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Journal of Strategic StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjss20

Book ReviewsF. G. Hoffman a , John Bew b , David French c , NicolasLewkowicz d , Thomas Rid e , Paul Staniland f , TimStevens g & Peter J. P. Krause ha Fairfax Station , VAb King's College Londonc Brentwood , Essexd University of Bristole The Shalem Center , Jerusalem, Israelf University of Chicagog King's College Londonh Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPublished online: 21 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: F. G. Hoffman , John Bew , David French , Nicolas Lewkowicz ,Thomas Rid , Paul Staniland , Tim Stevens & Peter J. P. Krause (2010) Book Reviews,Journal of Strategic Studies, 33:5, 777-795, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2010.513199

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BOOK REVIEWS

Donald Kagan, Thucydides: The Reinvention of History. New York:Viking, 2009. Pp. 257. $26.95, PB. ISBN 9-780-14311-829-9.

No one can fault Thucydides for lack of ambition. It will be enough forme, he wrote nearly 25 centuries ago, if these words of mine arejudged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events whichhappened in the past and which (human nature being what it is)will . . . be repeated in the future. In a massive narrative coveringnotable examples of Greek hubris, the Athenian author sought toproduce a possession for all time. While Thucydides might be accusedof arrogance, he did achieve his goal. Human nature being what it is,the interplay of fear, honor and interest in human conflict has beencontinuously repeated. His History of the Peloponnesian War remainsa classic text and has rightly earned him accolades as the father ofpolitical history. Thucydides called war a savage schoolmaster, and heeffectively addressed the role of strategic assessment, the importance ofdomestic politics in conflict, the complexities of alliances anddiplomacy, and the interplay of land and sea warfare.

For this reason, Thucydides sits on a pedestal among historians, andhis work is considered de rigueur today for anyone serious aboutmilitary history and international relations. His insights have proveninvaluable to serious students attempting to understand the past andapply it to the present and future. Much of this reputation is based onThucydides purportedly dispassionate style, attention to detail, andperceived objectivity. Comparing him to Herodotus, the author RobertKaplan observes, Thucydides is more trustworthy. He is also morelimited. Thucydides gives us a distilled rendition of the facts. Likewise,Princetons James McPherson prefers Thucydides precisely because heis a more careful, precise, and trustworthy historian who does not try togo beyond the evidence.

Yet, as the distinguished Yale classicist Donald Kagan shows inThucydides: The Reinvention of History, our Athenian narrator is notquite the detached historian we were led to think. After he was exiled asa disgraced Athenian admiral for the embarrassing loss of Amphipolisin 424 BC, Thucydides had much time to ponder the war. However, hewas also biased by his association with critical players like Pericles andhis preference for the propertied class. Like any historian, Thucydides

The Journal of Strategic StudiesVol. 33, No. 5, 777795, October 2010

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/10/050777-19

DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2010.513199

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had to create a framework for the war and had to select facts and weighsources and arrange a narrative. His History is very much a personalhistory with honor and reputation at stake. Contrary to what we mighthave thought, Thucydides is more subtle than trustworthy. LikeWinston Churchill, he carefully crafted a story he wanted the audienceto accept. As Kagan reveals in his wonderfully handled account,Thucydides was human after all and his account should be treated withsome skepticism. The author of his own highly regarded four-volumehistory of the ancient Greeks own Long War, Kagan meticulouslyweighs the evidence from other sources of that time as well asThucydides own account.

Thus, while Thucydides paints Pericles and his grand strategy for thewar as completely reasonable, Kagan finds this to be a revisionistinterpretation. Blame for the protracted and plague-ridden strife ofAthens was laid at the feet of the fickle nature of democratic rule by theAthenian historian. No mention is made of Pericles failure to ensurethat the Athenian treasury was robust enough to make the strategyviable or whether his defensive strategy fitted Greek culture.

Likewise, Thucydides would have his readers believe that theinfamous Sicilian expedition in 415 (and the next years surge) shouldnot be blamed on the aristocratic Nicias. Again no mention is made ofNicias own failures to ensure that his expedition was equipped withthe cavalry required to take Syracuse, or his poor tactical dispositionsand weak leadership. Kagan convincingly demonstrates that Thucy-dides shades his arguments, largely by omission, to craft his owninterpretation of events against the contemporary accounts of his time.While generous with praise for the Athenians research, ProfessorKagan finds that For all his unprecedented efforts to seek and test theevidence, and for all his originality and wisdom, he was not infallible.

While not the perfect picture of detachment his admirers thoughthim to be, Kagan has no problem arguing that the study of Thucydidestext still merits our time. As he concludes: His History raises for thefirst time countless questions about the development of human societiesthat remain very relevant today. He looks deeply into the causes of war,drawing a distinction between those openly alleged and those morefundamental but less obvious. Kagan continuously demonstrates amastery of his subject matter and the broader context of the age.

Anyone who wants to understand Thucydides in breadth, depth andcontext should read Kagans discerning deconstruction of the under-lying evidence. The author dissects the arguments embedded in theHistory of the Peloponnesian War with exquisite detail and scholar-ship. The end product is a masterful work of history that will assuredlybe judged as an indispensable commentary, highly recommended for allgraduate-level courses in history and international security studies or

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for anyone wanting to understand why the past will be repeated in thefuture.

