This section includes book notes of 150-300 words as well as some book reviews of 600-900 words on books of particular interest to the members of our group. If you have either suggestions for books you would like to review or see reviewed (including recent books of your own), please contact our new book reviews editors, Andreas Umland andreumland@yahoo.com or Matthew J. Goodwinmatthewjamesgoodwin@yahoo.com Books newly available for review: Women, Ethnicity and Nationalisms in Latin America by Natividad Gutierrez Chong (2007), Ashgate. Torture and Democracy by Darius Rejali (2007), Princeton University Press. Ultranationalism and Hate Crimes in Contemporary Russia by Galina Kozhevnikova (2008), ibidem-Verlag.
Book Notes
Nick Lowles (ed), From Cable Street to Oldham: 70 Years of Community Resistance. Essex: Searchlight, 2007. 170 pp., GBP 5.99, ISBN 0-9522038-7-1 (pbk). Reviewed by Nigel Copsey (University of Teesside, UK). This book, produced by the team of writers at Searchlight Magazine offers a ‘‘snapshot’‘ of various episodes in the history of anti-fascism and anti-racism in Britain from the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End in 1936 through to activity against the British National Party today. Its purpose is to serve as a source of inspiration for the next generation of anti-fascist activists. Although it is not an academic text as such (unfortunately there are no footnotes), it contains some original material that researchers will find of value. The book opens with the Battle of Cable Street, and whilst anti-fascists have been guilty of overegging the importance of this particular episode, the treatment here is balanced. The second chapter, a well-informed study of Jewishled opposition to Mosley immediately after the Second World War, is followed by veteran anti-fascist campaigner Gerry Gable’s examination of the emergence of Britain’s first anti-racist groups in the 1950s. More interesting, however, is Gable’s chapter on Jewish opposition to fascism in the 1960s, which benefits from his own
personal recollections - Gable was involved with the 62 Group - and brings some interesting new material to light. Opposition to the National Front in the 1970s follows, and whilst much of the ground has already been covered elsewhere, this chapter does shift the focus away from the Anti-Nazi League to Rock Against Racism. Possibly more satisfying will be the chapter on the Asian Youth Movement in 1980s Bradford - a valuable local case study of resistance to fascism and racism from within the Asian community. Although the penultimate chapter on community-based opposition to the BNP in Tower Hamlets in the 1990s is rather derivative, the final chapter on opposition to the BNP in Oldham is steered by the author’s first-hand knowledge of the anti-BNP campaign in the town. Easy on the pocket (so we can forgive the typographical errors), and not too partisan, it is definitely worth a purchase.
Neil J. Kressel, Bad Faith: The Danger of Religious Extremism. New York: Prometheus, 2007, 327 pp., USD 26.00, ISBN 978-1-59102-503-0 (hbk). Reviewed by Matthew J. Goodwin (University of Manchester). As the author notes, despite an upsurge of interest in religious extremism there remains considerable confusion and debate over its nature, how it differs from traditional forms of piety, its origins, and potential response strategies. Drawing on theorizing in modern psychology and social science more generally, Kressel seeks to identify when, and in what context, religious extremists ‘‘cross the line’‘ toward dangerous activity. In presenting the argument, the book is divided into three parts; (1) defining and identifying religious militancy and assessing its development in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, (2) examining the causes of militant faith, and (3) exploring potential response strategies. It is perhaps the second section that will be of most interest to readers. Similar to recent research on the motive for active commitment to right-wing extremism, Kressel notes the inadequacy of ‘‘classic’‘ explanatory models, rejecting interpretations that portray religious militancy as a reaction to severe poverty, deprivation, frustration, or psychopathology. That said, at times the arguments do not appear all that dissimilar from earlier approaches. Discussing individual psychology, Kressel contends that those drawn to extremist behavior ‘‘are often preoccupied with questions of pride and may feel humiliated…they may be deeply frustrated people, consumed by thoughts that their lives have been spoiled or wasted. They may be racked by guilt…They may be especially likely to come from families lacking in normal love and support’‘ (pp.249-50). However, the author is careful to incorporate the wider societal context in which extremism emerges. Modernization and the ensuing reorganization of status and power lie at the core of the argument: whilst those cultures that have benefited from modernization and modernity may contain extremist elements, ‘‘[t]he greatest risk of religious extremism will be among nations, cultures, and other groupings that have been losers in the process’‘ (p.228). In this sense, the engine that fuels fanaticism centres on identity threats that subsequently initiate a reassertion of self-esteem based on traditional forms of identity. It is the Muslim world that is especially vulnerable to this process, ‘‘because so much of the collective esteem in this culture rests on a memory of
a highly successful religious civilization’‘ (p.229). Overall Bad Faith is an interesting and very readable text that will appeal more to a wider popular audience and undergraduates than to specialists in the field. There are no particularly original insights and the final section on potential response strategies could be a lot more concise. Nevertheless, in general this accessible piece of research is a useful and accessible contribution to the debate over the nature of contemporary religious extremism.
