locates it as a sub-species of war; and stresses the centrality of politics and
power within it. This facilitates his construction of a multi-causal, disaggregative and dispassionate
(p. 52) explanatory framework: one that draws on distinct disciplinary approaches and recognizes the
distinctiveness of particular terrorist campaigns in their individual complexity.
The most interesting part of Englishs book, however, arrives with his enquiry into the origins,
continuation and conclusion of earlier terrorist campaigns, one drawing largely, although not exclu
sively, on his own work on the Provisional IRA. This culminates in the offering of seven key points
for responding to terrorism with which the discussion concludes. Some of these, such as the need
to discuss underlying root causes and the desirability of enhanced coordination within and between
states, are instantly recognizable from the established literatures on terrorism. Others, such as the
need to maintain credibility among domestic audiences and potential adversaries, and the need to
learn to live with the reality of terrorism, cannot be emphasized too strongly in the contemporary
context.
Englishs Terrorism: how to respond again travels some distance in correcting some of the limitations
of existing understandings of terrorism. By drawing on the authors own primary research such as
interviews conducted with violent political actors, this introductory text retains a credibility and
persuasiveness lacked by many of its competitors. Englishs call to avoid hasty reactions to contempo
rary types of terrorism by learning from historical precedents is one of profound importance for all
interested in terrorist violence. His critique could have been advanced still further in places: against
which criteria, for example, were the abuses at Guantnamo Bay and Abu Ghraib simply not
on the same scale of awfulness as the attacks of 9/11 (p. 104)? And, elsewhere, his analysis could
have benefited from greater precision: why, for example, does a non-essentialist family resem
blances approach to the question of definition seem unnecessarily elusive (p. 22)? Yet the book, like
Neumanns, advances our understanding of terrorism, its costs and its consequences considerably.
Lee Jarvis, Swansea University, UK
The de-radicalization of jihadists: transforming armed Islamist movements. By Omar Ashour.

Abingdon: Routledge. 2009. 224pp. 70.00. isbn 978 0 41548 545 6.
Omar Ashours study into the conditions and factors that have led to the deradicalization of specific
radical Islamist groups is the first such work to have been undertaken on this subject and offers a very
important insight into an issue that will undoubtedly have fundamental consequences for govern
ments and peoples around the world.
The two main questions that Ashour seeks to answer are: why will the deradicalization process of
change start?; and under what conditions will it succeed?. To do this, he has chosen as his case-studies
the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyaalso known as the Islamic Groupboth
originating in Egypt, as they represent two pioneering cases of comprehensive de-radicalization (p.
13). Great attention is also spent analysing Islamist groups in Algeria: the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS);
the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and Al-Qaeda
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Book reviews
in the Islamic Countries of the Maghreb (QICM). Ashour argues that Algeria is probably the only
country that offers both cases of Islamist pragmatic de-radicalization (AIS) as well as de-radicalization
failure (GIA, GSPC and QICM) under the very same structural/contextual conditions (p. 14).
The author has managed to undertake a very complex study, which has clearly involved a consid
erable amount of research, and to present it in a clear, concise and highly engaging manner. The
opening chapters outline his central arguments and hypotheses, providing a clear overview of the
steps that Islamist movements take (or do not take) when undergoing deradicalization. His central
premise is that Islamist groups will deradicalize on three separate levels: first, on an ideological basis,
whereby a group reverses its ideology and de-legitimizes the use of violent methods to achieve
political goals, while also moving towards an acceptance of gradual social, political and economic
changes; second, at a behavioural level, whereby the group practically abandons the use of violence to
achieve political goals without a concurrent process of ideological de-legitimization; and finally, at
an organizational level, involving the dismantlement of the armed units of the organization, which
includes discharging/demobilizing their members without splits, mutiny or internal violence (pp.
56). Corresponding to these levels are the types of deradicalization that Islamist groups undergo:
comprehensivesuccessful deradicalization on all of the above three levels; substantivesuccessful
deradicalization on ideological and behavioural levels, but not on the organizational level; and third,
pragmatic, whereby the group deradicalizes on the behavioural and organizational levels but without
an ideological delegitimization of violence.
What follows is an extremely comprehensive analysis of the various armed Islamist groups. The
level of detail is very high and demonstrates clearly that the author has utilized a vast array of sources
in his work. However, at certain points I felt that such intricate details were not always of much
significance and at times not particularly enlightening. That said, for the groups which Ashour has
analysed, he successfully dedicates an entire chapter to each, providing a thorough historical overview
in each case. This goes a long way in allowing the reader to place the actions and subsequent decisions
taken by each movement within the proper context. The second half of the book comprises a far
more thorough look at the causes of deradicalization, together with instances when deradicaliza
tion failed. In the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ashour demonstrates how deradicalization was
only successful when four key variables were present and why it was not successful on two previous
occasions when they were not present, with the variables being: charismatic leadership; social interac
tion (both internally and externally); state repression; and selective inducements.
The same criteria are applied to both Egypts Islamic Group and Al-Jihad Organisation and also for
the case-study of the AIS, the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, which deradical
ized successfully, in contrast to the countrys GIA.
The de-radicalization of jihadists is an outstanding piece of work. At only just over 200 pages it is
relatively short, yet Ashour manages to provide a highly detailed, very well-presented analysis of
how and why several of the most important armed Islamist movements over the last 70 years have
successfully sought to fundamentally alter their ideology, behaviour and structure and why this has
been unattainable for others.
Chris Macmillan
Crime, war and global trafficking: designing international cooperation. By Christine Jojarth.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009. 342pp. 50.00. isbn 978 0 52188 611 6.
This book will be of less interest to scholars and policy-makers concerned with crime, war or global
trafficking (of diamonds and light arms), as its title suggests, and more to those who tend to read the
small print, literally and figuratively, as represented by the subtitle, designing international coopera
tion. The books target audience may be either international lawyers, the cadre of international civil
servants or, most probably, fellow political scientists, particularly those belonging to the scientific
wing of the social science and with a strong commitment to jargon and formulas. While I do not, I
still believe that the book will do extremely well by its intended target audience: it is well thought
out, efficiently presented, nuanced, historically accurate and balanced, and most importantly and
268
impressively, Christine Jojarth acknowledges readily the limitations of her model, which is almost
unheard of in a world where models, alas, rarely if ever capture anything approximating the observed
world. This is perhaps the most impressive aspect of this book, and in that sense it represents the best
the scientific wing of political science can offer.
The book centres on a puzzle, in the words of the author: Why do states adopt strikingly
different designs for international institutions created to tackle seemingly similar problems? Why
indeed? Drug, diamond and small-arms trafficking, as well as money laundering are the case-studies
chosen by Jojarth to elicit a generalizable theory of international regimes. The theory of international
regimes came on the scene in the 1980s during the heyday of interdependence theories in Interna
tional Relations. The argument presented in a seminal book edited by Stephen Krasner (International
regimes, Cornell University Press, 1983) was that the world had witnessed proliferation of cooperative
arrangementswhich Krasner described as international regimesaimed typically at solving either
technical or substantial issues of cooperation. There were important regimes such as an international
trading regime, as well as less high-profile cooperative arrangements like the international whaling
commission. But they all had certain things in common, based on formal and equally informal rules,
norms of behaviour, conventions and so on. Combined, they were changing the nature of interna
tional relations beyond recognition. Jojarth draws on these early insights, but also contrasts them with
more recent work, which she considers to be more scientific. This term is typically employed in
political science circles to describe the movement that aims at introducing neo-classical concepts into
the study of politics, or as it is sometimes called, new political economy. Neo-classical economics
itself has undergone important changes in the past three decades and increasingly recognizes the
importance of institutional conditions and set-up. Jojarths ideas draw on one strand of modern
neo-classical thinking, which is associated with the more recent developments, transaction cost
economics. The author argues, sensibly, that designs of international regimes tend to emerge out of
conflicting interests and a balance of three factors: asset specificity, a cost-benefit analysis conducted
by key stakeholders in a regime; behavioural uncertainty, the capacity of central government to
deliver on promises; and environmental uncertainty, the confidence of regime designers in their
ability to understand or control the dynamics of the business they seek to regulate. If they believe
they understand the business and can control it, they may seek a more robust, legalized regime; if
they do not, they may be less keen on creating a legally binding regime. All three factors together
provide a fairly good explanation for the international regimes that have emerged in the case of drug
trafficking, money laundering and diamond trafficking, but not, surprisingly, small-arms and light-
weapons trafficking. Here, Jojarth suggests, we may have encountered the limits of her variant of
transaction cost analysis and may need to introduce other factors such as poweran admission that
makes the entire work that much more plausible.
I would argue that in the cases of drug trafficking and money laundering, other factors need to be
taken into consideration. The former refers to corporeal assets, substances that are shipped, sold and
consumed, the latter refers to incorporeal assetsone form of money transformed into anotherand
that, in turn, raises entirely different issues of detection and control, both nationally and internation
ally, which may explain better the failure of the international regime on money laundering despite
arguable strong commitment of the actors that combat money laundering.
The book is a fine specimen of a particular approach to political science. I am still to be convinced
that the heavily jargonized opening two chapters add anything in particular that could not have been
stated on one page, and possibly more effectively. Yet within its own terms of reference, this book
undoubtedly counts as an important contribution.
Ronen Palan, University of Birmingham, UK
269
Book reviews
Security and the war on terror. Edited by Alex J. Bellamy, Roland Bleiker, Sara E. Davies
and Richard Devetak. London: Routledge. 2008. 235pp. Index. Pb.: 22.99. isbn 978 0 41536 845 2.
This edited collection brings together theorists, both established and junior, to discuss the impact of
security, economics, ethics and law on the war on terror. The book makes an important contribu
tion to critical security studies and should be read widely. The essays not only engage with tradi
tional security concernssuch as law, intelligence and economicsand reinterpret them from a
critical perspective, but also present further compelling evidence about the importance of including
and interpreting security issues that have often been sidelinedsuch as feminism and emotions
in debates about security and the war on terror. In the introduction, Alex J. Bellamy and Roland
Bleiker advance four propositions: that the attacks of 11 September 2001 challenged core western
beliefs about the theory and practice of security; that the United States and its allies responded with
a strategy underpinned by old and discredited ways of pursuing security; that this strategy has failed;
but that alternatives are possible. The essays explore these propositions through a number of critical
approaches and are organized into three parts: Security and terrorism; Ethics, emotions and law in
the war on terror; and Fighting terror.
In the first chapter, Paul D. Williams gives an overview of security studies and the Long War.
Williams discusses how other important security issues have been neglected to make way for the new
American grand strategy, the Bush doctrine. Chapter two, by Anthony Burke, explores cause and
effect in the war on terror. Burke takes Osama bin Ladens statements and through a critical analysis
of strategic and counter-terrorist doctrines seeks to develop a historical model of cause and effect
based on language, meaning and (mis)interpretation (p. 26). The next chapter, by Katrina Lee-Koo,
examines critical feminist perspectives in the war on terror. Lee-Koo shows how critical feminism
reveals that the war on terror has had the effect of increasing insecurity for certain women in America,
Afghanistan and Iraq and in the military.
Chapter four, by Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker, attempts to map out an emotionally
attuned way of dealing with terrorist threats (p. 67) and to dispel long-held beliefs in security studies
and International Relations (IR) that emotions are something to be dismissed. Sara E. Davies then
explores the legal statusor state of exceptionof terror suspects. Chapter six, by Cian ODriscoll,
examines the notion of just war in the war on terror. ODriscoll posits that the just war tradition is
currently moving away from the legalist position, which dominated the twentieth century, and back
towards the classical approach. Chapter seven, by Alex J. Bellamy, examines the pre-emption of terror
through pre-emptive self-defence.
Richard Devetak explores the changing relationship between the North and the South; according
to Devetak, after 11 September 2001, the South became the Norths problem a problem [maybe
even] internal to the North (p. 125). Christian Enemark examines the advantages and disadvantages
of domestic biodefence, while Hugh Smith discusses the role of ethics in intelligence gathering in
the war on terror. Smith argues that the war on terror has enabled the Bush administration and the
American intelligence community to invoke extraordinary powers. J. C. Sharman explores how the
Bush administration ineffectively adapted anti-money-laundering strategiesdeveloped for fighting
the war on drugsto their fight against Al-Qaeda.
In the conclusion, Sara E. Davies and Richard Devetak draw together the diverse arguments
presented in this volume, reiterating that the return to realism in the aftermath of the September11
attacks was misguided, and that to engage fully with contemporary security issues there should
be a greater appreciation of critical approaches that questioned why insecurity existed, who was
most insecure, how those insecurities might be ameliorated and how best to understand and explain
security and insecurity (p. 190). My only criticism is that this volume does not deal with the impor
tant relationship between media studies, visual culture and security in the war on terror. After all,
we live in an information age where new media and images progressively dominate our lives. We
are also increasingly made aware of contemporary security issues through these media and images
rather than through speech alonehence Bleikers announcement of an aesthetic turn in the study
of IR (Millennium 30: 3, 2001, pp. 50933). Unfortunately, in this volume the editors have themselves
sidelined this important area of critical security studies.
Nathan Roger, Swansea University, UK
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Politics, democracy and social affairs
Politics, democracy and social affairs

Facts are subversive: political writings from a decade without a name. By Timothy Garton
Ash. London: Atlantic Books. 2009. 352pp. 25.00. isbn 978 1 84887 089 5.
There are few things more exasperating than hearing someone pontificating about how Britain is the
only country in Europe (or even the world) which does X, Y or Zusually something bad. As the
person making this statement often speaks only English and has little experience of more than one or
two other countries it is usually easy to dismiss such airy comparisons. But when Timothy Garton
Ash makes such a statement you have to take it seriously; he is one of the few people in British public
life who really does know what is happening in a large number of European countries from the inside.
There is a good example of Garton Ashs trans-European comparative knowledge in his latest
collection of essays, Facts are subversive. He takes issue with the clich that only in Britain do people
talk about Europe as somewhere elseactually no, they also do it in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece
and Hungary. That is rather a trivial example but it is Garton Ashs ability to compare, say, the Iranian
revolution 30 years on with the liberation of Eastern Europe from communism that makes him such
an unusual and valuable commentator.
The collection shows off his impressive range of interests over the past ten yearsfrom the fall of
Milosevic, through the Orange revolution in Ukraine, to Britains European ambivalence, or Gnter
Grasss revelations about his SS youthin the form of essays usually reprinted from the New York
Review of Books or in one or two cases from Prospect (the magazine I edit).
The first three sections on velvet revolutions, Europe, and Islam and terror, are all solid enough.
I found it useful to be reminded about what happened in Serbia in 2000 or how the Polish Kaczynski
twins rose to prominence (both were minor figures in Solidarity), or even that the French national
assembly tried to make it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians
during the First World War.
But actually the current affairs essays are the least satisfactory part of the collection. Garton Ash
is a good writer but he is not writing timelessly brilliant reportage, nor does he provide postscripts
from his vantage point six or seven years later to tell us whether or not things evolved as he expected.
