Foreign affairs 2014 01-02

Return to Table of Contents Let the People Go Assume for a moment that everything others are hypothetical. What research Collier says is correct. He argues that shows is that the economic value of those there is an optimal level of emigration men’s labor will decline by 60 to 80 percent from low-income countries and that it lies or more, reducing the size of the world somewhere between Bangladesh’s rate of economy; the job prospects of British around four percent, which he deems workers will be essentially unaffected, beneficial, and Haiti’s level of around ten given how little interest they have in low- percent, which he deems harmful. Many wage service work; the British government low-income countries have emigration will collect less tax revenue; Collier and rates far below four percent. If those rates his colleagues will pay slightly more for tea were raised to four percent, that would and cakes; and Algeria and Bangladesh mean about 13 million new immigrants will lose whatever money those men may (using the World Bank’s definition of have been sending home. low-income countries and its 2010 estimates of cross-country migration Beyond those well-documented effects, numbers). If all of them moved to oecd Collier posits other, wildly hypothetical countries, the foreign-born population effects: that the Oxonians strolling down of the oecd countries would rise from Holywell Street will be able to gaze at 12 percent to 13 percent—the same level one another with more trust and mutual found in the United States and far below regard, and that somehow people working the 20 percent share in Canada and the in Algeria and Bangladesh will become 27 percent share in Australia. more motivated to improve their lots and their countries. British national identity Those people would move from will also be protected, like an endangered countries with average annual incomes of species, for were England to become “an about $600 to countries where average extension of Bangladesh,” Collier writes incomes are over $30,000, transforming at one point, “it would be a terrible loss to their lives and adding hundreds of billions global cultures.” Social science may one of dollars to the world economy every day prove all this speculation right, but year. In other words, even if one concedes not before other and better books arrive Collier’s dubious moral and empirical to lift the heavy burden of proof, serving claims about immigration, his own analysis up evidence in place of portentous insinu- suggests colossal potential gains from new ations and fearful “preventative policies.” immigration without substantial offsetting harm. But somehow, in his policy conclu- Collier laments the fact that the immi- sions, Collier preoccupies himself exclu- gration debate has been marked by “high sively with restricting immigration. emotion and little knowledge.” That is true, yet Exodus exemplifies the problem. This fact and fiction book could have seriously engaged with the large literature on immigration and helped Soon, the young sandwich-makers incar- people without Collier’s training and cerated and then deported from Collier’s position think through the complexities doorstep will have arrived in Algeria and of the issue. Instead, Collier has written Bangladesh, if they have not already. Some a text mortally wounded by incoherence, of the effects of their removal have been error, and overconfident leaps to baseless proved by stacks of economic studies; conclusions.∂ January/February 2014 159

Return to Table of Contents From Shah to service, known as savak and adept in Supreme Leader torture. “The boy,” as he was known in his father’s court, became a man: melancholic, What the Iranian Revolution grandiose, lonely, standing athwart titanic Revealed forces he could barely recognize let alone contain. No one was ever so blind-sided Laura Secor by the history he had made. Days of God: The Revolution in Iran and The story of the shah is compelling Its Consequences in the way of fiction: the tragic antihero by james buchan. Simon and friendless in his gilded palace, unable, for Schuster, 2013, 432 pp. $27.99. want of character and common experi- ence, to see the shadow he himself has Revolutionary Iran cast. But if the monarchy is the stuff of by michael axworthy. Oxford literature, the story of Iran’s postrevolu- University Press, 2013, 528 pp. $34.95. tionary Islamic Republic calls for sociology instead. Reading Iranian history as written There is something irresistible by Westerners, it is impossible to miss this about the story of Iran’s last shah, dramatic reversal of emphasis. Inevitably, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The accounts of prerevolutionary Iran fore- pampered, foreign-educated son of a dour ground the shah, his court, and its foreign autocrat, Mohammad Reza ascended to patrons. But the revolution forced Iranian the Peacock Throne in 1941, at age 21. society, with all its cleavages and com- He was weak and malleable, surrounded plexities, its aspirations and refusals, into by sycophants and schemers, beholden the light of historical explanation. For to foreign powers that treated him with all the Western intimacy with the Pahlavi contempt. Nearly unseated by his popular court, and for all the opacity of the Islamic prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, Republic, Westerners see Iran more in 1953, the shah retained his throne clearly now. with American and clerical connivance. That crucible hardened him into some- Two magisterial new books by British thing both brittle and shrewd. He fancied scholars of Iran make the best of this himself a nationalist beloved by his people, historical divide and the continuities that but in truth he scarcely knew them; he span it. James Buchan’s Days of God, a grew Iran’s economy and its military, survey of the Pahlavi years, with spectacu- broke up feudal landholdings, and crushed lar detail on the revolution itself, includes dissent with his notorious intelligence some deft portraiture and notes of literary grace. Buchan, who lived in Iran in the Laura secor is a journalist who has late 1970s, writes with an irreverence and reported from Iran for The New Yorker and confidence born of long familiarity, and The New York Times Magazine. the Iran of his history feels vibrantly present. Still, his history moves largely from the top down until 1979, when the revolution forces the old protagonists from the scene. Michael Axworthy’s precise and judicious Revolutionary Iran 160 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents From Shah to Supreme Leader carries the country’s history forward as a Westerners knew Mohammad Reza contest among political visions and social well. They were visitors in his court, forces. Axworthy’s Iran is less lived-in patrons and partners who took the meas­ and more abstract than Buchan’s, but in ure of the royal mood. They were also another sense, more fully dimensional. technicians, advisers, businesspeople, and teachers. Between 1970 and 1979, the To read these two books together is to number of Americans living in Iran, many understand the revolution as something of them working in the defense industry, other than a historical rupture. It is to increased from fewer than 8,000 to close sense that when looking at Iran before to 50,000. Foreigners shared the tense and and after the revolution, one is turning a vivid streets of the Iranian capital, which kaleidoscope, reconstituting a new picture sloped from the city’s affluent north to its from the same elements. For although the squalid south, mountain runoff sluicing Islamic Revolution upended Iran’s political through the city’s roadside gutters and arrangements, it did not replace the polity. deepening in murk as it neared the desert The tensions and energies that animate plain. But for the most part, according to Iranian society today are not new; they Axworthy, Americans lived in American have simply become more visible. compounds, sent their children to Ameri- can schools, and shopped at American shah of shahs commissaries. They took proximity for intimacy and never saw coming the lurch Mohammad Reza, as Buchan portrays of history that would end with their him, was a stateless creature of an interna- violent expulsion. tional aristocracy to which he never properly belonged, perched awkwardly Beyond the palace gates, Iran con- atop a country that never properly vulsed with social upheaval that threw belonged to him. His father founded the its inequities into sharp relief. Hundreds Pahlavi dynasty from nothing, having of thousands of rural Iranians, displaced seized power as a low-level military officer by land reform, swelled the country’s of obscure origins. An austere, provincial cities, many of them settling in slums man, the elder Pahlavi confected a crown and shantytowns. Between 1930 and 1979, prince with all the European trappings Tehran’s population leapt from around and manners he imagined a crown prince 300,000 to about five million (today it should have. By the time he took power, is close to 14 million), poor youth from Mohammad Reza suffered from desola- traditional families living cheek by jowl tion at his core, which he tried to assuage with the cosmopolitan sons and daughters with sexual dalliances, European luxuries, of the modern middle class and with and an aviation hobby that terrified his casually entitled foreigners. The structures passengers. As early as 1947, he expressed of old Iran—the bazaar as the center of frank envy to the French scholar Henry commerce, the low houses turned in on Corbin, because at least Corbin had his private courtyards, the neighborhood philosophical work and “his life was not cleric as moral arbiter—heaved beneath empty.” The Iranian state seemed in those the pressure of the emerging megacity, the days an extension of Mohammad Reza’s global economy, and the shah’s relentless troubled psyche; it acted on his pretenses, drive toward a vision of modernity that his prejudices, his ambitions and anxieties. January/February 2014 161

Return to Table of Contents Laura Secor had incubated abroad. Deep fault lines Khomeini exuded a cold-blooded ambi- emerged in a society ill at ease with itself tion that the head of savak once said and aggrieved with the West. made his hair stand on end. In his pres- ence, writes Buchan, one felt “as if some The problems of modernity and figure of fathomless authority had authenticity preoccupied Iranian intellec- appeared and with a single glare brought tuals. If agrarian society must fall to the modernity . . . to an end.” Forceful and machine, reasoned the writer Jalal Al-e uncompromising, Khomeini conceded Ahmad in his 1962 pamphlet Westoxication, nothing to courtesy, to diplomatic niceties, at the very least, Iranians should own the or, in the end, to the softer yearnings of machine. Iran’s educated classes channeled his own people. “Within Creation, he Marx, Lenin, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Frantz seemed to be but imperfectly detained, Fanon to university campuses. Ali Shariati, like a passenger in an airport lounge in perhaps the most influential Iranian thick weather,” Buchan muses. “In the intellectual of the prerevolutionary period, West, having done with Scholasticism folded these ideas into a religious dis- long ago, we cannot understand a man course that reimagined Shiism as a native who could know so much and, at the same revolutionary creed—one that promoted time, so little. His mystical writings pass social justice in a society riven by inequality over our heads and his political state- and that called for militancy in the face ments . . . beneath our notice.” of oppression. Between subjection Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a charis- matic cleric distinguished as much by his and citizenship mystical cast of mind as by his ferocious opposition to the shah, was more reaction- Axworthy’s Khomeini cuts a strikingly ary. He first rose to prominence when he different figure. According to Axworthy, organized opposition to a 1963 law confer- as the first supreme leader of the Islamic ring on women the right to vote and to Republic, Khomeini acted with a detached run for city councils. Not long after, he impartiality, often wincing at the applica- tapped into the rich vein of public indig- tion of violence. Axworthy contends that nation by speaking out ringingly against the Khomeini sought to end the Iran-Iraq War shah’s apparent capitulation to American in 1982, after Iran regained the territory whims. As early as 1943, he had envisioned it had earlier lost, and only reluctantly an Islamic state governed by a learned acceded to the Revolutionary Guards’ cleric and with no legislation but the word judgment that it would be better to invade of God. But this was hardly a revolutionary Iraq and pursue the ouster of Saddam rallying point. Rather, after the revolution, Hussein. Axworthy believes that judgment Khomeini’s acolytes imposed his theory was sound. of clerical rule on an otherwise liberal constitution. That compromise would These contentions are controversial in prove fateful, a paradox built into the very light of other scholarship on the era, and foundation of the revolutionary state. Axworthy does not cinch the case for them. But his chapter on the Iran-Iraq War is Buchan portrays Khomeini as a lifelong a masterful showpiece in a book that is radical, an aggressively political man on balance edifying and fair-minded. within a clergy that was largely quietistic. Axworthy reconstructs the battlefield 162 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents From Shah to Supreme Leader The emperor’s new clothes: replacing portraits in the Niavaran Palace, Tehran, February 1979 corbis / s y gma / alain dejean through excerpted narratives of Iranian fought in World War I, with “much the soldiers. These young men turn out to be same patriotism and commitment to their far more recognizable than the fevered comrades, and encouraged to volunteer by imagery of the time might have led one to much the same wish for adventure. They believe. “We should not need to displace were exploited in much the same way by the fact of their bravery into categories their governments and generals, because like fanaticism and martyrdom in order governments and generals need naive to comprehend it,” concludes Axworthy. young men and boys to fight for them.” These young Iranian men were not so different from the British soldiers who Throughout the 1980s, the Islamic Republic forged itself in the white heat of January/February 2014 163

Return to Table of Contents Laura Secor conflict, both foreign and domestic. The even one as whipsawed between subjection Iran-Iraq War cost hundreds of thousands and citizenship as Iran’s. of lives before it ended in stalemate in 1988. At home, the revolutionaries who a tense stability had toppled the shah found themselves divided over the very fundamentals of the To travel in contemporary Iran is to know new regime: whether it should embrace that it remains, as Buchan describes the theocracy or republicanism, socialism or late monarchy, “an uneasy country.” The mercantilism, liberty or justice. As the Islamic Republic has in many ways acceler- radical clerics around Khomeini closed ated the very trends that pulled at the ranks, opponents of the new revolution- seams of the monarchy. Today’s Iran is ary order faced everything from firing still more modern, still more urban, still squads to street combat, culminating in more demanding of civil rights and the execution of thousands of political freedoms than the Iran of the 1970s. The prisoners in 1988. The opposition that postrevolutionary regime has dramatically the Islamic Republic did not decimate, it expanded access to education, partly as a intimidated into silence. Prisons that had consequence of sex segregation and forced been built by the shah filled to many times veiling, which have made university life their capacity, such that cellmates had to less alienating for the most traditional take turns sleeping because there was not families, and partly, as Axworthy notes, enough room to lie on the floor. Although because Iranian clerics esteem education the new regime discontinued methods of as a universal good. The expansion of torture deemed un-Islamic, it came up literacy, together with vast improvements with new ones. By the time of Khomeini’s in rural infrastructure and social services, death, in 1989, a stable order had emerged has done much to promote social mobility from a level of violence unprecedented in in Iran. But Iran’s expanding middle class Iranian history. exerts pressure on the state that nurtured it, and which has failed to make a stable That order, despite its authoritarianism space for it in an economy dependent on and fierce policing of the public sphere, oil. The Islamic Republic has vacillated in never fully ossified. The Islamic Republic its response to these and other pressures. retained a surprising degree of respon- The constitution itself sometimes seems siveness. This owed partly to the demo- to suggest two opposing answers to every cratic elements in the constitution, which question; passionately held contradictory allowed for an elected president, parlia- ideas sustain the Iranian state in perma- ment, and local councils, subordinate nent tension. Tension has become a though these were to clerical councils and stability of sorts. the far-reaching powers of the supreme leader. It owed also to the complexity and Iran’s revolutionaries were young men multiplicity of the instruments of state. in 1979. They matured with their Islamic Air had a way of filtering through the Republic, and with that maturation came latticework of factionalism. Constituencies realignments that were all but inexplicable attached themselves to political figures to anyone who presumed that ideological and currents within the system. Revolu- commitments had the constancy of tion conferred ownership on a people, character traits. During the 1990s, the most radical Islamic leftists of the previ- 164 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents ous decade remade themselves as liberal directory reformists, advocating free speech, civic engagement, and the rule of law. This Subscriber Services agenda was enormously popular. In 1997, the reformists carried the country in the subs.foreignaffairs.com landslide election of President Muham- tel: 800.829.5539 mad Khatami. Once in power, the reform- international tel: 813.910.3608 ists relaxed censorship, encouraged the development of civic organizations, and Academic Resources reached out to the world by suggesting a “dialogue among civilizations.” But they www.foreignaffairs.com/classroom faced implacable opposition from the e-mail: [email protected] establishment’s hard-line right. According tel: 800.716.0002 to Axworthy, the hard-liners feared that Iran’s hard-won independence would be Submit an Article swept away on a tide of Western cultural imports and bent to the will of Western www.foreignaffairs.com/submit diplomatic interlocutors. But this expla- nation passes too quickly over cruder Bulk and Institutional Subscriptions motives, such as the self-interest of an elite fearful of the popular will and e-mail: [email protected] determined to protect its prerogatives. Advertise in Foreign Affairs Hard-liners used their dominant positions in the clerical councils, the www.foreignaffairs.com/advertise judiciary, and the intelligence apparatus e-mail: [email protected] to veto reformist legislation, gag reformist tel: 212.434.9526 newspapers, and disqualify reformist candidates for office. They unleashed a Employment and campaign of censorship, imprisonment, Internship Opportunities assassination, and intimidation against intellectuals, writers, student activists, and www.foreignaffairs.com/jobs others. Khatami might have leveraged his popular support in a showdown with the international editions hard-line establishment, but he was not that kind of man. Reform, moreover, was Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica not that kind of project. It was an insiders’ initiative, meant not to upend the system www.fal.itam.mx but to improve it. No one was less forgiv- e-mail: [email protected] ing of Khatami’s failures than the constitu- ency that had elected him. Rossia v Globalnoi Politike (Russian) new faces, old divisions www.globalaffairs.ru When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded e-mail: [email protected] Khatami in 2005, he seemed to herald a Foreign Affairs Report (Japanese) www.foreignaffairsj.co.jp e-mail: [email protected] 165

