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Book Reviews

EDITED BY TERRY BARRINGER

America’s Commission in the World?Ignorant Armies—Sliding into War in Iraq

Gwyne DyerToronto, McClelland and Stewart, 2003, 189 pp., ISBN 0-77-102977-2

America’s War on Terror

Patrick Hayden, Tom Lansford and Robert P. Watson (Eds)Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, xviii + 166 pp., ISBN 0-754-63799-9

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II

William BlumLondon, Zed Books, 2003, 470 pp., ISBN 8-427-7369-0

We Americans have no commission from God to police the World. (BenjaminHarrison, 23rd president of the United States, 1889 – 93)

These three books tackle one common theme that would seem to contravene thewords of President Benjamin Harrison: the intervention of the USA in the affairs ofother states. Between them they cover the period from the end of the Second WorldWar to the onset of war in Iraq in the spring of 2003.

Gwyne Dyer’s Ignorant Armies was written in early 2003 and has as its focus thewar against Iraq that was about to break. Dyer’s work provides a critical analysis ofhow those fighting the ‘war on terror’ declared in the aftermath of 11 September2001 ended up confronting Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. The impending conflicthe describes as a most ‘unnecessary war’. While Dyer is clearly not a supporter of theBush administration, this work is not wholly anti-Bush; instead Dyer differentiatesbetween the success of the war on terror in Afghanistan and then the skewing of thewar in targeting Iraq. Indeed, between September and December 2001 Dyerdescribes Bush as ‘‘a very impressive performer’’ (p. 95).

The success Dyer identifies is set against ingrained pressures within the USestablishment not to commit forces overseas. He attributes this to the so-called‘Mogadishu line’, after the death of 19 American soldiers in the Somali capital in1993. Dyer feels the USA did things well during operation Enduring Freedom byseeking and gaining United Nations approval, forming a broad-based coalition,being sensitive to collateral damage and framing a long-term plan for the

The Round TableVol. 94, No. 1, 145 – 165, January 2005

ISSN 0035-8533 Print/1474-029X Online/05/010145-21 # 2005 The Round Table Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/00358530500033422

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rehabilitation of Afghanistan. Having dismantled Afghanistan’s capability tosupport al-Qaeda, Dyer claims that, at that stage, Bush could have called an endto the most obvious operation in the war on terror but maintained an ongoingcampaign of intelligence gathering and lower-level operations to prevent threatsemerging. Instead in January 2002 the ‘Axis of Evil’ emerged from the Bush WhiteHouse as a potential target in the war on terror. The implication for Dyer is that, byidentifying the Axis of Evil, Bush made the war on terror a political fight. The aimafter that was to challenge any and all that did not conform to US interests. In thisthe USA chose the target of least resistance within the Axis of Evil and drew theirplans against Baghdad. By redirecting the war on terror to Iraq, Dyer suggests thatthe only ones to benefit will be al-Qaeda and their policy of ‘la politique du pire’—thepolitics of making things worse.

Within this analysis Dyer considers many of the salient issues that havesurrounded the build-up to conflict in Iraq. In discussing weapons of massdestruction Dyer suggests the term really means nuclear weapons and refers tochemical and biological weapons as an ‘interesting curiosity’ (p. 30). Dyer also seeksto debunk Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, as many have done before him,by arguing that clashes are taking place within geographically dispersed culturesbetween modernisers and traditionalists.

While making interesting points, the volume can be criticized for lacking academicdepth in terms of providing the appropriate evidence and sources, as demonstratedby the absence of a bibliography. Nevertheless, Dyer’s views provide a thought-provoking comment on the transition through the war on terror to events in the Gulfin 2003. Dyer’s concerns are epitomized in his summation of the impact of 11September 2001: ‘‘it did not change the world, but it is being used in an attempt tochange the world’’ (p. 2).

This proposition arises in the collection of essays brought together in America’sWar on Terror. The work examines a variety of the wider implications of thecampaign being fought by the Bush administration. It begins with a conventionalattempt to define terrorism and in doing so employs the ‘sound bite’: one man’sterrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Indeed, it is only as the preface draws to aclose that, after a brief history of terrorism, the aim of the book is disclosed. Theeditors’ focus is on ‘‘the concepts, background, and emerging views of terrorism andthe American response to terrorism’’ (p. vx). However, this work only partiallysucceeds in fulfilling these lofty aims, which is perhaps not surprising in a volume offewer than 200 pages and with contributions from scholars at various stages of theircareers. Neal Allen provides an interesting essay outlining the presidential ‘regime’he sees developing as the Bush administration tackles the war on terror. Allensuggests this fight will see a greater concentration of power in foreign policy makingin the White House. He draws parallels with the administrations of WilliamMcKinley and Theodore Roosevelt in their pursuit of a ‘limited colonialism’ at theturn of the 20th century and then with Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman in the1940s.

The next essay of note is composed by Jack Lechelt and entitled ‘The loyal footsoldier: Vice President Cheney in the war on terror’. Lechelt states that because of hisvast experience and influence with Bush, Cheney has become ‘‘the most influentialand powerful Vice President in the history of the United States’’ (p. 64). He outlines

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six key areas that allow Cheney to wield this influence, the most telling of which isthat he has no presidential ambition of his own. The international dimension of thewar on terror is handled admirably in the entries by Vaughn Shannon, ‘The politicsof the Middle East peace process and the war on terror’, and Patrick Hayden, ‘Thewar on terrorism and the just use of military force’. Shannon considers that in thewar on terror the peace process in the Middle East is a means to an end for Bush andnot an end in itself, but that this may actually help Arab – Israeli reconciliation.Hayden’s contribution in utilizing just-war theory is to ask the pertinent question ofwhat the limits are to fighting the war on terror.

Mark Evans in the final contribution provides a worthy piece on ‘‘‘Terrorism’’ inthe moral discourse of humanity’. Evans’ focus is the moral judgementalism that isemployed in analysing the war on terror and he asks if it is worthwhile to rejectmoral judgements. In endeavouring to be ‘objective’ in analysing the war on terrorone is ignoring the value of a moral judgement; who would not want to incorporate amoral dimension in dealing with the potential the war on terror has to inflictsuffering? Certainly George Bush has employed a moral judgementalism in hisrhetoric on the war on terror. In summation, the value of this collection of essays, incontrast to other analyses, is in moving beyond a conventional study of cause andeffect and instead broadening the questions one has to consider in evaluating the waron terror.

William Blum’s Killing Hope—US Military and CIA Interventions since WorldWar II admirably considers the exploits of the USA in infiltrating, corrupting,destabilizing and overthrowing regimes across the world it has found not to its tastesince the end of the Second World War. This book provides an indispensablereference guide, charting the instances of US intervention in the affairs of otherstates, ranging from virtually all of Eastern Europe during the 1950s to Brazil in the1960s and Afghanistan in the 1980s. Blum places much of the motivation for this onthe Cold War mindset within the US establishment yet employs a conventionalrevisionist view of Soviet territorial desires on Western Europe and its desire toattack the USA. The author also argues that throughout the period it ‘‘matteredlittle’’ whether those targeted were followers of communism, only that they could belabelled as such. While one would not be surprised to find examinations of attemptsto destabilize communist regimes in China and Korea in the 1950s, Blum alsoincludes an account of the CIA’s influence in the removal from office of a legallyelected prime minister in a ‘western’ liberal democracy. Edward Whitlam’s reign asthe prime minister of Australia was ended in 1975 by the non-elected GovernorGeneral. Blum attributes this to the CIA letting it be known that they would cut offall intelligence links if Whitlam’s investigations into US military and intelligenceinstallations in Australia were not ceased. As Blum points out, the CIA would nothave gone to the trouble in a Third World country to utilize a constitutional method,albeit an archaic one.