(The piece on the Ukraine particularly cries out for this treatment. The westernizing leaders who
swept to power in 2004Victor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenkoare about to be swept out of
power again by their old pro-Russian adversaries.) And his opinions tend to be a summation of the
liberal conventional wisdomhe is someone who has usually helped to shape that liberal wisdom in
the first place but, still, the views can be rather predictable. (Too often he hand-wringingly calls for
more debates about things, for example about what kind of people we [the British] think we are
before we can even begin to talk about our role in the European Union.)
Indeed, on Britain and the EU Garton Ash is too often preaching to the converted. I would like to
have read a straightforward argument for British membership of the EU. Why cant we join Switzer
land and Norway prospering on the outside? There is a plausible argument for saying that both
psychologically (we were neither defeated nor humiliated after the Second World War, like most of
the rest of Europe) and economically (we had few small farmers and fewer successful manufacturers,
who did best out of the first stages of the Common Market), Britain was not well suited to the first
phase of European integration. Now, with the defeat of European federalism, the growth of trade
in services and the creation of a defence-security dimension to the EU, the organization is far more
designed around British strengths. But this argument needs to be made and remade and commenta
tors like Garton Ash need to arm themselves with the mundane details of business and economic
flows.
Garton Ash is most at home painting the big picture and this collection is full of sharp observa
tions that illuminate corners of it. He points out, for example, that eleven out of the 27 EU heads
of government gathered at the spring 2007 European Council were subjects of communist dictator
ships less than 20 years agomoreover the President of the Commission Jos Manuel Barroso grew
up under Salazars dictatorship in Portugal and the EUs former foreign policy chief, Javier Solana,
remembers dodging General Francos police.
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Book reviews
Some of the freshest writing in this collection is about countries he knows less welllike Iran
and Brazilbut his real strength, like Orwells, is writing about the intersection between politics and
literature (or culture more broadly). Towards the end of the collection are superb essays on Gnter
Grass and The lives of others, the film about the Stasi. And like an Orwell with a few more foreign
languages, Garton Ash is surely on course to becoming a national treasure.
David Goodhart
Political economy, economics and development

A failure of capitalism: the crisis of 08 and the descent into depression. By Richard A.
Posner. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. 2009. 346pp. Index. 17.95. isbn
978 0 67403 514 0.
Richard Posner is a distinguished lawyer with a deep knowledge of economics. It is no surprise that he
has written a fascinating book. It is, however, a book with which I strongly disagree. Before I explain
my disagreement I summarize the books contents and arguments. It should also be said that despite
being written at speed, in medias res to quote Posner, A failure of capitalism is clearly and agreeably
writtenit is a most enjoyable read.
Eleven chapters lead us from The depression and its proximate causes through The crisis in
banking and The underlying causes to chapters where blame is apportioned and plans for the future
laid out. The books concluding chapter is entitled The future of conservatism, understandably so in
view of Posners verdict that the depression resulted from capitalisms failures.
In what ways did capitalism fail? There was a Crisis in banking (chapter two) which, as a result of
falls in the values of bank assets, led to a sudden drying up of credit flows. On the Underlying causes
(chapter three), Posner writes, surely sensibly, that he is sceptical that readily avoidable mistakes,
failures of rationality, or the intellectual deficiencies of financial managers were major factors.
Rather, he describes a range of causes such as the difficulty of forecasting; rapid expansion in the
financial sector; a period of unusually low interest rates and so forth. Chapter four then gives a lucid
narrative of the run-up to and development of the crash. On why it was not anticipated Posner draws
on an analogy with Pearl Harbor to suggest why events that seem likely when viewed with hindsight
are not anticipated and prevented. Our forecasts are not independent of our personal and intellectual
histories. Precautionary action is expensive. The English language also makes it difficult: Posner notes
that English has no neutral word for someone who warns of disasterthey are invariably Cassandras,
alarmists, prophets of doom.
Chapter five contains a clear description of how the US government responded to the crisis, with
all major possible criticisms of the response fairly described and evaluated. Chapter six looks for silver
liningsone is that it may make the economics profession wake up and think more about depres
sions and how to anticipate and perhaps prevent them. Posner implicitly assumes they are preventable,
a position which most but certainly not all economists would accept.
Near the end of chapter seven, What we are learning about capitalism and government, we find
that The governments regulatory failure was great, but it cannot extenuate the markets failure.
More precisely, it cannot concealindeed it highlightsthe need for better government regulation
to secure the public good of financial stability (p. 248). This of course raises the question of what
better regulation would comprise: it is here that I have my main difference with Richard Posner, and
I turn to it in a moment.
Chapter eight describes The economics profession asleep at the switch. Only a few econo
mists said there was coming trouble on the scale that eventuated. (To be fair, many were warning of
problems to come, although they got the size of them pretty wrong.) Why this deficiency? All sorts
of factors matter, but a basic difficulty is that serious depressions are rare events. Study of them does
not have much to go on, and while we know a lot about the proximate causes of severe depressions
usually unintended and sharp monetary contractionsmoving on to fruitful generalizations about
why these monetary contractions occur and how they can be prevented is, at best, work in progress.
272
The final three chaptersApportioning blame; The way forward; and The future of conserva
tismare followed by a brief concluding overview. All contain good points, for instance an explana
tion of why the failure of Lehman Brothers was so important.
I like this book a lot. It is informative, readable and packed with insights. Where then is my major
disagreement? Posner writes: The depression has hit economic libertarians in their solar plexus,
because it is largely a consequence not of the governments overregulating the economy and by doing
so fettering free enterprise, but rather of the innate limitations of the free market (p. 306). The
trouble with that statement is that it ignores a very important aspect of banking history. Bank failures
were at the root of the problem. But bank failures are not regular events, occurring steadily through
time and across countries. In the Great Depression over 10,000 banks failed in the United States; in
Canada none did. Bank regulation can be faulty in design. Further, in his defence of bankers against
the view of Paul Krugman that those who ran the banks into difficulties should be fired, Posner
maintains that they were not stupid people, and that they are well qualified by knowledge, experience
and ability to lead the banks out of difficulties again. This is misguided.
When banking systems were stable, as they have been for long periods at many times and in many
places, individual banks were allowed to fail. When they did, owners lost wealthsometimes all of
itand managers lost position, reputation and future career. On the basis of setting a lawyer to catch
a lawyer, the following is from remarks by Lee Bucheit (a partner in the New York office of the inter
national law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP) to the House of Lords Economic Affairs
Committee: The sanction that capitalism imposes on imprudence, incompetence, sometimes just
bad luck, is failure. It is the brooding presence of that sanction that keeps managers on their toes, that
keeps them acting in a prudent way. Losing that sanction has given us much trouble, and perpetu
ating its loss will cause us more trouble. That is why I disagree profoundly with Richard Posners
fascinating book. Capitalism failed, but not because of insufficient regulation. It failed because regula
tion removed the fear of failure.
Geoffrey Wood, Cass Business School, City University London, UK
The romantic economist: imagination in economics. By Richard Bronk. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press. 2009. 382pp. Index. Pb.: 17.99. isbn 978 0 52173 515 5.
Economics has often been called the dismal science, not only for its dissection of the most base
human motives of consumption and avarice, but for its single-minded focus on supposed actor
rationality and its dry exposition. The multitudinous possibilities of life as having meaning far
beyond an economists graphs and tables generally eluded the field until perhaps the 1990s. Given
the almost unanimous failure of professional economists to forecast the recent economic crisis and
global recession, an overhaul of the discipline is long overdue; a new century more fraught with
thorny world problems than any other now demands it. Richard Bronks examination of economic
history provides timely and useful food for thought, taking an intriguing approach to multi-disci
plinary thinking that could just save twenty-first-century economics. The new organizing assump
tions that could restructure the field, surprisingly, come from the poetry and philosophy of the
Romantics.
Bronk began his quest with work in finance, where he saw a frequent mismatch between the
way economists study the world and the way financial markets actually work. He also learned
that national institutions and history matter to economic performance (p. xii) and that motiva
tions beyond economic efficiency and profit maximization, such as imagination and sentiment,
drive those participating in markets. Bronk starts his analysis with the common milieu of both
Romantics and early economists. In 183840, John Stuart Mill criticized Jeremy Bentham for not
grasping the complexity of human actions, for his narrow conception of laws and institutions and
for reductionist analysis. Remarkably, this echoes many modern critiques of economics. Mill recom
mended combining Benthams half-truths with the more holistic thinking of poets such as Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He claimed in his Autobiography to have been influenced by the Romantics to unite
self-awareness to utilitarianism. Much of early Romanticism reflected ongoing arguments within the
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Enlightenment but, by the mid-nineteenth century, thought had clearly polarized into rationalist and
sense/experience camps. Thus, Mills effort ultimately failed.
Even so, echoes of this earlier attempt at synthesis can be found in both the earliest eighteenth-
century and later twentieth-century ponderings of various thinkers. Adam Smith was one such
polymath who ranged across philosophyhis The wealth of nations was more an indictment of govern
ment power than a plea for unfettered markets. Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes used
an eclectic mix of both the standard social physics (or abstract A mode) approaches and the
more historically aware and holistic (B mode) approaches (p. 58). It was early nineteenth-century
economists such as Jean-Baptiste Say and David Ricardo who brought about the split of political
economy from philosophy, while neo-classical theorists fixated on the notion of market equilibrium
to the exclusion of virtually any other construct. However, minority voices such as Joseph Schum
peter, Friedrich von Hayek and William Brian Arthur suggested that economies are always in flux
or manifest spontaneous order that is never in equilibrium. Even Keynes noted the critical role of
animal spirits in the market place. Nevertheless, the A mode and rational choice theory (basically
an extension of neo-classical method) had triumphed within academia by the mid-twentieth century.
Bronk spends much of the book laying out the supposed lessons that can be gleaned from
Romanticism. While a diverse lot, the Romantics set forth four overall themes: the centrality of
organic rather than mechanical metaphors, especially when applied to society or the mind; value
pluralism without a guiding scale of value; a fuller psychology that pays more attention to the
role of imagination and sentiment as well as reason; and the importance of language, perspective,
metaphor and imaginative intuition in mediating our perception and understanding of the world
(p. 87). These can teach us new ways to think about the nation-state, measure economic phenomena
and introduce imagination and creativity into modern markets. Romantic-like alternative perspec
tives have already informed recent economics scholarship. For instance, a radical reconceptualiza
tion of economic theory along organic lines by economists at the Santa Fe Institute applies insights
from recent biology and physics theory to demonstrate the usefulness of non-linear reactions and
increasing returns (p. 128). Arthur shows that increasing returns, not equilibria, dominate high-tech
markets, and complexity theory illustrates how market behaviour is multifaceted and evolutionary,
more like an ecosystem than a classically envisioned industrial economy.
The Romantics use of imagination and metaphor can be adapted to modern problems in various
ways. These include openness to new theoretical perspectives (analytical negative capability, p. 277);
use of multiple paradigms for research problems; and selection of theory according to the nature of
the matter being studied (disciplined eclecticism, p. 281). The book ends with a plea to reconsider
the ceteris paribus clause of most economic calculationsmeaning that not all things are necessarily
equaland for greater interplay of the various Romantic insights with economic facts on the ground.
This books cross-disciplinary approach constitutes both a strength and a weakness. Bronk has
covered the Romantic side well, but could use more development of the work of economists.
For a meditation on economics, the volume contains little discussion of specific economic theory
or methodology. It feels a bit odd to flip through an economics-related tome and not see a single
graph or formula, but now and then to be serenaded by poetry. More discussion of the workings of
specific theories, rather than general theoretical perspectives of well-known economists, would have
greatly strengthened the arguments. Certain major economists, such as Marshall and Schumpeter,
are given extensive coverage, while giants like Keynes and Milton Friedman could use much more.
Marx and Marxian economics are barely mentioned, and international political economy, statism or
dependency and world systems theory are not discussed. In the end, though, these are mere quibbles.
The book is quite subversive, in the best sense of the word: by undermining the modern bases of
economics, it can stimulate the kind of vital dialogue that may lead economics to a granderand
more accuratevision of how the world really works.
Joel Campbell, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan
274
The future of the dollar. Edited by Eric Helleiner and Jonathan Kirshner. Ithaca, NY, and
London: Cornell University Press. 2009. 250pp. Index. Pb.: 15.50. isbn 978 0 80147 561 0.
Like navigating during a storm, writing at a time of crisis is a hugely demanding task: familiar points
of reference may not be available, and great uncertainty and volatility make any firm assessment
difficult. If it is hard to assess what the short term will look like, it is even harder to formulate a view
on the longer term. When, in late 2008, Eric Helleiner and Jonathan Kirshner bravely embarked
on editing a book on the future of the US dollar, it was not even clear whether the international
financial and banking system was going to survive the crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman
Brothers. Trying to discuss the issue of what would be the future of the dollar as an international
currencya simple question, as the editors modestly put it in the prefacelooked almost like a
mission impossible. And indeed, despite having assembled an excellent group of contributors, to
some extent the book seems stuck in the past. In the meantime, however, the debate has moved on,
widened and enriched as a result of the G20 processstarted in London in April 2009 and carried
on in Pittsburgh the following September. In the final chapter the editors frame the contributions
within the context of the 2008 financial crisis, but with limited effect. The book makes no reference
to a number of proposalsfrom Chinas central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan and his speech on
reform of the international monetary system to the Stiglitz commissionwhich were not on the
table at the time it went to press. The use of Special Drawing Rights as a possible alternative to the
dollar, the role of the International Monetary Fund in surveillance, the use of bilateral swaps and
Chinas pilote scheme for the convertibility of the yuan are all recent developments that have put the
functioning of the international monetary system, and its policy implications, on everybodys radar.
It is unfortunatecertainly by timing and not by designthat the book ignores all these develop
ments. Equally ignored are the narrowing of the current account deficit of the United States and
improvements in the household savings rate as a result of the crisis, hence the argument that links the
fate of the US dollar to the unfolding of the global imbalances seems less convincing.
Overall, the reader has the impression of dj vu: we have been here before and the dollar has not
collapsed. The geopolitical chapters (David Calleo and Jonathan Kirshner) are the most intriguing,
but also the least convincing. It is true that large dollar accumulation in the hands of countries
which are not in the US sphere of influence could lead to retaliations towards the dollar and the US.
However, given the huge losses that such a scenario would implyChina now holds more than US$2
trillionany kind of anti-American behaviour looks highly unlikely. At the moment, China and
other dollar-holding countries seem to have a bigger problem than the United States, as they are stuck
in the dollar trap with little scope for manoeuvring, and have to resort to a bit of diversification on
the margins. It is clearly the case of our currency, your problem which, if anything, puts the United
States in an even stronger position. Possibly because of the lack of viable alternativesthe euro is a
good second best, but not an alternative to the greenbackthe US dollar, as in the 1970s and 1980s,
is here to stay as the key international currency for years to come.
The book offers great value in presenting different approaches and views on the future of the
dollar. And reading through a rather heterogeneous collection of contributions one cannot but agree
with Helleiner and Kirshner that the field of dollar studies is so ridden with disagreements that it
would be virtually impossible to conclude with a coherent, let alone common, view.
