Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War by Alan KramerReview by: Lawrence D. FreedmanForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2008), pp. 181-182Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20020291 .

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become discouraged. A couple of nice touches are his use of personal experiences to illuminate key issues and his identi fication of a number of "entrapments," apparently intractable debates in which analysis can get snarled up-for example, the debate over the tradeoffs between fight ing terrorism and protecting civil liberties.

Bioviolence. Preventing Biological Terror and Crime. BY BARRY KELLMAN.

Cambridge University Press, 2007, 390 pp. $8o.oo (paper, $28.99).

Bioterrorism: Confronting a Complex Threat. EDITED BY ANDREAS WENGER AND

RETO WOLLENMANN. Lynne

Rienner, 2007, 241 pp. $52.00.

According to Kellman, a law professor, bioviolence is "the infliction of harm by the intentional manipulation of living

micro-organisms for hostile purposes." There is, he argues, a perpetual war going on between humanity and microbes: supporting the microbes is "species treason." Keilman emphasizes the risks resulting from advances in biotechnology, the ease

with which disease can spread, and the development of forms of political strife in

which biological routes to mass slaughter might seem enticing. Measures that might protect against catastrophe have not been taken, he complains, because policymakers are poorly informed about the dangers, think nationally rather than internation ally, and lack an integrative approach.

Kellman's tone is at times shrill, but his detail is impressive, and the risks are hardly trivial. He sees the threat to be so great that it challenges ideas about how the international community should govern itself, and he eloquently shows why muddling through is not good enough. Given the ambition of some of his pre

scriptions, however, muddling through may be a more likely course.

Kellman's puzzle is why there has yet to be a major incident of bioviolence. The use of disease to exterminate the unwary is not new-recall Native Americans being handed rugs infected with small pox. In the twentieth century, the great powers developed biological weapons until concluding that they would be tricky to use effectively in war. Al Qaeda has shown an unnerving interest in toxins, and some cults and terrorists have conducted some nasty little experiments, but so far with limited results. The Wenger and

Wollenmann volume focuses largely on the problem faced by policymakers when there are so many uncertainties. The issue, as Anthony Cordesman puts it, is "when to cry wolf, what to cry, and how to cry it."

This is not an area about which anybody wants to appear complacent, but Milton Leitenberg's essay is worth reading for the view that the danger of bioterrorism has been deliberately exaggerated in recent years. This creates the risk of preparing for the wrong contingency: the real danger

may be a natural pandemic (such as avian flu). More seriously, it puts noxious ideas into the heads of terrorists. The challenge, accordingly, is how to get governments to take prudent steps to prepare for a wolf

without constantly yelling that one is on its way.

Dynamic ofDestruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. BY ALAN KRAM ER. Oxford University Press, 2007, 446 pp. $34.00.

For atrocities to happen, perpetrators must first think atrocious thoughts. Kramer's book considers the source of the atrocious thoughts leading up to and

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into World War I among both military and cultural theorists. As it is the world

war that followed that is best known for its atrocities, it is sobering to be reminded of the horrors of this one, even away from the trenches. Kramer starts with the burning of the ancient library of Louvain, Belgium, by invading German troops in a murderous frenzy and uses this event to pose the question of how terrible, destructive urges can grip whole societies in times of war. Looking at the origins of the war, he covers familiar ground from a new angle, subjecting Austro-Hungarian as well as German attitudes to searching scrutiny. Once wars come to be about nationality and ethnicity, and civilians are seen as legitimate targets, the dynamic of destruction takes over.

The consequences are revealed in some compelling memoirs and photos. Kramer packs a lot in, so the book requires carefuil reading, but his material is as fascinating as it is depressing.

The United States WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making ofthe United States. BY STEPHEN MIHM. Harvard

University Press, 2007, 472 pp. $30.00. As aftershocks of a crisis in the credit markets continue to reverberate, Mihm offers a timely reminder of the degree to

which bad credit and lax regulation have shaped both American finance and Amer ican culture. From colonial times to the

Civil War, the United States was a cash strapped society of optimistic dreamers.

The future wealth of the country was

immense; its current resources, limited. Before the Civil War, there was no national currency; unregulated banks issued vast quantities of bank notes that circulated

with varying discounts-as money. This chaos was a paradise for counterfeiters, and

Mihm's entertaining and comprehensive account describes the crucial role that rampant chicanery, charlatanism, and fraud played in the rapidly developing

U.S. economy. Mihm can be overly portentous at times as he laboriously tells readers how to interpret the history he presents. He also faces an inevitable difficulty for any historian of fraud: he is dealing with unreliable characters and falsified or poorly kept records. But even

with these limits, this book provides readers with an important and revealing perspective on the growth of the culture and politics of American business. Chi canery and fraud helped make this country great; recent headlines suggest the process is still under way.

The Puritan Origins ofAmerican Patriotism. BY GEORGE McKENNA. Yale

University Press, 2007, 448 pp. $3s.00. In Dangerous Nation, Robert Kagan argues that the influence of Puritan New England in subsequent U.S. national development has been greatly exaggerated. McKenna has a very different take, and this thoughtfil and well-written book makes a powerfuil case that Puritan values and ideas continue to shape American identity and politics down to the present day. To make the argument, McKenna sometimes has to stretch-in his view, the Puritan legacy changed from generation to generation but overall, readers leave this book, the product of a lifetime of scholarship, con vinced that those seventeenth-century New

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