Current-order Books

I don't need to dream with any scheme to bleed USA. These kind of positions. You WASPs have nothing in your heads... it's impossible to be crazyer than you... You think that the whole world is the same thing, you have no vision beyond your little farms...

This book is really disgusting. The author is one of those people who live based on abstract principles, without any contact with the real world. He simply ignores the needs of the modern state and the real problems of public administration. Besides, he is one of those Americans that cannot see beyond the US borders. He thinks all the time in terms of US universal values. Very bad.

Hirsen brings arguments that totalitarians and utopians will not want to read. If the abuse of presidential power is allowed to go unchallenged, then our government will rapidly devolve into a dictatorship. Congress is almost as culpable, for not jealously protecting their law-making prerogative (how could the Founding Fathers have foreseen that their primary concern would become getting re-elected?) Every person who has any regard for Constitutional limitations on the abuse of government needs to add this to their reading list. At this price, they should buy ten and give them for gifts! . Those who live in third-world countries and dream of schemes to bleed the USA dry with global welfare will not have a clue. They should work, instead, to bring freedom and limited government, and hence, properity, to their own countries.

This is really more of a pamphlet than a book. In a few short pages James Hirsen outlines his belief that Executive Orders pose a serious risk to American government. Executive Orders are those nifty little notes the President signs whenever he needs to do some housecleaning within the Executive branch of government. This booklet explains that these orders have existed since the earliest days of the Republic, but only in recent years have they expanded in both number and scope.

According to Hirsen, Clinton relied on them to circumvent the legislative process when scandals torpedoed his chances of passing his programs in Congress. Two orders from the Clinton regime are reprinted in the booklet. One deals with the issue of Federalism, the other with international treaties. Hirsen believes that the order on Federalism was an attempt by Clinton to override the 10th amendment of the Bill of Rights. Hirsen believes this order would (or could) be used by the government to take away powers traditionally awarded to the states. This order also revoked two previous orders under Reagan's watch, although Hirsen is somewhat vague on what these orders were (one required a cost-benefit analysis to be performed for federal "rules," the other is referred to as only "protecting the family."). Hirsen sees the other order as a means for the United Nations and environmentalist organizations to sink their meat hooks into American sovereignty. A short conclusion makes several suggestions to curb the use of Executive Orders.

Hirsen certainly has an agenda, but he does make points. Executive Orders can be dangerous and should only be used to change rules within the Executive branch. Hirsen's concern about the United Nations seems to be on par with that of the John Birch Society and other ultraconservative organizations. His references to Helen Chenoweth and Ron Paul would certainly endear him to those groups as well. Still, for those concerned with the increasingly autocratic stance of the government, this is a good read. At the very least, it will give some even more to worry about at night!

This little book will show you the way our Constitution has been disregarded by occupants of the Oval Office. Read it and share it.

I wonder what the Editor and the contributing authors think of my listing of the thirteen elements of a strongly sovereign nation-state, found at my blog Globalities, found at http://globalities.blogspot.com

I propose that we need to amend the United States Constitution to permit regional territorial secession (of individual States or accumulations of
States) from the United States and its successor - in whole or in part - entities(s), once the USA gives to others enough of its sovereignty to warrant secession.

We need to work out the details, but we need to explicitly reject from now forward President Lincoln's principle of forced continued union of the States, as the United States corrodes into an cog in a this-worldly global economic/governmental wheel.

The sovereignty of nations - like the strong family putting its imprint on the family's kids - is an essential bulwark against the false security of the leading-to-one-word-government process.

Check out my listing of the elements of sovereignty if you like. The explicit, numbered listing can help in perception, analysis, and action.

Best regards and Merry Chrismas,

Ned Jacobs

I generally tend not to rave about books but Orrin Judd's overview of the debate over sovereignty in this post-9/11 world is among the best compilations on the subject I have ever read. . For those opposed to international bodies such as the UN taking precedence over national governments, Judd's collection is a potent collection of arguments that buttress that point of view. Yet isolationism isn't his intention given the admission that sovereignty can no longer be considered an absolute. Ultimately, it is a celebration of freedom and the dream of those who signed the Declaration of Independence that freedom be known worldwide. History will decide whether this new paradigm is the key to that future.

Tired, recycled 'libertarian' nonsense, masquerading as serious analysis. When will these guys grow up and join the real world?

Princeton historian Harold James's new book THE ROMAN PREDICAMENT lays out an argument about how a decidedly nonimperial power such as the United States may be setting itself up to become the new Rome, with all that entails for us and the rest of the world.

