"Hot Off the Presses"

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Winter 2008-09

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: International Security; Intrastate Conflict Program; Managing the Atom

The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks

By Assaf Moghadam, Johns Hopkins University Press

This groundbreaking volume examines the rise and spread of suicide attacks over the past decade. Sorting through 1,270 terror strikes between 1981 and 2007, Assaf Moghadam attributes their recent proliferation to the mutually related ascendance of al Qaeda and its guiding ideology, Salafi Jihad, an extreme interpretation of Islam that rejects national boundaries and seeks to create a global Muslim community. In exploring the roots of the extreme radicalization represented by Salafism, Moghadam finds many causes, including Western dominance in the Arab world, the physical diffusion of Salafi institutions and actors, and the element of opportunity created by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He uses individual examples from the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Europe to show how the elite leaders of al Qaeda and affiliated groups and their foot soldiers interact with one another and how they garner support from the Muslim community. This unflinching analysis provides new information about the relationship between ideology and suicide attacks and recommends policies focused on containing Salafi Jihadism.

"This is an authoritative and updated study on suicide attacks that is better than any other research published in the field. Moghadam offers a clear conceptualization of a complicated phenomenon and a fascinating historical background of the various manifestations of suicide in political contexts."—Ami Pedahzur, University of Texas, Austin

This unflinching analysis provides new information about the relationship between ideology and suicide attacks and recommends policies focused on containing Salafi Jihadism.

"This is an authoritative and updated study on suicide attacks that is better than any other research published in the field. Moghadam offers a clear conceptualization of a complicated phenomenon and a fascinating historical background of the various manifestations of suicide in political contexts."—Ami Pedahzur, University of Texas, Austin

Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters

 By Richard A. Clarke; HarperCollins (May 2008)

Richard Clarke's dramatic statement and apology to the grieving families during the 9/11 Commission hearings touched a raw nerve across America. Clarke says in his new book that not only had our government failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks, but it has proven itself, time and again, incapable of handling the majority of our most crucial national security issues, from Iraq to Katrina and beyond. This is not just a temporary failure of our current leadership—it is a systemic problem, he claims.

Clarke minces no words in his examination of the breadth and depth of the mediocrity, entropy, and collapse endemic in America's national security programs. Drawing on his thirty years in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, Clarke gives us a privileged, if horrifying, look into the debacle of government policies, discovering patterns in the failures and offering ways to stop the cycle once and for all.

China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence

Edited Robert I. Rotberg; Brookings Institution Press (October 2008)

Africa has long attracted China. We can date their first certain involvement from the fourteenth century, but East African city-states may have been trading with southern China even earlier. In the mid-twentieth century, Maoist China funded and educated sub-Saharan African anti-colonial liberation movements and leaders, and the Peoples’ Republic of China then assisted new sub-Saharan nations. Africa and China are now immersed in their third and most transformative era of heavy engagement, one that promises to do more for economic growth and poverty alleviation than anything attempted by Western colonialism or international aid programs. Robert Rotberg and his Chinese, African, and other colleagues discuss this important trend and specify its likely implications.

Among the specific topics tackled here are China’s interest in African oil; military and security relations; the influx and goals of Chinese aid to sub-Saharan Africa; human rights issues; and China’s overall strategy in the region. China’s insatiable demand for energy and raw materials responds to sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively abundant supplies of unprocessed metals, diamonds, and gold, while offering a growing market for Africa’s agriculture and light manufactures.

Among the specific topics tackled here are China’s interest in African oil; military and security relations; the influx and goals of Chinese aid to sub-Saharan Africa; human rights issues; and China’s overall strategy in the region. China’s insatiable demand for energy and raw materials responds to sub-Saharan Africa’s relatively abundant supplies of unprocessed metals, diamonds, and gold, while offering a growing market for Africa’s agriculture and light manufactures.

Primacy and Its Discontents: American Power and International Stability

An International Security Reader

Edited by Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Coté Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller; MIT Press (February 2009)

The unprecedented military, economic, and political power of the United States has led some observers to declare that we live in a unipolar world in which America enjoys primacy or even hegemony. At the same time public opinion polls abroad reveal high levels of anti-Americanism, and many foreign governments criticize U.S. policies. Primacy and Its Discontents, based on a series of presentations and discussions organized by the Belfer Center, explores the sources of American primacy, including the uses of U.S. military power, and the likely duration of unipolarity. It offers theoretical arguments for why the rest of the world will—or will not—align against the United States. The contributors offer alternative prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy, ranging from vigorous efforts to maintain American primacy to acceptance of a multipolar world of several great powers.

“Primacy and Its Discontents is an astonishing, state-of-the-art collection of articles about this profound change in the structure of international politics and its implications for the rest of the world.”

—Randall Schweller, Ohio State University

The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey

By M. Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig, Cambridge University Press, (2008)

Where is the power? Students of politics have pondered this question and social scientists have scrutinized formal political institutions and the distribution of power among agencies of the government and the state. This book assesses the strength of the national legislature of every country in the world with a population of at least a half-million inhabitants. The Legislative Powers Survey (LPS) is a list of 32 items that gauges the legislature’s sway over the executive, its institutional autonomy, its authority in specific areas, and its institutional capacity. Individual country chapters provide answers to each of the 32 survey items, supplemented by expert commentary and relevant excerpts from constitutions. 

“This is an impressive undertaking, genuinely novel in its conception, and remarkably broad in scope. The strength of legislatures is a critical marker of the performance of representative institutions and of democracy more generally.”

—John Carey, Dartmouth College

--Compiled by Susan Lynch, International Security Program and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program

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