Recent Books
184 foreign affairs
Embracing peace talks can signal
weakness and a lack of resolve, which can
damage the morale of one’s troops
while emboldening the adversary. Only
those factions confident in their strate-
gic position will agree to open talks,
and such offers are often combined with
demonstrations of military strength.
More circumspect parties to a conflict
keep the initial conversations closed.
Mastro catalogs many examples of how
this dynamic has worked in practice, but
her main case studies come from Asia
during the Cold War, where she focuses
on the experiences of China during the
Korean War, China and India during
their 1962 war, and the North Vietnamese
during the Vietnam War.The United States
Jessica T. Mathews
Audience of One: Donald Trump,
Television, and the Fracturing of America
BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK. Liveright,
2019, 304 pp.P
oniewozik, the chief television
critic for The New York Times, has
written a dazzling dual biography
of television and Donald Trump. The
two stories have intertwined over the
course of the past 70 years as television
transformed, from the unifying mono-
culture of the three major networks to
the fractionalized cable universe. As one
tv era followed another, Trump drew
personal lessons from each: the talk and
lifestyle shows of the 1980s (“all about
ego and the projection of self”), theOnly the Dead: The Persistence of War in
the Modern Age
BY BEAR F. BRAUMOELLER. Oxford
University Press, 2019, 344 pp.
In the best-selling 2011 book The Better
Angels of Our Nature, the psychologist
Steven Pinker made the optimistic case
that war was on the wane and that
human beings had entered the most
peaceful period in their species’ history.
It was a popular but controversial
argument that has since attracted many
detractors. Braumoeller delivers a
crushing critique by taking on Pinker’s
central methodological claim—that his
analysis is based on hard data and sound
reasoning. As Braumoeller weighs the
merits of the evidence supporting
Pinker’s thesis, he charts the pitfalls of
the various statistical techniques that
political scientists commonly use in
studying international conflict, showing
how to distinguish significant from
anomalous findings. The statistical
trends that emerge from Braumoeller’s
alternative analysis refute the case for
optimism. When things do seem to get
better, it’s not because humankind is
becoming more intrinsically civilized
but because the major powers have
ordered their affairs in ways that make
war less likely.
The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to
Peace Talks in Wartime
BY ORIANA SKYLAR MASTRO.
Cornell University Press, 2019, 216 pp.
In this welcome contribution to the study
of wartime diplomacy, Mastro shows
why it can be so hard for belligerents to
find a diplomatic route out of conflict.