Seeing Like a State - James C. Scott

The trail of history shows a steadily increasing level of technology and efficiency, or so we would believe. This book looks at the connections between 'high modernism', i.e. the belief that implementation of new technology can solve the world's problems, and various tragedies that have occurred in the past two hundred years. Several aspects of the book fascinated me, including:

The idea that states will seek to organize things in order to maximize control to ensure both stability, and, more importantly, tax revenues;

The history of state building, through changes in social institutions, societal structure, and even simple things such as creation of maps;

The juxtaposition of small-scale and large-scale farming, and the relative strength and sustainability of small-scale farming;

Case studies of development projects in the former USSR, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, as well as planned cities in Brazil and India and urban modification of Paris; and,

The idea that formal laws and codes cannot fully substitute for real-world experience, with the example of 'work-to-rule' strikes in France, in which workers strike simply by carrying out the duties required of them by law and no more.

Special Providence - Walter Russell Mead

Written and published in the Summer of 2001, this book takes a historical view of American Foreign Policy. The author sets out to answer a question which I would loosely paraphrase thus: 'Why, with its wavering foreign policy, has the United States been so successful in the international system and risen to such global prominence at the end of the 20th century'.

A main feature of the book is the author uses a multi-level analysis of the Unisted States' past international actions, with relatively strong emphasis on economic and trade issues, and the way that they interact with great-power strategy. He posits that the strong emphasis on trade by the United States has allowed it greater flexibility in its international policy, regardless of which of the four 'schools' which he describes had principal control over the international actions of the United States. The United States' relatively nuanced foreign policy approach contrasts with various other schools of international relations, such as Continental Realism and Idealism, which focus mainly on great-power politics and which have a relatively centralized elite foreign-policy decision maker.

According to the book, the schools of American Foreign Policy vary greatly in their approach to both trade and international intervention, with the influence of each school waxing and waning depending on system, state, and substate level factors. Briefly, the Hamiltonian school focuses on big business and high-level international trade, the Wilsonian school on spreading human rights and other values which enhance the standard of living of non-American peoples around the world, the Jeffersonian school focuses on protecting American democracy, which is easily compromised when the United States overextends itself around the world, and the Jacksonian school focuses on the standard of living and honor of the American people.

In many ways I feel that the book comes across as somewhat a product of its times, those being the early months of the George W. Bush administration, when the United States had not yet become fully mobilized in what we now entitle the Struggle Against International Terrorism. The author wrote that the US should emphasize a Jeffersonian approach in the future. However, interceding events have led to nearly a tide of Wilsonian/Jacksonian action that the current administration does not seem to have fully abandoned.

Honorable Survivor - Lynne Joiner

The Republican period in Mainland China continues to occupy a position of extreme importance in understanding both the subsequent rise of the People's Republic of China and the relationship between the United States and the PRC. Service, along with other diplomats working in China, predicted in the early 1940s that corruption and abuses of the populace by the Republican army, led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, would cause the Republican side to be unsuccessful in the event of a Chinese civil war. While history proved Service correct, the death of President Roosevelt led to the rise of President Truman, who decided to support the Republicans unilaterally in order to oppose the Stalin-led USSR, thus leading to a deep freeze on PRC-US relations.

For his part, due to his meetings with Chinese Communists in Yan'an as a part of his work in China, Service was accused of 'association with known Communists' during and forced out of his post at the US Foreign Service in 1951. While he successfully won all hearings in court and was eventually reinstated to the foreign service, he was unable to pass the security clearance process due to previous indiscretions and eventually found a job at the University of California at Berkeley in 1972. The book serves as a cautionary example of an individual being right, but not having the political power to protect their judgement. The example of the United States' continuing support of the Nationalists also shows the damage that an overreliance on Wilsonian idealism can cause if the process of vetting and auditing of the relationship with a foreign government becomes hijacked.