In the introductory chapter the editors do a great job in mapping the contributions into a frame
work that is organized in terms of determinants of international currency standingmarket-based,
instrumental, geopoliticaland of the future of the dollars international rolesustainable, uncer
tain, declining. Going through the book, starting from the optimistic, market-based chapter by
Harold James to the pessimistic, geopolitical assessment by Jonathan Kirshner, readers make an intel
lectual journey at the end of which they will not necessarily be able to make their minds up about
the future of the dollar, unless they already have a view on it. But it is a fascinating journey, a truly
multidisciplinary one, and largely accessible to non-specialists, apart from a couple of more technical
chapters (Ronald McKinnon and Herman Schwartz). Where this journey leads is not clear, certainly
not to a new approach or view on the future of the dollar. In the final chapter the editors seem happy
to assign the book with a less ambitious task and aim to offer a guide to the futurenot necessarily
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Book reviews
to the future of the dollar, but a guide to understanding and assessing the future of predictions about
the dollar (p. 217).
Paola Subacchi, International Economics, Chatham House
Discipline in the global economy? International finance and the end of liberalism. By Jakob
Vestergaard. Abingdon: Routledge. 2009. 288pp. Index. 65.00. isbn 978 0 41599 031 8.
While most people silently suffer the consequences of financial crises that are beyond their compre
hension, those claiming knowledge about the world of finance seem now, again, to agree that we need
new regulatory measures that can make the world financial system more stable and resilient. Jakob
Vestergaard is no exception to this, but stresses that adequately [discussing] the task of devising a
new regime of international financial regulation requires a thorough understanding of the current
regime, and the ideas which took part in shaping it (p. 12). Warning against the tendency to
grossly underestimate the regulatory crisis implied in the financial crisis, he argues that if financial
regulatory reform is limited to more or less marginal adjustments, the next financial crisis will be an
accident waiting to happen (p. 3). Against this background, Vestergaard seeks both to provide the
required understanding of the old regulatory regime, and to indicate a better approach to financial
regulation. While attending to these tasks, he draws inspiration from Michel Foucaults work on
disciplinary power and governmentality.
In part one of the book, Vestergaard engages with four different narratives of the Asian crisis of
19978exemplified by the work of Barry Eichengreen, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert
Wadeand argues that the IMFs structural reform strategy was not a necessary response to the
crisis, but rather a product of a particular way of knowing it as having been caused one-sidedly by the
weaknesses of the Asian economies. More specifically, Asian capitalism was effectively framed as an
improper form of capitalism, as a pathological condition in urgent need of cure (p. 85) or structural
transformation into a proper capitalist form. According to Vestergaard, the wider significance of this
relates to how key elements of the structural reform programmes were codified and universalized in
and through the International Financial Architecture (IFA) initiative (the focus of the books second
part). In this connection, he argues that the IFA established a comprehensive system of supranational
normalization, surveillance, and corrective reform, to discipline economies and ensure the formation
of docile economiesa disciplinary system targeted at all economies, evoking constant pressure to
conform to [an Anglo-American] mode of organizing and regulating them (pp. 56). Based on a
detailed analysis of the Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) and its assessments both of
compliance with standards of best practice and of financial system stability, Vestergaard concludes
not only that the IFA/FSAP has proved ineffective, but also that its pro-cyclical features contribute to
decreasing the resilience of the global financial system.
In the books third part, Vestergaard seeks to problematize the IFA in the name of (neo-)liber
alism. He argues that there is a widespread tendency among contemporary neo-liberals to conceive of
freedom and government as opposites, which has contributed to render liberalism blind to its own
governmental nature and, consequently, to a failure on the part of (neo-)liberals to problematize the
governmental programmes launched by liberalism itself . This, he notes, takes the form less of law
and decree, and more of (self-)disciplining through normalization and surveillance. This concerns
also the IFA which, Vestergaard argues, should be met with the ethos of early liberalism: continuous
problematization in favour of a regulatory framework that widens and ensures a space for free, institu
tional competition (p. 220). This is very much what Vestergaard has set out to do, and he concludes
that the IFA governs both too much and too little (p. 227). Against this background, and based on
a post-Keynesian (contra neo-classical) conception of the proper role of regulation, the final chapter
outlines essential elements of a new regulatory approach that is both systemic and counter-cyclical
(p. 242)elements, it is acknowledged, that draw heavily on the work of John Eatwell, Charles
Goodhart, Avinash Persaud and Michael Pettis.
Although Vestergaards analysis of the IFA as a disciplinary system has some merit, and (neo-)
liberals might benefit from the criticism directed at them, I must admit not having enjoyed the book
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Ethnicity and cultural politics
very much. First, while accepting the importance of the Asian crisis for the development of the IFA,
it need not take six chapters to reach the conclusion that the IMFs policy response was the product
of a particular reading of the crisis. Second, the book could have benefited from Foucaults work
being more integrated in Vestergaards analysis, rather than outlined in separate chapters. Related to
the previous points, I admittedly did not appreciate reading so many heavily quoted, chapter-long
summaries of other scholars work. Lastly, the book does not add much to what already exists in
the form of proposals for new financial regulation. Criticism aside, I found the books most inter
esting aspect to be how Foucaults work is used instrumentally with the aim of improving (neo-)
liberal governance. Overall, Vestergaards is much more of a (neo-)liberal voice engaged in first-order
problematization, than a Foucauldian voice engaged in critical second-order reproblematization.
Tore Fougner, Bilkent University, Turkey

The crisis of Islamic civilization. By Ali A. Allawi. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2009.
304pp. 18.99. isbn 978 0 30013 931 0.
To pick, as Ali Allawi has done in this book, a very challenging topic which has been in discussion
for over two centuries, and to presume to provide answers where many a formidable mind has failed
before, is to set oneself a daunting challenge. Allawi starts on a personal note, contrasting the easy-
going, largely secular Iraq of the 1950s where he grew up, with later developments in the Muslim
world where the tide of militant Islam seemed unstoppable everywhere. By the time he became
a minister in American-occupied Iraq after 2003, Islamist parties were the dominant actors on the
political arena. However, these parties did not appear to be interested in anything religious. Their
leaders main concern was to amass power and wealth by any means, while the rank and file engaged
in murderous, no-holds-barred sectarian wars.
The main point Allawi makes, however, is that the trials and travails of militant Islam are only
a symptom of a deeper malaise that has infected the Islamic civilization, and the book proceeds to
discover the deeper roots of the crisis, asking whether Islams mismatch with the modern world is
intrinsic to the religion itself or is due to other factors; whether Islamic civilization still represents a
unity; whether it can be recreated anew; and if so, under what conditions.
Allawi defines Islamic civilization in terms of the centrality of the sacred and the community, in
contrast to the secular individualism of modern western civilization. Departing from the claim that
Islamic civilization is currently in the grip of a monumental crisis, partly caused by western encroach
ments which prevented Islam from having its own path to modernity, and partly from the decline of
its inner vitality and creativity, the author proceeds to trace a series of failed attempts to restore this
vitality. These endeavours started with traditional jihads in Algeria and elsewhere; attempts at reform
aimed at transcending traditionalism and reconciling Islam with modernity; extensive and prolonged
experimentations with various forms of secularization; and, finally the revolt of Islam currently
manifesting itself in the escalation of Islamic militancy.
Partly as a response to this militancy, and prodded on by western powers alarmed by Islami
cally inspired terrorist violence, a number of movements have arisen that seek to bring about an
Islamic Reformation. The author dismisses the parallels with the Christian experience as absurd,
and expresses astonishment at the adoption of programmes of Islamic Reformation as the declared
political objectives of major (non-Muslim) powers. He offers a negative evaluation of the impact and
the prospects of the boldest of these Islamic reform bids, an assessment that is hard to contest. Allawi
rightly debunks the mythical ascription of modernizing impact to the Reformation, and its depiction
as a pre-history of the Enlightenment, reminding us that it has never received universal Christian
endorsement, and has generated violence and religious extremism. However, the author at times slips
into affirming the very parallels he has earlier debunked.
Concluding that neither thorough secularization nor militancy is likely to save or restore Islamic
civilization, he argues that the solution lies in reclaiming Islams inner spirituality. According to Allawi,
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Book reviews
most modern revivalist efforts emphasize outer forms of religiosity and neglect the inner dimension of
the faith, an aspect that has traditionally been espoused by Sufi mysticism. Reviving and reclaiming this
mystical dimension is the key to restoring Islamic civilization to its leading role in the world.
Trying to answer a recurrent question and to cover well-trodden (and very controversial) ground
poses many risks. From the very outset, Allawi seems to be skating on thin ice, and he is only
occasionally aware of this. His cursory definition of civilization and adoption of the term Oriental
despotism concedes too much to the OrientalistWeberian paradigm of which he is otherwise
critical. He even accepts Samuel Huntingtons classification of civilizations (erroneously dated 1992),
building on it claims such as: of all the great civilizations of the world, it was only Islam that had
no state champions who could act out their role on the global stage. This assertion again under
lines the ambiguity of his stance on the Islamic state, which he at once regards as indispensable and
catastrophic: The last crisis of Islamic civilization, he argues, the one that will put a definitive end
to the civilizational cycle which began with the establishment of Islam as a distinct cultural, political
and cultural community, will be linked to the success of political Islam. This success will remove the
possibility that the political route could ever be the basis for rejuvenating or refashioning the elements
of a new Islamic civilization.
But perhaps the books most controversial point is the identification of Islamic spiritualism exclu
sively with Sufism, coupled with Allawis blanket attacks on modern Salafism and Islamism as devoid
of spirituality. These assertions neglect that the leading figures in modern revivalismwith the
possible exception of Abul Ala Maududiwere spiritual even in the narrow sense of being steeped in
the Sufi tradition. But this tradition does not have a monopoly of spiritualism, and even Salafis do not
question the spiritualism of Sufism, but rather its alleged superstitions and grand metaphysical claims.
These and other minor (Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas was not the originator of the concept
of Islamization of knowledge) and major (Islam does not reject individualism, quite the reverse,
the Quran constantly stresses the primacy and finality of individual responsibility) quibbles aside,
Allawis contribution remains interesting, thought-provoking and worthy of careful reading.
Abdelwahab El-Affendi, University of Westminster, UK
Islam and the secular state: negotiating the future of sharia. By Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2008. 324pp. Index. 25.95. isbn 978 0 67402 776 3.
The fall and rise of the Islamic state. By Noah Feldman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. 2008. 324pp. Index. 15.95. isbn 978 0 67402 776 3.
Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim and Noah Feldman have written books on very different but closely
related subjects. Feldman has written a book on the Islamic state, pointing to its possible future in
identifying indigenous roots for democracy. An-Naim brings together two decades of scholarship
and activism in his reflective book on the secular state for Muslims. The secular and Islamic states are
by definition mutually antagonistic, often in fact aligning protagonists against each other. However,
in these two books, they converge on the meaning of the Sharia (Islamic law/jurisprudence) in
modern society. It is quite fitting, therefore, to examine the two books in relation to each other.
Feldmans book is easier to read and more straightforward. Focusing on the Middle East, the book is
divided into three parts: first, Feldman examines the place of the Sharia and its guardians, the religious
scholars (ulama), who studied, developed and promoted its values in pre-modern states and society.
Here he argues that the Sharia was the standard against which political authority was balanced. In the
second part, he examines the breakdown of this balance during the colonial period. Driven by both
external pressures and internal developments, the Sharia was dislodged from its social position. Its
guardians lost their influential positions in society, which paved the way for the authoritarian state in
the Middle East. In the second half of the twentieth century, the Islamic state resurfaced in opposi
tion to this authoritarian state. This forms the third part of Feldmans study, in which he locates the
re-emergence of the Sharia. A source of authenticity and demand of the popular will, the Sharia
challenged the authoritarian nature of Middle East states. Feldman accuses western governments of
not recognizing the potential that the Islamic state and the Sharia hold for democratic change. At
278
the same time, he is mindful of the model offered by Iran and the Taleban, where the balance is tilted
in favour of the religious establishment. Authoritarianism can come from either secular or religious
provenance, according to Feldman. The democratic future of Middle Eastern states calls for a balance
of forces, in which both the religious establishment and political leadership must play a role.
An-Naims book presents a model for Muslim societies across the globe, not only in the Middle
East. He pleads for a balance between a secular constitutional order that upholds human rights, and
the Sharia, which, he argues, belongs firmly in the private and political spheres. An-Naim makes a
distinction between the state and politics: Islamic jurisprudence has to be kept out of the former, but
belongs firmly in the latter, to prevent it from complete privatization. At the same time, an-Naim
proposes that matters of public policy and welfare should be mediated through civic reason. The
upshot of the latter is to define a non-sectarian discourse in the public realm where the values of
religion may be articulated. His first three chapters present his model; his approach to Islam and state;
and constitutionalism and human rights. The second half of the book presents cases-studies of India,
Turkey and Indonesia. The author does not explicitly explain his choice, but seems to have chosen
examples of countries where Muslims have accepted some level of secular constitutional orders. In
each case, he presents the latest research on Islam, the Sharia and the state in these countries. These
cover the pre-modern history of the separation of religious and political authority; the nature of the
secular state; and a future in which the Sharia, state and civic reason may be balanced. On each of
these parameters, an-Naim emphasizes the merits of his model. First, he argues, the secular idea was
not directly imported from the West. It had antecedents, even if not named as such, in local histories.
Second, the secular state was not a model that could be imposed from above; it was the outcome of
a political process that had to be developed in local contexts. And modern discourses on the Sharia,
state and values were open to debate and contention. Such discursive traditions should continue, and
they could only take place with integrity in a secular, neutral context.
The books converge around different approaches to and interpretations of the Sharia. Even though
Feldman discusses modern changes in the meaning of Islamic jurisprudence, he does not take into
consideration its contradiction with human rights. Furthermore, he does not elaborate on the implica
tions of its modern rigidity for inter-religious relations. An-Naim is directly concerned about these,
and does not see the Sharia as a higher ethical benchmark for the modern state. Moreover, Feldman
also does not recognize the place of the Sharia in modern authoritarian states. His case-study of Saudi
Arabia is illuminating, identifying the pre-modern model still at work to some extent. However, the
fact that the Sharia is part of the legitimating toolbox of most modern states does not receive sufficient
attention. The Sharia is used among antagonistic groups in their claim for support and legitimacy, not
as the basis on which they could agree on a higher set of ethical guidelines.
An-Naim discusses the problem of applying the Sharia in modern state contexts. In confronting
a terrain fraught with contradictions, he wants to clearly separate human rights, the state and the
Sharia. Each has a legitimate role to play, but should not cross into the terrain of the other. They may,
however, influence each other but then take on the meaning and aura of the new space occupied. The
Sharia, for example, has a role to play in private as well as in political debate. In the latter, though, it
must take on the form of civic reason, and shed its religious character. These sanitized spaces are useful
for heuristic purposes, but an-Naim also intends them to play distinctive roles in society. The success
or failure will rest on future developments. In the present text, he seems to be directing societies how
to keep the lines clear. In reality, they are not.
I would have liked to see more clarity in both books on their understanding of Islam as religion.
