Foreign affairs 2017 03-04

Recent Books MacArthur still enjoyed great support Cassandra in Oz: Counterinsurgency and from the American public, but not from Future War his fellow generals. Brands’ book is not a BY CONRAD C. CRANE. Naval revisionist account, and it skimps a bit Institute Press, 2016, 320 pp. on the wider context o the spat. But Brands is an accomplished storyteller Prior to the U.S. invasion o Iraq in and skillfully captures Truman’s seething 2003, many experts issued warnings irritation and MacArthur’s self-regard about how dire the aftermath might be and almost comical grandiloquence. without proper preparations. Crane was one such Cassandra; he was ignored by The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story the Bush administration along with all the others. But in 2006, the Pentagon of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That turned to Crane to help draft a new counterinsurgency manual for the U.S. Changed the World Army and the Marines. The resulting BY SHARON WEINBERGER. Knopf, text in uenced the conduct o the so- 2017, 496 pp. called surge in Iraq that began the follow- ing year. Crane’s memoir includes a few The title o Weinberger’s book might lead too many reports o conferences and one to expect revelations about hidden lists o their attendees, and the book’s geniuses responsible for great military discussion o military doctrine some- innovations. But the impression left by times becomes abstruse. Yet Crane’s this history o the Pentagon’s Defense re ections deserve attention, for they Advanced Research Projects Agency, set illuminate the key questions o counter- up in 1958 largely to get a grip on the insurgency with great lucidity. His book U.S. military’s space programs, is that o ers a rare account o how military many o its projects were delusional, bureaucracies debate strategy, along wasteful, and at times downright danger- with plenty o good-sense suggestions ous. D did play a role in some impor- that should guide future campaigns. It tant developments, notably early research would be a shame i Crane became a that led to the Internet, drones, and stealth Cassandra once more. bombers. But from the Vietnam War until the present, its leaders have tended Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya to look for technical xes to essentially Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons political problems; the results have some- times been disastrous, such as the use o BY MALFRID BRAUT Agent Orange in Vietnam. In a telling line, Weinberger notes that in recent HEGGHAMMER. Cornell University years, ’s “press releases tout devices Press, 2016, 288 pp. that can help soldiers scale glass skyscrap- ers, while American forces ght in a Why do some states succeed at build- country dominated by mud houses.” ing nuclear weapons and others fail? Her account is critical but not mocking; Braut-Hegghammer has produced an it is a well-researched contribution to insightful account o two cases o the history o U.S. military technology. failure. Iraq might have achieved its March/April 2017 173

Recent Books nuclear ambitions had Saddam Hussein The United States not started a ght with the West by invading Kuwait in 1990; he was forced Walter Russell Mead to dismantle his nuclear facilities after the ensuing Gul War. Libya, meanwhile, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled never made much headway, despite America three decades o e ort and consider- BY DONALD J. TRUMP. Threshold able help from the illicit proliferation Editions, 2016, 208 pp. network run by the Pakistani physicist A. Q. Khan. The Libyans eventually The Field of Fight abandoned their program as part o a broader rapprochement with the West. BY MICHAEL T. FLYNN AND In both cases, the programs were chaotic and hampered by inadequate oversight MICHAEL LEDEEN. St. Martin’s and shifting priorities. Iraq’s program Press, 2016, 208 pp. produced better results because the Iraqi government retained some capacity, It’s hard to know how President whereas the Libyan dictator Muammar Donald Trump and his national al-Qadda had deliberately dismantled security adviser, Michael Flynn, his country’s state institutions. Braut- will respond to the kinds o unantici- Hegghammer suggests that regardless pated international events that have o the importance that these autocrats often upset even the best-laid plans o attached to their nuclear programs, new administrations. But their books neither leader truly prioritized them— provide useful insights into the instincts or even had much o a clue about how and approaches that will guide them. they were proceeding. The lesson for nonproliferation is that intentions A very distinct worldview emerges often outstrip capabilities: whether a from Trump’s book, which was origi- state can actually manage a complex nally published in 2015 (with the far nuclear program matters more than less sunny title Crippled America) and how much its leaders want one. then substantially revised and reissued during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump is a popular nationalist rather than an ideological one. He sees the United States as a community o people with shared customs, a shared history, and shared values rather than as a nation founded on a unique and particular set o ideas. In Trump’s view, the country must compete more vigorously in an international system in which all states naturally seek their own economic and security interests. Trump does not instinc- tively embrace the idea o a global liberal 174

