Faultines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2012.00184.x
AuthorAdnan Naseemullah
Date01 May 2012
Published date01 May 2012
Reviews
Old & New Terrorism by Peter R. Neumann. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2009. 218 pp., paperback, 978 0745643762
The changing concept and practice of terrorism are sub-
ject to a painstaking yet easily digestible analysis in this
relatively short but nevertheless convincing volume by
Peter R. Neumann, Director of the International Centre
for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at
King’s College London.
The author’s argument takes off on a similar path to
the one pursued by Mary Kaldor in her controversial
book, New and Old Wars. Neumann locates the primary
causes of the changing nature of terrorism in the new
conditions ushered in by late modernity and the desta-
bilising processes of globalisation.
Neumann f‌irst takes the reader on a tour of ‘ideal
types’ of old and new terrorism, which he illustrates with
reference to the IRA and al-Qa’eda respectively. Old ter-
rorism, Neumann argues, is hierarchically structured,
nationalist and or Marxist in aim, and in general avoids
targeting civilians; new terrorism, on the other hand, is
religiously inspired, does not discriminate between civil-
ian and military targets, and is structured as a network
with global reach and orientation.
Following these conceptual clarif‌ications, Neumann
goes on to describe the various ways in which the tech-
nological and political processes of late modernity and
globalisation have caused the transformation of old ter-
rorism into its new, more vicious, type. Quite rightly, he
places strong emphasis on the ‘information revolution’
and the transnational opportunities in the f‌ields of com-
munication and organisation with which the Internet,
satellite television and the increased f‌low of goods and
people have presented terrorist groups and the diaspo-
ras within which they operate, and he describes their
effects on such groups with great precision and clarity.
His argument that the identity shattering effects globali-
sation has initiated in many societies has greatly contrib-
uted to a revival in particularist ideologies such as ethno
nationalism and Islamism is likewise sound and well
structured.
The weakest part of the book is its treatment of ‘new’
strategies that are inherently brutalising and intended to
cause maximum devastation regardless of the innocence
or guilt of their victims. The author’s suggestion that the
particularist motives of most ‘new’ terrorists are coming
to overshadow the ‘old’ universalism of groups such as
the IRA and are contributing to less ‘civilised’ tactics is
made hollow by reference to the violent, exclusive
nationalism of ‘old’ organisations such as the Tamil
Tigers and the Zionist group, Irgun, and his argument
that the contemporary global media makes it diff‌icult for
terrorists to ‘break through’ the barriers of desensitisa-
tion to reach the news cycle, is somewhat forced and
unconvincing. Furthermore, despite Neumann’s profes-
sion that ‘terrorism’ must be used as a descriptive term,
his own moral judgements of the phenomenon are sub-
tly present throughout the book.
Leaving these issues aside, however, Old & New Terror-
ism should be welcomed as an intelligent and sophisti-
cated contribution to a debate that is unlikely to be
resolved any time soon.
Daniel Falkiner
Daniel Falkiner is a PhD Candidate at the London School
of Economics and Political Science.
Faultines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the
World Economy by Raghuram Rajan. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 2010. 272 pp., £18.85 hardcover,
978 0691146836.
The scenes of the credit crisis in the autumn of 2008 –
employees streaming out of a bankrupt Lehman in Lon-
don and New York, the existential panic of Wall Street
traders – have faded into medium – term memory. The
world has settled down into the diff‌icult business of
struggling out of the Great Recession. The more immedi-
ate tasks of 2012, which include bolstering the tepid
recovery in the US and preventing sovereign debt
defaults in Europe, tend to make the credit crisis seem
stale and uninteresting. Indeed, academic studies, such
as Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s This Time is
Different, characterize the 2008 crisis as simply another
case within a large category of f‌inancial crises going
back centuries.
Before we consign it to simply a case within an
already expanding category, however, there is a pressing
need to account for the political economy of the 2008
crisis – its context, its causes, its effects. Raghuram
Rajan’s Faultines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the
World Economy salvages both the particularity and the
horror of the f‌inancial crisis, while also providing a
coherent narrative of structural ‘faultlines’ within the glo-
bal economy that caused it. He argues persuasively that
while the crisis itself has been largely resolved, its under-
lying causes have not been addressed.
Rajan’s approach is to situate the crisis within three
separate but interconnected frameworks, each constitut-
ing a separate faultline: the politics of US economic and
social policy, the trade imbalances caused by export led
economies, and the structures of f‌inancial institutions. He
Global Policy Volume 3 . Issue 2 . May 2012
Global Policy (2012) 3:2 doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2012.00183.x ª2012 London School of Economics and Political Science and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Reviews
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