James argues that our commitment to commercial liberalism -- free trade and free markets -- may not, despite our best intentions, lead to "a stable, prosperous, an integrated international society" (p.1) Rather, such efforts will cause a "vicious spiral" through which the liberal international order undermines itself by causing domestic conflict and international war. Domestic conflict comes from increasing demands here at home to tame the untrammeled actions of the free market. International conflict arises from states and other actors who fear globalization's inequities and uncertainties. In a classic illustration of the old adage that the "road to hell is paved with good intentions," James fears that the United States will respond to these threats to the liberal world order in a very illiberal, imperial fashion, as the Roman republic did two millennia ago....

James thinks that the only way to escape the "challenge and response model" (or the globalization and empire model) that brought down the Roman and British empires is to embrace a values-based system organized "within a shared natural law framework" (p. 148).... For him, the alternative to the U.S. imperial approach to maintaining international order is Europe, whose power, in his view, lies primarily in its values. These values include, among other things, the state's willingness to tame the vagaries of the unconstrained free market, a different definition of security that seeks to prevent conflict and war, and finally an alternative to the omnipresent and suffocatingly uniform American culture that defines globalization....

What are we to make of James's argument? I think his diagnosis is correct -- that efforts to preserve the liberal order can lead to illiberal imperial policies -- but he does not take into consideration how liberalism itself can encourage imperialism. Given that factor, adoption of Europe's neo-Kantian project may not solve the imperial dilemma, but instead exacerbate it. Rather than building more international institutions of governance, we should rely on the "invisible hand" of the balance of power as the best means to preserve international order (not to mention our own domestic liberalism) without empire.

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have exposed the surprising links between liberalism and imperialism. Liberalism contains a powerful impulse to impose itself on the rest of the world and rationalizes doing so by suggesting that virtue and self-interest can be reconciled in a certain type of imperialism. (A burgeoning literature on this topic includes Uday Singh Mehta, LIBERALISM AND EMPIRE: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999], and Jennifer Pitts, A TURN TO EMPIRE: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005].) The virtuous side of liberal imperialism can be found in the idea of a "benign hegemony" that brings the benefits of progress to benighted regions of the world. The self-interested side is the premise that liberalism cannot survive in a nonliberal world....

Given [the] surprising affinities between liberalism and international aggression, it is not surprising that many American liberals have had a hard time criticizing the Bush administration's policies and therefore have done little to oppose them, considering that they embrace so many of the liberal premises that undergird them.

The current global political climate has led many observers to draw parallels between the American empire and those of Rome and Great Britain, and to the extent that all three, at the height of their power, were globally dominant, this comparison holds superficially. Prof. James, however, has not simply taken this comparison at face value, but sought the lessons and rules of empire as understood in Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". His reading of the two leads to the idea of the "Roman dilemma", that peaceful economic prosperity under a liberal order of free commerce cannot be maintained because the rule and enforcement of the laws necessary for such commerce require power, and power tends to be unequal and to concentrate itself, leading to two opposing and irreconcilable camps: "people who believe in universal rules and people who see power behind the rules". For its modern application, Prof. James draws upon Robert Kagan's "Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus" view of how the current military power disparity across the Atlantic inevitably leads to the unilateral use of that power by America and its opposition by Europe, i.e. Americans believe in the exercise of military power despite rules and Europeans believe in the universal application of rules as a result of its relative military weakness, both in pursuit of a liberal economic order and sustained prosperity.

We can already see how such a global hegemony draws to itself the very seeds of instability it tries to contain. This, then, is the current incarnation of the Roman predicament: the growing resentment and suspicion towards the United States demands further use of power, increasing opposition towards that power, resulting in a cycle of increasing instability and the possible dissolution of not only empire, but the very peace and stability it tries to maintain.

But this does not have to be, as Prof. James, at the end of his concise and cogent book, attempts to lay the foundation for a new world order based not on unilateral decrees and legal officiousness, but rather shared values and aspirations. Unfortunately, when rigid fundamentalists--religious, ideological, or otherwise--hold sway in opposing camps, common ground becomes an ever-widening gap. We must depend, therefore, on thoughtful, rational and reasonable moderates and progressives from both sides to represent not fundamentalist views but fundamental values, and proceed from there.

While the author wrote a cogent synopsis of Gibbon's study of the end of the Roman empire and told those who didn't already know that Adam Smith's works consisted of more than the "invisible hand," he writes of the effects of globalization on economies as though the war in Iraq is just an aside.