Alexander Höllwerth, Das sakrale eurasische Imperium des Aleksandr Dugin: Eine Diskursanalyse zum postsowjetischen russischen Rechtsextremismus [Alexander Dugin’s Sacral Eurasian Empire: A Discourse Analysis of Post-Soviet Russian Right-Wing Extremism]. Stuttgart:ibidem-Verlag, 2007, 735 pp., EUR 59.90, ISBN 3898218139 (pbk). Reviewed by Tanja Fichtner (University of Bamberg). Alexander Höllwerth presents the first extensive volume on mysterious Aleksandr Gel’evich Dugin, the Rasputin-like philosopher and ultra-right, who managed to transform himself from a dubious SS-admirer of the 90s to the Russian nation’s first expert in all kinds of ‘‘geopolitical’‘ questions. Russian and western scholars watched Dugins rise closely from his National Bolshevik Party days on, pointing out the radical anti-humanism and fascist contents of his doctrine. Meanwhile, Dugin was in a postmodern play with images and brands, labeled his fascist fantasies of a Great Russia ‘‘neo-Eurasianism’‘ and ‘‘geopolitics,’‘ and found himself in the center of a society still traumatized by the giant territorial loses of the early 90s. Since then, he enjoys the reputation of intellectual brilliance. This stems from bestsellers like ‘‘The Foundations of Geopolitics,’‘ a 700-page tome, as well as from the impressive list of historical schools of thoughts he is referring to. Alexander Höllwerth accepts the challenge of de-masking this post-modern prophet of inhumanity by engaging in a deep and accurate, sometimes even painstaking dialogue with Dugin’s writings. What Höllwerth is doing is discourse analysis at its best (although I would have preferred a somewhat shorter introduction to its methodology). The result of this intensive dialogue is an excellent survey of Dugins thinking. The reader gets profound insights into both Russian national thought and postmodern criticism of Western civilization, and begins to understand where Dugin stands in this highly complex and prevailing field. It is also to Höllwerths credit that he points out that what looks highly complex could be nevertheless reduced to a very simple black and white pattern. There is Holy Russia on the one side, and the spoiled West on the other. Much of Dugins complexity turns out to be nothing more than repetitions of the same thing with different, ever more sophisticated terminology. His references to Western thinking and Western self-criticism go only so far as to confirm his own world view. Höllwerth calls this highly biased and simplifying reception ‘‘sub-discourses.’‘ Thus, the book provides a lot more than a detailed summary and analysis of modern Russian Neo-Eurasianism. By delving deeply into the philosophical background of Western values and its critics, Höllwerth manages to lay bare connections between
Dugin’s thinking and that of anti-Westerners in other cultures like in the Islamic world. Dugin has been promoting a coalition of Russia with Akhmadinedzhad’s Iran for a long time although the relation between Dugin’s doctrine and Putin’s assertive foreign policy remains unclear in the mist of Dugin’s role plays. Höllwerth’s analysis is compulsory reading for anybody trying to understand the new axioms of Russian identity within a world where Western humanism is no longer without intellectual alternatives.
