Abstract
Issues relating to national security and external intervention have been given renewed currency in the post-9/11 era. In a world ostensibly besieged by an unprecedented array of threats there is ample scope for academic inquiry into the nature of the prevailing menace. These books are not concerned with prescribing mechanisms for maximising security or outlining innovative means for determining and destroying threats. Rather they address, respectively, the question of legitimacy in the use of force, the historical lineage of contemporary security theory and the (still relevant though often overlooked) question of when it is right to use force for humanitarian purposes. Taken together these themes offer a much needed analytical perspective on what is an increasingly emotive and situational concern.
Force and Legitimacy in World Politics is an invaluable volume for those interested in security studies. Comprising contributions from some of the most respected thinkers in this field, it provides a level of perception and a range of analysis of the highest quality. It blends informative overviews with insightful critiques and addresses itself to both theory and practice. Throughout the contributions address ‘the tension between law and legitimacy in the use of force’ (p. 13) and, of course, the impact of the invasion of Iraq is a common theme. Falk is particularly critical of those who sought to justify the invasion on legal grounds, invoking Kant's description of international lawyers as ‘miserable consolers’ (p. 48). Byers highlights the new ambiguity introduced into the rules governing the use of force by the 2002 US National Security Strategy, suggesting that this may ‘allow power and influence to play a greater role in the law's application’ (p. 61). Reus-Smit provides a brilliant analysis of the liberal perspective, describing its goal as ‘the formal rehierarchisation of international society’ (p. 72). Mueller's discussion of Iraq highlights the extent to which this ‘mess’ has furthered the suspicion that benevolent state action is a cover for nefarious national interest (p. 123). Rengger provides a fascinating account of the origins of the just war theory, stressing the extent to which its architects, and St Augustine in particular, expressed a deep abhorrence of violence and really sought to articulate an evaluative schema rather than an enabling checklist for those seeking to employ force (p. 160). Kinsella presents a convincing explanation for the US's determination to be seen to be acting lawfully with respect to targeting civilians while evidencing less interest in the case of prisoners of war.
While there is no overall theoretical commonality the contributors are united by a clear concern with the present trajectory of Western attitudes towards international law. The capacity of the powerful to coerce compliance with their vision of law is accepted, but as the editors note, ultimately ‘individuals do not obey the law simply because they are compelled to do so but because they are persuaded of its necessity, utility or moral value’ (p. 5).
The Empire of Security and the Safety of the People has less immediate engagement with contemporary events than Force and Legitimacy in World Politics, but it constitutes another excellent addition to the security studies canon. Bain explains the rationale for the book as derived from his identification of a dearth of appreciation for historical considerations in contemporary security studies discourse (p. xi). To that end contributors address themselves to many key historical figures whose work exhibits remarkable prescience such as Kant, Rousseau and, of course, Hobbes. Bain's own introduction explodes many of the myths surrounding Hobbes’ position on the sovereign and national security, propagated primarily, he suggests, by realists. Far from advocating a narrow notion of national security, Hobbes believed it the state's duty to safeguard quite expansive social goods: ‘For the word “safety”, Hobbes explains, should be understood to mean, not a base condition of mere survival, but “a happy life so far as that is possible”’ (p. 1). Bain's claim, ‘if George Bush's vision of the world were ever realized it would look rather more like Immanual Kant's pacific federation of republics than an empire of any sort’ (p. 7) is similarly contrary to prevalent doctrine but the understanding of the relationship between historical considerations and contemporary practice is compelling throughout.
Roberts’ examination of the historical lineage of humanitarian intervention is of particular note. His analysis identifies the key sources of dissonance within the issue and convincingly highlights the extent to which these issues, despite seeming to have emerged only in the 1990s, can be traced back to the pre-Charter era. Interventions have always been problematic; he notes, ‘There never was a golden age in which the principles governing intervention were completely clear’ (p. 160). Roberts’ conception of legal doctrine, namely that ‘[it] may have some of the flexibility that is seen as an attribute of ethics’ (p. 174) echoes that of the Armstrong, Farrell and Maiguashca volume and this is a refreshing change from those perspectives that seek to portray law as either unambiguous and all-encompassing, or wish to subvert it entirely with ethical thought.
Each of these edited volumes deals with the issue of humanitarian intervention as part of a broader study of the legitimate use of force, and The Use of Force in Humanitarian Intervention focuses more particularly on this issue. The depth of historical analysis prevalent in the edited volumes is not replicated here, and Janzekovic advances a very contemporary pro-intervention advocacy. The humanitarian intervention debate has lost the dominance it exercised on international relations discourse in the 1990s; this has much to do of course with the new issue of global terrorism but, within academia, a degree of stagnation has set in with the entrenchment of the pro- and anti-intervention perspectives leading to intellectual malaise. Janzekovic's is a perspective which, though peppered with contemporary examples, is firmly embedded in the debates of the 1990s. The outlook advanced here is antistatist and guided by a deep moralism: ‘Whatever moral good the entity of statehood is assumed to possess, it must yield to the superior imperatives of the rights of humanity’ (p. 144). The advocacy does, however, occasionally lapse into extremism: ‘It is not enough’, he claims, ‘to simply blame belligerents for atrocities. We are all to blame for not responding directly and effectively to stop such activities’ (p. 32). Surely this is an overstatement? The prescriptions advanced evidence a wide-ranging engagement with the issue but there could be more clarification. Asserting that ‘The military needs clear political and strategic directives, realistic mission goals and achievable military objectives before forceful intervention should even be considered’ (p. 75) is no doubt accurate, but how this could plausibly be brought about remains unclear. In Janzekovic's defence broad prescriptions do constitute vital foundations for more concrete policy and his outlook throughout is consistent on the need for a radical change to existing mechanisms.
Security studies is likely to remain a critical sub-discipline of IR, and the two edited volumes reviewed here constitute vital examinations of some of the most salient issues therein, while Janzekovic provides an indicative taste of the vibrancy of the humanitarian intervention debate. Each book will appeal to advanced undergraduates but most particularly postgraduates and academics engaged in security studies.
Aidan Hehir
(University of Westminster)
This wide-ranging and ground-breaking book is packed with historical claims and theoretical concepts related to its central theme: the existence, configuration and continued relevance of republican security theory (RST) from ancient Greece to the present. This tradition, it is argued, subsumes most contemporary IR theories but contains neglected reservoirs of ideas about the importance of physical context as well as strategies for achieving the liberal-republican aim of security from violence by simultaneously negating both anarchy and hierarchy.
The first of three parts presents the core themes of RST and its relationship to the major contemporary theories of IR. Deudney insists on the importance of rediscovering material context as a crucial dimension of international politics and in pursuing this argument he makes a number of innovative theoretical points that are richly illustrated. The second part is historical and brings us from Athens to the ‘climax’ of early modern RST, the founding of the United States of America. The third part deals with the acceleration of world politics brought about by the industrial and nuclear revolutions and their implications for the relevance and configuration of RST. The book culminates with Deudney's own republican way out of our security predicament: the establishment of world nuclear government.
Bounding Power raises many questions, for example about the relationship between history and theory in works of this type (of which there ought to be more). Realism and liberalism are invented traditions, Deudney argues, but this healthy view is left behind when the authentic tradition of RST from the polis to the present is set out. Other interpretive moves can be challenged, including the readings of some of the staggering number of individual thinkers we meet in less than 400 dense pages as well as the make-up of the liberal political tradition that Deudney deploys to give coherence to republicanism. And then there is the feasibility and appeal of Deudney's own vision of world politics. This plethora of themes illustrates the many contributions of this important and thought-provoking book. Bounding Power deserves a wide readership in IR, political theory and history.
Casper Sylvest
(University of Southern Denmark)
The increasing recourse to ‘globalisation’ in the post-Cold War period as a catch-all term that is intended to explain all kinds of processes has tended to obfuscate the complexity of global trends. Thus, thinking about globalisation – both as a concept and as a set of practices – seems to gravitate easily towards the realm of fantasy and science fiction. That being so, an ungainly but important task is to distinguish between phantoms and substance in contemporary engagements with the content, contexts and perceptions of the dynamics of globalisation. In this respect, el-Ojeili and Hayden have produced a volume that engages with the shifts in human social organisation, the perceptions and constructions of proximity between communities and regions and the extension of power relations across the globe. Such transformations reflect the pervasiveness of global structures (i.e. formal and informal institutional arrangements) that make possible the intensification in diverse forms of communications and exchanges across the globe (p. 14).
