Brookings Press Blog

One Sunday, Two Reviews in NYTBR

The Search for al Qaeda and Restoring the Balance reviewed 1/18

The January 18th issue of the New York Times Book Review includes reviews of The Search for Al Qaeda and Restoring the Balance. From the review of The Search for Al Qaeda by Bruce Riedel and The Duel by Tariq Ali:

The pros and cons of continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be gleaned from two recent books, “The Search for Al Qaeda” by Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, and “The Duel” by Tariq Ali. One thing they agree on—and which was underscored by the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai—is that Pakistan is going to be at the forefront of foreign policy concerns for the Obama administration.

. . .

Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America’s values, only its policies.

. . .

Which man is right, which one wrong? Whatever the case, their books are a starting point for a much-needed debate.

From the review of Restoring the Balance by Richard Haass and Martin Indyk:

Beginning in July 2007, two of this country’s pre-eminent Middle East policy research institutions, both with close ties to the incoming administration, the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, took the rare step of joining forces and asking 15 of their scholars to focus on the crucial challenges facing the next president. The results are collected in “Restoring the Balance,” a thoughtful and nicely structured collection of seven essays that examine the Iranian challenge and its many parts.

. . .

The Middle East is rich in awkward realities. Still, whether or not this plan will succeed, much of it will probably be attempted. In that sense, “Restoring the Balance” is a very useful and readable introduction to the thinking beyond the coming shift.

- Read "War Room Debate", the review including The Search for al Qaeda, by Ray Bonner

- Learn more about The Search for al Qaeda

- Read "Mission to Tehran", the review of Restoring the Balance, by Ethan Bronner

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance

Martin Indyk on Charlie Rose and Today Shows

Restoring the Balance will also have DC and NYC book launches

Martin Indyk, coauthor of Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, will be appearing on the Charlie Rose show on Tuesday, December 2 and on NBC's Today Show Wednesday, December 3! On December 2 there will also be two major launch events for this new book: the Brookings Institution will host a launch event during the day in Washington, and the Council on Foreign Relations will host an event in New York later that evening.

Indyk was the Ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for near east affairs during the Clinton Administration. He now directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Restoring the Balance will be available in bookstores shortly.

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance

Brookings and the Presidential Transition

Three new titles highlight the challenges facing the incoming administration

As supporters of Barack Obama celebrate their candidate’s historic victory, political observers and potential appointees are already turning their attention to questions of transition and governing. Three new titles from the Brookings Institution Press bring timely and expert analysis to bear on the changing political landscape and the immediate challenges facing the incoming administration. Each has garnered considerable attention already and should continue to do so.

• Stephen Hess, the nation’s most experienced expert on presidential transitions, is author of What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect. His book already has been positively reviewed in Library Journal and featured in U.S. News and World Report. What Do We Do Now? will be launched and excerpted as part of an ambitious Brookings-wide initiative on the presidential transition. On Thursday, November 6, Hess will appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, Fox 5 DC morning news, and will also participate in a Washington Post on-line chat. The book will also be excerpted in tomorrow’s edition of Politico.

• Kurt Campbell and James Steinberg are the authors of Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power. Drawing on decades of high-level government service and public policy experience, former presidential advisers Kurt Campbell and James Steinberg review past foreign policy episodes and identify the major pitfalls that a president-elect must try to avoid in the early days of an administration. Both authors are well known in policy circles — e.g Steinberg has been widely mentioned as a potential National Security Adviser. The book will be launched with fanfare on November 13 at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. The dust jacket includes endorsements from Brent Scowcroft, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright.

• Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and current director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, head up a stellar cast of authors on Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. This is the first book to leverage fully the resources of these eminent foreign policy organizations. The goal is a new, nonpartisan strategy toward the tinderbox Middle East. The book will be rolled out in both New York and Washington with launch events on Tuesday, December 2, and it will receive a heavy publicity push from both institutions. It may ride the coattails of last week’s cover story in Newsweek, coauthored by Haass. Among the other authors are Steve Simon (coauthor of The Next Attack), Kenneth Pollack (A Path Out of the Desert), and Bruce Ridel (The Search for al Qaeda).

- Learn more about What Do We Do Now?.

