Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Thompson (emer., Univ. of Indiana, Bloomington) provides a succinct response to declinist and anti-declinist arguments about the international position of the US. Many analyses of its role in the world focus primarily on the key decisions of US policy makers responding to international conditions and domestic political considerations. Thompson, however, incorporates two analytic perspectives. The first is long cycle political/economic theory, which draws on a broad range of countries and historical periods. The second perspective comes from international relations theories addressing relative threat perception and agency in the development and selling of grand strategy to key domestic elements. Data-driven chapters about the relative decline of the US compared to other world states--particularly the corrosive dysfunction of the domestic political system in the US--are particularly insightful. The concluding chapters about the Sino-American rivalry and the prospects for current and future world orders provide important analytic perspectives but do not arrive at specific conclusions. Although certain chapters are drawn from previously published work by the author, they remain relevant. This is among the best books this reader has reviewed in 30 years.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Mukherjee (London School of Economics) offers an outstanding corrective to power politics and power transition theories by asking why a rising international power willingly abandons the potential for relative gains for the sake of international cooperation. To answer this question, Mukherjee introduces a new theory, institutional status theory (IST). IST explains the different strategies that rising powers employ to attain or maintain status in the international system. At its core, IST emphasizes status and argues that given certain conditions, rising powers will disregard material interests in exchange for inclusion as a great power. IST suggests that a rising power is more likely to support the international order when that system fosters institutional openness and procedural fairness. After laying out the theory, Mukherjee proceeds to demonstrate IST's utility in three historical cases: the United States in 1856, Japan in 1922, and India in 1970. Mukherjee also applies the theory to China's approach to the world. Although he acknowledges that IST is not applicable to great power behavior, Mukherjee provides an important analysis of how status and symbolic equality impact international relations.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Why do states join international organizations (IOs)? Why do existing IO members accept them? Conventional scholarship emphasizes the utility or value, often economic, of expanding membership. This work offers a different, compelling alternative: geopolitical alignments affect who wants to join, whether they are accepted, what the conditions of entry will be, and who is excluded. In this way, IOs are similar to social clubs because the desirability of new members is important and not restricted to what new members might contribute as a result of the collaboration. The clear, coherent framework has downstream consequences for understanding multiple aspects of IOs: relations with nonmembers (increased hostility), cooperation among members (enhanced relations), likelihood of expulsion (rare), and more. Davis (Harvard Univ.) supports her theoretical arguments with compelling, wide-ranging evidence: large-N analyses of IOs, applications to regional organizations, case studies of GATT/WTO and OECD, and foreign policy analysis of Japan. The terms major work and essential reading are sometimes exaggerated in reviews but not in this case. This work will change the way scholars look at international organizations.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

This book represents the latest effort by one of the leading political geographers of his generation and the winner of two Choice Outstanding Academic Title awards. This current work does not disappoint. Agnew (geography, Univ. of California, Los Angeles) ably elucidates the less obvious (hence "hidden") financial, cultural, regulatory, and developmental dimensions of interstate interactions in the post-1990 era of globalization. He brings into focus the often neglected forces operating outside the military and diplomatic competitions among states. Specific topics addressed include US immigration debates, the rise of China, the decline of manufacturing employment in the US, the 2007-8 financial crisis and its aftermath, the Eurozone crisis, the rise of national populism in the US and elsewhere, and the growing importance of credit rating agencies. Readers at all levels will benefit from the shift in Agnew's focus away from the strictly territorial definitions of geopolitics and toward the multifarious, often hidden transnational and global interconnections and networks underlying the dynamics of the contemporary world.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