Book Reviews Cyprian P. Balmires (ed), World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006. 750 pp., GBP £118.50/ USD 185.00, ISBN 1-57607940-6 (hbk). Reviewed by Jeffrey Kaplan (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh).
World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia is a curious work on a number of levels. Most striking to this reviewer is always the question of market and readership. In this sense Cyprian Balmires’ text is no different from any number of encyclopedic works published each year (indeed, ABC-CLIO specializes in such texts). Who other than libraries buys these expensive, often multi-volume sets, and who, in the age of the internet, seeks them out for the often short and pithy entries which they contain? And given the drastic shrinkage of library budgets, how long can this market be sustained? Having asked this global question, we turn to the volumes at hand. One suspects, upon receipt of two weighty volumes on the subject of world fascism, that the editor may have engaged in some (perhaps considerable) padding to fill out the 750 pages of text and such useful bonuses as a chronology of fascism and a short bibliography. The suspicion is further fueled by the ‘‘Introduction’‘ by Roger Griffin (which, with its ‘‘Short History of Fascism’‘ is surely the most valuable part of the Encyclopedia), which states that: ‘‘According to our definition, there have been only two actual governments that can properly be referred to as fascist.’‘ (p. 3) Prof. Griffin is of course referring to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The same author goes on to define fascism as containing three core elements: ‘‘Ultra-Nationalism’‘, ‘‘Revolution’‘ and ‘‘Rebirth’‘. (pp. 2-3) This definitional precision would certainly lead one to expect a rather concise, historically rooted volume, much in the style of Phillip Rees’, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), which focused narrowly on the far right in the United States according to a carefully laid out definitional structure. The actual entries however, are uneven and at times somewhat surprising. The surprising choice was to include in the entries countries that had little or no
connection to historical fascism whatever. This assignment seems to confuse authors as well. Rae Wear for example, states honestly that ‘‘It is difficult to determine which groups in Australia would qualify as ‘fascist’.’‘ (p. 66) He does note some far right movements in Australia of course, but none that would meet the definition of fascism. Susan and Sophal Ear face an even greater challenge in finding anything in Kampuchea (even in the Khmer Rouge period) that would meet Griffin’s definition of fascism. In so doing however, they rather redeem the choice to include countries in the volume as they conclude their entry with a review of definitional elements of fascism to defend their determination that Kampuchea was not fascist. (pp. 361-363) Not unexpectedly, the entries on contemporary radical right and racist movements make no pretense at analytical precision. A number of authors: Chip Berlet, Martin Durham, and Cyprian P. Blamires among them, provide brief entries on the usual suspects— Aryan Nations, Richard Butler and the like—with their lack of comment suggesting that these figures or organizations are fascist in nature, and thus in ignoring the kind of careful definitional groundwork that Griffin has so carefully laid in the introductory chapter. By longstanding practice, the term ‘‘fascism’‘ when applied to these movements has been a pejorative, much as the term ‘‘terrorist’‘ today is used to delegitimize unpopular belief systems. All this said, the Encyclopedia does include solid entries on authentically fascist figures, ideas and institutions from the Interwar and WWII era. These could easily have been condensed into a single, quite valuable and much more affordable volume and been the more valuable for it.
Roger Griffin, Werner Loh and Andreas Umland (eds), Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right. With an afterword by Walter Laqueur. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2006. 510 pp. EUR 34.90, ISBN 3-89821-674-8 (pbk). Reviewed by Cyprian P. Blamires (Independent Scholar, United Kingdom).
