Review: The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| Author | Robert O. Matthews |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000238 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
I
Reviews
|
There
are at least three serious problems with his approach to the four
cases.
In each
case,
Crawford dwells on the ideas and actions
of
the decision-
makers involved, be they Prince Gorchakov, Theobald von Bethmann
Hollweg,
or Mohammed Ayub Khan. Yet his argument is based on the
assumption that individuals have no impact on the outcomes of
crises,
which are predetermined by the configuration
of
the international system. If
the availability of "alignment options" was all that mattered, why should we
care
about what Bismarck thought in October 1876 or what the Turkish for-
eign
minister told the American ambassador in February
1963?
A second,
related problem is the failure to acknowledge the connections between for-
eign
and domestic policy. Crawford pays only lip service to this idea, even
where domestic concerns were of central importance to the actions of all of
the players, as in the
July
crisis.
Oddly, he notes this weakness in his dis-
cussion
of the United States, but not in his other case studies. Finally, his
attempt to identify the single determinant
of
the success or failure of pivotal
deterrence suggests a simplistic
"if
only"
approach to the past, assuming that
if
only one or two things had been different, then major catastrophes—such
as the outbreak of the First World War—would have been averted. In
adopt-
ing this approach, Crawford implicitly dismisses the deep roots and tectonic
forces,
both domestic and international, that produced these catastrophes.
Crawford's final chapter is an attempt to show the relevance of his the-
ory of pivotal deterrence to contemporary American foreign policy. His
chief
example is tension over the Taiwan Strait, undoubtedly an important
case,
but where is the discussion of Korea or, more importantly, terrorism?
In
a book that makes the case for the contemporary relevance of deterrence
theory, these are serious omissions. Crawford deserves credit for his thor-
ough research and discussion of each
case,
but his tendentious approach
and simplistic conclusions ultimately prove unsatisfying.
M.
D. /.
Morgan/Yale
University
THE
ROOT
CAUSES
OF
SUDAN'S
CIVIL
WARS
Douglas H. Johnson
Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2003. xx, 234pp. US$54.95 cloth
(ISBN
0-253-34213-9), US$24.95 paper
(ISBN
0-253-21584-6)
Anyone familiar with Douglas Johnson's earlier work will not be surprised
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608 I International
Journal
|
Spring
2005
|
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