Books in Brief
From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations by Amitai Etzioni (Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pp., $29.95). At one point during the early 1990s, Amitai Etzioni seemed to be everywhere–in Clinton’s White House, among centrists on Capitol Hill–promoting the communitarianism he helped found. It was a movement that was explicitly “beyondist,” claiming to transcend the clash between liberals and conservatives with a new golden rule: “Respect and uphold society’s moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy.”
In Etzioni’s latest book, the rule is elevated to geopolitics. He describes the world as divided into East (with reverence for social order) and West (with exaltation of individual autonomy) and foresees the emergence of a global “good society” that synthesizes the best of both. The war on terror, he warns, should not be seen as a clash of civilizations. And by pushing democratic freedoms on the East, we take an approach that is not only patronizing but almost explicitly colonialist.
From Empire to Community rejects the Bush administration’s foreign policy in general, but not in many particulars. Etzioni argues, for example, that in the new community of nations, the threat of opprobrium will be more effective than the threat of force. And yet, “deterrence will no longer do,” he writes. “Those who might employ WMD or give them to terrorists must be defanged one way or the other.” Etzioni even insists that arms control must be backed by the threat of force–which makes his demand for a “Dialogue of Civilizations” a little piquant: global communitarianism, with a big stick just in case things go wrong.
–Mario Loyola
Thirty Days: An Inside Account of Tony Blair at War by Peter Stothard (Perennial, 244 pp., $13.95). Much ink has been spilled trying to capture the essence of Tony Blair. Peter Stothard’s Thirty Days attempts to go where the biographies, cabinet tell-alls, and tabloid exposés have been unable to tread: inside Blair’s inner circle of advisers. Stothard, a former editor of the Times of London, was granted unparalleled access to the prime minister and his staff during what was perhaps the most momentous month of Tony Blair’s seven years in power. Items on the agenda during this period included deal making at the United Nations before the war, the war’s early stages, and the political fallout in Britain.
Stothard’s account is occasionally more diary than book. He spends much time discussing the setting in which meetings take place, down to the photos on Blair’s desk or the fashion choices of Blair’s colleagues on weekends: Hilary Armstrong “has abandoned her grandmotherly office gray for a soft cream leather jacket. John Reid is in leather too, harder and black. Gordon Brown is wearing a black-and-white rugby shirt. Sally Morgan is in a blue sweater.” Once you get past these atmospherics, however, Tony Blair is revealed in these pages as a man sure of his mission and steadfast in his support for the United States. He masterfully thwarts cabinet defections and rebellious MPs, while enduring French obstruction at the United Nations and in Brussels.
We will need to wait for Tony Blair’s memoirs to learn which factors were uppermost in his mind when he put his political career on the line in the spring of 2003, while a skeptical Britain protested outside his window. Stothard suggests that Blair’s “powerful Christian seriousness” is a factor, contributing to his close relationship with President Bush, who shares his moral certainty about the world.
This may be true, but it is likely that the answer is more straightforward. Blair respects America in a way uncommon in Europe. As he explained in his moving address to a joint session of Congress last year, “Our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you.”
–Jamie M. Fly