Return to Table of Contents Laura Secor return to the Islamic Republic’s early authoritarian political philosophies, days. In truth, Ahmadinejad and his cosmopolitanism and nativism, expansive faction were the first, and still the only, and minimal interpretations of Islam— new faces to emerge on Iran’s political occupied a sort of negative space for scene since that time. Ahmadinejad’s Western observers. The shah’s court was young, populist conservatives had never a conclave of idiosyncrasy and personal before held high political office. They ambition compared with the Islamic tapped into the resentment of the lower Republic’s rich web of connections to classes, which had borne the brunt of the the society it governs—combatively, war in the 1980s and made up the ranks repressively, but dynamically nonetheless. of the Basij militia but felt their share of power and wealth to be incommensurate Axworthy’s book went to press before with their sacrifice. They called them- the election of President Hassan Rouhani, selves “principle-ists,” because they a conservative cleric who has nonetheless believed that the revolution’s principles promised to open up Iranian society and were increasingly diluted by political reconnect his country to the community innovation and elite corruption. Ironi- of nations. Rouhani has transfixed the cally, as Axworthy points out, they revived world by extending the hand of diplomacy the rhetoric of the most radical faction to Western powers so long estranged. But from the 1980s—the very faction that, as his domestic mandate, to which outside reformists, came to oppose Ahmadinejad. observers have paid less attention, might ultimately prove determinative. Four Axworthy provides a gripping and long years of nonrecognition between the illuminating narrative of Ahmadinejad’s hard-line stalwart and a reform movement eight years in office, including the suspi- officially branded as “seditionist” seem cious 2009 election that delivered the to have hardened Iran’s divisions into president a second term and gave rise irresolvable hostility. Rouhani has a chance to the largest protest movement in the to sow peace among Iran’s citizens, at the Islamic Republic’s history. The tensions very least by providing legal outlets for that held Iran in balance seemed to strain criticism, dialogue, and dissent. For today, to the breaking point. Caught between as in the past, national reconciliation reform and confrontation, the opposition remains the true test of Iran’s rulers, who Green Movement opted for the former govern a society cleaved, not always in but was forced into the latter. Caught obvious ways, by ideology, class, and between constitutionalism and violence, differing notions of identity. There, in the the regime chose violence. vibrant human space that extends through the Iranian interior, lies the new presi- “The crisis was not just a confronta- dent’s fundamental mandate and his tion between the regime and a section of greatest challenge.∂ the populace; it was also a crisis within the regime itself, and it is still not resolved,” Axworthy writes. He might as well have written that it was a crisis within the populace itself. Under the monarchy, Iran’s internal tensions—between modern and traditional ways of life, liberal and 166 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Command and nuclear warhead—the most powerful Combust ever deployed by the United States— was found, relatively intact, in a ditch America’s Secret History of 200 yards away from the silo. Atomic Accidents The Damascus accident epitomizes Gregory D. Koblentz the hidden risk of what the sociologist Charles Perrow has dubbed “normal Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the accidents,” or mishaps that become Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety virtually inevitable once a system grows by eric schlosser. Penguin Press, so complex that seemingly trivial miscues 2013, 632 pp. $36.00. can cause chain reactions with catastrophic results. As the journalist Eric Schlosser Between 1950 and 1980, the explains in his new book, Command and United States experienced a Control, “The Titan II explosion at reported 32 “broken arrows,” the Damascus was a normal accident, set in military’s term for accidents involving motion by a trivial event (the dropped nuclear weapons. The last of these socket) and caused by a tightly coupled, occurred in September 1980, at a U.S. interactive system.” That system, he writes, Air Force base in Damascus, Arkansas. was so overly complex that technicians It started when a young technician in the control room could not determine performing routine maintenance on a what was happening inside the silo. Titan II missile housed in an under- And basic human negligence had only ground silo dropped a socket wrench. made things worse: “Warnings had been The wrench punctured the missile’s fuel ignored, unnecessary risks taken, sloppy tank. As the highly toxic and flammable work done.” fuel leaked from the missile, officers and airmen scrambled to diagnose the Command and Control is really two problem and fix it. Their efforts ulti- books in one. The first is a techno-thriller, mately failed, and eight hours after the narrating the Damascus accident in fuel tank ruptured, it exploded with gripping detail and bringing alive the tremendous force. The detonation of participants and the tough decisions the missile’s liquid fuel was powerful they confronted in dramatic fashion. enough to throw the silo’s 740-ton blast The second is a more analytic explora- door more than 200 yards and send a tion of the challenge at the heart of fireball hundreds of feet into the night nuclear command-and-control systems: sky. The missile’s nine-megaton thermo­ how to ensure that nuclear weapons are both completely reliable and perfectly gregory d. kobLentz is an Associate safe. Schlosser skillfully fits these two Professor in the Department of Public and parts together to shine a bright light International Affairs at George Mason University. on the potentially catastrophic combi- nation of human fallibility and complex systems. As in his two previous books, Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, Schlosser has exposed the hidden costs of practices that are widely accepted by January/February 2014 167

Return to Table of Contents Gregory D. Koblentz the American public. Others have exam- Schlosser profiles one of the most ined nuclear weapons though the lens of powerful organizations driving this trend: the normal-accidents theory, most notably the Strategic Air Command, which was the political scientist Scott Sagan in his created in 1946 as the air force’s nuclear- influential 1993 book, The Limits of Safety. strike arm. When General Curtis LeMay But Schlosser’s gifts as a storyteller lend took over sac in 1948, he inherited an his book a visceral quality, such that every organization that was grossly unprepared successive accident or close call feels more for its mission. To enable sac to execute hair-raising than the last. its elaborate war plan at a moment’s notice under the most stressful conditions DOOMSDAY MACHINISTS imaginable, he developed a checklist for every task and contingency, instituted a Since the dawn of the nuclear age, rigorous program of training and exer- military planners, scientists, and civilian cises, measured performance through leaders have struggled with what the routine and surprise inspections, and political scientist Peter Feaver has termed held officers and airmen accountable the “always/never dilemma”: how to if their performance did not meet his ensure that nuclear weapons always standards. The command quickly devel- launch and detonate when ordered to do oped a reputation for its discipline, so, but never when they are not supposed proficiency, and zero tolerance for mis- to. In Schlosser’s telling, throughout the takes. “To err is human,” newcomers were Cold War, the military invariably opted told, but “to forgive is not sac policy.” for technologies and doctrines that maximized the readiness and reliability Under LeMay’s leadership, sac’s of U.S. nuclear forces to deliver a devas- arsenal grew to include nearly 2,000 tating blow against the Soviet Union. bombers, 800 tankers, and thousands of nuclear weapons. The hawkish LeMay, The trend started under President famous for orchestrating the firebomb- Dwight Eisenhower, who supported ing of Japan, was and remains a contro- the nuclearization of the military and versial figure. As air force chief of staff, the militarization of nuclear weapons as he advocated a first strike against Soviet a cost-saving way to deter the Soviets. missiles in Cuba during the Cuban missile Under Eisenhower, custody of nuclear crisis and, later, rapid escalation of U.S. weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic military involvement in Vietnam. But Energy Commission to the military, it is undeniable that by the time LeMay and each service branch lobbied for left sac, in 1957, he had transformed the new nuclear weapons to support its tradi- organization from a hollow force into a tional missions. Even the authority to formidable and impressive nuclear-war- launch nuclear weapons under certain fighting machine. conditions was predelegated by the president to military commanders. As To maximize the United States’ the number, type, and power of nuclear ability to survive a surprise attack and weapons increased, they became widely deliver a massive retaliatory blow, sac dispersed across the United States, at kept a large portion of its bombers on overseas military bases, and onboard ground alert—fully fueled, loaded with ships and submarines. thermonuclear weapons, and ready for 168 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents launch within 15 minutes—and main- broken vents, mechanical malfunctions, tained a small number of nuclear-armed or human error. bombers on continuous airborne alert. It is no coincidence that the accident In 1961, a B-52 on airborne alert rate for U.S. nuclear weapons was broke apart in midair, dropping two Mark highest between 1958 and 1968, when 39 hydrogen bombs near Goldsboro, sac’s alert rate was at its peak. Schlosser North Carolina. As it hurtled toward recounts in horrifying detail a litany of the ground, one of the weapons rapidly accidents in which nuclear-armed passed through five of the six steps bombers crashed or caught fire due to needed to arm it for an explosion. If misplaced rubber cushions, loose nuts, the sixth safety mechanism had mal- functioned, the four-megaton bomb January/February 2014 169

Return to Table of Contents Gregory D. Koblentz could have detonated on impact, show- 484 footnotes and a 29-page bibliography, ering the eastern seaboard with radioac- Schlosser’s book ably brings the hidden tive fallout. Even more disturbing, that history of U.S. nuclear command and sixth switch was later found to have had control to a broader audience. a history of malfunctions. POSTWAR POSSIBILITIES Near the end of the Eisenhower administration, the safety of nuclear As alarming as these revelations are, weapons began to receive more con- the world Schlosser so vividly describes certed attention from weapons scientists no longer exists. The Cold War ended and civilian leaders. As Schlosser more than two decades ago. As Schlosser recounts, the military’s strong prefer- himself acknowledges, steep reductions ence for reliability tended to trump in strategic nuclear arms, the retirement other concerns. Even civilians such as of older and more dangerous weapons, Donald Quarles, the secretary of the and the near-total elimination of tactical air force, who took a personal interest nuclear weapons have greatly reduced in nuclear safety, believed that such the risks of a nuclear accident. Yet considerations “should, of course, cause Schlosser is quick to point out that this minimum interference with readiness change does not mean the risks have and reliability.” The uniformed brass been eliminated. In August 2007, for were even less tolerant of such interfer- example, a B-52 bomber flew from the ence, and high-level civilian interven- Minot air base, in North Dakota, to tion was frequently required to ensure Louisiana mistakenly loaded with six the adoption of measures that would cruise missiles, each armed with a improve security and reduce the risk 150-kiloton nuclear warhead for a of unauthorized use. combined yield of about 60 Hiroshima- size bombs. Surprisingly, this incident One of the factors that contributed warrants only a page in Schlosser’s book, to this prioritization of reliability over despite it being the first time since sac’s safety was the intense secrecy that airborne alert was terminated in 1968 shrouded all things nuclear. Military that a nuclear-armed bomber flew over officials withheld details about nuclear the United States. accidents not only from Congress and the public but also from other parts of A report of the incident in the the nuclear weapons enterprise. As part Military Times triggered an avalanche of of his research, Schlosser obtained a investigations into the air force’s nuclear 245-page declassified Pentagon report safety and security measures. After then on nuclear mishaps, which lists hundreds Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired of minor accidents and technical glitches its secretary and its chief of staff, the air that the weapons scientists who were force embarked on a major reorganiza- in charge of ensuring the safety of the tion of its nuclear operations. One of U.S. nuclear arsenal were never informed the most important changes was to create of. Schlosser provides several examples a high-level command dedicated to the of unsafe, insecure, or high-risk practices nuclear mission, the Air Force Global that the military halted only after they Strike Command. Some of the indepen- were exposed to outside scrutiny. With dent inquiries pointed to the dissolution 170 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents of sac in 1992 and the erosion of its Editorial Internship organizational culture as the root cause of the Minot incident. yet this view Foreign Affairs is looking for an risks romanticizing sac. Although the Academic Year Intern to join our discipline and attention to detail that editorial team. the command instilled in its members was commendable, its emphasis on The Academic year Internship is operational readiness at the expense of a full-time paid position offering safety was not. And despite sac’s zero- exceptional training in serious tolerance approach, dangerous accidents journalism. The intern works as occurred nonetheless. Schlosser’s book an assistant editor with substantial is a powerful reminder that no combi- responsibility. Previous interns nation of organizational design and have included recent graduates culture can prevent accidents when from undergraduate and master’s systems are highly complex, tightly programs. Candidates should have connected, and sensitive to unexpected a serious interest in international deviations from standard operating relations, a flair for writing, and a procedures. facility with the English language. Perhaps the most important applica- The Academic year Intern works tion of the lessons from Schlosser’s for one year, starting in July or book is not to the United States but to August. regional nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan, where Schlosser believes For more information about how to the biggest risk of nuclear confrontation apply for the 2014–15 academic year now lies. With India and Pakistan capable position, please visit: of annihilating each other’s capitals with a nuclear-armed missile in a matter of www.foreignaffairs.com/Apply minutes, these countries face even stronger pressures on their command-and- Applications will be due control systems than the Cold War February 3, 2014. superpowers did. To make matters worse, Pakistan is currently introducing 171 tactical nuclear weapons into its arsenal to counter India’s conventional superi- ority, lowering the threshold for when nuclear weapons might be used during a conflict. And Pakistani nuclear planners must also grapple with internal security threats of a kind that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union ever had to face. As a result, Pakistan faces what Sagan calls the “vulnerability/invulner- ability paradox”: measures that allow its nuclear forces to withstand a first

