Review: Young Soldiers
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000429 |
| Author | Jeffrey Grey |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Autumn 2005 | 1181 |
| Reviews |
humanitarian issues. He also includes a useful chapter on the spectrum of
interventions by the international community that have taken place since
1990, and attempts to look at some of the successes and failures thereof.
Another possible Achilles heel addressed in the book is the capacity of
international relations scholars to adequately address internal conflicts.
Being such a scholar, Alley is well equipped to ask this question. He arrives
at the conclusion that the field lacks the analytic breadth to explore the caus-
es of internal conflicts, and has few tools with which to understand such
wars. Along with traditional military analysts, many in the international rela-
tions field appear to be waiting and hoping for a return of the primacy of
international wars and to be spared the burden of dealing with the messiness
of intrastate conflicts. Perhaps they are all too aware that such wars may need
a completely different approach and may be better served by social or politi-
cal psychology, or sociology, rather than the traditional realist paradigm. I
would like to think that this book will provide a useful nudge to such ana-
lysts, as the subtitle of this book,
Wars Without End?
, seems to suggest that
dealing with such wars is likely to be the necessary grist for many a scholar’s
mill over the coming decades.
Mari Fitzduff/BrandeisUniversity
YOUNG SOLDIERS
Why They Choose to Fight
Rachel Brett and Irma Specht
Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2004. xvi, 192pp, US$45.00 cloth
(ISBN 1-58826-285-5), US$17.95 paper (ISBN 1-58826-261-8)
The phenomenon of child soldiers in global conflicts, mostly though not
exclusively in the developing world, has attracted considerable attention both
from scholars and international aid agencies in the last decade. This study is
based on extensive interviews with 53 boys and girls, all adolescents at the
time and with experience in a range of conflicts, including Northern Irish
paramilitary members and adolescent soldiers in the British army (a little
oddly for this reader, since these do not seem to provide comparable cases
with the other combatants studied).
The study’s perspective is very much that of the young combatants
themselves, and the text is heavily laced with excerpts from the various inter-
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