Article
Vol. 26, No. 2
Steven E. Miller, Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Cote Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Diane J. McCree, editors
(The MIT Press, Fall 2001)
The fall issue was in press on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four airliners, sending two crashing into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into rural Pennsylvania. In the coming months and years, International Security will examine the implications of these tragic and terrible events, as well as the full panoply of contemporary security challenges that flow from them.
Using detailed evidence from the four-day ground campaign in the Persian Gulf War, Daryl Press of Dartmouth College Press concludes that air power was "neither sufficient nor necessary" in defeating Iraq and that "its role has been exaggerated and misunderstood." Press argues that other factors, including the overwhelming superiority of U.S. and British ground troops in both training and equipment and Iraq''s poor timing of the invasion of Kuwait, better explain the lopsided outcome. Peter Liberman of Queens College, City University of New York, examines South Africa''s decision to build nuclear weapons in the 1970s and 1980s and then the unprecedented decision to dismantle them in 1990-91.
How likely is China to use force to achieve its political aims? Can we predict Chinese actions against Taiwan based on Beijing''s past behavior? Allen Whiting of the University of Arizona examines eight Chinese military engagements from 1950 to 1996 that involved the United States, the Soviet Union, or their proxies to answer these questions. In these conflicts, says Whiting, China was able to balance risk taking and risk management to avoid either defeat or escalation by its opponents. Although a number of contingency factors makes predictions about Chinese behavior toward Taiwan nearly impossible, Whiting does suggest that China''s past willing ness to use force could cast "a worrisome shadow over the next decade."
What is human security? Is it a new paradigm as some would suggest? Or empty rhetoric? In considering recent efforts to redefine international security in terms of human security, Roland Paris of the University of Colorado argues that the term is still "so vague that it verges on meaninglessness." Paris proposes instead that human security become the label for a broad category of research within the security studies field.
Richard Rosecrance of the University of California, Los Angeles, reviews Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational Institutions by Lloyd Gruber.
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