Thus, el-Ojeili and Hayden not only begin dispelling the myths that seem to inform much of popular and policy perceptions of globalisation, but also undertake a perceptive assessment of its characteristics. They suggest that the causal use of the term often substitutes for the critical analysis of the pervasive ambiguity, uncertainty and change that pervade the current study, practices and experience of world affairs. The reference to globalisation, therefore, tends to obscure the variety of complex, uneven and interrelated processes that animate global interactions. In elaborating their claims, el-Ojeili and Hayden undertake a detailed assessment of the concepts, interpretations and socio-economic events that underwrite the dominant theoretical responses to globalisation. Such parallel analytical examination is accompanied by a historical process-tracing of the experience, meaning and impact of such transformations. The volume considers these alterations within their economic, political and cultural contexts. In this respect, the analysis offers an original conceptualisation of the frameworks for understanding and explaining the ongoing dynamics of global social chance.
This comprehensive overview of the notion and practices of globalisation is therefore expected to benefit the explorations of advanced undergraduate students and scholars alike. The former are likely to appreciate the accessible and easy-to-follow treatment of the topic, while the latter would be provoked by the inferences and reflections of the authors. At the same time, this volume is an insightful repository on how theoretical frameworks tend to foreclose certain perspectives on global interactions while favouring others.
Emilian Kavalski
(University of Alberta, Canada)
The first years of the twenty-first century have been typified by a regrettable absence of strategic approaches to current threats faced by the West. American and UK experiences in Iraq perhaps represent the nadir in this respect. Political leaders have asked of their militaries tasks which they could not have been expected to achieve alone. Failure to appreciate fully the complex social, cultural and political contexts within which force was applied fundamentally undermined progress toward stated objectives. Strategy is in short supply while, in an era of multiple, diverse and intertwined challenges, the demand is high.
This book serves to strengthen a central theme that runs through all of Gray's work; that is the unity of all strategic phenomena. As such, this collection of essays constitutes a valuable companion to his seminal Modern Strategy. Yet here Gray's approach differs markedly. The pieces are diverse and cover a range of subjects written over the course of Gray's career as both strategic practitioner and strategic theorist. As such, this collection represents an overview of what has certainly been a remarkable intellectual trajectory.
As ever, Gray provokes, but to good purpose. Although the arguments contained in the individual pieces – which include such topics as nuclear strategy, sea power and the ethics of the use of force – may be controversial, the fundamental themes and arguments of the book are extremely convincing: the necessity of consequentialist reasoning in strategic thinking; the emphasis on strategy's practical nature; the tense relationship between theory and practice; the importance of history as the only available convincing evidence; the need for geographical and cultural understanding; and crucially, as Clausewitz himself stressed, the authority of politics in all matters strategic.
While the individual essays can certainly be read independently, the true value of this book lies in the wider point it conveys and which represents Gray's overarching purpose. Reconciling the apparent antinomy between the universal and the particular in war – something that has evaded so many military thinkers throughout history – is a difficult task, but the evident unity that arises out of these diverse pieces serves to impress upon the reader the force of Gray's central assertion: strategy is, and always will be, the bridge that relates military power to political purpose. Its form may change but the essence is timeless.
This highly readable book is a welcome complement to the works of a formidable generation of authors – yet to be replaced in the UK – such as Lawrence Freedman and Rupert Smith, who together represent the strategic diviners of Clausewitz, and to whom we should listen intently.
Thomas Waldman
(University of Sheffield)
This book sets out the relationship between ethics, medicine and war in all its complexity, offers tough-minded analysis of the key dilemmas and puts forth a series of challenging arguments. The author's opening premise is that it is a mistake to believe that medical ethics in peacetime is identical to medical ethics in wartime. In wartime, Gross argues, basic values associated with medical ethics such as informed consent come into conflict with values associated with the just war tradition and reason of state. In such cases, it might be required that medical ethics gives way to military necessity. In other words, in wartime medicine itself becomes a component of the military struggle. Gross defends this proposition on ethical grounds and demonstrates that this is indeed how medical professionals often behave. This raises a whole host of dilemmas that are simply overlooked by more simplistic accounts of the relationship between medicine and war. Thus, for example, in deciding whether to provide medical support to interrogational torture, individual medical practitioners must reach their own decision about the relative merits of harming an individual in order potentially to save many others. Similar dilemmas attend the provision of triage on the battlefront. Instead of providing triage to individuals in greatest need, medical practitioners are required to privilege friendly soldiers potentially able to return to military service.
This is an important and comprehensive book, the first systematic account of its kind. It covers in detail the myriad ways in which peacetime medical ethics becomes problematic in wartime before addressing the most vexing issues such as patient rights, triage, neutrality and the role of medical practitioners in the commission of harm by assisting and monitoring torture and aiding weapons development. Gross's insistence that medical ethics yields to necessity produces a series of challenging and well-conceived arguments that are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the field. It goes without saying that a book cannot be this bold without making moves that others might challenge. In particular, ethicists and lawyers might contest the role afforded to military necessity and point out that there are important limits to what can be justified by reference to necessity. In addition, Gross argues that medical practitioners are not governed by a cosmopolitan professional ethic that transcends national interests – a claim that will no doubt be hotly disputed.
Alex J. Bellamy
(University of Queensland)
Each of the books under review concerns itself with different facets of what is commonly referred to as globalisation. The nature and role of the state, the implications for the concept of citizenship, political governance in conjunction with neoliberal stipulations and the problems associated with the political, economic and social integration of the globe are tackled through sophisticated theoretical approaches.
Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh provide a thorough introduction to contemporary theorizing about the state. While the conceptual abstraction that the state exhibits remains difficult to define as such, they bifurcate the analysis into two different approaches. Following Weber, the first concerns defining it along structural or institutional principles that ‘embed’ political agents. The second uses historical contextualization as a way of understanding present institutional circumstances. Many of the chapters in the book fit within this framework. The chapters on ‘Pluralism’, ‘Elitism’ and ‘Marxism’ rearticulate the debates surrounding these concepts as they apply to theorizing about the state.
Two more recent approaches, however, have come to challenge the traditional methodological inquiries into the state: feminism and post-structural/discourse-analysis. On the one hand, as Johanna Kantola argues, feminists are beginning to see the state as the locus of patriarchal domination within capitalist society. Furthermore, she highlights the importance that feminists have attached to post-structural methodologies for challenging the inherent patriarchal assumption latent within the structure of the state, all the while moving away from a more classical oppressive view of the state. Alan Finlayson and James Martin's chapter on post-structuralism probes deeper into the more recent approaches towards problematising the state. They take issue with the general approach of positing the state as an a historical rational figure that constitutes politics and likewise sovereignty. On the contrary, discursive practices such as history tied to relations of power normalise and exclude agents while constituting the very fabric of state. Here, Michel Foucault's approach of decentering political theory from the sovereign takes on added importance in understanding a global neoliberal context which, as Finlayson and Martin argue, continues to constitute subjects, states and entire populations through certain practices.
The next three chapters are concerned with globalisation and its implications for the state. Marsh, Smith and Hothi explore the different theoretical positions that constitute the globalisation debate and its effect on the state. They argue that the state will not lose its coherence in a limited economically globalized world. More importantly, the language of globalization plays as important a role in shaping the policy choices as actual economic forces. For Sørensen, the transformation of the traditional state into a postmodern one poses problems for the evolution and establishment of democratic governance. Multi-level forms of governance have blurred the dividing lines of state sovereignty and, rather, emphasized the importance of ‘soft’ power. Peters and Pierre explore the role of governance and the state and sound a word of caution that the institution of the state is not about to disappear.
The problem of the state, its role and methods of governing are explored in more detail by Aihwa Ong in her ethnographic studies situated in Asia. Ong shows that neoliberalism is not only a set of doctrines that affect economic policies by de-emphasizing state power; it is a set of mechanisms, a ‘mobile technology’, that enhance, constitute and also graft themselves on to the management of the entire society. Ong combines this idea with the renewed interest in political theory, with the Schmittian conception of the state of exception as constitutive of sovereignty. As such, she identifies in different Asian settings a set of exceptional circumstances in which neoliberalism's emphasis on producing ‘free’ self-sustaining and productive subjects is contrasted with modalities of exclusion inherent in state power and culture. Essentially, what Ong discovers is that the relationship between neoliberalism as exception and exception as neoliberalism, rather than fuse the community into a single prevailing logic of economic, cultural and political emancipation, instead creates a fragmentation of the polity.
