Book club

I haven't read Sarah Palin's new autobiography, and frankly, I don't plan to. But I did Michiko Kakutani's review in yesterday's New York Times, and I was struck by this passage:

In Going Rogue Ms. Palin talks perfunctorily about fiscal responsibility and a muscular foreign policy, and more passionately about the importance of energy independence, but she is quite up front about the fact that much of her appeal lies in her just-folks "hockey mom" ordinariness. She pretends no particular familiarity with the Middle East, the Iraq war or Islamic politics -- "I knew the history of the conflict," she writes, "to the extent that most Americans did." And she argues that "there's no better training ground for politics than motherhood."

Yet Mr. McCain's astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town with fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate underscores just how alarmingly expertise is discounted -- or equated with elitism -- in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge.

I think Kakutani is right, but I wonder why so many people -- including Senator McCain, Ms. Palin herself, and the other folks who supported her -- seem to think you don't need to know anything to be good at running foreign policy. I doubt if Ms. Palin would let someone perform surgery on one of her children (or even repair her car) simply because they had parenting experience or an entertaining life story. No, she'd want to make sure that the person in question actually knew what they were doing. Virtually all of us normally insist on genuine expertise when we hire anyone to do an important job -- whether it's carpentry or a cardiac bypass -- yet millions of people in this country seem to think that the most momentous decisions about our collective future can be entrusted to people who are sublimely comfortable in their own ignorance.

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Corruption now 'dominates and paralyzes the society,' David Halberstam observed. American officials perceived the problems but they could not find solutions. ... The Embassy pressed the government to remove officials known to be corrupt, but with little result. 'You fight like hell to get someone removed and most times you fail and you just make it worse,' a frustrated American explained to Halberstam. 'And then on occasions when you win, why hell, they give you someone just as bad.' The United States found to its chagrin that as its commitment increased its leverage diminished. Concern with corruption and inefficiency was always balanced by fear that tough action might alienate the government or bring about its collapse. Lodge and Westmoreland were inclined to accept the situation and deal with other problems."

Source: George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States in Vietnam, 1950-1975., 1st. ed., pp. 162-63. The Halberstam quotations are from his article, "Return to Vietnam," Harpers (December 1967).

One of the pleasant frustrations of modern life is that there are far more good books out there than any of us have time to read. Browsing the Brookline Booksmith -- the wonderful local bookstore in my hometown -- is simultaneously delightful and depressing: I get intrigued and excited by all sorts of titles, but then I have trouble deciding which to buy and which to read first.

I'm know I'm not the only person with that problem -- which is why book reviews exist -- so I thought I'd help out by suggesting a few books I've recently read that got my own synapses humming.

The first is John Mueller's Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda, which relentlessly punctures the various ways that analysts of all persuasions have overstated the dangers and the importance of nuclear weapons. (For a preview of Mueller's argument, see the FP excerpt here). It is an equal-opportunity critique, as Mueller goes after hawks, doves, realists, and other Cassandras with equal relish and a playful but pungent wit. He emphasizes that nuclear weapons are in fact highly destructive and need to be handled with great care, but convincingly shows that policymakers and pundits have 1) routinely exaggerated their destructive power (i.e., by suggesting they can "destroy the world"), 2) inflated their importance in deterring war, imparting influence, or enhancing status, and 3) overstated the risk of nuclear accidents, nuclear terrorism, or other very low-probability events. And instead of encouraging a useful prudence, Mueller argues that our "atomic obsession" has led us to adopt various policies that wasted a lot of money and may have actually made the situation more dangerous rather than less. Not everyone will be convinced by Mueller's arguments, but the book will certainly make you think. Added bonus: It's immensely fun to read.

My second recommendation is Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall's America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity. This is a creative, carefully researched, and incisive analysis of U.S. strategy during the long struggle against the Soviet Union. There are plenty of good books on this topic already, but Craig and Logevall's is one of the best, and their interpretation has important implications for contemporary strategic debates. In brief, they argue that America's initial response to the Soviet threat in Europe was both necessary and successful, but overselling by early Cold Warriors also put in place a worldview and a set of domestic institutions that consistently exaggerated U.S. insecurity and led to costly and counterproductive excesses over the next 40 years. The Soviet Union is now gone, but that worldview and those institutions remain in place today. Which is why the United States spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined, why we find ourselves bogged down in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, and why we panic over countries like Iran (whose defense spending in 2007 was a whopping $7.5 billion, or about 1 percent of America's).