F. G. HOFFMAN 2010Fairfax Station, VA

Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History. London: IconBooks, 2010. Pp. 220. 14.99, PB. ISBN 9-781-84831-155-8.

Both experts and amateur enthusiasts will be interested in the latestoffering from one of Britains foremost and most prolific militaryhistorians, though this book is more clearly geared to the latter.Professor Jeremy Black offers a fresh perspective on the Battle ofWaterloo of 1815, by emphasising the importance of the long-termmilitary, political, geopolitical and strategic context in which it tookplace. In doing so, he provides a counterpoint to those historians whosee the impact of Napoleon and his vast conscript army as a militaryrevolution to go alongside the political revolution which began in Parisin 1789. Instead, Black believes that Waterloo in common with muchof the history of the so-called revolutionary period testifies to theresilience of ancien regime ideas, structures, societies, and solutions,including military means. If anything, he argues, the potential forchange was best represented not by Napoleon, whose Caesarism madehim essentially a destructive force, but by the capability of theimpersonal state in the shape of Britain, headed (though not led) by theelderly, deaf, blind and mentally unstable George III.

The book is, in essence, a synthesis of the most recent secondaryliterature on Waterloo, so readers expecting to find fresh archivalresearch will be disappointed. Much of the ground which is coveredwill also be familiar to professional historians of this period. Forexample, Black spends a significant amount of time explainingNapoleons preference for concentrating his resources and attentionson a single front at one time and his avoidance of lengthy, sappingcampaigns in favour of decisive set-piece battles. The same might besaid of the observation that Britain and Russia were the biggest winnersfrom the post-war settlement, or the section which deals with Francesreturn to the international system after 1815.

Nonetheless, the obvious and admirable attempt to address a wideraudience does not distract from the underlying quality of analysis.Black navigates the work of other historians with eloquence and brio,and a refreshing lightness of touch. At most junctures, he emphasisesthe existence of continuity over change and the accidental (orcircumstantial) ahead of individual genius. This is not simply a case

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of the revenge of the particular on the general so much as an attempt torestore complexity where simplistic narratives have taken over.

While steering clear of mystical readings of his strengths, hischapter on Napoleons generalship is accessible, balanced andjudicious. Likewise, his account of the Peninsular War moreparticularly the lessons that Wellington learned from it and appliedat Waterloo is also impressive and useful to scholars of any level.When it comes to Waterloo itself, we are left with a vivid picture of thechaotic as much as the heroic reality of the battle: the uncommon levelof hand-to-hand combat; the poor visibility because of the hugeclouds of gunfire smoke which filled the air; the poor communicationbetween officers due to mounted couriers regularly falling off theirhorses, often to their deaths; and the high rate of casualties frombackfiring cannons.

It is in the last few chapters where Black opens himself to considerthe wider impact of Waterloo on domestic politics, geopolitics anddiplomacy that he makes some of his most interesting and originalobservations, but also veers slightly off script. There are one or twoinstances in which the tone becomes unnecessarily polemical: such ashis complaint about what he sees as an attempt to de-militarisemilitary history in academia or more tangentially a condemnationof New Labours attitude to history in contrast with MargaretThatchers robust historicized nationalism. Similarly, while the overallemphasis on continuity is convincing, it is not quite accurate to say thatthe European great-power system did not change substantially forseveral decades; the Treaty of Vienna was a watershed in internationalrelations and, of course, most of its provisions were agreed beforeNapoleon escaped from Elba.

Waterloo is often accredited with creating the assumption that onegreat set-piece battle could settle a war something which subsequentwars, from the Crimean to World War II, spectacularly disproved.Towards the end of the essay, Black makes the point that theRevolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the lessons of which shapedmilitary strategy through much of the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies are also seen as less worthy of study in a modern era ofinsurrectionary and counter-insurrectionary warfare. In fact, as hepoints out, such tactics were a crucial facet of the great power warfarefrom 1792 to 1815, particularly the guerrilla warfare which occurredon the Spanish Peninsula. Unfortunately, the author does not expandon the insight any further, but contemporary military strategists coulddo worse than turn their attention to this period.

JOHN BEW 2010Kings College London

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William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice of the Somme and theMaking of the Twentieth Century. London: Little Brown, 2009.Pp.699. 25.00, HB. ISBN 978-1-4087-0108-9.

The Battle of the Somme in 1916 was the biggest and most expensivebattle ever fought by the British Army. Stupid and callous generalsmismanaged operations on a grand scale in the course of a pointlessbattle that condemned a whole generation of young Britons to theirdeaths. These are the accepted cliches that have left a scar on the Britishnational psyche that remains to this day. They are why most of theAnglophone literature on the battle focuses entirely on the Britishexperience.

But Bill Philpotts starting point is that such a narrow reading ofthe past cannot make sense of the battle because it fails tocomprehend the bigger picture. Basing his conclusions not merelyon British, but also on Canadian, Australian, French and Germanarchival sources, it is that bigger picture that he presents here. It takestwo sides to make a battle, and what is important about this book isthat it integrates the operations of both Britains major ally, theFrench, and their common enemy, the Germans, into the story. Indoing so Bloody Victory goes a long way towards transforming thetime-honoured narrative.