Recent Books order based on economic interdepen- Supporters o sustaining the liberal dence and free trade. He evinces even order have long argued that doing less interest in the concept o a global so, although di cult and expensive, cosmopolitan order buttressed by a represents the most practical and universal commitment to human rights cost-e ective method o furthering and democratic ideals. U.S. interests. Whether that logic will force itsel on Trump and his Flynn shares Trump’s vision o an team remains to be seen. inherently chaotic and dangerous world. The rst and most immediate threat The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating comes from violent jihadism. Trump and Flynn both downplay the distinctions Quest for the American Dream between Shiite and Sunni radicalism: BY TYLER COWEN. St. Martin’s Press, Iran may be ghting the Islamic State 2017, 256 pp. (or ), but in Trump’s and Flynn’s eyes, the two powers are more similar Cowen’s timely and well-written book than di erent. Iran resembles what points to a central feature o contem- might become i it achieved true sover- porary American life: since the 1980s, eignty, won diplomatic recognition, U.S. society has become less dynamic and settled down to build a collection and more risk averse. The quest for o allies and sympathizers around the safety and predictability has made the Middle East and the world. country both more and less comfort- able than before. Although many (per- China occupies second place in haps even most) Americans enjoy the both men’s rankings o the top threats stability and security that the status to U.S. interests and security. Russia quo provides, increasing numbers feel places a distant third, and the hope o thwarted by the lack o opportunity enlisting Moscow’s help against both and slow economic growth that charac- radical jihadism and China might explain terize their increasingly static society. why Trump has positioned himsel Others rejoice that their neighbor- for yet another U.S.-Russian “reset.” hoods have not been disrupted by new Still, for Trump and Flynn, Russia’s highways and housing developments, alliance with Iran poses a major obsta- but such “not in my backyard” stances cle. (They appear far less concerned create barriers to economic activity by Russia’s annexation o Crimea and that reduce growth, depress wages, and Moscow’s attempts to undermine the eliminate jobs. The apparent stability o American society, Cowen believes, is -backed European order.) The an illusion: behind the placid façade, question o whether Russia can be pulled technological change and global com- away from Iran is likely to occupy many petition have combined with domestic minds in the early months o the new discontent to bring forth a new age o administration. disruption—and, hopefully, renewal. For Cowen, a number o disparate Trump’s elevation to the White events—from nationwide protests House represents a profound break with the intellectual atmosphere and policy assumptions that have shaped two generations o American statecraft. March/April 2017 175

Recent Books over police brutality to the election o Western Europe Donald Trump as president—serve as Andrew Moravcsik signs that disruptive forces are gathering strength. Only time will tell whether they will yield benign or malignant e ects. Learning From Experience Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939 BY GEORGE P. SHULTZ. Hoover BY VOLKER ULLRICH. Knopf, Institution Press, 2016, 184 pp. 2016, 1,008 pp. At a time o rapid change and upheaval Is today’s right-wing populism in the United States, this short and comparable to the fascism o the engaging memoir by one o the most 1930s? Many observers take comfort accomplished Americans o the last in the belie that times have changed so hal century stands as a testament to much that such an analogy is anachro- the insights that a long life can provide. nistic. They point out that Adol Hitler Shultz, now 96, served as President rose to power owing to the shock o the Richard Nixon’s secretary o labor, Great Depression, the harshness o the director o the O ce o Management Treaty o Versailles, the menace o com- and Budget, and treasury secretary, munist revolution, the legacy o anti- and later served as secretary o state Semitism, and the fragility o Germany’s in the Reagan administration. In his democratic norms—a perfect storm unlike book, he distills the basic lessons he anything before or since. In this biogra- learned during his decades in public phy, which covers the Nazi leader’s life service and in his private life and applies up to the outbreak o war in 1939, Ullrich them to some o today’s challenges. calls such complacency into question. Simple as his insights sound—always Hitler is no anachronism; he is an eerily be learning, never compromise your familiar gure: inexperienced, impul- basic principles just to keep a job, and sive, ignorant, egomaniacal, petty, and so on—they are often profound and resentful o established experts—yet provocative. Surveying the troubled gifted with an extraordinary theatrical condition o the United States today, talent for emotionally compelling, dem- Shultz strikes a reassuringly hopeful agogic appeals to nativism. His oppo- note. “I remain a genuine optimist,” nents underestimated his political skill, he writes in the nal chapter, “even viewing him as an incompetent bumbler though we are surrounded by di cult and a temporary celebrity who could problems and are not at the top o our be easily tamed by the conservative game.” As the United States steps establishment. As Hitler rose, his rivals uncertainly into the Trump era, Shultz’s waged internecine political squabbles— wisdom and counsel are more valuable, until it was too late to stop him. The and more badly needed, than ever. material that Ullrich presents is hardly original, but his book nonetheless serves as an eloquent reminder o the 176

Recent Books adage that those who do not read Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of history are doomed to repeat it. Germany and American Holocaust Laid Low: Inside the Crisis That Memory Since the 1970s Overwhelmed Europe and the IMF BY JACOB S. EDER. Oxford BY PAUL BLUSTEIN. Centre for University Press, 2016, 320 pp. International Governance Innovation, 2016, 504 pp. It is easy to forget that for decades after World War II, the Holocaust did not Countless articles and books have play anything like the role it does today analyzed the euro crisis, but until now, in American culture. Beginning in the a serious treatment o the International 1970s, mostly American Jewish activists Monetary Fund’s role in the crisis has sought to create more opportunities for been missing. Media reports often Holocaust survivors to tell their stories portray the as lled with neolib- and thus to bolster awareness o this eral ideologues who enthusiastically singular event. Their campaign culmi- helped institutions and leaders nated in the construction o the U.S. impose harsh austerity policies and Holocaust Memorial Museum on the debt-repayment terms on southern Washington Mall, which o cially European countries. In this authorita- opened in 1993. At the time, German tive and detailed account, Blustein leaders worried that the museum marshals impressive research to rebut would cast present-day Germany in a this view. He argues that the fund is bad light and threaten the transatlantic home to sound technocrats who act alliance—the angst o Eder’s title. The independently and that, in addressing German government tried to convince the euro crisis, economists have the Holocaust Museum’s founders to proved more farsighted and able to acknowledge postwar Germany’s remark- learn from mistakes than national ably successful policies o democratiza- governments and have consistently tion, reconciliation, and remembrance, advocated more balanced, less austere as well as wartime German opposition policies for Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, to Hitler. Those e orts were completely and Portugal, including debt resched- rebu ed, but German fears proved to uling and the imposition o higher be exaggerated: the new museum con- losses on foreign bondholders. Unfor- veyed a relatively balanced view, and tunately, those proposals have been Germany itsel soon changed its policy, consistently overruled by European as symbolized by the construction o a governments (which are overrepre- striking Holocaust memorial near the sented on the ’s board), sometimes Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. All o this rejected by the U.S. Treasury Depart- re ects a broader process through which ment, and even shot down on occasion the Holocaust has been “universalized”: by southern European politicians who transformed from a speci c event in have sought to avoid short-term Germany’s past into a stand-in for adjustment costs. genocide anywhere. March/April 2017 177

