Iran and the Bomb: The Abdication of International Responsibility by Thérèse Delpech; RosSchwartzReview by: Lawrence D. FreedmanForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2008), p. 180Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20020287 .

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Recent Books

Military; Scientific, and Technological

LAWRENCE D. FREEDMAN

Iran and the Bomb: TheAbdication of International Responsibility. BY THERESE DELPECH. TRANSLATED

BY ROS SCHWARTZ. Columbia

University Press, 2007, 16o pp. $26.95. Those curious as to why France is at the

forefront of efforts to curtail Iran's ambitions to become a nuclear power should read this

wonderftilly pugnacious book by Delpech, the director of strategic studies at the French Atomic Energy Commission. She sets out with authority, concision, and

clarity the reasons why the international community should be concerned about Iran's nuclear program. There is no doubt

about what the Iranians are up to or about the need for a strong response if they are

to be diverted from their current course. To

justify her subtitle, Delpech goes through each country and regional grouping with an interest in the matter, from the perma nent members of the UN Security Council to implicated countries such as Pakistan and threatened countries such as Israel and

Saudi Arabia, ending with the International Atomic Energy Agency, in each case

explaining, without condoning, their equiv ocations. For a short, sharp book on the

current crisis and how it should be managed, it is hard to see how this could be bettered.

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. BY ANDREW COCKBURN.

Scribner, 2007, 256 pp. $2s.00. It would be out of character for Cockburn to write a balanced biography of Donald

Rumsfeld, and this dark portrait of a manipulative schemer presents few redeem ing qualities. Cockburn is, however, an assiduous investigator and skiliftil narrator. The story he tells is almost Shakespearean in its concluding tragedy. Out of the

wreckage of the Nixon and Ford years comes the elder George Bush's abiding hostility toward Rumsfeld, which raises intriguing questions about how Rumsfeld could exercise such influence over the younger George Bush. The material on Iraq is familiar but usefully and effectively pulled together, taking the book to its grim conclusion. The denouement was surprisingly prolonged. It had been ap parent for some time that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would have to go, yet Bush waited until the political damage was done, and congressional elections were lost, before firing him.

The Faces of Terrorism: Social and Psychological Dimensions. BY NEIL J.

SMELSER. Princeton University Press, 2007, 292 pp. $29.95.

Whatever one's complaints about the excess of new books on terrorism despite there being so little left to say, Smelser, a leading social scientist, turns his attention to the topic with valuable results. After 9/11, Smelser was invited to contribute to various panels on terrorism established by the National Academies, and he took the view that social scientists ought to offer fresh approaches that sidestep parti san political debates. The resulting book is valuable not only because of Smelser's shrewd judgments but also because he draws on such a wide literature-including on issues related to a range of radical

political movements and on the factors that allow these movements to prosper or

[180] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume87No.z

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