When comparing the economic consquences of past wars he rightly states that the Gulf War of 1991 was too short-lived to have any significant effect on the economy in terms of inflationary/deflationary effects. However, he then states that the same holds true for the 2003 war.

Hunh? This book was written in 2006 after three disastrous years of a failed policy, or lack thereof, in Iraq. In mentioning Iraq he states: "Moreover, it is possible to envisage more attention being paid in advance to the management of post-conflict situations in a manner that in the Iraq case was made impossible by the rush of events." (91)

First of all, the war in Iraq was a war of choice engineered by lies and a rush to judgement before anyone had a chance to point out that the people leading the charge had no hard evidence for their casus belli. Secondly, there was no plan for post-war Iraq. International law makes it incumbent on the occupying force to restore infrastructure and care for the non-combatants. The Bush administration made no plans for the occupation. In fact, in order to escape its responsibilities in that area, as in so many others, the administration installed Bremer as a sort of pro-counsel who, legally it is claimed, was not a part of the US government. So the Coalition Provisional Authority could not be held liable under international law for the failures of the war planners to fail to plan for the aftermath of the war.

Got it?

They then rushed elections with people of their own choosing standing for office, another violation of international law. Elections held under the auspices of an occupying force are by definition not free elections. However, here stands the CPA again as a buffer between the US government and the nebulous Iraqi candidates, and the machinery entity that resulted from the orgy of purple fingers is supposed to be a legitimate governing body.

The book, as a whole, is interesting to those already familiar with international relations and the events of the last thirty years. However, Professor James and his publisher did a great marketing job by placing George W. Bush in a laurel wreath on the cover and then eliding over the deficiencies and outright fiscal irresponsibilities perpetrated on the American way of life by this current group in Washington.

There are better places to get an overview of American empire and militarism, specifically Chalmers Johnson's trilogy and Andrew Bacevich's The New Militarism. Niall Ferguson's books provided a counter point to Mr. Johnson's works.

Professor James could have done a much better job; instead of disingenuously marketing this book using Bush's image while absolving him of any responsibility for the crimes committed against the American system of government, he could have compared the end of the Roman empire to where we find ourselves today.

Gibbon: "Such is the constitution of civil society, that, whilst a few persons are distinguished by riches, by honours, and by knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance, and poverty." James writes: "Inequality was the social problem that provoked the rise of what he saw as the ideology that would undermine the Roman empire." (86)

Instead of giving George W. Bush a pass and referring to "the rush of events" in Iraq, the author would have served his readers better by assigning the blame for that rush where it squarely belongs.

Cohen pays all too little attention to Kosovo in this treatment of Milosevic-era Serbia, downplays popular culture (in spite of his professions to the contrary), and urges that the reader accept a version of historical determinism in which the actions of Serbs are seen as determined by the Ottoman occupation which ended in the nineteenth century. Cohen shows himself to have been sympathetic to the Serbian nationalist-expansionist project even while expressing a veiled contempt for Serbs. If one wants to understand Milosevic or, for that matter, Serbia in the Milosevic era, one would do a lot better to turn to the splendid treatments by Louis Sell or Adam LeBor.

This is the best of the Milosevic books in terms of biographical information for those interested in what kind of man he really is.

Granted, there isn't a lot of detail about him, but it's most than others. Something is always missing when people describe him--he was a charming but complete cynical bastardo. One has to be impressed with the trained abiltity to just lie to people outright and make them believe it. A man with no vision but a knack for quick power plays, the wily Slobo finally committed about fifty too many war crimes and just had to go. He now resides in The Hague, where his high blood pressure will be the ultimate judge before the hasty four-year trial wraps up.

Slobo sounds like a rather banal, cold dude. His rule was hardly prosperous. Multiple wars, sanctions, NATO bombs, refugees, massive atrocities--again, Slobo's skill is his ability to paint himself as a not-so-perfect leader who is no worse than anyone else. The country was run into the ground and finally they just couldn't take the atrocities and burned the Parliament building.

A very thorough account of the Milosevic years, though obviously Milosevic-centric. More than a biography of the leader, a pretty good history book as well.

Revised edition is inevitable. If he survives sentencing, we can possibly expect the autobiography, in which Slobo writes his own history book.

This book is the best English-language treatment to date of Milosevic's rule in Serbia as can be found in a single volume.