Blum’s contribution to the critical assessment of the role of the USA is plain to seein Killing Hope. As one might suspect from someone who left the State Departmentin 1967 because he disagreed with US policy towards Vietnam and who entitled hisprevious work, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Blum findsplenty to criticize in US foreign policy. Yet the book is a well crafted and wellconsidered piece that can only really be criticized in its final chapters for making

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evident political criticism of the administrations of the 1990s. Such an all-encompassing volume, recounting over 50 instances of US intervention, is awelcome accompaniment to examinations of US foreign policy in the second half ofthe 20th century. Blum’s final thoughts reveal a worrying twist for many on thethoughts of Immanuel Kant. The USA is following a policy of ‘perpetual war forperpetual peace’ (p. 392), which makes the prospect of it accepting it has ‘nocommission from God’ to intervene where it sees fit, increasingly unlikely.

J. Simon RofeDefence Studies Department King’s College London, UK

Inside the Foreign OfficeThe New Mandarins: How British Foreign Policy Works

John DickieLondon and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2004, pp. viii+234, ISBN 1-86064-978-5

American visitors waiting in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to see theSecretary of State can hardly believe their eyes as attendants trundle antiquatedtrolleys along the corridors distributing boxes of telegrams. John Dickie, who haswatched this scene as a diplomatic correspondent for more than half a century,describes how they move at a measured pace, as if they are delivering second-classletters—but today, he adds, there is one difference: they do so amid the hum of theIT inside the diplomatic rooms. ‘‘The end of the paper regime is not in sight yet’’,says Dickie, ‘‘for although there is no shortage of computers throughout thebuildings Jack Straw admitted that he does not use one very often and that when hewas studying a situation he preferred to read about it on paper, not on screen’’.

Dickie’s admirable and informative book is about the dragging of the Foreign andCommonwealth Office into the 21st century. Modernization still has some way to go.A cautious cast of mind and ponderous way of thinking remain, as does ‘‘in somequarters a disinclination to be direct in setting out arguments for course of action,despite a persistent campaign by Sir John Kerr, (the reforming Permanent Under-Secretary of State) to strike out the phrase ‘I feel that. . .’ and insist that what theForeign Office wants is not feelings but well-thought out considerations.’’

When Kerr took over in 1997 none of the 21 under-secretaries was a woman.When he left there were 13 under-secretaries, three of them women. Diplomats hadno choice as to where they were posted. Today, under the bidding system for posts,they can map out their moves as they are promoted. In academia the popularity of acareer in the diplomatic service has soared, sharing top place with the BBC andBritish Airways.

It was under an aloof and difficult Robin Cook that the Foreign Office revolutionbegan. He set up a reform group of young officials—Young Turks—to think theunthinkable. In this most tradition-bound department of government the mandarinswould have quickly sounded alarm bells, but a Young Turk, reports Dickie, said:‘‘We were lucky John Kerr was there at the time because he saw himself as arevolting peasant too’’.

Dickie works through all the reforms that took place: Dress Down Day (Friday),when young officials worked in leisure gear; more modern pictures on the walls; a

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fitness centre and a creche for 36 children in the building. Instead of calling their boss‘Ambassador’ or ‘Sir’ staff now used first names; a Human Rights Department cameinto being. The big change was from an antiquated communications system to state-of-the-art.

The number of serving officers from ethnic minorities is still small—289 of 5436staff at the end of 2001—but rising. The appointment in April 2004 of 44-year-oldAnwar Choudhary, former consultant engineer with Siemens Plessey, as HighCommissioner in Bangladesh, was a watershed. A former journalist, PeterLongworth, became High Commissioner in Zimbabwe.

Dickies’s thoroughly researched book is full of unreported facts. Who knew thatthe video library, for example, offered for the training of diplomats such titles as oneon chairing meetings with John Cleese called More Bloody Meetings and anothercalled Decisions, Decisions?

At the end of the 20th century morale in the Office was still low. Staff did not thinktheir skills and potential were being best used or that promotion was ‘fair andobjective’. The situation of spouses with skills and careers of their own wasunsatisfactory and not properly appreciated.

From his long experience as a diplomatic correspondent Dickie has manyamusing, sometimes sharp, anecdotes about foreign secretaries. Like the oneabout Murray Maclehose, later to be Governor of Hong Kong, who when he wasprincipal private secretary to George Brown would draw British ambassadors onone side just before Brown arrived and say: ‘‘If you don’t know it already, thisman is an alcoholic. In the course of the next 48 hours he is bound to insult you,your wife, and probably everyone on your embassy staff. But you just have tolive with it. . .He will be gone before the weekend and you can relax and pretendhis visit never happened.’’

Anthony Crosland was another difficult Secretary of State. When he was latearriving at his No. 1 Carlton Gardens residence to greet a visiting foreign secretaryhe was served a glass of sherry by a young first secretary. The unfortunate man (laterto become an ambassador) was pulled on one side and told: ‘‘Never, never, neverserve sherry in my presence or to my guests—it’s only done in senior common roomsat Oxford’’.

In the closing chapters of this book Dickie deals with the rise of the politicalcorrespondent at the expense of the diplomatic correspondent that has followedfrom the ever-increasing role of No. 10 Downing Street in formulating foreign policyat the expense of the Foreign Office. This trend can be traced back as far as HaroldWilson’s tenure as prime minister. It accelerated under Margaret Thatcher and hasbeen carried several steps further by Tony Blair.

Dickie produces the astonishing statistic that in the first 60 days of the Afghancrisis Blair had 59 meetings with world leaders, as well as 34 phone calls to them. Hemade 31 flights and travelled 40 000 miles.

A couple of quotes in this book span the change in diplomacy that Dickie spellsout. One is from Sir Peter Marshall, former deputy Commonwealth Secretary-General: ‘‘When I entered the British Foreign Service in 1949 I received absolutelyno formal training whatsoever. One entered the pool at the deep end.’’ The other isfrom Canadian former deputy foreign minister Gordon Smith: ‘‘There was a timewhen establishing a new embassy or diplomatic post took weeks, even months. Now

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it takes a plane ticket, a laptop and a dial tone—and maybe a diplomatic passport.We can hit the ground running.’’

A little sadly, perhaps, it cannot now be long before the last antiquated documenttrolley trundles out of the corridors of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for thelast time.

Derek Ingram

International Relations in the 21st CenturyThe New Economic Diplomacy: Decision Making and Negotiation in International

Economic Relations

Nicholas Bayne and Stephen WoolcockLondon, Ashgate, 2003, pp. xiv +314, ISBN (hardback) 0-7546-1832- 3,(paperback) ISBN 0-754-6 4318-2

This is a book to be enjoyed at many levels. There is meaty pabulum for theacademic; revealing insight into the world of international negotiation for theaspirant diplomat; required reading for any NGO member; and a fluent and readablesurvey of the machinery of international relations for the general reader. Hardly apage of The Financial Times or The Economist will not find some close reference andillumination in this book.