This aspect hovers in the background but does not get sufficient attention. It is more clearly impli
cated in an-Naims book, where it inheres in the Sharia. However, an-Naim is more interested in
setting its limits and boundaries. He says far too little about its actual role, and even less about what
the meaning and role of religion should be in a constitutional order. He does not want to opt for
privatized religion, but seems to go in that direction.
Both books are excellent contributions to the ongoing discussion on Islam and secular states. In
combination, they bring two inseparable topics closer together.
Abdulkader Tayob, University of Cape Town, South Africa
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Book reviews
Energy and environment

Emerging global scarcities and power shifts. Edited by Bernard Berendsen. Amsterdam:
Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen. 2009. 308pp. 21.21. isbn 978 9 06832 689 5.
For a number of years, the Dutch Chapter of the Society for International Development has been
organizing a remarkable lecture series in which an international set of academics, politicians and
activists cast light on international policy issues. Among the contributors a fair representation from
the developing world or, in other words, the South is usually included. In 2008, the series resulted
in a publication called Democracy and development. The book under review is the second publication
resulting from the lecture series.
This volume deals with topics that have a long-term perspective: scarcities of food, energy and
water against the background of the shaping of a multipolar world system in which Russia, India
and China are major players. What is also striking in this collection is the attention given to Latin
America as not only rich in minerals, but also containing, for example, 20 per cent of the worlds fresh
water resources. These chapters are among the most interesting. Reinaldo Figuerrado, a Venezuelan,
is clearly no supporter of Hugo Chvez, but it is plain from his contribution that, even without
Chvez, Venezuelas relationship with the United States would be fraught. Figuerrado argues, for
example, that the cost of environmental concerns should not be the exclusive responsibility of
producer countries. He is still smarting from the decision by the Carter administration to demand
lower sulphur content in oil, with the costs being pushed onto producers. However, concerns about
energy no longer involve merely the United States and Latin American producer countries. Cor van
Beuningen, representing the Dutch think-tank Socires, sketches how energy issues between Latin
American countries mesh in a subcontinent-wide constellation: a shortfall in gas deliveries from
Bolivia not only has repercussions in Chilein the form of the customer not receiving deliveries
but also knock-on effects in Argentina and Brazil. He reasons convincingly that energy issues are
dragging countries like Brazil into an arms race on the subcontinent. Javier Santiso, working at the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), clarifies how trade with India
and China has risen in importance in Latin America. Yang Guang, from the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, writes about ChinaAfrica energy relations, providing an impeccable picture of Chinese
Sudanese relations. A large section on Russia and its gas deliveries to Europe by Jonathan Stern of the
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies completes a picture of international relations and energy. These
articles represent a significant reorientation from the former concentration on traditional suppliers in
the Middle East and the assumption of western dominance. However, new perspectives also emerge
on matters that are taken for granted. For example, Coby van der Linde, from the international
relations think-tank the Clingendael Institute, writes: In a couple of years time, we will think back
over the years of the so-called OPEC ruled world and be grateful that they had created so much
buffer capacity and stability in the market (p. 115). This is widely different from looking at the cartel
as whimsically distorting the market.
The articles dealing directly with international relations are interesting, but the contributions
by the scientists may be the most useful. They make complicated physical processes clear to people
with an interest in policy. Pier Vellinga explains the mechanisms surrounding climate change and
ice ages lucidly, making highly practical policy recommendations, such as building coal gasification
plants instead of conventional coal plants. It is not possible to switch off coal plants even if there is
ample energy supply from other sources such as wind or biofuels, whereas surplus gas production can
be stored. Rudy Rabbinge makes it clear that the production of all biomass is due to solar energy
(p.40) and makes thus a clear link between agriculture, food and energy policies. He is quite sceptical
about biofuels. Too many hectares are needed for biofuel productionland that could be used for
innovative new agricultural products, among which he mentions, surprisingly, plastics. Kornelis Blok
disagrees and considers biofuels as one of a string of alternatives that should be explored. Andre Faaij
disputes Rabbinges claim that biofuel production needs to compete with food and other agricul
tural production. From this exchange of views, a policy-maker can get useful introductions to quite
technical subjects.
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Energy and environment
The contributions to the book by politicians and NGO activists are disappointing in comparison.
They usually do not rise beyond exhortation when analysis is called for. It is, for example, a mystery
to me why Jan Pronk praises the Kyoto accord as a success, despite it not leading to concrete action.
One would expect somebody who has for a very long time been a cabinet minister in charge of devel
opment cooperation, and thereafter a minister of the environment, to comment more incisively on
the difficulties of raising political support for these issues. Nevertheless, it should be clear that there is
a lot in this volume that makes it worth looking into and that it is a useful source for both academics
and policy-makers.
Jan Kees van Donge, African Studies Centre, The Netherlands
China and the energy equation in Asia: the determinants of policy choice. By Jean A.
Garrison. Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner. 2009. 187pp. 53.95. isbn 978 1 93504 905 0.
China is a complex country with multiple actors that its leadership can hardly coordinate. Central
government ministries compete for supremacy in decision-making, local governments refuse to
comply with national laws and the state-owned energy companies have their own ideas. Energy
policy-making in China is accordingly messy. It becomes even messier the more Chinas populace
demands that the environment be no longer polluted. In order to keep stability, the leadership has
found that it has to react to these demands and strengthen environmental regulation. This means that
the dialogue between the energy and environment bureaucracies as well as between government and
society must increase, if energy policy-making is to be effective.
Jean Garrison promises to bring light into this jumble by tracking reforms of the energy bureau
cracy, including its environmental considerations. Then she analyses the consequences of the domestic
power alignment for Chinas international energy policy. Garrison concludes that there are multiple
and competing interests in China from government and society that challenge the effective imple
mentation of any energy policy. The consequence is that there is no single energy policy, but inter
connected, if disjointed, policy initiatives that get lumped together and called an energy strategy by
the Chinese government and outsiders (p. 142).
This conclusion is correct but not new, and this is the great disappointment of the book. It lacks
new material and originality. Of course, and this is one of its values, it is a work of great diligence.
It carefully collects information on much that has happened in the energy relations between China
and the regions of Central, North-East and South-East Asia. The book begins by laying out Chinas
domestic energy demands and the reforms in the energy bureaucracy. The latter aims at producing
an effective energy policy in order to cope with the former. In terms of theory, Garrison frames her
narrative of the reform processes with the classic method of explaining policy-making in China: the
concept of fragmented authoritarianism, developed by Kenneth Lieberthal and David Lampton, is
itself part of the bureaucratic politics/foreign policy analytical realm.
The result of Chinas fragmented bureaucracy is a push-pull pattern (p. 36) between actors who
prefer mercantilism and those who prefer liberalism, that is between centralizing nationalist forces and
liberalizing forces advocating international interdependence. The author then applies the push-pull
pattern to Chinas energy relations with Central, North-East and South-East Asia. Central Asia comes
first, and its analysis begins well: it promises to show how Central Asia, squashed between China and
Russia, is developing its own identity rather than being just an appendix of either of the two. Yet
disappointment for the reader follows: Central Asian identity seems merely to consist in balancing
Russia and China by exploiting energy leverage or by introducing state control of strategic assets.
Perhaps more could have been made of this promise, trying to answer, for example, questions such as:
are there regional energy institutions evolving? Do Central Asian countries cooperate on an energy
strategy? What role do OECD countries have in the development of Central Asian energy infrastruc
ture? And how does this position the region strategically beyond the immediate surrounding area?
Other points also deserve a closer look. For instance, on page 52 Garrison hides in endnote 47 the
fact that China is in the process of expanding hydropower links with Kyrgyzstan. Given the politi
cally and socially sensitive nature of hydropower and the international implications for its financing,
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this would have been an interesting ground to explore (do Central Asian countries in their develop
ment of hydropower take into account global norms for environmental impact assessment and reset
tlement, such as those of the World Bank? Who builds hydropower infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan:
China, the World Bank or other actors?). These lines of questioning might have added originality
and perhaps would have advanced the idea of Central Asian identity construction. The following
chapters on North-East and South-East Asia also do not present new facts or lines of argumentation.
The question now arises as to who is the books target audience, and here another of its merits may
be found. Garrison hints at the fact that it is targeted at a US audience and at all those who do not
see that China has multiple faces and that policy-making is an excruciating and extended bargaining
process. The book therefore will be important to all those who want to learn how political decisions
are made in China. In addition, through its synopsis of material on Chinas energy relations with its
neighbours, the book serves as an excellent introductory reader to the making of Chinese energy
policy.
Oliver Hensengerth
History
The rise and fall of communism. By Archie Brown. London: The Bodley Head. 2009. 719pp.
Index. 25.00. isbn 978 0 22407 879 5.
Big C Communism, or little c communism? Debates on the European left during the Cold War
repeatedly turned to this question. Was what was happening in the Soviet Union and beyond really
the building of communism, the emancipatory progress of history towards its utopian end? Or was
it instead a bastardized sui generis socio-political system, Communism, marked by oppression and
totalitarian tendencies? That it was the latter became increasingly clear to most observers. And it is
Communism, rather than communism, which is the focus of Archie Browns impressive volume. With
events in the Soviet Union forming the backbone of his analysis, constituting ten out of 30 chapters,
Brown sets out the spread of Communism across the world. He argues that only 16 countries have
ever been Communist for any significant period of time, though of course that number includes
both the biggest and the most populous countries in the world (Russia and China). To back up his
numerical precision, Brown provides an astute and useful six-point definition (chapter six) of what
makes a Communist system, namely, a party with a monopoly of power; democratic centralism;
non-capitalist ownership of the means of production; a command economy; the declared aim of
building communism; and a sense of belonging to an international Communist movement.
Browns approach is, as his typology suggests, a methodical one. Such an approach sits well with
the nature of the regimes he studies, which favoured the technocratic elements of their ideology over
the romantic notion of setting the workers free. With laudable detail and clarity, Brown sets out the
rise to power of Communist regimes across the world, their domestic development and their impact
on global affairs. He explains too how these regimes controlled their states through a combination
of violence, privilege, nationalism and a systematic, occasionally inspiring, but increasingly empty
and emblematic commitment to a communist future. A keystone sentence slipped in towards the end
declares that in the last two years of the Soviet Unions existence, the abandonment of Marxism-
Leninism by many of the partys conservatives was to come close to matching its abandonment by the
radical party reformers (pp. 50910). In the end, no one believed in communismor even Commu
nismbut in power.
As is inevitable with such a vast topic, some aspects of the Communist era are more to the fore
than others. For example, North Korea is comparatively lightly covered while a very detailed account
is given of the Gorbachev years and the Soviet collapse, perhaps not surprisingly given the authors
particular expertise. In contrast to the more detached stance of earlier chapters, these latter chapters
draw on a wider range of sources and have a sharper edge of judgement. Several times, Gorbachev
and his reforms are compared favourably to what was to follow in Russia. His partial parliamentary
reforms, which moved in a democratic direction but by no means went all the way, are defended
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unnecessarily, for they were radical enough in their own contexton the grounds that a fully-
fledged democracy has not at any point been achieved (p. 516) in post-Soviet Russia, and that
the parliament created under Gorbachev called the states leaders to account far more vigorously
than Russian parliaments were later to do. Such a stance would be contested by many who recall
Russias freely contested elections under President Yeltsin, or Yeltsins failure on repeated occasions
to persuade the parliament to appoint his prime minister of choice.
The notion of communism with a small c becomes less prominent as the book progresses, as
indeed it enjoyed decreasing prominence in the regimes discussed as time went on. The opening
chapter begins with a fascinating tour dhorizon of communist ideas in Europe from the first millen
nium ad onwards, noting examples of radical egalitarianism and revolt against oppression across the
centuries. The final chapter, Whats left of Communism?, deals entirely with capital C Commu
nism, noting the ghastly failure (p. 616) of this dangerous illusion (p. 613). Those countries which
retain the label of Communist today all fall short of Browns six-point definition, chiefly on economic
and ideological grounds, and not least because the international Communist movement is no more.
However, the impulses for equality and liberty, utopia and revolution, which are cited as (proto-)
communist in the opening chapter, remain a constant part of global politics. The fall of Communism
leaves them searching for a new, and more appropriate, vehicle.
Edwin Bacon, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
The great Cold War: a journey through the hall of mirrors. By Gordon S. Barrass. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press. 2009. 457pp. Index. 22.50. isbn 978 0 80476 064 5.
In his prologue, Gordon Barrass poses three questions which provide the framework for this excellent
book: why did the Cold War start? Why did it last so long? Why did it end the way it did? His answers
emerge from a narrative history of the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, preceded by a thumbnail account
of RussianAmerican relations from 1647 to the Second World War; and followed by three short
chapters assessing the role of intelligence in keeping the war cold. Finally, Barrass seeks to explode a
number of myths which, he believes, distort our interpretation of what happened during the Cold
War years and, consequently, the lessons to be learned from them.
One of the many surprisesat least to mewhich this book contains is the sheer volume of
primary source material about the Cold War that is now available to historians: Cold War archives
abound, mostly in the United States but also in London, Zurich, Berlin and Moscow (the Gorbachev
Foundation). Much of this source material is available on the web. The references in Barrasss endnotes
(a conventional bibliography would have been a welcome addition to the book) reveal a vast range of
memoirs from members of the political, diplomatic and intelligence communities on both sides of the
EastWest divide. Barrass, like me a foot soldier in the Cold War, has not only mastered and distilled
this mass of original material, but also illuminated it by personal interviews with key Cold War actors,
including former senior members of the CIA, the KGB and the Stasi. The result is a narrative of great
clarity and, occasionally, dramatic power; set pieces such as the Korean War, the Berlin crises, the
Cuba crisis and the collapse of the Soviet empire are very well done.
This comprehensive account, not least the evidence that it provides of Soviet thinking during
the Cold War years, finally makes it possible to remove doubt or qualification from two proposi
tions concerning the period. The first is that at no time during those 45 years did either side have any
intention of attacking the other. The second, linked to the first, is that the Cold War remained cold
because both sides possessed nuclear weapons of such immense destructive power that no conceivable
benefit could accrue to an aggressor that would outweigh the retribution he could expect. Nuclear
deterrence worked. This by no means implies that the Cold War years were risk-free. Barrasss narra
tive charts the deadly rhythm of EastWest rivalry during the entire period, in which the scien
tific or politico-strategic success of one side provoked a frantic catch-up effort by the other, thereby
triggering a renewed quest by the first for assured superiority. But despite the existence of so many
points of friction between East and West across the globe, any of which might have become combus
tible, the risk of a strategic conflict arising from miscalculation or accident appears to have been
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rather lower than it appeared at the time: the stakes were simply too high. The Soviet Union, under
successive leaders pre-Gorbachev, pushed as hard as it dared in Europe and the Third World to
secure global advantage for communism; during the Reagan presidency, the United States exerted
mounting pressure on the Soviet system until it cracked. But neither side pursued its risk-taking to the
point at which strategic hostilities, with the potential for a nuclear exchange, might be provoked. A
vital contribution of intelligence, in all its many manifestations, was to give both sides an occasional
glimpse, through the fog of suspicion, deception and secrecy, of where that point might lie.
