Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Understanding Iraq , by William R. Polk. Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco , by David L. Phillips. Understanding Terror Networks , by Marc Sageman. Islamic Fundamentalism since 1945 , by Beverley Milton‐Edwards. Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism , by Judith Palmer Harik. Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab‐Israeli Conflict since 1967, Third Edition , by William B. Quandt. How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate, a Cross‐Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process , by Tamara Cofman Wittes, editor. Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan Toward Peace , by Martin van Creveld. Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial by Fire , by Flynt Leverett. The World According to Whitbeck , by John Whitbeck. Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa's Last Colony? by Toby Shelley.     

In Search of Co‐variance,Causal Mechanisms or Congruence? Towards a Plural Understanding of Case Studies

Methodological reflections about case study research have increased within recent years. According to our account, there are three distinct approaches to case studies: co‐variational, causal process tracing, and congruence analysis. The main goals of this article are to lay out the distinct ways in which causal inferences are drawn for the cases under study and to scrutinize the different understandings and directions of generalization within these three approaches. By doing so we highlight two aspects: First, causal process tracing and congruence analysis should be seen as two distinct alternatives to the dominant co‐variational template. Second, the main characteristics of case studies, their thickness, provides only an unavoidable dilemma if we aim to generalize the findings towards a wider population of similar cases as in the co‐variational template. If we would like to get deeper insights â‐“ as the causal process tracing approach does â‐“ or if we would like to use the empirical evidence for a broader theoretical discourse â‐“ as the congruence analysis does â‐“ case studies do not face a trade‐off.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab‐Israeli Peace , by Aaron David Miller. Negotiating Arab‐Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East , by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky. The Arab‐Israeli Conflict — A History , by David W. Lesch. A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance , by Mary Elizabeth King. Hezbollah: A Short History, by Augustus Richard Norton. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty‐First Century , by Marc Sageman. Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy , by Tamara Coffman Wittes. An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? Reidar Vissar and Gareth Stansfield, eds. A Political Economy of the Middle East, Third Edition, by Alan Richards and John Waterbury. Arguing the Just War in Islam , by John Kelsay. Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party , Edited by Umit Cizre. REVIEW ESSAY: Kurdish Scholarship Comes of Age     

From “international cooperation” to “development policy”? Reform and reorientation of Japan's ODA

Japan's program for official development assistance (ODA) is a critical tool of foreign policy. However, this program has historically been driven by quantitative goals. Only in the last decade have explicit principles and implementation policies emerged that concentrate on a qualitative, more human-centered approach to ODA. According to Professor Dr. Franz Nuscheler and Ben Warkentin, Director and Research Fellow respectively of the Institute for Development and Peace, Duisburg University, Germany, this reorientation of Japan's ODA has the potential to challenge the overall stature of the country” s foreign relations. It remains to be seen, however, whether Japan's commitments to ODA reforms will be put into practice. Will Japan's ODA Charter be a tiger without teeth?     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East , by Martin Indyk. We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work , by Jimmy Carter. A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World , by Emile Nakhleh. Egypt After Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World , by Bruce K. Rutherford. Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons , by Joseph A. Kéchichian. What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq , by Nadje al‐Ali and Nicola Pratt. Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism , by Sinan Ciddi. European and Turkish Voices in Favour and Against Turkish Accession to the European Union. Christiane Timmerman, Dirk Rochtus, and Sara Mels, eds.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Through Secret Channels, by Mahmoud Abbas. Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government's Road to the Oslo Accord, by David Makovsky. The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East, Uri Savir. The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Han Peleg. Albany: Druze and Jews in Israel - A Shared Destiny? by Zeidan Atashi The Remaking of Saudi Arabia: The Struggle between King Saud and Crown Prince Faysal, 1953-1962, by Sarah Yisraeli. Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq, by Ofra Bengio. The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism, by Ahmed Rashid.     