It is not just a biography, though that, too, can be found in the sections discussing Milosevic's rise to power (frequently drawing on the pathbreaking work of Serb journalist Slavoljub Djukic). Cohen's work is much more a well-researched account of the main political events, players, and contexts in Serbia/Yugoslavia where Milosevic is the central, but far from exclusive, focus.

Cohen treats primarily domestic politics, but also spends a fair amount of time on the foreign context, particularly in relation to Dayton and also the Kosovo conflict. He is particularly good on summarizing the levers of power and patrimonial methods used by Milosevic, and especially Serbian political culture--something of a favorite topic with Cohen--that helped to underpin Milosevic's rule. Cohen's cultural emphasis leads him to argue that some authoritarian social attitudes are likely to trouble, though not necessarily determine, Serbian politics after Milosevic's departure.

As much as I like the political-party level details available in Robert Thomas's _Politics of Serbia in the 1990s_ (especially on party origins), and the interesting political-cultural account in Eric Gordy's _The Culture of Power in Serbia_, Cohen does a better, more thorough job fleshing out the factional character of the Milosevic regime and its opposition, with more attention paid to basic features of political economy and analysis of social support for political players. It might be possible to improve on this book by touching up details and tightening particular arguments, but for an avowed case study speaking to larger questions, Cohen has raised the empirical and analytical bar impressively high.

Cohen's treatment of the Kosovo conflict is quite good in its details, but journalist Tim Judah's book on Kosovo is better on the genealogy and players of Albanian military and political groups and the negotiations at Rambouillet and during the war. For laypeople, Cohen also gives an excellent thumbnail sketch of debates over the character of nationalism, and concrete policy outcomes in the Balkans as a result of the debate. He does not, however, really clarify to what extent nationalism on any side should be tolerated and respected, preferring instead to warn the West in general terms to be "open-minded" and "pragmatic" of the complexities behind myths and national aspirations. It's a plea for comprehension first, but short on policy specifics, which, in retrospect, is perhaps not such a bad thing.

The only other flaw I have to mention is the repeated and distracting spelling errors [e.g., "loosing" for losing] and somewhat less frequent syntactical / grammatical mistakes peppered throughout. Considering how hard it is for all of us to edit our own copy after months of staring at monitors, the fault lies with copy editors who are paid not to rely solely on their spell-checkers and who might have tinkered in mistaken directions with the original copy.

This book is fairly smoothly written, although perhaps somewhat dense for non-academics. As of this writing, you'll be hard pressed to find a better account of Milosevic's Serbia, and I count it as a good reference and analytic help in my own research on Serbia compared to her neighbors. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but I'm happy to round it up to 5 because it'll be awhile before anyone tops Cohen's accomplishment.

This book covers the first Bush administration and the foreign policy decisions they took around the end of the cold war and the Gulf war. The book covers the authors views as to what the U.S. should and should not do as far as aggression across the globe. I must say that I found this book more interesting reading it now, after the second Bush's first term and the Iraqi war. There were so many parallels in what the authors are concerned about and what has taken place over the past four years that one would have thought the book was written in 2004 and not 1992. Basically, the authors felt that the fist Bush administration was too eager to send the military off to do the job that the diplomats should have been doing. An interesting view given that most people view the first President Bush as one of the stronger Presidents in the area of Foreign Policy and diplomacy that we have had over the past few decade's.

Given the climate today the authors took some rather interesting positions that today would be met with a mixture of contempt and adoration from both sides of the political isle. They are dead set against preemptive war and want the U.S. to fall back to more of a isolationist position, at least in regard to military action. They argue that this is keeping with what the countries founding fathers would have done. They also think the UN should be the body used to work through these type of international disputes. But in a fit or either hard edged pragmatism or just plain ruthlessness, the authors argue that once we were engaged in the Gulf war the only logical outcome was to go all the way to Baghdad and oust Saddam.

Overall the book is interesting and presents its arguments is a well thought out and calm if not cautious way. This is not one of the many over dramatic, shout at each other type of political book that is so common today. These two authors are college professors and reading the book you did get the feeling of a senior level class room lecture. This is my one complaint, the book was written far to dry to gain wide acceptance among general readers. Unless you are truly interested in the topic, I would assume the general reader would put the book down after the first chapter thinking it was too dense.