Recent Books Charlemagne foreign policy, and he never gets lost in them. French foreign policy, in his view, BY JOHANNES F RIED. changes far less than the grand rhetori- cal declarations o successive presidents TRANSLATED BY PETER LEWIS. might lead one to expect. Beginning with President Charles de Gaulle in 1945, all Harvard University Press, 2016, 688 pp. French leaders have sought to manage the slow decline o France’s relative prestige Fried, one o Germany’s most distin- and power in both Europe and the world. guished historians, launches this grand Accordingly, maintaining substantial biography with a disarming caveat: “The military (especially nuclear) capabilities following book is not a novel, but it is a and a central role in the have remained work o ction all the same.” Fried be- constant priorities. Although Bozo dispels lieves that we are impossibly distant from the illusion o powerful French presidents, those who inhabited Europe 1,200 years his treatment relies heavily on a set o ago: we can hardly imagine their language, perceptions common among French emotions, and beliefs—or even the “alien foreign policy elites and so focuses on landscape” o impenetrable forests and deserted wastelands they inhabited. At this security and nuclear policy to the distance, historical biography can be no exclusion o nearly everything else. A better than a rough approximation, even reader might thus never suspect that when the subject is the greatest European France pursues an active policy o military monarch o the era. Charlemagne united or economic intervention in Africa and Europe for the rst time since the fall o the Middle East. Moreover, in an era Rome, and the resulting Holy Roman o “soft” and economic power, French Empire endured for a thousand years. His policies on trade, nance, immigration, reforms o military logistics, money, law, development, culture, European en- and many other things changed Europe largement, and East Asia go nearly forever. Yet we know little about him with unmentioned. The de nitive study o certainty. Much o what contemporary modern French foreign policy remains sources and subsequent historians reveal to be written. is probably romantic legend. The record is contradictory and thus open to interpreta- The Face of Britain: The History of the tion, as be ts a merciless conqueror who was canonized shortly after his death. For Nation Through Its Portraits those who wish to grapple with Char- BY SIMON SCHAMA. Oxford lemagne’s life in its entirety, without false University Press, 2016, 632 pp. certainties, Fried’s book is the best choice. French Foreign Policy Since 1945: An Contemporary art history increasingly Introduction spawns multimedia spectacles. Schama’s work on British portraiture is an exam- BY F RÉDÉRIC BOZO. TRANSLATED ple: it has appeared as a series, a National Portrait Gallery exhibition, BY JONATHAN HENSHER. Berghahn and now this book. Schama helped Books, 2016, 220 pp. pioneer this multiplatform approach Bozo commands the details o his country’s 178

Recent Books and remains one o the best in the or will they give in to the populist business. He devotes successive chap- temptation? Among the more interest- ters o this richly illustrated volume to ing ndings is the fact that the region’s the themes that he argues have lain at current demographic dividend—the high the heart o British national identity: ratio o working people to dependents— power, love, fame, self, and “the people.” will cease to pay o by the 2040s, when Schama does not stick to any overarch- aging populations will require sharp ing thesis for long, and he says little gains in labor productivity in order to about deep causes, the sociological sustain prosperity. In one best-case context, or even aesthetics. Rather, he scenario, the region would up its game recounts the personal foibles o the in scienti c innovation and export highlighted artists and their subjects in diversi cation. Another potential bright the manner o re ned dinner-table spot: climate change could transform gossip. The result is unfailingly amus- South America into the breadbasket o ing and intermittently risqué, delivered the world. The region will also likely be with smooth, slightly ironic panache. blessed with a relative absence o ethnic and sectarian ssures, international Western Hemisphere terrorism, and interstate con ict, even though narcotics tra cking will persist. Richard Feinberg The Political Economy of China–Latin Latin America and the Caribbean 2030: America Relations in the New Millennium: Future Scenarios Brave New World BY JASON MARCZAK AND PETER EDITED BY MARGARET MYERS ENGELKE. Inter-American Development Bank and the Atlantic AND CAROL WISE. Routledge, Council, 2016, 152 pp. 2017, 300 pp. This exercise in strategic foresight Leading experts on Chinese–Latin considers the factors that will American relations puncture lazy myths have the most in uence on the and widespread hyperbole in this valuable future o development in Latin Amer- collection o well-edited essays. Chinese ica: the quality o education; the level investments and foreign assistance in the o investment in infrastructure; and the region, although noteworthy, are not evolution o democratic governance, nearly as signi cant as many assume, and especially in the areas o transparency many Chinese projects announced with and accountability, scal reform, regula- great fanfare remain in limbo, including tory e ciency, and social inclusion. Much a $50-billion-plus Nicaraguan canal. also hinges on the evolving political Overall, the contributors are sanguine attitudes o the growing middle classes: about Chinese motives, nding that Will they be satis ed with gradual reform, China’s commercial goals take prece- dence over its possible geopolitical aims—at least for now. A number o the authors note that generous Chinese March/April 2017 179