Her first chapter concerns the case of Malaysia and the inherent tension between economic modernization and the traditional role of the religious authorities in shaping the identities of women and minorities. Chapter 2 focuses upon the consequences of the Asian financial crises for the Chinese Diaspora in Indonesia and the nexus between the state's obligations towards its citizens vs. virtual transnational internet communities based on ethnicity. Chapters 3 and 4 specifically map out the evolving geographical effects of neoliberal technologies of governance. Ong argues that ‘graduated sovereignty’ in the Emerging Asian Tigers reflects a flexibility inherent in the adoption of neoliberal market forces, and sovereignty can no longer be considered a uniform structure within a given territory. Part of this process is a zoning of ‘exceptional’ spaces that experiment with greater economic and social freedom as a way of encouraging entrepreneurial subjectivities without losing the authoritarian coherence that continues to remain fluid. Chapter 5 presents a cogent critique of the formulations in Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Ong argues instead that an ethnic disciplinary technique at the transnational level along with lateral relocations of production does not lead to a homogenisation of the labour force as multitude. These processes undermine the territorially conceived rights inherent in citizenship and labour collective bargaining, as capital is constantly on the move. Ong devotes the rest of her studies to situating the transformation of citizenship in the face of neoliberal policies in the United States and East Asia, and convincingly shows the plasticity of traditional political theoretical concepts in an economically globalised setting.
Gérard Raulet is likewise concerned with the meaning of citizenship today. While Ong focuses on ethnographic case studies to formulate theoretical propositions, Raulet, a French philosopher of German Idealism, presents a deeply philosophical work that departs from a Kantian cosmopolitan intent. Raulet would in fact agree with Ong's general claim that more global socialisation does not create a world society. The antinomy that Raulet sees present within the discourses and practices of economic globalization is fundamentally tied to the inability to reconcile the natural limits of the earth with an ideology of the end of history. What then is the role of political philosophy in an age of globalisation that seeks to marginalise the nation state within the ominous logic of neoliberalism? Raulet stakes out the position that the locus of political philosophy must remain within the nation state and that, following a reading of Kant, there is no fundamental incongruity between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. In his attempts at rescuing the particularity and self-determination of different social groups within the crisis of modernity, Raulet invokes the Kantian distinction between a moral and teleological community. Whereas the traditional root of the republican conception of citizenship lies within a moral framework, Raulet argues that this moral idea must come at the end of a teleological process inherent within civil society, which would allow for a more pluralistic form of communities. Yet in the final chapter he presents a critique of multiculturalism as a fragmentation of society, without addressing the necessary consensus-driven politics within the public space.
While Raulet's essay is an attempt to show that political philosophy remains relevant to the question of citizenship in the age of economic globalization, the political theorist Fred Dallmayr's recent collection of essays presents a starker image of the consequences of neoliberal empire. Lost in the immensity of capital accumulation, political power, military build-up and ever-increasing economic development through huge industrial projects, the small wonder that Heidegger sought in his Letter on Humanism – the presence of the unadulterated divine within everyday being – disappears.
Dallmayr's first chapter provides a historical overview of the evolving delegitimation of global metaphysical systems to the elevation of human finitude, as a way of critiquing grand political projects. Chapter 2 explores the nefarious aspects of modernity through the writings of Theodore Adorno, Martin Heidegger and Enrique Dussel and their applicability today. Chapter 3 presents Dallmayr's views on what constitutes the empire pax americana – an empire based ultimately on fear – and critiques the arguments presented by the apologists of empire, from a moralism rooted in a mission civilizatrice type of imperialism to the more modern rationalizations based in power politics. Dallmayr seeks rather the more gentle cosmopolis in which a rooted difference remains prized. His next two chapters are central as introductions for the importance of the role that critical theorists play in critiquing empire. Arundhati Roy, who is famous for her novel The God of Small Things, is also a prolific commentator on the workings of empire and its effects on human beings. Dallmayr elegantly shows how Roy is able to demonstrate the inner inconsistencies in the discourse of ‘big’ development, whether economic or military. Edward Said, however, remains Dallmayr's example par excellence for the role of the intellectual to stand up to power. Throughout the book, Dallmayr (again following Heidegger) strongly criticises the ever-increasing technicity or fabrication of the globe, and as such continues to strive for a politics of genuine letting be. Dallmayr's excellent and lucid prose is a pleasure to read, and the reader is left with a deeper appreciation of the growing importance of critique as a means of resistance.
Alexander D. Barder
(Florida International University)
This volume represents a debate, sponsored by the open Democracy forum, on David Held's analysis of the challenges and dangers of the contemporary globalised world order. His ideas were set out at full length in his book The Global Covenant and are summarised at the start of this one as the point of departure for the debate. Having already received considerable attention, his arguments are by now quite familiar. They centre on his advocacy of an agenda for ‘global social democracy’ as the most appropriate and desirable avenue for addressing the combination of huge problems the world currently faces, identified by Held as the failure of progress in addressing global inequality and injustice, the crisis of the world trading system, the onward and largely unchecked march of global warming and the erosion of the multilateral system.
The essays in this volume offer spirited engagement with Held's work, each essay taking issue with different aspects of the ideas set out in the introductory summary. The line-up of contributors is unquestionably impressive and diverse, and without exception the essays are lively and well written. The volume is in this sense well worth reading. It does not offer meticulous, heavy-duty scholarly analysis; to the contrary, its appeal lies precisely in the fact that the essays are deliberately short, pithy, provocative and robust. Taken as a whole, one does nevertheless worry while reading that the representation of a range of positions tends to spill over into a degree of predictability. With a number of the essays, there is a sense in which the ground is well trodden – to use John Elkington's metaphor, the tennis balls are rather worn – and some of the essays have the ring of a rehearsal of already very familiar arguments. Bringing them together in this volume certainly makes for an interesting and welcome collection, but new insights and new directions in the debate, or indeed a sense of new and constructive dialogue between the positions, is not necessarily abundantly in evidence.
The diversity of positions in the volume is at the same time rather narrow, in that the essays are strikingly representative of a very ‘Northern’ debate on global governance and globalisation. With the exception of Patrick Bond, writing from South Africa, to my mind the most arresting feature of the book is the absence of contributors from outside that familiar ‘inner circle’ of academics, journalists and others rooted in the context of the advanced, industrialised, democratic countries, multilateral institutions and other organisations of a similar character. It would have been fascinating to see an engagement on these pressing issues of the governance of globalisation and the ideas of global social democracy from people not rooted in the ‘core’ regions and elite institutions of the global political economy, and offering potentially different perspectives on these questions that one too rarely encounters. It is to be hoped that the debate in this interesting volume might soon be broadened in this way.
Nicola Philips
(University of Manchester)
Fifteen years ago Eugene Skolinikoff concluded The Elusive Transformation, his study of technology in international relations, by arguing that while science and technology had had major social and economic effects, their impact on the underlying international political structure had been significantly less evident; technology had done little to transform the key elements of international relations. Nowadays, such a claim would have to contend with the accelerated deployment and use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and most obviously the internet, alongside the sometimes hysterical declarations of a new age, a new society wrought by digitisation. However, this is not necessarily to dismiss Skolinikoff's conservative conclusion; rather it is an invitation to be sure what we mean by technological change, and its impact on global politics. Of the four books under review, Geoffrey Herrera's Technology and International Transformation is the one that most directly and explicitly responds to the debates in international relations prompted by Skolinikoff and others. Herrera, unlike the other authors discussed below, sets his study firmly in the context of the discipline of IR, and so his book seems like a good place to start.
Herrera spends some time setting out a critical engagement with the great names of US IR, ranging from Kenneth Waltz to Alexander Wendt before setting out his own approach which seeks to sidestep the excesses of technological determinism, and the perhaps too particular (tightly focused) social embeddedness of technology approach, by deploying an analysis of international socio-technical systems. Implicitly rejecting although not actually discussing the national systems of innovation approach to understanding technological developments, Herrera suggests all technological advances take place in an international context. He presents a multifaceted analysis of causality that he establishes through two long and detailed historical chapters, both of which focus on key technologies of global power: the railways, as an infrastructural support for military mobilisation at the beginning of the twentieth century; and the atom bomb as the underpinning of US power in the second half of the century. Herrera concludes that the next transformational technology will stem from the ‘information revolution’ although, being cautious, he suggests that it is as yet too early to judge its effect on the international system, a caution not shared by others. Overall this is a well-judged book with a wealth of historical detail. However, while the author does a good job of demonstrating how a socio-technical systems approach delivers insights unavailable to other forms of analysis preponderant in US IR, for a European audience, aware of an extensive literature on the political economy of innovation, there is little in this book that adds significantly to our knowledge of technology in global political economy. Indeed, its narrative focus which is primarily an account of comparative analytical developments in the US suggests that the empirical focus may be relatively globalised, but the analytical tools remain national.