It is also highly original, in conjugating the analytical skills of academics with theexperience of policy practitioners to show how states manage and conduct theirinternational economic relations. In British life there has always been something of agulf fixed between the two worlds, often brought home vividly to any diplomatinvited to dine at an Oxbridge high table.

The authors happily bridge this gap, and are well equipped to do so. Sir NicholasBayne joined the Foreign Service with a DPhil in archaeology, and is no stranger toacademe. He extended his interests into economics throughout a richly varied andhighly successful diplomatic career (he is a leading authority on EconomicSummitry, on which he has written extensively). On the inspiration of the late MikeHodges of the LSE, he teamed up with Stephen Woolcock, lecturer and master of thetheory of international relations there, to arrange a series of graduate seminars inEconomic Diplomacy at which pairs of academics and practitioners shared theplatform. This turned into a full graduate course in 1999 – 2000 with the samecomposition, and continues to this day.

The book embodies these lectures and retains the fluency of the spoken word. Thisis valuable, for the matiere is not exactly bedside reading (save for the confirmedinsomniac). Each chapter is self-contained, so the contents can be digested seriatim.But the great strength of the book lies in the synoptic view it provides of the worldeconomy, and the huge problems that lie in managing it. It therefore richly rewardsthe effort of persisting to the end.

But it is not all heavy going. There are many happy touches to lighten the path:‘‘In some respects economic diplomacy is like sex: easier to describe if you havepractised it yourself’’, and ‘‘Economic diplomacy is like cookery. If the nationaleconomic pudding goes into the international steamer for too short a time, it comes

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out hard and unpalatable, however much brandy and raisins may be in it. But if it isleft there too long, it dissolves into a tasteless mush.’’ If the arcana of internationalcommodity agreements, agricultural export subsidies and the linkages betweendefence and foreign policy in Japanese –US economic relations can ever be madeeasy reading, the authors succeed heroically in achieving this.

The layout of the book is simple. In Part 1 the nature of economic diplomacy isdefined, analysed and demonstrated with practical examples. It deploys threetensions and eight associated questions, which serve as a leitmotiv linking thecomponents of the book. Part II shows the different levels at which economicdiplomacy is conducted, and how this varies with the body conducting it and thetheme it is treating.

A helpful introduction tells us what economic diplomacy is, how it differs from(yet still resembles) normal diplomacy, and why it matters to all of us. It describesthe tensions which government in particular must master: those between politics andeconomics, between international and domestic pressures, and those in the state’srelations with others such as private business and NGOs. It reminds us that oureconomic relations with others are conducted at a number of levels—bi-, multi-,plurilaterally and regionally. It asks which is better—voluntary cooperation orbinding rules? And it cites recent history to show how rapidly the scene can change,as when recovery from the financial crises of the late 1990s was followed by thebattering of the world trade system at Seattle and the doldrums from which it hasonly recently—and tentatively—emerged.

Part 1 takes us more deeply into the theory and practice of these ‘special relations’.Stephen Woolcock sifts from the abundant international relations and internationalpolitical economy literature the role of states, systems, ideas and individuals inshaping outcomes; the light thrown on this process by game theory, especially aspropounded by Robert Putnam (co-author of Bayne’s book on Summitry); andOdell’s negotiation theory, whose elements aptly explain why the Doha trade roundwas so difficult to relaunch. The simple message of this and the following chapter isthat decision making for governments, forced to reconcile domestic and internationalinterests, demands for democratic accountability from legislatures and increasinglyvoluble interests groups, is today much more complicated than it used to be.

This is fascinatingly elaborated by Bayne and his fellow-practitioners, whosespecialized contributions show how far theory is actually reflected in practice. Thisspills over from the first to the second part of the book. Bayne, a former ambassadorto the OECD, is here joined by outstanding representatives of the Whitehallmandarinate (Colin Budd, Richard Carden and Nigel Wicks), as well as Phil Evansfrom the Consumers’ Association, Patrick Rabe from the European Commission,Matthew Goodman, an American banker turned financial diplomat, and IvanMbirimi, a talented Zimbabwean working on economic affairs at the Common-wealth Secretariat. This heady mixture of talents deals with Summits, the USA andespecially its relations with Japan, the EU’s regional and especially environmentaleconomic diplomacy, how developing countries cope as recent but increasinglystrong players in the game, the role of the major financial institutions, and theorganization of the world trading system.

Especially interesting are the limits on US hegemony and the muscle power of theEuropean Union to promote—or frustrate—the sensible evolution of world

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economic relations. Both themes recur throughout the book. We are reminded that,despite its unilateralist and formerly isolationist reflexes, the USA has to bend theknee to the WTO’s dispute settlement panel and depends for its prosperity on Asianand others’ readiness to continue investing their savings in the dollar. Yet it stillenjoys the power to unlock the Doha and perhaps the Kyoto processes when itreverts to its mood of postwar enlightenment and constructive engagement.

The book leaves one thankful that such crucial facts of contemporary life shouldbe managed by intelligent and devoted officials who are not afraid to thrash outcommuniques in the small hours which commit governments to forswear ‘war byother means’ and instead try to make the world a better place. The promise of asuccessful Doha trade round (by no means assured as yet) is an eloquent illustrationof this unsung fact of life.

The Commonwealth receives a passing mention, as one of the plurilateralorganizations that seeks to build bridges towards voluntary cooperation, but lacksthe muscle to enforce rules. More might have been made of its capacity for‘benevolent contagion’, whereby a consensus perceived to be in the common good ofdeveloped and developing countries, sometimes born of arduous late-night drafting,is subsequently exported to multilateral fora (the Bretton Woods institutions, theUN) and there endorsed by the global community.

Few remember that what is now familiar—the heavily indebted poor countries(HIPC) initiative—was spawned by Kenneth Clarke at the 1994 CommonwealthFinance Ministers meeting in Malta, to be greeted with contumely by the Frenchamong others, but which landed on the agenda of the 1996 Bank/Fund meeting as amajor development. Nor that the Edinburgh Economic Declaration of 1997 callingfor the better management of globalization was initially opposed root and branch byCommonwealth small states because of their fear of another Uruguay trade round.They ignored the fact that a Commonwealth delegation of trade ministers had, onthe evidence of Leon Brittan, EU Trade Commissioner, made a crucial contributionto its success in 1993. The value of the Commonwealth’s ability to generateconsensus on matters central to the management of the global economy should bemore widely recognized.

This is a book that one returns to with pleasure. The authors and its contributorshave done a manful service to the specialized as well as the general reader indissecting the processes of managing the international economy and assigning weightto the institutions which rule our lives. It deserves a wide readership.

Humphrey Maud

New Directions in Global Political Governance: The G8 and International Order in the

Twenty-First Century

John J. Kirton and Junichi TakaseAldershot, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 368, ISBN 0-7546-1833-1

This is the eighth volume in the G8 and Global Governance Series, which exploresthe issues, institutions and strategies of the participants in the G8 network of globalgovernance. As in previous volumes there is a detailed account of the most recent

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summit and the sometimes arcane and complex procedures that govern the leadersand their ‘sherpas’. The analysis of the 2000 Okinawa Summit also reflectsinterestingly on the role of Japan at the summit and the way in which that countryhas responded to the increasing threat of global destabilization. Most significantly,New Directions in Global Governance goes further than any previous volume inlooking comprehensively at the role of the G8 itself in shaping a new internationalorder for the 21st century. In reflecting on the post-9/11 age the book explores thechallenges globalization poses to the long-established institutions of globalgovernance. In particular, it examines the role that the UN, the G8 and theUSA—considered by some to be a hegemonic ‘hyperpower’—can play in catalysingneeded change. The reflections contained in Part IV on new directions in globalinstitutional governance go as far as to argue for a central role for the G8 and theestablishment of concert diplomacy as a desirable replacement for the UN system.