This account of human rights campaigns in China asks probing research questions about whether these campaigns influence the people or simply fortify the regime. Early chapters look at the history of foreign attempts to target China's human rights problems and explore major controversies, such as the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and military repression in Tibet in 2008. Gruffydd-Jones (Univ. of Kent, UK) spells out statistically the conditions that explain whether the CCP reports on international pressures. Later chapters use three methods to study citizens' reactions: online surveys on the status of women's rights, interviews with citizens on the street about instances of foreign pressure, and a quasi-natural experiment measuring national attitude changes when President Obama met the Dalai Lama in 2011. The final chapter goes beyond China to cases in Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, emphasizing the need for both top-down and bottom-up pressures to improve human rights. The author's practical advice to the international human rights community is to use "the right timing, targeting, topic, and source," thereby minimizing "the likelihood that its actions will be used as propaganda tools" (p. 172). A fascinating read.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Shambaugh (George Washington Univ.) revised and updated his popular edited collection on Asian international relations, which has served as an excellent student reference for many years. His masterful opus offers a nuanced approach to understanding the regional competition that forces many of Asia's neighboring nations--China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and even Pakistan--to find ways to coexist peacefully. He identifies five particular variables, whose consequences most merit attention: China's increasingly assertive "wolf warrior" diplomacy; the US-China power rivalry; the emergence of regional multilateralism; a dangerously nuclear Korean peninsula; and, most worrisome, Taiwan--a ticking time bomb. Ancillary problems to add to the mix range from Chinese adventurism in the South and East China Seas and the blossoming China-Russia partnership to aging populations in all the northeastern Asian countries, upcoming leadership changes in several states, and the potential for military accidents in a number of the region's rivals. Shambaugh wisely suggests changing the approach to Asian international relations from a country-by-country area studies strategy to a holistic analysis of the Indo-Pacific as a whole.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Pack (Middle East Institute) analyzes post-Gaddafi Libya and argues that it portends weakening geopolitics around the world. In doing so, the author identifies the prominent structural features that influence geopolitics in a self-reinforcing cycle toward disorder, in Libya and beyond. Pack delivers profound insights from both personal experience and extensive research in Libya, conducted over two decades and documented with over 100 pages of notes and bibliography. The author organizes his book into five engaging chapters bookended by a provocative introduction and a lucid conclusion. Pack's writing is engrossing, and his analysis proves forceful. This book is equal parts insightful and alarming. The author develops such novel concepts as "enduring disorder" and provides a critical assessment of the international community. The admirable result is a searing appraisal of the fragmentation within the global system. Pack also makes a clarion call for a much-needed reformulation of international institutions with respect to collective action. Anyone with an interest in Libya and global politics, in both theory and reality, will greatly profit from reading this important book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

In this book, Galeotti (Russian security affairs, independent scholar) presents an accessible, important history of Russia's recent military excursions and policies. The book is part military history and part political history. Weaving these different outlooks together provides essential context for understanding Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The study begins with a brief presentation of the state of the military at the end of the Soviet Union and during Yeltsin's reign in the 1990s. However, the majority of the book focuses on Putin's time in office: his initial execution of the Second Chechen War, his attempts to strengthen and modernize the military, and his actions in the near abroad. Although the primary focus is historical, the last section addresses Russia's attempts at political warfare and how technology may shape the future of Russia's approach to war. The current struggles of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when viewed in light of this history, seem more systemic to Russia's military than unique to the moment. Overall, Galeotti's book is required reading for anyone wishing to understand Russia's current invasion of Ukraine and Russia's approach to its military more broadly.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

The long-term and probably enduring effects of US-driven transnational counterterrorism efforts since 9/11 are still unfolding. According to de Londras (Birmingham Law School, UK), whatever else they may be, their institutional, legal, and normative impulses and impacts are "expansionary, rights-limiting, and unaccountable." Her piercing and provocative analysis systematically dissects the myriad modalities of the sprawling transnational counterterrorism order at national, regional, and global levels, with particular emphasis on the role of the UN. Based on extensive research, this eye-opening, thoroughly documented inquiry reveals the extent to which international institutions have been created or revamped to serve the interests of powerful states, how both domestic and international laws and norms have been reframed and enforced in ways that marginalize rights, and how accountability has been weak and is not likely to improve. In short, the book reveals how a new and highly problematic paradigm of global governance has become entrenched. Although sometimes wordy and redundant, this incisive study should command the attention of scholars and policy makers alike. It will be of particular interest to those specializing in international relations, security, and law.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