Philpotts assessment of the British experience on the Somme reflects,and builds upon, the modern scholarly consensus, albeit one that hashardly penetrated the popular consciousness. This was a war betweenindustrial empires, and it inevitably degenerated into an attritionalstruggle. Casualties were bound to be grievously high. The BritishArmys losses on 1 July 1916 were excessive. The infantry were sentover the top to achieve over-ambitious objectives with too little artillerysupport. But thereafter the British Army began to learn valuablelessons. By September, its professional skills had improved and its rateof losses had dropped. But what is less well-understood, even byscholars, is that the Somme was not a British, but an Anglo-Frenchoffensive. The battle was just one part of a bigger Entente strategy. TheFrench committed about the same number of troops to the battle asthe British, but thanks to their greater professionalism from the start ofthe battle they suffered significantly fewer casualties in their operationssouth of the river.

If the book has a hero it is the French commander, Ferdinand Foch.Recognising that a breakthrough was impossible, by September 1916Foch had begun to develop a new operational art form, the bataillegenerale. Combining high tempo operations, material superiority,manoeuvre and an attritional strategy, he showed that by knocking theGermans off-balance it was at least possible to push them backwards.

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When he practised it on a much grander scale as the Alliedgeneralissimo during the Hundred Days campaign in 1918, it wasthis doctrine that was finally to shatter the cohesion of the GermanArmy.

But that cohesion had already suffered a grievous blow on theSomme. If both the French and British lost heavily in the summer of1916, the biggest losers in Philpotts estimation, were the Germans.Coming on top of their casualties at Verdun, by the end of the battle theGermans had lost about a million men on the Western Front in thecourse of 1916. In the authors stark, but realistic, assessment,industrial war in the early twentieth century was not about controllingterritory; it was concerned with deploying machines to kill men. By theend of the battle the Germans soldiers determination to fight on to finalvictory at whatever the cost was starting to crack.

The book also goes beyond the battlefield to examine how the battlewas interpreted and understood on the home fronts of the belligerents.This enables Philpott to provide a compelling critique of the myth thatthe battle was futile. It did not seem futile either to the men who foughtit or their families back home. The Somme pitted not just armiesagainst each other, but opposing political and cultural systems. It was astruggle between parliamentary democracy, in its French and Britishforms, versus authoritarian German kultur. It was just as much apsychological and political struggle as it was a military battle ofattrition.

It does the memory of those who died during the battle a gravedisservice to suggest that they did not die for a good cause. The Britishbelieved they were fighting to crush the evils of Prussian militarism. TheFrench were determined to liberate their occupied provinces from theGerman yoke. The Germans were fighting to defend their beleagueredempire. Everyone knew that they had right on their side. Today thesemight not seem like ideas worth dying for. But our inability to grasp thefact that they did seem like supremely good causes to soldiers andcivilians in 1916 shows how far removed we are from the world of ourgrandfathers and great-grandfathers.

DAVID FRENCH 2010Brentwood, Essex

Giles MacDonogh, 1938: Hitlers Gamble. London: Constable, 2009.20.00, HB. ISBN 9-781-84529-845-6.

This book chronicles the eventful year of 1938, starting with a reviewof Hitlers strategic plans, as revealed in the Hossbach minutes of the

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meeting summoned by Hitler in November 1937. The Hossbachmemorandum, which became an important piece of evidence at theNuremberg Trials, outlined Hitlers aims for the future of theReich. Hitlers blueprint called for the preservation and enlargementof the German racial community, not overseas, but in Europe.The Reichs territorial expansion would provide the German nationwith the required Lebensraum to achieve economic self-sufficiency.This required the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia andthe extraction of their much needed manpower, foreign currencyand raw materials in order to entrench Germanys geostrategicposition.

MacDonogh points out that it seems unlikely . . . that Hitler had amaster plan for these changes or any grand strategy that was specific to1938 (pp.xixxx). The author highlights that by 1938 the conservativeelements in the Hitlerite regime had become increasingly marginalisedafter verbalising their disagreement at the revisionist drive which wascrippling the German economy. Hermann Goring had replacedHjalmar Schacht as the Nazi economics supremo and was put incharge of making Germany self-sufficient while financing rearmament.At the same time, the German foreign policy apparatus had sufferedirreversible changes with Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath andseveral key ambassadors having been replaced.

A chapter is devoted to each month of that momentous year, chartingthe events which precipitated the war. MacDonogh cites the BlombergFritsch crisis in January and the end of Cabinet government inFebruary, which solidified Hitlers position and isolated the moderateelements in the regime. The Anschluss in March, the Austrian Plebiscitein April that revealed overwhelming support for the Fuhrer (p.xv),Hitlers trip to Rome in May, which consolidated the alliance withItaly, and the Kendrick crisis in August which destroyed the Britishintelligence network in Germany are also given extensive treatment.The strategic situation would take a decisive turn with NevilleChamberlains visit to Germany and the signing of the Munichagreement in September, the occupation of the Sudetenland in Octoberand the persecution of the Jews in the latter part of the year.