Tucker and Hendrickson effectively communicate a criticism of American foreign policy during the Bush Administration. The book is interesting, readable and appropriate for any political science student interested in American foreign policy after the cold war. The arguments are well presented for the most part, but some are problematic. For example, the authors contend that NATO was established as a collective security stating that "NATO, however, was a pure application of collective security: `It is directed against no one; it is directed solely against aggression.'"(65) While the statement in and of itself may have occurred in practice, the organization itself was designed to combat the spread of Communism, not aggression. In The Imperial Temptation, the authors evaluate the foreign policy of an administration based on a single event: the gulf war. Although this event may be characteristic of the administration, not enough evidence is presented to support that assertion. The Imperial Temptation is a valuable book for the curious and/or critical political science student interested in varying views regarding post-cold war American foreign policy, or simply the gulf war itself. It is an interesting book, and a fairly easy reader on American foreign policy after the cold war.

Attali's intriguing thesis--the microchip will allow for a reshuffling of the world geopolitical power structure and promote the growth and social dominance of "nomadic men" with few ties to place or fellow man--is consistently undermined, and eventually rendered ineffective, by three problems:

A pervasive and thinly disguised national chauvinism;

Grossly inaccurate macroeconomic forecasting; and

A pendantic and condescending Foreward by Alvin Toffler which insists that we, as provincial and intellectually vacant Americans, must read this book simply because Attali is a stunning genius eager to save us from our own ignorance.

I will give this book one more star for each of the problems the author chooses to correct in future editions.

I read this book as soon as it came out and was very impressed, especially because his ideas of rich and poor "nomads" was born out in my own experience. As early as the late 70's I was meeting Koreans who had worked for engineering companies in Iraq, probably as low paid labour. One of their chaplains had come straight from expulsion by the Ayatollahs there to study in the post-graduate programme I was teaching. Then I noted the low paid horde that had been stranded in Kuweit after the Gulf War. All these were graphic examples of "poor" nomads. Since then the movement of poor or desperate peoples has become worse and is dramatised by the international "sex industry" revelations almost daily. The rich migrants are also increasingly visible, with or without the Concord Crash. Attali was right then with one of his major theses. Since he is a hardened practical economist, he is even more likely to be right in economic matters.

The fact that his economic wisdom runs counter to prevailing "conventional wisdom" in economic matters may suggest that he may have a true prophetic nose and may be on a useful scent.

I'm going to be glad to study this book carefully again, now ten years later.

For being a book about The Skull and Bones secret society, this book was frighteningly dull. It was as if she was committed to writing a book about this society, initially thinking that it would be engaging, but then she researched (and OH BOY did she research) and wrote it, only to discover that it was actually a pretty boring subject, but hey, she might as well get paid.

If you're looking for a (very dry) history of the Skull and Bones written by someone who won't ever let you forget that they also went to Yale (Which is where the Skull and Bones is. At Yale. Where the write went to school. Yale. Where the Skull and Bones is. Did I mention Yale yet?), this book will suffice.

This was our third book. . .wore the others out from use as so few people had ever paid much attention to this "Secret Society".
The Author made reading very enjoyable. Don't see how they can equate Skull and Bones Society with the Christian Principles of Yale though.

Guess it is like everything else that came over from Europe. . .

I definitely enjoyed Alexandra Robbins' other books, however "Secrets of the Tomb" is not a fun read. Robbins is long winded and lacks the narrative that is so entertaining in "Pledged" and "The Overachievers." The book takes a historical perspective that is too detailed and not very direct, creating a lot of build-up for describing a boring society and ritual. Since Robbins was herself a member of a secret society the book is written with an undercurrent of reverance that seems to bar the author from revealing too much.

I thought the book was a little slow in the beginning, as it deeply covers the rise of the secret societies within Yale's deep past. However, the author transitioned very smoothly from subject to subject and captured my interest with every page. The author dives deep into the basis of the Skull and Bones society, including the historical and tremendously ironic history of the Bush family. Very interesting read, with deeply historical and accurate documentation of the society's beginnings, an inside look into the initaition rituals, debunking of myths, and exasperating covering of historical (and ultimately important) American families.

The book has an intriguing cover and title. The introduction was captivating. Sadly, it's all downhill from there -- it reads like the minutes of a long and unproductive meeting.

Apparently, the author has succeeded in recruiting her friends to leave contrived reviews. Of the 28 which rated this book at 5-stars, 15 were anonymous and 9 had this book as their only reviewed work. That leaves 4 people who unquestionably enjoyed it -- the editor, her parents, and boyfriend. The others are suspect.