Return to Table of Contents Gregory D. Koblentz strike, such as mating warheads to or without proper authorization.” This mobile missiles and dispersing them, safety record is even more impressive also make them more vulnerable to when one takes into account the 55,000 theft or takeover by terrorists. nuclear weapons produced by the other eight nuclear weapons states. Schlosser’s India’s nuclear command-and-control account shows that serious accidents have system faces a different challenge. occurred but also that they have never According to Verghese Koithara, a resulted in the ultimate catastrophe—a retired Indian vice admiral, India’s nuclear explosion. program suffers from too little military input. Nuclear doctrine remains in As Perrow has pointed out, this the hands of civilian scientists who are apparent contradiction makes logical disconnected from the operational sense. A nuclear weapon must undergo realities of handling and deploying a highly precise sequence of events nuclear weapons. As a result, the Indian before it can detonate, and any accident nuclear command-and-control system is that disrupts a single step in this process characterized by a “preference for will prevent an explosion. According to networking over institutionalization, Perrow, “the immense complexity of the tight compartmentalization of activities, devices might have protected us from a dysfunctional approach to secrecy, disaster even as it caused lesser accidents.” highly inadequate external audit, and a But as Schlosser notes in his book, marked lack of operational goal setting.” complacency about the safety of nuclear This description does not inspire much weapons risks running afoul of what the confidence in the system responsible sociologist Donald MacKenzie has called for ensuring the safety and security of “the Titanic effect”: the safer a system India’s roughly one hundred nuclear is believed to be, the more catastrophic weapons. the accident to which it is vulnerable. The challenge, then, is to make the system DISASTER RELIEF safer while preserving the belief that it is dangerous.∂ Schlosser concludes his book on a contradictory note. On the one hand, he pessimistically describes the world’s nuclear weapons as “an accident wait- ing to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial—and they work.” On the other hand, his book is filled with exam- ples of when nuclear weapons haven’t worked, even when subjected to abnor- mal environments and unanticipated stresses. According to Schlosser, “none of the roughly seventy thousand nuclear weapons built by the United States since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently 172 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents Art in the Time of mantle of democracy. Franco, of course, Authoritarianism made no such attempt: he was proudly authoritarian. As for the Republicans, Spain’s Cultural Success although they paid lip service to demo- Under Franco cratic principles and tried to practice them, their side devolved into disorder Victor Pérez-Díaz and lawlessness during the war, and anarchists and communists came to Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and dominate their ranks. Memory Since 1936 by jeremy treglown. Farrar, Nor were the Republicans particularly Straus and Giroux, 2013, 320 pp. $30.00. virtuous from a moral standpoint. As the Nationalists were quick to point out, Seventy-five years after its conclu- the Republicans assassinated almost 7,000 sion, the Spanish Civil War can priests and nuns and killed roughly 2,500 sometimes seem like a river of prison inmates in the 1936 Parac­ uellos blood that led inexorably to the sea of massacres, a series of organized mass horrors that was World War II. But murders during the battle for Madrid. Spain’s battle was also a devastating Franco’s forces, of course, committed conflict in its own right, killing approx- their own share of atrocities and repres- imately 500,000 people. The war, sion, both during and after the war. Both which lasted from 1936 to 1939, pitted sides believed they had to be ruthless the Republicans, loyal to the existing because most ordinary Spaniards were government, against the Nationalists, a not that interested in fighting for either rightist rebel coalition led by General side and had to be coerced into doing so Francisco Franco. Franco’s initial coup through fear and violence. In the first failed but left the country militarily and months of the conflict, 120,000 people politically divided. The Nationalists volunteered to fight for the republic, and eventually won, and Franco ruled Spain the Nationalists rallied some 100,000 from 1939 until his death, in 1975. volunteers; by the end of the war, the Republicans and the Nationalists had The war, so often misunderstood as mobilized, largely through conscription, a mere prelude to World War II, is also about 1.7 million and 1.2 million men, frequently miscast as a simple story of respectively. These figures suggest that good versus evil, a fight between demo- the war involved not two Spains but three: crats and fascists. In fact, neither side two polarized blocs of true believers in the struggle could honestly claim the and a far larger body of people who just went along—or were forced to. VICTOR PÉREZ-DÍAZ is President of the Madrid-based research center Analistas Socio- The war’s carnage remains indelibly Políticos and the author of The Return of Civil etched into Spanish memory. Tremendous Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain. amounts of ink have been spilled discuss- ing and analyzing the war in the last 75 years. Indeed, some Spanish historians claim that the volume of historiography on the civil war comes close to that January/February 2014 173

Return to Table of Contents Victor Pérez-Díaz covering World War II. A small but above than most portrayals suggest. growing part of this large bibliography This cultural richness resulted not, studies the memory of the war and its Treglown argues, from benevolence lingering effects on Spanish culture on the part of Franco or his entourage. and society. Many of these writings, Rather, it reflected the reality that for similar to those on the war itself that Franco, an opportunistic authoritarian have presented it as a straightforward eager to get along with the West, morality tale, take a less-than-nuanced governing Spain meant allowing for pro-Republican viewpoint, most notably limited pluralism and making conces- in their portrayals of Francoist Spain sions to a population ever more used as a cultural desert. to a modicum of wealth and freedom. It is for precisely this reason that the politics of memory Franco’s Crypt, the latest book by the British literary critic Jeremy Treglown, Treglown begins his journey by intro- is so refreshing. In his focus on the ducing readers to the Association for surprising richness of Spanish culture the Recovery of Historical Memory, a since the war, Treglown pushes back group of Spaniards trying to right the against a knee-jerk pro-Republican wrongs of the war. Its members are perspective—not by apologizing for the sensitive souls who have nevertheless Nationalists but simply by abstaining taken on a sometimes macabre task: from projecting his own moral stance searching for the remains of bodies to on the culture of the period. As he writes, give them a proper burial. Many of “Franco is a bad memory, like a bad those who were killed by the National- dream. But ‘bad memory’ also means ists during the war and its aftermath forgetfulness and falsification. When still lie in mass graves. In 2000, the Spain’s campaigners for historical association began a nationwide effort to memory accuse their opponents and disinter and rebury the bodies. Its task, critics of olvido, amnesia, they have not surprisingly, has been complicated themselves often forgotten, or over- by politics. When the Socialist Workers’ looked, or are simply ignorant of, the Party took power in 2004, its leader, rich historical deposits in their own Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez culture.” Zapatero, sought to pass the Law of Historical Memory, condemning the To explain how the Spanish have Franco regime and granting certain come to terms with the war and Fran- rights to the descendants of the victims. co’s rule, Treglown narrates a series of The law inevitably (and, Treglown argues, personal encounters with people and intentionally) drew the opposition of places in contemporary Spain, weaving the conservative People’s Party, thus them together with his examinations making the party appear to be a defender of cultural artifacts, including public of Francoism. The law was ultimately works, paintings, movies, and novels. approved in October 2007. His analysis is anything but simplistic. He shows how the day-to-day cultural Of course, when they were in power, reality of the Francoist period was much Franco and his supporters also politicized more complex and less planned from the act of commemorating the war—a 174 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents Art in the Time of Authoritarianism The Valley of the Fallen: Franco’s memorial to the dead, December 1956 gett y images / time & life pictures / dmitri kessel fact that becomes apparent in Treglown’s was to retain a hold on Spaniards’ hearts portrait of the Valley of the Fallen, a and minds, the Spanish church had to memorial on the outskirts of Madrid take into account the intellectual and commissioned by Franco and completed emotional attachments that many Span- in 1959. The memorial includes a Catho- ish felt not only to the war’s winners lic basilica, underscoring the extent to but also to the losing side. The church’s which Catholicism formed a crucial outreach to Republican sympathizers part of the collective imagination of was strengthened by broader shifts the Nationalists. Franco had cast his within European Catholicism during the military rebellion as a holy crusade, 1950s and 1960s, as the Catholic Church citing the Republicans’ complicity in began experimenting with Christian the assassinations of thousands of clergy Democratic parties and made overtures members as proof of their godlessness, to the left. The church also underwent and he used his alliance with the church a deep theological renewal during this to help legitimize his rule. same period, which led to the liberal- izing Second Vatican Council in the The strategy worked during the early 1960s. early years of the Franco era. However, over the course of the following decades, The end result was a new brand of Franco’s Catholic allies underwent a ecclesiastics and lay Catholics who felt profound change. Because their goal comfortable detaching themselves from January/February 2014 175

Return to Table of Contents Victor Pérez-Díaz Franco’s regime, or even fighting it hinder them”—a statement equally head-on in a variety of forums, including applicable to any number of the writers student movements, intellectual circles, and filmmakers Treglown profiles. The unions, political parties, and the media. most celebrated Spanish novelists and During the 1950s and 1960s, a surge directors of the Franco era offered of anti-Franco civil-society associations accounts of people’s lives that avoided accompanied vast demographic and simple morality plays and partisan economic transformations produced in games. Most of them refused to take part by waves of Spaniards going to part in fratricidal political fights over other parts of Europe to work and the war’s legacy. Instead, they bore study, tourists arriving from the rest witness to the decency, resilience, and of Europe, and increasing economic and cunning of ordinary people recovering cultural exchanges of other sorts between from the devastation of war, enduring Spain and other countries. These devel- the postwar years, and later adapting as opments transformed Spanish universi- Spain began to enjoy relative prosperity. ties, factories, and towns—and in turn In a sense, the most influential Spanish loosened the country’s politics. art and culture of the Franco era em- braced a nationalism of sorts without The mirror up to nature necessarily embracing the Nationalists. In the second half of Franco’s Crypt, Emblematic of this stance was the Treglown finds a parallel to this set Nobel Prize–winning novelist Camilo of extraordinary economic and social José Cela. During the war, Cela had changes, and the little-understood served in the Nationalist army, and he political opening that came with it, in the later worked as a censor for the regime. work of the Spanish artists, filmmakers, But in his novels, he eschewed the war’s and novelists who sought to make sense factionalism. As Treglown writes, Cela’s of the civil war and life under Franco. celebrated 1969 novel San Camilo, 1936 Just as in the political sphere, where focuses on the first days of the civil Franco’s rule could not fully repress trends war, interpreting the violence and that ultimately led to the restoration upheaval through the stories of “ordinary of Spanish democracy, the dictator also people . . . including several who are had trouble snuffing out Spain’s power- killed but whose deaths make no head- ful cultural avant-garde. Even when lines.” Cela’s novels did not ignore they found themselves pitted against political events altogether; they just an authoritarian government, Franco- focused on their effects on the common era artists continued to produce work people, each of whom, as Cela put it, of aesthetic, moral, and emotional carries “a moving little novel stuck to complexity. his heart.” The dedication of San Camilo reads as one of the most damning judg- Referring to Spanish abstract artists ments of the Spanish Civil War ever such as the sculptor Eduardo Chillida written and demonstrates the sort of and the painter and sculptor Antoni unifying, inclusive, and yet chastened Tàpies, Treglown writes, “While [they] nationalism that defines many of the were affected . . . by the political-historical works Treglown describes: “To the situation in which they grew up, it didn’t 176 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents conscripts of 1937, all of whom lost Franklin Williams something: their life, their freedom, Internship their dreams, their hope, their decency. And not to the adventurers from abroad, The Council on Foreign Relations is seeking Fascists and Marxists, who had their talented individuals for the Franklin Williams fill of killing Spaniards like rabbits and Internship. whom no one had invited to take part in our funeral.” The Franklin Williams Internship, named after the late Ambassador Franklin H. Williams, Cela’s opposite number, in some was established for undergraduate and graduate ways, was Ramón Sender, another of students who have a serious interest in the novelists analyzed in Franco’s Crypt. international relations. Sender was a passionate Republican who saw his wife killed by Nationalist Ambassador Williams had a long career of forces during the civil war and was later public service, including serving as the exiled, first to Mexico and later to the American Ambassador to Ghana, as well as the United States. Yet as Treglown highlights, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lincoln Sender’s memoir, The War in Spain, is University, one of the country’s historically “exceptionally alert to the feelings and black colleges. He was also a Director of the views of people on the other side.” Council on Foreign Relations, where he made Treglown cites Sender’s best-known special efforts to encourage the nomination of work, the 1953 Requiem for a Spanish black Americans to membership. Peasant, as another example of the novel- ist’s “compulsion to cross political The Council will select one individual each boundaries and delve into the emo- term (fall, spring, and summer) to work in tional as well as moral difficulties they the Council’s New York City headquarters. can create.” The intern will work closely with a Program Director or Fellow in either the Studies or how spain became democratic the Meetings Program and will be involved with program coordination, substantive In a sense, both Cela and Sender helped and business writing, research, and budget establish the conditions for the politics management. The selected intern will be and culture of reconciliation that came to required to make a commitment of at least 12 characterize Spain’s transition to democ- hours per week, and will be paid $10 an hour. racy following Franco’s death. Spain’s transition cannot be explained just by To apply for this internship, please send a paying attention to the behavior of résumé and cover letter including the se- political, social, and economic elites in mester, days, and times available to work to response to Franco’s death. Any account the Internship Coordinator in the Human must consider the developments that Resources Office at the address listed below. took place during Franco’s rule itself, The Council is an equal opportunity employer. including the profound cultural trans- formations of the period. For the pro- Council on Foreign Relations tagonists of the era, the civil war and Human Resources Office authoritarianism provided a lesson in 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065 reverse—a “how not to” lesson in tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893 [email protected] http://www.cfr.org 177

Return to Table of Contents Victor Pérez-Díaz political life. It made them inclined to But what such figures lacked in cooperate, to consider others’ demands radical bona fides, they made up for in and criticisms, and to initiate a tradition pragmatism. Indeed, the experience of of moderation that was crucial for the fighting the system while securing a country’s democratic transition. position within it left many Franco-era political figures in the ideal position to This was especially true of the lead the country through a democratic children of Francoism, who came of age transition. They knew how to prepare a as student protest politics swept Europe left-leaning political and cultural world in the late 1950s and 1960s. This group for an accommodation with a capitalist largely hailed from middle-class families economy and liberal democratic politics. that had either supported the govern- They were prepared to make the neces- ment or seen it as a lesser evil. Yet in sary compromises, such as allowing time, many in this generation turned the monarchy to remain an element of against the regime and came to see its Spain’s government, enshrining private discourse as a mix of conservative and property in the constitution, and accept- capitalist platitudes, encouraged by the ing the fact that educational freedom teachings of an anachronistic church. meant a role in the schools for the church They thought Francoism gave rise to and other private organizations. too many unscrupulous social climbers, rampant corruption, and a world of For all its progress, today’s Spain is cultural opportunists. struggling with a grave and prolonged economic crisis, strong separatist move- Despite their disillusionment with ments, and a pervasive lack of trust in Franco’s rule, many in this generation the political class. But there seems to managed to find positions in the lower be a limit to the intensity of the divi- echelons of the state-sanctioned academy sions in Spanish society. Maybe that is or the public administration, particu- a testament to the lasting effects of the larly in the economic bureaucracy. From Franco generation’s pragmatism and its those positions, they helped foster a moderate, unifying, and almost tacit milieu sympathetic to art and culture. nationalism. In other words, the accom- The end result was a society in which modating, cautious style that Treglown repressive policies coexisted with a observes has helped keep the country degree of ambiguity about free expres- together even in extremely dire straits.∂ sion and in which many cultural critics and political dissidents lived cautiously but quite publicly. In fact, none of the ministers of the first post-Franco socialist government, in the early 1980s, had spent a single night in a Franco government jail. The only exception was Miguel Boyer, who, as finance minister, convinced his fellow Socialists to eschew traditional leftist programs and instead adopt a variant of the conventional, moderate economic policies of the time. 178 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents Blind Oracle asset. Some derivatives, such as corn futures, can help economic growth, but A Response to “Never Saw that did not happen here. In the case It Coming” of home mortgages, financiers bundled millions of toxic loans using the mortgage Richard Katz income as supposed backing. Then, they created a second layer of derivatives In his recent essay “Never Saw It supposedly based on the value of the Coming” (November/December first set, and so on. In the end, the total 2013), Alan Greenspan makes two package—built on such strange-sounding central arguments: first, that virtually no concoctions as “synthetic collateralized one foresaw the 2008 U.S. financial crisis debt obligations” and “naked credit default and, second, that irrational “animal spirits” swaps”—had a face value of $35 trillion, were the root cause. If true, these propo- 14 times the value of the mortgages sitions would absolve policymakers such supposedly backing them. This explains as Greenspan of blame. But neither why the 2008 financial crisis was so much holds water. larger than the housing crash that triggered it. The truth is that many experts wor- ried about the U.S. housing bubble and Greenspan was one of the chief predicted a crash, even if they couldn’t advocates of deregulating finance, pin down its timing or severity. As early including derivatives. Testifying before as 2002, Congress summoned Greenspan Congress in 2005, he asserted that even himself to discuss “the possible emergence if home prices declined, they “likely of a bubble in home prices,” a concern would not have substantial macroeco- he repeatedly dismissed. A year later, nomic implications. Nationwide banking the economists Robert Shiller, who won and widespread securitization of mort- last year’s Nobel Prize in Economics for gages make it less likely that financial his work on financial crises, and Karl Case intermediation would be impaired than voiced just that worry. Also in 2003, was the case in prior episodes of regional 50 of the top U.S. newspapers ran a house price corrections.” combined 268 stories referencing a “housing bubble.” By 2005, they had But many others correctly predicted run an additional 1,977 such stories. that this house of flimsy cards would actually amplify the effects of a decline What turned the eventual bursting in home prices. As early as 2002, the of that bubble into the worst financial investor Warren Buffet argued that the crisis since the 1930s was not animal more exotic derivatives were “financial spirits but unregulated derivatives— weapons of mass destruction.” And in complicated financial instruments whose 2005, Raghuram Rajan, then the Inter- value is “derived from” an underlying national Monetary Fund’s chief econo- mist, warned of the dangers created by RIchard katz is Editor of The Oriental new “perverse incentives” for financial managers. Banks, he said, were “employ- Economist Report and a correspondent for ing risky derivatives strategies to goose up returns.” In the event of a downturn Japan’s Weekly Toyo Keizai. January/February 2014 179

Return to Table of Contents Richard Katz in the assets behind these derivatives, their boards with fellow ceos seeking such as housing, “the interbank market equally generous compensation deals. could freeze up, and one could well If they took big risks that worked out, have a full blown financial crisis.” these executives were given enormous rewards; yet even when the gambles Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry failed, they still won big. Stanley O’Neal, Summers publicly dismissed Rajan as a the former chair and ceo of Merrill “Luddite.” Seven years earlier, Summers Lynch, walked away with $165 million had quashed an effort by Brooksley Born, after ruining the company. And according then chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures to one Harvard study, Lehman Brothers’ Trading Commission, to regulate some last chair and ceo, Richard Fuld, ended financial derivatives. “I have 13 bankers in up with a net $222 million from the my office,” Summers told her in a phone bankrupt firm. call at the time, “and they say if you go forward with this, you will cause the Mortgage lenders, too, had skewed worst financial crisis since World War II.” incentives, since they no longer kept the loans on their own books, instead passing rational factors them on to investment banks, which bundled and sold them as derivatives By blaming the financial crisis on “animal to investors. These lenders now had sprits” and “irrational factors,” Greenspan little stake in whether borrowers could suggests that no one is at fault. The real pay back the loans. As a consequence, problem, however, was that although most lenders approved huge numbers of players had pursued their own interests mortgages that did not require the rationally, they had, as Rajan put it, borrowers to document their ability to “perverse incentives.” pay. Many financiers themselves report- edly dubbed these mortgages “liar Greenspan and other proponents of loans”—which suggests that they, too, radical deregulation claimed to be liberat- may have been committing securities ing market forces. But markets cannot fraud. Yet Greenspan refused to use work properly unless healthy institutions the powers that Congress had given nurture them. That includes making him in 1994 to require nonbank mort- sure that each key player has independent gage issuers to follow the same simple interests so that each can balance the rules applied to banks: you can’t lend to power of the others. In this environment, people without a down payment, without what is good for each player is generally proof of ability to pay, and without a good for the economy as a whole. By beating heart (there were several reported removing many existing checks and cases in which lenders approved mort- balances, radical deregulation ended gages for deceased individuals). up undermining the market. The credit-rating agencies, whose Perhaps the most perverse incentives impartial judgments investors relied were those governing the behavior of on, faced their own perverse incentives. ceos of financial firms, for there was After decades of being paid by investors, little to dissuade them from enriching in the 1970s, they switched to earning themselves at the expense of their firms fees from lenders. This gave the agencies and shareholders. Ceos routinely took on the additional role of chair and filled 180 f o r e i g n a f fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Blind Oracle a financial interest in assigning high should be laws against fraud, and I don’t ratings to trillions of dollars’ worth of think there is any need for a law against toxic assets. fraud.” He simply believed the market would correct itself. It was not until 2008 At the same time, regulators weak- that Greenspan admitted in congressional ened legal deterrence. After the collapse testimony that he had “made a mistake of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Timothy in presuming that the self-interests of Geithner, then president of the Federal organizations, specifically banks and Reserve Bank of New York, told Andrew others, were such that they were best Cuomo, then New York’s attorney general, capable of protecting their own share- that Cuomo’s investigations into Wall holders and their equity in the firms.” Street malfeasance could destabilize the financial system. The result was a Regulators need not be soothsayers or de facto policy of protecting financiers micromanagers, but they must safeguard deemed “too big to jail.” It is hard to the market from conflicts of interest, think of any major player who has even perverse incentives, and collusion. With been indicted, let alone convicted and the proper checks in place, market players jailed. What a contrast to the prison will have an interest in doing the right sentences for a host of corporate fraud- thing. Lenders who have to keep on sters, such as the executives at Enron their books even parts of the loans they and WorldCom, in the early years of this make are more likely to make sure that century. Geithner had reason to know the borrowers can repay those loans. better. As the U.S. Treasury’s attaché in Ceos compelled to return compensation Tokyo during the early 1990s and then if their firms suffer major losses would as a senior Treasury official, Geithner had be more hesitant to make reckless bets participated in the Clinton administra- with other people’s money. tion’s criticism that excessive leniency on the part of Japan’s Ministry of Finance To be sure, booms and busts will had prolonged that nation’s banking come and go. But their severity can crisis. Even today, the U.S. House of vary dramatically based on the policies Representatives is allowing lobbyists in place to prevent them. With stronger for Citigroup to draft the words of laws regulations, neither the housing and aimed at weakening parts of the Dodd- derivatives bubbles nor the eventual Frank financial reform law relating to crash would have been so bad. Shifting derivatives. Congress members deemed the blame from identifiable perverse friendly get more campaign contributions incentives to vague talk of “animal from Wall Street. spirits” leaves us more vulnerable to a repeat.∂ As a result of all these changes, what was good for each powerful player was no longer good for the system as a whole. Greenspan failed to recognize this danger, not for lack of evidence but because he wore ideological blinders. Born later recalled Greenspan telling her, “You probably will always believe there January/February 2014 181

Return to Table of Contents Reverse the Curse from resource extraction by granting licenses and concessions to private firms. How Can Oil Help the Poor? Locals thus have little say in contract negotiations and rarely see any of the Land Matters profits. To further complicate matters, most property ownership, especially in Karol Boudreaux and Africa, is not legally recognized, even Tiernan Mennen after generations of traditional use— making it easier for the government to Larry Diamond and Jack Mosbacher remove people living in the way of (“Petroleum to the People,” extractive activities. September/October 2013) rightly observe that the coming oil boom in This setup contrasts markedly with the Africa is, paradoxically, a frightening legal frameworks that govern landowner- prospect for the continent’s poor and ship in those developed countries that marginalized. If the so-called resource have harnessed their natural resources curse holds, this new surge of easy money to build strong economies, large middle will indeed “poison the prospects for classes, and democratic societies. In development,” fueling corruption, infla- the United States, resource rights attach tion, and authoritarian regimes. The to individual landownership. In no case authors’ proposed solution, however, does the government automatically own falls short. Diamond and Mosbacher what lies on or underneath privately suggest that governments could reverse owned land. The state instead gains the curse by distributing oil revenues revenue from taxing the incomes of directly to the people as taxable income. landowners and of the companies that But doing so would not address the help them extract their land’s resources. fundamental issue that gives rise to the resource curse in the first place: weak The United States has extended the land rights. benefits of landownership to many indigenous communities, and the Most developing countries still rely results have been impressive. In Alaska, on legal frameworks that were originally some 110,000 shareholders of 12 for- established for colonial-era exploitation. profit native corporations now own These laws, many of which are still in entitlements to more than 40 million place today, vest all natural resources— acres of land. Those ownership rights and often the associated land, too—in have encouraged the shareholders to the state. This means that individuals or carefully manage their resources, and in communities that own land do not own 2010, their collective revenue exceeded the minerals, petroleum, timber, water, $8 billion, providing cash dividends or other resources attached to it. The that totaled nearly $170 million. That state retains that privilege, and it profits translates into significant tax revenue that the state and federal governments can use to provide services to others. And the businesses that the corporations operate have provided thousands of jobs and internships. 182 f o r e i g n a f fai r s

Return to Table of Contents In some developed countries, such The Internship as Canada and Norway, the government Program still owns or controls a large share of the natural resources. But in those states, The Council on Foreign Relations is seek- the resources tend to be located either ing talented individuals who are consider- offshore or in sparsely inhabited interiors. ing a career in international relations. They also represent a complimentary Interns are recruited year-round on a ­semester source of government revenues. basis to work in both the New York City and Washington, D.C., offices. An intern’s duties The United States provides a better generally consist of administrative work, model for developing countries. Indi- editing and writing, and event coordination. vidual resource rights there underpinned The Council considers both undergraduate the development of democratic institu- and graduate students with majors in Interna- tions and a diversified economy. By tional Relations, Political Science, Economics, expanding the the tax base, landownership or a related field for its internship program. gave citizens a stronger stake in local A regional specialization and language skills governance and gave the government may also be required for some positions. In the capital to provide needed services. addition to meeting the intellectual require- Because both the risks and the benefits of ments, applicants should have excellent resource extraction were tied to land- skills in administration, writing, and re- ownership, individuals and communities search, and a command of word processing, could weigh the tradeoffs of extraction. spreadsheet applications, and the Internet. And the government assumed a more To apply for an internship, please send a natural role as regulator. résumé and cover letter including the se- mester, days, and times available to work Although the grand solution pro- to the I­ nternship Coordinator in the Hu- posed by Diamond and Mosbacher man Resources Office at the address listed would improve on the status quo in below. Please refer to the Council’s Web developing countries, it would at the site for specific opportunities. The Coun- same time undercut the principle that cil is an equal opportunity employer. strong property rights are critical to sustainable economic growth. A cash- Council on Foreign Relations for-petroleum scheme would provide Human Resources Office equal levels of income to all people, 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065 regardless of who carries the brunt of tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893 the burden. Yet the destruction and [email protected] http://www.cfr.org pollution of land disproportionately hurts the communities that inhabit it. 183 In South Sudan, for example, the seasonal grazing lands of the Nuer and Shilluk tribes have been turned into oil fields. And in Nigeria, the communi- ties that live in the Niger River delta have had to suffer the consequences of oil spills from offshore rigs. Yet under a cash-for-petroleum scheme, they