Recent Books lending, notably to Venezuela, might agriculture, to address food insecurity have enabled irresponsible populist and promote export diversi cation (76 spending. And some Chinese rms have general agricultural projects and 13 more violated regional norms by damaging in the sugar industry). This long list o natural environments, harming indig- projects makes clear that many Cuban enous communities, and possibly engag- o cials are well aware o their country’s ing in corrupt practices. But Chinese pressing needs and realize that foreign businesses are learning, and their prac- tices seem to be improving. Looking rms could make vital contributions to forward, i the United States confronts the island’s future prosperity. Never- Latin America with less attractive policies theless, the government’s approval o on trade, investment, and labor move- foreign investment projects outside the ment, China may be tempted to ll the tourism sector remains frustratingly resulting vacuum. The transformation o slow, the result o bureaucratic sclerosis China’s benign commercial interests into and lingering ideological opposition in geopolitical ambitions may arrive sooner some quarters o the leadership. than the contributors to this volume— assembled prior to the election o Donald Sólo así: Por una agenda ciudadana Trump as U.S. president—could possibly independiente (The Only Way: Toward have anticipated. an Independent Citizen Agenda) BY JORGE G. CASTAÑEDA. Debate, Cuba: Portfolio of Opportunities for Foreign 2016, 88 pp. Investment, 2016–17 Castañeda adopts the voice o a respon- sible policy entrepreneur in this tract BY THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN meant to position him to run for presi- dent in Mexico’s 2018 election. A leading TRADE AND INVESTMENT OF THE intellectual and former Mexican foreign minister who has journeyed from the REPUBLIC OF CUBA. Ministry o socialist left toward the reformist center, Foreign Trade and Investment o the Castañeda recognizes the progress, inad- Republic o Cuba, 2016, 116 pp. equate though it may be, that Mexico has made in reforming its democratic For the third time in as many years, institutions and protecting its citizens’ Cuba’s Ministry o Foreign Trade and social and economic rights. He strikes a Investment has published an impressive cooperative note in discussing relations compilation o development projects with the United States and urges Mexico open to foreign participation. The latest to avoid anachronistic, destructive popu- report details 395 business opportuni- lism. He seeks to improve his country’s ties, up from the 326 in 2015 and 246 democracy by combating corruption and in 2014. The most pressing investment o cial impunity, protecting human rights, priorities remain unchanged: tourism, reforming the electoral system to facili- to earn badly needed foreign exchange tate the rise o independent candidates, (114 projects listed in the latest edition); defending minorities, and enhancing energy, to replace declining subsidies from Venezuela (87 hydrocarbon projects and 23 that focus on renewables); and 180

Recent Books consumer protections. Castañeda argues present to the United States in eastern that the dominant political parties are too Europe, the Middle East, and greater thoroughly compromised to realize such Eurasia—and to the di erent challenges goals: only an independent movement it poses to western European countries, that rallies civil society can modernize for whom Russia represents less a loom- Mexico. He sees hope in an educated, ing hegemonic rival than an alienated youthful middle class that perceives neighbor that is turning eastward. Trenin human rights as a legitimately Mexican concludes with some smart suggestions concept rather than as a foreign import. for how the West can address what should In his denunciation o the political class, be its real concerns about Russia. Most Castañeda may sound like antiestab- o the steps he recommends, however, lishment populists elsewhere. But his would depend on a grand geopolitical campaign platform is more thoughtful, modus vivendi that would require a level constructive, and, ultimately, a rmative. o wisdom not yet evident in either Moscow or Western capitals. Eastern Europe and Former The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Soviet Republics Leningrad Robert Legvold BY ALEXIS PERI. Harvard University Press, 2017, 384 pp. Should We Fear Russia? The battle for Leningrad lasted 1,127 BY DMITRI TRENIN. Polity, 2016, days; the city was under siege for 900 144 pp. o them. Between 1.6 million and two million Soviet citizens died, 800,000 o R are is the foreign policy analyst them civilians—40 percent o the city’s who can apply cool, dispassionate, prewar population. (As Peri points out, balanced, and critical analysis to the overall death toll approximates the the policies o his or her own country total number o members o the U.S. while also understanding and explaining military who died in war between 1776 the impulses that drive other countries, and 1975.) Leningrad residents o all particularly adversaries. Trenin, a Russian types—from factory foremen to teachers, scholar, is one such analyst. In this short, party workers to professional writers— tightly argued book, his answer to the kept diaries during the ordeal. Peri question in the book’s title is yes, but searches through 125 o them to capture not for the oversimpli ed reasons most how the nightmare deconstructed the in the West would give. He rst lays writers’ prior realities and altered their out the many factors that have wrongly sense o humanity. Her portrait is a increased Western wariness o Vladimir sensitive, at times almost poetic exami- Putin’s Russia and treats them to an nation o their emotions and disordered astringent wash. Then he turns to the mental states. It both contrasts with and very real challenges that Russia does complements the equally accurate o cial Soviet portrait o a stalwart population March/April 2017 181