(1) Speaking as a former police supervisor, criticisms of the "Broken Windows" Theory of policing are often well taken. Unfortunately, Bernard Harcourt couches his oppositional views in a rambling, inefficiently written academese. Concise, telling points are few. The bibliography is decent. (2) Timothy Lynch's "'We Own the Night' Amadou Diallo's Deadly Encounter with New York City's Street Crimes Unit" makes a much more effective argument in only 8 pages. (Cato Institute Briefing Papers #56). George Kelling, the National Institute of Justice, and the New York Office of the Attorney General have all produced shorter, precise, and much more telling analyses of some of the pros and cons of Broken Windows doctrine.

This book is about the "broken windows" model of policing, which was put into action by Rudy Guiliani in New York City. Despite the fact that the crime rate in New York City has plummetted after this new style of policing was put into effect, Professor Harcourt hates broken windows policing. He tries to get you to agree with him by making two arguments.

First, Harcourt argues that "broken windows" policing does not work. He cites alot of empirical evidence. If you read his evidence carefully, and I did, it does not say that broken windows policing does not work. Rather, this evidence says that it has not been proven that it does work. The studies he cites basically conclude, "Gee, we do not know why crime went down." Harcout then dishonestly argues that these studies prove that Broken Windows does not work. No, they prove no such thing. Read Harcourt's footnotes if you do not believe me; his evidence does not support his argument.

Second, Harcourt argues that Broken Windowns does work, but that the cost is too high. He argues that the way the broken windows works in practice is that it really cracks down on minor crime.

This is true. The whole idea of Brokens Window policing is that, if you crack down on minor crime, you will create an environment of order, which will greatly reduce major crime.

Why is this a bad thing? Harcourt is a post-modernist, who takes Foucalt and Derrida seriously. Following his European masters, he argues that all forms of order are oppressive, and that is morally wrong for society to impose order upon anyone. In short, he is against order. Broken windows policing tends to restore order, therefore he is against it.

Thus, the title, "Illusion of Order" is deliberately dishonest. It suggests that Harcourt is for order, but that Broken Windows policing does not provide it. In fact, the book says nothing of the kind. Instead, the book says that Harcourt is against order, and thinks that Broken Windows policing creates order at too high a price.

Providing an abundance of evidence that many academics can't write, Harcourt displays his lack of talent in Illusion of Order. That said, the topic is fascinating and his critique of "broken windows" policing is blistering. Read it for the substance; just be prepared to wade through the pretty awful style.

B. Harcourt is an expert who debunks myths in law enforcement. His findings are against common sense and may sound ridiculous to readers (and policymakers alike) with an IQ below 70, yet he has a point and makes it in a clear and well written style. Unlike superficial studies, his book goes through substantial analyses and details, which are necessary to document the case he makes. A recommended reading.

This work may be best suited for students of Criminology who are required to demonstrate their knowledge and skill in conducting their own research somewhere along the continuum from Community Oriented Policing to Intelligence Led Policing. The highly academic style is replete with methodical concerns, including the value of empirical evidence, and research jargon such as regression analysis, correlation of variables, etc.

Although the book was prepared essentially as a peer review of the earlier works of the proponents of the `Broken Windows' theory, the real value may be in its recognition of the shallowness of strictly quantitative analysis. " The important methodological point is that, once we have taken the `social meaning turn' - and I believe we must- quantitative correlations between enforcement and crime will no longer be sufficient. ...The study of social meaning calls for the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods, and integration which is being increasingly reflected in the social sciences today. From political science and sociology to program evaluation in psychology, there is a growing movement to overcome the traditional paradigm war, and to increase the amount of information brought to bear on hypotheses." Pp 110-114.

This is an essential read for the serious student of modern police methods.

I have been following Richard Butler for many years with a lot of interest as he is a man who is extremely experienced in the issues of nuclear proliferation.

His argument is that nuclear weapons spread is caused by other states that have nuclear weapons, they are expensive and that we could modify the world system so we could get rid of them. Well I find myself disagreeing with him.

Originally nuclear weapons were first developed by the US against a non-nuclear opponent Germany. When the US discovered that Germany did not have a bomb, they kept on making it. They then used it against a non-nuclear enemy Japan. Then they built up their nuclear resources against a non-nuclear Russia. Later on Israel developed its nuclear weapons to be used as a last resort against enemies that lacked nuclear weapons. What I think one could argue is that the presence of nuclear weapons accelerates the spread of nuclear weapons but not that it is the cause!

