The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

written two books, Coalition, Coercion and Compro- mise: Diplomacy of the Gulf Crisis, 1990-91 (Institute of Biblical Studies, 1997) and The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily (McFarland & Co., 2003). Toussaint’s Clause is an ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book; it has been nominated for the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2005 Book Award. The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century Richard T. Arndt, Potomac Books, Inc., 2005, $45.00, hardcover, 608 pages. If war is the last resort of kings, then cultural diplo- macy, an age-old tool for promoting understanding among nations through cultural exchange, should be the first, says Richard Arndt in The First Resort of Kings. The author of this exploration of eight decades of American cultural diplomacy, from World War I through the 1990s, is a retired FSO and 24-year veteran of the U.S. Information Agency. Please see p. 66 for a review. In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda Robert E. Gribbin, iUniverse, 2005, $23.95, paperback, 360 pages. Robert Gribbin, U.S. ambassador to Rwanda from 1995 to 1999, draws on 30 years of experience in the region to analyze U.S. perceptions of Rwanda in the years before the genocide and to recount the unfolding of the terrible event and its aftermath. In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda is part of the Memoirs and Occasional Papers series of the Associa- tion for Diplomatic Studies and Training; it has been nominated for the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2005 Book Award. Please see page 67 for a review of this book. Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain Dale R. Herspring, ed., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005 (second edition), $29.95, paperback, 315 pages. Updated to take account of devel- opments through 2003, this new edition of Putin’s Russia is a valu- able and highly readable analysis of the forces shaping contemporary Russia. Fourteen contributors with experience and expertise in Russia address President Vladimir Putin’s handling of politics, civil society, the economy, the military and security, and foreign policy. The result is a detailed assessment of Putin’s efforts to extricate Russia from the mess it found itself in by the end of the Yeltsin era and set it on a stable course toward a democratic and prosperous future. However, as retired FSO James F. Collins, U.S. ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001, notes in his foreword, the book offers no uniform or consistent answers to critical questions about the future of Russia’s fragile democra- cy and developing market economy. “Rather,” Collins says, “what emerges is a complex and uneven tapestry whose design and weaving are far from complete.” Dale R. Herspring is a professor of political science at Kansas State University. A retired FSO and 32-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, he is the author and editor of 10 books and more than 70 articles dealing with civil- military relations in the former East Germany, Poland, Russia, the USSR and the United States. The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush Dale R. Herspring, University Press of Kansas, 2005, $45.00, hardcover, 490 pages. This timely and path-breaking book addresses the complex rela- tionship between civilian and mili- tary officials in the U.S., for the first time from the standpoint of the military. The book focuses on the relationship between the military and its commander- in-chief from the administrations of FDR to George W. Bush. Each chapter zeros in on one president and his key advisers, and contains case studies showing how the military reacted to the president’s leadership. The final chapter includes a ranking of the presidents according to their degree of conflict with the military — from, for example, Nixon, Johnson and Clinton in the “High Conflict” category to G.H.W. Bush, Ford, Reagan and Roosevelt in the “Minimal Conflict” cate- gory. In between, the author shows how the nature of civilian control has changed, and also how the military has become a very effective bureaucratic interest group. (See previous entry for author’s information.) F O C U S N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27