Hitlers trip to Italy revealed the ambivalent position of Mussoliniand his entourage towards Nazi Germany. While Hitler proved willingto relinquish any claims to the South Tyrol in return for freedom ofmovement in Austria and Czechoslovakia (p. 131), Ribbentrop wasanxious to link Italy into a pact with Germany. Despite acquiescing tothe adoption of the racial laws against the Jews, the Fascist leadershipwere apprehensive about joining such a treaty, as they intended tohonour the 1937 Anglo-Italian Agreement which gave validity toRomes claims in the Mediterranean.

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MacDonogh mentions that the signing of the Munich Agreement inSeptember obliterated any chances to remove Hitler from powerbecause of opposition in the army and the Wilhelmstrasse and thereaction against Canaris and Kleist-Schmenzin and all those who hadimplied that Britain would fight (p.228). The Munich Agreemententailed the weakening of the internal opposition to Hitler. Conse-quently, there would be no further major attempts to undermine theFuhrers authority until the failed coup of 20 July 1944.

The book pays particular attention to the plight which befell theJewish population in Austria after the Anschluss, something whichbecame the first statement of intent in Hitlers desire for a JudenreinEurope. The author points out that the annexation of Austria providedHitler with the opportunity to implement the eradication of Jewish lifeby means of emigration, the plundering of Jewish businesses and,remarkably, through an end to assimilation (p.116).

The author works on the premise that until 1938, Hitler could bedismissed as a ruthless but efficient dictator, a problem to Germanyalone; after 1938 he was clearly a threat to the entire world.MacDonogh succeeds in mapping the most relevant indicators ofHitlers strategy and the events that were to plague the continent ofEurope a year later. Although somewhat broadly tackled, it constitutesa revealing account of Hitlers opening moves to war.

NICOLAS LEWKOWICZ 2010University of Bristol

Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through WesternEyes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp.256. $25.00,HB. ISBN 978-0-231-15414-7.

The orient is a diffuse idea. Oriental was what lurked beyond theboundaries of civilised Europe, unknown and fascinating. It stood forthe East, sometimes for the South, always for the unknown other. Ideasof the oriental other have not just influenced, and sometimesdominated, Western perspectives toward the East. As Patrick Portersfine new book shows, orientalism has also affected Western views of itsbattles and wars.

On the face of it, the scene is predictable: Western armies are madefor industrial battles, decisive plots of organised force, and orchestratedmanoeuvres. They are rational, orderly, calculated bureaucracies with asophisticated division of labour, high-tech weapons systems and clearlines of authority from civilian politicians. They develop plans ininstitutionalised general staffs, and their strategic and operational

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thinking guided by post-Enlightenment intellectual craftsmen likeAntoine de Jomini or Carl von Clausewitz.

Easterners, so the popular stereotype goes, fight altogether differently as martyrs and kamikazes. They are deceitful, cunning, irrational,emotional, chaotic, and spiritual, their raw violence seemingly triggeredby primordial ethnic or tribal hatred, vendettas, and blood feuds. Someof these juxtapositions are very much alive today. Patrick Porter seesthe orientalist world view come to the fore in popular culture, forinstance in films like 300, Black Hawk Down, Rambo II and III, andThe Last Samurai. But such an argument would be trite. MilitaryOrientalism is shrewder.

Porters critical thrust goes against the cultural turn, the revivedfocus on culture among those who make and study strategy. The UnitedStates land forces have turned their attention to understanding aliencultures counter-insurgencys human terrain and away from thehigh-tech hype of the 1990s. Europes armies, with the usual delay of afew years, are chasing after what some critics see as an American fad. Inacademia and strategic studies, likewise, anthropologists and counter-insurgency theory is in; Clausewitz is out. Yes, seeing the relevance ofculture is a step forward, Porter agrees. But seeing culture as rigid andstable can be naive.

Instead, Military Orientalism analyses culture in motion. Thebooks objective is to marry better models of culture with the world ofmilitary policy and analysis. The thesis is radical only at first glance: instrategy, where all sides in a conflict apply almost all means at theirdisposal to succeed, culture becomes more dynamic and more volatile.When facing battle, actors change traditions, violate norms, and theyinnovate in order to gain an advantage. At war, Porter writes, evenactors regarded as conservatives may use their culture strategically,remaking their worlds to fit their needs. Culture does not just shapeways of war; war shapes culture.

Four chapter-length case studies furnish the argument.The first deals with British military observers of the Russo-Japanese

War of 190405, who linked Japans prowess to its social setup,political values, and concept of citizenship. Yet British observersclaimed that the Japanese way of war and the Far Eastern warriorvalues offered advice that could help improve the British Empiresmastery of battle, as Britains own fighting ethos was diluted byurbanisation, modernisation, and liberalism.

The second case study explores Western perceptions of Mongolwarriors, who roamed Central Asias endless steppe in the first half ofthe thirteenth century. European and American observers came to seeGenghis Khans mounted warriors as roaming nomadic predators,laying waste to civilisation on its path with chilling virtuosity. But the

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Mongols mobility and aggressiveness, in turn, have long inspiredEuropean, Russian, and lately American strategic thinkers.