Knowledge production on conflict early warning at the African Union

ABSTRACT

How does the African Union (AU) generate knowledge about on-going violent conflict as well as post-conflict situations? This article offers an analysis of the multiple sites and sources in the construction of conflict-related knowledge. It also reflects on the various institutional ways this knowledge is filtered into the activities of a wide range of AU actors, starting with the AU Commission, the AU Commission Chairperson and the Peace and Security Council. Emphasis is on the development of the Continental Early Warning System and some of its limitations, the latter partly related to the specific organisational culture of the African Union.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait , by Mary Ann Tétreault All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies , by Michael Herb. Saddam's Secrets: The Hunt for Iraq's Hidden Weapons , by Tim Trevan. Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem‐Once and for All , by Scott Ritter. The Arab Shia: The Forgotten Muslims , by Graham E. A Very Political Economy: Peacebuilding and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza , by Rex Brynen. Water Politics in the Middle East: A Context for Conflict or Cooperation? , by Mostafa Dolatrar and Tim S. Gray. Water in the Middle East: A Geography of Peace , eds. Hussein A. Amery and Aaron T. Wolfe. Water Conflict: Economics, Politics, Law and the Palestinian‐Israeli Water Resources , by Sharif S. Elmusa. New Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel , ed. Geoffrey Wigoder. The Oxford History of Islam , ed. John Esposito Islam and Central Asia: An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat ? eds. Roald Sagdeev and Susan Eisenhower.     

The Liberals as Managers of the Australian-American Alliance

Only occasionally has the worth of the Australian‐American alliance been questioned in Australian politics — and then it has usually been at the expense of the detractors. More important has been the question of how the alliance has been managed. How have Australian governments of the last fifty‐four years dealt with features such as the asymmetry of the relationship, in terms of power; the potential disruptions to avoid; the growing range of policy issues and ministerial portfolios to consider; the need for good relations at officials' level; and the need to keep the alliance out of party politics as much as possible? If the Menzies Government began well in the 1950s, then involvement in the Vietnam War was a low‐point in the mid‐late 1960s, and it took until the 1990s for the Liberals to recover from this. The Howard Government's efforts since the late 1990s, however, have gone a long way towards restoring the Liberals' reputation as effective managers of the alliance.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Pursuing Peace: An American Strategy for the Arab-Israeli Peace Process , Final Report of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Strategic Study Group. The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations , by Itamar Rabinovich. The Gulf, Cooperation and the Council: An American Perspective , by Joseph Wright Twinam. Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait's Elusive Frontier with Iraq , by David H. Finnic Storm Center: The USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655 , by Will and Sharon Rogers, with Gene Gregston. Allahu Akbar , by Edward Nash. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? by John L. Esposito. A Muslim Primer: Beginner's Guide to Islam , by Ira G. Zepp, Jr., with an introduction by Sayyid Muhammad Syeed. Fields of Fig and Olive: Ameera and Other Stories of the Middle East , by Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki.     

Review Essay: Stabilizing Nuclear Southern Asia

ABSTRACT

This review article considers three significant volumes recently published in the field of Southern Asian security studies. These consist of Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism, by Toby Dalton and George Perkovich; Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland (eds.), Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories; and Mooed Yusuf, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia. In the wake of the 2019 India–Pakistan Pulwama militarized crisis, each book focuses on a distinct element of the Southern Asian security milieu that is crucial to understanding drivers of regional insecurity and potential pathways toward greater stability. However, collectively, they leave room for greater exploration for the effects of emerging trends in this regional strategic competition. These include the evolving regional preferences and actions of China, the potential for Pakistan-based terrorist groups to become independent actors throughout a Southern Asian crisis, and the growing prominence of precision-strike standoff weapons in the strategic planning of China, India, and Pakistan. Still, these three volumes prove indispensable for understanding the contemporary political and security dynamics of Southern Asia.     

