The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship by A. Jay CristolReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2002), pp. 188-189Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20033373 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:33:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Recent Books

concluding that it is the best option. This well-written work will no doubt attract much controversy. But it will be indispensable, even for those who disagree with its conclusions.

You've Got Dissent: Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijings Counter Strategies. BY MICHAEL CHASE AND

JAMES MULVENON. Santa Monica:

Rand, 2002,114 pp. $20.00 (paper). This fascinating monograph by two analysts-one of whom, Mulvenon, is

widely regarded as a top expert on the People's Liberation Army-describes the cyberwar raging between China's

Communist Party and its opponents. The tale will disappoint those who believed that the Internet age would sweep away tyranny and repression. It turns out that a variety of the party's techniques-from hacking to brute intimidation, updated forms of censorship to manipulation of corporate greed-work remarkably well even against so clever and persistent an underground movement as the Falun Gong. The authors conclude, however, that the party's approach will work only in the short-to-medium term. As survivors of the Internet boom know, moderation in one's estimates of the power of informa tion technology may prove the soundest point of view.

Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995. BY THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

AGENCY. Washington: CIA Office of Public Affairs, 2002, 501 pp. $188.oo.

The historian of recent wars is often at a loss for material-often just a patchwork of newspaper reports, firsthand accounts by eyewitnesses, and the memoirs of

politicians and soldiers whose concern for their reputations may outweigh their obligations to history. In contrast, this massive volume is a wonderful resource for scholars and students alike. To take but one example, its account of Slovenia's successful struggle against the far larger

Yugoslav National Army is a remarkable look at how a tiny country combined old techniques of territorial warfare with a distinctly modern sense of media rela tions. The work is based exclusively on unclassified sources, although the analysts clearly had access to much more. Some readers will be put off by the array of tables, elaborate chronology, and massive footnotes. But many more will be grateful for the authors' meticulousness and the thick wad of excellent maps that accom panies this volume. This work is a superb contribution to contemporary strategic studies and will prove a boon to students in universities and war colleges alike. Three cheers for the authors-and for whoever in the government had the good sense to support this publication.

The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U S. Navy Spy Ship. BY A. JAY CRISTOL. Washington:

Brassey's, 2002, 294 pp. $27.50.

This is the definitive book on the Israeli attack during the Six-Day War on an

American spy ship, a horrible accident that killed 34 Americans and left many

more wounded. For many years, the inci dent has been the subject of writings that range from the doggedly investigative to the frankly antisemitic. This meticulous

work belongs to the former category, a superb account by a federal judge (with a doctorate to boot) who has served for

many years as a U.S. naval aviator and a

[188] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume8i No.6

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:33:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Recent Books

member of the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps. Documents, pictures, transcripts, and interviews all come under the microscope. The evidence, the author argues, overwhelmingly suggests that the incident was a wretched mistake brought about by a complex series of Israeli and

American errors, not by any deliberate plan. To be sure, the fundamental implau sibility of an Israeli decision to attack an

American ship always made the contrary argument suspect. And there will be those

who will cling to a fantasy of Israeli pre meditation and malevolence, regardless of the evidence. But for those readers of a rational turn of mind, this book ends the debate.

Making the Nation Safer. The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism. BY THE NATIONAL

RESEARCH COUNCIL, COMMITTEE

ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM.

Washington: National Academy Press, 2002, 440 pp. $43.95 (paper).

This ponderous volume, covering every thing from power plants to robotics, in formation technology to food safety,

will be of interest to experts in each of the various subfields. But even for non specialist readers, there is something here of deeper interest; call it the sociology of mobilization. Granted, there is enormous technical expertise mixed with banal platitudes ("more research is needed," "government agencies should coordinate better," "less dangerous technologies should be investigated," etc.), not to mention wildly ambitious intellectual claims. One should be wary of a book with a section on "counterterrorism threat modeling" that has, at the center of an obscure diagram,

a goose egg labeled "state of the world." But these flaws aside, the volume imparts a sense of the extraordinary range of talents and resources that the United States can bring to bear to counter or mitigate hor rible new threats. The potential power of this country, defensive as well as offensive, is enormous. Yet one wonders whether the government will mobilize it effectively before another devastating blow falls.

Armies Without States: The Privatization of Security. BY ROBERT MANDEL. Boulder:

Lynne Rienner, 2002,169 pp. $49.95. This short, dense work by a professor of international relations is a serious medi tation on an important subject: the mi gration of important security functions from the state to private organizations.

That is not the way it was supposed to be done under the Westphalian system of state organization, although scholars of early-modern Europe should be interested to know that their political science colleagues are surprised to learn that it is happening. More interested in cate gorization and conceptualization than in narrative, this book is nonetheless a useful look at a subject likely to grow in importance-if only because, as the author argues, many countries will not have much of a choice.

TheEnemy's HouseDivided. BY CHARLES DE GAULLE, TRANSLATED AND

EDITED BY ROBERT EDEN. Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, 169 pp. $32.50.

In 1924, a French captain who had been taken prisoner in March 1916 and escaped only at the end of the war published a short, trenchant analysis of why Germany lost the war. It reflected not only his

F O R E I G N AF FA I R S November/December2002 [18 9]

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:33:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions