Rotberg, Robert, and Greg Mills, eds. War and Peace in Southern Africa in Transition: Crime, Drugs, Armies and Trade.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; Cambridge, MA: The World Peace Foundation, 1998.

In spring 1965, Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University introduced the notion of political decay into the lexicon of political science in his article on "Political Development and Political Decay," published in the April 1965 issue of World Politics. Since then he developed an interest in South Africa as part of his wider concern for the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule throughout the world. The eleven contributors to this co-edited work, a number of whom are South Africans, examine certain facets of post-apartheid South Africa within the larger regional context of Southern Africa. Implicitly they consider the manifestations and implications of political decay for the core state within the region, and that decay entails elements of what has come to be termed kleptocracy, a neologism suggesting governance through theft.

With the replacement of white minority by African majority rule in the South African political and economic center of the region, there is hope, expectation and frustration among the newly enfranchised South Africans. The world and South African economies have not recently been beneficent forces, and population pressures (through birth and immigration from its neighbors) place nearly intolerable burdens on the state. State capacity and legitimacy (earned through the provision of economic well-being) are at risk, and the state system is challenged to some extent by non-governmental organizations and far-flung criminal, especially drug, syndicates. Expectation and performance are not in harmony, and this has serious consequences for foreign and defense policies which are organizational and symbolic reflections of the new South Africa.

Five of the contributors (Glenn Oosthuysen, Jacklyn Cock, Steven Metz, Jeffrey Herbst and Mark Malan) explore the legacies of the wars of liberation in Southern Africa with regard to small arms proliferation - a classic example of kleptocracy in terms of police, military and liberation movement arsenals - and to military demobilization and reorganization. These tasks are fraught with political, ideological, ethnic and budgetary challenges. Indeed, the parallels with the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic are rather striking, to say nothing of the creation of the post-World War II Bundeswehr of the Bonn Republic. Herbst, in his chapter on African armies and regional peacekeeping, underscores the significance of "failed states" in the continent and takes issue with the conventional wisdom regarding "mission creep" in humanitarian military operations. Such states may require sustained interest and even novel territorial rearrangements that run counter to the status quo orientation of the Organization of African Unity. Mark Malan, a retired South African army officer, asserts in his chapter dealing with peacekeeping in Southern Africa that there is ". . . a complete lack of consensus about the UN's obligations in messy and indistinct intrastate conflicts." (p. 262) In his opinion, ". . . most of the traditional contributors to UN peace operations have . . . [concluded] that the costs - in domestic political capital - of further engagement in Ônew generation' [African] peace operations . . . outweigh the altruistic benefits of potentially contributing to . . . world peace." (p. 261)

The remaining six contributors (Mark Shaw, Joan Wardrop, Hussein Solomon, Katherine Marshall, Robert S. Gelbard and C.J.D. Venter) graphically underscore the need for rapid economic expansion and for a network of bilateral agreements to help staunch the flow of impoverished and unskilled economic refugees to South Africa. Solomon provides detailed evidence of the dimensions and socioeconomic costs of unchecked migration to South Africa, particularly from Mozambique, while other authors (Wardrop, Gelbard and Venter) demonstrate the extent and costs of the drug trade and related patterns of crime. Some of this activity can be traced to relatively inept demobilization packages for regime and anti-regime soldiers, to low literacy and skill levels, and even to craven and compromised police officers. Katherine Marshall underscores the challenges and possibilities for rapid economic growth, along with redistributive policies, for Southern African economies. She emphasizes the skewness of intrastate economic distribution, especially in South Africa, and the near hegemonic position of South Africa in the regional economy.

This co-edited volume emerged from a 1996 conference which was sponsored by the World Peace Foundation of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the US Department of State, the US Army War College, the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the nongovernmental Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. Robert Rotberg of the World Peace Foundation wrote the short preface, while Greg Mills of the SAIIA provided the lengthier introduction. The volume contains a solid index, but no maps, chronology, or bibliography. It will appeal to Africanists as well as to those interested in comparative civil-military affairs.

Richard Dale

Fountain Hills, Arizona