Power & Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats Review

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Power & Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats ReviewAt the start of any new administration in the United States, there is a rush to offer advice from many quarters. Ideas are deliberated at think tanks and university departments to make an imprint on the fresh stock of decision-makers that are moving into the halls of power in Washington. Often such grand visions end up being no more than mere grandstanding. Happily, that is not the case with "Power and Responsibility," which provides a clear and crisp set of guidelines for the new administration as well as for international institutions.
Crafted after a detailed consultation process involving a range of global leaders, the three authors have provided a definitive case for the doctrine of "responsible sovereignty." The Sudanese-scholar and diplomat Francis Deng coined this phrase that was adopted by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan as an antidote to the divisive rhetoric of Westphalian sovereignty that often trumps any credible critique of member states. Two of the authors Bruce Jones and Stephen John Stedman worked at the United Nations while Carlos Pascual is a former U.S. ambassador and Vice President of the Brookings Institution. Having witnessed the decision-making process closely at various levels, the authors have a refreshingly pragmatic tone while also providing some bold new ideas and themes.
Some of the significant recommendations in the book include:
a)Reforming the UN Security Council to include long-term non-veto members that would over time become permanent members. The authors recognize that ideally there should be a more equitable system of governance but they make this suggestion for the sake of "marrying what is right with what is doable."
b)Making a distinction between preemptive and preventive use of force, arguing that the former suggests an imminent danger of a provable threat and would be covered under Article 41 of the UN Charter. On this point, perhaps the authors are not as clear regarding what process would differentiate between what is imminent and provable and what is not.
c)Providing a clear agenda for action on climate change and biotechnology as well as bioterrorism that embraces a multilateral approach that is based on science and technology rather than political opportunism.
d)Stressing the importance of nuclear nonproliferation by following the channels of international agreements and providing a coherent analysis of the "hard cases" of North Korea and Iran.
e)Admirably daring to ask the question "Does military occupation cause terrorism?" and answering in the affirmative rather than equivocating about moral equivalence as most Washington pundits tend to do.
Overall this is a fine work of policy analysis that should be seriously considered by US policy makers and the electorate at large. Perhaps one aspect of the book which is somewhat troubling is its continuing insistence that "U.S. consent is a necessary condition for success." While this may be true at a proximate level, there needs to be an effort to move away from this imperative that tends to sound a bit sanctimonious. The rise of Europe and Asia should not be neglected and it may be instructive to prepare the US for a time when the consent of no single country is dominant but rather a more inclusive international governance system emerges.
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