The G7 was founded in 1975 and represented the leaders of the USA, France,Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy. Canada was invited to become a member at thefirst meeting. Democratic Russia joined in the 1990s and so gave rise to the G8.Some of the debates are still focused on the original seven members and hence thegroup may be referred to as G7/8. Part 1 of New Directions reflects on theglobalization challenge and the G8’s Okinawa response. The key chapter is byNicholas Bayne. In it he clearly sets out the purpose of the summits. They are toprovide collective management of the world economy, to reconcile the tensionswithin globalization and to generate political leadership. The mere statement of thepurposes illustrates the enormity, some might say arrogance, of the task set by theG8. However, Bayne is disarming. He notes that there are far more countries in theinternational economic system and the G8 is now less dominant and has a realproblem of legitimacy. He argues that the G8 should lead, but do so tactfully andassociate with others as much as it can. He further notes that, while the summitswere intended to promote collective management in place of US hegemony, theyhave largely failed to do so. He also makes revealing comments about individualleaders and argues that the G8 should keep its present constitution of leadingindustrial democracies but work harder to share views with others. Unfortunately,the pragmatic and measured evaluation displayed by Sir Nicholas is not particularlyprominent in the writing of most of the other contributors.

In the next section, there is a valuable exploration of the role of Japan within the21st century world order. The chapters are written by Japanese scholars and containinteresting insights into the perceptions of the host nation to the global concerns ofthe summit. Yuichi Morii asserts that the Okinawa Summit cannot be separatedfrom the Okinawa problem, one of the major political issues in Japanese politics.The unwelcome presence of the massive US military base on the island and thescandal of the rape case in 1995 made Okinawa a particularly symbolic choice as thevenue for the summit. Part 2 recounts how the fact of the physical presence of the G8summit dramatically highlighted the issues of security sharing, national relationswith the USA and the vulnerability of a local economy.

In Part 3 the emphasis is on the G8 and global security. Steven Lamy of theUniversity of Southern California provides an excellent analysis of the G8 and thehuman security agenda. He notes that there has been a growing tendency to put theinterests, rights and needs of individuals at the centre of security debates. However,

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he then argues that the emergence of George W. Bush as leader in the USA heralds areturn to the idea that the international system is anarchic, dangerous andcompetitive, and that security is about the threat, use and control of military force.Yet this idea is being thrust forward while other countries and non-governmentalorganizations are promoting a broader and more human-centric security agenda.Lamy quotes an address by UN official Juan Somavia: ‘‘Human security requires anew world view; one where 35 000 children a day dying of preventable diseases wouldbe unthinkable and one where safe drinking water for everyone is more than amirage in the middle of the desert’’. The chapter concludes that it is hard to beoptimistic about the role of the G8 as a leading force for reform and change in thehuman security area.

However, it is in Part 4, on new directions in global institutional governance,that the most potent desires of the G8 are exposed. In an uncompromisingchapter by John Kirton, guru of the G7/8, he argues that the members of the G7/8 do not believe that the UN Security Council and the Permanent Five can bereformed to meet the needs of the modern world. Most crucially, he goes on tocall for a major strengthening of the G7/8 system as a political institution so itcan replace the UN as the centre of global political governance in the centuryahead.

New Directions in Global Political Governance provides a rich resource forinternational relations students and for those seeking a better understanding of thetensions and strategies that inform the exercise of power in the new century.Inevitably, some of the convoluted and densely argued contributions typical ofinternational summitry are reflected in the writing of the present book. A 64-wordsentence in the first chapter is, unfortunately, not a completely isolated example.Later, in a chapter on Japanese foreign policy, the fact that a document as thick as abook was submitted to a meeting on the preservation of forests appears to be quotedwithout irony.

Most contributors believe that the G8 has effectively pioneered new institutionsand processes, but also feel that there is much still to do. However, key writersrefer to deep dissatisfaction with the role of the UN and the lack of effectivenessof its associated institutions. The optimism about the potential of the G8 and theunease about the UN then leads one of the editors and the Director of the G8Research Group to propose that the G8 should replace the UN as the centre ofpolitical security governance for the new era. Interestingly, such an outcomemight well be gratifying to the G7’s real founder, Henry Kissinger. FollowingOkinawa, the G7/8 summit moved through the streets of Genoa, with is its200 000 protesters, to Kananaskis in 2002 and then to France in 2003. To thosewho seek to challenge the hegemony of the great powers, the claim that eightcountries should decide on key global issues will be seen as breathtakingarrogance. It is certain that knowledge of the aspiration to replace the UN wouldadd further fuel to the passions of the protesters that continue to picket the richman’s club. However, events since the summit in Okinawa ensure that the debateon global security that is central to this volume will remain at the top of theinternational agenda.

James Porter

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Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam

Jason BurkeLondon, Penguin, 2004 (revised edition), pp. 356, ISBN 0-141-01912-3

If you want to know more about Al-Qaeda, but are too busy to read more than onebook, get your hands on this one. It is clear, lucid and provocative, written by aleading British journalist who has spent plenty of time talking to ordinary people inAfghanistan and Pakistan, plus dozens of bureaucrats, intelligence officers anddiplomats, but has also done extensive documentary research. It is a revised versionof a text first published by I. B. Tauris in 2003 with a different subtitle.

The book gives us a view of Al-Qaeda significantly different from the one offereddaily on the airwaves. Jason Burke does not propose a different view of his subjectmerely in order to shock us and to win a superficial reputation for originality. On thecontrary, his sober tone, his clear sympathy for the ordinary people of southern Asiaand above all his careful use of evidence, all make his argument persuasive. Briefly, itis this: Al-Qaeda has never existed in the sense of a world-wide organizationcontrolled from a central node. Such a vision of a tightly organized conspiracy hasbeen propagated above all by the US government since the late 1990s, not least bylaw enforcement officers who have felt obliged to portray Al-Qaeda in terms of atraditional terrorist organization in order to secure convictions. This wasparticularly so after the African embassy bombings of August 1998, when theFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working with existing conspiracy laws thatwere originally designed to deal with coherent and structured criminal enterprises,sought to portray individual suspects who would otherwise be difficult to convict asmembers of an organization. ‘‘Unfortunately’’, Burke tells us, in this case ‘‘itcompletely misrepresents the nature of the entity under investigation’’ (p. 7). Thenearest thing to Al-Qaeda as the name is popularly understood existed only between1996 and 2001. Al-Qaeda is not a coherent hierarchical group, with a single leader, abroadly uniform ideology and an ability to conceive and execute projects globallythrough disciplined cadres, sleepers and activists throughout the world (p. 231).

