Presidential War Power by Louis FisherReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1995), pp. 136-137Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047230 .

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Recent Books

ism." He credits the environmental move

ment for generating useful political pres sure for action, which has gained wide

political support in Europe and North America in the last three decades and has

stimulated useful environment-improving

technological changes. However, "envi

ronmentalists, who are surely on the right side of history, are increasingly on the

wrong side of the present, risking their

credibility by proclaiming emergencies that do not exist." He deplores the hype,

exaggerations, and downright lies perpe trated by some so-called environmental

ists, for whom environmental damage

simply provides the latest handle to attack the capitalist system.

The Transformation of the World

Economy, 1980-9J. by Robert

solomon. NewYork: St. Martins

Press, 1995, 238 pp. $39-95

Organized geographically, the book cov

ers all the major rich countries, the for

mer communist countries, China, and

the major countries of Latin America

and the Middle East. A useful review of the major thrusts and alterations in

national economic policy and perfor mance over a remarkable period from the

1980s to the early 1990s. The book pro vides little discussion of the international

economy as a whole, including trade lib

eralization, the remarkable growth in

international capital movements despite the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and the

gradual shift by many countries to float

ing exchange rates. Sub-Saharan Africa

warrants only a page, and Nigeria, the

worlds eighth-most populous state, gets no discussion at all.

Military, Scientific, and Technological

ELIOT A. COHEN

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.

by Laurie GARRETT. New York:

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994,

750 pp. $25.00. A sprawling, engrossing,

even terrifying

study of how humankind can expect to

suffer continuous lethal eruptions of ill

ness, despite the progress of medicine.

The fundamental idea has caught on

broadly, but Garrett, a gifted popular science writer, is enlightening on many of the subthemes and details, from Ebola and Marburg virus to hiv, hanta viruses,

and seal plague. The increasing ease of

international travel and the creation of

megacities conducive to the spread of

disease are two matters of particular

importance to those concerned with

international relations. Indeed, as

reflection on medical history suggests, the spread and course of pandemics may affect international relations in powerful

ways. A shorter book might have been made of this text, and the writing has a

distinctly panicky edge, but on balance, after reading this work one begins to

think a note of hysteria may be justified.

Presidential War Power, by louis

fisher. Lawrence: University Press of

Kansas, 1995, 245 pp. $29.95.

Fisher, a senior researcher at the Con

gressional Research Service, believes

that the discretion allowed modern pres idents in the use of military power

would have come as an unpleasant sur

[136] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume74No.4

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Recent Books

prise to the framers of the Constitution.

He deplores what he occasionally refers

to as monarchical tendencies in the

White House; indeed, he even objects to assertions that the president is "pre eminent in foreign affairs." Three-quar ters of the book deals with the postwar

period, but in light of the author's fun

damental contention it is odd that the

chapter on the Constitution itself is only 12 pages long, and that Lincolns breath

taking assertion of executive power dur

ing the Civil War merits only some

three pages of text. The author relies

chiefly on court opinions and public

papers of the presidents. The result is a

clearly argued and well-documented

work, written from the point of view of

a student of constitutional law, not a

scholar or practitioner of foreign policy and international relations.

Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air

Campaign against Iraq, by richard t.

Reynolds. Maxwell Air Force Base:

Air University Press, 1995,147 pp.

Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm, by

richard m. swain. Ft. Leavenworth:

U.S. Army Command and General

Staff*College Press, 1994,369 pp.

Reynolds and his colleagues convinc

ingly (though at times luridly) contend that the Air Force was far from united

behind Colonel John Wardens concept of independent strategic operations in

the Persian Gulf War. Reynolds opens with an

apologetic note by the comman

der of Air University, who expresses

deep concern about the way the author

characterizes people. And rightly so: the

product of an extensive interview project

conducted by several Air Force officers, this monograph has heroes and villains.

Leading the heroes is air power zealot

Warden, whose small cell of planners in

the late summer of 1990 laid the concep tual groundwork for the air attack on

Iraq. The villains are various senior

officers, many from the Air Force's own

Tactical Air Command. A flawed study this, one that scorns the written record,

makes liberal and implausible use of

quotation marks and exclamation

points, and is clearly partisan. An altogether superior work, Swains

book contends that this was a war won,

in many respects, well before it started, and that if the plan and its execution

were not, despite some postwar myth

making, overly elegant, they did not need

to be. A sober and scholarly study of the

Third Army?the army component of

Central Commands forces in the Persian

Gulf?it is written primarily for military officers but deserves a wider audience.

Swain was in Saudi Arabia during the

war, but he draws primarily on written

sources and brings to bear the trained

judgment of both warrior and scholar.

Although its tone is more guarded, the

book is astringent in its judgment of

some top people. Swain examines the

weaknesses as well as the strengths of

army planning, including what he

describes as staff officers* occasionally scholastic preoccupations with opera tional pauses and the culminating point of victory. Two very different books, each

calculated to make generals mad.

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 1-800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 199s [137]

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