Herrera's relatively narrow analytical focus contrasts markedly with Vaclav Smil's Transforming the Twentieth Century. Smil takes a series of generic categories of technology (energy, materials, production, transportation and communication) and examines how the shifts and advances of the twentieth century have impacted on the global political economy. This is a book full of interesting detail that in a short review cannot be covered with any justice, but notably of all the books reviewed here Smil has by far the most global perspective, drawing his material from a vast range of secondary sources to establish a globalised history. Crucially, Smil wants to emphasise how recent much of the modern technological age is (in its contemporary form, less than two generations old) and as such it is difficult to know how and where technological societies (drawing this depiction from Jacques Ellul) will develop. Rejecting technological determinism, Smil tells a series of stories of individual innovation but also structural and political influence, to set out a complex account of a century of technology, which has led the human race to the position where its technological advances have begun to threaten the very earth that supports us. Although Smil seems optimistic about the possibility that technological developments may once again save us, his account avoids causal determinism to conclude that this is actually an issue of political will. Like Herrera, Smil sees technological advance as complex and multifaceted, rather than merely concerned with the most recent technological shifts and developments, and most importantly carefully places a concern for agency at the centre of his account.
Unlike the first two books in this review, which were concerned with the longer historical impact of technological change, the second two books have chosen to focus on the contemporary information revolution, as is currently more usual. Moreover, they are good examples of the current common analytical focus on the global dimension of new ICTs. These books are concerned with two of the central issues that have attracted the attention of those interested in globalisation and digitisation: firstly, does the accelerating deployment of the internet and its associated technologies produce a space that is not as amenable to regulation and power as territorially located technological systems have been in the past?; and secondly, are the very clear inequalities of the new information society (its ‘digital divide’) amenable to political economic and social intervention?
Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu ask a question as old as the technology itself:Who Controls the Internet? And their answer, rejecting previous claims for the borderless and unregulated ‘natural’ character of cyberspace, suggests that political forces have been able to (re)impose regulatory and political control (based on broadly territorial power), and despite the complaints of libertarian celebrants of the new information society, this is not such a bad thing. Ranging across issues as diverse as the Nazi Memorabilia case, which established the French government's ability to require Yahoo to block certain sites (as well as they could) from French users, the domain-name allocation system and the question of Chinese censorship of internet pages for political reasons, the authors demonstrate conclusively that some significant modes of state-based regulation and intervention remain possible. This then leads them to examine more proactive regulatory interventions and suggest that like other political economic realms, cyberspace depends on the rule of law, delivered by states. In an argument that echoes Skolinikoff, Goldsmith and Wu conclude that states are managing to localise the internet, making it respond to national needs and priorities (or at least those articulated by government): in other words the benefits that the internet delivered may be modified or directed by the continuing power of national governments.
O'Hara and Stevens’ Inequality.com seeks to explore one of the key policy dimensions where states have tried to intervene and regulate cyberspace: the so called ‘digital divide’. Although initially articulating some scepticism about the social transformations often claimed for the internet, quite quickly the authors begin to suggest that ICTs are indeed changing society and its economic relations quite fundamentally. Thus, ICTs and the internet are both amenable to previous modes of political analysis (the authors deploy Rawls, Marx and others extensively) and revolutionary, a position that is not without its tensions. O'Hara and Stevens see the internet as a site for political action and mobilisation as well as a focus for societal change, again mirroring earlier claims about the transformation wrought by the information age, this time in the realm of politics. However, unlike previous analysis, one of the key concerns of the authors is the democratisation of cyberspace, and the utilisation of the internet to enliven and expand deliberative democracy itself. This they argue can be achieved through prioritising intervention and support on those currently least able to take advantage of the benefits ICTs and the internet offer. As so often with books concerned with the internet, O'Hara and Stevens offer a volatile combination of description, analysis and evangelism (for their solution), while all the time entertaining no doubt that the social deployment of the internet must be (if equitably handled) a social good (brushing aside questions of privacy, for instance, because most Western states are benign). Thus while Goldsmith and Wu are interested in demonstrating that states retain significant policy levers in the new information age, O'Hara and Stevens are more concerned with the uses to which such levers might be put.
So what do these books tell us about the role of technology in global politics? Mostly they exhibit the continuing disconnection between widerranging histories of technology that seek to place the development of various technologies in a wider global political economic context and those that focus on what Alvin Toffler once referred to as the Third Wave, the information revolution. Thus, for those interested in a history of modern developments in ICTs, set into a global historical context, the work continues to be left to the reader, assembling a mosaic of resources to tell a story that is seldom told compellingly in any single source. While this may not be such a problem for the committed researcher, for the more casual inquirer this remains a frustrating lacuna.
As regards the disciplines of politics and/or international relations, what is interesting is that while all four of these books acquit themselves relatively well in the sense that they demonstrate significant political analytical sensibility, only the Herrera volume actually engages with politics as an academic discipline. For international relations especially, though perhaps a little less so for politics, after reading these books one is left wondering why these authors are not relating their work to the disciplines that would seem to offer an analysis of the overarching context of their studies. Herrera does do this, and to some extent O'Hara and Stevens discuss some of the literature that one might expect them to interrogate on the way to their conclusions about the policy reformulations needed to combat the digital divide, but the suggestion that there might be a well-developed literature of the political economy of state industrial and technology policy that would speak to the concerns raised by all four of these books is largely absent from their considerations.
This may be because although there is an increasing concern with technology, driven by the ever more ubiquitous internet and its associated technologies reaching out across disciplinary boundaries and foci of analysis, the academy has not fully embraced (on this showing, at least) the clear multi/interdisciplinary logic of the study of technology. While technology itself has always been important in our lives, there seems to be something about studying it that maintains relatively discrete academic silos rather than (as one might expect) breaking out into horizontal connections between them. Only Smil comes near this sort of promise in his multifaceted and complex history of twentieth-century technology; however here the analysis (like Braudel) presents itself as an empirical account, leaving the reader to join the theoretical allusions and issues into a larger political economic account. Although these four books represent different parts of the elephant, as yet we have not removed the blindfold that we seem too often to wear when it comes to assembling our account of the global political economy of technology.
Christopher May
(University of Lancaster)
‘One of the most intensely debated questions in international political studies today is whether world politics is undergoing an epochal structural transformation’ (p. 1). Thus Koenig-Archibugi begins this co-edited volume, and the aim is to analyse the diversity of governance modes that exist in order to examine important transnational problems. The editors establish three areas of global governance for scrutiny within the book. The first is publicness, which analyses the role of non-state actors in global governance through an examination of the active participants. The second, delegation, refers to the origins, functions and impacts of international organisations and institutions in general, and to a number of functions in global governance which can be performed by ‘ad hoc’ organisations or those which operate without agents. The third area is inclusiveness, which discusses the ways global governance institutions deal with or reflect the inequalities of power in international relations, where some powers are shared between a large number of those affected, while others are concentrated among the few.
The volume thoroughly analyses these three areas of global governance by examining a wide range of case studies including the governance of genetically modified crops and foods (p. 52), the arbitration of transnational disputes (p. 101) and the transnational policy networks that guide security in cyberspace (p. 154), to mention a few. The common link between the chapters is that they discuss governance at a level which does not fit within traditional inter-state relations but rather creates a new transnational politics beyond the state. The editors write that ‘questions about the legitimacy of such arrangements are increasingly important not only for scholars interested in the normative foundations of the global order, but also for significant sections of the public who are and feel affected by governance beyond the state’ (p. 236).
Even though the book is thorough and encapsulates a wide variety of case studies, the themes of publicness, delegation and inclusiveness which run through the volume seem in places artificial. The contributing authors have tried to force their work into the footprint of the theme rather than starting with the theme at the outset, which gives a disappointing aftertaste to an otherwise interesting book. However, despite this flaw, this is still a volume highly recommended for any scholar of governance beyond the state.
