Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

Recent Books

January/February 2020 179

International Order: A Political History
BY STEPHEN A. KOCS. Lynne
Rienner, 2019, 261 pp.

Coupled with the rise of China, the
United States’ foreign policy struggles
have renewed old debates about the
nature of international order and about
what a post-U.S. global system might
look like. In this illuminating history,
Kocs traces how international order has
risen and fallen over the centuries. At
every stage, order emerged from the
actions of powerful states that wanted
to establish norms, rules, and institu-
tions to suit their own purposes. In each
instance, the result was an uneasy
balance of coercion and consent, a
tension that ultimately became a source
of disorder. The victors of World War I
set up a new order grounded in universal
principles—free trade, self-determination,
arbitration, and collective security—but
were not willing to extend them to their
colonial subjects. During the Cold War,
the United States tried to infuse liberal
values into its dominance of the West-
ern system, and the Soviet Union tried
to justify its rule of the Eastern bloc
with a vision of communist egalitarian-
ism. Today’s “liberal order” combines
multilateral institutions and the promo-
tion of human rights with forceful
diplomacy and military intervention-
ism. Kocs does not break new scholarly
ground, but his comparative historical
perspective provides a useful primer
and a starting point for debate.

Economic, Social, and

Environmental

Richard N. Cooper

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance

Is Making Us All Poorer

BY NICHOLAS SHAXSON. Grove

Press, 2019, 384 pp.

T

his well-researched but some-

what intemperate book argues

that the financial sector in all

modern economies is much too large.

Shaxson angrily decries the overweening

influence of banks and investment

companies, which he believes lord over

the economy to the detriment of other

kinds of businesses. He laments how the

financial sector absorbs bright college

graduates, extracting human capital from

the rest of the economy. In the United

Kingdom and the United States, all

political parties are to blame for the

financial sector’s dominance. Shaxson

criticizes the former Democratic U.S.

president Bill Clinton and the former

Labour British prime minister Tony

Blair as much as he berates Republicans

and Tories. A British journalist, Shax-

son reserves particular ire for the City

of London—home to the British

financial sector—and for the role of

British dependencies such as Bermuda

in facilitating tax avoidance and many

other forms of financial malfeasance.

He urges a future post-Trump United

States to not only clean up its own act

but also pressure the United Kingdom to

reckon with the culture of tax avoid-

ance it has created over the years.