Foreign Affairs - Books for the Century

评语：For millennia, Europe was a warring continent that featured shifting alliances among dynastic states ruthlessly striving for regional and global primacy. Over the past 75 years, however, the region has emerged as a zone of unmatched peace, prosperity, tolerance, and stability, with a benign global presence. Today, European countries dominate lists of the most admired political systems and most desirable places to live. This extraordinary transformation sprang from a century-long domestic political evolution toward self-determination, social welfare provision, and liberal democracy. In each area, Europe learned and applied the lessons of its turbulent history. These advances might not have been possible without a key underlying shift in the global balance of military power. In his 1994 history of foreign policy over the past two centuries, Kissinger insisted that Europe owes its period of peace to the emergence of a hegemonic United States, which tipped the military balance in two world wars and then provided a deterrent shield that kept “the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as NATO’s first secretary-general, Lionel Ismay, put it. This realist view that Europe’s stability was entirely dependent on U.S. military hegemony still circulates widely in the Washington establishment. Military power may be essential, but in the end, it can do little more than preserve an armed status quo. To attain the deeper and permanent peace seen in Europe today—where war has become all but unthinkable, internal borders have become inconsequential, and goods, capital and people move freely—bigger changes were required. Europeans had to renounce radically revisionist leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler—men who espoused extreme goals that could be achieved only by force of arms. Instead, Europeans learned to view the existing regional order as fundamentally legitimate and then committed themselves to intense cooperation within it. Three social trends fueled this transformation in foreign policy. First was the spread of national self-determination. Starting around the turn of the nineteenth century, peoples began revolting against empires in order to establish their own nation-states. Even Kissinger, critical as he is of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s impatient idealism in crafting the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, cannot help but praise the president’s prophetic awareness that self-determination would become the foundational norm of modern world politics. A century later, European nations are satisfied: no people dreams of altering borders or imposing extreme political ideologies by force—predatory Russian actions at the continent’s eastern edge being the exception that proves the rule. Second was the adoption of the welfare state across Europe. In his celebrated critique of the Treaty of Versailles, Keynes predicted that the post–World War I settlement could not last. In the modern era of mass politics and transnational interdependence, he reasoned, international economic stability and justice are preconditions for peace. Keynes prophesied that, given the severe economic demands placed on Germany, resentment of the post-Versailles order, extreme inequality, social resistance, and macroeconomic shocks would inevitably disillusion moderates and breed radical politics—a prediction that proved correct when the Great Depression propelled Hitler into the German chancellery. A generation later, the Marshall Plan, the creation of social welfare states, and the founding of the Bretton Woods system—in which Keynes again played an influential role—gave Europe a second chance. Berman traced the distinctive European character of the beliefs and institutions of modern social democracy, showing how deeply they are embedded in the European politics, and contends that it is the most successful political model in the world today. Third was the spread of liberal democracy. In the interwar period, truly democratic governments were few and beleaguered. Yet World War II discredited the fascist right, and the Soviet threat tamed the communist left. In his magisterial account of European politics and society over the past 75 years, Judt shows how democracy, combined with self-determination and social welfare, ushered in three generations of moderate politics, economic prosperity, and social tolerance. As the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant foresaw in the late eighteenth century, the result has been a seemingly perpetual peace heretofore unknown to Europe.