Barrasss answers to the three questions posed in his prologue are sensible and well argued. I am less
certain about his five myths: that the Soviet Union was never a real threat to the West; that detente
could have worked in the 1960s and 1970s; that the United States prevailed because it was strong and
united; that the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of western intrigue; and that Reagan played a
greater part than Gorbachev in ending the Cold War. I would prefer to describe these as half-truths,
thus deserving only partial demolition rather than the comprehensive slaying accorded to them in the
books final chapter. As Barrass himself demonstrates, the threat posed by the Soviet Union, though
real, was more measured than many feared at the time. Detente, for example in the Helsinki Final
Act, did make a contribution to the eventual victory of western over totalitarian values. Although the
United States was not always strong, united or well supported by its allies, it was primarily American
economic and military strength that made possibleas Barrass admits in slaying his fourth myththe
sustained external pressure on the Soviet Union, which eventually resulted in its collapse. And finally,
although Gorbachevs contribution to ending the Cold War was key and unquestionable, Reagans
eventual conversion to the value of building trust through dialogue was of at least equal value.
These quibbles, however, relate to only one chapter out of 39 in a remarkable book that deserves
to remain for many years one of the best and most readable historical interpretations of the Cold War.
Bryan Cartledge
Europe
Europe old and new: transnationalism, belonging, xenophobia. By Ray Taras. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield. 2008. 266pp. Pb.: 16.95. isbn 978 0 74255 516 7.
Mapping the divisions of Europe has become a major preoccupation of European Studies scholars:
east/west, core/periphery, European Union member/non-member. A relatively recent addition to
the list is old/new Europe, a division which came to prominence at the time of the invasion of Iraq
in 2003, and was reinforced by the EU enlargement of 2004 which added twelve new, largely Eastern
European member states to the bloc. But what value is there in persisting with a division which was
little more than a playground taunt used by Donald Rumsfeld in an attempt to divide France and
Germany from the European nations which were more supportive of US adventurism in the Middle
East? This book does not opt for a facile definition of old versus new, choosing instead to explore
the conflicting experiences of political elites and ordinary citizens and what constitutes belonging
from these different perspectives, although it has to be said that in doing so the old/new distinction
becomes somewhat blurred.
Ray Taras looks at important questions even if exploration of them is hampered by the design and
structure of his book. For example, chapters one and two offer a potted history of EU institutions and
enlargement, begging the question who exactly is the book aimed at?, because it is difficult to imagine
students of European Studies finding anything of interest here. Other students may well find some
sections confusing: since when has the Common Agricultural Policy been known by the acronym
CAF? In chapter three the author regains focus and begins to explore the metacultural presumptions
of the European elites. The argument here is that while the European publics are polyvocal and
comfortable with their own particularities and differences, the elites are metacultural, holding on to a
vision of the wholeness and coherence of Europe. This is an interesting argument, which chimes nicely
with Manuel Castellss idea that European elites are cosmopolitan while people remain local. However,
this chapter fails to push home its advantage, foundering on a rather idiosyncraticinterpretation of
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transnationalism, which Taras sees as a synonym for EU integration. He defines it as a condition where
national interests are subordinated to wider ones involving promotion of a notional common good
(p. 69). For many authors, however, transnationalism is all about grassroots cross-border connections
and linkages between non-state actors, enterprises, non-governmental organizations and individuals.
As such, transnationalism remains tangential to the EU project and Tarass argument that the paradig
matic form of transnationalism today is Europeanness (p. 70) appears overstated; the idea that cosmo
politans are the finished product of transnationalism (p. 72) remains unsupported.
Nevertheless, the important themes of the book continue to be explored in chapters four to
nine, now mainly focusing on the phobias of the European publics (in contrast to the assumptions of
cultural unity of the elites) and the xenophobia which continues to afflict social and political relations
across the continent. At the centre of the account are two chapters which explore narratives of home
and belonging in contemporary European literature. These are both highly readable chapters, which
stand at odds with the rest of the book. In terms of the design and structure of the book one needs to
ask why two such chapters sit alongside the aforementioned boilerplate chapters on the institutional
development of the EU. What we are never told is why the author views literature as prime source
material for an exploration of belonging and xenophobia. Also, it is easy quibble with the choice
of European authors: why these and not others? The selection of authors (Andre Makine, Mircea
Cartarescu, Dubravka Ugresic) and the discussion of the difficulty in thinking about home across
borders is an interesting one, but the flavour of the discussion would surely have been different if
the chosen authors had been, say, Salman Rushdie, Samuel Beckett and Orhan Pamuk. I raise this to
highlight the important issue of the type of resource literature represents for scholars of European
integration, and I would disagree with the authors confident statement, following his critique of the
writing of a number of authors who have all given expression to Europes phobias (Ismail Kadare,
Emine Segvi zdamar, Dorota Maslowska, Michel Houellebecq), that Houellebecqs expose of old
Europes xenophobic proclivities is a valuable contribution to our understanding of xenophobia (p.
219). Why should it possess this status? What makes it a better source of understanding than other
contributions?
While I am sympathetic to the idea of using contemporary literature as a resource for under
standing political developments, I also recognize the need to justify both the status of literature as
source material and the choice of some authors over others. Neither course of action is defended here,
which is a great shame as the author has embarked on a form of enquiry which requires justification
in the most rigorous of terms.
Chris Rumford, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Farmers on welfare: the making of Europes Common Agricultural Policy. By Ann-Christina

L. Knudsen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2009. 348pp. Index. 30.50. isbn 978 0 80144 727 3.
How is one to make sense of the surprising resilience of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in
the face of efforts at reforming it? This important book has much to say about the limbo in which
the CAP currently finds itself, but, unlike most of the literature in the field, it does so through a
historical analysis of the origins of the CAP, from the entering into force of the European Economic
Community Treaty in January 1958 to the settlement of the common grain price in December 1964.
This is the occasion for the authora historiannot only to illuminate the particular context in
which the CAP materialized and to highlight its lasting effect on subsequent policy developments, but
also to challenge the prevailing (liberal intergovernmentalist) view of the CAP as a policy driven and
captured by national, commercial interests. A standard narrative associated with this view is that the
CAP embodies a Franco-German deal, in which France demanded and obtained a common market for
agricultural products and Germany a common market for industrial goods. Ann-Christina Knudsen
rejects this view, which she finds unhelpful and inaccurate, and instead advances a welfarist interpre
tation. The main rationale underpinning this interpretation is that the CAP did not materialize on a
clean slate. Rather, pre-existing national agricultural policies, whose overarching aim was to ensure
fairer living conditions for farmers, shaped both its content and its instrumentation in the form of price
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support. Hence the apparent irrationalityfrom an economic point of viewof the CAP: the CAP
was designed in a similar way [to pre-existing national agricultural policies] in order to reach certain
welfarist objectives already framed in national agricultural policies (p. 9). Knudsens analysis starts with
an examination of the nationally embedded ideas and administrative structures predating the CAP
(chapters one and two). The author then turns to the chronological narrative of the formation of the
CAP policy regime from the sketching out of the first options in 195860 to the setting of the common
grain price in 19624 (chapters three to five). The last chapter shows how the key themes and policy
choices of the 1960s continue to structure policy developments. The argument here is that, paradoxi
cally, increased efforts to instigate market-conforming reforms have further enhanced the welfarist
orientation of the CAP.
Others before have criticized the economic bias of the literature. This book, however, is different
in that it develops a fully fledged alternative narrative, based on comprehensive archival evidence.
New insights emerge on the formative period of the CAP. Contrary to received wisdom, Germany
not Francewas the pivotal actor; France did not seem to have had much of a blueprint; and the
organization of European farmers COPA (the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations)
was a very secondary player. Furthermore, the member states did not play the European game very
well, which gave the European Commission an advantage in the negotiations, at least in the first years.
The latters grand proposal of 1960 in fact marked a branching point in the development of the CAP
by thrusting the CAP away from structural policy.
The book does not escape criticism. It omits the story of the formulation of the objectives laid
down in Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome. These objectives are fundamentally ambiguous and
conflicting, which suggests that national conceptions of the role of agriculture in the economy and
the appropriate scope and aims of state intervention in this sector probably diverged noticeably
beyond the collective welfarist act of faith. Also, Knudsens fascinating analysis of Germanys role in
the formation of the CAP policy regime begs the question of the respective role of general (welfare)
concerns and less general (clientelistic) considerations. Knudsen succeeds, however, in showing that
the CAP cannot be abstracted out of its context and that the political and economic problems plaguing
the farm sector in many postwar European countries cast a long shadow on CAP policy-making
making it a more complex affair than simply a matter of commercial diplomacy. Altogether, Farmers
on welfare offers an original and compelling ideal-typical portrait of the CAP as a welfare policy and
makes a significant contribution to the literature. Students of the CAP and European Union politics
alike will find it both highly informative and entertaining.
Christilla Roederer-Rynning, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
European security governance: the European Union in a Westphalian world. Edited by

Charlotte Wagnsson, James A. Sperling and Jan Hallenberg. London and New York: Routledge.
2009. 168pp. 70.00. isbn 978 0 41549 352 9.
European security governance is an edited volume which considers the question of a global system of
security governance and the position of the European Union within the established Westphalian order.
James Sperlings excellent introduction establishes a distinction between the notion of Westphalian
and post-Westphalian states. A Westphalian state is described as a traditional sovereignty-bound state
with a narrow security agenda, whereas a post-Westphalian state is willing to compromise or abnegate
sovereignty through the institutionalization of security cooperation and has a broader definition of
security. According to Sperling, the study of security governance has focused on two features: insti
tutional characteristics of governance, and the military aspect of security. He writes that security
governance performs two functionsinstitution-building and conflict resolutionand employs two
sets of instrumentsthe persuasive (economic, political and diplomatic) and the coercive (military
intervention and internal policing) (p. 7).
The first part of the volume examines the institutional dimensions of security governance. Malena
Britz and Hanna Ojanen argue that the European Union and the United Nations are both parts of
a system of security governance, and work on the development of security governance in order to
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enhance international security. Rafael Biermann looks at the question of NATO governance and the
consequences of its Westphalian characters on the completion of the EU project, analysing Euro-
Atlantic security governance. Arita Eriksson then offers a study of the EU and its provision of hard
security in the case of the intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), developing
an excellent analysis of the EU military operations in the DRC as a way of understanding security
governance in its global context.
The second section emphasizes the different modes of security governance. Andrew Rosss
argument looks at the implication of US foreign policy after 9/11 and its consequence on the EU
approach to security governance. The main focus concerns the different models of governance, that
is unilateralism versus multilateralism. However, the author tends to focus more on American than
European foreign policy, limiting the relevance of this piece within the book. Bertil Nygren analyses
the paradox that the energy sector creates within the stability of governance. He argues that the
current dynamic is defined as an anarchical regional system shaped by the interaction between newly
independent states of the region and major external powers.
In the last chapter of this section, Alison Watson studies the consequences of non-governance
on the issue of the role of children in international law and post-conflict environments. The author
argues that the current state-based governance rules are inadequate in dealing with issues of human
security, and that the EU and the UN should take into consideration these policies in the planning of
security governance missions. This piece offers a different understanding of the problem of govern
ance by looking at a different level of analysis (individual versus national or international), while
employing a constructivist and feminist theoretical framework.
Charlotte Wagnsson and Jan Hallenberg conclude with a very inspiring chapter that asks: What
are the prospects for exporting the EUs security culture that makes possible its unique form of
security governance? They ask if this form of security governance developed by the EU could be
exported and raise a central question: Can the EU security governance withstand the encroachments
and exigencies of a Westphalian world? (p. 127). Wagnsson and Hallenberg claim that the EU is an
example of a post-Westphalian region, given the following characteristics: the large number of actors
in the European sphere of security (public and private); institutionalization of security practices;
relations built around common norms and understandings and a common purpose; and commitment
to spreading good governance, leading to the development of a regional security governance.
European security governance tries to elucidate the complex question of security governance.
However, it seems that between the introduction and the conclusion, some of the chapters have limited
explanatory power and relevance to the books main question. Even so, Sperlings and Wagnsson and
Hallenbergs chapters are both very strong, developing incisive arguments on the notion of global
governance and the meaning of a Westphalian order; offering excellent literature reviews on the role
of the EU within the Westphalian order; and posing central questions for future research.
This edited volume gives an interesting explanation of global governance and the role of the EU
in leading the process. With the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU is now represented by
a president/chairperson and a foreign minister. This institutional innovation marks an important step
in promoting new ideas and norms within the Westphalian world order. But can post-Westphalian
security governance be disseminated? This will be one of the fundamental questions for upcoming
debates.
Maxime Lariv, University of Miami, USA
Russia and Eurasia
Russian Eurasianism: an ideology of empire. By Marlne Laruelle. Baltimore, MD: Johns

Hopkins University Press. 2008. 296pp. 32.00. isbn 978 0 80189 073 4.
Following the western-inspired reforms of Peter the Great, Westernizers (Zapadniki) in Russia argued
that this was an irreversible process. Their Slavophile critics countered that since Russias Orthodox
and collectivist values were not part of the West, and never would be, Russia should seek to unite
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all Slavic and Orthodox peoples in a distinctive Russia-led civilization. After the Bolshevik Revolu
tion and the establishment of the Soviet Union on the territories of the Russian Empire, the early
classical Eurasianists, drawn largely from the squabbling Russian migr circles in Europe, concluded
that the Zapadniki and the Slavophiles had both missed the point: it was the mix of Slavic and Turko-
Muslim peoples and the positive, rather than negative, legacy of the Mongol Empire which justified
the maintenance of the Russian imperial space. These obscure debates attracted little attention at the
time. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, questions concerning the civilizational identity
of the Russian Federation and its self-standing (samostoyatelnost) position, squeezed between an
expanding European Union and a Greater China, have breathed new life into the Eurasian movement.
In two previous volumes (Mythe aryen et rve imperial dans la Russie du XIXe sicle, Centre national
de la recherche scientifique, 2005; Lidologie eurasiste russe, ou, comment penser lempire, LHarmattan,
1999), Marlne Laruelle, an established authority in the field, has explored the ideas generated by
Russias nineteenth-century expansion in Asia (proto-Eurasianism), and the writings of the interwar
Eurasianists. In this, her third volume, Laruelles scrutiny of neo-Eurasianism is sympathetic, balanced
and perceptivea signal achievement given the muddled, and sometimes messianic, nature of much
Eurasianist writing.
After a brief review of the interwar Eurasianists, Laruelle examines the writings of the Orien
talist historian, geographer and philosopher Lev Gumilev (191292), and the philosopher and political
scientist Aleksandr Panarin (19402003). Son of the poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova,
Lev Gumilev was the link between the interwar Eurasianists and the neo-Eurasianists. Whatever the
intellectual worth of his idiosyncratic theories of ethnogenesis and studies of the Turkic-Mongol
peoples, he remains, significantly, an extraordinarily popular writer. His works still fill the shelves
of Russian bookshops and figure large on school and university reading lists. Unveiling a bust of
Gumilev at the thousandth anniversary of the multi-faith city of Kazan in August 2005, President
Putin made clear his admiration for the writer. Critical of the geographical determinism of the early
Eurasianists and the naturalism of Gumilev, Panarin has argued that the western phase of world
development has become an eastern one, reflecting a shift away from technological towards spiritual
values. Panarin sees Russias role as a bridge between the two worlds, serving as an East for the West
and a West for the East.