My third suggestion is Margaret MacMillan's Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, which I read on my recent trip to Norway. Based on a series of invited lectures, it is a set of pointed reflections on history, historians, and the ways in which the past is employed (and distorted) for both noble and ignoble purposes. If not quite the intellectual tour de force of a book like David Hackett Fischer's Historians' Fallacies, her reflections nonetheless provide a smart and eminently sensible set of warnings for citizens and leaders alike. History is essential to our identities, but it can also a dangerous weapon in the hands of anyone with a political agenda.

And speaking of history, my last recommendation is Eugene Rogan's The Arabs, which I acquired last week. I haven't finished it, but so far it's an entertaining, gracefully written, and eye-opening look at a diverse people whose history, culture and character are often badly misunderstood (if not actively distorted) here in the United States. Read it. You'll learn a lot.

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Several friends and associates have asked me how it feels to have our book on the Israel lobby plugged by Osama bin Laden. While it is usually gratifying to get kudos for your work, that is certainly not the case in this instance, given what bin Laden has done in the past and given what he stands for. I just wish we had captured him long ago, making it impossible for him to issue any statements to the world.   

I do have a few additional comments on the matter, however. To start, Bin Laden's announcement that there is a powerful "Israel lobby" in the United States is not exactly a news flash. If he had not cited us, he could just have easily quoted the late Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) who wrote in his memoirs that "I was never put under greater pressure than by the Israeli lobby ... it's the most influential crowd in Congress by far." Or he could have cited former Senator Ernest ("Fritz") Hollings (D-SC), who said that "you can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here." He might have invoked notorious terrorist sympathizer Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who called AIPAC "the most effective general interest group ... across the entire planet," or even former Senate Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) who told AIPAC's annual conference that "without your constant support ... the U.S.-Israeli relationship would not be." Heck, bin Laden could even have brought up Alan Dershowitz, who once wrote that "my generation of Jews ... became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fundraising effort in the history of democracy." In short, he didn't need our book to tell people there's an Israel lobby with a powerful influence on U.S. Middle East policy.

It is also important to ask why bin Laden called attention to U.S. support for Israel, and to the lobby's role in generating that support. He did this because he understands -- along with plenty of other people -- that the combination of unconditional U.S. support for Israel and Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians is a source of great resentment in the Arab and Islamic world. This is hardly an original insight on his part either. The 9/11 Commission reported "it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... is [a] dominant staple of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."  imilarly, the State Department's Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World found that "citizens in these countries are genuinely distressed at the plight of the Palestinians and at the role they perceive the United States to be playing." Not only is Bin Laden personally motivated by this issue -- as his own family and prior statements attest -- he knows it is a good way to attract support.

Third, my co-author and I have a very different idea of how to deal with this situation than bin Laden does. He recruits people to engage in despicable acts of violence against innocents, in the grandiose (and vain) hope of toppling all of the states in the region (not just Israel). He's perfectly happy to kill Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists, and just about anyone else if it will advance that goal. By contrast, Professor Mearsheimer and I reject his aims and abhor his chosen means. We believe the United States should defend Israel's existence, and we said so repeatedly in our book. (My guess is that bin Laden missed those parts). We also think the United States should oppose Israel's occupation of the West Bank and control of Gaza and treat Israel the same way it treats other democracies. Why? Because ending the occupation and having a normal relationship with Israel would be better for us, better for Israel, and better for our other friends in the region. In short, we want the United States to pursue a smarter and more ethical policy in the Middle East. Needless to say, that's a far cry from bin Laden's murderous agenda.

Ironically, bin Laden's "endorsement" of our book could even be a self-defeating gesture. If enough people were to read our book and U.S. policy were to evolve in the manner we recommend, bin Laden's call to arms would fall on deaf ears and he'd become even more irrelevant than he is today. Furthermore, any would-be imitators who might subsequently emerge would find an even less receptive audience.

And if Juan Cole is right and bin Laden's statement was a sign of weakness, so much the better.

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It's summertime, and some of you will be headed for the beach, or the country, or wherever you go to relax and recharge. You want to take along something fun to read, and you're not quite ready to tackle that new translation of War and Peace. But you're afraid you’ll feel guilty if you don't read something that is at least tangentially related to international politics. 

What’s the answer? Simple. Here’s a list of books for your summer vacation reading that are all entertaining and easy-to-devour, but will also keep at least a few of your foreign policy synapses alive while you're relaxing. These suggestions are from my own list of guilty pleasures, and I'm not claiming that these books are the "ten best" or anything like that. I'm sure I've missed a few obvious candidates, so feel free to offer up suggestions of your own.

1. Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy.

Yes, it's sci-fi, and the prose style isn't exactly Proust. But it's got lots of international (or more precisely, "interstellar") politics in it: balance of power, empire, deterrence theory, diplomacy, religion, economic interdependence, and you name it. The late Ernst Haas used to recommend it to grad students at Berkeley, and it's easy to see why. And the central premise of the book -- that mathematically inclined social scientists ("the psycho-historians") could forecast the future and guide it -- is certain to appeal to scholars who think that they could rule the world if they just got their models properly specified and had enough data. (Note: if Asimov's not-so-subtle leftwing politics bothers you, you can read Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers instead, which includes lots of chest-thumping patriotism as well as explicit denunciations of Marx.)

2. Graham Greene, The Quiet American. 

World-weary and cautionary tale about the idealism of American intervention, well worth re-reading in light of our current overseas adventures. And Greene is always easy to devour, even when dozing at the beach.

3. Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I must have read this book twenty times when I was in high-school, even though I didn't really understand it.  A dark and comic portrait of World War II, and Heller skewers many absurdities of military life. If you're worried that Heller will undermine your sense of patriotism, read Herman Wouk's The Winds of War as an antidote (another one of my faves -- see below).

4. John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People

Yes, I know the Cold War is over, which gives these books a rather dated quality. But the characters are beautifully crafted, the prose is elegant and seductive, and both books are real page-turners. The first time I read them, I stayed up to 3 AM to finish the damn thing and was next-to-useless the next day. (Cautionary note: the second volume of the trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy, is a bit tedious. But you'll probably want to read it anyway.) Le Carre is still churning them out, of course, but these three books remain his high point.

5. Alan Furst, The Polish Officer

I'd recommend anything by Furst, who has written a whole series of dark and romantic noir-ish novels that offer detailed and remarkably vivid portraits of life in Europe before and during the Nazi period. There's not a lot of "high politics" in these books, but they depict spies, politicians, military officials, and ordinary people caught up in the dark dealings of a horrific period. There's betrayal around every corner, and you’ll find them impossible to put down.

6. Orhan Parmuk, Snow

This was my "beach book" last summer, and I concede it's not directly about "foreign policy" at all. But it is a brooding and moving portrait of life in contemporary Turkey, and especially the growing role of Islam. If you think that phenomenon is important, this book will open your eyes and touch your heart.

7. Joseph S. Nye, The Power Game

How many major IR scholars have written a novel and actually gotten it published? (Kindly hold the snarky comments about all the political science books that you think are also "fictional"). It's a fun read, and you get to see how a distinguished scholar, government official, and former Harvard dean writes a sex scene. (And for another example of a Harvard scholar venturing into fiction, see the late John K. Galbraith's The Triumph: A Novel of Modern Diplomacy, a wicked satire about an ill-starred U.S. intervention in Latin America. It must be fiction, because something like that could never happen in real life, could it?)

8. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

A missionary family's experiences in the Congo, where misguided idealism and stubbornness eventually lead to tragic consequences. A powerful indictment of patriarchy, religion, and overzealous American righteousness.

9. Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy

An intense and inspired set of novels set in and around World War I, imagining the relations between soldiers -- including real-life figures such as the poet Siegfried Sassoon -- and the doctors charged with treating them in hospital.  Not exactly a lighthearted read, but it will grip you.

10. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

I think I read every one of Wouk’s books when I was a teen-ager, and The Caine Mutiny is still my favorite (and his best). But this book (and its sequel, War and Remembrance) is broader, and includes cameo appearances by Churchill, Stalin, and other real-life figures. Wouk marches his characters around the world, and manages to get most of the global conflict in somewhere. It's not great art, but it will more than pass the time.  

Pack away a few of these, and you'll have plenty to read while you're relaxing. And you won't have to feel too guilty about it either.

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So when I offered my "top ten" list of favorite books in international relations last week, how many of you noticed that all of the authors were men? I did, and so did my wife. Not only that, but most of the suggestions sent in by commenters referred to books written by men as well. Of course, my interests tend to lie on the security side of the field, which has tended to attract more men than women until fairly recently. And my list leaned toward recognized classics, which biased it towards older works (and thus to eras when women scholars were fewer in number). But I've been in the business long enough to know that subtler forms of bias might be involved too, so I thought I'd put out a list of some of my favorite books by women scholars (plus a few journalists/public intellectuals). It's not hard to come up with ten (and a few more).

1. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. To take nothing away from others, this is arguably the most influential book by a woman scholar in the field of security affairs, and it cast a long shadow over subsequent studies of intelligence failure and strategic surprise.

2. Susan Strange, States and Markets. Strange was a pioneering figure in the history of international studies in Britain, and a clear-eyed thinker and writer. Frankly, I enjoyed some of her articles (such as "Cave! Hic Dragone: A Critique of Regime Analysis," in the 1983 International Organization issue on regimes) more than her books, but the overall contribution earns a place on my list.

3. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force. This book helped convince me that constructivist analysis could say something important and tangible about security affairs.  It’s sharply written and persuasive, too. Need I say more?

4. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam. A Pulitzer-prize winning investigation of Vietnamese society and a piercing critique of America's tragic intervention there. Students of missile defense should also read her Way out There in the Blue: Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, a fascinating account of Ronald Reagan's campaign to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."

5. Kathryn Sikkink and Margaret Keck, Activists beyond Border: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Both Keck and Sikkink have written other important works, but this is my favorite, as it brought to light an under-studied (and one might argue increasingly important) phenomenon.

6. Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": American in the Age of Genocide. Another Pulitzer Prize-winner by (full disclosure) a friend and colleague. Power is no realist, but I think the book’s lessons point in that direction. If great powers like the United States are too self-interested to do very much to save the lives of others (a tendency she deplores), why expect that to change? A wonderful book, full of passion and insight and gripping prose.

7. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. When one considers that issues of the "commons" are now central to much of world politics, and how institutions will be central to any effective solution, this was a remarkably far-sighted book.

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions. Although primarily a work of comparative historical sociology, Skocpol’s path breaking work also emphasizes the role of international pressures in driving great revolutions.  Like its author, a work to be reckoned with.

9. Beth Simmons, Who Adjusts?: Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years, 1923-1939. For those of you who thought Charles Kindleberger answered all your questions about the Great Depression. And worth re-reading in light of our current situation.

10. Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population. I mentioned this in my earlier discussion, and can’t resist highlighting it here. The argument is simple but striking and could have far-reaching implications. Short version: if a cultural preference for male offspring leads to too many unattached men in your society, look out.

Like my earlier top ten, this list just scratches the surface of interesting works on different aspects of world politics. Other obvious contenders (i.e., books I've enjoyed and/or learned a lot from) would include Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics; Jo-Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics; Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War, Monica Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence; Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill; Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking; Debora Spar, The Cooperative Edge, Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire, and Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo.  And yes, I know I'm leaving plenty of deserving scholars out, but I'm confident readers will tell me who I missed. 

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered a predictably unhelpful response to President Barack Obama's conciliatory message to the Muslim world last week. Ahmadinejad's answer: first the United States has to "apologize" for its opposition to Iran's nuclear program and for a host of other transgressions.

I've got news for him: we've already done so -- at least in part -- and he's not going to get another apology any time soon. Obama may be hoping for a fresh start with Tehran, but he is not going to start the process by apologizing for anything. And he's certainly not going to take any steps that might bolster Ahmadinejad's popularity between now and the Iranian presidential election in June.

Yet Ahmadinejad's statement does raise a broader question: should states apologize at all, even when they've done something they regret?

You might think that realists wouldn't put much stock in apologies; aren't they just meaningless "cheap talk?" Don't realists worry more about balances of power and conflicts of interest, and don't they emphasize that international politics is a rough business where states routinely do nasty things to weaker parties? Given that world-view, what's the point of saying you're sorry?

In fact, even realists think being willing to apologize sometimes matters. But as Dartmouth's Jennifer Lind argues in her book Sorry States: Apologies in World Politics, the act of apology can be tricky too, and can easily backfire.

There are at least three good reasons for states to apologize when they have behaved badly towards others.

First, apologizing to those you have wronged is an acknowledgement of their equal status; it is a recognition that they are of sufficient stature to deserve an expression of regret. Refusing to apologize sends the message that you think the wronged party is too insignificant to warrant any contrition. To do so betrays contempt for the party we have wronged, and treating someone with contempt is bound to fuel a desire for revenge.