A most remarkable event: an English scholar, native of an island legendary for its insularity and for its tenacious suspicion of all things Continental and ‘‘foreign’‘ dares to issue a challenge to his German counterparts to lay aside their inward-looking preoccupations and enter an ongoing global debate! The English scholar, Roger Griffin, is an Oxford-based specialist in the topic of global (or ‘‘generic’‘) fascist studies, and his target is German academia's allegedly insular refusal to take seriously the seething mass of new ideas and new approaches to global fascism which has emerged in the
Anglo-American world of scholarship over the last forty years. Werner Loh, editor of Erwägen Wissen Ethik (EWE, Deliberation Knowledge Ethics) took up the challenge to move this conflict forward by creating a forum for debate between the two sides, while Russian studies specialist Andreas Umland has now attempted to widen it even further by republishing the material from EWE in a book series directed at an academic audience studying Eastern Europe. The focus of discussion in this book is the particular theory of generic fascism propounded by Griffin, which he expounds in the opening chapter. The rest of the first half of the volume comprises the critical responses of a large number of scholars including his own Anglo-American colleagues as well as quite a number of German specialists. In the second half of the work Griffin is given a chance to respond to the numerous critiques of his approach and then the other contributors also exercise their right of reply to his response. He then rounds the book off with a final response to their critiques. An appendix at the end contains a different but related debate between A. James Gregor and Andreas Umland on the question of whether the Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin can be classed as a ‘‘fascist’‘. This then is quite an unusual book. We are all familiar with conference proceedings in which a large number of contributors look at different aspects of the same theme; we are familiar with Festschrifts in which the colleagues of a particular eminent individual contribute chapters on the basis of their own speciality; but this is something different. A volume in which many contributors home in on a particular theory of one scholar and express their approval or disapproval of it. And it has to be said that the sparks really do fly. What is at stake is the view of generic fascism which Griffin has been promoting tirelessly over the past fifteen years. He advocates - as a heuristic tool, not an absolute truth - a description of fascism as revolutionary palingenetic hypernationalism, i.e. a call for the ‘‘rebirth’‘ of a decadent (real or ideal) ‘‘nation’‘ through violent revolution. He claims that these core elements of fascism can be found in the regimes of both Mussolini and Hitler, so that Nazism was not to do with some Sonderweg followed by Germany but was simply the German version of an idea that transcended German culture. Griffin does not recognize any other regimes (such as Francoist Spain) as properly fascist, only a limited number of political movements in various countries both before the War and after it. He argues that fascism did not disappear in 1945 but simply mutated into a fragmented and largely leaderless movement competing for propaganda space in far less visible ways than the mass movements of the thirties. The responses in this book to Griffin's ideas range from the adulatory to the vituperative. Some of the Anglophone scholars are very positive about his theory, especially Stanley Payne, one of the gray eminences of postwar fascist studies. Others are not at all convinced, in particular A. James Gregor, a specialist in Italian fascist thought. The ire of Gregor and of several others is aroused by Griffin's rather cheeky claim that ‘‘a new consensus’‘ has emerged in Anglophone fascist studies which supports some or all of his arguments. This claim is clearly rather propagandistic and the substance behind it seemingly amounts to no more than the coexistence of a number of sympathizers. Gregor's splenetic denial of this consensus does look rather ostrich-like given that
several Anglophone contributors to the volume do in actual fact openly express a greater or lesser degree of support for Griffin's theses. There is more than enough material in this volume to satisfy an Anglophone readership, but the German responses are in German so this will deter some. Generally speaking Griffin's arguments seem to make the German scholars angry, and in one case - that of Friedrich Pohlmann - spitting with rage. They seem very tied to the ‘‘totalitarianism’‘ thesis according to which the interwar dictatorships of Left and Right were simply different specimens of a new phenomenon of totalising power. Griffin would probably not deny that interwar fascisms can legitimately be studied in this context, but it rather misses his point, which is to consider in what way the far right dictatorships - for all their admitted similarities to those on the Left - were in fact different from them, and then to ask whether, within the far right dictatorships themselves, a particularly ‘‘fascist’‘ core of ideas can be identified. Fortunately the calm voice of Sven Reichardt restores some balance, he has clearly grasped the point of the ‘‘generic fascism’‘ approach even though he has criticisms of his own. It is greatly to be hoped that this pioneering book will do something to coax German scholars of Nazism out into a more international arena.
