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Title: The Breaking of Nations : Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century by Robert Cooper ISBN: 0-87113-913-8 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 09 February, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Another quick read
Comment: Easy reading - not very deep. A point of view of the European experience leading up to the present political environment with a generalization into a direction for the future. Good background on the creation and importance of the EU for us folks across the pond. The second essay posits five maximums leading to the conclusion that the ultimate goal of the political process should be to help people redefine their identity into a larger context. Harris, in "Civilization and Its Enemies" traces the process of redefining individual identity over history. His work builds on the work of Fukuyama in "The End of History and the Last Man." I though Harris' history and argument more persuasive. As such I did not find Cooper as enlightening as I had hoped.
Rating: 5
Summary: Important discussion of a model of an emerging world order.
Comment: This book consists primarily of two essays on an emerging world order from the perspective of a British scholar and diplomat who has also participated in the European project. He is fully conversant in what Europe implies for Europe, but he is also fully conversant in (and sympathetic to) the British objections to Europe and the psychology of American foreign policy. Furthermore, it seems that this book is meant as a "third way" alternative to the "Power and Paradise" that Robert Kagan discusses in his book of that title (or "Power and Weakness", the title of the underlying Policy Review article that began the debate).
Cooper takes several phenomena in the modern foreign policy world as new. The basic idea is the emergence of a post-Westphalian order that qualifies (and sometimes rejects) sovereignty. This emerged out of World War II (which he importantly compares to the Thirty Years' War in that it gave cause to radically change the international order), but the full implications are only now becoming apparent. There are a couple of features of this world order.
First, new kinds of entities appear on the international scene which are not states, but to which states cede sovereignty. For example, the EU, the WTO, IAEA and NPT, verifiable arms control regimes, etc. In each of these, states give up sovereignty in exchange for various kinds of benefits, either in security or economic realms. Slowly, cooperation becomes the order of the day. He terms this "post-modern" international relations, and he calls the international order that existed between Westphalia and the end of World War II, "modern".
Second, a post-modern international order depends on a modern hegemon like the United States. Someone has to affirm security and tradition interests and to enforce them. However, this creates a fundamental tension between the post-modern states and the modern states. It is interesting to compare this discussion with Huntington's (in Soldier and State)about the need for a conservative-realist military in a modern liberal state. Huntington, mistakenly, thought that liberalism would ultimatley fail in the Cold War. Cooper explores the current tensions that arise, but he does not attempt to predict the future as Huntington did.
Third, he talks about the role of legitimacy in this context. How does legitimacy work when you have a necessary modern state, like the US, and a post-modern world order? How do you incorporate states that are failing or, perhaps, not yet even modern? Can states go from a sort of pre-modern state to a post-modern state? Do they have to pass through a variety of "modernity"? All important questions in an age of nation-building and an expanding European project. It is also interesting to see how much this agrees with the afterward to the 2nd edition of Kagan's book, discussed above. The Iraq war has made us realize these crises more.
Unfortunately, I don't believe that Cooper addresses one of the more interesting questions, which is the rise of non-national, non-sovereign entities like NGOs, multinational corporations, and international crime and terrorism. Many of the treaties that define this post-modern order, such as the ICC, the landmine treaty, and others, have all been negotiated as much by MGOs (operating out of the US!) as they have been by states. In addition, it appears that terrorist organizations can exist most easily in those places in which sovereignty is not total, such as in both pre-modern states and in post-modern states. What does this mean? The modern response to terrorism is that a state stops it because it challenges the monopoly on violence. But how does a state that has cedes part of its monopoly to others respond?
Finally, it would be interesting to consider the relationship of America's historically commercially driven policy has to the post-modern order. Walter Russell Mead wrote about this in "Special Providence", and it illustrates an important feature about the United States. Was it, in fact, an early post-modern state that reverted to a modern condition? What would that mean for Cooper's model?
Rating: 5
Summary: European multilateralism and American unilateralism can meet
Comment: As a result of 9/11 foreign policy is hot. The popularity of intelligent academic like books dedicated to the subject has soared. The American public seems finally to have caught up an insatiable thirst of knowledge for this esoteric subject. This is undeniably a very good thing. And, this book from Robert Cooper is an excellent tonic to quench this thirst for knowledge. Cooper is an excellent writer. His lively style renders his book easy to read. Also, he is so erudite on his subject matter that the amount of information and knowledge he shares within this relatively short book is truly remarkable.
The core of the book is based on two essays Cooper wrote several years ago. The first one "The Condition of the World" originally written in 1996 is somewhat the better structured of the two. It develops a powerful foreign policy model by grouping nations into three categories.
The first category consists of "pre-modern states." These are completely dysfunctional. They are typically broke, can't deliver any social services effectively, and the government's authority is often challenged by gangs, warlords, and other outlaws. Many African countries come to mind.
The second category consists of "modern states." These are you regular sovereign nations working perfectly well on most counts. This is Australia, Japan, Canada, you name it.
The third category consists of "post-modern states." This essentially describes the European Union, whereby a group of countries have agreed to relinquish some of their respective sovereign rights to a supranational political entity (EU) for the greater good of the respective community of countries. In Cooper's views this category is obviously the higher political life form. And, the other two "states" consist simply of sequential stepping stones towards this most evolved state. This is obviously a questionable assumption. Where Cooper sees the benefit of multilateralism, cooperation, free flowing trade within the EU. Someone else could just as well see excessive bureaucracy, an extra layer of government, analysis-paralysis devoid of any effective foreign policy, and a trading block that actually reduces trade opportunity within a truly freer trade framework (WTO). However, Cooper makes his case extremely well. He is a formidable debater and does make a convincing case for his political framework and the superiority of the EU post-modern states structure.
Cooper somehow struggles a bit with the hegemonic status of the U.S. He concedes that the U.S. stands "outside and above" the post-modern structure. He also accepts that the world does indeed benefit from the U.S. protection umbrella. Without a strong leader setting a set of rules and examples, the world could easily fall into chaos of competing power blocks vying for the top spot. Thus, Cooper unlike many authors on the subject, finds himself both espousing European multilateralism and the American unilateralism.
His second essay, encapsulated within this book, has a much different overtone. Its vision is a lot darker. It reflects on a world becoming more dangerous, more uncertain, less manageable. He believes humanitarian and military interventions in collapsing states will become maybe more frequent and more urgent. Counter-terrorism will become potentially a permanent endeavor. Government efforts to hunt down and grab WMD from the wrong hands will also be a long term effort. His second essay, in style and vision, resembles a lot the excellent books written on the same subject by Robert Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy comes to mind).
In the end, this book may raises more issues, questions, and concerns than it answers. I think there lies his great merit. Contrary to many other authors who seem to know best about something as liquid and complex as foreign policy, Cooper's humbler attitude is refreshing. He does not have the ready solution to all the world's problems. But, he sure diagnoses these problems very skillfully. He also asks the right questions and raises the correct concerns. Finally, he also suggests the rather radical idea that European multilateralism and American unilateralism can cohabitate the Western World. They don't have to compete with each other.
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