- Learn more about Difficult Transitions.

- Learn more about Restoring the Balance.

U.S. Foreign Policy Needs a New Playbook

Stale Cold War mentality fosters distrust toward the United States

America has a bad habit of compromising its core values of freedom and democracy by forging alliances with dictators who don’t support these basic tenets. During the Cold War, all a developing country needed to do in order to gain U.S. support was to stay out of the Soviet orbit—the enemy of our enemy was our friend. We thus found ourselves siding with despots such as Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu of Zaire, the Shah of Iran—the list goes on. Similarly, being a source of vital resources or a protector of “international stability” in today’s world is too often sufficient qualification for U.S. aid.

Author Hilton Root takes a shrewd look at what is happening in American foreign affairs in Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World. He challenges long-held assumptions about our actions abroad, arguing that “outmoded” may be a more accurate description of our foreign policy than “current.”

Root’s book, just published by the Brookings Institution Press, comes at a turning point in America’s history. Unfortunately, our recent track record shows that we haven’t learned from the past. In Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, the United States has contributed billions of dollars to Pervez Musharraf’s government, largely to secure its support in the war on terror. That aid, however, still has not secured the loyalty of the military regime or the friendship of the population. Root questions the wisdom of providing aid to governments that remain corrupt and tyrannical, in light of the potential blowback.

So, what should America do at this crossroads? Root, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, argues that fostering economic development—not propping up dictators—is the better course for the country’s short-term and long-term goals. In the long term, it is actually a more effective strategy for building stability and winning the hearts and minds of the developing world.

You can hear from the author himself about his alternative strategy to close the gap between security and economic development. Hilton Root will be appearing at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. this Saturday, July 19th at 1 p.m. Don’t miss out!

- Learn more about Alliance Curse.

- Learn more about the event at Politics & Prose.

Four Crises and a Peace Process

Book, Event Examines American Engagement with India and Pakistan

While many assume that the era of India-Pakistan crisis is over, the new Brookings book Four Crises and a Peace Process questions whether new flashpoints might lie just ahead. Authors P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Brookings senior fellow Stephen P. Cohen explore this critical question, made even more urgent by the current political turmoil in Pakistan.

Four Crises … focuses on four contained conflicts on the subcontinent: the “Brasstacks” crisis of 1986-1987, the Compound Crisis of 1990, the Kargil Conflict of 1999, and the Border Confrontation Crisis of 2001-02. All four of the crises are notable because any one could have escalated into a large-scale conflict—or even all-out war—and three of these conflicts took place after India and Pakistan had gone nuclear.

Brookings launched this book last week with an event featuring Cohen; Brookings senior fellow Peter W. Rodman; Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Ambassador Schaffer said this about the book:

At a time when all of us South Asia watchers are beating our gums daily and more about Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is a useful reminder that the old standby India-Pakistan issue is still with us, that it is an old standby, but that it changes through time and sometimes in significant ways.

Dr. Tellis complimented the authors on “truly an excellent book” and said:

I read it over the Thanksgiving break, and I had read all the previous studies that had been done which fed into the book. This is really, in some sense, much better than the previous work because you have an opportunity to look at four crises in a synoptic fashion, and so you can actually tease out elements of comparison and salient themes that come through the book very, very clearly. It’s written in a wonderful fashion, and I think the organization is absolutely superb with respect to the variables the authors are trying to tease out of the four crises that they have investigated.

- Check out the full event transcript.

- Learn more about Four Crises and a Peace Process.

- Read about Four Crises and a Peace Process in The Daily Times of Pakistan.

The Peninsula Question

An intensive record of attempts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula

In October 2002 the United States confronted North Korea with its suspicions that Kim Jong-il’s regime was enriching uranium, in violation of the existing Agreed Framework established during the Clinton administration. In The Peninsula Question, international journalist Yoichi Funabashi chronicles in detail this dangerous event as well as ensuing attempts during the Six-Party talks to engage with North Korea. In turn, he analyzes the upshot of external responses to North Korea.