评语：For millennia, Europe was a warring continent that featured shifting alliances among dynastic states ruthlessly striving for regional and global primacy. Over the past 75 years, however, the region has emerged as a zone of unmatched peace, prosperity, tolerance, and stability, with a benign global presence. Today, European countries dominate lists of the most admired political systems and most desirable places to live. This extraordinary transformation sprang from a century-long domestic political evolution toward self-determination, social welfare provision, and liberal democracy. In each area, Europe learned and applied the lessons of its turbulent history. These advances might not have been possible without a key underlying shift in the global balance of military power. In his 1994 history of foreign policy over the past two centuries, Kissinger insisted that Europe owes its period of peace to the emergence of a hegemonic United States, which tipped the military balance in two world wars and then provided a deterrent shield that kept “the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as NATO’s first secretary-general, Lionel Ismay, put it. This realist view that Europe’s stability was entirely dependent on U.S. military hegemony still circulates widely in the Washington establishment. Military power may be essential, but in the end, it can do little more than preserve an armed status quo. To attain the deeper and permanent peace seen in Europe today—where war has become all but unthinkable, internal borders have become inconsequential, and goods, capital and people move freely—bigger changes were required. Europeans had to renounce radically revisionist leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler—men who espoused extreme goals that could be achieved only by force of arms. Instead, Europeans learned to view the existing regional order as fundamentally legitimate and then committed themselves to intense cooperation within it. Three social trends fueled this transformation in foreign policy. First was the spread of national self-determination. Starting around the turn of the nineteenth century, peoples began revolting against empires in order to establish their own nation-states. Even Kissinger, critical as he is of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s impatient idealism in crafting the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, cannot help but praise the president’s prophetic awareness that self-determination would become the foundational norm of modern world politics. A century later, European nations are satisfied: no people dreams of altering borders or imposing extreme political ideologies by force—predatory Russian actions at the continent’s eastern edge being the exception that proves the rule. Second was the adoption of the welfare state across Europe. In his celebrated critique of the Treaty of Versailles, Keynes predicted that the post–World War I settlement could not last. In the modern era of mass politics and transnational interdependence, he reasoned, international economic stability and justice are preconditions for peace. Keynes prophesied that, given the severe economic demands placed on Germany, resentment of the post-Versailles order, extreme inequality, social resistance, and macroeconomic shocks would inevitably disillusion moderates and breed radical politics—a prediction that proved correct when the Great Depression propelled Hitler into the German chancellery. A generation later, the Marshall Plan, the creation of social welfare states, and the founding of the Bretton Woods system—in which Keynes again played an influential role—gave Europe a second chance. Berman traced the distinctive European character of the beliefs and institutions of modern social democracy, showing how deeply they are embedded in the European politics, and contends that it is the most successful political model in the world today. Third was the spread of liberal democracy. In the interwar period, truly democratic governments were few and beleaguered. Yet World War II discredited the fascist right, and the Soviet threat tamed the communist left. In his magisterial account of European politics and society over the past 75 years, Judt shows how democracy, combined with self-determination and social welfare, ushered in three generations of moderate politics, economic prosperity, and social tolerance. As the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant foresaw in the late eighteenth century, the result has been a seemingly perpetual peace heretofore unknown to Europe.

