Review – India’s Strategic Practice and the Return of History
Scholars from the South are infiltrating IR from within the discipline. To that trend, Vivekanandan’s work is a welcome addition.
Review – Managing the China Challenge
China’s rapid economic growth continues apace presenting multi-national corporations with new opportunities. Kenneth G. Lieberthal explores the strategies MNCs need to employ to succeed in business in China and the importance of remaining sensitive to the state’s political concerns.
Review – Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet
Klare’s analysis is timely, well written, and intriguing considering its central thesis that the world’s reliance on fossil fuels will eventually lead to increased geopolitical tensions. While other books offer a more thorough account, this is a welcome read.
Review – In My Time
Dick Cheney served as Vice President during one of the most controversial U.S. administrations in history. Those hoping for a greater insight into this divisive period, or wanting to better understand Cheney, will be disappointed by a memoir that offers little more than was already known.
Review – International Interventions in Local Conflicts
The bloody and protracted small wars of the last 20 years seem to be the current norm in IR, and may well be so for the foreseeable future. It is into this context that we can place Uzi Rabi’s edited collection.
Review – No Higher Honour
While Rice frequently exercises her right to settle scores and set the record straight, there are no revisions to the controversial foreign policy record of the Bush years.
Review – Globalization and Its Discontents
Formerly Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz explores the policies of the international financial community towards developing or crisis-stricken countries during the 1980s and 90s. As an isolated study of their failures it provides a useful insight but as a commentary on the ills of economic globalisation it fails to consider several other key factors.
Review – China: The Pessoptimist Nation
Pessoptimist, coined to describe the combination of positive and negative feelings China has about itself and others, is an apt neologism to describe China’s bipolar sense of national identity, formed from a confused superiority and inferiorly complex that has emerged from its recent economic growth and historical humiliation.
Review – A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace
Dick Couch is an individual well placed to deal with the issues of unit culture, training, combat experience, and the misconduct of the few, all of which forms the core of this text. Whilst the book does have several weaknesses, it provides a quick and easy to understand insight into a key issue affecting the US Military today.
Review – Democracy Promotion and Conflict-based Reconstruction
Matthew A. Hill’s survey of America’s democratisation missions takes the reader on a journey through the horrors of post-conflict states, the cut-and-thrust of policy debate and the ever evolving idea of democracy. It will prove a valuable resource to any student or researcher seeking an understanding of the current situations in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