So what is Al-Qaeda really? It is in some respects a network of networks, each oneformed in national struggles in various parts of the world, from the west coast of theUSA (scene of a thwarted millennium bomb attack planned by an Algerian militant)to Indonesia. It is also simply an idea or an ideology. Although Al-Qaeda haschanged over time, perhaps the best way of understanding it is as a scale. At oneextreme is a tightly organized cell, the Al-Qaeda hardcore that first coalesced aroundOsama bin Laden and his mentor, the late Abdallah Azzam, in Afghanistan in thelate 1980s. This hardcore has organized a few attacks in what might be called thetraditional terrorist manner, closely controlling an operation such as the 1998bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. At the other end of the scale are local groupsor even individuals scattered through the world who have never met Bin Laden orany of his close associates nor been to Afghanistan, but who share the aims of the Al-Qaeda hardcore as they understand them from internet messages, videos or otherpropaganda material. In between the two extremes are local groups with some sortof radical Islamist ideology that may at some point have had some direct links withthe Al-Qaeda hardcore, but which can better be thought of as franchising operations,

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which carry out an action initiated by themselves but claiming a global brand name.Burke offers three models for understanding Al-Qaeda in its capacity as what heterms the Holy War Foundation. It could be compared to a wealthy university thatdisburses research grants, or to a venture capital company that chooses to financeone or two proposals from the hundreds that are submitted, or to a publishing housethat backs some projects that are brought to it, but rejects many others.

The good news is that many members of the Al-Qaeda hardcore have been killedor captured. Bin Laden himself must these days find communication by satellitephone too risky to be able to run much in the way of a centralized operation.President George W. Bush is said to keep a list in his desk-drawer where he crossesoff the names of members of the hardcore group as they are eliminated. Bin Laden israpidly becoming operationally irrelevant. On the other hand, having become one ofthe most instantly recognizable people in the world, he has also acquired massiveinfluence as a propagandist. Hence the bad news is that, as the veterans of theAfghan war against the Soviets and of the Taliban-era training camps disappear orscatter, attacks attributed to Al-Qaeda are increasingly being carried out by peoplewith little personal connection to the Afghanistan core, like the 2002 bombing of aBali nightclub or the 2004 Madrid railway bombing. Both were carried out in thestyle of Al-Qaeda rather than by any group of people who had trained with BinLaden. This tendency is deeply troubling as it implies that the death or capture ofBin Laden and his closest associates will not prevent future Al-Qaeda attacks. Themost wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, often described as a top Al-Qaeda operative, is no such thing, according to Burke’s research. Al-Zarqawi, aJordanian-born veteran of the Afghan war, has historically been a rival to BinLaden, not his lieutenant or even his ally, although it was reported in October 2004that al-Zarqawi’s group in Iraq had formally aligned itself to Al-Qaeda for the firsttime in an announcement posted on the internet. If so, it is a sign of the rapidlychanging nature of Al-Qaeda.

So what do Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda want? Bin Laden’s aim is to radicalize andmobilize those millions of Muslims who, until now, have spurned the appeals ofradical activists to rise up against impious governments. His strategy is not so muchto fight the West as to persuade Muslims that there is a cosmic struggle taking placebetween good and evil. He believes that, once the world’s Muslims have realized this,they will rise up and return to the true path. Precisely what this true path is, intheological terms, is not clear. Although Burke tells us little of the religious aspectsof Islamic radicalism, other authors, such as the academic Olivier Roy, have pointedout that Bin Laden is more a political thinker than a religious one, and that his visionof the revolution he hopes to inspire owes more to the Marxist tradition ofrevolutionary militancy than it does to the history of Islamic thought.

As for Al-Qaeda’s rapid growth, the least that one can say is that Westerngovernments, and above all the USA, have played into the hands of Al-Qaeda timeafter time. The most obvious examples are the war in Iraq and the failure to applyoverwhelming pressure for a political settlement in Israel and Palestine, the latter asubject that Jason Burke deliberately avoids because, he tells us, it stems from a verydifferent history and set of circumstances than those he recounts and analyses in thisbook. By its tactic of armed propaganda, Al-Qaeda has been successful incapitalizing on frustrations in many parts of the world that stem not so much

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from poverty or oppression as from dashed hopes of development and progress. Themovement’s most obvious constituency, of course, is the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims,but there are many other people who are not Muslim, and who disapprove of Al-Qaeda’s violence, but who have a sneaking admiration for its brazen defiance. Thepopularity of Osama bin Laden tee-shirts even in non-Muslim areas of Africa isevidence of this. Specifically in Afghanistan the West has missed two golden chances,the first when it failed to restore the country to some sort of peace and stability afterthe departure of Soviet forces, the second when it failed to do so again after thedeparture of the Taliban.

The first thing the rich world needs to do to counter the ruthless, nihilist andmillennarian Al-Qaeda is to develop an accurate idea of what is actually happeningin the world. Ever since the end of the Cold War there has been no clear or coherentvision of what sort of a place the world is becoming. Politicians and writers havecompeted to advance their own vision, from George Bush Senior’s ‘New worldorder’ and Francis Fukayama’s ‘End of history’ to Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash ofcivilizations’ and a spate of recent takes on globalization. None of the big ideas thathave had brief popularity in the political offices and think-tanks of Washington hashad much serious explanatory power, because none has really sought to understandor even to encompass the ideas and aspirations of billions of the world’s people, theones who feel that someone or something is preventing them from enjoying the lifethey think they deserve.

Even in recent years there has been a marked decline in the quality of the world’smost influential news media, most notably in the USA but also in Europe, in aprocess usually known as ‘dumbing down’. To judge from the Iraq debacle, Westernintelligence services have not fared much better. Scholarly analysis has declined inmany respects too, as academics come under pressures both professional andcommercial to write books that are fashionable above all else. Fortunately, there arestill some journalists like Jason Burke who are intelligent, dogged and honest.

Stephen EllisAfrika Studie Centrum, Leiden, The Netherlands

History and HistoriansThe Birth of the Modern World 1780 – 1914: Global Connections and Comparisons

C. A. BaylyMalden, MA and Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pp. xxiv + 540, ISBN 0-613-23616-3

Few scholars could be better qualified to write this book than Christopher Bayly.Professor of Imperial History at Cambridge, he has an exceptional grasp of thecomparative history of empires and he wears his learning lightly. The present workdevelops the approach of his earlier overview, Imperial Meridian: The British Empireand the World 1780 – 1830 (Longman, 1989), in which he set the British Raj in Indianot so much in the comparative filter of rival European projections upon the widerworld, but rather within the context of the rhythms of rise and contraction amongother Asian empires. The result is a giant of a book that will remain a landmarkstudy.

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Bayly begins by playing down the notion of ‘prime movers’, pointing out, forinstance, that American independence preceded industrialization and so could nothave been its by-product. Smiling politely upon the postmodernists, he defends thecontinuing utility of ‘grand narrative’. He is even agnostic about the label of‘modernity’, preferring to search for elements of uniformity, a term which enableshim, through a slight play on words, to work outwards from the presentation of thehuman body towards the systematization of structures and philosophies. Thus it isclear from the outset that this is no minor intellectual skirmish but a massive assaultdelivered on a wide intellectual front, a Normandy invasion of a book.

