BOOK REVIEWS
Regions of War and Peace edited by DOUGLAS LEMKE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 235, ยฃ45 h/bk, ยฃ15.95 p/bk).
After years of relative neglect, the events of 9/11 have dispelled the notion of some international relations experts that the Third World could be ignored. For a few brief years, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some ventured the opinion that the new hegemonic power, the United States, could afford to turn its back on the developing countries. From the point of view of security, so the argument went, the end of the Cold War had transformed them into irrelevant entities. Judging by the stagnation of aid flows to developing regions over the 1990s, it was also a view shared by many other industrialised countries. Yet the recent upsurge of fears concerning social dislocation, conflict, mass immigration and, above all, terrorism coming from the Third World has finally put paid to that myth. Whether the renewed interest in the developing world turns out to be good or bad for developing countries themselves is not yet clear, but at present, with the US administration's obsession with security, and its almost complete lack of concern for underlying social and economic problems both at home and abroad, the signs are not good.
Against this backdrop, the subject matter of this book has, in principle at least, an enormous relevance. Douglas Lemke's ambitious text attempts to explain the causes of international conflict between states, focusing on what the author terms the interaction of 'minor powers' (i.e. developing countries). In his analysis, he makes a concerted effort to apply power transition theory to the cases of developing regions. The broad theoretical case is made in Chapters 2 and 3. Whether the case is convincing or not is another matter. Power transition theory basically postulates a hierarchy of states, populated by numerous weak states at the bottom and a few strong states at the top. The very strongest of states is called the 'dominant power' and is responsible for establishing and maintaining the international status quo in order to further its own long-term interests. Lemke (p. 23) cites as an example of dominant power interests the imposition of a liberal international economic order by a dominant power enjoying comparative advantage in commerce with other nations. This is, of course, a misunderstanding of the concept of comparative advantage since, although they may lack absolute competitive advantages, all nations enjoy some comparative advantage (unless, by pure fluke, relative prices coincide).
Beyond nit picking of this sort, however, the fundamental flaw with this book is the overall approach. Arguably, even when applied to the 'major powers', the broad brushstrokes of power transition theory are not very persuasive-the theory presents an overly mechanical and functionalist perspective of international relations. It is also limited in its usefulness because it purports to predict conflict between countries. Yet in the post-Cold War world, it has often been internal conflict that has been the fundamental cause of war, not international power relations of the kind Lemke explores in this book. In recent years, Africa has been a good example of how internal conflict can spill across borders and cause regional wars. Tellingly, Lemke dedicates considerable space to explaining 'African exceptionalism'-Chapter 7 is dedicated to explaining the apparent paradoxical result from the author's econometric analysis that Africa is a region of relative interstate peace! Moreover, on many occasions the reader is left with the feeling that, despite his caveats, Lemke is excessively bold in his assertions and claims for power transition theory. For example, in keeping with the theoretical framework focussed on the definition of local hierarchies, Lemke proposes a number of explicatory variables to predict the probability of inter-state conflict (Chapter 4). Much of this smacks of tautological reasoning. Military build-ups are, for example, as much a product of international tensions as they are a sign of a propensity to confront the dominant power. Lemke proposes the use of GNP or GDP as a proxy for the demographic, industrial and military capabilities of states. He makes the rather extraordinary claim that 'since gross national product . . . data were not