Then Porter moves on to more recent examples, the Taliban andHizballah. Both enemies have in common that they are culturalrealists they may change long-established behaviour, their time-honoured traditions, and their accustomed cultural dispositions inorder to fit their strategic and operational needs, to guarantee survivalif not success on the twenty-first-century battlefield. The Taliban, heargues, therefore exhibit a characteristic ambiguity between stasis andchange. At first glance, the Islamist purists appear as tribal warriors,driven by extreme and extremely conservative values andworldviews. Yet, at closer view, the Taliban are highly adaptiveenemies, with innovative methods in education, public outreach, andmodern tactics that embrace the latest high-tech innovations.

The book focuses on two issues simultaneously, Western views andEastern war on both counts Military Orientalism has someshortcomings. It somewhat selectively uncovers orientalist attitudesin scholarly articles and policy documents. As a result, the booksometimes seems to overestimate the strategic relevance of perceptions,including oriental perceptions. The Second Lebanon War (2006), forinstance, was highly damaging for Hizballah, no matter its short-termpublic relations advantage in some quarters.

Second, the books criticism of cultural notions is right most of thetime, but not all the time. The remarkable increase in suicide bombings,to give just one example, is hard to explain without reference tospirituality and features that seem genuine to specific cultures.Orientalist views, in short, may sometimes be wrong and irrelevant,but sometimes they may be correct and relevant. But the authorrecognises these problems and admits that his book may be tinged bythe very images and myths that it seeks to challenge.

Politicians view the armed forces as instruments of state power.Armies often see themselves as surgeons, methodically administering acertain treatment until an operation is accomplished successfully. Bothlike to imagine the enemy as still, pliable, and visible. In Porterspotent analysis, reality is not as neatly cut and stable. The mostendurable element may be the Western views of its oriental enemies.Here, Porters notion of cultural realism is designed to create betterstrategic visibility: attention to cultural fluidity, to contradictions, andto our own assumptions, he hopes, may help realise, for instance, howthe Taliban of today differ from the Taliban of 2001, or howHizballahs tactics have changed between 2000 and 2006.

War, Porter writes in Clausewitzian fashion, is a deadlyreactive dance, and culture is subject to its volatile nature. Thecultural landscape cannot be accurately mapped with the help of

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anthropologists, because that human terrain, unlike geography, is evershifting. Herein lies the danger of the cultural turn in strategic affairs: itis not just that it may restate old bigotry in the language of politicalcorrectness. It may ignore and deny something much older and muchmore fundamental: the dynamic nature of war.

THOMAS RID 2010The Shalem Center, Jerusalem, Israel

Steven R. David, Catastrophic Consequences: Civil Wars and AmericanInterests. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Pp.204.$25.00, PB. ISBN 0-801-88989-8.

Steven David has written an important and serious book on howinternal wars can harm American strategic interests. Focusing onChina, Mexico, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as the most dangerouspossible sites of civil war (p.153), David argues that state collapse andinternal rebellions can generate unintended but devastating spillovereffects that include loose nuclear weapons, massive refugee flows, andglobal economic shocks. Catastrophic Consequences is valuable bothfor its cogent, straightforward analysis and for bringing together a setof important cases that are rarely compared to one another. The bookbuilds on Davids excellent previous research on the links betweeninternal and external security.

David argues that the United States is highly vulnerable to the effectsof foreign civil wars. He analyzes China, Mexico, Pakistan, and SaudiArabia in terms of the potential danger their collapse or disarray wouldpose to the United States, the likelihood and causes of possible civil warwithin each state, and the possible results of this instability. Escalatingunrest in Pakistan carries with it the most alarming risks, with thepossibility that a fractured or overwhelmed Pakistan Army losescontrol of nuclear assets to Islamist radicals who could then attack theUS. He rightly notes that full-scale state collapse in Pakistan wouldpose a uniquely horrific threat to American interests because it bringstogether a witches brew of capability and instability (p.50).

In Saudi Arabia, rebellion against and conflict within the royal familycould lead to the destruction of crucial oil infrastructure that wouldbadly damage the American, and global, economy. David correctlyidentifies the current obstacles to rapid US adaptation to a massive andprolonged oil shock.

The dangers presented by violence and instability in Mexico arefound in flows of refugees to the US, shocks to the American economy,and the safety of Americans in Mexico. This focus on Mexico is

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particularly prescient as that country descends further into drug-fueledviolence.

Finally, waves of unrest, rebellion, and economic collapse withinChina could have devastating effects on the global economy andsecurity in Asia. He describes a China very much at odds withoptimistic predictions about its future, one in which a fragile bankingsystem, corrupt institutions, and various demographic imbalancescreate severe risks to the countrys stability.

While David overstates the case that civil wars have been largelyignored by scholars and policymakers (p.2), since a huge amount ofattention has been paid to failed states, ungoverned spaces, andAmerican interventions from Haiti to Kosovo, he is absolutely right tohighlight the importance of internal conflicts. Davids arguments arelucid and provocative, and they need to be carefully considered byscholars, analysts, and policymakers.

Yet Catastrophic Consequences leaves open several questions andconcerns. First, Davids approach lumps together a wide variety oftypes of internal conflicts under a shared banner, from martial lawto political party polarization to state collapse to peripheralinsurgency. These forms of rebellion and contentious politics havevery distinct origins and consequences, but David tends to identifythem one after another without much differentiation, leading to a setof laundry lists of disaster. There is much more room to parse outhow variation in the type and intensity of internal conflict in eachcase would affect American interests. In China, there is a hugedifference between chaotic state collapse and increasing nationalistmilitarization over the issue of Taiwan. Regional insurgencies againstthe Pakistani state are far less serious than a direct fracturing ofthe states coercive apparatus. The level of unrest in Saudi Arabiacould range from a minor blip to a massive supply crisis, and itmatters enormously which is most likely and under what circum-stances.