The story begins in the late 18th century with the crumbling of old regimes allacross Europe and Asia (sub-Saharan Africa is harder to accommodate, theAmericas are still subordinate). Thanks to ‘‘archaic globalisation’’, the world ofmuskets and sailing ships was already beginning to cohere into a single community.In many societies, work patterns were increasingly harnessed to market economies,and these ‘‘industrious revolutions’’ imposed the discipline that would facilitatefactory production. Here is the ‘Age of Revolutions’ in an interconnected, globalperspective. However, the new world order that emerged after 1815 was fragile, andthe next half century was ‘‘a period of flux and hiatus’’. Its chief achievement, thecentrality of the state, prompts a discussion of the definitions and dimensions of thatstrange creature. On balance, Bayly concludes, the notion of the state acquiredsufficient legitimacy to dazzle the minds of contemporaries, but its manifestations(especially in China) could not always mobilize sufficient force to impose effectivecentral control. Moreover, this mid-19th century world was still one shaped byarchaic globalization, and only gradually moving towards full internationalization.Bayly argues for the importance of the state—only then does he move toindustrialization and large-scale urbanization as a prelude to consideration ofnationalism. Twenty years ago, a book of this kind would have focused upon‘imperialism’, but Bayly relegates this intellectual by-road to half a dozen pages,insisting that its manifestations are simply part of a chicken-and-egg, cause-and-effect circular process of nationalisms in conflict.

By the late 19th century Bayly is ranging even more widely, into the realm of ideassuch as liberalism and socialism, the rise of science and the emergence of globalidioms not merely in art and architecture but even in literature. In such a world ofrationality and naked power, how did religion survive? Bayly dismisses thecondescending marginalization that sees religion as a form of primitive protestagainst change, arguing rather that the great faiths themselves embraced elements ofmodernity, using printing, mass education and systematization of doctrine, tobecome ‘Imperial Religions’, often in partnership with local states and helping toarticulate the nationalisms that they fostered: even the Church of England inflateditself into the Anglican communion.

From 1880 onwards everything speeded up. Elements of the old regime, such asmonarchy and racism, died hard—one half suspects that Bayly blames theirobstinate survival for the First World War. Unfortunately, the cumulative andaccelerating pace of change created an atmosphere of decay and crisis beyond thecontrol of burgeoning internationalism, both economic and intellectual, and so itwas that in August 1914 the guns shattered the remaining barriers to a single,integrated and unambiguously modernized world. How had it happened that

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northwestern Europe and its American projection had come to drive the wholeplanet? Bayly acknowledges that they were more successful than the rest of theworld, but he dismisses explanations that assert European ‘exceptionalism’, let aloneassume innate European superiority or pronounce verdicts of failure elsewhere.

‘‘Historians keep themselves in a job by overthrowing received wisdom once ageneration or so’’, Bayly remarks. Indeed, ‘‘they think they are at their best whenchallenging orthodoxy’’. But this is no mere cussed inversion of previous dogma.Rather it is the conflation and extension of much recent scholarship to produce whatthe author terms ‘‘a reflection on, rather than a narrative of, world history’’.Paradoxically, I have found it an extraordinarily difficult book to read, and myassessment is of necessity admiring rather than profound. Without doubt the blockmust be traced to shortcomings in the reviewer. Bayly writes well and, unlike moreponderous polymaths, he does not seek to humiliate the reader with the grindingforce of his knowledge. Better surely to have this global grand sweep rather than ahistoriography of empire composed of endless monographs on the inshore fisheriesof the Marzipan Islands. Whence, then, my unease? Primarily it stems from one ofBayly’s undoubted strengths: he is a master pattern maker. If patterns are made byjoining up the dots, then everything depends on the selection of those dots. Theproblem is that, in any period, empires will be in the process of reforming centrallywhile they advance and retreat at the periphery, states will exhibit simultaneoussymptoms of decadence and renewal. A broad and visionary intellect will identifycontemporaneous similarities and parallels at opposite ends of the planet, butwhether these represent trends or coincidence it is hard to know. Indeed, Bayly’spredominant unifying theme for much of the 19th century is one of transition, inwhich resilient survivals resist change in a stewing pot of flux and fluidity.Notwithstanding the book’s title, even modernity is a muted and almost tacitconcept.

This in turn leads to two areas of unease about the terminal date, 1914. First, wasthe modern world born at or before Sarajevo? If modernity boils down touniformity, to an interrelated planet, then surely the touchstone must be China. Formuch of the 20th century, China was somehow relegated to the internationalsidelines, a cordoned-off and peeping spectator of external events. Only at the startof the 21st century has the Chinese economic boom, dreamed of for 200 years, finallylured outside investment and impacted upon world raw material prices. It seemsalmost ungrateful to raise the second problem: Bayly has come closer than mosthistorians to tackling the secret of the universe, and it is hardly fair to demand thathe should have thrown in the causes of the First World War as well. But if a scholarcan look back and so beguilingly discern the origins of our world today, surely thesame hindsight ought to be able to trace the sub-text that led to Tannenberg and theSomme. Somehow, 1914 doubles as unexpected disaster and logical culmination.Perhaps Bayly will emulate Hobsbawm, whose work he admires, and give us a sequelfor the 20th century.

The text is enriched by unusually well integrated and thought-provokingillustrations, plus a dozen maps which are helpful but not totally reliable. Onedealing with religion has shunted Quebec City into Manitoba and eccentricallyappears to equate Wellington with Lourdes and Mecca, an example perhaps of theoverlap between pattern making and shoe-horning. (If the aim was to avoid a blank

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space around New Zealand, why not select Anglican Christchurch or Free KirkDunedin?) Be in no doubt, you will read, mark and learn a great deal from The Birthof the Modern World. But the full process of inward digestion may require more thanone journey through this intriguing text.

Ged Martin

History and the Media

David Cannadine (Ed.)Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 175. ISBN 1-403-92037-0

Let’s face it: the best history there has been on television was an item in the BritishTV show, Dead Ringers. David Starkey and Simon Schama, out filming, meet in afield. A battle ensues between them and their crews, and the whole thing is overlaidwith a pompous and portentous commentary. This satirical item conveyed a numberof essential truths about history on television: that it is powerfully competitive; thatit is personality driven; that it is trying to make news rather than sense; that it isdesperately seeking to inflate the importance of a restricted set of subjects; that it isthe victim of language which seeks to grab attention by being ‘over the top’; and thatit is essentially conservative, generally ignoring all recent trends in research andwriting in the discipline.

This volume of essays arose from a conference (mainly, but not exclusively,devoted to television) at the Institute of Historical Research. Although we are toldthat there were 400 people present from both academe and the media, no one wasapparently prepared to take up a critical stance. The whole thing reads rather like theproduct of a mutual admiration society, in which each performer indulges in eulogieson the others. ‘The academy’ comes in for much stick: academics ‘with tenure’ and in‘provincial universities’ (these two phrases uttered with a metropolitan snarl onseveral occasions) criticize the products of the telly dons for one reason only: they areutterly jealous of the fame and the money. Hence, more than once, the critics ofSchama who wrote in The Times Literary Supplement and History Today arecastigated for their obtuse and obscurantist views.