I also disagree about the expense. To quote the US federal government and say that nuclear weapons cost more then education, training, employment and social services; agriculture, natural resources and environment; general science and space research; community and regional development; law enforcement; and energy production and regulation is dishonest. Most these expenses are not federal but state and local costs. Defense tends to be a federal expense. I could use the same argument and argue since the US state governments spend so little on nuclear weapons compared to other things that nuclear weapons are cheap.

But say his own figures is correct and the US military spend about 14% of its budget on nuclear weapons. The US military budget is about 19% of the federal total. So that works out to about 2.7% of the federal budget. For that expenditure, the US gets a massive powerful weapon system which is much cheaper then any other conventional system. President Eisenhower, who Richard Butler likes to selectively quote, talked about getting the biggest bang for the buck, and Eisenhower was talking about nukes. Bluntly the reason the US went for a nuclear defense system was it was cheaper. Similarly nuclear programs in other countries, do not appear to have made much a dent on their countries budgets so much that open societies like Britain, France, Israel and South Africa all managed to hid the relative small amounts in large items.


Not only that but many countries purposes, a conventional system cannot do what a nuclear system can do. What size conventional force could North Korea or Iran build, that could deter the US?


Lastly as anyone who has followed world affairs can see, its extremely unlikely that the international community can even if it wanted to police nuclear proliferation. His example of a policeman and crime is just wishful thinking - crime occurs in all countries. Nor is it easy to find, EVERY nation that today possesses nuclear weapons has lied about its intention to develop them. EVERY nuclear nation once protested that either "we are NOT going to develop nuclear weapons" or "our nuclear research is for peaceful purposes only." Then they went right ahead and developed the bomb. All we need is one crime in this case for a country going nuclear and Richard Butler's theories go out the door. By Richard Butler calculations then 44 countries could get a bomb, if they wanted one. Since then, one now has it North Korea. So we have a failure rate of 2%. Considering the record of the UN there is no reason to believe that any new UN body would do much not that much. Short of an invasion of North Korea, there is little the world can do to stop North Korea.

The problem is that nuclear have been invented, its very hard to uninvent them and wishful thinking like this book suggests is not the answer.

The author, Richard Butler, headed the UN Special Commission for Disarming Iraq. He was formerly a career member of the Australian diplomatic corp. and is a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament. In this book, the author gives his point of view. The international community of countries is facing a critical choice concerning the spread of nuclear weapons. The world is divided into countries that possess nuclear weapons, the "Have" countries, and those countries that do not possess such weapons are the Have-Nots". In the U.S., every country that attempts to join the ranks of the "Have" countries are berated with military threats and international sanctions because they have broken the terms of the (Non-Proliferation Treaty) NPT. The author's view is that the "Have" countries have themselves to blame for the root of the problem. The other half of the NPT holds that the countries possessing Nuclear Weapons must strive toward disarmament. The "Have -Not " countries that are playing catch-up in this arms race consider the NPT a broken treaty as they view each successive generation of improved nuclear weapons being deployed by the "Have" countries. Richard Butler's idea is that everything the nuclear powers use to prevent the remainder of the countries from joining its privileged circle is doomed to failure. The idea for the U.S. to set up a missile defense system will just be another privileged circle that will make the "playing" field even more tilted. Another exclusive club that will also become more populated as the technology trickles down. The book provides an excellent history of the Nuclear Weapons Age politics and treaties and their interplay upon different countries of the world community. .
Some very current and good information is provided on the status of Iraq. The author explains the problems and his views very well. Well worth the read. His solutions seem to be a situation of "more of the same thing" I gave it three stars just because the solutions seems so weak. The information and the history provided is the five star section of the book.

I must say right up front that I was disappointed with this book. I had read the authors other book on his time as an Iraqi weapons inspector and found it to be both interesting and entertaining. I had hoped this book would be the same. It turns out the interesting sections were sparse and even the authors mother might be hard pressed to call the book entertaining. The author has spent most of his career working on nuclear weapons issues in regards to disarmament. Given that he was a member of the Australian government this meant his work consisted of being ignored by the countries with the weapons and be placated by the countries that wanted them. The book is his review of the current state of affaires with nuclear weapons and his opinion on the "star wars" missile defense system the U.S. is in the process of building.

I guess I should not be too hard on the author. He did drop into his book here and there very interesting bits of information about nuclear weapons, who has them and what do they have. He also gives the reader some in sight as to which counties helped who with the creation of the weapons. I also liked the numbers he tossed in every now and then. The overall amount of money the U.S. alone has spent on these weapons systems is jaw dropping amazing. My complaints with the book are two fold. First he left out a large amount of interesting information that could have bulked up the book. There were very little discussion on what the current weapons can do, how they are delivered, and how the missile defense system is supposed to work. Given that the author was barely able to scrape together 160 pages for the book, it might not have been that bad of an idea to spend a little time at the library and give the reader a bit more.