The nuclear option in India's security policy

Notwithstanding its good international citizenship on arms control, its low defense expenditures, and its democratic institutions that are largely taken for granted by the West, India's ambiguous nuclear posture is a self‐inflicted wound that will not heal so long as it neither acquires nor renounces nuclear weapons, says Ramesh Thakur. He argues that India has four options: to become an overt NWS, to reject the NPT but sign the CTBT, to renounce the nuclear option, or to maintain its present threshold status while keeping open the nuclear option. Thakur was head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University and has been appointed as vice rector at the United Nations University, Tokyo.     

The Palestinian Fidâ'i as an Icon of Transnational Struggle: The South Lebanese Experience

How did the Palestinian Resistance build the key transnational figure of the fidâ'i and why did South Lebanon play a major role in this process? Assessing the hypothesis of the ‘Lebanonisation’ of this symbol of the Palestinian national struggle, this article will examine the role and the symbol of the fidâ'i in the context of Lebanon in the 1970s, through an analysis of the actions of the fidâ'iyyn and the values and ethics that fidâ'iyyn were supposed to embody. Drawing on interviews with former fidâ'iyyn and previous research on the topic, I will consider the two dimensions of the presence of the fidâ'iyyn: first, their location in South Lebanon and how this borderland became a significant part of their struggle in the political consciousness of the marginalised local population; and second, the nature of the symbol they began to represent for Lebanese groups, especially those who became involved in Resistance groups like the student brigade (al-katibe al-tullabiyya).     

Did They Read Marx? Marx Reception and Social Democratic Party Members in Imperial Germany, 1890–1914

Did rank‐and‐file members of the German Social Democratic party before 1914 bother to read Marx? A number of studies of borrowing from trade union and other workers' libraries since the 1970s have indicated that workers who read Marx were rare, although this does not mean that workers' reading habits were not influenced by socialist ideas. However, for a broader understanding of the reception of Marx's writings among rank‐and‐file German socialists, it is necessary to consider not only books, but the pamphlet literature produced by the SPD in huge quantities, serialisations and other treatments in the party press, and oral communication. When the full range of sources is considered, the extent of the reception of Marx's writings, albeit often in very simplified forms, can be more fully appreciated.     

Winning the Peace: Australia's Campaign to Change the Asia‐Pacific

Winning the Peace: Australia's Campaign to Change the Asia‐Pacific. By Andrew Carr (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2015), pp.viii + 336, AU$59.99 (pb).     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East , by Leon Hadar Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq , by Larry Diamond Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam , by Robert Dreyfuss The Road Ahead: Middle East Policy in the Bush Administration's Second Term , edited by Flynt Leverett My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope , by L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism , by Michael Provence Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad , by Natana J. Delong‐Bas Reframing Anti‐Semitism: Alternative Jewish Perspectives , Jewish Voice for Peace, eds. Parting Ways: The Crisis in German‐American Relations , by Stephen F. Szabo     

The regional outcome of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement five years down the road: Are external forces playing a progressive role?

ABSTRACT

The Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005 is the outcome of regional and international mediation led by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)1 and the IGAD Partners’ Forum broadened to include the United States of America, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and the United Nations. Five years into its implementation the peace agreement appears to have transformed the war between North and South Sudan into a series of engagements of conflicting nature. Numerous contradictory actions by both the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National Congress Party (NCP) (the main political forces behind the CPA) have been noted during the ongoing implementation process (Grawert forthcoming 2010; Grawert and El-Battahani 2005; Wassara 2008). Although internal Sudanese forces are the key actors in implementing the CPA, external forces are critical in providing the support and pressure needed for a complete realisation of the peace deal. The New Regionalism Approach (NRA), as advanced by Grant and Soderbäum (2003), is instrumental in understanding this dynamic. This article is based on the result of a study that seeks to examine why positive engagements of external forces are needed for a timely implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.     

