Review: The Pre-Emptive Empire
| Published date | 01 June 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200405900218 |
| Author | Dominic Sandbrook |
| Date | 01 June 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
narratives
about
how
new
beliefs
allowed
or
facilitated
changes in
intervention
behavior
by
creating
new
norms
of
behavior
and
new
rea-
sons-which
are
not
to be confused
with
causes
or
law-like
rules-for
action.
The
cases
suggest
that
social
purpose
effects
change
only
through
a
combination
of
agent
action
(powerful
individual
leaders
such
as
Elihu Root,
Klemens
Metternich
or
William Gladstone)
and
structural
transformation
(changes
in
social
structures
in
international
law
and
in
institutions
such
as
decolonization
or
the
expansion
of
human
rights).
In
my
view,
the
most
important
theoretical
contribution
of
the
book,
and
there
are
many,
is
the
conceptual
combination
of
utility
and
legitimacy
or,
put
differently, the fusing
of
functional/utilitarian
argu-
ments
and
normative
and
ideational
ones.
Finnemore
correctly
main-
tains
that
the
utility
of
force
is
a
function
of
its
legitimacy;
that
is,
because
force
is
a
means to
some
other
social
end,
it
must
be
coupled
with
legitimacy
to
have
its
maximum
effect.
New
types
of
interven-
tion,
therefore,
are
seen
as
"useful"
and
"effective"
because
the
norma-
tive
and
social
dimensions
of
states'
definitions
of
utility
have
changed
over
time.
Finnemore
derives
this
insight
by
recognizing
the
interde-
pendence
of
what
have
been
traditionally
seen
as
competing
argu-
ments:
functional/utilitarian
versus
ideational/normative
theories
of
action.
For
this
reason
alone,
and
there
are
many
others,
The
Purpose
of
Intervention
should
be
read by
all
serious
students
of
international
rela-
tions
and
practitioners
of
foreign
policy.
It
is
a
provocative,
well-
argued,
and
concisely
written
book
on what
is
arguably
the
most
time-
less
and
central
issue
in
the
discipline,
the
use
of
force.
Randall
Schweller/The
Ohio
State
University
THE
PRE-EMPTIVE EMPIRE
A
Guide
to
Bush's
Kingdom
Saul
Landau
London:
Pluto
Press,
2003.
ix,
182pp,
$38.95
cloth
(ISBN
0-7453-
2140-2)
s Michael
Moore
and
Ann
Coulter
can
attest,
there
is
a
lot
of
IAtX
oney
in
partisan
political
commentary.
Reviews
of
their
books
on
booksellers' websites
run
into the hundreds,
usually
awarding
the
462
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Spring200
4
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