Power & Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threat |  | Authors: Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, Stephen John Stedman
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Category: Book
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Media: Hardcover
Pages: 360
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Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0815747063
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.033
EAN: 9780815747062
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Product Description
The post-World War II fabric of global security, designed and maintained by the United States, has dangerously frayed. Built for a different age, current international institutions are ill-equipped to address today's most pressing global security challenges, ranging from climate change and nuclear proliferation to civil strife and terrorism. Revitalizing the institutions of cooperation will require a new conceptual foundation for global security. The 'national sovereignty' of the twentieth century must give way to 'responsible sovereignty' - a principle requiring nations not only to protect their own people, but also to cooperate across borders to safeguard common resources and tackle common threats. Achieving this will require American leadership and commitment to a rule-based international order.In "Power and Responsibility" Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, and Stephen Stedman provide the conceptual underpinnings for a new approach to sovereignty and cooperation. They present ideas for the new U.S. administration, working with other global powers, to promote together what they cannot produce apart - peace and stability. Recommendations follow more than a year of consultations with policymakers and experts all over the world. They reflect the guidance of the Managing Global Insecurity Project Advisory Group, composed of prominent figures from the United States and abroad. They call for the new president and key partners to launch a 2009 campaign to revitalize international cooperation and rejuvenate international institutions. As Washington prepares for a presidential transition, the time has arrived for a serious rethinking of American policy. For the United States, this is no time to go it alone.
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| Customer Reviews:
Sound advice for the Obama administration and beyond March 4, 2009
Saleem Ali (Vermont, USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
At the start of any new administration in the United States, there is a rush to offer advice from many quarters. Ideas are deliberated at think tanks and university departments to make an imprint on the fresh stock of decision-makers that are moving into the halls of power in Washington. Often such grand visions end up being no more than mere grandstanding. Happily, that is not the case with "Power and Responsibility," which provides a clear and crisp set of guidelines for the new administration as well as for international institutions.
Crafted after a detailed consultation process involving a range of global leaders, the three authors have provided a definitive case for the doctrine of "responsible sovereignty." The Sudanese-scholar and diplomat Francis Deng coined this phrase that was adopted by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan as an antidote to the divisive rhetoric of Westphalian sovereignty that often trumps any credible critique of member states. Two of the authors Bruce Jones and Stephen John Stedman worked at the United Nations while Carlos Pascual is a former U.S. ambassador and Vice President of the Brookings Institution. Having witnessed the decision-making process closely at various levels, the authors have a refreshingly pragmatic tone while also providing some bold new ideas and themes.
Some of the significant recommendations in the book include:
a) Reforming the UN Security Council to include long-term non-veto members that would over time become permanent members. The authors recognize that ideally there should be a more equitable system of governance but they make this suggestion for the sake of "marrying what is right with what is doable."
b) Making a distinction between preemptive and preventive use of force, arguing that the former suggests an imminent danger of a provable threat and would be covered under Article 41 of the UN Charter. On this point, perhaps the authors are not as clear regarding what process would differentiate between what is imminent and provable and what is not.
c) Providing a clear agenda for action on climate change and biotechnology as well as bioterrorism that embraces a multilateral approach that is based on science and technology rather than political opportunism.
d) Stressing the importance of nuclear nonproliferation by following the channels of international agreements and providing a coherent analysis of the "hard cases" of North Korea and Iran.
e) Admirably daring to ask the question "Does military occupation cause terrorism?" and answering in the affirmative rather than equivocating about moral equivalence as most Washington pundits tend to do.
Overall this is a fine work of policy analysis that should be seriously considered by US policy makers and the electorate at large. Perhaps one aspect of the book which is somewhat troubling is its continuing insistence that "U.S. consent is a necessary condition for success." While this may be true at a proximate level, there needs to be an effort to move away from this imperative that tends to sound a bit sanctimonious. The rise of Europe and Asia should not be neglected and it may be instructive to prepare the US for a time when the consent of no single country is dominant but rather a more inclusive international governance system emerges.
