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Review Essays, Americas, Middle East
An Eye for an Eye

Mark Osiel’s provocative new book, The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture and the Law of War, provides detailed discussions of a number of important moral and legal issues arising for the United States in its ongoing response to the threats posed by the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The specific focus is the US-deployed counter-terrorist methods of sustained detention, torture, and targeted killing of suspected terrorists. The author, Mark Osiel, displays a wide knowledge of relevant literature in a number of fields, including international law, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.

By Seumas Miller  |  July 6, 2009
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Review Essays, Europe
Evaluating the Euro

The euro turned ten on January 1, 2009, which called for a reflection on its first decade.

By Ophelia Eglene  |  March 21, 2009
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Review Essays, Asia Pacific
Pakistan's Overbearing Army

Fifty years ago this October 24, Pakistan’s first Army Commander in Chief overthrew the prime minister, imposed martial law, and abrogated the constitution. That jarring rotation from civilian rule to martial law spawned five decades of overhauled constitutions, three protracted periods of martial law, and the overthrow of four civilian governments. In Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within, renowned Pakistan expert and former New York Times journalist Shuja Nawaz examines the tumultuous history of Pakistan’s overbearing army.

By Malou Innocent  |  December 19, 2008
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Review Essays
Debating Trade Reform

One helpful way to consider serious ideas and proposals about reforming the global trade regime is to organize them into three clusters or sets of approaches—participation, leadership, and holistic change of paradigm. Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo, the authors of The New Global Trading Order, focus on the last of the three. The first cluster emphasizes ways to increase the transparency, public participation, and accountability of the WTO and associated national and international institutions.

By David Deese  |  September 28, 2008
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Review Essays
Rethinking Economic Reform

The co-authors of Human Rights and Structural Adjustment, M. Rodwan Abouharb and David Cingranelli, present a simple and straightforward argument: the economic reform programs initiated by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the 1980s, which tended to be lumped together under the awkward phrase "structural adjustment," caused a progressive worsening of human rights conditions in the countries that undertook them. The longer a country was exposed to structural adjustment, the worse the country's human rights conditions became.

By Michael Lofchie  |  August 16, 2008
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Review Essays, Americas, Asia Pacific
A Dubious Recipe

Amy Chua, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, has written an ambitious book covering a vast array of empires and other powers. The work reaches from the Great Persian Empire to Rome and the contemporary US hyperpower. Her analysis also includes an outlook on the possible challengers to the latter, namely China, the European Union, and India.

By Armand Clesse  |  March 15, 2008
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Africa, Review Essays
Assessing the Nuclear Threat

While Langewiesche’s new work has a great “hook,” it offers little new insight into Pakistan’s role in Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan’s aid and abetment of nuclear weapons proliferation. Moreover, it is largely silent on the danger that Pakistani nuclear weapons might, in the midst of political chaos, slip into al-Qaeda’s murderous hands.

By Richard L. Russell  |  March 15, 2008
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Review Essays
China’s Soft Power

Much is made today of China’s booming economy. US defense secretaries point to China’s rising military power and question why China feels the need to build its military might so rapidly. US diplomats work with Chinese diplomats in an effort to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis. These measures are covered extensively in the world press. In contrast, China’s global involvement in a number of other areas tends to receive comparatively little attention from either the press or from US and European political leaders and scholars.

By Dwight H. Perkins  |  December 31, 2007
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Review Essays
Europe’s New Economics

Old Europe is always good for surprises. The region’s actual economic performance is much better than expected, with growth rates above potential for this year and the next. Employment prospects are encouraging, with the creation of millions of new jobs and unemployment rates falling to below 7 percent. The public finances of European Union member states are also improving, bringing the fiscal deficit well below the critical deficit criterion of the Maastricht Treaty. Europe is thus gaining new strength in terms of growth.

By Christa Randzio-Plath  |  December 31, 2007
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Review Essays, Americas
The Final Frontiers?

US empire is in vogue, if not on the streets of Paris than at least as a topic of academic discourse. Analysts should, however, beware. The last wave of historians of US “empire,” including such New Left revisionists as William Appleman Williams and Walter LaFeber, shrunk the “e” word from six letters to four, employing it more as epithet than as analytical concept. Without defining empire, early narratives were at best equally comprehensible sans “empire” and at worst vehicles for bias.

By Stephen Wertheim  |  November 22, 2007  |  1
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