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Title: Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time by Gordon A. Craig, Alexander L. George ISBN: 0-19-509244-9 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A lot of Thick Description for the Money
Comment: Alexander L. George has built his career around the premise that American policymakers do a poor job managing international affairs and that scholars could help them do better if only (a) policymakers listened to scholars and (b) scholars had anything useful to say. In "Force and Statecraft," George and Craig offer thick, lavish descriptions of various diplomatic crises but very little in the way of either prescriptive or theoretical principles for managing them. In other words, they have little to say, so it's unlikely policymakers will pay much attention to them.
The first half of the book consists of lavish -- almost tedious -- descriptions of various foreign policy realms of the past, with chapters built around a curiously (for George) systemic view of international politics. Though individuals flit in and out of the narrative, the "system" does carry a lot of the variance in this book.
The second half of the book consists of a review of "tools" of statecraft but these, again, lack theoretical rigor or for that matter prescriptive reliability. Instead of variables we get "conditions" for success. Whether or not policymakers are able to discern if these "conditions" obtain is, one supposes, non-random but, if so, George hasn't much to say about this.
Like the tools he promotes, it appears that management of any diplomatic situation is "context-dependent." Readers looking for theories of diplomacy, international politics, or even George's own creation, coercive diplomacy, are likely to be disappointed. But if all you want is a once-around-the-great-power-world recounting of some 19th-20th Century history, you could do worse.
Rating: 5
Summary: An International Affairs Degree in a Single Book
Comment: Okay, maybe not an entire IR degree. Most require classes in economics and geography as well. However, this was a required text for one of my international affairs classes, and it was one of the few books that I refused to sell back at the end of the semester, despite being the quintessential starving college student. Although it is clearly written and easy to understand, it is not simply a collection of truisms that any first year student would take for granted.
Force and Statecraft really does contain just about everything you need to know for an IR degree. It is organized by topic, which many of my classmates found boring. However, I found that this allowed for the clearest exposition of the ideas possible, and allowed the authors to examine each idea in detail before moving on to the next.
The pairing of the authors is excellent. Alexander George is a political scientist specializing in foreign relations, and Gordon Craig is a historian specializing in diplomatic and interstate history. I am convinced that it is this pairing that allows Force and Statecraft to have such a broad scope without losing any of its expertise, as often happens in books by a single author. Both are excellent writers, and their other books are highly recommended as well.
This book begins, as many IR degree programs do, with a diplomatic history course. This is essential to understanding international relations today, and Craig makes it exciting and interesting. It should be noted that this first section also covers the importance of economics and domestic opinion in the making of foreign policy, something that is often overlooked by other books. The book then goes on, topic by topic, to discuss the major topics in foreign policy, paying particular attention to the techniques of diplomacy and foreign policy, something also lacking in most books in the field. This is a book anyone interested in foreign policy should have on their bookshelf.
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Title: International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues (6th Edition) by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis ISBN: 0321088743 Publisher: Pearson Education Pub. Date: 22 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
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Title: The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone by Joseph S. Nye Jr. ISBN: 0195150880 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Economic Statecraft by David Allen Baldwin ISBN: 0691101752 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1985 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: War and Politics by Bernard Brodie ISBN: 0023150203 Publisher: Pearson Education Pub. Date: 01 March, 1974 List Price(USD): $98.00 |
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Title: Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger ISBN: 0671510991 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 04 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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