Return to Table of Contents Diamond and Mosbacher and Their Critics would not be entitled to the compensa- Diamond and Mosbacher tion they deserve. Reply Linking resources to land in these countries would prove difficult but not There is no magic bullet for impossible. Any attempt to provide avoiding the resource curse, and more cash to those adversely affected, so we welcome Karol Boudreaux however, would be virtually impossible and Tiernan Mennen’s response. Even without first establishing who has rights our own proposal—a far-reaching oil-to- to what resources. The first step, then, cash scheme, in which natural resource is to legally recognize the long-standing profits would be distributed to citizens claims of individuals and communities as taxable income—would have to be to the land they already live on. In such complemented by radical efforts to countries as Afghanistan and Indonesia, increase the transparency of government this would also mean recognizing cus- budgets and revenues. And numerous tomary or traditional landownership other reforms are also worth considering. systems and enshrining these communal One former president of a mineral-rich arrangements in law. To spur this change, developing country told us that he would Western development assistance must like to require extractive industries to promote local landownership, linking make payments directly to the people trade agreements, aid budgets, and loans in the communities that inhabit the land to the recognition and protection of land they are extracting from. This would rights. Over the long term, govern- not strengthen citizenship the way direct ments should continue to encourage a taxation would, but it would get resource careful transition from state ownership revenues directly to the people. to individual and community resource ownership. Certainly, Boudreaux and Mennen are correct that justice demands that the Empowering locals to manage people who live on resource-rich land resources, generate revenue, and con- should enjoy both a political right to have tribute to the tax base would minimize a large say in whether the mineral wealth the effects of the resource curse while will be extracted at all and an economic avoiding the pitfalls of Diamond and right to a disproportionate share of the Mosbacher’s cash-for-petroleum scheme. income from that wealth, given that Doing so would address the root cause they will bear more of the social and of the curse, not merely its symptoms. environmental costs of extraction. Karol boudreaux is Director for Invest- But their proposal poses some practical and moral dilemmas. First, ments in Property Rights at the Omidyar Net- much of Africa’s newly discovered oil, particularly in West Africa, lies offshore, ­work. Follow her on Twitter @KarolBoudreaux. and so much of the revenue will accrue to the government—and then to govern- tiernan mennen is Founder and Executive ment officials—regardless of any changes in land rights. Second, given that where Director of the Hakí Network and Director for mineral wealth lies is an accident of Land Resource Rights at Chemonics Interna- tional. Follow him on Twitter @TiernanMennen. 184 f o r e i g n a f fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Reverse the Curse nature, it is unclear who should be resources belong not to the state or to considered the owners of that wealth: any particular individuals but to all the the people who by chance live on top of people of the country. it or the broadest segment of humanity that could reasonably lay a claim to it— We say “might” for a reason. Ulti- that is, all of a country’s citizens. mately, what mineral-rich, poor countries most need now is an open, far-reaching In addition to strengthening land policy debate. It is possible to know rights, Boudreaux and Mennen want to what has not worked in the past, but give effect to these claims by granting not to predict what will work under ownership of the subsurface and other different circumstances in the future. resources to the communal or individual We suspect that in most African countries, landowners. This proposal would leave where land rights are flawed or nonexis- two problems, however. First, once the tent and tribal institutions have mingled revenue flows to a community, there is no in complicated ways with colonial legal good way to ensure distributive justice systems, oil-to-cash programs would within it. To be sure, the people of offer an efficient and achievable path to Nigeria’s oil-rich but now environmen- addressing the resource curse. But each tally devastated Delta region have seen society must weigh its own options. tragically little benefit. But this is not Policy innovation is sorely needed, and because money has not flowed to them. In in that spirit, we welcome this latest fact, they have received vast and dispro- contribution to the debate.∂ portionate amounts of the revenue, as Nigeria’s oil-producing states retain 13 percent of oil revenues off the top. The core problem is bad governance at every level. It is not only presidents and federal ministers who have stolen from the Nigerian people but also state gover- nors and local officials. Recognizing communal rights to natural resources would not serve justice unless the revenue flowed directly to the people, which is hardly guaranteed. Second, giving ownership of the subsurface and other resources to private landowners could trigger extensive land grabs in badly governed states, as the rich and powerful pushed ordinary people off their land in order to seize the wealth on and underneath it. This possibility under- scores why the issue of land rights is so important, but it also suggests that distributive justice might be better achieved by establishing that natural January/February 2014 185

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books include stabilizing financial markets, promoting economic growth and equality, Political and Legal and protecting rights and freedoms. G. John Ikenberry Just War and International Order: The Uncivil Condition in World Politics If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Nicholas Rengger. by Benjamin R. Barber. Yale University Press, 2013, 432 pp. $30.00. Cambridge University Press, 2013, 220 pp. $85.00 (paper, $29.99). Barber, author of the prescient 1996 book Jihad vs. McWorld, In this work of political theory, Rengger sees cities as the best hope for notes what he considers a disturbing shift solving global problems and safeguarding in Western discourse on the use of force. democracy. In Barber’s view, nation-states Liberal internationalists and “just war” have shown that they are simply not up theorists see themselves as trying to to the task of global governance. Cities, prevent and circumscribe acts of violence on the other hand, have demonstrated and war. But Rengger argues that, ironi- remarkable political vitality. Their politics cally, these liberal political traditions are tend to be pragmatic and oriented toward instead creating new legal and moral problem solving: trash needs to be picked justifications for the use of force around up; streets must be plowed. Barber’s most the world. Liberal ideas of law and justice interesting thesis is that cities, which now have led the Western powers to pursue house more than half of humanity, are new and more expansive collective ends. more internationalist and inclined toward Although many liberals have opposed bottom-up solutions than states. Barber’s specific interventions, such as the Iraq war, proposal is to make cities the “building Rengger sees their embrace of such ideas blocks” of a form of global governance as “the responsibility to protect” as a sign enshrined in a “parliament of mayors.” that long-standing restraints on the use of The book is organized around short force will soon begin to disappear. Reng- portraits of activist mayors, such as New ger wants the world to think of interna- York City’s Michael Bloomberg, London’s tional law and justice not as tools for a Boris Johnson, Moscow’s Yuri Luzhkov, progressive agenda but as frameworks that and Delhi’s Sheila Dikshit. The book is allow people to pursue their own ends. But convincing in its claim, echoed in the the question remains: Without ambitious words of Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo efforts to solve collective global problems, Paes, that the leaders of cities have “the how viable is individual freedom? political position to really change people’s lives.” Less convincing is the idea that NATO Before the Korean War: April 1949– cities can carry the burden of global June 1950 problem solving, where the challenges by Lawrence S. Kaplan. Kent State University Press, 2013, 240 pp. $60.00. In this detailed account of nato’s first year, Kaplan shows that the launch of 186 f o r e i g n a f fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books the alliance is best understood not as a republicanism, and market economics by watershed moment for American inter- examining what happened when intellec- nationalism but as just one part of the tuals in one country grappled with the long path the United States had traveled ideas of another. Others focus on the great from isolationism to engagement. Kaplan forces that push and pull ideas around the chronicles the Truman administration’s globe, such as commerce and conquest. navigation of the tricky politics of ratify- One of the more interesting chapters ing the treaty and bringing the alliance to reveals that the particular European ideas life. The book’s most interesting element about civilization and society that made is the story it tells about how American their way to Japan during the late nine- proponents of nato were able to cast teenth century just happened to be ones the treaty less as a military alliance and that the Japanese authorities could use more as a tool of U.S. postwar interna- to legitimize their reorganization of the tionalism, creating a partnership that state. Lurking in the background of would bolster European stability and the book is a charged question: Is global allay British and French fears of a resur- intellectual history another way for the gent Germany. The alliance emerged not strong to dominate the weak, or is it a in a single moment of creation but through way for diverse peoples and societies to a long and tedious process of negotia- search together for knowledge? tions marked as much by improvisation as by design. Nonetheless, as Kaplan Armed State Building: Confronting State argues, the two sides ultimately discov- Failure, 1898–2012 ered the terms of a grand bargain: the by Paul D. Miller. Cornell United States would commit itself to University Press, 2013, 264 pp. $35.00. helping rebuild and protect Europe, and the Europeans would overcome In this excellent study, Miller brings their differences and forge a new to bear scholarly rigor and his recent Atlantic system. experience as the U.S. National Security Council’s director for Afghanistan and Global Intellectual History Pakistan to assess U.S. and un efforts to rebuild failed states through armed edited by Samuel Moyn and intervention. Drawing on evidence from such missions in Germany after Andrew Sartori. Columbia World War II and more recent attempts University Press, 2013, 352 pp. $35.00. in Nicaragua, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, Miller argues Scholars have traditionally studied ideas there is no master strategy that will work and intellectual history within national, in all instances. In successful cases, such regional, or civilizational contexts. But as the Allied occupation of Germany and as part of a broader “global history” the un’s postconflict reconstruction movement, historians have begun to operations in Mozambique and Namibia, interpret the rise and spread of ideas the key was correctly matching the as a global phenomenon. This useful strategy to the problem. The most collection includes scholars who study the paths of ideas such as Confucianism, January/February 2014 187

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books important choices that would-be nation the amount of sunlight that reaches the builders must make are whether to impose earth’s surface by reflecting some of it direct rule over a failed state and whether back into space, such as placing aerosols to assume full responsibility for its into the stratosphere. Keith does not security. Miller argues that the ongoing recommend that anyone try this yet, failure in Afghanistan is a result of nato nor does he suggest that it would be a and the United States’ adopting the wrong good substitute for reducing emissions strategy for rebuilding Afghan state of greenhouse gases. But he wants security forces. Despite his firsthand scientists to learn how to do it effectively experience of the struggle in Afghanistan, and efficiently while minimizing any Miller delivers a surprisingly upbeat unwanted side effects. assessment of armed state building. His book displays an admirable clarity in The Price of Rights: Regulating its evidence and analysis, although it International Labor Migration is worth wondering whether powerful by Martin Ruhs. Princeton Western states can reliably behave as University Press, 2013, 272 pp. $35.00. carefully as Miller advises. Economic, Social, and Migration across national boundaries Environmental has increased greatly in the last decade and has become a contentious political Richard N. Cooper issue in many receiving countries. To what extent should countries encourage immi- A Case for Climate Engineering gration? What rights should be conferred by David Keith. MIT Press, 2013, on immigrants, especially temporary ones? 112 pp. $14.95. Ruhs emphasizes the uncomfortable tradeoffs built into every answer to Many uncertainties surround those questions. The un Human Rights the future effects of climate Council and the International Labor change. Keith, a physicist, Organization, along with many civil argues that humankind would be wise to rights groups and labor unions, take the do some contingency planning, in case position that foreign-born workers should those effects prove to be more powerful not be discriminated against in their new than now predicted or come faster than places of employment. Others, including expected. The earth has experienced many the governments of developing countries different climates, and human beings and some economists, believe that more are highly adaptable. But we adapt more immigration, particularly from poor easily to slow processes than to rapid countries to rich ones, would improve the ones, so we should learn how to slow lots of the receiving countries and the immi- down global warming through climate grants alike. Ruhs points to the substantial engineering—just in case we need to. tension that exists between those two Keith focuses on techniques to reduce positions: stronger rights will lead receiv- ing countries to accept fewer immigrants, especially temporary ones. He urges 188 f o r e i g n a f fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books receiving countries to prioritize the rights Freedom From National Debt of immigrants, identifying which rights by F rank N. Newman. Two are inalienable and which ones should be Harbors Press, 2013, 104 pp. $9.95. considered more malleable given the need to stimulate more immigration. Newman, a former senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department, offers a primer Against the Consensus: Reflections on the on the vital role of U.S. Treasury securities Great Recession in the global economy. In the process, he by Justin Yifu Lin. Cambridge exposes as mere blather much of the what University Press, 2013, 273 pp. $29.99. passes for sound discussion of U.S. public debt and the federal government’s debt Lin, a former World Bank chief econo- ceiling, persuasively contradicting claims mist, examines the causes of the 2008 commonly made by deficit hawks. The financial crisis. His analysis is kinder U.S. government, whose securities are less to China than other reviews of the crisis risky than bank deposits, is not akin to an have been, and he places a good deal extremely large household, he argues, and of blame for the disaster on financial its finances should not be evaluated as if deregulation in Europe and the United it were. Near-term federal budget deficits States. Lin argues that to end today’s are not a burden on future generations, global economic stagnation and to reduce as long as the borrowed funds are spent the risk of future financial crises, banks wisely and will result in more production. and households in Europe and in the Foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries does United States must repair their balance not pose much risk to the United States, sheets and Western governments must and interest payments on U.S. public regain the flexibility they need to pursue debt do not consume economic resources. sound fiscal policies. Economies around This short book should be read by every the world require long-term investments journalist who covers economics and in infrastructure and education, and Lin finance, every politician or policymaker urges international financial institutions who works on economic affairs, and to lend more for those purposes, financing anyone else concerned about the federal such loans by borrowing in financial government’s role in the U.S. economy markets or directly from countries with and the country’s financial system. excess foreign exchange reserves. Doing so would boost economic recovery and East Asian Development: Foundations and create jobs in rich countries while fur- Strategies thering development in poor ones. Lin by Dwight H. Perkins. Harvard also presents a rather sketchy proposal University Press, 2013, 222 pp. $35.00. for reforming the international monetary system by introducing a new internation- During the past half century, the global ally agreed-on reserve asset and estab- economy’s most impressive growth engines lishing relatively stable exchange rates. have largely resided in East and Southeast Asia. To explain the extraordinary perfor- mance of these Asian economies, Perkins January/February 2014 189