Funabashi gathered his research through a wealth of in-depth interviews with more than 160 diplomats and decision makers from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Using this foundation of unique primary sources, he exercises his journalistic skills to integrate separate storylines and establish an understandable chronicle of subsequent events. In addition, Funabashi evaluates both the cognitive and emotive levels of officials’ responses. In doing so, he illustrates how the individual efforts of these major powers laid the groundwork for multilateral negotiations, first as the trilateral meeting and then as the Six-Party Talks.

The Peninsula Question provides a window of understanding on the historical, geopolitical, and security concerns at play on the Korean peninsula. This well-crafted study of the Korean nuclear crisis focuses on a larger political framework, rather than simply U.S. relations with North Korea. It pays special attention to China's dealings with Pyongyang, providing rare insights into the decision-making processes of Beijing. This is an important, authoritative resource for understanding the crisis in Korea and diplomacy in Northeast Asia.

- Learn more about The Peninsula Question.

Requiem or Revival? The Promise of North American Integration

New book criticizes NAFTA while North American leaders defend it at annual summit

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper met recently with US President George Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón near Ottawa for the annual North American Summit, aiming to strengthen security and economic ties between their countries. At the conclusion of the two-day summit, the three leaders issued a joint statement in which they said, "We must build on NAFTA's success and reduce unnecessary trade barriers to ensure North America remains a competitive and a dynamic place to do business."

At the same time, NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, is receiving a growing amount of criticism from citizens of the three member nations. More than a dozen years after NAFTA's controversial but hopeful launch in 1994, progress toward economic integration has stalled. Mexico's economy remains far behind those of Canada and the United States, and such pressing issues as energy security remain unaddressed. In the timely new book, Requiem or Revival? The Promise of North American Integration, edited by Isabel Studer and Carol Wise, scholars and policymakers from all three nations dissect NAFTA's failure to fulfill its early promise and evaluate the prospects for further integration.

- Learn more about Requiem or Revival?

Worst of the Worst

New book from Brookings and the World Peace Foundation examines repressive and rogue nations

Repressive regimes tyrannize their own citizens and threaten global stability and order. Worst of the Worst identifies and characterizes the world’s most odious states and singles out which repressors are aggressive and, hence, can truly be called rogues. Robert I. Rotberg and his colleagues define the actions that constitute repression and propose a method of measuring human rights violations. They offer an index of nation-state repressiveness, classifying “gross repressors,” “high repressors,” and “aggressive repressors” or “rogues” on a ten-point scale. Based on arms and drug trafficking, support of terror, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and crossborder attacks, this valuable diagnostic tool will guide the international community in crafting effective policies to deal with injustice in the developing world. The repressors and rogues profiled include Belarus, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe.

- Learn more about Worst of the Worst.

This Week in History

The Nuclear Bomb Is Born

On July 16, 1945, the top-secret Manhattan Project successfully tested the first atomic bomb in Alamorgodo, New Mexico.

On July 22, 1987, in a landmark decision, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to ban intermediate-range nuclear missiles. This decision paved the way for the groundbreaking Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the United States that effectively eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.

Take a moment to peruse these books about nuclear proliferation:

- Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb, Charles Pritchard (Brookings, 2007)

- Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World, Ivo H. Daalder, ed. (Brookings, 2007)

- Global Non-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism: The Impact of UNSCR 1540, Olivia Bosch and Peter van Ham, eds. (Brookings, Chatham House, and the Clingendael Institute; 2006)

- U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Confronting Today’s Threats, George Bunn and Christopher F. Chyba, eds. (Brookings and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, 2006)

- The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices, Kurt M. Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss, eds. (Brookings, 2004).

(Image above is of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945)

Failed Diplomacy Book Event

Panel to discuss Pritchard’s inside story of how North Korea got the bomb

On Tuesday, July 17, Brookings, the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and the Korea Economic Institute will host a discussion of Charles “Jack” Pritchard’s new book Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb. The event—which will take place at 10 a.m. at SAIS in Washington, DC—will feature Pritchard, a former ambassador and special envoy for negotiations with North Korea. Richard Bush, senior fellow and director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at Brookings, will moderate the discussion.  Don Oberdorfer, chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and author of The Two Koreas (Basic Books, 2001), will serve as discussant.

- Event information and registration.

- UPDATE - Read the event transcript.

- Learn more about Failed Diplomacy.