Book Review: Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument

• Author: Sheldon W. Simon
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297903200220
• Published date: 01 June 1979
• Date: 01 June 1979
• Subject Matter: Book Review

Book

Reviews and Notes

231

between existing corporations and ghetto-owned community development corpora-

tions,

or

something similar to it,

rvill

bring any permanent peace to the urban ghetto.

The business establishment rejected the plan, however, because it feared CORE’S

militant rhetoric, the ghetto residents lacked skills, and the corporations maintained

a

continuing interest in the ghetto’s economic dependency.

In the face of these obstacles, Hall concurs with Booker

T.

\flashington and

urges that the black community make the building

of

an economic base its first

priority.

The

author forcefully castigates the folly of seeking the political kingdom

first. Blacks have gained political control of the cities only to find industry has

moved to the suburbs, and the black-urban bloc is outvoted by

a

rural-suburban

coalition in the Congress. There must be another way!

To

construct an economic

base, however, the black community

will

require

a

large capital investment.

If,

as

IIalI demonstrates, the corporations refuse to assume the risk, the government

must do it. And some kind

of

political action would be necessary to move the

government.

Even

if

the black community were to emphasize industry and commerce, why

should this strategy manifest itself as separatism rather than economic nationalism?

For

one thing, in Hall’s view, the white population still behaves

so

to promote

a

separatist society. And what about the blacks? Theodore Draper has argued that

the miniscule numbers of free blacks who were attracted

to

African colonization,

even during the darkest days

of

slavery, and the quickness with which the Garvey

movement succumbed without

a

struggle, illustrate the impotence

of

the separatist

phenomenon. While

Hall

admits that only

a

minority within the black community

has possessed separatist sentiments, his historical account emphasizes that

a

separa-

tist tradition strong enough to affect the future has firmly established itself in the

United States.

If

he had clarified the differences between his and Draper‘s inter-

pretations, his conclusions would be more convincing.

K.

ROBERT

KEISER

San

Diego

State University

j

Force

Without

War:

U.S.

Armed Forces as

a

Political Instrument.

By

BARRY

M.

BLECHNAN

and

STnPEiEN

s.

KAPLAN. (Washington,

D.C.:

Brookings Insti-

tution,

1978.

Pp.

584. $19.95; $8.95.)

In recent years international relations specialists have engaged in efforts to

bridge the gap between aggregate data analysis based on quantifiable variables and

,

case studies characterized by contextual richness. These scholars hope that the

rigor of the former may be crosschecked through the “real world” ambiguity

of

the

latter.

If

both streams of evidence point in the same direction, they argue, then we

,,

can be somewhat more confident in our theoretical postulates. The contributors

’

to the Blechman/Kaplan volume have advanced toward the realization of this

enterprise.

Combining the comparative case study approach of works such

as

George

and Smoke’s

Deterrence

in

American Foreign

Policy

(New York: Columbia Uni-

versity Press,

1974)

with descriptive statistics, the authors examine the use

of

force

as

a

political instrument in American foreign policy from World War

I1

through

1975.

They identify

a

universe of

215

incidents in which military units

were

de-

ployed in

“a.

belated attempt to make clear

a

policy intent

or

military capability

which for one reason

or

another

-

domestic dissension, uncertain

or

jnept leader-

ship. inadequate military pfepantion

.

.

.

or

the unreality of the pol~cy objective

itself

-

has come into question.’’ In short the military is used for

a

brief period to

persuade other actors either to persist in

or

desist from their current behavior.

In order to compare the characteristics of incidents in which there were fav-

orable from unfavorable outcomes,

a

representative sample of

33

incidents

(15

percent) was selected from the total and analyzed for short-term and Iong-term

outcomes with respect to

US.

objectives, the nature

of

American military involve-

ment, the character of the targets, and

US.

domestic conditions. The focus on

duration of outcomes permitted the authors to differentiate short-term rrsuccesses”