In contrast to the mystical assertions of Gumilev and the reflective works of Panarin, it is the
writings and activities of Russias best-known contemporary Eurasianist, Aleksandr Dugin, which
form the centrepiece of Laruelles study. Dismissing his liberal Eurasianist colleagues, who argue that
Russia ought to adopt modernization without Westernization, the hard-line Dugin calls explicitly
for the restoration of Russian control of the Eurasian heartland, including Central Asia, the Caucasus
and beyond. Drawing extensively on a wide range of geopolitical analyses, Dugin identifies the
United States and Atlanticism, not Europe and Westernism, as the chief Other. Although Dugins
lectures at the Military Academy of the Russian General Staff and his connections with the Russian
State Duma attest to his prominence within Russian military and political circles, the influence of
his policy prescriptions within the presidential administration is questionable. Putin (and President
Medvedev) have made clear their determination to re-establish Russia as a great power (derzhava);
have referred to Russia as a Euro-Asian country (evro-aziatskaia strana); and have struggled to develop
a Eurasian Economic Community. However, in the main Moscow has pursued a hard-headed and
flexible realist foreign policy to advance Russias national interests. Russia has worked with the US
and other western powers to contain international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but has also
been prepared to defy Washington and Brussels and assert its influence in the post-Soviet space, as the
August 2008 Georgian crisis made clear.
Laruelles last two chapters deal with non-Russian Muslim Eurasianism and the influence of
neo-Eurasianism in Kazakhstan and Turkey. Adopting a constructivist approach, she explores the
claims that Eurasianisms respect for the cultural and religious underpinnings of each distinctive civili
zation, and its emphasis on benevolent friendship among peoples, have a wide appeal, stretching
from the Turkic republics of the Russian Federation to some of the newly independent Central Asian
states and Turkey. Laruelle concludes that, while praising the ethnic and religious diversity of the
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Eurasian space, Russian and Kazakh Eurasianism provide a screen for Russian and Kazakh predomi
nance, while Turkish Eurasianism has developed a pragmatic and instrumental view of a multicultural
Eurasian community embracing the Turkic peoples of Turkey, Russia and Inner Asia.
Dmitri Trenin has argued that Eurasianism is a dead-end: a pretentious neither-nor position. For
as long as Russias search for its identity continues, whatever its contradictions and ambiguities, the
diverse school of neo-Eurasianist thinking will survive.
John Berryman, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
Russian nationalism and the national reassertion of Russia. Edited by Marlne Laruelle.
London and New York: Routledge. 2009. 276pp. Index. 80.00. isbn 978 0 41548 446 6.
Russian nationalism is a puzzlingly multi-faceted phenomenon, with twisted historical roots and
dubious cultural heritage; it forever tries to reconcile imperial ambition and ethnic exclusiveness
and has a tendency to sprout ugly xenophobic fringes. It is certainly a contemporary phenomenon,
which is carefully cultivated by the two-headed Russian leadership, but Marlne Laruelle has taken a
pretty accurate measure of the official patriotism, revealing that it is mostly devoid of content (p. 25).
That is not meant to imply that the team of authors whom she gathered to produce this commend
able volume were dealing with shallow discourse exercises and other low-content matters. To the
contrary, the topic they are collectively dealing with is as challenging as it remains under-researched.
Andreas Umland points out, for that matter, that the varieties of Russian putatively fascist group
ings would seem to be politically more relevant than the thoroughly researched but mostly marginal
extreme right-wing trends in contemporary Western Europe (p. 80).
The book gives sufficient and indeed necessary attention to the activities of the motley neo-fascist
groups and to the evolving blend of nationalistic and imperial thinking, including the ever-prolific
Aleksandr Dugin, who has single-handedly transformed traditionally loose Eurasianist ideas into an
aggressive (if not entirely comprehensible) train of thought. The most important contribution of
this collective work, however, lies in analysing the development of an official ideology of Putinism
on the basis of inflated self-assessmentdistorted by the mind-boggling inflow of petro-roubles in
the mid-2000sand assertive rejection of western democratic prescriptions. This ideology finds no
problem with borrowing from the heritage of Stalin, who is increasingly portrayed as an effective
manager, even if the partial rehabilitation, as Veljko Vujacic correctly argues, does not signify that
we are witnessing a return to Stalinist values (p. 69). This regime is indeed too thoroughly corrupt to
embrace the discipline of terror, but not too decadent to ignore the need to manipulate public opinion
for securing its own continuity.
Perhaps the most disturbing feature of this manipulation is the spread of xenophobia in Russian
society, which has some long-familiar anti-Semitic subtext but is now primarily aimed at labour
migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Mikhail Alekseev examines this trend with the help
of both opinion polls and statistical modelsand arrives at some good paradoxes (p. 181), pointing
out, for instance, that while the perceptions of the scale of migration are systematically higher than
the real data, two ethnic groups are seen as immigrating in numbers that are far beyond the reality:
the Chechens and the Chinese. The conveniently ignored rise of xenophobic violence goes hand in
hand with the penetration of nationalistic discourses into the cultural mainstream, where political
correctness is typically dismissed as western hypocrisy.
The arrival of a severe economic crisis, which has hit Russia with greater force than most indus
trialized states or emerging economies, has meant a shattering blow to the self-perception of a rising
power that Putin had so confidently propagated. Reckoning with the reality of a backward and
inefficient state, which President Medvedev now has to address, may be a healthy process, but the
pains of a protracted recession exacerbate the bitter disappointment of the lost pseudo-patriotic
illusions of grandeur, and the resulting disorientation is not necessarily conducive to a sober self-
assessment. The temptation to blame enemies for ones own blunders is ever present, and various
kinds of nationalism could join forces to mobilize an inert society and seek an easy way out of the
complex disasterwhich in fact leads to a familiar Russia-for-the-Russians dead-end.
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John B. Dunlop, a scholar who commands great respect in this field, writes in the foreword
that research on Russian nationalism is crucial for attempting to grasp where the country might be
heading (p. xvii). The book is dedicated to him.
Pavel Baev, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway
Middle East and North Africa

Defeat: why they lost Iraq. By Jonathan Steele. London: I. B. Tauris. 2009. 304pp. Pb.: 20.00.
isbn 978 1 84885 077 4.
Defeat in Iraq was almost instant and certainly inevitable, born of a failure of USUK political
intelligence and understanding of history, described by Jonathan Steele as a weird mixture of total
cynicism and moral fervour. In the present cacophony of anti-war literature in the public arena,
Steeles credentials are such that his take on the Iraq adventure makes a worthy addition to better
understanding recent events.
Steeles central thesis is both simple and devastating. Having spent nine extended visits watching
the situation deteriorate, Steeles argument is that while the management of the occupation of Iraq
was a disaster, its very conception was doomed to failure. Why? Conventional understanding suggests
that the Coalition Provisional Authoritys (CPA) disbanding of the Iraqi security forces and army was
a major trigger of the insurgency. Steele by contrast found that the insurgency was more fundamen
tally opposed to the very presence of foreign forces, based on existing national pride and loyalty to
Islam. What the poor decision-making of the CPA did, whether through disbanding the army or
the heavy-handed methods utilized in Fallujah or Najaf, simply exacerbated such violent opposition.
Steele argues that the only possible successful scenario would have been to avoid the transition
from liberator to occupier by leaving immediately after the invasion. This vindicates one of the ideas
of the much maligned Donald Rumsfeld, who wanted to leave Iraq as soon as possible. However,
as with any hypothetical scenario, we can never know how bloody or peaceful it would have been,
although when compared to reality it is hard to imagine a much worse outcome.
In defending its hypothesis of the allergic reaction to occupation, Defeat examines a potted history
of the meeting of the Occident and the Orient to provide a backdrop to how the western military
and cultural penetration of the region over the centuries created ripe conditions for what occurred
post-2003. The book does live up to its promise to avoid the chronological narrative found in many
other accounts, but can seem a bit disjointed at times because of it. Historians of Iraq in particular may
take issue as to whether the starting points for understanding events are the right ones.
Steele is slightly off target in attacking both Bush and Blair as being unaware of Iraqi history
or the complexity of Iraqi society. While this may be true it misses the conviction of both leaders that
resulted in the decision to invade: the key was that they believed in themselves as agents of change,
not beholden to the past experiences or history of others. It was this arrogance born of false convic
tion that led Blair to reject the diplomatic prewar advice of academic experts on Iraq, by explaining
that Saddam was uniquely evil.
Defeat made headlines by breaking the story that the Foreign Offices (FCO) Arabists failed to
predict the rise of the Islamists or to realize that the occupation would provoke an insurgency. Steele
describes this as arguably the biggest foreign policy blunder in recent British history since Suez.
While the FCO may have got things seriously wrong, the reality of US hegemony in the decision-
making process, combined with Blairs determination to stay by their side, makes any FCO failure
somewhat irrelevant to the bigger picture.
Like any current history, Defeat has to an extent been overtaken by events. A simplistic narrative
can read that the United States went into Iraq to save it from Saddam; the insurgency forced them to
save themselves from Iraq; after which time the civil war meant that they had to save Iraq from itself.
Steeles last visit to Iraq was in 2008 as the effect of the surge began to result in reductions in levels
of violence. General Petraeuss population-centric counter-insurgency ideas fragilely reconnected the
Sunni insurgency to the government and supported Prime Minister Maliki in purging rejectionist
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Shia militias. The withdrawal of US forces from urban areas at the end of June proved that a certain
modus vivendi could be reached between the occupier and the occupied, a reality that Steeles book
could not have easily explained. However, as this improvement was premised on clear deadlines of
departure and actual sovereignty being restored to the nascent Iraqi government, it seems that for real
defeat in Iraq to be avoided the occupation will have to end.
James Denselow, Kings College London, UK
Guardians of the revolution: Iran and the world in the age of the Ayatollahs. By Ray Takeyh.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009. 328pp. 15.99. isbn 978 0 19532 784 7.
Ray Takeyhs new book has three core arguments. First, he argues that the Islamic Republic of
Iran is not a totalitarian state. Rather, it is only the faction following Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi
Mesbah-Yazdiwhich includes President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadthat can be seen as a champion
of totalitarian Islam. While Ayatollah Khomeini had totalitarian aspirations, his adherents prevented
the Islamic Republic from becoming a pure totalitarian state. Second, Takeyh agues that during the
presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (198997), Iran developed and displayed what he calls
pragmatic restraint and that the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (19972005) was genuinely a
period of reform. Third, he argues that the West bears a great deal of culpability for the failure of
Mohammad Khatamis reform movement: the United States made a grave error in not seriously
engaging Tehran during their time in office.
Regarding the first argument, the factors of a totalitarian state are to be found in Iran. Takeyhs
main mistake, however, seems to be that his analysis only focuses on one element of Iranian society:
the ruling Islamists. When he writes about the broad range of ideologies in Iran, Takeyh really
means the inter-Islamist conflicts, ignoring the multiple non-Islamist movements, which are still
alive, though persecuted, in Iran. Takeyh argues that the only viable movement for change in Iran is
the Khatami-led reformists, who I contend never reformed or democratized Iran. Khatami speaks of
a society that does not deviate from Islamic laws, thus severely limiting the potential for change. In
contrast, most other opposition and dissident groups recognize that proper reform in Iran can only
occur by changing the Islamic constitution.
The author is also critical of the reform movement, but in a different vein. He argues that they
should have used the opportunity provided by the Khatami presidency to organize the masses by
building new political parties rather than opening newspapers (many of which have been banned by
the conservatives). But would such efforts have made much of a difference? Over the last 30 years,
the regime has systematically eliminated political movements whose ideas deviate from the ruling
ideology of the Islamic Republic.
Regarding Iranian policy, Takeyh argues that the Islamic Republic would modify itself along
pragmatic lines. He notes that in the 1980s, Iran made a number of mistakes by perpetuating and
prolonging conflicts as part of its foreign policy: most notably, the US embassy hostage crisis and the
Rushdie affair. However, he contends that since the 1980s, pragmatism has played a more central role
in Irans decision-making. But has it? The current nuclear debate suggests otherwise. While the West
has offered Iran a package involving uranium enrichment, the Islamic Republic refuses to make any
concessions or agreements, prolonging a most volatile debate. Iranian foreign policy, it would seem,
remains consistent.
Takeyh speaks of the failures and missed opportunities of the West in its dealings with Iran. To a
certain extent, he is correct. But on the other side, how interested in dialogue or reconciliation has
Iran ever been, even during the Khatami presidency? As Bruno Schirra recently reported in the Wall
Street Journal, the German foreign intelligence service discovered that the military element of Irans
nuclear programme continued under President Khatami, in contrast to the 2007 US National Intel
ligence Estimate. Khatami, in fact, never questioned Irans military nuclear programme, or entered
into a dialogue about it.
Similarly, would any Iranian leader accept a decision by the Palestinian leadership to make peace
with Israel? Above all, the leader Ali Khamenei would never allow such a step. Yet Takeyh argues
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that Khatami would agree to such a deal. At the same time, Khatami has marched on the front lines
of the al-Quds day protests (which call for the destruction of Israel), as is traditionally expected of
the head of state. The central figure in Takeyhs argument of pragmatism is Rafsanjani. To an extent,
Takeyh is correct: Rafsanjani has exhibited a great deal of pragmatism when it comes to economic
policies. Indeed, he has frequently called for a more liberalized economy in Iran and an increase in
foreign investment. But in the realm of foreign policy, no pragmatism exists. Was he being pragmatic
when he approved the assassination of opposition figures in Europe in the 1980s? Can we ignore his
role in the 1994 AMIA bombings in Argentina, for which Interpol has issued a red notice? In truth,
Rafsanjani remains committed to the central tenets of Iranian foreign policy, particularly the use
of terrorism abroad. A Khomeinist Iran will always be in conflict with the West; it is ideologically
ingrained in the Islamic Republic.
Nevertheless, there is much to learn from Takeyhs work: most notably, the gap between the will
of the Iranian people and that of its theocratic rulers. But to truly understand Iran and its political
future, one must broaden the focus.
Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, European Foundation for Democracy, Belgium
Sub-Saharan Africa
Chinas new role in Africa. By Ian Taylor. Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner. 2008.
227pp. 49.50. isbn 978 1 58826 636 1.
Chinas African challenges. By Sarah Raines. Abingdon: Routledge. 2009. 270pp. Pb.: 9.99.
isbn 978 0 41555 693 4.