Second, far from being "cheap talk," apologies can be a costly signal that conveys a genuine and sincere desire for a new relationship. Why? Because apologizing to a former adversary is politically risky, and only leaders who are genuinely sorry would be willing to run the risks and bear the costs.  When a state acknowledges responsibility and expresses regret, it also opens itself up to demands for compensation or various forms of sanction and it may even lend legitimacy to opponents who then try to take advantage of the admission. The fact that there can be genuine costs to an apology explains why mere words still carry genuine meaning to the wronged party.

Third, apologizing tells others that no matter what we may have done in the past, we understand where the boundaries of acceptable conduct lie. If a country commits a heinous act and then refuses to apologize for it, others have reason to question whether its leaders are even aware that they have crossed a moral boundary. When someone shows no understanding of where the lines are, there is every reason to think they would cross them again without a second thought. To take an obvious example, had Germany failed to acknowledge the Holocaust and to openly apologize for it, people everywhere would have reason to think that Germans might easily do something similar again. The same logic explains why Pope Benedict's decision to reverse the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying priest is troubling; if the Vatican thinks Holocaust-denial is a minor matter that should take a back seat to the unity of the church, what does that tell us about the priority it places on crimes against humanity?

Even for realists, therefore, apologies can be a necessary tool of diplomacy. Apologizing for past mistakes is sometimes the best -- maybe the only -- way to wipe the slate clean and provide others with some basis for giving a country a second chance. Being a great power may mean that you never have to say you're sorry, but sometimes it is still a good idea.

But not always. Lind's book also shows that the question of apologies is more complicated than the simple picture I just sketched. She points out that states sometimes reconcile in the absence of an official apology -- as France and Germany did after World War II -- especially when former rivals realize that they have powerful strategic reasons to bury the hatchet and move on. Moreover, sometimes the act of extending an apology triggers a domestic backlash that undercuts the very leaders who are trying to promoting reconciliation, reinforcing existing suspicions and frustrating efforts to build a new relationship.  In order to balance these conflicting imperatives, states may be better off eschewing efforts to "name and shame" and relying on less accusatory forms of remembrance and regret, such as memorials to victims (on both sides), international commissions to advise on the writing of textbooks and other educational materials, and joint scholarly programs designed to address sensitive historical events.

With respect to the United States and Iran, this is good advice. To build a new relationship, both sides will have to come to terms with the various hostile acts that each has committed over the past fifty-plus years. But no Iranian leader is likely to apologize to the "Great Satan" and no U.S. president could go beyond past expressions of regret without risking a backlash here at home. A better path is to emphasize the interests that the United States and Iran do have in common -- such as a shared desire for a stable and unified Iraq, and a growing concern about the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan -- while addressing the obvious points of contention (e.g., Iran's nuclear program). If we can make progress on the concrete diplomatic issues, we can also begin unofficial efforts to understand how and why U.S.-Iranian relations deteriorated in the past. American and Iranian scholars could usefully explore these issues through academic exchanges and then disseminate their findings more broadly, allowing each society to learn from past mistakes but without demanding humiliating expressions of regret that neither is likely to get.

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I'd like to follow up last week's query about the "IR Hall of Fame" with a new "open-mic" question: who are the most underrated scholars in the history of the field?

As I suspect most academics realize, the ivory tower is a less-than-perfect meritocracy. Success and renown are partly a function of one's work, of course, but there are a lot of random elements in the process. Timing matters, picking a "hot topic" for one's early work helps, being plugged into a well-placed network of scholars is a big plus, and sheer good fortune plays a role, too. All this is to say that cream usually rises, but not necessarily as far as it should.

To be clear: by "underrated" I don't necessarily mean people who remained completely obscure despite having done great work. Rather, I would also include individuals who have done excellent work that did attract some attention, but nonetheless never got quite as much attention as it deserved.

My nominee in this category would be John Herz. Among other things, Herz identified the core concept of the "security dilemma" -- which he described as:

A social constellation in which units of power (such as states or nations in international relations) find themselves whenever they exist side by side without higher authority that might impose standards of behavior upon them and thus protect them from attacking each other. In such a condition, a feeling of insecurity, deriving from mutual suspicion and mutual fear, comples these units to compete for ever more power in order to find more security, an effort which proves self-defeating because complete security remains ultimately unobtainable."

Herz also wrote important works contrasting political realism and political idealism, on international law, and on the implications of nuclear weapons for world politics. He's a respected figure in the history of the field, but as Jana Puglierin puts it in the current issue of the British journal International Relations (a special issue devoted to Herz's thought), he "has so far not had the recognition his contribution to theorizing world politics deserves."

So the floor is open: who are the other thinkers who deserve more recognition than they have heretofore received?

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