But my largest issue with the book was this pie in the sky view that by just talking to all the counties in the world about not having these weapons, somehow the countries that currently have the weapons would just decide to trash them and we would all live happily ever after. Now I do not argue that this would be a nice state of affairs, but lets step into reality. Who really thinks the conservative government we have now would think voluntarily getting rid of all nuclear weapons is a good idea. How about the Israelis, surrounded by enemies or how about India and Pakistan, two countries that routinely have boarder fights today. I felt the thinking was simplistic, narrow minded and bordering on the fanciful. Overall the book was average, it held some interesting bits of info, but also suffered from rather long and dull musings about a better world. I am sure there are better books dealing with weapons disarmament or the missile defense system.

Richard Butler, a proponent of the abolition of all nuclear weapons, has written an important book concerning the current state of nuclear weapons in the world. His main thesis states that the problem with nuclear weapons are the weapons themselves and anything short of getting rid of them a futile effort. Specifically he refers to the Bush administrations future deployment of National Missile Defence as the "fatal choice."

According to Butler, the advocates of missile defense and other measures designed to keep and expand nuclear arsenals in the U.S. use the argument that current treaties, especially the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, are not being adhered to and are thus useless. Butler, however, indicts the U.S. as being the main noncopliant culprit in that the U.S. has not bilaterally reduced its arsenal along with Russia to lower levels as is required in the treaty. Instead of scrapping the treaties, Butler advocates that these treaties ought to be bolstered and the proper institution be established to ensure compliance by all signators.

Butler's book outlines effectively a few specific arguments against NMD.

This collection is certainly 'diverse'. There are a number of interesting essays here, a number of mediocre ones, and a number which could fall into the 'relevant' category if they happen to be your thing. Overall a good introduction to the influence of what was then called 'postmodernism' on academic Marxism in the USA. 'Postmodernism' may have worn out its welcome by now but that by no means signifies a victory for complacent 'modernist' Marxists such as Eagleton, but rather might signal the end of Marxism's relevance in academic work and its relegation to political movements in Nepal, Chiapas, etc.
The one stand-out essay here is Warren Montag's paper on Louis Althusser's autobiography. Surely essential reading for anyone reading 'The Future lasts Forever'. You can probably photocopy that brief piece from the local library, however.

Insulated, tenured academic Marxists like Callari didn't lose their rudder after the cold war, they lost their keel. These essays are illuminating not because the subject matter is something we haven't heard before, but because they reveal the grumpy, cantankerous nature of self-indulgent authors who are bobbing around the ocean willing to say anything to get noticed.

Marxism in the Postmodern Age provides, perhaps, one of the most comprehensive reviews of current Marxist thought and action available today. Featuring over 50 essays by prominent theorists, artists, and educators dedicated to the progressive cause, this volume manages to cover nearly every aspect of Marxist theory in our society, from politics and economics to art and pop culture. While there are many standard pieces covering topics such as the global state of the anti-capitalist cause in the wake of the Soviet collapse, there are also more practical and lighter topics such as "Waiting for the Revolution, or How to Smash Capitalism in Your Spare Time" and chapters with specific focus on Marxism in popular culture. It is this diversity which is really this works greatest strength. By bringing together both "academic Marxists" and active radicals, reformers and revolutionaries, political commentators and protestors, this work provides a more comprehensive view of the current state of the struggle than most other sources. This book is an excellent reference source, most people won't be interested in every article in this compendium, and a significant number require at least a comfortable grasp of complex economic and political theorems, but the book does provide information on both common and rare topics of interest to most progressives and radicals. The one true drawback to this volume is its publication date; the book was originally published in 1995, and many of the articles date back to the 1992 conference on "Marxism in the New World Order" held at UMass Amherst. In a rapidly changing socio-political climate, this is a significant time period, and many issues, which are now at the forefront of the fight against capitalism, are mentioned only briefly or not at all. For example, the World Trade Organization, currently perhaps the organization against which there is, perhaps, the most domestic Marxist protest (as demonstrated in Seattle) isn't even mentioned. This, however, is not a crippling drawback, and the scope of the text easily makes up for it. This is an essential for anyone seeking to gain an understanding of Marxism not as a theory, but as an ideology, and as a possibility for the future.