Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability by Norman MyersReview by: Francis FukuyamaForeign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1994), p. 142Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20045934 .

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Recent Books

others who do not shy away on principle from proposals for multilateral interven

tion in such cases, the author leaves

unanswered the difficult questions of

practicality and will.

Ethnie Conflict and International Security. EDITED BY MICHAEL E. BROWN.

Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1993, 276 pp. $42.50 (paper, $14.95). This volume, part of the growing litera

ture on ethnic conflict, is a collection of

essays previously published in Survival,

largely by international relations special ists of diverse backgrounds. Jenone

Walker, for example, draws on her State

Department experience to offer helpful

guidelines for policymakers dealing with ethnic problems, while Barry Posen's

application of realist theory to ethnic

conflict usefully demonstrates the theo

ry's limits in regard to the problem of

irrational hatreds. While the volume

tends to be somewhat Eurocentric in its

outlook and prescriptions, it is a good bellwether of current thinking.

Ultimate Security: The Environmental

Basis of Political Stability, by norman

myers. New York: W. W. Norton &

Company, 1993,308 pp. $25.00. This book seeks to present environmental

concerns as security concerns in a way that will be convincing to even the most

hardheaded traditional "realists." I sus

pect Myers will not convert many. Many of the examples cited here?water

resources, ozone depletion, deforestation

and the like?have already been accepted as issues that could have important inter

national security implications, and there

is broad agreement that they should be

dealt with by the international communi

ty. The author weakens his case, however,

by failing to distinguish core environ

mental problems from either speculative disaster scenarios or humanitarian issues

that simply cannot be construed as

relevant to security. Many of his observa

tions?on Mexico as an economic basket

case, or the consequences of America's

ever-increasing military spending?

already have a rather dated quality.

We All Lost the Cold War. by richard

NED LEBOW AND JANICE GROSS

stein. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1994,521 pp. $35.00. This book is built around two detailed case studies of classic Cold War crises, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the

1973 Middle East war. The case studies

incorporate new primary materials,

mostly in the form of extensive inter

views with the Soviet and American par

ticipants, and will be of considerable use

to historians. For all of the detail, how

ever, certain specific interpretations are

questionable, e.g., the treatment of the

Soviet intervention threat in October

1973 as a case of failed "compellance" rather than a bluff coming after the crisis

had peaked. The book's central theme is

that nuclear weapons are clumsy and

dangerous as instruments of coercive

diplomacy. This conclusion, hardly a

startling one, falls somewhat short of jus

tifying the book's title.

On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 1993. edited by Stephen

SHUTE AND SUSAN HURLEY. New

York: BasicBooks, 1993, 262 pp. $25.00. This is a collection of lectures by seven

[142] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume73No.2

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