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. XIV+385 pp., USD 34.99, ISBN 978-0521-61632-4 (pbk.). Reviewed by Hans-Georg Betz (Independent Scholar, Switzerland) During the past several years, Cas Mudde has established himself as one of the most influential scholars writing on the radical right. Particularly his comparative studies on right-wing radical ideology and his writings on conceptualization and classification have had a lasting impact on the field. His new book represents the most comprehensive comparative study of the populist right in Europe (including central and eastern Europe) to date, reflecting a quasi-encyclopedic knowledge of the field (the bibliography alone takes up 55 pages). The analysis is divided into three parts – concepts, issues, and explanations. Each part offers an exhaustive review of the literature; a thorough discussion of the major points of contention that have dominated the scholarly debate on the radical right in recent years; and a wealth of empirical evidence that allows the reader to judge the validity and plausibility of the main approaches and arguments advanced in the field. In the process, Mudde makes several important points. For one, he forcefully argues that among all the factors that might explain why some parties have done well whereas others have failed at the polls, none are more crucial than party organization, local implantation, and, above all, leadership. As he puts it, the most ‘‘successful populist radical right parties have both skillful external and internal leaders, working in unity towards the same goal’‘ (p. 276). The results of recent elections in Switzerland and
Denmark certainly support this contention. A second central point of the book regards ideology. Here Mudde argues that what distinguishes the radical right as a party family is its promotion of nativism, which in his view represents the ‘‘core feature’‘ of its political ideology. Unfortunately, while Mudde makes a convincing case for his choice of nativism, he fails to follow through and apply the concept in his own analysis in a systematic way. Until recently, nativism was primarily used to characterize American responses to immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The perhaps best-known example of nativism is the wave of anti-Catholic sentiments in 1830s and 1840s, which led to the establishment of the Know-Nothing Party, which for a relatively short period of time dominated the legislatures in a significant number of states. The party and its supporters charged that the influx of Catholics posed a fundamental threat to American values, democracy, and the country’s independence. Catholics were characterized as authoritarian, blindly following the lead of the Pope; Catholicism was depicted as fundamentally incompatible with American democracy. Later on, American nativists would use similar arguments to assert the ‘‘unassimilability’‘ of Chinese, Indian, and other non-European immigrant groups on the basis of their alleged cultural distance and difference. In the current situation, nativism is diametrically opposed to liberal multiculturalism and its proponents and promoters in the media, academia, and politics. Seen from this perspective, the recent adoption of Islamophobia (discussed in the book, albeit too briefly) by virtually all right-wing radical parties in Western Europe as a central issue for political mobilization (for instance against the construction of mosques and particularly minarets in Germany, Italy, Norway and Switzerland, charged with representing ‘‘symbols of conquest’‘) finds a convincing explanation. At the same time, the concept allows to establish a bridge between West and East, where the radical right stokes the flames of nativism against the alleged threat posed by ethnic minorities, such as Rom and Sinti, deemed culturally unassimilable. Last but not least, nativism as a concept goes a long way to provide analysts with a heuristic tool to determine which parties belong to the radical right and which not. Of course, disputes over classification are likely to continue. It is not entirely clear, for instance, why Mudde excludes the Norwegian Progress Party from the radical-right party family, given the party’s frequent appeals to nativist sentiments, particularly with respect to Islam. A similar point can be made about the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), Western Europe’s currently most successful nativist party. The SVP’s dramatic gains in the 1990s were largely the result of the party’s aggressive right-wing populist course, under the leadership of Christoph Blocher. The moderate, pragmatic wing of the party quickly capitulated before the populist steamroller while newly formed cantonal party organizations (particularly in the French-speaking parts of the country) eagerly adopted the new ‘‘winning formula.’‘ In fact, when Blocher lost his reelection bid as a Federal Councilor, the party did not split, as many observers had predicted. These minor points of disagreement should not detract from the fact, however, that Populist Right Parties in Europe represents a milestone in the study of the
contemporary radical right, which is bound to shape the discussion on the subject in the years to come.
