The Foreign Service Journal, November 2003

The Nation-States: Concert or Chaos Richard Lee Hough, University Press of America, 2003, $25.00, paperback, 154 pages. This book is a thoughtful and well-argued response to the increasingly insistent predictions of the demise of the nation-state as the fundamental way political power is organized in our world. The author examines what he terms “the messy, conflictive realities impinging on the nation- state system,” and concludes that the nation-state is not in as bad shape as commentators have portrayed and should be seen as a firm but adaptive nexus in the face of changes that challenge world order. Richard Hough is a retired USAID officer. He was also on the staff of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, where he concentrated on laud reform programs in Central America, and has taught at Redlands University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the National War College and Georgetown University. He has written widely on international affairs and public policy. This book grew out of a course the author taught at Georgetown University. Investing In Peace: How Development Aid Can Prevent or Promote Conflict Robert J. Muscat, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2002, $23.95, paperback, 256 pages. The problem of failed states and internal conflict in developing nations was pushed to the fore- front by the horror of Rwanda and the breakup of Yugoslavia in the past decade, and is now before us as a challenge to nationbuilding efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is there anything international actors can do to prevent or ameliorate internal conflict and failed states? Are conflict-prevention measures already being attempted, and in some cases succeeding so well that we are unaware of them? If so, what can we learn from them? This book by retired USAID officer Robert J. Muscat attempts to answer these questions by offering a timely and eye-opening study of the role develop- ment agencies play in conflict-prone situations. The first part of the book, an investigation of the problem of conflict, its different forms and the different approach- es to it, centers on nine case studies — four where con- flicts were fought and five where conflicts were avoid- ed — and the role of development aid in each. The second part considers the practicalities of an agenda for conflict prevention. Muscat worked for USAID in Thailand, Brazil and Kenya. As the agency’s chief economist, he was eco- nomic adviser to the Thai development planning agency and the Malaysian Ministry of Finance, and was planning director for the U.N. Development Program. He has consulted for U.N. agencies and the World Bank, and was a visiting scholar at Columbia’s East Asian Institute and at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025 Ambassador Mark Palmer, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003, $27.95, hardcover, 348 pages. Ambassador Mark Palmer ap- plauded President George W. Bush’s identification of the “axis of evil” in 2002, but believed it “fell woefully short of describing fully what is in fact a vast arc of tyranny, where a few dozen men hold a third of the planet’s population under their thumbs.” Now Saddam Hussein is gone, but there are 44 dictators left. This book, which the author describes as “the first attempt by an experienced diplomat to put democracy at the center of foreign policy,” is a rallying cry and something of a road map to oust them all and establish a world of democracies, “mostly without the use of violence,” by 2025. During a 26-year career in the Foreign Service, Palmer was posted to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, served as ambassador to Hungary, and held policy positions during the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and first Bush administrations. Upon retire- ment from the Service in 1990, he was one of the first American investors in eastern Europe following the fall of communism. He is vice chairman of Freedom House. F O C U S N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33