评语：For millennia, Europe was a warring continent that featured shifting alliances among dynastic states ruthlessly striving for regional and global primacy. Over the past 75 years, however, the region has emerged as a zone of unmatched peace, prosperity, tolerance, and stability, with a benign global presence. Today, European countries dominate lists of the most admired political systems and most desirable places to live. This extraordinary transformation sprang from a century-long domestic political evolution toward self-determination, social welfare provision, and liberal democracy. In each area, Europe learned and applied the lessons of its turbulent history. These advances might not have been possible without a key underlying shift in the global balance of military power. In his 1994 history of foreign policy over the past two centuries, Kissinger insisted that Europe owes its period of peace to the emergence of a hegemonic United States, which tipped the military balance in two world wars and then provided a deterrent shield that kept “the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as NATO’s first secretary-general, Lionel Ismay, put it. This realist view that Europe’s stability was entirely dependent on U.S. military hegemony still circulates widely in the Washington establishment. Military power may be essential, but in the end, it can do little more than preserve an armed status quo. To attain the deeper and permanent peace seen in Europe today—where war has become all but unthinkable, internal borders have become inconsequential, and goods, capital and people move freely—bigger changes were required. Europeans had to renounce radically revisionist leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler—men who espoused extreme goals that could be achieved only by force of arms. Instead, Europeans learned to view the existing regional order as fundamentally legitimate and then committed themselves to intense cooperation within it. Three social trends fueled this transformation in foreign policy. First was the spread of national self-determination. Starting around the turn of the nineteenth century, peoples began revolting against empires in order to establish their own nation-states. Even Kissinger, critical as he is of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s impatient idealism in crafting the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, cannot help but praise the president’s prophetic awareness that self-determination would become the foundational norm of modern world politics. A century later, European nations are satisfied: no people dreams of altering borders or imposing extreme political ideologies by force—predatory Russian actions at the continent’s eastern edge being the exception that proves the rule. Second was the adoption of the welfare state across Europe. In his celebrated critique of the Treaty of Versailles, Keynes predicted that the post–World War I settlement could not last. In the modern era of mass politics and transnational interdependence, he reasoned, international economic stability and justice are preconditions for peace. Keynes prophesied that, given the severe economic demands placed on Germany, resentment of the post-Versailles order, extreme inequality, social resistance, and macroeconomic shocks would inevitably disillusion moderates and breed radical politics—a prediction that proved correct when the Great Depression propelled Hitler into the German chancellery. A generation later, the Marshall Plan, the creation of social welfare states, and the founding of the Bretton Woods system—in which Keynes again played an influential role—gave Europe a second chance. Berman traced the distinctive European character of the beliefs and institutions of modern social democracy, showing how deeply they are embedded in the European politics, and contends that it is the most successful political model in the world today. Third was the spread of liberal democracy. In the interwar period, truly democratic governments were few and beleaguered. Yet World War II discredited the fascist right, and the Soviet threat tamed the communist left. In his magisterial account of European politics and society over the past 75 years, Judt shows how democracy, combined with self-determination and social welfare, ushered in three generations of moderate politics, economic prosperity, and social tolerance. As the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant foresaw in the late eighteenth century, the result has been a seemingly perpetual peace heretofore unknown to Europe.

评语：Much of what the United States tries to do abroad in the coming century (and therefore what the international community can do collectively) depends on whether U.S. leaders can sort out their own house first. Extreme polarization in American society has eroded faith in the norms and institutions that make democracy possible. Much has been written about the evolving style of authoritarianism around the world, and many authors have tried to explain, without notable success, what motivates the legions of Americans who back former U.S. President Donald Trump. But few books go beyond the recent past to the deep roots of the United States’ current political discontent. Two works by the historian Hofstadter written 60 years ago offer more answers about the future by probing further into the past. The books examine the long-standing opposition to ideas, to elites, to expertise, and to learning in U.S. political history; the powerful role of evangelical Christianity (long before it became an explicitly political movement) in opposition to school desegregation, civil and voting rights, women’s rights, and abortion; and the constant pull of conspiracy theories on the right, principally, but also the left. Hofstadter’s pinpointing of what moves “the arena of uncommonly angry minds” provides a clearer understanding of the United States’ current polarization than the dozens of books focused on “Trumpism.”

评语：Much of what the United States tries to do abroad in the coming century (and therefore what the international community can do collectively) depends on whether U.S. leaders can sort out their own house first. Extreme polarization in American society has eroded faith in the norms and institutions that make democracy possible. Much has been written about the evolving style of authoritarianism around the world, and many authors have tried to explain, without notable success, what motivates the legions of Americans who back former U.S. President Donald Trump. But few books go beyond the recent past to the deep roots of the United States’ current political discontent. Two works by the historian Hofstadter written 60 years ago offer more answers about the future by probing further into the past. The books examine the long-standing opposition to ideas, to elites, to expertise, and to learning in U.S. political history; the powerful role of evangelical Christianity (long before it became an explicitly political movement) in opposition to school desegregation, civil and voting rights, women’s rights, and abortion; and the constant pull of conspiracy theories on the right, principally, but also the left. Hofstadter’s pinpointing of what moves “the arena of uncommonly angry minds” provides a clearer understanding of the United States’ current polarization than the dozens of books focused on “Trumpism.”