Bubba Book January 7, 2010
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
EDIT of 7 Jan 09. I got halfway through another book last night and now understand the Princeton-based idea that the US has enough power to demand changes and that earlier "balance of power" constraints might not apply. On the one hand, this is an idea worth pursuing, but if you know nothing of strategy, intelligence (decision-support) and how to integrate Whole of Government and Multinational Engagement campaigns against the ten threats by harmonizing the twelve policies and engaging the eight demographic leaders, then this is just academic blabber. On the other hand, this is 100% on the money--if the USA were a Smart Nation with an honest government, now is the time to lead--but it's not going to come out of the ivory tower or politicals in waiting for their next job, it will come from the bottom (Epoch B), the poor, and the eight demographic powers (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards such as South Africa, Thailan, and Turkey, with the Nordics and BENELUX always lurking positively on the fringes.
Original review:
I tried hard to find enough in this book to warrant five stars, but between the pedestrian threats, buying in blindly to the climate change fraud, assertions such as "There is no prospect for international stability and prosperity in the next twenty years that does not rest on U.S. power and leadership," and the general obliviousness of the authors to multiple literatures highly relevant to their ostensible objective of answering the question "how do we organize our globalized world," this has to stay a four. It has some worthwhile bits that I itemize below, but on balance this is an annoying book, part cursory overview, part grand-standing proposals for new organizations, and part job application--at least one of these authors wants to be the first High Commissioner for Counter-Terrorism.
Although the authors are familiar with A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which was published in 2004, this book does not resonate with the ten priorities set forth there, in this order:
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime
Had the author's actually sought to tailor their suggestions to the above elegant threat architecture, this could have been a much more rewarding book. As it is, it strikes me as a book written around a few ideas:
01 G-16, not G-8 expanded, half old bubbas and half new bubbas
02 UN High Commissioner for Counterterrorism
03 New body to replace what UN Economic and Social Council should be doing, they call the new body a Center for Economic Prosperity [it's at this point I wonder if these guys have a clue about ecological economics, true cost, fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, etcetera.
The best part of the book is pages 197-202, with the following discussed:
Preventive Mediation
+ Coordinate among international institutions
+ Form a joint scenario-planning team
+ Build UN capacity for mediation and political analysis
+ Cultivate "anticipatory" relationships
+ Support information diplomatic capacities
Peacekeeping
+ Mitigate the shortage of specialized peacekeeping assets
+ Address the lack of strategic airlift for peace operations
+ Improve NATO's ability to mount multidimensional operations
+ Develop an institutional framework for strategic projections and joint planning for peace operations
+ Create a more structured funding pool for AU and other African missions
+ Promote an intermilitary, intergovernmental doctrine for peace operations
+ Broaden the system of standby reserve capabilities for peacekeeping
+ Establish a target for net global capacity of up to 300,000 peacekeepers
Peacebuilding
+ Create a UN strategic planning capacity supplemented by national and regional capabilities
+ Establish a response corps to run field missions
+ Build an expanded international network of skilled providers to implement programs
+ Ensure $2 billion in predictable funding for UN peacebuilding activities
Minor points worth noting:
+ Nothing of significance on strategy, decrepit intelligence, open sources, etcetera.
+ Regional works better than unilateral
+ NGOs matter, UN needs reform
+ Sweden, Thailand, Chile, and South Africa "get it" on UN reform and are leaders
+ US centric in the extreme
+ Dismisses Venezuela with Iran and Syria as "unsavory"
+ "Responsible States" may sound cool, but totally divorced from corruption, ignorance etc.
+ Confuse democracy with development
+ Recognize that US policy is driving a wedge between US and everyone else
+ No real treatment of culture, religion
+ Limited understanding of a number of literatures including poverty, social entrepreneurship, and collective intelligence to wealth of networks
+ Crummy index
Other books I recommend along with More Secure World (which is also free online):
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Faith- Based Diplomacy Trumping Realpolitik
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
You can access my other 1500 non-fiction reviews in any of 98 categories at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
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