Tomas Adell
(Queen's University Belfast)
Chae-Jin Lee argues that while both realist and liberal paradigms have shaped American policy towards Korea, the primary focus has been on containing the North and ensuring the national security of the South. Secondary goals – such as promoting economic development and democracy – have received relatively little attention.
For instance, in the early stages of the Cold War the United States expressed a strong commitment to containment by signing a defence treaty with the South and committing a large number of ground troops. Under Richard Nixon, by contrast, the broader regional objective of improving relations with China came at the expense of the alliance with South Korea. Park Chung Hee's protests notwithstanding, Washington transferred troops from the peninsula to Vietnam. The Carter administration sought – without success – to reduce the American military presence even further. In contrast to Carter's criticism of Seoul's repression of civil rights, Ronald Reagan strongly supported this Cold War ally despite ongoing human rights abuses under Chun Doohwan. George H. Bush encountered a bolder Korean counterpart in Roh Tae-woo, who sought to improve relations with China and the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War in Europe raised the possibility of similar changes in East Asia. Anticipating the collapse of the North Korean regime, both the Clinton administration and South Korea – especially under Kim Daejung – switched to an engagement policy towards the North. Given that the Korean side was more committed to such a policy, it was perhaps no surprise that tensions increased between the two sides during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The book concludes by considering the future. Lee argues that American policy towards Korea will in part depend on North–South relations, and in turn posits that both ongoing alignment and estrangement are possible between a unified Korea and the US.
Lee provides an excellent study of foreign policy-making in a region vital to American interests. The author highlights both the capacity of the United States to defend its allies and the fragility of America's image abroad, which suffers if the US is perceived to support dictatorial regimes. His highly convincing and judicious account draws on numerous declassified documents, including many for which the author himself applied under the Freedom of Information Act. Subsequently this volume will serve as a valuable resource for scholars of American foreign policy and contemporary Korean history.
David Hundt
(Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)
Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society is one of the landmark texts of British international relations. Thirty years after its original publication, Richard Little and John Williams have produced a timely and incisive collection of essays that sheds new light on The Anarchical Society and the many ideas it has spawned. As the editors point out in the introduction, there is much in Bull's work that now seems anachronistic: not least, his focus on bipolarity, neglect of non-state actors, regionalism and the global economy, and ill-formed methodology. Nevertheless, there is just as much that continues to shape the way we think about world politics, especially Bull's discussion of the tension between order and justice, and the role of institutions. The purposes of this book are to explore the extent to which The Anarchical Society continues to shed light on world politics, to critique some of its main failings and develop some of its key ideas.
To do this, the editors have adopted the structure used by Bull. The first part of the book therefore focuses on some of the conceptual issues connected with placing The Anarchical Society in a globalised world. John Williams opens by presenting a critique of Bull's conception of order, arguing that Bull was neither clear nor consistent about the meaning of order and overlooked its normative character almost entirely. Nicholas Rengger identifies two moral sensibilities that are in constant tension in Bull's work – a basic rejection of the possibility of human progress and an acceptance of that very idea. Rengger argues that whereas Bull's work is often presented as a via media between these two positions, they in fact flatly contradict one another and that far from being resolved, the tension runs through Bull's work. In the final chapter in this section, João Almeida contributes to a growing literature which holds that international society is more solidarist than is typically recognised.
The second section focuses on the question of institutions of world society and contains excellent chapters by Buzan (on the nature of institutions), Richard Little (on the balance of power and great power management), David Armstrong (on international law), Ian Hall (on diplomacy) and Charles Jones (on the institution of war). Although each takes a different approach to their topic, they all help illuminate important aspects of Bull's work. The book ends with a chapter by Andrew Hurrell that assesses the future direction of international society and contends that a retreat to pluralism is simply not viable.
This book is a very useful companion to Bull's as it introduces Bull to a globalised world and scrutinises his ideas in depth.
Alex J. Bellamy
(University of Queensland)
In The Case for Goliath Michael Mandelbaum contends that the United States functions not as an ‘empire’, but rather as ‘the world's government’. He delineates the myriad of ways in which it provides other countries with security and economic stability, explores why it is nonetheless the object of such searing criticism and concludes by describing a world in which the United States plays a far more modest role.
Although his conclusion – that ‘a world without America’ would be more dangerous and less prosperous – is likely correct, the arguments that he adduces to render it so are suspect. For example, while Mandelbaum is critical of other countries’ ‘anti-Americanism’, he argues that, no matter the severity or depth of the criticisms that it may issue, the global public is grateful for and wishes to maintain American primacy. Like most observers, he conflates opposition to American foreign policy with opposition to American people, culture and values (the latter of which constitutes ‘anti-Americanism’). This error alone weakens his book's thesis. Putting it aside for now, he supports the aforementioned contention by pointing to the absence of explicit forms of opposition, such as countervailing military alliances.
Compelling though this argument may appear, it provokes a basic rejoinder: unlike those of the dominant powers of the past, the United States’ objectives are not largely militaristic. If it attempted to pursue a course of territorial augmentation through colonisation, conquest or other such mechanisms, it would certainly confront countervailing coalitions. Mandelbaum's reasoning belies the extent and diversity of opposition to American foreign policy, neglecting to consider the emergence of less explicit bands. Stephen M. Walt and other esteemed scholars of international relations point to subtler manifestations of resistance, such as diplomatic coalitions.
Mandelbaum's other central contention – that the international community welcomes American stewardship – is also problematic. The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Globe Scan, an international polling firm, recently conducted a survey of 23 countries to gauge their citizens’ opinions on the optimal structure of global governance. Twenty of the twenty-three believe that the European Union's superseding the United States’ influence in world affairs would be ‘mainly positive’. Furthermore, of the sixteen countries that the Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed in mid-2005, often vast majorities in fifteen of them wished to see a military counter-force to the United States.
Ultimately, then, by neglecting important nuances and disregarding contradictory evidence, Mandelbaum does not help us to understand why the United States’ actions abroad have fallen into such great disrepute.
Ali Suhail Wyne
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
The study of international relations involves numerous theories, methodologies and methods of analysis. For Mintz and Russett the ‘use of different methods, designs, datasets, and techniques produces inconsistent, often conflicting results’ (p. 6). They believe that the solution rests with the ‘greater use of sensitivity analysis (SA) through: (a) a greater use of robustness tests, and (b) combining multiple methods of inquiry to test IR theories’ (p. 10). As such the book contains a number of contributions as disparate as ‘the Postwar Public Health Effects of Civil Conflict’ (p. 92) to ‘When Likely Losers Choose War’ (p. 179). What links these incongruent contributions is the centrality of a ‘scientific’ examination. This ‘scientific’ analysis is at heart the inherent internalisation of economic rational choice theory to the study of international relations. Therefore readers should expect that most of the contributions use mathematical equations and multivariate analysis. While this should not dissuade anyone from reading the text, many European scholars of IR who do not have a mathematical or economics background will struggle with some of the finer details of the content.
In many respects the contributors and editors of this book are successful in their aim of attempting to provide a ‘scientific’ and thus robust analysis of their area of study. We should applaud the argument that ‘Practitioners in the IR field should pay more attention (beyond the actual production of findings), to setting, as a standard, the reporting of robust, solid research findings’ (p. 17). However, those looking for ‘new directions for international relations’ will not find them in this book. Rather, what is found is traditional American scholarship based on rational choice models. What is really needed is a single text that brings together the multitude of methodologies and theories of IR, to show not just their possible similarities but also the possible benefits of examining one case study from multiple perspectives.
This text is an example of putting method before theory, when in reality method is the servant of theory. To those scholars examining IR from a positivistic background this book is likely to be valued for its rigour and insight into both the methods and methodology of their means of research. However, for everyone else from con-structivists to feminists it is unlikely that it will offer much in the way of insight.
Michael Clarke
(Queen's University Belfast)
This edited collection is the third volume resulting from the international, interdisciplinary ‘Global Assessment Project’ launched in 1995. The book's central aim is to understand why some global environmental assessments have more influence than others.
Chapters are well researched, drawing on extensive interviewing, participant observation and documentary analysis. The contributions are diverse in terms of geography, policy area and their focus: some examine the influence of global assessments on the international policy agenda, others consider their impact on individual countries, while yet other chapters focus on the impact of assessments on local decision-makers. For example, chapter 3 explores why global assessments of biodiversity and climate change have considerably less influence in India than in developed countries; chapter 6 examines the contrasting impacts in Poland and Bulgaria of cost assessments sponsored by the EU and World Bank; and chapter 8 is a comparative analysis of the influence of risk assessments of sea-level rises on policy-making in Maine and Hawaii.