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books draws on academic research and on his resources most effectively and maxi- own decades-long experience as an adviser mize their impact. In this, they are no to developing countries. It comes as no different from other political entities, surprise that the explanations vary over except that their resources tend to be as time and from economy to economy. Also meager as their ambitions are huge. Their unsurprising is the good deal of attention organizational challenges are aggravated that Perkins pays to China, the largest further by the need to remain covert. of the economies examined (India and the rest of South Asia are not included). In a unique study, Shapiro explores Perkins predicts that China’s outsized the management of such groups with economic growth will decline significantly considerable rigor, beginning with the in the years ahead, perhaps to an annual nineteenth-century Russian progenitors of rate of five percent, which would still be contemporary terrorist groups and ending high by world standards. He also helpfully with al Qaeda. Some of the groups he places China in the context of other examines, such as the Palestinian organi- successful Asian countries, in which, zation Fatah and the Provisional Irish Perkins argues, high growth has been aided Republican Army, were substantial by a strong emphasis on education. Asian operations, and their size made it more countries’ development of their nonagri- difficult to retain cohesion among their cultural labor forces has also played an distinct factions, especially when opportu- important role, as has their steady nities arose to move into more mainstream engagement with the global economy. political activity. When Shapiro turns to smaller and supposedly more fanatical Military, Scientific, and groups, it is strangely comforting to Technological find their leaders struggling with dodgy expense claims and insubordinate hot- Lawrence D. Freedman heads and to see how bolder members feel weighed down by bureaucratic demands The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing and slow decision-making. By analyzing Violent Covert Organizations the internal travails of such groups, by Jacob N. Shapiro. Princeton Shapiro exposes some of their vulnerabili- University Press, 2013, 352 pp. $29.95. ties: for example, the way their leaders, in trying to keep tabs on followers, inadver- Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep tently leave clues for intelligence agencies. Battle Against America by michael W. S. Ryan. Columbia Ryan reinforces Shapiro’s underlying University Press, 2013, 368 pp. $37.50. point about the calculating nature of terrorist groups with a forensic history If terrorists want to achieve their al Qaeda’s strategic development. Ryan political ends, they need a strategy, scrutinizes a number of important Salafi as well as an organizational structure, texts in which theorists allied with that allows them to use their limited al Qaeda explain the radical nature of their objectives and methods. The most important observation is that they do not, as many might suppose, depend largely on inspiration from established currents 190 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books in Islamist thinking; instead, they draw flawed judgment. Farmelo demonstrates on some of the classic works on guerrilla that although principles and evidence warfare, including those by Clausewitz, often shape the relationship between Mao Zedong, and the North Vietnamese science and policy, personality and politics leader Vo Nguyen Giap. One important play just as large a role. al Qaeda strategist, Abu Ubayd al-Qurashi, about whom little is known, appears to be Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of extremely well read in Western military the Urban Guerrilla studies, including relatively recent works by David Kilcullen. Oxford on “fourth-generation warfare,” which is University Press, 2013, 352 pp. $27.95. marked to a degree by the rise of violent nonstate groups. Kilcullen has a rare ability to combine serious theory with the insight of an Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States experienced practitioner. He argues that Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear most future conflicts will occur in cities, Arms Race thanks to the extraordinary growth in by Graham Farmelo. Basic Books, urban populations and the interconnect- 2013, 576 pp. $29.99. edness wrought by new technologies, which will create novel opportunities for Winston Churchill’s last major speech crime and political violence. Kilcullen as British prime minister, delivered to brings his narrative to life by using Parliament on March 1, 1955, was one of contemporary examples, including the his best. In vivid terms, Churchill made recent revolts in Libya and Syria and the case for nuclear deterrence, reflecting the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. on the “sublime irony” that the world The density of contemporary cities had reached a point “where safety will be makes it easier for gangsters and warlords the sturdy child of terror, and survival to assert control and renders civilian the twin brother of annihilation.” In this populations highly vulnerable. Security terrific book, Farmelo tells the story of forces can address such threats, but as the United Kingdom’s nuclear program, Kilcullen notes, a lack of popular support which began with pioneering work in can make intensive search-and-destroy Cambridge before World War II and measures counterproductive. Kilcullen’s ultimately merged with the United States’ book would have benefited from more Manhattan Project. The book is built historical perspective. States have long around a compelling portrait of Churchill coped with the particular challenges that demonstrates the variability of his of urban security. Modern Paris was judgment. Farmelo also introduces readers designed, in part, to help the authorities to the remarkable collection of scientists maintain order, and in Warsaw during who led the British endeavor and who World War II, anti-Nazi Polish resisters helped shaped the country’s nuclear policy, learned that states or armies can sup- including Frederick Lindemann, Churchill’s press a popular urban uprising so long main scientific adviser, whom Farmelo as they care little about preserving life portrays as an antidemocratic snob with or property. January/February 2014 191

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books Killing Without Heart: Limits on Robotic Two recent books by leading Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict figures in the fight for the by M. Shane Riza. Potomac Books, future of American education 2013, 256 pp. $29.95. illustrate the passions at play in one of the country’s most important debates. The United States’ increased use of Ravitch has emerged as the most unmanned aerial vehicles to target consistent and searching critic of the individuals has already generated contemporary education-reform move- considerable moral and legal unease. ment, which favors more testing, more Imagine, however, the dilemmas that accountability for teachers, and more will arise once machines not only are charter schools. The movement enjoys able to kill at a distance but also can the support of an influential coalition decide whom to kill, without any of entrepreneurs, politicians of both opportunity for human deliberation or, parties, and wealthy foundations. Against possibly, hesitation. In this thoughtful these formidable opponents, Ravitch meditation on technology and ethics, scores some important points: test scores Riza, a fighter pilot and colonel in the are somewhat arbitrary, “teaching to the U.S. Air Force, worries that robotics test” is not how great schools are built, make it easier to go to war. But the segregation and poverty contribute to concern that mechanical slaughter is poor school performance more than many replacing the work of discerning warriors reformers admit, both the Bush and the is hardly new, and Riza exaggerates Obama administrations gave the Depart- the role that robotics will play in future ment of Education far more power than it combat. Nonetheless, he performs a can wield wisely or well, and proponents valuable service by raising the challenging of charter schools and school-voucher issues of impunity and accountability. programs do not always have the facts on their side. As for school choice, which The United States reformers believe will improve the system by making schools compete for Walter Russell Mead students (and the funding that comes with them), Ravitch argues that educa- Reign of Error: The Hoax of the tion is one of the areas in which free- Privatization Movement and the Danger to market thinking and market metaphors America’s Public Schools fail. But Ravitch’s feisty defense of the by Diane Ravitch. Knopf, 2013, pre-reform status quo will strike many 416 pp. $27.95. readers as too undiscriminating. Can it really be true that in cities where gov- Radical: Fighting to Put Students First ernments have been hollowed out by by Michelle Rhee. Harper, 2013, decades of corruption and one-party 304 pp. $27.99 (paper, $15.99). rule, the public school systems don’t need much reform? Is it not true that many public school teachers become cynical and despairing after years spent working in dysfunctional systems? 192 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books Rhee entered education through the They also believe in an aggressive Teach for America program and eventu- combination of force and diplomacy to ally rose to become an extremely con- advance the American agenda world- troversial chancellor of the crisis-ridden wide, but they are less confident than Washington, D.C., public school system, either liberals or neoconservatives that where she took on the powerful teachers’ a democratic utopia is just around the union. In 2010, the district elected a corner. This is a valuable way of thinking new mayor who did not support Rhee, about U.S. foreign policy for a post- and Rhee left her post to found an Bush, post-Obama future. It will be advocacy group that promotes school interesting to see if any 2016 Republican reform and supports politicians who presidential candidates look to Nau’s back it. Rhee believes that rewarding ideas as a way to bridge the widening successful teachers and either retraining gaps within the gop when it comes to or firing low performers will improve foreign policy. the quality of education. This is her core disagreement with Ravitch, who The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics, argues that teaching is too complicated Economics, and a Half Century of False and too personal a profession to be Prophecies easily assessed and graded and that, in by Josef Joffe. Liveright, 2013, the real world, subjective assessments 352 pp. $26.95. are likely to be biased and putatively objective ones, such as standardized From the Sputnik panic to the global tests, are often inaccurate. chorus claiming that the 2008 financial crisis would spell the end of the U.S. Conservative Internationalism: Armed model of capitalism, pessimists have Diplomacy Under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, been predicting American decline for and Reagan 50 years. In this brave and bracing book, by Henry R. Nau. Princeton Joffe treats these repeated failed proph- University Press, 2013, 344 pp. $35.00. ecies to the merciless debunking they deserve. Envious foreigners and nervous Nau is interesting, provocative, and Americans alike have predicted the sometimes convincing when he looks imminent demise of American power for signs of conservative internationalism due to an allegedly failed educational through the long sweep of U.S. history. system, the superior performance of His description of that school of thought foreign rivals, budget and trade deficits alone makes this book worth reading. stemming back to the Kennedy era, Unlike realists, Nau argues, conservative imperial hubris, and assorted other internationalists accept the promotion maladies. Joffe makes a strong case that of freedom as a legitimate goal of U.S. a mix of Chinese vulnerabilities and foreign policy. Unlike liberal interna- American strengths means it is unlikely tionalists, they believe that American that China will replace the United States power, rather than international institu- anytime soon as the center of the global tions, offers the greatest hope for progress. system. Yet, as Joffe notes, constant January/February 2014 193

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books anxiety about the United States’ prospects Western Europe might be one of the cultural forces responsible for the country’s persistent Andrew Moravcsik strength; rather than resting on their laurels, Americans continually and even neurotically poke at their social fabric, looking for tears that need mending. In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones. Oxford The War of 1812: Writings From America’s University Press, 2013, 256 pp. $29.95. Second War of Independence edited by Donald R. Hickey. Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Library of America, 2013, 928 pp. Cold War, and the Twilight of Empire $40.00. by Calder Walton. Overlook Press, 2013, 448 pp. $35.00. The indispensable Library of America Spies and surveillance have domi- has produced a valuable collection of nated headlines all across Europe documents and contemporary accounts in recent months. These two books of the War of 1812. The war was osten- sibly fought over British attempts to help illuminate how contemporary restrict U.S. trade and force sailors on espionage took shape. Jeffreys-Jones American-flagged vessels into service focuses on Anglo-American intelligence in the British Royal Navy. It was, cooperation, arguing that its finest hours however, vehemently opposed by most were during World War II and in the U.S. trading and mercantile interests early stages of the Cold War. By the 1960s, and was most strongly supported by the British could no longer keep up with farmers and other interior dwellers. either U.S. technological prowess or the One of the many merits of this volume Americans’ unilateral impulsiveness. The is that, through speeches and accounts relationship fell into decline; today, it is of official meetings, readers are able no longer special. to see the war through the eyes of the To understand what the British were defeated—and there was no group for really up to in those years of decline, whom the War of 1812 was a worse readers can turn to Walton’s far more disaster than Native Americans. Ulti- thoroughly documented study, which mately deserted by their British allies, describes the role of the United Kingdom’s the Native American tribes who lived intelligence agencies in defending and between the Appalachian Mountains and then liquidating the British Empire. This the Mississippi River suffered a series included intensive involvement in brutal of defeats at the hands of American forces counterinsurgency operations, colonial that left them defenseless before the repression, and widespread torture, but accelerating tide of settlement along also quite a bit of sensible, moderate the frontier. advice that tended to be ignored by colonial administrations. The records of these events, suppressed by the British 194 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books government for half a century, make for World War II, the Cultural Revolution fascinating reading. in China, the Greek Civil War and Cypriot partition, and the mass refugee The Democratic Foundations of Policy crises in southern Africa. To a surprising Diffusion: How Health, Family, and extent, they find that politics and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries ideology, rather than the sheer moral by Katerina Linos. Oxford horror of violence, have determined University Press, 2013, 250 pp. $99.00. what subsequently registered as a painful and traumatic event, defined Linos argues that the adoption of who was treated as a perpetrator or a particular health and family policies victim, and dictated who deserved in one country can increase support restitution. Political polarization leads for them in others. Technocrats draw Colombians to view kidnappings as on specific experiences elsewhere to individual private misfortunes rather fine-tune domestic policy proposals. than public problems. One-party rule More surprising, everyday voters—even led Poland to suppress the true story in a country with an exceptionalist of the Katyn massacre of 1940, in which self-image, such as the United States— Soviet secret police forces killed more see the adoption of policies by other than 20,000 Polish nationals. The Holo- large countries as a signal that the caust sensitized the world to Jewish proposals are feasible and fair. This suffering yet desensitized many Israelis would seem utterly implausible if to Palestinian suffering. Germans view Linos did not document it with public the Allied bombing of World War II opinion data and historical case studies as deserved retribution, whereas the from Greece, Spain, and the United Japanese view it as a complex and States. For scholars, the book poses ambiguous national trauma. Readers as many questions as it answers. For might disagree with these conclusions, policymakers, it suggests novel ways to but the book makes a convincing case build support for policy innovations. that the moral lessons of the last cen- tury remain ambiguous and contested. Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of The Art of Lobbying the EU: More Collective Suffering Machiavelli in Brussels. 4th ed. edited by Ron Eyerman, by Rinus van Schendelen. Jeffrey C. Alexander, and Amsterdam University Press, 2013, 390 pp. $55.00. Elizabeth Butler Breese. Paradigm, 2011, 336 pp. $113.00 Academics and practitioners generally (paper, $37.95). go their separate ways, barely paying attention to each other. Occasionally, In this book, a team of sociologists however, a scholarly book emerges whose revisits some of the most horrifying scope, clarity, and focus on a vital issue cases of mass slaughter from the past allow it to cross the theory-praxis divide. century, including many episodes during January/February 2014 195

