Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict

This massive tome represents the collective wisdom of a high-powered group of foreign policy practitioners and scholars, most of whom have been associated with the U.S. Institute of Peace over the past few years. Like other books of this type, it is very difficult to summarize; the richest chapters are probably those discussing the prospects and pitfalls of intervention in regional conflicts and humanitarian relief operations. The chapters by Crocker and Richard Betts serve as good counterpoints, the former arguing for an activist policy of preventive engagement and the latter cautioning about the illusion of "depoliticized" intervention. Henry Kissinger's chapter on the "New World Order" is misnamed: the new order is the same old one of power and politics that Kissinger has spent his life analyzing, only with the great-power deck reshuffled. The quality of the essays is uniformly high, and the edition should be useful in university courses surveying the contemporary international scene.