评语：Much of what the United States tries to do abroad in the coming century (and therefore what the international community can do collectively) depends on whether U.S. leaders can sort out their own house first. Extreme polarization in American society has eroded faith in the norms and institutions that make democracy possible. Much has been written about the evolving style of authoritarianism around the world, and many authors have tried to explain, without notable success, what motivates the legions of Americans who back former U.S. President Donald Trump. But few books go beyond the recent past to the deep roots of the United States’ current political discontent. Two works by the historian Hofstadter written 60 years ago offer more answers about the future by probing further into the past. The books examine the long-standing opposition to ideas, to elites, to expertise, and to learning in U.S. political history; the powerful role of evangelical Christianity (long before it became an explicitly political movement) in opposition to school desegregation, civil and voting rights, women’s rights, and abortion; and the constant pull of conspiracy theories on the right, principally, but also the left. Hofstadter’s pinpointing of what moves “the arena of uncommonly angry minds” provides a clearer understanding of the United States’ current polarization than the dozens of books focused on “Trumpism.”

评语：Much of what the United States tries to do abroad in the coming century (and therefore what the international community can do collectively) depends on whether U.S. leaders can sort out their own house first. Extreme polarization in American society has eroded faith in the norms and institutions that make democracy possible. Much has been written about the evolving style of authoritarianism around the world, and many authors have tried to explain, without notable success, what motivates the legions of Americans who back former U.S. President Donald Trump. But few books go beyond the recent past to the deep roots of the United States’ current political discontent. Two works by the historian Hofstadter written 60 years ago offer more answers about the future by probing further into the past. The books examine the long-standing opposition to ideas, to elites, to expertise, and to learning in U.S. political history; the powerful role of evangelical Christianity (long before it became an explicitly political movement) in opposition to school desegregation, civil and voting rights, women’s rights, and abortion; and the constant pull of conspiracy theories on the right, principally, but also the left. Hofstadter’s pinpointing of what moves “the arena of uncommonly angry minds” provides a clearer understanding of the United States’ current polarization than the dozens of books focused on “Trumpism.”

评语：The ability of artificial intelligence to overturn every aspect of human society—from the nature of work to who (or what) makes decisions about war—will have even greater consequences in the years ahead. Lee, the Taiwanese-born, U.S.-educated and -trained former president of Google China, is a globally recognized ai expert who can write for the uninitiated. His book, a collaboration with Chinese science-fiction writer Chen, combines ten imaginary—often terrifying—stories of ai’s potential impacts with Lee’s clearheaded analysis of the issues each raises. He is surprisingly optimistic. “We are the masters of our fate,” he writes, “and no technological revolution will ever change that.” Theoretically, that should be true; in practice, it may not be.

评语：Citizens’ movements transformed the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, including the campaigns for civil rights, women’s rights, and the environment. In the last case, the spark took the form of a single book: Carson’s groundbreaking account of environmental destruction. Excerpted in The New Yorker before its publication in 1962, the book sold two million hardcover copies in two years. Carson was a little-known oceanographer who had spent much of her career writing brochures for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But her book had a seismic impact with its elegant prose and well-documented depiction of a world bathed in toxic chemicals, of the deleterious consequences of those chemicals for human health, and of misinformation campaigns by the chemical industry that public officials passively accepted. Industry groups attempted to dismiss her as a communist or a hysterical woman, but the attacks did not prevent her work from winning the approval of the scientific community and from becoming not just mainstream but a classic still in print after more than half a century. The book led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency, and stoked broad concerns about clean air and water, land and wildlife conversation, and, eventually, climate change.

评语：Citizens’ movements transformed the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, including the campaigns for civil rights, women’s rights, and the environment. In the last case, the spark took the form of a single book: Carson’s groundbreaking account of environmental destruction. Excerpted in The New Yorker before its publication in 1962, the book sold two million hardcover copies in two years. Carson was a little-known oceanographer who had spent much of her career writing brochures for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But her book had a seismic impact with its elegant prose and well-documented depiction of a world bathed in toxic chemicals, of the deleterious consequences of those chemicals for human health, and of misinformation campaigns by the chemical industry that public officials passively accepted. Industry groups attempted to dismiss her as a communist or a hysterical woman, but the attacks did not prevent her work from winning the approval of the scientific community and from becoming not just mainstream but a classic still in print after more than half a century. The book led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency, and stoked broad concerns about clean air and water, land and wildlife conversation, and, eventually, climate change.

