The Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy.

• Author: Salem, Emad M.
• Position: Book review

THE LIMITS OF CULTURE: ISLAM AND FOREIGN POLICY Brenda Shaffer, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 350 pages.

The Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy is an impressive collection of essays that aims to explain the foreign policy of states. The essays center on one pivotal question--whether culture affects foreign policy or whether states determine foreign policy according to their material interests. The arguments that take shape in order to answer this question focus on the United States, Taliban Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Caspian states, with considerable attention given to Iran.

While some of the authors argue that culture is indeed a strong determinant of a country's foreign policy, others claim that cultural perceptions can shift according to foreign policy, or are even entirely independent of it. While it seems that the fact that contending views are offered in a single volume would allow the reader autonomy of judgment, most authors claim that the cultural interests of a state rarely trump material interests. These essays outline a defensive-realist world where states, and their ruling regimes, are most interested with their survival, despite their often culturally-centered rhetoric. While the majority of the essays...