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books This latest edition of van Schendelen’s of the financial sector reflects the cozy classic work synthesizes the most personal style of Irish politics. The media important lessons that political scientists, and economists failed to inform the management scholars, and the best public about the growing risks. The public affairs professionals have learned authors conclude that the government about how to lobby the European Union. had no practical alternative to issuing Mastering the eu process is hard, as a much-criticized comprehensive bank the five pages of abbreviations at the guarantee, which, combined with irre- beginning of the book attest. Yet knowl- sponsible government borrowing and edge helps lobbyists pick which buttons spending during the boom years, quickly to push when dealing with eu policy- fueled public-sector deficits. makers. Although the book is not an easy read, it makes even complex questions— Western Hemisphere such as whether lobbyists are a force for Europe’s democratic legitimacy— Richard Feinberg concrete and accessible to the average reader. It is hard to imagine anyone The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: succeeding in Brussels without knowing Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy what is in this unique volume. Toward Argentina The Fall of the Celtic Tiger: Ireland and by William Michael Schmidli. the Euro Debt Crisis Cornell University Press, 2013, by Donal Donovan and Antoin E. 272 pp. $39.95. Murphy. Oxford University Press, As U.S. President Jimmy Carter 2013, 256 pp. $65.00. entered the White House in 1977, determined to restore purposeful Although its subject matter and the idealism to U.S. foreign policy, a brutal text itself are a bit dry, this book is military dictatorship in Argentina was the best so far on the Irish financial systematically torturing and murdering crisis of 2008. The authors trace the thousands of suspected leftists. In his well-known contours of the financial fast-paced, engrossing account, Schmidli crisis that swept over Ireland, the gov- chronicles the fierce internal struggles ernment’s response, and the debate within the White House and the State that has followed. They explain how Department, where political appointees an investment boom triggered a housing dedicated to transforming Carter’s bubble. When the bubble burst, it took idealism into concrete policies battled the banking sector with it. Private actors career diplomats accustomed to maintain- were at best shortsighted and at worst ing cordial relations with anticommunist criminal, and public authorities, notably regimes such as Argentina’s. Schmidli the Central Bank of Ireland, failed to concludes that, despite subsequent policy discharge their regulatory duties. The fact vacillations, the United States extracted that during the boom, politicians failed some important concessions from the to push against the irrational optimism 196 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books Argentine junta, saving many lives. improved material conditions; more More broadly, the Carter team succeeded controversial, however, was Castro’s in institutionalizing human rights in claim that the logical destiny of Cuban U.S. foreign policy: after some early history was a radical social revolution. backsliding, the Reagan administration Today, deprived Cuban youth are less deemed democracy promotion the core interested in historical slogans than in of its Argentina policy, which Schmidli better living standards, portending a describes as an “unmistakable validation reinterpretation of the past. As Pérez for U.S. human rights advocates’ struggle.” concludes, “A history that had failed to Drawing on declassified documents fulfill the promise of its premise [risks] and personal interviews, Schmidli paints being discarded as irrelevant,” perhaps colorful portraits of key players in the giving rise to a “counterfactual history, policy debates. More interviews of with a host of what-ifs”—especially the Argentines would have rounded out the question of what might have been had picture. But this very valuable study the United States not tried to subvert also underscores the vital roles of human the Cuban Revolution, which Pérez rights activists and Congress in laying refers to as “the noble gesture of 1959.” the foundations for Carter’s diplomatic offensive. The Economic Development of Latin America Since Independence The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past by Luis Bértola and José by Louis A. Pérez, Jr. University of North Carolina Press, 2013, 352 pp. Antonio Ocampo. Oxford $39.95. University Press, 2012, 352 pp. $125.00 (paper, $45.00). Pérez, a masterful historian of Cuba, argues that whether Fidel Castro was This well-argued interpretive economic motivated by heartfelt convictions or history is reasonably balanced in its political opportunism, the Cuban leader assessment of the region’s progress and undeniably understood the power of shortcomings, even as it leans toward the past to drive contemporary politics. the neostructuralist school of thought From the outset, Castro associated and the approach associated with the himself with the images and purposes un Economic Commission for Latin of Cuba’s national heroes and martyrs, America and the Caribbean, both of casting himself as the standard-bearer of which favor state activism. The distin- a hundred years of extraordinarily bloody guished authors consider four major struggles for national identity and dignity historical periods: the chaotic postcolo- in the face of foreign imperialism—first nial era (1810–70), the first great wave Spanish, then American. Overtly hostile of globalization and commodity exports U.S. administrations inadvertently (1870–1929), the era dominated by the strengthened Castro’s nationalist creden- kind of state-led industrialization that tials. Inherent in Cubans’ aspirations Bértola and Ocampo prefer (the 1930s for sovereignty was an anticipation of through the 1970s), and the recent turn back toward market mechanisms, which they view with some skepticism. During January/February 2014 197

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books the golden age of state-led growth, only if the region draws the right lessons development strategies promoted from its checkered past, conserves national industries and domestic mar- earnings from high commodity prices in kets and the public sector’s delivery sovereign wealth funds, further diversifies of education and health services. But its exports to include modern goods and adjustments became necessary, the services (pop music, software develop- authors recognize, and the book identifies ment, product design, and so on), and four main ingredients for promoting develops its human capital and physical sustainable growth going forward: infrastructure. Most interesting, Toro sound macroeconomic management to Hardy urges Latin American diplomats confront global vulnerabilities, energetic to unite as a block and negotiate a grand competitiveness and technology policies, bargain with China in order to integrate strong governance institutions (although their economies into Chinese industrial the optimal mix of state and market varies value chains and to obtain more access across countries), and equity agendas to Chinese capital and technology. to encourage more just distributions of wealth. Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman The World Turned Upside Down: The by Jeremy Adelman. Princeton Complex Partnership Between China and University Press, 2013, 760 pp. $39.95. Latin America This is a wonderful book about a superb by Alfredo Toro Hardy. political economist. Adelman invested many years in this admiring biography, World Scientific Publishing, 2013, which allows readers to fully appreciate 268 pp. $98.00. the diversity of Albert Hirschman’s many contributions to economic scholarship; A senior Venezuelan diplomat-scholar, it also does not fail to offer occasional Toro Hardy depicts a rapidly declining criticisms. Hirschman never won a United States and Europe and an emerg- Nobel Prize in Economics, but his writing ing Chinese powerhouse, voicing an did lead to the emergence of political increasingly common perspective on economy as a central field within the global trends. Extensively referencing social sciences in the United States. commentators such as Joseph Stiglitz, Hirschman’s 1970 book, Exit, Voice, and Niall Ferguson, and Kishore Mahbubani, Loyalty, generated an immense positive Toro Hardy gleefully depicts U.S. response on its appearance, although society as trapped in a self-destructive primarily from political scientists, rather orgy, as myopic corporations and dead- than economists. Hirschman possessed locked politicians lose all sense of the a unique ability to shift from the particular national interest, while the Chinese to the general and projected an implicit Community Party brilliantly masters optimism about humanity’s prospects. technological innovation and gains He did not enjoy teaching—to put it global leadership. A more multicultural, mildly. But he was able to profoundly multipolar world will present exciting opportunities for Latin America, but 198 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books influence two generations of students addresses these varieties of populism, who have greatly benefited from reading concluding with a wide-ranging essay by his works, which have proved especially the editors that analyzes the continuing useful for those who study development significance of this durable political issues in Latin America, a region to which phenomenon in Latin America. Hirschman paid particular attention. arturo cruz, jr. albert fishlow Latin American Populism in the Twenty- Eastern Europe and Former first Century Soviet Republics edited by Carlos de la Torre and Robert Legvold Cynthia J. Arnson. Johns Hopkins Russia, the West, and Military Intervention University Press and Woodrow Wilson by Roy Allison. Oxford University Center Press, 2013, 416 pp. $30.00. Press, 2013, 320 pp. $85.00. During the twentieth century, a majority No issue has more vexed recent of the countries in Latin America U.S.-Russian relations than the developed market economies and tension over military interven- representative democracies. Yet in tions, such as those launched or backed some of these countries, the promises by Washington in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya of a liberal society did not match the and the one carried out by Russia in magnitude of citizens’ demands, pro- Georgia. Analysts have paid too little voking calls for democracies that were attention to the roots of this tension, more representative and for states which lie in the conflicting normative that were more active in the production and legal standards each side has used and distribution of goods and services. to justify its actions. It takes a scholar Latin American leaders including Hugo as meticulous and thorough as Allison Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of to properly chronicle the remarkably Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, the complex debate between proponents Kirchners of Argentina, and even Álvaro of traditional norms of state sovereignty Uribe of Colombia all rose to power and advocates for new norms of human- partly through promises to be more itarian interventionism. In this clash, the effective and just in the mediation Russians—like the Chinese, the Indians, between citizen demands and state and many others—align themselves with resources. Chávez shared so generously the conservative, pro-sovereignty side of with his supporters that Venezuela’s the argument, a position that owes as petroleum revenues proved insufficient much to self-interest as to principle. to cover the runaway costs. Morales, Yet the Russians have struggled to be for his part, has also shared with his consistent. Although doing so is not his supporters, but he has managed to overt purpose, Allison demonstrates how maintain budget discipline, taking if U.S. and western European analysts advantage of high commodity export prices. De la Torre and Arnson’s volume January/February 2014 199

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books ignore or discount this dimension of Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Russian thinking, their explanations Europe of Russian behavior in controversies by Simon Winder. Farrar, Straus over intervention (including in the and Giroux, 2014, 576 pp. $30.00. Syrian civil war) will be shallow. Making five centuries of Habsburg Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: history fun seems like a tall order, but Russia’s Influence Abroad Winder pulls it off. He entertains because by James Sherr. Chatham House, he is entertained. His sprawling history of 2013, 152 pp. $25.95. a dynastic empire that began in the early twelfth century and finally unraveled in In the debate over just how alienated 1918 is a personal travelogue; over many Russian foreign policy has become journeys, he foraged in both the famous from the interests of the United States and the obscure historical sites of central and Europe, count Sherr among those and southern Europe, detailing here arguing that the sides are worlds apart. what they represented in their day. With His case, however, is neither strident unrelenting wit—sometimes smirking nor crude. On the contrary, Sherr subtly but also self-mocking—he traces the traces the historical roots and complex Habsburgs’ fortunes: their ascendance to character of Russian power. His starting the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in point is the political scientist Joseph the fifteenth century; the division of the Nye’s notion of “soft power.” But in his family into Austrian and Spanish houses examination of Russia’s relations with in the sixteenth century; and the Austro- states that were once within the Soviet Hungarian Empire’s central role in all Union’s borders or that were part of the of modern Europe’s dramas, from the extended Soviet empire, Sherr reveals French Revolution to World War I. the Russian approach to instruments What gives the text verve is Winder’s of influence—trade, energy, the Russian ability to interweave the eccentric details Orthodox Church, and Russian cultural of the Habsburgs themselves with an exports—as more brutal than dulcet. absorbing cultural history, driven by He interprets the fundamental impulse his exuberant passion for the lives and behind Russian policy as a desire to music of great composers and textured create an international environment that by his skillful physical descriptions of protects the Russian regime’s preferred forgotten corners of the realm. domestic order, but he views the steps Russia takes to further that stark agenda Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist as intricate and artful. As for the policy’s States: Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, success, Sherr’s judgment lingers between Macedonia, and Kosovo mixed and suspended. As for the policy’s by Maria Koinova. University of permanence, he allows for the possibility Pennsylvania Press, 2013, 320 pp. $69.95. of change—perhaps, ultimately, out of necessity. Within the substantial group of scholars focused on ethnic conflict, Koinova has 200 foreign affairs

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books carved out a niche between those who crimes against humanity committed by concentrate on civil wars and intrastate their leaders and prosecuted before the conflict and those more concerned with International Criminal Tribunal for the countries in which multiethnic relations former Yugoslavia. Judging the Serbian have remained peaceful. She is interested public mind is not easy. Gordy, by going in why ethnonationalist conflicts vary in beyond merely examining the legal the level of violence they generate, why dramas and public opinion polls, discov- violence at whatever level persists, and ered that most Serbs see the issues of when and why things change for the guilt and responsibility in wavering better or the worse. To get at the answers, shades, not stark colors. The Serbian she explores three cases, similar in their people, he concludes, have come a good characteristics but different in their distance. But denialism lingers, for outcomes: Bulgaria (where majority- which he assigns considerable blame minority conflict has been free of to the non-Serbian prosecutors at the violence), Kosovo (where it has not), tribunal, who have failed to clearly and Macedonia (somewhere in between). convey to the Serbs the full, convincing Elaborate but lucid theorizing informs weight of the evidence against their her explanations, at the heart of which former leaders. Gordy delivers his are what she calls “critical junctures”— judgment of all the parties with sensi- the historical moments (such as the tivity and compassion. aftermath of Soviet communism) when majority-minority relationships form in a The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to way that encourages either accommoda- Terms With the Stalinist Past tion or resistance. The conditions that by Denis Kozlov. Harvard develop in those brief periods tend to University Press, 2013, 442 pp. $55.00. harden, improving or deteriorating only as the result of external shocks or In repressive societies, literature often incremental change. carries a weight that it does not in free countries. The principal venue in Guilt, Responsibility, and Denial: The Past the post-Stalinist Soviet Union for at Stake in Post-Milosevic Serbia reflections—narrow at first and then by Eric Gordy. University of inexorably widening—on the Soviet Pennsylvania Press, 2013, 288 pp. $65.00. Union’s history was the venerated literary journal Novyi Mir (New World). The For all the attention paid to the carnage journal shot to prominence in 1953 with of the Yugoslav wars and the trials of its publication of an essay on sincerity in those responsible for the violence, literature, written by the critic Vladimir scholars have only just begun to assess Pomerantsev. Western literary critics the legacies of those leaders and their accustomed to scarcely a ripple of atten- impact on their successors and the tion might find it hard to believe, but societies they left behind. Gordy zeroes the piece stirred a storm of controversy in on how Serbs have (or have not) in newspapers, universities, and even come to terms with the war crimes and factories. More than 700 letters flooded January/February 2014 201

