The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

prosecuting war criminals and providing compensation to war victims. This book examines the body’s exercise of governmental authority in territories such as Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor. It also explores the more recent controversies over Iraq, in which disagreements among the permanent members have made decisive action difficult, and the investiga- tions into fraud and abuse in various U.N. programs. Principal deputy legal adviser to the Department of State from 1990 to 2000, Michael Matheson is now a member of the U.N. International Law Commission. U.S. Relations with Latin America During the Clinton Years: Opportunities Lost or Opportunities Squandered? David Scott Palmer, University Press of California, 2006, $24.95, paperback, 125 pages. Reading like an insider’s account, this treatment of the Clinton presidency’s Latin America policy is based in part on interviews and roundtable discussions with more than 50 participants in the Latin American for- eign policy process. Palmer concedes that the Clinton administration made some progress managing hemispheric relations. But, he argues, Clinton failed to build on the favorable conditions he inherited. By showing only sporadic interest in Latin America, his administration failed to exploit the historic opening for a new approach to rela- tions. (Look for a full-length review of the book in the December FSJ .) A professor of international relations and political science at Boston University, David Scott Palmer pre- viously served as director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End Peter W. Galbraith, Simon & Schuster, 2006, $15.00, paperback, 275 pages. Here is an account of Washington’s failed strategy toward Iraq from the perspective of an individual who has witnessed many of that country’s milestone events since the 1980s. At that time, as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, he uncov- ered and publicized Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds. According to Galbraith, the Bush administration’s effort to bring democracy to Iraq and transform the Middle East is doomed and will only leave the U.S. with an open- ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. “Peter Galbraith has seen, with balance and clarity, the whole arc of America’s tragic and misman- aged relationship with Iraq. This is an essential book as the debate on what to do in Iraq continues to grow in the Unites States,” writes Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the U.N. Peter Galbraith served as the first U.S. ambassador to Croatia. He is currently the senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington, D.C., and principal of a Vermont-based consulting firm specializing in international negotia- tions. Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World Dennis Ross, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, $26.00, hardcover, 384 pages. Statecraft is as old as poli- tics: Plato wrote about it; Machiavelli practiced it. Yet, after the end of the Cold War some predicted that it would become obsolete. Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration’s Middle East envoy, contends that in a globalized world of fluid borders, terrorist networks and violent unrest, statecraft is more necessary than ever — if only to keep the peace. In this illuminating book, Ross maintains that the Bush administration’s problems stem from its inability to use the tools of statecraft — economic, diplomatic and military — to advance America’s national interests. He examines case studies of foreign policy disasters and triumphs to illustrate statecraft in practice and N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33