Some of the possible scenarios David presents are not just differentbut also diametrically opposed to another. For instance, the Chinesestate may split and collapse into factional feuding (p.143), or itsincreasingly professionalized, capable, and organized military mayoverthrow its civilian masters (p.142). It is hard to reconcile the state-collapse future with the praetorian-state future: they cannot be equallylikely or driven by the same causes.

Mexico is presented as a state with a political and security elite that isthoroughly enervated and infiltrated by drug money and corruption(pp.10610), yet David also argues that it is easy to foresee theemergence of a Mexican leader who will not tolerate this growing statewithin a state and undertake a serious effort to rid Mexico once and for

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all of the drug cartels (p.114). Given the detailed analysis underlyingthe former claim, the latter assertion comes as a surprise.

Second, David spreads himself too thin in the empirical research,trying to offer compelling and comprehensive treatments of fourincredibly complex countries. The author is to be commended for hisambition and effort, but the errors and omissions in the case of Pakistanillustrate some of the problems that come with this approach. Hemakes some minor mistakes (the plural of madrassah should bemadaris for instance), but others are much more significant.

David never discusses the Muhajir insurgency and related ethnicconflict in Karachi, Pakistans volatile economic hub and largest city,which has contributed to endemic national instability. In addition, hisclaim that the 2002 election results in the North West Frontier Province(NWFP) showed that the Islamist and separatist movements becameone and the same (p.72) ignores the deep-seated rivalry betweenIslamist parties and the Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party(ANP), which won the NWFP in 2008. This leads to a seriousmisreading of Pashtun separatism and its possible implications for thePakistani state. Regionalist sentiment in Sindh, Karachi, Baluchistan,and the NWFP has in fact traditionally been opposed to radical Islamistpolitics. For this reason among others, Davids argument that theBaluch revolt is only less slightly dangerous (p. 68) than the Al-Qaedaand Taliban presence in the NWFP is not very credible.

Davids concerns about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal are under-standable and articulately framed, but he offers very little detailabout the command structure, organizational functioning, andhistory of the Pakistani nuclear establishment, which is absolutelyessential to any balanced assessment of the risks of nuclear loss.There are only a few brief paragraphs on this essential topic (pp.5863). Similarly, there is no in-depth analysis of the political interestsof the pivotal military, which is portrayed both as the oneinstitution that holds the country together (p.64) and as extra-ordinarily inept (p.66). Most curiously, David writes that the majorquestion regarding Pakistan is not whether civil war will break out,but why it has not done so already (p.76). As of the bookspublication in 2008, an intense insurgency had been raging in theNWFP and parts of Baluchistan for several years accompanied bymass-casualty bombings and heavy military losses. Civil war hadalready come to Pakistan.

Third, the approach of Catastrophic Consequences is forward-looking and by its very nature speculative. This is useful for policy andplanning purposes, but the cost is a lack of structured historical analysison how civil wars have (and have not) influenced American interests inthe past. This would have both provided a valuable, lasting scholarly

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contribution and more clearly explained Davids expectations forfuture contingencies in China, Mexico, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

There are also dangers to this speculative approach because coreassumptions can become rapidly obsolete. While Davids argumentslook to be increasingly supported in Mexico, the end of military ruleand resurgence of counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan underminesome of the arguments he presents. Similarly, the reduction ofmilitant violence in Saudi Arabia from its peak around 2004 maydowngrade our fears of large-scale political unrest in the country.The shelf life of Catastrophic Consequences thus may be limited bythis approach.

Despite these concerns, Davids book is well worth reading andpondering. It synthesizes a huge amount of information into acompelling argument. Crucially, Catastrophic Consequences alsosuggests a set of interesting research questions through which tofurther explore the hugely important relationships between wars withinstates and conflicts among them.

PAUL STANILAND 2010University of Chicago

Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the NewWorld Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do AboutIt. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Pp.280. $25.99, HB. ISBN 978-0-316-11808-8.

Drawing an analogy from the early twentieth-century Einsteinianrevolution in physics, Ramos thesis is that a similar revolution inpolitics, particularly foreign policy, is now required in order for us (forwhich, read US) to thrive and survive in the modern globalenvironment of accelerating change and ever deeper complexity. Ramoargues persuasively that the old laws of (inter)national power areincreasingly redundant in effecting positive change and irrelevant to thereality of global systems.

This book is unlikely to appeal to political realists, for whom talk ofnon-state power or state non-power is often an uncomfortable andunresolved distraction. Realists, though, should remember that theirworldview is predicated on the notion that without states, there isanarchy. In a world that increasingly seems anarchic, then perhaps weshould re-evaluate the Westphalian system in terms of success andfailure of the nation-state?

Democratic peace theory may hold true for democracies but it sayslittle about wars prosecuted by them against non-democratic nations.