I well remember the apoplexies that were induced in my British historiancolleagues by Schama’s televised History of Britain. I remember even more theevening I wrecked my living room while watching his piece on Empire. The BritishEmpire, apparently, had a right empire and a wrong empire. The right one was the13 colonies, which ultimately cleaved to the glorious Declaration of Independenceand freedom’s dream. The wrong one was the Caribbean sunk in sugar and slavery,the home of the unfree. The treatment was marked more by what Schama did not saythan what he did. He never mentioned that the Declaration of Independence (itsphrases in any case largely the product of the Scottish Enlightenment) did not applyto women, blacks or native Americans. He said nothing about, even denied theexistence of, the considerable anti-slavery movement in Britain and its colonies. Henever mentioned the fact that slavery lasted 30 more years in the USA or that it wasfollowed by disabilities, not to mention lynchings, that were in many ways moreterrible than anything in the imperial world.

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I could go on. In short, Schama’s take on empire was, in my view, inaccurate anddishonest. He appears in this volume, and as always we are presented with hisinexorable parade of epigram. For Schama the epigram is his epigraph, his epicentre,and his epilogue. Why does someone not tell him (perhaps a television producer?)that a relentless parade of epigrammar ends up by being collective solecism, at oncepretentious and sententious. As Noel Coward once remarked, wit should be offeredin rare flashes, never spread on like marmalade. There are other articles by JeremyIsaacs, Melvyn Bragg, Tristram Hunt and Max Hastings, the latter stunned that hisdaughter’s school had the cheek to teach her about 19th-century Poor Law and the18th-century Agricultural Revolution. Such ‘boring history’ in his view should beconsigned to the junk heap, to be replaced by his kind of history, about great figures,exciting events, above all war.

And there’s the rub. Hastings really offers the motto for all the material here.History on television should always be from above; it should always be about anelite; it should generally concentrate on war. At the risk of revealing my own allegedjealousy (in fact, I really care about the discipline and how it is presented, but then Iwould say that wouldn’t I?) let me offer an example from my own experience. I wasonce asked by a production company to submit an outline for a series of sixprogrammes on the British Empire. I embarked on this from several standpoints:first, that the recent work on imperialism should be presented, and, above all that theapproach should demonstrate an interaction between ‘above’ and ‘below’, betweenthose who ran empire and those who lived in it. I wished to convey the notion thathistory is not necessarily about stark positives and negatives, but is marked byambiguity and the unexpected outcome. I was also alert to the fact that it had to belively and interesting to a modern public.

To that end, I proposed a programme on sport—sport as emblematic of imperialrule, but something that was readily taken over by indigenous peoples or whites inthe ‘dominions’, was used by them as a form of nationalism, and ultimately turnedback upon the imperialists. Next, one on sex and gender, illustrating negative andpositive aspects of the revolution imperialism wrought in these areas. Then, theenvironment, a major concern of today. Here I wanted to convey the notion thatimperialism actually developed a lot of concerns about ecologies of empire and that,in some cases, postcolonial regimes (and modern superpowers) have been lesssensitive. Others would have been on media, communications, language andtechnology; missions and religion generally; and cities, their class patterns,architecture, commerce and modernism. The whole was designed to show howimperialism was about the interactive, yet was crucial in the making of a modernworld, even in aspects like sport and sex.

The treatment was rejected. The production company decided instead to offer aseries on imperial heroes, featuring such as Robert Clive, General Gordon, CecilRhodes. To my relief it was never screened, although instead we got (from a differentchannel) Niall Ferguson. His series was effectively a paean to young fogeyconservatism. Someone had to discover that the British Empire was a good thingsome day (I myself reject the postcolonial notion that it was uniquely evil, but see itas good in parts, though often denying human dignity and rights). Ferguson was lessambivalent, just as he is about the American empire, often setting up an accurate setof premises and then leaping perversely to an inappropriate conclusion. But the

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principal problem with his series was that it said little about recent trends in historywriting. It was history from above; it was political, with a dash of economics; and itsaid nothing about interactive relations, and very little that was respectful aboutindigenous peoples. As television, it grabbed the headlines and executives werehappy. As history, it was more dubious.

In other articles in the book, Roger Smither enquires why there is so muchtelevision history about war. I looked for a critique here, but I was disappointed. Hemakes largely banal and obvious comments. Ian Kershaw offers a brief piece and thereader hoped for a more acute and professional line. Another disappointment there.John Tusa writes about the importance of history in his career, interesting enoughand beautifully written, but largely tangential. Jean Seaton offers an essay on herwork on the history of broadcasting in the 1980s, which makes many penetrating andfascinating comments. Finally, David Puttnam provides a curious and terse chapteron how Hollywood has stolen history. It was obviously exciting to get his name inthe volume, but although his main point is a good one, he never really substantiatesit with chapter and verse, title and frame.

Ultimately, I had the sensation that this volume gets us nowhere, rather like a lotof television history itself. It proceeds on one principal assumption, namely that thepublic’s exposure to history on television always has to be good. Poor history isbetter than no history. Maybe there is an argument for that. Curiously, it neveraddresses those television programmes which do look at the lives, conditions andskeletons of ordinary people, programmes like Meet the Ancestors, even Time Team.In many respects these do a better job than the posturing poseurs of modern history.It is a pity that their viewpoints could not be transferred to a later period. Despite myopening joke, there is some good history on television, but this book ignores it,probably because the excellent stuff has a lower profile.

John M. MacKenzie

Commonwealth Countries TodayChanging India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent

Robert W. SternCambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (second edition), pp. xvii + 250, ISBN(hardback) 0-521-810809, (paperback) 0-521-0091-2-X

Changing India, by Robert Stern, is a florid and highly readable account ofcontemporary Indian society and how it is changing. Addressing the non-specialistreader interested in South Asia, the book casts a cheerful light upon the variegatedfabric of India’s social institutions and traces the recent history of their evolution. Ahighly updated (Stern even alludes to that ubiquitous phenomenon of recent years,the ‘war on terror’) and informative thesis, this book is an ideal introduction foranyone seeking to understand ‘‘the extraordinary emergence of India as a lively,genuine and stable parliamentary democracy’’, despite the ravages of time andcircumstance.

Stern’s account of India’s journey into modernity seeks to situate the focussquarely upon a single concept—bourgeois revolution. Borrowing from the seminal

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work of Barrington Moore Jr, he defines this revolution by the ‘‘broad institutionalresults to which they contribute’’, in this case the development together of capitalismand parliamentary democracy. The essence of this sort of development is that it isvery much a top-down process and thus, it is posited, distinct from the sorts ofpeasant/agrarian revolutions witnessed in Russia and China (also political move-ments that Moore has brilliantly analysed). Given this, it is clear that the author hasdone well in choosing bourgeois revolution as a unifying concept in his analysis ofthe bewilderingly vast number of social phenomena and practices in India. This isbecause he then systematically undertakes the task of disaggregating and explainingthe ‘dominant alliance’ of elites that plays a decisive role in determining the course ofdevelopment in India and subsequently all the other interest groups that support thiscoalition. Thus, with a certain analytical flourish, Stern brings into relief thespectacular canvas of the social terrain that is India at the turn of the millennium.

Where else to begin such a gargantuan task but in the place where ‘‘seven out often Indian families’’ live? The villages of India constitute the first arena in which theimpact of the bourgeois revolution on the family, caste and class (and the impact ofthese on the revolution too) is examined. The discussion begins with a description ofthe various attributes of Indian families—the forces of kinship that hold it togetherand determine the course of its evolution. Stern then discusses the role of women inthe family (and in society in general), touching upon issues of gender inequality,based on inheritance laws and practices, for example. Up to this point the analysis isentirely descriptive. While this might serve usefully to inform the lay reader with noprior knowledge of Indian society, case studies or deeper empirical investigationsmight have found favour with readers possessing more than a basic knowledge ofthis country and its people. Stern does bring to bear some basic data, but the level ofthe analysis is still superficial at best.