In this challenging critique of American foreign policy in the Middle East, Hamid (Brookings Institution) analyzes a persistent dilemma in US relations with regional states and cultures. If the goal of foreign policy is democracy and the liberal values that Americans often associate with it, then democratic elections may result in unexpected or bad policies and practices not favored, or even feared, by the US. Hamid seeks to decouple democracy and liberalism, which are in tension in American interactions in the Middle East, where the basic cleavages in Muslim-majority societies are religion, culture, and identity. A democratic election might result in an Islamist government. Using studies of Jordan, Egypt, and Algeria, Hamid demonstrates that the US is often caught in a circular loop of democratic advocacy, fear of election results, toleration of authoritarian regimes, and the undermining of democracy. He concludes with "democratic minimalism," which prioritizes free elections, even if they lead to majority rule against individual rights. This shift in thought about Muslim-majority states and cultures would facilitate more effective US policy in the Middle East.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Professor, defense strategist, columnist, and prolific author Brands (Johns Hopkins) contends in this insightful volume--whose name refers to the geopolitical position between peace and war--that the US has entered a second Cold War, this time primarily with China. Therefore, he asserts, US scholars must study the first Cold War to gain insight into the current long-term, strategic, great-power competition. Though he admits that "the Cold War is not a perfect analogue for today's rivalries," he declares the study essential "because the past is the only place we can look to understand things that haven't happened yet" and "it would be intellectually wasteful to ignore the insights the Cold War offers" (pp. 9-10). Using a solid bibliography to back his historical perspective, Brands proposes 12 lessons he believes should be learned, expounding on each to clarify its value to the current strategic competition. Academics may not agree with all his findings, but deliberating over them still serves a critical function: gaining insights that policy makers, citizens, and scholars can use to influence the future of democracy and the world.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; practitioners; general readers.

In this welcome addition to the growing literature on immigration, Zayas (Univ. of Texas) focuses on Central American asylum seekers (from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala) stuck in detention centers on the US-Mexico border. A bilingual social work scholar and psychologist, Zayas pulls no punches as he presents harrowing stories of mothers and children fleeing war and gang violence to arrival at the border, where they are incarcerated in private, profit-seeking prisons, which US immigration euphemistically terms detention centers. Though detention centers have been widely used from Obama's presidency in 2014 to the current Biden regime, Zayas particularly condemns the inhumanity and cruelty of Trump's reliance on family separation as immigration control. Trump's heinous 2018 family separation policy intentionally separated thousands of children from parents, many still not reunited five years later. While providing some history of Central American migration al norte, Zayas's emphatically stated goal is to tell the human stories of suffering and horror, especially as captured in the words of mothers and children (some in the original Spanish, with translation), by way of opening Americans' eyes to the profound human cost of detention and separation to children and families, insisting that it is everyone's responsibility to know. Gut-wrenching in places, and hard to put down.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

National security has been an issue since the presidency of George Washington, but unfortunately, many Americans have a limited understanding of the topic's complexity. Luckily, readers may explore the subject in the sixth edition of US National Security: Policymakers, Processes, and Politics. The authors reflect on concerns that have long worried national security analysts and politicians, such as the dangers nuclear war and hypersonic weapons systems pose. Drones and other remotely controlled weapons have further changed the security equation. As the authors note, the Reagan dream of an antiballistic missile defense system has yet to prove practical; however, antimissile defenses, such as the Iron Dome, are cost effective. In response to foreign conflicts and domestic anxieties, US National Security explains that the American president faces previously unknown challenges from a resurgent Russia employing a gray-zone form of political-military warfare and active measures to influence the American public, as it did in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China's cyberwar capabilities creating great global threats, the new edition of US National Security is an essential addition to any academic library.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.