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Nor has neo-Wilsonian democracy cured the world of war and want, asfamously suggested by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History andthe Last Man (1992). The US-led war on terror has succeeded only increating more terrorists, an empirical proof surely contrary to its statedobjectives. Self-balancing and largely self-regulating global capitalmarkets have proven to be incapable of balancing or regulatingeffectively enough to stave off near-collapse and subsequent economicmisery to millions. Capitalism itself, and its Cold War foe, communism,have in most cases achieved the very opposite of their aims of bringingprosperity, health and happiness to all.

Ramos does not suggest that the world is anarchic, however. Hisview is that the world is in a state of organised instability, a conceptdrawn from the physical sciences, in particular chaos theory andcomplexity science. In this system, we never know what event, object orperson may prove to be responsible for triggering unexpected andoccasionally catastrophic change. The scientific metaphor runs throughthe book and also provides it with its conceptual basis. This is acommon and effective conceit but has its limitations. There is little needto refer to the physics of politics, for example, when all one isreferring to is political economy, a term of sufficient currency andutility to satisfy most authors.

Our current institutions are inherently incapable of grasping the ideaof organised instability and therefore formulate policy via outmodedthought and practice. Essentially, they make bad policy because they donot understand the environment in which they operate, and are toolethargic and inflexible to adapt and respond. The old rulebooks ofcause and effect, deterrence and defence, are no longer applicable,relying as they do on monolithic organising principles. Ramo isencouraging policy-makers to take a good hard look at the worldaround them and at themselves and then begin reconfiguring powerstructures and decision-making processes in order to generate good andappropriate policy that reflects the dynamism of a complex world.

Through a series of diverse case studies Ramo draws conclusionsabout how some people and organisations are thriving in an unstableworld. At the heart of them all is a reliance on quick-wittedness,innovation, pragmatism, and an eye for opportunity. This holds true asmuch for Hizballah as it does for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The bulkof the book is taken up with describing how people are adaptingsuccessfully across the world while traditional structures are fallingbehind. Ramo writes in engaging fashion, is adept at linking acrosstimes and subjects, and the reader is left in little doubt that he isdefinitely on to something.

However, as a guide to how we can save ourselves (p.8) thebook inevitably falls short. Although Ramo does not claim to be

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prescriptive in his recommendations for how this can be achieved, hedoes not offer anything likely to be of interest to those who shouldperhaps be reading this book in the first place: policy-makers.Although the author writes encouragingly of returning a sense ofagency and responsibility to weary citizens everywhere, if ourinstitutions really do need to change then how best should that beachieved? Ramo offers no solutions in this department, other than arefocusing from security to resilience, learning from Orientalconcepts of indirection rather than confrontation, and an apprecia-tion of context. His suggestion that we view threats as systems,rather than objects, is wise but already part of military planning, ifnot political decision-making.

More revealing though is the discovery of sufficient typographicerrors and egregious mistakes the Rwandan genocide was in 1994,not 1995 (p.82) coupled with frequent references to the still unfoldingeconomic crisis, to suggest that this volume may perhaps have beenrushed to publication. It feels unfinished and drops away alarminglytowards the end without satisfactory conclusion. Ramo could quiteeasily defend this on the basis that in his worldview nothing is everfinished and, certainly, if his ideas are to be taken seriously then this isall a work-in-progress anyway. He also leaves us in no doubt as to hishigh-flying social environment, reflecting perhaps his hobby ofcompetitive aerobatics.

The book is accompanied by an eclectic bibliography, the constitu-ents of which are, in the habit of popular volumes, annoyinglyunreferenced in the text. Although a useful reading list, there areomissions. Given its likely readership one could reasonably expect tofind listed John Robbs Brave New War (2007), Nassim NicholasTalebs The Black Swan (2007), and General Sir Rupert Smiths TheUtility of Force (2005). Relying as it does in part on chaos theory, theomission of James Gleicks groundbreaking access-level book, Chaos:Making a New Science (1987), is curious.

Despite its limitations The Age of the Unthinkable deserves widereadership which, judging by its media reception in the US, it is likely togain. Joshua Cooper Ramo is erudite and imaginative, a combinationthat means that although he may not have all the answers he is entirelycompetent to successfully communicate complexity with clarity. This isno mean feat, and the book offers sufficient insight into the modernworld, its characteristics and its problems, that it commends itself tothe academy and to the wider public and, of course, to policy-makerseverywhere.

TIM STEVENS 2010Kings College London

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Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding theDecline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2009. Pp.330. $29.95, HB. ISBN 978-0-691-13948-7.

Audrey Kurth Cronin observes that despite variation in casualties,objectives, and longevity, all previous terrorism campaigns have hadone key characteristic in common: they ended. Therefore, she arguesthat the best way to develop counterterrorism policy is to thoroughlyanalyze the final stages of previous terrorist organizations in the hopethat the resulting findings can provide improved guidance to those whowish to better understand terrorism campaigns and bring them to aclose.

