Review: A Hundred Horizons
| Author | Gagan D. S. Sood |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300120 |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 225 |
| Reviews |
upon the fundamental dilemma facing US grand strategy, namely that dis-
proportionately limited means will be used to pursue overly ambitious lib-
eral goals. The book’s steady theoretical argumentation and well-docu-
mented case studies nicely illustrate the problem. To be sure, the book
would benefit from a more clearly delineated selection of strategic options.
The strong similarity between primacy and liberal internationalism raises
questions about the true extent of post-Cold War strategic adjustments. The
relationship between the cases and grand strategic options themselves
could have also been further clarified. Yet these criticisms of an otherwise
worthy addition to the grand strategy literature are minor indeed.
Reluctant Crusaders
serves as a very useful reminder that strategic
adjustments may require a severe exogenous shock—like 9/11—to open
American decision-makers to new strategic ideas. The US presidential elec-
tion in 2008, while raising the possibility of a significant strategic shift,
could easily (and more likely) result in second-order changes that leave cur-
rent strategic commitments largely untouched. If so, future US adminis-
trations would do well to heed Colin Dueck’s warning that “[t]o pursue a
global grand strategy without providing the means—military, political, and
economic—for it is to invite not only humiliation, but disaster” (171).
David S. McDonough/Dalhousie University
A HUNDRED HORIZONS
The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire
Sugata Bose
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 333pp, US$27.95 cloth
(ISBN 978-0674021570)
For those who have a penchant for pondering the past on grand scales,
these are exciting times. Over the last decade, there has been a spate of
books by historians and historically minded social scientists on expansive
periods that encompass significant portions—if not the entirety—of the
world. Taken as a whole, these exhibit a multiplicity of approaches and mar-
shal a wonderful array of motifs in their quest to elucidate the past on the
largest of canvases and to help us understand how the world came to be as
it is today.
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