The volume's principal argument is that to have influence environmental assessments must be viewed by multiple audiences as salient and legitimate as well as credible, and it suggests stakeholder participation is the best way to foster each of these three attributes. It persuasively argues that assessments should be seen as ‘social processes’ rather than simply end reports, with their influence dependent more on their conduct than content.
Despite the varied nature of the individual contributions, the volume fits together well as a whole, with the various authors each considering the report process and the importance of salience, legitimacy and credibility. The concluding chapter is strong, bringing the themes and other chapters together effectively. One criticism is that there was insufficient discussion of what actually constitutes influence: although the introduction usefully states a broad definition of influence has been adopted (including changes in issue domains, alongside changes in state policy and behaviour), it devotes less than a page to unpacking and justifying this definition (p. 11), and the other chapters deal only briefly with conceptualising influence, if at all. Nevertheless, this volume makes a useful contribution both to the substantive policy areas examined and the broader issue of how and why assessments have influence. It provides valuable advice to practitioners carrying out environmental assessments and will also be of interest to scholars studying the impact of assessments on the framing of environmental issues and the making of environmental policy.
Louise Strong
(University of Sheffield)
In a world which tends towards the liberalisation of trade in goods and capital, not considering free human cross-border mobility would present an anachronistic contradiction. In the face of prevailing economic and political inequalities, Moses’ book addresses these ‘paradoxes of globalisation’ (p. 18) and argues the case for the abolition of border controls to a general audience. He seeks to overcome common preconceptions and juxtaposes anti-immigration calls with well-presented counter-arguments.
Showing the historical context in which current border regimes evolved, the author sensitises the wider audience to question the implicitness of states’ restrictions on exit and entry. The moral argument is made that free mobility is a universal right and, with John Locke, that it is the base for any political community. An instrumentalist morality provides the universalist approach with content: disadvantaged people can better their social, political and economic position and the privileged fulfil their moral obligations, reducing global inequalities. When looking at the implications of an open border regime on the body politic, Moses sheds light on an understudied area. Expanding the idea that people could not only voice their opinion but also ‘vote with their feet’ (Aristide Zolberg), he argues that repressive or unresponsive regimes would come under pressure and have to turn towards their citizens’ demands in a competitive environment. The economic effects on sending and receiving countries and at the international level are all evaluated.
Due to the great scope of the argument, the problem-oriented analysis remains mostly at the macro level, showing that in interest-based evaluations of open versus closed borders there are no clear-cut answers. However, more fine-grained analysis should have been included to qualify some of the sweeping generalisations. More emphasis should be laid particularly on the effects on sending countries, which may not easily ‘exploit international labour markets to import professionals’ (p. 205). In this sense, the book takes the perspective of developed states and those in transition, for it overestimates the chances of mobility for the most underprivileged or the scope of change in these settings, and underestimates the general cultural factors which bind people to their homeland. Although its political realism may be questioned, Moses presents an easily accessible and comprehensive piece which urges us to think the ‘unthinkable’.
Daniel Wunderlich
(University of Sheffield)
Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism is an edited collection which brings to the forefront of scholarly discussion one of the most deadly – yet largely unexplained – tactics utilised by non-state military actors in modern warfare. Although the ‘suicide bomber’ has become almost synonymous with Islamic militancy since 9/11, it has a much longer pedigree. This form of terrorism appeared in its ‘present form only at the beginning of the 1980s’ but has ‘proven to be one of the most efficient and least expensive tactics ever to be employed’ by some 32 groups in 28 countries since then (p. 1).
This book arose from a conference held at the University of Texas at Austin during which experts engaged in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the definitions, sociology and political contexts of suicide terrorism. Consequently the book showcases a range of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodological strategies. All chapters display a sophisticated degree of theoretical reflection. In the opening chapter Moghadam argues that it is important to be ‘precise about how one defines suicide attacks’ (p. 22). He opts for a multi-causal approach to understanding the individual, organisational and environmental variables giving rise to suicide attacks (ch. 4). Elsewhere Alonso and Reinares (ch. 9) conclude from their case study on the perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid train bombings that it ‘is clear that terrorism in general, and suicide terrorism in particular, is a group phenomenon’ (p. 194). Importantly, faith-based terrorist groups (chs 6 and 7) are considered alongside more secular actors such as the Vietcong (ch. 5). In the latter instance Weinberg suggests that ‘the 1968 Tet offensive had precisely the kind of psychological impact on American audiences that al-Qa'eda in Iraq is hoping to achieve’ (p. 120). Unfortunately, some of the contributors tend to conflate al-Qa'eda significance in the schema of Islamic militancy. This is something of a conceptual overstretch which runs the risk of decontextualising suicide attacks in Iraq – and elsewhere – by downplaying the significance of contingent factors such as state-building failure, sectarianism and forcible demographic change.
Historical and regional comparisons serve an important conceptual function in terrorism studies, especially when one is attempting a delineation of a complex phenomenon such as suicide bombing. The stress on tactics, decision-making processes and target acquisition in this book makes it an effective compendium for those wishing to gain an empirically grounded perspective on the modus operandi of present-day terrorist groups.
Several of these themes are taken up by Paul Wilkinson in the second edition of his well-received Terrorism versus Democracy. The book first went to press on the eve of 9/11 and this updated edition duly takes on board the transformation of the international political system in the intervening years. It deals primarily with the strategies open to liberal democratic states that wish to counter the threat of terrorism in an increasingly globalised world. Wilkinson's recommendations range from judicial and military responses to intelligence gathering, sharing and analysis at an international level (pp. 189–91, p. 207). He suggests that liberal democracies have been ‘extraordinarily resilient in withstanding terrorist attempts to coerce them into major changes of policy or surrender in the face of terrorist demands’ (p. 49). In contrast to dictatorships and colonialist regimes, argues Wilkinson, the popular legitimacy enjoyed by a state can make all the difference in its attempts to tackle terrorism. Wilkinson's scepticism about including terrorists in peace processes as potential methodologies for encouraging them to abandon armed struggle impacts negatively on his analysis of their end goals.
Wilkinson argues that ‘the global jihad waged by the al-Qa'eda movement is the most dangerous international non-state terrorist threat the world has ever confronted’ (p. 192), yet, surprisingly he does not provide sufficient coverage of its internal dynamics or appreciate the sorts of socio-economic or political grievances that fan the flames of Islamic militancy. Perhaps an extended chapter penetrating the inner mechanics of the al-Qa'eda network would have complemented his rather state-centric view of the threat. Notwithstanding this criticism, students seeking a conceptual understanding of terrorism are well served by Wilkinson's opening chapter where he distinguishes terrorism from other forms of political violence, including insurgency. The chapters covering the role of law enforcement and criminal justice agencies – as well as the military – in combating terrorism are excellent and showcase Wilkinson's considerable erudition and analytical reach. Perhaps more discussion of the human rights violations committed by states in the context of changing international norms on the law of armed conflict would have enhanced what is otherwise an exceptionally impressive book.
Both books are timely additions to what is an extremely timely series. I would recommend them to students and scholars working in the interrelated fields of international terrorism and security studies who wish to gain an informed insight into the complex phenomenon of global terrorism.
Aaron Edwards
(Queen's University Belfast)
For many decades academics and intellectuals have debated the nature of American power in the world. Petras and Veltmeyer's book has emerged as part of a new wave of academic literature which focuses particular attention on the subject of the American ‘Empire’. Empire with Imperialism is an explicit and open critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000), one of the works most prominently associated with this debate in recent years. Central to Petras and Veltmeyer's critique is that the title Empire should have been accompanied by the ‘implied subtitle of “without imperialism”’ (p. 6). For them, where Hardt and Negri have offered an analysis of contemporary empire as driven by market forces, particularly in the form of multinational corporations (MNCs), they have systematically failed to account for the central role of the imperial state in determining and maintaining such forces. Empire with Imperialism primarily aims to redress ‘one of the most pervasive and insidious myths of our times … that we live in a world with weak nation states’ (p. 35).