Chinas burgeoning role in Africa has inspired a huge amount of analysis and commentary in the
last few years. As Sarah Raines describes it, from being heavily engaged in Africa as a revolutionary
partner in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to build the enormous but largely ineffective Tanzania
rail line, the engagement became somewhat stagnant in the 1980s as China restarted its economy,
opened up and focused on acquiring western technology, investment and export markets. In the
late 1990s, however, something happened. China became a net importer of oil in 1993. Its energy
hunger prompted the country to seek supplies abroad. Many of the 53 countries in the African conti
nent offered potential sources. In the following decade, China signed increasingly large deals with
countries ranging from South Africa to Nigeria and Sudan.
These separate studies complement each other. Ian Taylors strength is his evident intimate knowl
edge of the dynamics within African countries. His study is rich in detail on the separate relations
between individual African countries and China. As both authors are at pains to point out, this is
not a straightforward story. While only four African nations continue to recognize Taiwan over
the Peoples Republic, the views of the political elites within each of these countries run from
almost complete praise for the speed and scale of Chinas trade and aid commitments to Africa (most
vociferously, the President of Senegal, who has been a consistent admirer of the Chinese way of doing
things in his country and continent, placing it above those of western countries and multinational
entities like companies, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund) to something much
more nuanced. In the 2005 election in Zambia, as both Taylor and Raines point out, the opposition
parties played with the mantra of Chinese investment only creates jobs for Chinese well enough to
win many urban seats, even if they did not finally take the whole election.
Sarah Raines has more detail on the Chinese side. While Ian Taylor goes to some lengths to
make clear that not only is Africa not unified as an actor, but China is not a unified actor within
Africa, Raines spends a whole chapter plotting out in detail the various parts of the Chinese state
and non-state machinery that engage with Africa, from the national oil companies to the state banks
to the National Development and Reform Commission; the state investment funds; and various
national and provincia-level entities. China has articulated its policy towards Africa in government
documents and in the institution of the Forum on ChinaAfrica Cooperation (FOCAC), which meets
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biannually, alternating between Africa and China. Yet Raines sets down clearly the very different
dynamics and pressures on Chinese policy-making towards Africa, with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs frequently being sidelined, and the more powerful domestic energy interests dominating.
This has led to China coming a cropper in its interests in places of instability and poor governance
like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even in South Africa, there has been a lack of
understanding by Chinese companies which undercut everyone else when bidding for projects, won
contracts and then found that they were unable to deliver them because they had failed to factor in
compliance with employment laws and best trade practice.
Both authors succeed in spelling out the pitfalls that China has come across in this complex terrain.
Sudan has been covered well. One Chinese vice-foreign minister, when a particularly brutal period
occurred in Sudan in 2005, simply talked about it being business as normal for outsiders. But as
Chinas involvement in peacekeeping forces, both there and elsewhere in Africa, proves, it has now
quietly accepted that rigidly standing by the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other
countries is not sustainable. With increasing assets in the African continent, China was even provoked
in late 2008 to send its first naval protective force abroad in six centuries, an event which Taylors book
was too early to cover.
Raines and Taylor both point out the key issuesthe historic links which underpin the political
links today, and the current dynamics being dominated by resource needs from within China. Taylors
work is comprehensively sourced, and although it uses only English language material, it is clear he
has talked in detail with scholars and officials in China about Sino-African relations. Rainess book,
while stronger on Chinese sources, irritatingly has neither a bibliography nor, even worse, an index.
But she covers the various levels of government in China very well, and her presentation is clear and
methodical. One point she makes is that however large China might look, it is still a relatively small
player in the African continent, with its oil companies only accounting for a small percentage of oil
production there. Of this 90 per cent is sold onto the international markets rather than sent back to
China, where it would suffer the artificially depressed prices imposed by the state. What is clear from
this is that it is not so much how things stand that is important, but the clear sense that the potential
for growth of Chinese interests in Africa is massive. This links the books with the story of Chinas
interests in other parts of the world. What was once a small player abroad is now becoming increas
ingly prominent. Through no fault of their own, therefore, these two books are likely to become
rapidly out of date. It is in their mapping of the various problems that Chinese interests in Africa
come across, however, that they are likely to have more permanent value, problems not just for
countries in Africa, but also for other western powers with significant interests and trade there, such
as France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Both agree that whatever the negatives, this is
not a simple story of good and bad, or right and wrong, but of China being a highly complex actor,
helping to achieve some impressive economic work in Africa, and even now, as Raines points out,
thinking much more about its cultural influence on the continent (with the establishment of Confu
cian Institutes in many African countries). Both authors make clear that developments in the future
are likely to be faster, bolder and more radical. In that sense, it is very much a case of watch this space.
Kerry Brown, Asia Programme, Chatham House
Asia and Pacific

Whose ideas matter? Agency and power in Asian regionalism. By Amitav Acharya. Ithaca,
NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2009. 189pp. 26.95. isbn 978 0 80144 751 8.
A foreign norm diffuses to another country or region, fuses with local beliefs, amplifies these and
reflects back to the global level. This is the process, which according to Amitav Acharya is responsible
for regionalization in East and South-East Asia.
The idea of his book is to show how regionalism is not a product of the West or of post-Second
World War power alignments, but a genuine product of leaders of countries in the region. Acharya
is right in deploring that regionalism in East and South-East Asia has almost always been looked at
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from a western perspective, and has been analysed with concepts and theories that were developed in
academic institutions in the West, stemming from practices of cooperation in the West, particularly
in the European Union.
But this criticism is partly unfair, because there has been virtually no theorizing from scholars of
the region. One may therefore ask the question of whether the lack of regional theorizing does not
in fact mirror the situation of regionalism in East and South-East Asia. A constructivist approach
may seem the way out, as it might detect regional approaches to the management of multilateral
cooperation that Eurocentric analysis and rational International Relations theory with its focus on the
power and interest of sovereign states have missed. Amitav Acharya promises therefore to remedy the
western angle of analysis. Here is how it works: after the Second World War, there were two foreign
norms competing for influence in the regionnon-intervention and collective defence. Both met
with dominant local beliefsnationalism and anti-colonialism. While nationalist leaders perceived
collective defence as continuation of foreign dominance, they found that non-intervention is compat
ible with nationalism and anti-colonialism. In the following years (between the Asian Relations
Conference of 1947 and the Bandung Conference of 1955), the foreign and the local norms fused to
create a cognitive prior that would underpin future multilateral security cooperation: expanded
notions of non-intervention; soft institutionalism with the rejection of legally binding norms; and
defence bilateralism. The result was that any attempts to institutionalize collective defence failed
(especially the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, SEATO), whereas the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created based on the cognitive prior.
The argument is persuasive for regional security cooperation. However, Acharyas analysis becomes
precarious when he applies it to regional economic cooperation. Here, according to him the cognitive
prior consisted of economic nationalism, import substitution and collective bargaining. The argument
is unconvincing for two reasons: first, when regional governments realized that import substitution
did not develop their economies, they moved to export orientation, cast aside the cognitive prior and
henceforth became interlinked with the global economy. Second, loosely knit economic cooperation
in ASEAN pays tribute to the vast differences in economic development between regional countries.
Nevertheless, for security cooperation, the cognitive prior remained intact during the Cold War.
Then, in the post-Cold War world, ASEANs weak institutionalization became a problem, with
deterritorialized threats such as environmental pollution and transnational crime gaining promi
nence. A weak organization, ASEAN was overwhelmed by the forest fires in Indonesia in 1997, and
it failed to react to the financial crisis of the same year. From here on, Acharya sees a process of
institutional learning that has made non-intervention more flexible. Yet he seems overly optimistic:
the feeble attempts to talk sense into Burmas military regime are a result of outside pressure, not of
conviction in ASEAN; the response to SARS in 2003 was inadequate; the agreement of 2007 to set
up an ASEAN human rights mechanism was barely an ASEAN idea, being perfectly at odds with the
authoritarianism of most of the organizations members; the ASEAN charter, a constitution-style
document adopted in 2007triggered by the evidence that a large organization cannot function
effectively without a strong institutional frameworkhas not shown any palpable successes so far.
Given that most of these recent ASEAN initiatives are based on ideas of more transparency, account
ability and human rights, and also given that they have shown no significant development at all, it
would be worth exploring their extra-regional provenance (such as the aid-giving OECD countries)
rather than accepting them as original ASEAN initiatives. This is perhaps the most striking short
coming of Acharyas book.
Nevertheless, especially when discussing the Cold War period, the work is an important contri
bution to the understanding of the history of multilateral cooperation in the region. It usefully
complements rational theorizing, as well as the usual explanations of why ASEAN is so weakly insti
tutionalized: incomplete processes of nation-building (for instance in Cambodia and Timor-Leste);
intra-ASEAN dissonances (for instance about the future regional role of the United States and China,
and contested territorialities in the South China Sea); and the vast economic, social, cultural and
political differences between the countries.
Oliver Hensengerth
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Asia and Pacific
Challenges to Chinese foreign policy: diplomacy, globalisation and the next world power.
Edited by Yufan Hao, C. X. George Wei and Lowell Dittmer. Lexington, KY: University Press
of Kentucky. 2009. 377pp. Index. Pb.: 26.95. isbn 978 0 81319 202 4.
This collection of essays from primarily Chinese scholars seeks to offer an alternative approach to
western views of Chinas rapidly developing international relations in light of sweeping changes to its
global role. While the central question which this work seeks to answer is that of the balance between
internal domestic pressures and international factors (not the least of which being Chinas emerging
identity as a Great Power), many other facets of the countrys foreign policy are developed, leading
to the introduction of several other questions. These include how well China has been following
its purported doctrine of a peaceful rise; what types of strategies Beijing is undertaking in order
to develop in a peaceful fashion; and what the current and future trends in Chinas most important
bilateral relationships are, including those with the United States, the European Union and Japan.
As described in the introduction, the books main assertion is that in order to better understand the
possible changes and trends in Chinese foreign policy, one has to understand the basic forces and
factors that shape the continuity of policy and the context of change (p. 5). These include pressures
within the Chinese government as well as from the international community, which is seeking to
understand and better account for Beijings Great Power status.
This book seeks to cover a wide variety of historical, political and geographic areas, and this is,
in some ways, both a blessing and a liability. On one side, areas of Chinese foreign policy study,
including Sino-South Asian relations and the roles of Hong Kong and Macao, which have not been
given a comprehensive airing in other works, are developed to great effect here. The section on
Beijings relations with Islamabad is especially welcome, given recent events in Pakistan and its role
in global anti-terror operations. The chapter on Taiwan introduces fresh insights on both cross-Strait
relations and the response of outside parties including Washington. On the other hand, some areas
which are central to Chinas current foreign relations concerns do not receive as comprehensive an
analysis. The section on Sino-American relations, for example, is heavily dominated by a discus
sion of Chinese and American hard-power strategic issues, in particular nuclear politics. While this
area is definitely of great policy concern to both sides, it is but one component of the wider area
of diplomatic issues between the two countries, especially in light of the global recession and the
growing economic interdependence in which the pair are increasingly becoming embedded. By the
same token, the chapter on Beijings relations with the European Union focuses heavily on the trading
aspects of the relationship, with little emphasis on the considerable political differences that have
arisen of late, especially among some of the EUs larger members. The chapter on economic engage
ment introduces the subject by equating economic power with soft power, an assertion which is
definitely open to challenge not only regarding China but also in general foreign policy study.
Not all of the chapters examine current events, and some contributions rely heavily on histor
ical analysis. The first of these gives a comprehensive overview of the changes in Chinas foreign
policy-making from the death of Mao to current international challenges. Other chapters analyse
the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s and the Great Power plays in the Himalayan region during the Cold
War. Although this collection of essays lacks the strong central theme more common in other recent
compilations on Chinas international relations, there is much information here that will be of interest
to China scholars, as well as fresh insights on some of the most important past and present issues
relating to the countrys ongoing opening to the world.
Marc Lanteigne, University of St Andrews, UK
Chinese security policy: structure, power and politics. By Robert R. Ross. Abingdon: Rout
ledge. 2009. 342pp. Index. Pb.: 23.99. isbn 978 0 41577 786 5.
This is a new book, but the essays of which it consists date from as early as 1986 and have appeared
in various periodicals and journals. That they still stand up to serious study, almost a quarter of a
century after some of them were first published, is a testimony to the careful thought that has gone
into them.
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Robert Ross is a realist and his focus is on the key relationship between the United States and
China. Even his study in 1991 of Chinas role in relation to Cambodia (and much has happened since
then) shows that Chinas main consideration in almost all areas in which it operates is how to balance
its own interests with that of the worlds last remaining superpower. It does this for a sound reason:
Ross argues that while China remains an increasingly important land power, with ability to project
its interests deep into Central Asia and South-East Asia, the United States remains overwhelmingly
dominant in terms of sea power. Its navy is vastly larger and more advanced, and its experience
deeper: this dominates strategic thinking in China about the resolution of the Taiwanese issue and its
other interests in the region.
Rosss discussion of Taiwan is particularly interesting. No mainland Chinese leader, as he acknowl
edges, could ever go weak on the issue of Taiwan. Despite patience, and the frequent indicators that
in order to preserve the present status quo China is sometimes willing to put the issue of final reuni
fication on the back burner (it did, for instance, in the late 1970s, while restarting formal diplomatic
relations with the United States), the mainland communist government knows that conceding on
the issue of Taiwanese sovereignty would create a disastrous precedent for other areas like Tibet or
Xinjiang. The regime also knows that Taiwan is a test of its legitimacy in delivering unified govern
ment to the whole of the country, and that the island, which now stands as a de facto independent
actor, continues to pose immense threats for the mainland. But short of a straight declaration of
independence, which former Presidents Lee Teng Hui and Chen Shui-Bian came very close to but
never quite made, mainland China is willing to remain patient.
Whether Rosss assertions of the immense superiority of US land, air and sea forces is as tenable
now as it was when writing some of these essays is questionable. In the last decade, at least, China
has made massive improvements in its military capability. But on the detail, Ross sounds convincing,
talking about the ability of Chinese nuclear missiles to reach the US, though stored in isolated places
and difficult to mobilize quickly. Chinas second strike capacity, its lack of experience in combat
(its last real external combat experience was in 1979 against Vietnam, and that was a disaster) and its
weakness as a sea power are all still issues. But Chinas capacity in cyber attacks and in what Ross calls
information warfare is coming along in leaps and bounds. And it is likely, as Ross rightly says, that
because the costs of a nuclear war are so huge and destructive, conventional warfare and new forms
of less destructive non-conventional warfare are likely to remain with us. A nuclear resolution of the
Taiwan issue, Ross states, would wholly destroy the interests of both sides in this issue.
Ross has a deep understanding of internal Chinese politics and his work on howsince the time
of the doomed Lin Biao in the late 1960selite leadership issues in China have shaped its international
policy is richly detailed and enlightening. In particular, his argument about the role of a dominant
leader in foreign policy still remains valid, even though the current Chinese President Hu Jintao has
to work in a much more collegiate way than, say, Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping. But Rosss history
shows that even these two former leaders had to face down opposition as they shaped Chinas inter
national role. Mao had opposition from Lin Biao over the need to shift the key relationship from the
Soviet Union (with which China had come to blows in 1969) to the United States, and Deng needed
to manoeuvre first against the radical leftists in the Gang of Four in the late 1970s and then against
those who were much more reluctant to embrace the US in the 1980s. In a chapter on China and US
relations before and after the Tiananmen Square disaster in 1989, Ross argues that the US, despite
being in a position of great strength, did all it could to help out a country it knew was in domestic
turmoil, largely because the failure of China, even with the political model it then had, would have
been far worse an option for US interests than its success.