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books the journal’s offices, some of them none of the basic elements in the longer than 30 handwritten pages. Syrian conflict have changed—except Other provocations followed, each that the casualties and refugee flows pushing deeper into the dehumanized have increased significantly. reality of the Soviet experience and each generating agitated responses. With the The contributors to Hashemi and opening of the archives of the journal Postel’s volume reflect on whether and and of its bureaucratic keepers, Kozlov how outside powers should intervene gained access to tens of thousands of in Syria. If there is a common thread unpublished letters from readers as well that runs through the essays, it is that as the records of editorial meetings and “the responsibility to protect” applies in accounts of the authorities scrambling to Syria and should guide any intervention respond to the latest controversies. This by the United States or other players. fine history reveals the society-changing With varying levels of enthusiasm, power of what Kozlov calls “the relation- the contributors suggest establishing ship between texts and readers.” “no-kill zones” (Anne-Marie Slaugh- ter), providing massive humanitarian Middle East relief (Kenneth Roth), and even engaging in “sequential decapitation” of the Assad John Waterbury regime (Tom Farer). Christopher Hill invokes the agreement that ended the The Syria Dilemma war in Bosnia as a possible model for how to resolve the Syrian conflict, while edited by Nader Hashemi and Fareed Zakaria points to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a cautionary tale about Danny Postel. MIT Press, 2013, the risks of military intervention. 272 pp. $14.95. The Center for Global Affairs’ Syria 2018 report imagines possible scenarios for how the conflict might play out between by the nyu center for global now and 2018. Participants include Josh Landis, Bassam Haddad, Steven affairs. NYU Center for Global Heydemann, Robert Malley, and other Affairs, 2013, 41 pp. Free online. experts. They envision three possibilities: a regionalized conflict, a contained civil These studies bring together war, and a negotiated settlement. In leading experts on Syrian affairs the first, the conflict spills over Syria’s and conflict resolution. Both borders, igniting civil wars in Iraq and studies confirm that the Syrian civil war Lebanon and threatening King Abdullah’s presents stakeholders with many options, hold on power in Jordan. In the second, all of them bad. The first book was outside attempts to contain the conflict assembled at the beginning of 2013, and ultimately produce further chaos inside the second, midyear. Since then, with the country, especially in northern Syria. the exception of the U.S.-Russian agree- The authors find the third scenario, a ment that paved the way for Syria to negotiated settlement, “implausible” and give up its chemical weapons arsenal, therefore conclude that the least worst 202 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books option is containment, which would supporters will have little incentive to lead to the internal fracturing of Syria reach agreement with Washington on but might produce a less violent stale- the nuclear issue. Iran, Pollack argues, mate. It is notable that none of the three is aggressive but rational. It would not scenarios accounts for two developments use nuclear weapons unprovoked. It that would have a major impact on the would not share them with third parties conflict. One is a possible attack by either such as Hezbollah. It would only use the United States or Israel on Iranian them to defend itself. nuclear facilities. The other is a negoti- ated U.S.-Iranian “grand bargain,” or Roots of the Arab Spring: Contested at least a more stable détente between Authority and Political Change in the Washington and Tehran. Middle East Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and by Dafna Hochman Rand. American Strategy by Kenneth M. Pollack. Simon University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, and Schuster, 2013, 560 pp. $30.00. 176 pp. $47.50. This book will be read carefully in Should Western governments have Tehran, Washington, and Tel Aviv. seen the Arab Spring coming? Rand, Pollack lays out the strategic factors the who is currently serving on the U.S. United States must take into account National Security Council, carried out when deciding how to deal with Iran’s the research for this revealing book in nuclear program, covering nearly all Bahrain, Morocco, and Tunisia well contingencies, including military action. before the region was rocked by popular He argues forcefully that, should nego- revolts in 2011. She believes the West tiations fail, Washington should opt should have sensed that something for containment instead of military was coming, since systemic changes had action. His case is lucid and compel- already been roiling Arab societies for ling; he reminds readers that a U.S. some time. Her explanation acknowledges air campaign that failed to set back but does not stress the role of structural Iran’s nuclear development for more factors, such as youth unemployment, in than several years would probably lead producing the 2011 uprisings. Rather, to a U.S. ground invasion that would she focuses on the economic liberaliza- make the Iraq war look relatively simple. tion campaigns that Arab governments More provocatively, Pollack advocates launched in the 1990s and early years of combining containment with efforts at this century, in part to placate internal regime change, arguing that Iran does opposition and respond to pressure from not moderate when the pressure is off the West to reform. But the regimes but rather when it is high. He dismisses soon began to reverse those reforms, the idea that so long as Iran’s supreme which they believed had encouraged leader believes the United States seeks unwanted dissent. The reversals were to end the Islamic Republic, he and his meant to stifle opposition but served only to encourage more of it. Through top-down, antidemocratic constitutional January/February 2014 203

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books and legal maneuvers, Arab regimes sent their arguments, shining a light into a message that bargaining for change some hitherto dark corners. was futile and so, too, was the quest for incremental reform. For many Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of dissidents, that meant the only hope Lebanon’s Party of God for change was the fall of the regimes. by Matthew Levitt. Georgetown University Press, 2013, 426 pp. $32.95. Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973–2012 In this book, Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Treasury by Vahid Brown and Don Department, focuses on Hezbollah’s operations outside Lebanon in near- Rassler. Oxford University Press, excruciating detail. He presents an 2013, 320 pp. $35.00. avalanche of evidence that Hezbollah is a global terrorist organization and The Haqqani tribal network is based demonstrates that its links to Iran are in North Waziristan, a region that strong and organic. Levitt relies on straddles the border highlands between declassified intelligence, court docu- Afghanistan and Pakistan, a position ments, and other sources in the public that allows the Haqqanis to control domain to delve into familiar (albeit vital supply lines. The Haqqani patriarch, horrifying) crimes often linked to Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Hezbollah, including the deadly 1994 Sirajuddin Haqqani guide their organiza- bombing of a Jewish community center tion with a combination of fierce in Buenos Aires and the 1996 attack resistance to central authorities and a in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed less-than-strict practice of Islam. Above 19 U.S. military personnel. But Levitt all, they want to preserve control of does not offer much analysis of these their homeland, which has served as a events and makes little effort to situate safe haven for al Qaeda and as a supply them in a broader consideration of route through which Pakistan’s intel- Hezbollah’s tactics and strategy. The ligence service ships materiel to the main takeaway from his book is that Taliban and others in Afghanistan. Hezbollah’s overarching objective is to Brown and Rassler argue that the destroy Israel and drive the United Haqqanis have played a greater role States from any effective presence in in the region’s anti-American jihad the Middle East, and that its foreign than has al Qaeda—despite the fact operations also serve the purpose of that Washington assisted the Haqqanis’ revenge—above all for the assassination resistance to the Soviet occupation of of the group’s strategic mastermind, Afghanistan during the 1980s. They Imad Mugniyah, in February 2008. speculate that after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Haqqanis might refocus on India, Kashmir, and the Central Asian states. Brown and Rassler have assembled unique and impressive evidence for 204 foreign affairs

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books Asia and Pacific The China Story (www.thechinastory.org) Australian Centre on China in the World. Andrew J. Nathan Free online. An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Among a growing number of websites Contradictions and e-mail newsletters providing insight on China, the China Story stands out for by Jean Drèze and Amartya the richness of its coverage of Chinese culture and history. The site is guided by Sen. Princeton University Press, 2013, the veteran Sinologist Geremie Barmé 448 pp. $29.95. and informed by what he calls “New Sinology,” which emphasizes the conti- India has experienced two decades nuity of China’s contemporary problems of rapid economic growth, yet half and debates with those of the country’s of Indian households lack indoor past. The material is infused with Barmé’s toilets, nearly 40 percent of the coun- taste for the unconventional, affection try’s adults are illiterate, immunization for the Chinese language, and alternately rates there are among the lowest in the playful and acerbic writing style. The world, and 43 percent of its children are site’s sketches of leading Chinese thinkers underweight. The benefits of growth illustrate the vitality of Chinese intel- have flowed to the top 20 percent of lectual life despite the state’s efforts to the population, while the profoundly control it. The site also provides access poor—who represent 28 to 80 percent to the China Story Yearbook series, of the population, depending on where which covers politics, law, foreign policy, the line is drawn—have gained little. the blogosphere, and other subjects, and The authors, two distinguished econo- to the online journal China Heritage mists, use unfavorable comparisons with Quarterly, which carries articles about Bangladesh, China, and the countries of the presence of the past in Chinese sub-Saharan Africa, among other places, architecture, culture, and literature. to shame India’s politicians, corrupt bureaucrats, media, and self-interested Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, economic elites, whom they blame 1937–1945 collectively for the country’s pattern by Rana Mitter. Houghton Mifflin of “biased growth.” Against those who Harcourt, 2013, 464 pp. $30.00. want to address poverty through further market reforms, Drèze and Sen argue Mitter applies historical empathy to yield that India needs more (albeit better-run) fresh insights into the situations of all the public services and redistributive social actors in the horrific conflict that the programs. But given the scope and Chinese call the War of Resistance Against severity of the problems they describe, Japan, which lasted from 1937 to 1945. He it seems like a leap of faith to argue, as pays particular attention to China’s leaders, they do, that the system can right itself explaining Chiang Kai-shek’s decision to by means of “public reason” and greater breach the dikes of the Yellow River, an act political pressure from the poor. January/February 2014 205

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books that killed half a million of his country- fashion, sports, business, and a host of men; Mao Zedong’s preference for a other subjects in a wide range of styles, protracted guerrilla strategy against the which enables them to attract more Japanese; and Wang Jingwei’s decision to readers and listeners. Audiences place collaborate with the Japanese occupiers. greater trust in outlets they select for But he also recounts the frustrations of themselves than they did in the more Japanese infantrymen that led them to tightly controlled, less diverse media of behave so viciously in occupied Chinese the past. Meanwhile, the Communist cities. The only person Mitter fully Party still has the power to shape the condemns is U.S. General Joseph message whenever it feels the need to, “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, often portrayed including by firing reporters who get too as a hero in earlier accounts but whom far out of line. Stockmann finds that Mitter charges with blinkered egoism in the Propaganda Department more often his clashes with Chiang. The narrative uses its authority to tamp down, rather also tells the stories of soldiers, refugees, than ramp up, nationalist sentiment missionaries, and journalists, creating an against the United States and Japan, exceptionally full narrative of a fateful lest popular anger turn against the party period whose legacies still shape China; itself. By reporting more aggressively, these include a broader sense of national the media give the leadership better identity, modern techniques of mass information about what the public mobilization and propaganda, a large role thinks than they did in the past, which for the state in providing for the needs helps the government address problems of the people, and a culture of violence. that might otherwise lead to unrest. Media Commercialization and We Didn’t Start the Fire: My Struggle for Authoritarian Rule in China Democracy in Cambodia by Daniela Stockmann. by Sam Rainsy with David Cambridge University Press, 2012, Whitehouse. Silkworm Books, 352 pp. $95.00. 2013, 198 pp. $25.00. Chinese media have changed since the Sam Rainsy’s Cambodia National Rescue gray days of Maoism. There are now Party won a surprising 47 percent of the nearly 2,000 newspapers, 10,000 periodi- vote in the country’s National Assembly cals, and hundreds of radio and tv stations elections last summer, capping a series with a wide variety of styles and features. of contests during the past 20 years in All but a few have to support themselves which the party, under various names, won with advertising and subscriptions, spur- a growing vote share despite electoral ring fierce competition for readers and manipulation and violence meted out listeners. But contrary to the conventional by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party of wisdom, Stockmann argues that media Prime Minister Hun Sen. To explain his commercialization has strengthened, commitment to confronting Cambodia’s rather than weakened, the Communist entrenched elite in the face of legal Party’s rule. Today’s media cover persecution and assassination attempts, 206 f o r e i g n af fai r s

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books Sam Rainsy has written an autobiography much-reviled nineteenth-century empress that reaches back to his childhood, his dowager Cixi alongside the 2010 Nobel father’s exile and assassination, his work Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. The in Paris as a financial manager, and his portraits are beautifully written and bring interest in the Moral Re-Armament to life not only their subjects but also the movement and Buddhism. The book is mood and intellectual debates of the times also a manifesto pitched to foreign in which they lived. governments and nongovernmental organizations, asking them to stop elizabeth c. economy propping up the Hun Sen regime with development aid. In it, Sam Rainsy Africa explains how he would combat corrup- tion, land grabbing, nepotism, patronage, Nicolas van de Walle and other ills if he came to power. Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Twenty-first Century the Transformation of World Christianity by Orville Schell and John by Allen Heaton Anderson. Delury. Random House, 2013, Oxford University Press, 2013, 496 pp. $30.00. 336 pp. $24.95. Each year, scores of books appear pur- The various currents that make porting to explain where China has been, up Pentecostalism represent where it is now, and where it is going. the fastest-growing Christian Rare, however, is a book such as this one, denomination in Africa. In this sympa- which offers genuinely new insights into thetic survey, Anderson, a former this vast and complicated country. Schell Pentecostal minister, argues that Pente- and Delury argue that for most of China’s costalism in Africa must be understood recent history, the country has been more as an indigenous religion than as a consumed with the search for wealth and Western one. Pentecostal missionaries power: the desire to “see China return to introduced the faith into the “global greatness and honor.” They explore the South,” including Africa, during the early debates and often fierce political battles twentieth century, but the churches that surround this quest through a series soon began to develop autonomously. of fascinating portraits of Chinese think- Unlike churches belonging to traditional ers and leaders. The cast of characters is Christian sects, Pentecostal churches wide-ranging. Some of those profiled, were decentralized, nonhierarchical, and such as Mao Zedong, are familiar; others, independent of colonial authorities, such as the Qing dynasty scholar Wei making them more likely to take on Yuan, will be new to most readers. One of native leadership, adapt to local cultural the book’s greatest strengths is its authors’ norms, and connect with the nationalist lack of ideological bias in selecting their sentiments of newly urbanized and subjects: few would think to place the socially mobile Africans. In addition, January/February 2014 207

Return to Table of Contents Recent Books the relentless proselytizing required by Welz concludes that the passage of time Pentecostal theology ensured that there and the continued democratization of would be plenty of converts and led to the region are prerequisites for more steady growth during the entire twentieth meaningful regional cooperation. century. Today, more than 100 million Africans belong to Pentecostal churches, Experts see southern Africa as the making Anderson’s book essential subregion on the continent that is reading for anyone interested in the the most economically integrated and sociology of contemporary Africa. the Southern African Development Community as the continent’s most Integrating Africa: Decolonization’s Legacies, effective intergovernmental organiza- Sovereignty, and the African Union tion. Saunders and his colleagues have by Martin Welz. Routledge, 2012, brought together a group of well-informed 243 pp. $135.00 (paper, $44.95). analysts whose essays largely buttress Welz’s argument that independence is Region-Building in Southern Africa: still too recent for most governments Progress, Problems, and Prospects to easily agree to cede authority to the international technocrats of an organi- edited by Chris Saunders, zation such as the sadc. But unlike Welz, most of the book’s contributors Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa, and Dawn tend to emphasize the difficulty of forging cooperation when the capacity Nagar. Zed Books, 2012, 368 pp. $39.95. of the states involved remains low and the economic and political interests of Analysts frequently note the lack of the various countries diverge signifi- economic integration and political cantly. Perhaps the core difficulty is cooperation among the 54 states of the imbalance between rich states— Africa—an ironic state of affairs, perhaps, especially South Africa—and other, less given the large number of intergovern- affluent members, who worry that South mental organizations that exist on the Africa will reap most of the benefits of continent. Welz examines the foreign regional cooperation. For its part, South policy of eight countries in the region Africa seems unwilling to exert the kind to understand why the member states of leadership and policy generosity that of the Africa Union, the region’s primary would allay such fears. institution of regional integration, have not devoted more energy to realizing Political Parties in Africa: Ethnicity and the organization’s lofty aims. He mostly Party Formation blames domestic politics, especially the personalization of power by heads of by Sebastian Elischer. state, which tends to undermine com- mitments that countries make to greater Cambridge University Press, 2013, international cooperation. The book 336 pp. $95.00 (paper, $30.99). also makes an interesting observation: countries still governed by parties that Many assume that ethnic identity plays participated in anticolonial struggles are the main role in holding African political more reticent to give up sovereignty. parties together. Yet as Elischer shows 208 foreign affairs