This book is not unique in offering a critique of Hardt and Negri's assertions that imperialism is an inadequate way of understanding contemporary structures of power and market, but it certainly has much to offer analytically, quite apart from the critical elements. The discussion is lively and accessible, and it would make interesting reading not only for students of American politics but also those interested in the broad discussions around globalisation. The empirical scope is vast, essentially attempting to identify the sites of American power across the world. Consequently, although the arguments are generally well presented, there are occasional bold yet unqualified assertions. In addition, there are certainly areas which might have merited more consideration. While there is a short chapter on ‘Imperialism as Local Development’, this only goes some way to compensate for the lack of attention to the dynamics of American influence on the continent of Africa, or indeed the complex role of the major IGOs, which are treated as straightforward extensions of imperial state power. In establishing their critique, Petras and Veltmeyer ask questions of Empire's ‘rather philosophical (as opposed to political economy) approach’, which is interesting in light of the issues raised (p. 8, emphasis in original). While Empire with Imperialism presents an engaging argument about the role of the American imperial state, a political economist might point out that this work could also be improved in that respect.
Laura White
(University of Sheffield)
The scholarly analysis of informal groups of states, their role in preserving peace and their relationship with the United Nations (UN) is an understudied area of international relations. Prantl has undertaken a study to fill this gap. His primary aim is to grasp ‘the dynamics between informal institutions and the UN Security Council (SC) in the resolution of conflict’ (p. 4). He argues that there is a decoupling of problem solving and legitimacy in conflict resolution. For example, in Kosovo it was the Troika and G8 that resolved the crisis and prepared a resolution, with the SC providing the international legitimacy. In part Prantl sees this as an opportunity to escape the constraints of the SC and act as a ‘“safety valve” to both divert and alleviate the pressure for substantial reform’ (p. 88) of the UN. The study purports to use a rationalist theoretical approach; however, as the author admits, this is not really the case. Prantl instead focuses upon informing the reader of the workings of informal groups of states rather than immersing his findings in a theoretical model. To this end the book is substantially case-study driven with in-depth analysis of Namibia, El Salvador and Kosovo.
Prantl is successful in his aim of providing insight to the reader. However, there is nothing innovative in the means by which this is done. By remaining within the confines of a rationalist approach it is rather limited and leaves many areas unexamined. For example, he does not examine the role norms play in shaping or constituting international responses to conflict. The section devoted to case studies provides a raft of information to the reader but does somewhat lack a sense of analysis. There is no strong sense that the case studies are analysed comparatively to show how this process of maintaining peace through informal groups is evolving. However, this book is a must read for those involved in research on the UN, for it provides perhaps the first true insight into the relationship between the SC and informal groups of states. It is well written, erudite and persuasively argued, and what it lacks in methodological rigour it certainly makes up for by originality and insight into a relatively unknown aspect of international relations.
Michael Clarke
(Queen's University Belfast)
Seeking resistance to the particular neoliberal form of globalisation instilled in Africa immediately leads Prempeh into interesting and critical territory. Parts I and II provide the theoretical background, taking the Third Way project to task for its accommodating stance toward neoliberalism and offering in its stead a Marxist perspective that sees globalisation as a ‘new form of postcolonial imperialism aided by the exercise of imperial power’ (p. 7). The anti-capitalism thus defined is then located explicitly in African civil society groups and movements, a platform upon which narratives of resistance that reside outside the dominant Western conceptualisations of opposition can then be revealed.
Part III brings into focus five such narratives, beginning with a deconstruction of the New Economic Partnership for African Development by a panoply of social justice groups, which view this supposedly ‘home-grown’ framework as a Third Way compromise itself – a top-down renewal of unjust African integration into the world economy. From this point, concrete alternatives offered by grass-roots struggle are shown in relation to four key issue areas: HIV/AIDS, water privatisation, debt cancellation and trade. The chapter on water is particularly compelling, shedding light on the way in which state-subsidised water has been written out of development policy by the World Bank to the benefit of European multinationals, and the response to this by the Johannesburg Anti-Privatisation Forum in militant protest and illegal mains connection and non-payment schemes.
The chapter on debt, meanwhile, contains an insightful critique of the relief offered under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries and G8 Gleneagles initiatives, and of the distinctly African contribution to debt cancellation discourse. Yet here, as with the chapter on trade, one senses that the value of localised resistance is somewhat lost. For instance, on trade we learn that ‘trade and development advocates and NGOs in Africa and globally have joined together in umbrella groups and networks to criticize the international trade rules and the system of global governance as an exploitative system’ (p. 173) – a regrettably tame conclusion in what is the final chapter. But this should not detract from a book written largely with urgency and vitality. If at times Prempeh is guilty of over-romanticising the democratic credentials of African social movements, at others he traces the radical and subaltern agency in Africa with expert conviction. This will prove a rewarding read, not just for Africanists, but for anyone interested in globalisation and its discontents.
Ben Richardson
(University of Sheffield)
This volume expands upon a dialogue introduced in a collection of essays co-edited by Mark Rupert called Historical Materialism and Globalisation (New York: Routledge, 2002). Rupert and Solomon further explore the roots of globalisation and the application of post Marxist historical materialism to political, economic and social conditions influenced – not determined – by that phenomenon. They build upon the theoretical contributions of Marx, Gramsci and Cox to argue that the process of globalisation is a reflection of capitalist relations no longer linked to particular states, but to activities such as transnational labour markets and international solidarity and resistance. The clarity of their arguments is due in large part to the book's organisation, operational definitions and periodic summaries.
The authors first justify the book's theoretical context by maintaining that the scholarly tradition of historic materialism is at least as objective a method of critical analysis as any mainstream theory, and as a neglected theoretical framework it serves to reinvigorate intellectual and political discussions of the impact of capitalism on contemporary politics. In subsequent chapters they trace the evolution of relations between the state and capitalism, the fundamentals of globalisation, the gendered and class-based nature of global civil society and the link between state power, globalisation and terror. The focus in the latter chapter is on the role of US market-oriented policies that the authors say create and maintain the structural violence which contributes to worldwide economic and political inequities and the ensuing international opposition. The book concludes with a brief look at future scenarios.
Perhaps it is this brevity in addressing the ‘so what’ of globalisation that is the book's primary shortcoming. The subtitle of the book promises more than it delivers. Despite arguing that particular states no longer drive international political economy, the authors expend much breath on the continuing impact of American unilateralism and do not consider the potential influence of rising economies such as China. They mention only in passing that positive benefits may follow in the wake of Western-led globalisation. Instead, they take a strongly normative stance on selected outcomes of the process by devoting most of the book to describing the current horrors of political-social power relations related to globalisation. In keeping with general Marxist principles, one might ask of the authors to describe further, and in more objective fashion, the next stage of political activities beyond capitalism. The way in which states, international organisations and civil society might mitigate against these alternative futures could also be tackled.
Michaelene D. Cox
(Illinois State University)
Do ‘rogue states’ challenge deterrence-based security strategies? Smith defines ‘rogue states’ narrowly as those which brutalise their people, disregard international law, threaten neighbours, seek weapons of mass destruction (WMD), sponsor terrorism and reject human values (p. 14). He reviews the Cold War nuclear deterrence literature and its main detractors, although it is unclear whether Smith seeks to test these theories or show the limits of deterrence in contemporary applications.
Smith uses primarily US journalistic accounts to trace two cases of rogue deterrence: Iraq and North Korea. He explains his case selection by arguing that ‘both Iraq and North Korea sought to prevent US interference by posing the prospect of WMD retaliation’ (p. 44). He asserts that Saddam did not use chemical weapons against the US as he did against Iran because the United States and Israel possessed nuclear weapons. America was not deterred, but Iraq was. He credits North Korea with deterring American strikes on its Yongbyon nuclear complex through fear of the North's possible WMD retaliation. North Korea's WMD deterred America. While recognising that neither state actually possessed nuclear weapons during the time frame under analysis, Smith does not address alternative explanations for the Iraq wars and North Korea non-wars. He assumes that Pyongyang and Baghdad presented a similar conventional deterrent and cites scant evidence of WMD as an explanatory element.
Unimpressed with America's ability to deter ‘rogues’, Smith seeks new strategies to prevent WMD use or transfers to terrorists: interdiction and preventative war. He dismisses export controls as failures, without reference to the functions of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Australia Group, Nonproliferation Treaty or Nunn-Lugar arrangements. He briefly reviews missile and civil defences and outlines Bush's existing interdiction strategy with the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). His chapter on pre-emptive and preventative war notes that WMD-capable states may relinquish WMD through negotiation or force, yet Smith only discusses the latter. He discusses well the legality of pre-emptive war and observes how this plays out in practice, and he ends by suggesting ways to reconcile the ‘Bush Doctrine’ with international law.