Recent Books standing rm in the face o evil and in has never, and will never, follow foreign defense o Soviet ideals. Peri makes models, Colton argues: “What Russia plain that even though the diarists can and must become is a better edition endured the total transformation o o itself.” their fundamental sense o reality, their social relationships, and the Bosnia’s Paralyzed Peace nature o their social order, most o them did not become alienated from BY CHRISTOPHER BENNET T. the values and basic outlook o the Soviet system. Oxford University Press, 2016, 416 pp. Russia: What Everyone Needs to Know Readers who think the Bosnian trag- BY TIMOTHY J. COLTON. Oxford edy ended long ago and that the 1995 University Press, 2016, 288 pp. Dayton accords set the country on a path to peace and stability are in for a At rst glance, one might think this surprise. After retracing the Bosnian volume were merely a primer that takes war, the hopes surrounding the agree- the uninitiated through the key stages ment that ended it, and the two decades o Russia’s history. But that would be o increasingly fraught e orts to imple- to sell short a shrewd, bountiful book. ment the accords, Bennett warns that, With a nely tuned sense o choice, despite generous contributions from Colton selects the historical and physical international organizations, Bosnia is features that have made Russia Russia not evolving “into a self-sustaining and and then sets about exploring a wide stable democracy.” Instead, the country range o issues: how the country grew is “deteriorating at an accelerating pace.” so large, the imprint o empire on its Meanwhile, “a fatalistic cynicism appears character, the reasons it chose revolution to have taken root,” even as the inter- over reform, the triumph o the Bolsheviks, national community stubbornly hopes and the ways in which Soviet leaders that the lure o Bosnian integration Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and into Europe will allow the center to Leonid Brezhnev de ned their respec- hold. As Bennett makes clear in this tive eras. His discussion becomes even tough-minded book, the Dayton settle- more re ned and comprehensive when ment ended the violence but dealt more he turns to contemporary Russia, touch- with its symptoms than its underlying ing on almost every signi cant aspect causes, which still linger. The problem o the country’s foreign and domestic is that Bosnian elites—Croats, Serbs, development during the Yeltsin and and Bosniaks alike—continue to Putin periods. Colton avoids simple pursue the same narrow ethnonational- formulas and undergirds his analysis ist agendas that sparked the war rather with carefully chosen data, delivered in than encouraging the pursuit o larger a cool, evenhanded fashion. This is national goals. Moving past this particularly true o his assessment o the zero-sum stalemate will require what Putin regime and its prospects. Russia Bennett calls a new “logic o Bosnian politics,” and he lays out steps for achieving it. 182

Recent Books Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Middle East John Waterbury Contest Over Ukraine and the Caucasus BY GERARD TOAL. Oxford University Press, 2017, 408 pp. Toal argues that developments such as America’s Dream Palace: Middle East the Russian invasion o Georgia in 2008, Russia’s annexation o Crimea, and the Expertise and the Rise of the National Russian-fueled violence in eastern Ukraine are too often seen through a Security State reductive Manichaean lens. In reality, BY OSAMAH F. KHALIL. Harvard they grow out o an intricate knot o University Press, 2016, 440 pp. contested narratives and a web o strategic calculations shaped by emo- This is the work o a young but tional and moral impulses. Complicat- mature historian: thoroughly ing things further is the fact that these documented, carefully argued, are not two-way duels between major and well crafted. In a detailed look at powers but complex interactions in u- the nexus o American academic exper- enced by the actions o third parties. As tise on the Middle East and Washing- Toal reveals in his detailed account o ton’s diplomatic and intelligence power the events in Georgia and his somewhat centers, from the Wilson era through less probing retelling o the story in the Obama presidency, Khalil keeps Ukraine, the con icts have unfolded in his prose crisp and his judgments sober. the twisted wreckage o an imploded The supply o area experts uent in Russian empire, unleashing new ambi- local languages and familiar with the tions and fears and producing new and region’s populations has never naturally more complicated relationships. His met the demand from the public and analysis is not likely to a ect how a private sectors, so the U.S. government reader assigns blame for the outcomes in has either directly funded area studies the two cases, but it will enrich the or encouraged private foundations to reader’s understanding o them. do so. Such interventions began during World War II, and the ght against the Nazis was so compelling that few ob- jected when academics served in the U.S. O ce o Strategic Services, which later morphed into the . But as the disaster o the Vietnam War unfolded, area experts warned against academic complicity with U.S. imperialism. It is not clear i the challenge posed by violent jihadism has overcome such concerns, but it has certainly given rise to a new cottage industry in terrorism and counter- insurgency studies. March/April 2017 183