The North Korea Problem: Perspectives on the Nuclear Debate,Economic Reforms and Beyond

ABSTRACT

Despite a plethora of research on North Korea, understanding and managing the challenges posed by the country have long been complicated with no simple solution to put an end to this decades-long security and economic predicament on the Korean Peninsula. With the potential for international conflict, attention must be given to the converging messages emerging from the scholarly works reviewed in this article: Glyn Ford, Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff, Van Jackson, On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War and William Overholt’s collection North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War? These works speak to the need to: take seriously the risk of nuclear war; consider the connectedness of the North’s decades-long security and economic reform dilemmas; and to acknowledge that the mistrust that is deeply rooted on all sides must be mitigated to bring peace. These books are published at a critical juncture of increased tensions following a highly publicised but remarkably short-lived effort at a breakthrough on the Korean nuclear issue, Pyongyang’s rapidly evolving security posture and its perennial domestic challenges. Each of these volumes provides valuable insights on these challenges for North Korea and internationally.     

SPLM–NCP asymmetrical power relations jeopardise the implementation of the CPA and the future of the Sudan

ABSTRACT

The political instability that has characterised Sudanese politics since independence is attributable to political exclusion, economic neglect and marginalisation. Discrimination based on religion, language and culture has constituted the main contradictions between the masses of the Sudanese people (periphery) and the politically dominant Arabised Nubians (centre) in all the different politico-ideological hues experienced by the nation. Attempts to resolve this contradiction have left the structural imbalances inherited from the colonial administration of the Sudan intact. This explains the resurgence of war, particularly in Southern Sudan. The recent peace agreements between the National Congress Party (NCP), namely the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A); the Darfur Peace Agreement with the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) (Minawi); the Cairo Agreement with the National Democratic Alliance and the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement with the Eastern Sudan Front, have left the NCP still in firm control of the oppressive state machinery. The CPA power-sharing protocol awarded the NCP a majority which institutionalises a power asymmetry that the NCP utilises to obstruct implementation of the CPA and delay the process of democratic transformation.

This article analyses the asymmetry in the NCP–SPLM partnership and power relationship. It assumes that the tragic death of Dr. John Garang de Mabior is a major cause of the political weakness demonstrated by the SPLM since 2005. This power imbalance jeopardises the CPA implementation and the future of the Sudan as a state.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue Historical Records of Australia, Resumed Series III Despatches and papers relating to the history of Tasmania, Volume X, January‐December 1831. General Editor: Peter Chapman, Co‐editors Peter Chapman and Tim Jetson The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer. By Alison Alexander Where is Dr Leichhardt? The Greatest Mystery in Australian History. By Darrell Lewis Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland's Frontier Killing Times. By Timothy Bottoms Indigenous Crime and Settler Law: White Sovereignty after Empire. By Heather Douglas and Mark Finnane Forgotten War. By Henry Reynolds Dancing with Empty Pockets. Australia's Bohemians since 1860. By Tony Moore The Baby Farmers: A Chilling Tale of Missing Babies, Shameful Secrets and Murder in 19^th Century Australia. By Annie Cousins Eilean Giblin: A Feminist between the Wars. By Patricia Clarke Silences and Secrets: The Australian Experience of the Weintraub Syncopators. By Kay Dreyfus Big Coal: Australia's Dirtiest Habit. By Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton Employer Power and Weakness: How Local and Global Factors have shaped Australia's Meat Industry and its Industrial Relations. By Patrick O'Leary and Peter Sheldon Trust Me: Australians and their Politicians. By Jackie Dickenson Australian History Now. Edited by Anna Clark and Paul Ashton J.C. Beaglehole: Public Intellectual, Critical Conscience. By Doug Munro The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty. By Benjamin Curtis The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts. By Daniel Pick Before the Nation: Muslim‐Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late‐Ottoman Anatolia. By Nicholas Doumanis A Companion to Woodrow Wilson. Edited by Ross A. Kennedy Kennedy: A Cultural History of an American Icon. By Mark White America's Right: Anti‐Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party. By Robert B. Horwitz Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. By Lien‐Hang T. Nguyen. The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy. By Edward N. Luttwak Antarctica: a Biography. By David Day The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind. By Roger Chartier, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane