Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan by Peter J.KatzensteinReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1997), p. 152Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048141 .

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Recent Books

the prose make this a book at once im

portant and engrossing. All in all, a superb work that will find its place as one of the

indispensable books on the subject.

Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. BY PETER J. KATZENSTEIN. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1996,

307 pp. $35.00. Katzenstein wishes, as the title suggests, to explore the relationship between cul

ture and national security, using Japan as a case in point. He contends that, since World War II, Japan has devel

oped a distinctive, comprehensive, and

generally nonviolent definition of secu

rity that is different from that of the United States. To make his argument he

follows a discussion of Japanese cultural

norms with chapters on the police and

the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, before

exploring the U.S.-Japanese relationship and drawing an extended comparison between Japan and Germany. More

conventional students of Japan will no

doubt disapprove of a work by someone

who has relied primarily on English language materials and interviews. Na

tional security experts will find equally unsettling Katzenstein's unwillingness to appreciate Japanese national security doctrine as an outcome not of culture

but of Japan's peculiar position as an

American protectorate after World War

II. Nonetheless, an intriguing work well

worth reading.

The Powder Keg: An Intelligence Officers Guide to Military Forces in the Middle

East, 1996-20OO. BY EDWARD B.

atkeson. Falls Church: Nova

Publishers, 1996, 244 pp. $15.00 (paper).

U. S. Forces in the Middle East: Resources

and Capabilities, by Anthony h.

cordesman. Boulder: Westview

Press, 1997,145 pp. $62.00

(paper, $24.00).

During a long career in intelligence, retired

Major General Atkeson closely studied the Middle East. His book is methodical and straightforward, concentrating on an

analysis of the present and anticipated arsenals of Middle Eastern states, to

gether with the potential sources of

conflict among them. Cordesmans book

is a similarly thorough look, heavy on

tables and lists of facts and observations.

Despite the drawbacks of inventory

analysis, which usually does not pene trate into organizational culture and

doctrine, these are valuable resources.

The Military and Conflict Between Cultures: Soldiers at the Interface. EDITED BY JAMES C. BRADFORD.

College Station: Texas A &M

University Press, 1997, 23^ PP- $37-95 The word "interface" does not belong in

well-written text, let alone the title of a

book, but that should not deter poten tial readers. Some of the United States'

finest military historians?John Guil

martin, Dennis Showalter, Robert Utley, and Douglas Porch?have contributed

essays to this book. Divided into sections

of several essays each on premodern

armies, Western forces and indigenous

peoples, and twentieth-century clashes

between colonial armies and the people

they confronted, the book rewards a

careful browsing. Without quite admit

ting it, the volume deals not with

conflicts between cultures per se, but be

tween what used to be regarded as ad

vanced or developed civilizations and

[152] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume76No.4

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