Recent Books The Egyptians: A Radical History of Hellyer writes engagingly, although he Egypt’s Un nished Revolution spends a bit too much time assessing BY JACK SHENKER. New Press, 2016, what he himsel got right and wrong as 560 pp. an analyst o these developments and not enough time explaining where he This is not remotely a history, but it is a thinks Egypt is now heading. Hellyer lively account full o vignettes that capture believes there was nothing inevitable a good deal o contemporary Egypt. about Egypt’s evolution since the Shenker, a former correspondent for The overthrow o Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Guardian, sees the country as locked in a What Hellyer calls “the revolutionary struggle between neoliberal reforms and coalition” o Islamists, secular democrats, the revolutionary impulses o ordinary and “remnants” o the Mubarak regime people ground down by international could have settled on a single candidate capitalism and its agents in the deep state. in the 2012 presidential election, rather He issues quite a few Olympian judg- than splitting up, with the Islamists ments that brook no dissent, as when he backing Mohamed Morsi, a former declares that “neoliberalism is a political leader o the Muslim Brotherhood. project and its implementation always Hellyer argues that things might have involves a mass transfer from the poor to turned out di erently had the Brother- the rich.” But Shenker is also an eloquent hood not wrongly interpreted Morsi’s witness to several o Egypt’s beleaguered narrow election victory as a popular communities—peasants, factory workers, mandate and had Morsi not proved such bloggers, women, gays—who were a ham- sted leader. Sisi and his allies in momentarily liberated by the uprising o the deep state had not originally planned 2011. Only one Islamist, a jovial Sala st, to depose Morsi but ended up doing so slips into the narrative. Shenker seems to in a brutal fashion. I the Sisi regime view Islamism as one o the many guises cannot relieve Egypt’s socioeconomic that the oppressed don to face their pressures, the next uprisings will be led oppressors. His main message is that by the poor and will likely be violent. the forces o revolution are loose in the land: the movement that toppled Hosni The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Mubarak was only the opening salvo. Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism A Revolution Undone: Egypt’s Road BY CIHAN TUGAL. Verso, 2016, 304 pp. Beyond Revolt BY H. A. HELLYER. Oxford The “Turkish model” o governance prom- University Press, 2017, 320 pp. ises the merger o Islam with democracy and free markets. It rst took shape under This book considers Egypt’s recent Prime Minister Turgut Ozal in the 1980s uprisings and descent into military rule and then crystallized under Recep Tayyip and concludes with a brie treatment Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2002. o the regime o Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, In this ambitious book, Tugal compares the general who seized power in 2013. Turkey’s approach to those o Egypt, Iran, 184

Recent Books and Tunisia by examining how neoliberal such groups continue to survive. Nearly economic strategies have played out in all o Davidson’s sources are in the public each place, paying particular attention domain: he uncovers no original evidence to how governments have tried to engage for his argument and instead assembles devout Muslim constituencies in the familiar pieces into an unfamiliar shape. neoliberal project. Tugal argues that the The results are unconvincing. For exam- Arab uprisings o 2010–11 and the large ple, i Western powers fostered in antidevelopment protests that took order to drive a Sunni wedge between place in Istanbul in 2013 demonstrated Iran and Syria, why did they bother to the failure o those e orts. But Tugal’s topple Saddam Hussein, who already analysis is disjointed; cause and e ect played that role? More troubling, David- chase each other’s tails. He relies on son’s analysis denies agency to Islamists, jargon and leaves unde ned key concepts, Middle Easterners, and pretty much such as “political society,” “power bloc,” everyone else: in his view, we are all and “passive revolution”—a signi cant merely pawns in the shadow wars. problem, since the book hinges not on new empirical evidence but rather on Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance an analytic framework. in the Middle East Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the BY MICHAEL DORAN. Free Press, 2016, 320 pp. Middle East In this richly researched, brisk, and BY CHRISTOPHER DAVIDSON. insightful book, Doran argues that during the Suez crisis o 1956, U.S. Oneworld, 2016, 688 pp. President Dwight Eisenhower and his advisers were in the grip o a misleading According to Davidson, for more than a diplomatic paradigm, operating under century, the intelligence and military a awed set o assumptions about how establishments o the United Kingdom international politics worked. Despite and the United States have been leading a mounting evidence to the contrary, they hidden struggle against implicitly pro- believed they could appease the Egyptian gressive forces in the Middle East, driven leader Gamal Abdel Nasser by extracting by a desire for geopolitical advantage and concessions from his British, French, the control o oil. Notwithstanding the and Israeli adversaries. Instead, U.S. declaration o a “war on terror,” Davidson protection only whetted Nasser’s geopo- believes that the preferred instruments o litical appetite, and Eisenhower eventu- the Americans and the British have been ally rued his administration’s folly. Ike’s Islamist movements: the Muslim Brother- Gamble is broadly persuasive, but it loses hood, the Taliban, and, most recently, traction in places. The author sweepingly the Islamic State (also known as ). characterizes, and sometimes dismisses, The Americans and the British have often the work o other historians but seldom found themselves ghting their own tells readers who they are. Moreover, proxies, but they knew that would hap- although Doran deftly exposes Nasser’s pen, Davidson claims. They therefore ght hal eartedly, he contends, so that March/April 2017 185

Recent Books cynicism and aggressiveness, he down- decades? Surveying the experience o plays the defensive aspects o the Egyp- three Chinese counties, Ang cuts through tian leader’s position. During the period the usual debate about whether good in question, Egypt endured Israeli sabo- governance or economic growth should tage and an invasion launched by British, come rst, seeing a more cyclical process French, and Israeli forces. Meanwhile, at work. First, authorities allowed mar- Egypt’s ally Syria faced subversive attacks kets to emerge even though they were launched by Iraq, the United Kingdom, hampered by corruption, weak property and the United States. Doran acknowl- rights, and underregulation. Market edges most o those realities but, echoing activity then generated problems that the U.S. policymakers he criticizes, does required o cials to build stronger not permit them to dislodge his own institutions, which in turn fostered the favored paradigm. Still, the book o ers a further development o markets. forceful and challenging interpretation o the Suez crisis that no student o Middle Given China’s vastness, this process Eastern history can a ord to ignore. could unfold only because local o cials were incentivized to innovate constantly, Asia and Paci c no matter the risk—a process Ang labels “franchised decentralization.” Chung’s Andrew J. Nathan book is the most complete account avail- able o China’s unique combination o How China Escaped the Poverty Trap centralized policymaking and delegated BY YUEN YUEN ANG. Cornell implementation, a setup that emerged University Press, 2016, 344 pp. after years o experimentation by reform- era leaders seeking to overcome the aws Centrifugal Empire: Central-Local o Mao’s hypercentralized system. Today, Relations in China China has four levels o administration BY JAE HO CHUNG. Columbia below the central government, allowing University Press, 2016, 232 pp. wide discretion in implementing economic policy but imposing tight control over Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, other issues, such as population planning. Western Economists, and the Making of Global China Ang and Chung focus on the local BY JULIAN GEWIRTZ. Harvard level; Gewirtz provides a dramatic and University Press, 2017, 416 pp. freshly detailed account o the terrifying years from 1976 to 1993, when China’s Are there lessons in the Chinese central leaders held their breath and miracle for other countries that pushed their country into the unknown want to surge from deep poverty by beginning to liberalize its economy. to advanced development in a matter o He focuses especially on the boldness o Zhao Ziyang, who served as premier from 1980 to 1987. Zhao sought advice from foreign economists, putting their ideas into practice despite opposition from a conservative faction that was understand- ably suspicious o Western admonitions 186