Smith concludes his book by advocating a global quarantine against WMD transfers. Expanding the International Maritime Organisation and UN Security Council's role would provide the legal basis for an enhanced PSI, and with an expanded legal basis for interdiction, WMD transfers become harder. However, Smith seems to forget that WMD can be transferred in other ways than by sea – notably air transit – and nuclear know-how is even more difficult to intercept. This short book is ambitious in scope and purpose, but ultimately it leaves more holes in the analysis than can be highlighted here, which prevent a convincing theoretical or prescriptive argument in understanding this important topic.
Patrick McEachern
(Louisiana State University)
In this volume, Joseph Stiglitz develops his earlier arguments about globalisation with his co-author to develop an agenda for global trade reform. The book is written against the background of the failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations to deliver on promises that liberalisation would address development concerns. The agenda of developed countries in the WTO continues to be to press for rapid liberalisation by developing countries while maintaining relatively high barriers against their exports; the remit of the WTO has been extended to issues of intellectual property rights, services and investment measures where the gains from any agreement are likely to be skewed towards developed countries. Behind the formal one member, one vote structure of the WTO lies the unbalanced nature of commitments and implementation costs – poorer countries acceding to the WTO later typically had to make greater concessions to join.
Even those liberalisation measures of most interest to developing economies are likely to bring limited gains. For example, the largest beneficiaries of agricultural trade liberalisation are likely to be the Cairns group of rich food exporters. Initiatives such as the European Union's ‘Everything But Arms’ free trade regime for the least developed countries’ exports has had limited take-up due to its effective participation costs. While this means that trade liberalisation is unlikely to boost development in the way its proponents expect, equally it does not mean that the appropriate response is to retreat from global integration or reject multilateral institutions. This book is a lucid application of complex economic analysis to explain both why current trading arrangements bring limited gains to developing economies and also how they could be arranged to deliver generalised benefits.
Economists’ general belief in the superiority of free trade policies arises not just from the demonstration of their optimality under assumptions of perfect competition, full employment and so on, but also because this result typically survives relaxation of these conditions. There are a limited number of standard cases where in principle protection could raise welfare in the presence of certain market distortions, but the standard view is that the most appropriate policy is likely to be to tackle the distortions directly rather than offset them with protection. This view is reinforced by the distinctly mixed record of protectionist policies in practice. The authors here do not dispute the force of this approach – indeed, the premise of the book is that gains from trade can play a central role in development – but they stress the strictness of conditions required for free trade to be optimal. In particular, they argue that market failures are endemic in developing countries. Gains from trade arise as countries stop producing goods in which they are relatively inefficient and produce (more) goods in which they are relatively efficient. This, though, assumes a simple and costless shift in resources from declining to expanding sectors. In practice workers may not be able to access retraining and capital markets may fail to provide funds for new firms and industries. Entrepreneurs face uncertainty over which new products to produce and so while the first ones to figure out which products an economy has a comparative advantage in will generate useful economic signals, they are unlikely to be able to reap many of the gains from their discoveries.
All this means that expansion of exports following liberalisation is likely to be limited, at least initially, and the short-run result is likely to be increased unemployment with the costs of adjustment falling disproportionately on vulnerable groups. In the absence of effective policy measures, costs of adjustment may offset any likely gains. Note that the market failures here are systemic due to information asymmetries intrinsic to their operation; they are not the result of government interventions and thus cannot simply be removed by policy reform. The authors interpret the postwar experience of East Asian countries in this light, in terms of the judicious use of trade policy instruments tied to performance criteria to support the emergence of new industries. Developing countries have limited policy instruments in the face of pervasive market failures and thus the authors conclude that ‘even if trade policy is the nth best instrument, trade liberalisation should not occur until one of the n-1 preferred alternatives is feasible and successfully implemented’ (p. 31). This is a strong, novel basis to older arguments for developmental protectionism and those loosely formulated by developmental state theorists.
Would it convince a sceptic? Probably not. While some of the sources of market failure are irreducible, policy can still be directed to mitigating their effects; free traders would probably argue that reducing often high bureaucratic costs associated with business start-up is likely to be more effective than government support in encouraging the growth of new industries. Even if the account of the East Asian experience is accepted at face value, these cases are very much the exception in terms of their ability to devise and implement effective policy interventions.
Elsewhere the differences between the authors and the intellectual free traders are less than might immediately be apparent. The latter are often just as critical of both the double standards of developed countries in negotiations and the over-extension of the WTO to issues of intellectual property rights, investment measures and so on; there is no particular reason for such issues to be included but not, say, labour and environmental standards. The authors’ bold, simple proposal here is that countries should offer free trade access to countries with lower total GDP and lower GDP per capita than themselves. Beyond this sequenced trade liberalisation can be negotiated with countries able to develop adjustment policies tailored to their own circumstances to minimise costs and ensure benefits. Besides the simplicity and transparency of the proposal, it would help to boost South–South trade, where barriers are often particularly high, and it avoids negotiation between parties with clear power asymmetries. Therein may lie the rub – here and elsewhere the authors detail the dirty politics of trade negotiations but then effectively ask large nations to give up their power.
This book provides a cogent proposal to kickstart global trade negotiations, backed up by detailed theory and evidence to indicate that it would provide a significant boost to development. It is not without its limitations, though. It appears to have been written quickly and there is a certain amount of repetition of material. In places a safety net to cushion adjustment is proposed; elsewhere it is viewed as likely to be prohibitively expensive. The authors do a valuable service in pointing out that the standard estimates of gains from trade derive from computable general equilibrium models that assume away many of the market failures central to the analysis here and are thus likely to overstate benefits from particular liberalisation packages; the authors then rather want to have it both ways by citing such estimates when they appear to support their argument. For the most part the leap from theoretical analysis to real-world examples is done well, but a good deal of the middle ground between the two could be filled in with more detail. More fundamentally, the central premise of the book may be over-optimistic. The global spread of manufacturing is one of the great transformations of our time, but it is still a highly uneven process with strong clustering of activity. The rise of China in particular is likely to limit the possibility for sustained export growth and development by other low-income countries. The authors have provided valuable analysis and proposals which deserve to be debated further; whether trade, even on their proposals, can still play such a developmental role as envisaged here remains to be seen.
Jonathan Perraton
(University of Sheffield)
This volume offers a wide number of perspectives on the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent troubles in that region. It is divided into six parts. The first part provides a neat background to the crisis and features a chapter co-written by David Malone that provides a helpful summary of his book-length account of the Security Council's dealings with Iraq in the two decades prior to the war. The second section considers a range of structural and normative challenges, including chapters on the impact of unipolarity on world politics and a chapter by David Cotright that provides an excellent account of the anti-war movement. The third and fourth sections contain chapters on different national and international perspectives on the war.
Some of these chapters try to map out national debates about Iraq and in so doing provide an extremely useful comparative aid. Others, however, do not. Readers expecting Mark Heller's ‘Israeli Perspective’ to document the debate in that country, for example, will be disappointed. Instead, this chapter provides the perspective of ‘an Israeli’ – Heller himself. For this reviewer, Part V, which considers international legal and doctrinal issues, is the best part of the book. The chapters in this section are of a uniformly high quality and shed new and important light on the impact of the Iraq crisis on the authority and role of the Security Council and norms governing the use of force. Chapters which stand out here are Wheeler and Morris's evaluation of the war's impact on the norm of humanitarian intervention, Chesterman's account of post-war relations between the occupiers and the UN that helps to clarify a very wide range of issues, and Barkawi's outstanding assessment of the forces underlying the war on terror.
This is a very useful and comprehensive book with two notable absences. First, rather oddly, while there are chapters on the British, German, French, Egyptian and Latin American perspectives (to name just a few), there is no chapter on American domestic politics. Instead, Jane Boulden and Thomas Weiss offer an (albeit insightful) account of US–UN relations. Second, there are no thoroughgoing defences of a war that around 40 states supported at one time or another. As a result, the volume is not quite as comprehensive as it might have been. Finally, this reviewer would have liked the individual ‘country’ or region perspectives to have followed a common structure allowing for consistency and easier comparison. That said, this is an invaluable volume on one of the most important global questions of the day.
Alex Bellamy
(University of Queensland)
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