评语：Then there is the U.S. Army’s field manual. It is not a work of independent scholarship but a government document, more a product of its time than an enduring contribution to strategic thought. Yet it captured the insights of the United States’ senior military leadership as they struggled with the demands of two major counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The manual was drafted with substantial contributions from academics and nongovernmental organizations and stressed the need to avoid conventional thinking about war. Instead, it drew on a tradition of thinking about revolutionary and guerrilla warfare that emphasized the importance of separating militants from the wider population, in part by relying more on a political process than on combat. The manual encouraged flexibility in military attitudes and behavior and pointed to the value of restraint. It was well received and widely read, and its lessons were applied successfully if briefly in Iraq during the 2007 surge of U.S. troops in the country. Afghanistan, however, exposed the problems when it came to applying its core messages.

评语：These three books capture the key themes that have emerged in Western thinking about strategy since the end of World War II. By far the most important development was the start of the nuclear age. The advent of the atomic bomb demanded a reappraisal of military strategy, an effort that was largely led by civilian analysts, of whom Schelling was the most original and imaginative. He was an economist with a lively mind and an eclectic approach, influenced by, but not bound to, game theory. The shared fear of nuclear war created incentives for the superpower antagonists to cooperate as well as compete; this interdependence was a fruitful area for game theory. Schelling addressed the key policy issues of the day, explored the credibility of commitments and tacit forms of bargaining, and developed such influential concepts as “the threat that leaves something to chance” (the risk of escalation that one cannot completely control) and “the reciprocal fear of surprise attack” (the idea that the probability of a surprise attack grows because each side fears what the other fears).

评语：These three books capture the key themes that have emerged in Western thinking about strategy since the end of World War II. By far the most important development was the start of the nuclear age. The advent of the atomic bomb demanded a reappraisal of military strategy, an effort that was largely led by civilian analysts, of whom Schelling was the most original and imaginative. He was an economist with a lively mind and an eclectic approach, influenced by, but not bound to, game theory. The shared fear of nuclear war created incentives for the superpower antagonists to cooperate as well as compete; this interdependence was a fruitful area for game theory. Schelling addressed the key policy issues of the day, explored the credibility of commitments and tacit forms of bargaining, and developed such influential concepts as “the threat that leaves something to chance” (the risk of escalation that one cannot completely control) and “the reciprocal fear of surprise attack” (the idea that the probability of a surprise attack grows because each side fears what the other fears).

评语：Earle brought together a remarkable collection of essays to help explain the origins of strategy. In some respects, the impact of new forms of warfare, including the first atomic bombs, soon dated the volume. But the book’s abiding value was ensured by the ambitious historical sweep of Earle’s approach, his expansive definition of strategy—incorporating economic considerations and political context—and the quality of the individual contributions, including some by the leading historians of the time.

评语：Wright’s two-volume magnum opus, the result of years of meticulous and comprehensive research by his team at the University of Chicago, was published in 1943. This work had a utopian objective: to provide the evidence and analysis to make possible the prevention and limitation of war. Wright identified four key factors that determined the likelihood of conflict: technology (mainly military), law (mainly international), forms of political organization, and key values. Peace required maintaining an equilibrium “among the uncertain and fluctuating political and military forces within the system of states.” Wright argued that leaders could make sound policy decisions only by paying attention, in granular and quantitative detail, to subjects as diverse as the properties of weapons systems, demographics, the observance of international law, polling data, and the content of newspapers. Later generations of scholars followed Wright’s path in crafting a scientific approach to international relations that depended on thorough data gathering and rigorous analytical methodologies.

评语：To paraphrase the economist Paul Krugman: when it comes to economic growth, technological progress is not everything, but it is almost everything. Just as the pace and direction of technological change shaped the last economic century, it will equally shape the next. Gordon advances a pessimistic view of the capacity for technological change to continue raising living standards at the rate to which Americans grew accustomed in the last century. He points to “one great wave” of inventions and innovations between 1870 and 1970, such as electricity, indoor plumbing, and the internal combustion engine, and questions whether current advances in artificial intelligence, human genomics, and robotics can improve living standards to the same extent. Many readers will find Gordon’s skepticism regarding today’s new technologies counterintuitive. But they will be forced to think again about the capacity of these developments to improve the human condition. New technologies also have distributional consequences—as any early-twentieth-century horse-drawn carriage maker would attest. People must acquire skills and training to rise to the demands of new technological competition. Goldin and Katz view this interplay through the lens of U.S. history. They describe how the United States became a leader in the provision of universal education and how it pioneered the “high school movement.” They show how educational attainment advanced faster than technology in the first half of the twentieth century, leading to a drop in economic inequality. In the latter half of the century, however, technology “sprinted ahead” and accentuated distributional problems. The book raises questions about whether educational systems can continue to successfully impart requisite skills and training, whether they will win the political support needed to do so, and how inequality will deepen in the event of their failure. The global economic future will be shaped, in no small part, by the geostrategic contest between China and the United States and by the performance of their respective economic and political systems. One hesitates to recommend a book on the economic competition between these two countries, given the rapidity of change in their respective economies and polities and, no less, in their bilateral relations. But readers probably can’t do better than Pettis’s 2013 work. He emphasizes policy distortions that artificially boost saving and investment in China while depressing them in the United States, producing trade imbalances, financial weakness in China, and deindustrialization in the United States. Pettis did not predict the election of U.S. President Donald Trump or the economic and political clampdown under Chinese President Xi Jinping, but his analysis highlights the economic vulnerabilities of both countries as they face the next century. Finally, any reckoning with the economic future of the planet must include the challenge of climate change, to which the recent book by Nordhaus, the Nobel Prize–winning economist, is an essential introduction.

评语：To paraphrase the economist Paul Krugman: when it comes to economic growth, technological progress is not everything, but it is almost everything. Just as the pace and direction of technological change shaped the last economic century, it will equally shape the next. Gordon advances a pessimistic view of the capacity for technological change to continue raising living standards at the rate to which Americans grew accustomed in the last century. He points to “one great wave” of inventions and innovations between 1870 and 1970, such as electricity, indoor plumbing, and the internal combustion engine, and questions whether current advances in artificial intelligence, human genomics, and robotics can improve living standards to the same extent. Many readers will find Gordon’s skepticism regarding today’s new technologies counterintuitive. But they will be forced to think again about the capacity of these developments to improve the human condition. New technologies also have distributional consequences—as any early-twentieth-century horse-drawn carriage maker would attest. People must acquire skills and training to rise to the demands of new technological competition. Goldin and Katz view this interplay through the lens of U.S. history. They describe how the United States became a leader in the provision of universal education and how it pioneered the “high school movement.” They show how educational attainment advanced faster than technology in the first half of the twentieth century, leading to a drop in economic inequality. In the latter half of the century, however, technology “sprinted ahead” and accentuated distributional problems. The book raises questions about whether educational systems can continue to successfully impart requisite skills and training, whether they will win the political support needed to do so, and how inequality will deepen in the event of their failure. The global economic future will be shaped, in no small part, by the geostrategic contest between China and the United States and by the performance of their respective economic and political systems. One hesitates to recommend a book on the economic competition between these two countries, given the rapidity of change in their respective economies and polities and, no less, in their bilateral relations. But readers probably can’t do better than Pettis’s 2013 work. He emphasizes policy distortions that artificially boost saving and investment in China while depressing them in the United States, producing trade imbalances, financial weakness in China, and deindustrialization in the United States. Pettis did not predict the election of U.S. President Donald Trump or the economic and political clampdown under Chinese President Xi Jinping, but his analysis highlights the economic vulnerabilities of both countries as they face the next century. Finally, any reckoning with the economic future of the planet must include the challenge of climate change, to which the recent book by Nordhaus, the Nobel Prize–winning economist, is an essential introduction.