Having said that, the author does demonstrate his substantial knowledge of Indiansociety as he illuminates rather unexpected interactions between castes, class andgender biases. He points out, for example, that in South Asia women have oftenoccupied positions of political pre-eminence both because often, ‘‘the claim to powerof all these women was that they were the conjugal or consanguineal legatees to thegaddi (throne) of some ‘great man’’’. But, he posits, this is not the only explanation:these women and a growing number of others in modern, urban scenarios are thebeneficiaries of a general, gender-unrelated inegalitarianism in South Asia. That is, inthese societies the exercise of power by high-status women over low-status men is oflong standing and commonplace. This is a phenomenon that might surprise the layreader heretofore unacquainted with the micro-dynamics of Indian society andgenerally of the view that patriarchy would be unlikely to permit such femaledominance. Similarly, Stern provides a notably lucid exposition of the caste system inIndia, carefully pointing out the distinctions between ‘caste’, ‘jati’ and ‘varna’ in termsof pure definition and also in terms of the manifestations of these concepts in the dailylives of people in rural areas. As always, a key theme is the changing nature of thecaste system in the light of the modernization of the economy, and Stern highlightshow varying class status, for example, impinges upon traditional caste relationships.

In all, Stern deserves to be commended for attempting to bring such a diverseplatter of social institutions into an entertaining and informative semi-academicdiscourse. It is a pity then that he sometimes fails in this attempt. For instance, there

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are more than a few ambiguities surrounding even bourgeois revolution—a conceptthat is central to all his arguments (and the entire book, he promises). His repeatedassertion that he is using Moore’s interpretation of the concept does not sitcomfortably with his associating its causes and consequences dominantly with themiddle class. This creates room for suspicion that Stern has possibly misinterpretedMoore’s use of ‘bourgeois revolution’. It is possible that Moore had a more specificsub-class in mind—the industrial capitalists (and/or others deeply concerned withsurplus mobilization). Alternatively, the problem could be an error of omission, suchas when the author touches upon the origins of the bourgeois revolution, and tracesit to the Indian National Congress and its responses to British imperialism. Does thismean he is relegating to the background the popular (non-bourgeois) groundswell ofsupport enjoyed by the party during the struggle for independence? It is interestingthat Stern himself suggests that the role of the dominant classes should not beconsidered the only one; the revolution may not have got as far as it did if certainother social conditions had not been present. Among these conditions, Stern includes‘‘Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of conflict and conflict resolution’’, which istantamount to the construction of a multi-class alliance aimed at overthrowing the200-year old reign of the British in India. This contradicts his application of Moore’spolitical – economic hypothesis about the role of dominant classes in Indiadetermining the nature and progress of bourgeois revolution, or at least does notadequately explain the mass basis of the freedom struggle.

Which points to yet another paradigmatic problem with Stern’s account ofchanging India—the relegation to the background of political economy considera-tions of a macro nature. Yes, the primary purpose of the book, it would seem, is toexplain in terms of bourgeois revolution the adaptability of this ancient civilization’sdurable social structure and the vibrancy and genuineness of its more recentlyacquired political democracy. But the reader is sometimes left with a vague feeling ofincompleteness that is possibly engendered by the half-story that these explanationsconstitute. Economic incentives too drive Indians into transactional alliances withtheir brethren, not just kinship/ethnic ties! Consider the following example of this inthe south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Stern indicates that there is fierce political (e.g.electoral and often personal) rivalry between two major Dravidian parties in thestate and, ‘‘Today’s politics are the usual tussle between provincial castes andcommunities for sandwiches and candles’’. What he clearly fails to highlight,however, is that there is a strong caste – class mapping in Tamil Nadu, a fact thatrecent research on the state’s effectiveness in poverty alleviation has stronglyindicated. Thus, the general discourse in this book seems to be somewhat disinclinedto engage with political economy considerations—something that an author withStern’s intentions can ill afford to do.

That said, there are few accounts of contemporary Indian society that so adroitlynegotiate the twists and turns of the paradoxes that abound within it. To have donethis, and to go further in explaining the functionality of these paradoxes in terms oftheir role in bolstering the durability of ‘changing India’, is a brilliant achievementindeed. A most enjoyable read.

Naryan LaksmanLondon School of Economics

164 Book Reviews

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Belize Foreign Policy Yearbook 2003

Belmopan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003, pp. 64Available at www.mfa.gov.bz (then click on box for Foreign Policy Yearbook on homepage)

This innovative 60-page overview constitutes an interesting, even important, markerfor poor/small/weak states in the contemporary global political economy. Itillustrates how marginality can be minimized through creative diplomacy so thatBelize becomes somewhat more visible than other such countries in an increasinglyglobalized world of some 200 states. Yet, as the Minster admits in his Introduction, aForeign Office complement of 20 is severely constrained in world politics (pp. 9 – 10).It can only attempt to be distinctive through active networking and innovativemultilateralism.

This volume treats a trio of foreign policy levels, from bi- and multilateral to intra-and inter-regional. In the first, Belize has one or two distinctive connections, such aswith Taiwan (pp. 27 – 28 and 40 – 41). It also expresses dismay at the extraterritorialreach of the USA in terms of issues like the International Criminal Court (ICC) andallegations of trafficking in people (pp. 18 – 19). At the multilateral level theYearbook ranks the Commonwealth second (pp. 52 – 53) after Africa, the Caribbeanand the Pacific (ACP) and before the UN and World Trade Organization (WTO); analphabetical or perceptual ranking? But Belize is most active at the intermediate,regional level, particularly in a range of overlapping organizations such as TheAssociation of Caribbean States (ACS), Caricom and the Organization of AmericanStates (OAS). Despite being anglophone, Belize chaired the Spanish languageSistema de Integacion Centroamerica (SICA) for the second half of 2003 (p. 39), withsome translation assistance from Cuba (pp. 21 – 22). Nevertheless, despite carefuldiplomacy, some involving an extra-regional ‘Group of Friends’, its border disputewith Guatemala continues unresolved.

Difficult dimensions of ‘new’ regionalism or ‘new’ security present challenges tothe ‘island’-like characteristics of Belize: drugs, gangs (p. 40), etc. Interestingly,Belize is active in the global network of Small Island States (pp. 43 and 57). Despitebeing innovative, Belize’s external relations could include more interaction at alllevels with non-state actors like civil society (cf. the welcome mention of theCommonwealth Foundation on p. 53) and private companies as further means todeal with continuing challenges such as climate change (p. 33), Guatemala,indigenous communities (p. 58), sugar disputes (pp. 62 – 63) and US hegemony(wide-ranging Third Border Initiative (p. 35)), etc.

The Yearbook is distinguished by a thoughtful Foreword by the Director ofChatham House, Dr Victor Bulmer-Thomas (pp. 3 – 4), who welcomed PrimeMinister Said Musa to London in December 2003 en route to the Abuja CHOGM(pp. 4 and 25). Further editions of the Yearbook are awaited with great interest: amodel which other small states could well emulate, whether islands or not.

Timothy M. ShawInstitute of Commonwealth Studies

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