Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics
| DOI | 10.1177/002234330604300624 |
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| Author | Stein Tønnesson |
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
of children joining modern conflicts. However,
both volumes fail to pursue this issue in a sys-
tematic manner, owing to methodological short-
comings in the former and a different thematic
research focus in the latter. Rosen bases his
argument on the alleged overemphasis of human-
itarian organizations on children as victims of
adults’ manipulation and, instead, points at the
moral agency of child soldiers. However, the
strength of this argument might not sustain
methodological scrutiny. Objections arise from
the selection bias of cases – Jewish resistance in
World War II, the Sierra Leonean conflict and the
Palestinian uprising – which are used ‘to illustrate
the complexities of the child-soldier problem’
(p. 1) and disclaim child innocence. These cases
represent clear outliers in terms of the nature of
armed struggles in today’s world, and, therefore,
it remains questionable whether they can be used
to guide our understanding about why children
become soldiers. Another concern relates to the
treatment of the moral agency concept that pre-
supposes an individual’s capacity to make moral
judgments and take actions accordingly. Even
Rosen admits that joining the Jewish resistance
was a survival strategy for children attempting to
escape imminent persecution. In the case of Sierra
Leone, the author provides an invaluable account
of peacetime youth marginalization and partici-
pation in youth organizations, but falls short in
elaborating on the processes that transformed
prewar organizational activism into child soldier-
ing. The third problem concerns the unit of
analysis. While Rosen’s argument relates to child
agency, his sample also includes youth groups that
exceed 18 years of age. Treating child and youth
decisionmaking processes – and thus agency –
alike is controversial. The title of Pham’s book
might mislead a reader searching for extensive
research on child soldiers. Aside from three refer-
ences to youth joining the RUF and government
forces in Sierra Leone and two pages related solely
to the problem of child soldiers in the country,
the issue is not mentioned elsewhere in the book.
Pham presents three existing explanations of why
children in Sierra Leone joined the fighting
without challenging these propositions or provid-
ing any systematic support. To the benefit of
readers interested in political and economic pro-
cesses underlying the Sierra Leonean conflict, the
volume extensively covers the prewar political
settings; characteristics of actors, biographies of
leaders and conflict dynamics; and post-conflict
reconciliation efforts – all of which the author
refers to as adult interests in the book’s title. There
is no central argument in the book, although it
proposes several notions about why Sierra Leone
took its destructive path. The global dimension of
the conflict is handled in a unidirectional way
without addressing how armed conflict in an
African country can affect global security – a
potential scenario outlined by Kaplan, as cited in
the book. Pham does, however, reveal intricate
details of arms-supply mechanisms to Sierra
Leone and absorption of its diamonds by inter-
national markets. The book also describes how
international and regional military interventions
have affected the conflict dynamics (or its per-
petuation) and its regional spillover.
Vera Achvarina
Shambaugh, David, ed., 2005. Power Shift:
China and Asia’s New Dynamics. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. xx + 384 pp. ISBN
0520245709.
This is the kind of edited volume that is really
worth publishing. Seventeen of the world’s
leading experts on Chinese foreign policy came
together in December 2003 to discuss each
other’s drafts. David Shambaugh has not only
done a remarkable job as editor, but also has
written a good introduction summarizing the
main points made by all the contributors. The
main focus is on China’s relations with its neigh-
bours: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia,
Central and South Asia, and Russia. In addition,
there are sections devoted to China’s ‘regional
strategy’, its foreign economic relations and
military security. One section presents two
opposite viewpoints on the implications of
China’s rise for the United States (by Robert
Sutter and David M. Lampton), and a final
section discusses implications of China’s rise for
the Asian region. The contributions are generally
up to date and of high quality. One objection may
be that the book uses the term ‘region’ with many
different meanings, without discussing them. Is
China an Asian ‘regional power’? Or is it, rather,
rising as a global power, with strong influence in
several Asian regions, but unable to assume
leadership in East Asia because of the US–Japan
alliance and the continued animosity between
Beijing and Tokyo? This question is not really dis-
cussed.
Stein Tønnesson
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 43 / number 6 / november 2006
758
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