To accomplish this, Cronin analyzed 457 campaigns from theMemorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) TerrorismKnowledge Base in addition to numerous short case studies, whichhelped to illustrate the causal pathways of the demise of previouscampaigns. The six pathways Cronin identified serve as the foundationfor the book and are described as follows: (1) capture or killing thegroups leader (2) entry of the group into a legitimate political process(3) achievement of the groups aims (4) implosion or loss of the groupspublic support (5) defeat and elimination by brute force (6) transitionfrom terrorism into other forms of violence. (p.8)

Cronin presented these mechanisms as part of an analytical frame-work for academics and policymakers to better understand thedynamics of terrorism and then used the framework herself toevaluate the probable course of Al-Qaedas ultimate demise. Sheclaims that Al-Qaeda is unlikely to end due to decapitation of itsleadership (too late), achievement of its goals (impossible), orelimination by brute force (counterproductive and improbable).Instead, she argues that Al-Qaeda is likely to meet its demise due tothe loss of public support from targeting missteps or a transition toother methods of violence like insurgency, nudged along by statesoffers of negotiations and/or amnesty to Al-Qaedas peripheralelements.

As Cronin points out, far more scholarship has been completed onthe causes of terrorism, but the end of a campaign cannot beunderstood simply as the absence of its original causes. Her analysisof dynamics that emerge after a campaigns initiation, therefore,represents the first of two major contributions to the counterterrorismliterature. The second results from the structure of her analysis. Muchof the existing counterterrorism literature seeks to improve state policy,and so it focuses on what states have done right and wrong in the pastand makes recommendations about what they can do better in thefuture. This research design is not without merit, but its resulting policy

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recommendations can pose a problem when they are based on a state-centric concept of counterterrorism.

As Cronin effectively argues, many of the reasons why terrorism ends from infighting to a loss of popular support have little to do with theactions of states. Therefore, effective counterterrorism policy has asmuch to do with the realization by state actors of how often they playan inconsequential or even counterproductive role in the demise ofterrorist organizations as it does with attempts to actively thwart theiractivities. Cronins broader analysis of all possible pathways toterrorisms end reveals that studying the objective of most counter-terrorism policies (the end of terrorism) may be more useful thansimply studying the items of interest (the policies themselves), and maywell represent the best way to get the latter right.

Unfortunately, a few key methodological choices Cronin makes, onceher focus on the demise of terrorist campaigns is set, weakens some ofher empirical claims. First, her study selects both independent anddependent variables to a considerable degree. It is one thing to want tounderstand the manner in which terrorist campaigns end; it is anotherto draw conclusions almost exclusively by analyzing the presence ofthose pathways and the termination of campaigns. Doing so may limitthe identification of key independent variables and related hypotheses,make assessment of their relative explanatory power and scopeconditions problematic, and generally draw into question associatedcausal claims. In the absence of a more thorough examination ofinstances lacking her independent variables, or instances of endurancealongside her studies of campaign demise, her findings are less robustthan they otherwise might be.

This leads to the second problem with Cronins methodology,namely, the set-up of her case studies. The author repeatedly labels hercases comparative, but it is often unclear exactly what she iscomparing or how the comparison is being structured to yield powerfulresults. Most of her cases resemble brief attempts (often three pages orless and at times even less than one page) at describing one of her sixcausal pathways with some historical context. The vast majority arethus largely illustrative and lack consideration of competing explana-tions for the end of campaigns or any attempt to hold key lurkingvariables constant across cases.

That said, Cronin does offer a few promising exceptions, particularlyin the section on decapitation. Her analysis of The Shining Path, TheKurdistan Workers Party, and the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA)included time series data on group attacks overlaid with the date ofcapture of key leaders, which allows the reader to better assess thisexplanatory variable in greater context. As Cronin notes, the data isimperfect and challenges to assembling it in this manner abound, but

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these examples do provide a positive step in analyzing her claimsagainst the full life span of the groups, if not in comparison withcompeting explanations. Ultimately, the number of cases Croninconsiders is impressive, and since her primary purpose is thepresentation and specification of mechanisms rather than the testingof causal claims, these methodological critiques are not fatal to thelarger project, and they present opportunities for future research.

Cronin succeeds in the central goal of her study, which is to present atemplate for understanding the demise of terrorist campaigns thatfuture scholars can learn from, debate, and revise. Unfortunately,Cronins project fails to fully incorporate two recent similar studies, thearticle Why Terrorism Does Not Work by Max Abrahms (Interna-tional Security, 2006) and Why Terrorist Groups End: Lessons forCountering Al-Qaeda (2008) by Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, therebymissing an opportunity to launch that debate and further advance thesubfield.

Cronin could have examined best practices for analyzing terrorismsend using large statistical samples, which has not been attempted bymany scholars. In particular, she could have analyzed methodologicaldifficulties shared by all three studies in isolating the effects of the use ofterrorism by a single group on achievement of a political objective.Although Cronins awareness of this issue is clear from her discussionof two case studies of group success the Irgun Zvai Leumi and theAfrican National Congress she does not suggest or utilize anyqualitative or quantitative methodology for better isolating terrorismsimpact. This presents a further avenue for future research.

The fact that Cronins book raises more questions than it answersmay ultimately be a positive, because she aims to provide a wide-ranging analysis of a subject in its early phases that can serve as aspringboard to future studies. How Terrorism Ends is, therefore, aworthwhile book for both academics and policymakers. If a readeragrees with some points and finds others lacking, but ultimatelyconsiders how to grapple with terrorism from a new perspective,Cronin will have succeeded in her aims.

PETER J. P. KRAUSE 2010Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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