Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The Case for Ad Hoc Machinery by Lex RieffelReview by: Richard N. CooperForeign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2004), p. 170Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20033849 .

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Recent Books India but nothing on the truly awful state of India's state-run power system. In any case, the results of privatization have clearly been far worse than its advocates claim; this book starts to examine why.

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. BY PAUL KRUGMAN.

New York: W. W. Norton, 2003,

320 pp. $25.95.

A Princeton economist turned New York Times columnist, Krugman combines colorful writing with astute economic analysis. This book is a collection of his columns from 2000 to 2003 (plus some earlier articles written for non-economists)

with new introductory commentary. Krugman is a self-conscious outsider, an iconoclast who offers trenchant com

mentary on bad policy and bad business behavior, and much of the material here concerns what he considers the Bush administration's systematic deception of the public. In the introduction, he posits the existence of a revolutionary right-wing conspiracy-a term he does not use lightly. His commentary ranges from developments in Japan and Europe to financial crises and foreign trade policy, areas in which Krugman has made im portant contributions as an economist. He emerges as a strong, insightftil critic of an unqualified "market-knows-best" world view.

Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The Casefor Ad Hoc Machinery. BY LEX RIEFFEL. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2003, 368 pp. $39.95.

In recent decades, countless governments have borrowed too much abroad and subsequently had to reschedule or scale back their payments to foreign creditors

(Argentina being only the most recent in a long list). As a result, there have been various suggestions for streamlining, for malizing, and legalizing the procedures for dealing with sovereign debt problems. But in fact, reasonably orderly procedures have developed on an informal basis as collective experience builds. In this useful reference, Rieffel, for many years an official at the U.S. Treasury, provides a thorough account of the post-1gSo evolution of procedures for dealing with sovereign debt owed to both official and private creditors. After critically examining proposals for major institutional over hauls, he vigorously defends the ad hoc, evolutionary approach, while offering his own recommendations for modest improvements on current practices.

Military; Scientific, and Technological

LAWRENCE D. FREEDMAN

Terrorism, Afghanistan, andAmerica's New Way of War. BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN. Annapolis: United States

Naval Institute, 2003, 304 pp. $29.95. The Iraq War.A Military History. BY

WILLIAMSON MURRAY AND ROBERT H.

SCALES, JR. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, 368 pp. $25.95.

The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons. BY ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN. Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies Press, 2003, 592 pp. $2s.00.

The frustrations of occupying Iraq have obscured the short, sharp military cam paign with which the United States and

[170] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume83No.1.

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