Recent Books to abandon state planning and compro- small, safe pools o voters, delivering mise the country’s economic autonomy. them a stream o targeted building This is a story not o Western in uence projects, subsidies, and other help that seeping irresistibly into Chinese minds Catalinac terms “pork.” In 1994, the but o Chinese leaders actively reaching electoral system was changed to one that out for ideas. It is also a story o erce combined single-member districts and political struggles conducted in the form proportional representation, forcing o theoretical debates. Although built candidates to broaden their appeal to around personalities, it delivers a great larger constituencies. Ever since, scholars deal o insight into how China’s mix o have debated the policy impact. Catalinac socialism and capitalism works. uses an innovative computerized analysis o candidates’ election manifestoes to Together, these three books show show that after the reform they paid that China’s transformation cannot be more attention to national security issues attributed to a single cause; rather, it than before, and she argues that this arose from a contingent, interactive helps explain the government’s moves process—Ang calls it “directed improvi- toward a more assertive security policy. sation.” She formalizes this insight by She responds resourcefully to possible using a novel analytic method that she objections, among them that the mani- terms “coevolutionary narrative,” which festoes don’t matter much in Japanese has the potential to in uence future election campaigns and that security studies o institutional and economic policy more likely shifted because o change beyond China. The Chinese changes in the threat environment. Her system has proved to be remarkably contribution will not end the debate, agile, but creative adaptation is not an but it o ers an interesting new twist. easy lesson for others—or even present- day China—to apply. The process can Dealing With an Ambiguous World become bogged down, which might be BY BILAHARI KAUSIKAN. World happening in China today, as President Scienti c, 2016, 176 pp. Xi Jinping presses the country’s bureau- crats to carry out even riskier reforms. Electoral Reform and National Security in Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy Foreign Policy BY AMY CATALINAC. Cambridge University Press, 2016, 268 pp. BY SHIVSHANKAR MENON. Before 1994, Japan elected the lower Brookings Institution Press, 2016, 176 pp. house o its parliament using an unusual “multimember district” system that Realism is a worldview forced by forced candidates from each party to run circumstance on tiny Singapore, and not only against the other party but also few articulate it better than Kausikan, against one another. As a result, candi- who in 2013 retired as the top civil dates tended to build ties with relatively servant in the country’s Ministry o Foreign A airs. The lectures collected in his book brim with insights. “The small countries o Southeast Asia have March/April 2017 187

Recent Books lived in the midst o competition by the country as much as with those outside larger powers for many centuries,” he it. Although deterring Pakistan remains points out; “to balance, hedge, and a necessity, Menon argues that India bandwagon is embedded in our foreign has shifted its foreign policy focus to the policy .” Washington and Beijing rivalry with China, which is one reason will nd a way to get along since the India has developed a “natural partnership” United States cannot contain China and with the United States. Menon counsels China cannot expel the United States that in its dealings with China, India from Asia. But he warns the region’s should seek common bene ts where pos- smaller countries that “when major sible and “where there is a hindrance, . . . powers strike a deal, they generally try prevent it, eliminate it, work around it, to make lesser beings pay the price.” divert it.” An equal opportunity critic, he calls into question the alleged universality o Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Western values while also admonish- ing China that a great power “cannot Marcos Years forever portray itsel as a victim without calling its intentions into question.” BY SUSAN F. QUIMPO AND And to endear himsel to academics, he states, “Any resemblance between NATHAN GILBERT QUIMPO. Ohio what I studied and what I did for a University Press, 2016, 512 pp. living is almost coincidental.” A militant leftist movement has existed Menon is a realist from a large in various forms in the Philippines since country. He has served India in ambas- the early twentieth century. It burgeoned sadorial posts and as foreign secretary from the 1960s through the 1980s as and national security adviser and tells students and young professionals reacted the inside stories o developments in to Ferdinand Marcos’ repressive rule and which he played a key role, such as his 1972 imposition o martial law. Seven the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility o the ten Quimpo siblings were among Agreement with China and the 2005 those who joined the Maoism-in uenced nuclear agreement with the United Communist Party o the Philippines ( ). States, along with India’s responses to All who survive have contributed chapters Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attacks, to this collective memoir, which manages its failed military and diplomatic inter- to present a coherent story despite the ventions in the Sri Lankan civil war, and multitude o voices. The family saga began its adoption o a “no rst use” nuclear when the older siblings demonstrated policy. Although India’s policy process is against the Vietnam War as high school not known for its agility, Menon makes students, to the horror o their cautious, a good case that the government can hard-working parents. Step by step, the pull o bold initiatives by adopting a children deepened their involvement, “fundamentally realistic approach masked until most were living on the run, trying by normative rhetoric.” This is partly to spark an armed revolution. The male because foreign policy in a democracy siblings su ered imprisonment, torture, requires negotiating with forces inside and exile. With the end o the Marcos dictatorship and the breakup o the , 188