Sean S. Costigan and David Gold (eds), Terrornomics. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007. 222 pp., USD 69.95, ISBN 0754649954 (hbk). Reviewed by Panos A. Kostakos (University of Bath)
Governments and the media often promote the militarized side, imagery and discourse of the global war on terror, whilst pay little or no attention to the role of ‘‘soft-powers’‘. In the introductory chapter of Terrornomics -research articles provided by the Study Group on the Economics of Terrorism- Sean Costigan (2007) posits that terrorist leaders – most notably Osama bin Laden- are aware of the dynamics of the new Unipolar world and have shaped their terrorist agenda to the needs of our times (p. 1). Their ability to adapt to the new reality, Costigan argues, elevates economic warfare at the epicenter of the terrorist agendas. Thus, rather than analysing the threat of terrorism form a political, cultural or religious perspective, Terrornomics approaches the issue from an economic angle. The volume is a substantial account of the economic aspects of terrorism and examines a broad range of issues from Diaspora financing to cyber-terrorism to suicide terrorist attacks. The overall aim of the book is to expand the analytical toolkit of both scholars and practitioners and to facilitate further study of the issues. For this reason, Terrornomics is organised in three parts: The first part of the book, Financing Terror, addresses issues related to the finances of terrorist groups. Loretta Napoleoni’s (2007: 13-25) article The Evolution of Terrorist Financing/ since 9/11: How the new generation of Jihadists fund themselves, hypothesizes that Jihadist terror groups are mutating their funding mechanism towards a more decentralised financial structure. Examples of ‘‘homegrown’‘ groups or ‘‘improvised terrorist’‘ illustrate the success and potential of decentralising financial support away from traditional Al Qaeda’s sponsors. The second article by Rachel Ehrenfeld (2007: 27-48), Funding evil: How Terrorism is Financed and the Nexus of Terrorist and Criminal Organizations, examines some of the linkages between crime and terror groups. More specifically the article concentrates on the role of drug trade, illustrates the utility of legitimate fronts and Hawala banking and other financial structures and methods used by Jihadist networks. Michel Hess (2007: 50-63) in Substantiating the Nexus Between Diaspora Groups and the Financing of Terrorist, addresses issues related to the complexities of Diaspora-based financing. Hess highlights the ability of Diaspora communities to ‘‘provide the material means for general terrorist activities, including propaganda, recruitment, infrastructure and maintenance’‘ (p.50). The fourth and final contribution investigates the role of the Iranian Diaspora in the case of the Mujahedin-e Khalq also known as People's Mujahedin (MEK). Mark Clark’s (2007: 65-75) An Analysis of the Role of the Iranian Diaspora in the Financial
Support System of the Mujahedin-e Kjalq, surveys the organizational rational, financial structures and methods employed by MEK. The article offers an evaluation of the activities, nature and goals of the group and underlines its ability and willingness to be a motor of change. The second part of the volume, Issues and Analysis, deals with a wide-range of activities related to arms trafficking, cyber-terrorism, suicide terrorism and the impact of free trade on terrorism. William Hartung and Frida Berrigan (2007: 80-101) in their chapter Arms and Terrorism: Tracing the Links, examine the techniques practiced by terror groups in acquiring weapons (chiefly small arms and light weapons) and explore the vulnerabilities of current international regimes to controlling this problem. Their analysis is underpinned by the hypothesis that since the end of the Cold War, state sponsored terrorism is declining. They argue that ‘‘The process of non-state groups getting their weaponry from state sponsors is not nearly as prevalent as it was during the Cold War’‘ (79). In the post-Cold War era such non-state actors are becoming selfreliance and increasingly able to ‘‘find their own sources of armaments without any significant help form governments’‘ (79). Moving on to the sixth chapter, Rachel Stohl’s (2007:103-112) The United States, Small Arms and Terrorism, explores how terrorist groups exploit US domestic laws on firearms to foster their goals. The chapter looks into the US policy responses, export laws and political discourse towards the terrorist threat poised by small arms and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). Sean Costigan’s (2007) article Terrorist and the Internet: Crashing or Cashing in?, offers an interesting perspective on the role, magnitude and nature of what is publicly known as ‘‘cyber-terrorism’‘. The author holds that ‘‘by examining the background and trends in cyber-crimes, and