An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics by Donald W. ShriverReview by: Francis FukuyamaForeign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1995), pp. 162-163Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047315 .

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Recent Books

Edmund Burke and International Relations.

BY JENNIFER M. WELSH. NewYork

St. Martin's Press, 1995, 247 pp. $59.95. This is a thoughtful and illuminating analysis of the eighteenth century's fore

most conservative thinker on international

politics. Burke held a complex (some would argue contradictory) view of how

the international system ought to work:

on the one hand, he prized order, stability, and moderation in interstate relations, as

reflected in his opposition to the British

government's attempts to crush the Amer

ican revolution, while on the other, he

showed a crusader's zeal in urging the use

of force against the French Revolution.

While critical of Burke in many respects, the author sees a

larger consistency in his

thought that is relevant to contemporary

foreign affairs. Never simply a realist,

Burke believed there was a moral and cul

tural underpinning to the European state

system, and that concepts like legitimacy and sovereignty had to have a substantive

as well as a procedural meaning.

The United Nations and Civil Wars.

EDITED BY THOMAS G. WEISS.

Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995,

233 pp. $42.00. International Organizations and Civil

Wars. BY HILAIRE MCCOUBREY

and nigel D. white. Brookfield:

Dartmouth, 1995, 294 pp. $63.95. These two books analyze U.N. inter

ventions in civil wars of member states,

spurred by recent crises in Somalia,

Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

The volume edited by Weiss focuses on

the multifunctional character of recent

peacekeeping operations?that is, U.N.

involvement in civilian administration

rather than just security operations?

which it argues is too often overlooked.

The McCoubrey-White volume expati ates at great length

on the international

legal justifications for the expansion of

U.N. involvement from external to inter

nal conflicts. Of the two books, the for

mer is more useful; rather than dwelling on the legalisms of intervention, it pro vides helpful analyses of actual U.N.

operations. Both books chronicle the

United Nations' weaknesses and failures; neither squarely confronts whether there

is a fundamental flaw in the entire con

cept of U.N. peace enforcement, or

whether the organization has become a

dodge for nation-states seeking to evade

international obligations.

The Charter of the United Nations: A

Commentary, edited by bruno

sim ma. NewYork: Oxford University

Press, 1995,1,258 pp. $220.00.

This formidable tome is a detailed, arti

cle-by-article commentary on the U.N.

Charter by a group of German, Austrian,

and Swiss legal experts. It provides exten

sive background on the legislative history,

interpretation, and application of the

document. While of use to specialists in

international law, this volume's appeal to

the general reader is likely to be limited.

An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics. BY DONALD W. SHRIVER, JR.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 284 pp. $27.50.

This book, by a professor of Christian

ethics, starts from the unexceptional

premise that the world would be a better

place if nations and other political actors

would practice greater forgiveness toward

enemies, in light of the way that memories

of wrongs committed long ago tend to

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Recent Books

drive atrocities. The problem is that the

author takes the ethical question out of a

political context. He is therefore prone to

seeing moral equivalence in America's

dealings with its various enemies, and he

fails to confront adequately how democra

cies are to live with hostile states that are

neither forgiving nor repentant. His

extended treatment of America's post war relations with Germany and Japan is

much less perceptive than, for example, Ian Buruma's Wages of Guilt; while aware

that the Japanese have not come to terms

with their past as the Germans have, Shriver plays this down by saying that

Americans have not done so either. His

moral premise quickly leads to mushy rec

ommendations for greater mutual under

standing and some highly questionable recommendations for dealing with race

problems in the United States.

Economie, Social, and Environmental

RICHARD N. COOPER

Opening Americas Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy since 1776. by Alfred e.

eckes, jr. Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1995,

382 pp. $34-95 The author, a historian who served on the

International Trade Commission (itc)

during the 1980s, is well placed to write a

history of American trade policy, and this

book contains much interesting, even fas

cinating, material. It usefully corrects

some popular impressions on a number of

points, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff

of 1930 as a cause of the Great Depres

sion, and Alexander Hamilton's protec tionist leanings?he supported America's

first import tariff (averaging nine percent)

mainly for revenue.

Unfortunately, the author falsely

depicts the evolution of U.S. trade pol

icy over the years as a struggle between

the interests of domestic policy and the

interests of foreign and defense policy, with the former generally dominating the

century before 1934 and the latter domi

nating since 1934 (with some useful cor

rection during his term at the itc during the 1980s). Nowhere does Eckes discuss

the real struggle over trade policy as

viewed by economists for two centuries

and by U.S. presidents since Herbert

Hoover: between the here-and-now

interests of particular economic sectors

or firms and the general interests of

Americans as consumers.

The book contains extensive references

to archival material; but the author's use

of it, and of other quoted material, is both selective and tendentious. Presidents since

1934 generally saw trade liberalization as

good domestic as well as foreign policy, even when the domestic politics of liberal

ization were sometimes uncomfortable.

After the Gold Rush: The Trouble with

Affluence: 'Consumer Capitalism and the

Way Forward, by Stewart lansley.

London: Century, 1994, 269 pp. $20.00.

Why is so much malaise associated with

such general affluence? That is the topic of Lansley's book, written in Britain and

drawing largely on British and European experience. The book's thesis is that

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs,

call 1-800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- September/October 199s [ 16 3 ]

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