Recent Books the surviving siblings returned to their transitional government appointed him middle-class roots as teachers and govern- mayor o Mogadishu. At its strongest, ment o cials, although they remain Harding’s portrait o him resembles a outraged by the injustices in Philippine Somali version o Charles Dickens’ David society. At once political and personal, Copper eld; the passages evoking 1960s this is a valuable source on a lesser- street life in Mogadishu alone make known chapter o Philippine history. the book worth reading. Harding never whitewashes Nur’s faults, giving voice Africa to some o his detractors and pointing to a few shady episodes that have dogged Nicolas van de Walle him. But Harding renders Nur as a symbol o the optimism and resilience The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of that Somalis have demonstrated even in Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of the face o their country’s collapse. By Somalia the end o the book, most readers will BY ANDREW HARDING. St. Martin’s Press, 2016, 304 pp. nd themselves rooting for Nur, Moga- dishu, and Somalia. W ith the end o the Islamist militia al Shabab’s control Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa o Mogadishu in 2011, the BY DOMINIKA KOTER. Cambridge establishment o a new federal constitu- University Press, 2016, 220 pp. tion in 2012, and the signi cant decline in political violence since then, Somalia The ethnic violence that has marred seems as close as it ever has been to escap- recent elections in African countries, such ing the bloodshed and chaos that have as Kenya and Nigeria, has reinforced the plagued it for so long. Harding’s stunning notion that African politics is structured book relates the country’s recent history by stringent ethnic logics. In fact, as through the perspective o one man. The Koter shows in her ne book, the political result is great storytelling by a master salience o ethnicity varies enormously reporter. Mohamud “Tarzan” Nur was within and across African countries. Even born into rural poverty before Somalia in countries with easily identi able ethnic won its independence from the United groups, politicians and political parties Kingdom in 1960. He was brought up don’t necessarily rely on such cleavages. in a bleak orphanage in Mogadishu and Based on a careful comparison o Benin spent his childhood as a street urchin and Senegal (and buttressed with exam- respected for his ghting skills. But he ples from Botswana, Guinea, Kenya, grew up to become a civil engineer and and Mali), Koter’s research reveals that successful businessman, rst in Saudi African leaders play the ethnic card on Arabia and later in London. In 2010, he the national level only when they can’t returned to Somalia after the country’s rely on strong traditional or religious leaders at the local level to mobilize voters on their behal or when they lack the organizational capacity and resources March/April 2017 189

Recent Books to make broader appeals based on way station along the routes o the promises to deliver services and create international drug trade. economic opportunity. Koter’s model o careful scholarship is representative Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in o a wider trend toward high-quality Nigeria research on the evolution o African BY EBENEZER OBADARE. University electoral politics. o Rochester Press, 2016, 188 pp. Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to “Narco- Dissatis ed with the increasing tendency o scholars to reduce the meaning o State” “civil society” to the activities o nongov- ernmental organizations, Obadare argues EDITED BY PATRICK CHABAL AND that the everyday discourse o Nigerians produces the kind o political e ects— TOBY GREEN. Hurst, 2016, 288 pp. including resistance to the state’s author- ity and demands for accountability—that It is no surprise that Guinea-Bissau, with political scientists usually ascribe only to a population o less than two million and more institutional forms o civil society. a o just $7.5 billion, receives little Obadare contributes to the debate about attention from scholars. This excellent what counts as civil society by making a collection o essays on the West African compelling case that “associating is not country’s complicated politics is the rst undertaken by associations alone”: it also comprehensive English-language study o results from ordinary social life. His book the topic to appear in more than a decade. is at its best when it brings his argument Guinea-Bissau has weathered an unstable to life by cataloging and analyzing the democracy since 1994, when it held its witty stories, jokes, and wordplay that Nigerians employ to mock powerful rst multiparty elections. A brie civil war politicians and government institutions. broke out in 1998–99; since then, there Public discourse undoubtedly shapes have been a number o military coups. Nigerians’ attitudes toward their gov- Taken together, the essays collected here ernment, but it’s unclear whether it do a better job o describing the country’s truly promotes state responsiveness, as political environment than o explaining Obadare maintains, or whether it mostly the persistence o its toxic mixture o just palliates mass discontent.∂ extreme poverty, weak state capacity, and rapacious elites. But a number o them usefully examine Guinea-Bissau’s trans- formation into a “narco-state,” the result o collusion between authorities and Latin American drug cartels, which has turned the country into a signi cant Foreign A airs (ISSN 00157120), March/April 2017, Volume 96, Number 2. Published six times annually (January, March, May, July, September, November) at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065. Print subscriptions: U.S., $54.95; Canada, $66.95; other countries via air, $89.95 per year. Canadian Publication Mail–Mail # 1572121. Periodicals postage paid in New York, NY, and at additional mailing o ces. : Send address changes to Foreign A airs, P.O. Box 60001, Tampa, FL 33662-0001. From time to time, we permit certain carefully screened companies to send our subscribers information about products or services that we believe will be o interest. I you prefer not to receive such information, please contact us at the Tampa, FL, address indicated above. 190