detailing what is presently known about terrorist uses of information technologies and the internet, a surprising picture emerges: terrorists use information technologies but, at least for now, not as weapons’‘ (p.113). The author points out that although terrorists have not yet weaponised information technologies (118), they nevertheless use the Internet as communication medium as well as for planning, research, operational support, recruitment, propaganda and psychological warfare purposes (118-123). The eighth article, Preventing Terrorist best Practices from Going Mass Market: A Case Study of Suicide Attacks Crossing the Chams, deals with yet another central problem of modern terrorism. Rockford Weitz and Stacy Neal (2007:130-143) posit that ‘‘Al Qaeda has become a lethal amalgamation of multiple organisations that, although independent and maintaining unique and often regional agendas…share a common interest in cooperating to limit US influence through the world’‘ (p. 130). The authors use case studies of suicide attacks organised by Hezbollah, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Hamas and Al Qaeda in order to test the contagion theory and thus assess the ‘‘diffusion of best practices and technologies across their affiliated terrorist groups’‘ (p. 130). Katherine Barbieri and Swapna Pathak’s (2007: 145-158) article, Free Trade and Terrorism, explores the linkages between freetrade, globalization and terrorism. The article examines various aspects of the issue in question, such as the conflict of the ‘‘private versus public interests’‘, the role of ports as actors, the US trade security, the role of businesses and focus on international concerns regarding maritime security.
The third part of the book, Policies, surveys state actors’ policies and responses to counter-terrorism. Rico Carisch’s (2007:161-178) paper, Institutionalized Responses to 9/11, assesses responses directed by UN and non-UN institutions, addresses the problem of money laundering and evaluates the regulatory regimes adopted by US. Additionally, the article examines the effectiveness of targeted financial sanctions and of travel bans and the role private sector responses. Another major counter-terrorism policy response addressed in Gary Hufbauer and Thomas Moll’s (2007: 197-194) article Using Sanctions to Fight Terrorism, is the role of economic tools in the fight against terror. The authors consider the success of economic sanctions as diplomatic tools and offer an informative timeline of sanctions impose to various countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia) that have been accused of sponsoring terrorism. Additionally the ‘‘carrot’‘ approach is briefly examined with reference to countries like Pakistan, India, China, Armenia, Azerbaijan and countries of Central Asia that ‘‘the Bush administration has offered a number of financial incentives, including the permanent lifting of economic sanctions’‘ (p. 191). Finally, The Brittle Superpower, by Stephen Flynn (2007:195-210), provides a productive criticism of the core paradigm of US domestic policy and its links with counter-terrorist efforts. The author argues that although ‘‘the Bush administration has chosen to emphasize the use of military operations overseas’‘ domestic infrastructures remain considerably week and vulnerable. The source of this vulnerability, according to Stephen Flynn is that ‘‘While it has [the Bush Administration] now acknowledge in principle the need to improve critical infrastructure protection, in practice it has placed the burden for doing so primarily on the private sector that owns and operates much of that infrastructure. But this delegation of responsibility fails to acknowledge the practical limitations of the marketplace to agree upon common protocols and to make investments to bolster security’‘ (p. 195). The author provides a long list of recommendations that could protect these critical infrastructures (transportation, energy, information, finance, chemical, food, and logistical networks), increase the preparedness, responses and recovery efforts in case of a future terrorist plot (204). Overall Terrornomics touches upon a broad range of topics and binds together important aspects of the modern terrorist threat. The chapters are short, compact and informative and therefore allow the reader to gain a rapid perspective on the economics of terrorism from a macro level. However, this is also a disadvantage since most of the chapters luck consistency and vigor. Therefore, to my opinion, the book is more appropriate for those who are relatively new in terrorism studies and/or for undergraduate and master level students that explore that field. Advanced student and senior analysts with an interest on the economic side of terrorism and/or the role of ‘‘soft powers’‘ in the war of terror will also encounter some very interesting and helpful ideas.