States, Nations, and the Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace by BENJAMINMILLERReview by: G. JOHN IKENBERRYForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 6 (November/December 2008), pp. 157-158Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699384 .

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Recent Books

absence of a coherent and agreed-on form

of global political order. It is disorder and the lack of direction that characterize

today s global system. Hobsbawm is most

eloquent in explaining why empire and

hegemony?the solutions for the problem of order in other centuries?no longer work. In the past, Western domination

was facilitated by the fact that western ization was the only way that weak and backward societies could rise up, creating goodwill toward the West and the loyalty of local elites. But in a globalized economy, roads to modernization no longer run

through the West, leading to a diffusion of power and a fragmentation order.

Hobsbawm argues that the breakdown

of order is also caused by the changing character of armed violence?in which

soldiers, states, sovereignty, and borders

are less defined and the rules of war less clear. The books message is that a single superpower cannot impose order on a

world in which the authority of global institutions has eroded and the legitimacy of great-power rule has disappeared. But the question remains: What will

provide the basis for global order in the new century? Hobsbawm responds: "Since

historians are, fortunately, not prophets, I am not professionally obliged to give you an answer."

another. Weaker or smaller alliance partners

gain some access to the strategic decision

making of the leading state, and the leading state gains some leverage over the actions

of junior partners. This valuable study explores the logic of these intra-alliance

power relationships, looking in particular at moments when states try to use alliance

ties to restrain risky military actions by their partners. In a wide-ranging survey of alliances in Europe and Asia over the last century, Pressman finds that the "restraint motive" for alliance creation is

as important as the "mutual protection" motive. Case studies focus on the United

States' alliance relations with the United

Kingdom and Israel?probing episodes such as the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the U.S. nonintervention in Indochina in 1954, and the British intervention in the Suez War of 1956. Pressman finds that powerful states can use alliances to thwart the mil

itary actions of weaker partners if they are willing to mobilize their power to do so, and powerful states can go to war

despite the misgivings of their junior alliance partners. The value of the book is that it underscores the view that alliances are not just protection pacts but also a form of political architecture that creates

"institutional pathways" for the manage ment of wider geopolitical relationships. In other words, alliances are as much

about allies as they are about enemies. Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in

International Politics, byjeremy pressman. Cornell University Press,

2008,192 pp. $49.95 (paPer> $18.95). Alliances are traditionally seen as military pacts formed by states to counter common

threats. But alliances are also often valued as

political institutions that allow states within them to pressure and do business with one

States, Nations, and the Great Powers:

The Sources of Regional War and Peace.

by benjamin miller. Cambridge

University Press, 2007,526 pp. $110.00

(paper, $39.99). Debates about the causes of war have

FOREIGN AFFAIRS November/December2008 [157]

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Recent Books

tended to focus on conflict among the

great powers and the global balance of

power. This important study asserts that

the real puzzles of war and peace exist

on a lesser scale within regions. Most of

the wars in the last two centuries have been

between small to medium-size states,

neighbors struggling over prosaic matters of boundaries and politics. But regions vary widely in the incidence of war. In the current era, Europe and North America

have been quite peaceful, whereas East

Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Balkans have repeatedly experienced

war or the threat of war. To explain these

variations, the book offers an intriguing theory about the "fit" between states

and nations. Marshaling a mountain of

statistical and historical evidence, Miller

argues that peace is most likely to exist where there is "congruence" between the

underlying national aspirations and polit ical identifications and the formal political territorial borders. Where states and

nations are not aligned, conflict lurks.

Miller shows convincingly that condi tions of anarchy and power competition alone are rarely a trigger for war. Rather, it is contested boundaries and territories

that create a sense that the regional order

is not stable or legitimate, and this unset

tled situation turns mere political disputes into dangerous spirals of insecurity and threats of violence. In an interesting

chapter, Miller looks at the nineteenth

century colonial wars in Latin America

and the ways in which nation building and

regional territorial settlements removed

the sources of war. Although highly theoretical, the book is full of useful in

sights about potential pathways toward

regional peacemaking, particularly in

regard to the Middle East.

Humanitarianism in Question: Politics,

Power, Ethics, edited by Michael

barnett and thomas g. weiss.

Cornell University Press, 2008,320 pp.

$55.00 (paper, $19.95). This is a superb survey of the rise and

challenges of international humanitar

ian assistance. The book chronicles the

remarkable post-Cold War emergence of a global system of humanitarian re lief?a system complete with doctrines,

organizations, and extensive field oper ations. But it is also a system under

stress, working increasingly with little

guidance or support in war-torn societies

such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, and Rwanda. The authors in this collection

step back from these developments to ask first-order questions about the purposes and principles of humanitarianism. As the editors stress, although the humanitarian

assistance community has grown, it is

also increasingly divided over basic

questions about how to work with or

apart from the politics and power strug

gles that envelope crisis societies. Most

of the chapters explore these tensions

and the various ways that humanitarian

organizations have attempted to manage them. Humanitarian groups originally saw themselves as "above politics," but

as Janice Gross Stein and other authors

argue, today's aid workers have given up this fiction and now embrace at least

implicit political agendas. An insightful chapter by Bar nett and Jack Snyder identifies the various "grand strategies" of humanitarian intervention and explores their fit and effectiveness in different trouble spots. All in all, this book will

long be an essential guide to the theory and politics of global humanitarianism.

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