Ross is very rational in his approach to international relations. Countries are best placed, on
his account, if they understand well what other parties actually think about their own intentions.
Mistakes happen when this mutual understanding fails. Thus these essays show the real importance
of wide and deep dialogue and mutual understanding. And even though the power gap between the
US and China may have narrowed, the essays still discuss much that is of great relevance to the situa
tion today.
Kerry Brown, Asia Programme, Chatham House
296
North America
North America
Renegade: the making of Barack Obama. By Richard Wolffe. London: Virgin Books. 2009.
356pp. Index. 17.99. isbn 978 1 90526 487 2.
One year into Barack Obamas presidency, it is easy to forget the deep unlikelihood of his candidacy.
Richard Wolffes mix of campaign reportage and character study in Renegade: the making of Barack
Obama reminds us of the truly meteoric nature of Obamas rise. The author writes that it takes a
juxtaposition of man and moment to make a great president. It is too early to judge this in Obamas
case, but the same applies to making a great candidate. Renegade provides a sensible balance to the
rose-tinted view of Obamas supporters during the campaign and the hysterics of some opponents.
The portrait that emerges is more interesting than the idealized one of a liberal saviour come to bury
the Bush legacy. We see a pragmatic and disciplinedcalculating evenpolitician mapping his path
to power and executing his strategy from the start of his brief Senate career. Obama is clearly on the
liberal side of US politics, but as a senator he had no problem working on issues that liberals opposed.
Contrary to the image of the outsider riding to success on the back of grassroots donations, Renegade
shows that Obama was always pragmatic about the importance of fundraising from traditional big
donors, and that the campaigns netroots money only really became important after the Iowa caucus
in 2008. In 2007, old-style fundraising from large donors was the focus, which then allowed for a
bigger-than-planned grassroots strategy. One of the less glorious moments of the election came when
Obama opted out of public financing of his campaign, which would have imposed spending limits,
after having said he would not. This was a complete reversal, based on political advantage (p. 211).
Without downplaying the outsider nature of the candidate, Renegade highlights that Obama was
no unrealistic rebel. Narratives of the campaign underestimate the very short time-span between his
decision to run (made in December 2006) and the election, especially when considering the need to
build a top-tier fundraising operation from scratch. That Obama succeeded brilliantly in this reflects
his blend of outsider-idealist and insider-realist. As Wolffe observes, He grew into a methodical
insurgent (p. 135). The book is particularly good on tracing the formative experiences that led to this
potent mix. The chapter on Obamas experiences as a community organizer shows him developing a
combination of discipline and organization with the idealism of the civil rights movement. Similarly,
his presidential campaign set a high standard for discipline, innovation and strategic consistency. The
author does not shy away throughout, however, from noting how Obamas self-confidence and calm
can lead him to cockiness or even arrogance, an aspect that needs to be kept in check by his self-
discipline. Wolffe writes that at times it became hard to distinguish whether Obamas self-assurance
had turned into complacency. Critics of the Presidents handling of healthcare or Afghanistan might
find an echo of their own complaints there.
Renegade is strong on Obamas navigation of racial identity and politics in contemporary America,
placing him within the legacy of the civil rights movement and of the Joshua Generation, the leaders
who followed the Moses Generation of Martin Luther King (p. 157). One thing that stands out is
how lucky he was that the media did not latch earlier onto the controversial sermons of Reverend
Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Obamas church in Chicago. By the time the story had broken, the Obama
bandwagon had reached full speed and was not derailed, although it took some deft political work
by the candidate to defuse the situation. As Wolffe wonders, what might have been the outcome if
the controversy had erupted before Obamas campaign had been catapulted into the big time by his
win in Iowa?
Wolffe argues that, as the presidential campaign was the only major accomplishment in Obamas
record up to that point, it offers the best clue as to the future of his presidency. One year on, how
does this add up? The community organization/grassroots model was successful in the election, but
taking it into government does not appear to have worked out, as healthcare reform shows. In the
context of American politics it does not seem to have the potential of functioning as a type of party
movement for Obama. One of the books central themes is that Obama is at his best when sticking to
his own game plan. The question is whether this can work in the White Housea position buffeted
daily by the widest range of eventsas it did during the campaign.
297
Book reviews
One criticism is that the author seems occasionally too much in awe of his subject despiteor
maybe because ofthe degree of access. At times, Wolffe protests too much about Obamas strengths
and qualities as a politician, proceeding more by assertion than demonstration. The book comes close
to repetitiveness about Obamas determination to balance negative and positive campaigning on the
road to the White House. Even if one is inclined to agree that he ran an unusually restrained campaign,
it would have been better to read more of how this was done rather than have it pronounced. A
connected shortcoming is the tendency to veer at times towards hand-wringing at the roughness of
the political attacks on Obama from his opponents, parts of the media and the shadier reaches of the
internet.
Presidential elections are primarily won or lost on domestic issues, but it would have been useful
to have Obamas obvious lack of foreign policy experience, whatever his other qualities, probed
with more determination too. The stress on how his outlook on international issues comes out of his
personal family experience can wear a little thin. The argument, for example, that his very peripheral
involvement in trying to resolve the post-election violence in Kenya can be listed as foreign policy
experience is weak. Until a fuller biography of Barack Obama is produced, Renegade will stand along
side the Presidents own writing as among the best available sources on the subject. As such, it is a
welcome addition to what has been published so far about the first African-American president of
the United States. For all of the books merits, one wishes, though, that given the authors privileged
seat at one of the truly historic presidential campaigns and his apparent rapport with Obama, he had
made more of the opportunity.
Nicolas Bouchet, Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, UK
Latin America and Caribbean

Cuban medical internationalism: origins, evolution, and goals. By John M. Kirk and H.
Michael Erisman. London and New York: Palgrave. 2009. 228pp. Index. 60.00. isbn 978 1 40398
372 5.
In this pioneering work, two eminent scholars of revolutionary Cuba have teamed up to
providein admirably limpid prosean up-to-date and comprehensive overview of a signifi
cant but largely unacknowledged facet of the islands external relations. John Kirk and Michael
Erisman lament the fact that Cuban medical aid, whether in the aftermath of a natural catas
trophe such as Hurricane Mitch, which ravaged Central America in 1998, or as part of a long-term
programme to help build a sustainable health system in a country like Gambia, has been all but
ignored by the western media (understandably prone to trumpet their own nations contribu
tions, as in fact do the Cuban media). Yet, from the provision of post-earthquake relief to Chile
in 1960, and the dispatch of a medical team to Algeria in 1963, to the current proposal to send
medical missions to remote Pacific islands, as well as by venturing into urban barrios and rural areas
where local doctors have been loath to tread, Cuba in the authors estimation has put the devel
oped world to shame over the amount of aid that it has dispensed. Kirk and Erisman go so far
as to make the rather audacious claim that Cubas contemporary medical assistance undoubtedly
reaches more people than the work of all the G-8 countries together, as well as that of the World
Health Organization and Mdecins sans Frontires (p. 170). They endorse the view of Julie
Feinsilver, who has written extensively on the Cuban health care system, that there is no better
testament to the effectiveness of Cubas medical aid than the Bush administrations attempt in 2006
through the Cuban Medical Professional Parole programme to lure Cuban medical personnel
abroad into defecting to the United States.
A lengthy opening chapter sets forth the domestic roots of the philosophy underlying Cuban
medical internationalism: namely, the three bedrock principles established for the reformed health
system in the wake of the 1959 revolutionfree service; full geographical coverage; and access for
all. The authors underscore the value that is placed on human capital, the egalitarian ethos and spirit
of humanitarianism that is inculcated in the medical profession and the emphasis on preventive rather
298
Latin America and Caribbean
than curative medicine; this is sharply contrasted with the principles and praxis of medicine in the
United States.
Kirk and Erisman discount the notion that Cuba has deliberately sought to leverage its medical
assistance to achieve diplomatic support in international forums in order to bolster the islands
security. Cuban assistance has been offered regardless of a countrys political stance towards Havana;
Cuba even offered the Bush administration assistancewhich was summarily spurnedfollowing
Hurricane Katrinas devastation of New Orleans in 2005. Nevertheless, there is no denying that Cubas
international stock has risen in tandem with its expanding humanitarian outreach: foreign represen
tation in Havana has increased dramatically; Cuba recently completed its second chairmanship of
the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations; it now receives overwhelming support in the annual UN
General Assembly vote on the US embargo; and every Latin American nation now favours Cubas
readmission to the Organization of American States.
Although the primary focus of the volume is on Cuban medical aid, some insight is afforded into
other areas in which Cuba has offered assistance gratis, such as basic literacy promotion. It is indeed
remarkable that Cuba should also have a programme to provide energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs,
whereby a country like Jamaica can reduce its oil import bill.
This is certainly not a work that will disarm cynics and hard-nosed critics of the Castro regime,
who will probably pounce on the apparent acceptance at face value of official Cuban statistics to
buttress the case for Cuban largess, on the frequent reliance as a source on articles appearing in the
official organ Granma and on the analyses of sympathetic organizations such as MEDICC (Medical
Education Cooperation with Cuba). It is noteworthy that the authors do not comment on the surpris
ingly high number of Cuban medical graduates (37,841) enumerated in Table 4.7 (p. 115) for the years
199099encompassing the so-called Special Period of severe austerity in the aftermath of the Soviet
collapsecompared with 22,490 during the preceding decade and only 9,334 in the years 20002004.
The iteration of such essentially unverifiable sets of statistics, presented with few comparative bench
marks, can at times serve to disconcert the reader.
This reviewer felt that Kirk and Erisman do their case a distinct disservice with their fundamental
boosterism and with their lavish, unbounded praise throughout the text for Cubas obvious achieve
ments in the medical field. For example, in the space of two paragraphs at the end of chapter five, they
employ the words extraordinary, exceptional, stunning and exemplary, before citing Haitian
President Ren Prvals accolade: after God come the Cuban doctors (pp. 1678); such encomia
will surely raise questions about their overall scholarly objectivity. In fairness, the authors do speak
to the criticism that has been levelled at Cuba, but dismiss some of it too readily: the objections
of national medical associations to the Cuban medical presence (and presumably to the standard of
medical education imparted to their nationals in Cuba) in countries such as Honduras, Venezuela and
Bolivia are insufficiently explored.
The story of Cuban medical internationalism assuredly deserves a wide hearing. It is unfortu
nate, then, that the fairly steep price of this slender opus will perforce put it beyond the reach of its
intended audience.
Philip Chrimes
Brazil as an economic superpower? Understanding Brazils changing role in the global

economy. Edited by Lael Brainard and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz. Washington DC: Brookings
Institution Press. 2009. 291pp. Index. Pb.: 17.99. isbn 978 0 81570 296 2.
The fascination in G7 capitals with Brazil, Russia, India and China, created by Goldman Sachss 2003
publication Dreaming with the BRICs: the path to 2050, has only grown over the last year due
to the financial crisis and rise of the G20. Unfortunately for those charged with making decisions
involving the BRICs the bulk of the background material they need to consult is not available in
English. The excellent book reviewed here is thus a substantial contribution to contemporary policy
debates providing a significant tranche of the economic background needed to effectively engage
Brazil bilaterally and multilaterally.
299
Book reviews
In their introductory essay, Lael Brainard and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz explain why Brazil
belongs in the BRIC collection, putting forward the argument that the confluence of Brazils
economic prowess in the resource and energy sectors as well as the dynamism of its internal market
make the country a force to be reckoned with. In a lesson with a great deal of significance for other
would-be emerging market countries, the authors highlight the importance of policy continuity
for the emergence of Brazil as a stable economy. Indeed, the idea of policy continuity remains a
constant theme throughout the book, be it in discussions of how Brazil came to be a nascent energy
superpower, the countrys path to being a global agro-industrial leader, or its remarkable success in
domestic poverty alleviation.
The first section of the book ably discusses the substance of Brazils economic might: agriculture
and energy. Ricardo Sennes and Thais Narciso provide an excellent overview of Brazils rise and
position as a major international energy player. Myths about biofuels and the success of Petrobras are
dispelled, and the context necessary to understand Brazilian energy policy is given. Andr Meloni
Nassar achieves a similar feat with respect to agriculture. He makes good use of his position as the
head of ICONEBrazils foremost agricultural trade research institution and source of countless
World Trade Organization Doha round negotiating documentsto explain how and why Brazil
has become such a dominant player in international food trade, which was far from being an obvious
outcome 40 years ago. Significant policy and attitudinal changes were necessary to bring it about,
which Geraldo Barros deals with in his contribution.
In the second section, attention is turned to the outward manifestation of Brazils internal
economic changes: trade policy. Pedro da Motta Viega sets the scene with his survey of the shifting
landscape of domestic support in Brazil for international economic engagement. Of particular
interest is the narrative he weaves to explain how the ostensibly autarkic leftist government of Lula da
Silvas Workers Party effectively pursued a more liberal and internationalist foreign economic policy
than the previous centre-right government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Mauricio Mesquita
Moreira builds on this narrative by setting out the old and new issues dominating Brazilian trade
policy debates. While not dealt with in depth, Moreira points to the elephant in the corner assidu
ously ignored by the Brazilian government, namely that the supposed crown jewel in Brazils trade
policythe Southern Cone economic bloc Mercosuris inherently flawed and deeply problematic
for the countrys medium- and long-term ambitions.
The third section is possibly the most interesting for those looking for national development
strategy options. Ben Ross Schneider leads off with a survey of the biggest and most international
ized firms found in Brazil. His discussion on Brazils national champions offers an insightful mix of
historical context and informed prognostication, providing the reader with a solid grasp of what
factors are likely to drive statebusiness relations over the coming years in Brazil. Edmund Amanns
policy-oriented chapter harks back to Raul Prebischs late-career essays, taking up the question many
seemingly want to ignore: did Brazils experiment with import-substitution industrialization work?
While Amann rightly does not offer a clear answer to this complicated question in only 30 pages, he
does suggest that developmental policy from the 1960s to 1980s was an important factor in the growth
of major international Brazilian companies such as Vale, Embrear, Petrobras and Gerdau, but only
because the state got out of the way at a critical moment.
A final, more technocratic, chapter by Marcelo Neri builds on the state policy theme and puts a
human development capstone on the volume by explaining how and why poverty and inequality
have been declining at a rate not seen since Brazils miracle years of 196873. This is perhaps the most
important point to take from this bookboth the centre-right and the centre-left parties that have
run Brazil for the last 16 years, and will probably continue to do so for at least four more, have pursued
their chosen economic policies to solve the countrys enormous poverty and development challenges.
The liberal market-friendly policies that make possible the stories recounted in this volume were
maintained by Lula because they were delivering poverty reduction results, which rather suggests
they will continue.
Sean W. Burges, University of Ottawa, Canada
300

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