In cases such as World War I grief or trauma were nearly universal in the European context and a direct consequence of a political experience of war. This article asks whether widespread social suffering may have a social and political expression that is larger than the sum of traumatised or bereaved individuals. Section 1 explores Martha Nussbaum's theory of emotion, particularly as it relates to grief and compassion and uses this to build two contrasting typologies of grief and trauma. Central to this contrast is the idea that grief, as an emotion, is embedded in a community, while trauma and emotional numbing correspond with a breakdown of community and an isolation, which may give rise to solipsism. The latter would appear to make any notion of social trauma a contradiction in terms. Section 2 draws on the philosopher Wittgenstein's critique in the Philosophical Investigations of his early work in the Tractatus, to argue that even the solipsist exists in a particular kind of social world. This provides a foundation for arguing, in Section 3, that social trauma can find expression in a political solipsism, which has dangerous consequences. Section 4 theorises the relationship between trauma, identity and agency at the international level.

Diplomacy has long been neglected as a preoccupation of international theory. To repair this deficiency, this essay focuses upon bargaining over interstate disputes and makes two distinctions. One is between diplomacy as independent and as dependent variable. Analysis of diplomacy as independent variable studies diplomatic practice as causal influence, as when overcoming pressures that increase the danger of war or deadlock. This perspective is important for developing a diplomatic ‘point of view’. Dependent diplomacy analysis is preoccupied with constraints upon diplomatic statecraft and with adaptation to them. A second distinction is between negotiated bargaining, to reconcile divergent state interests, and non-negotiated bargaining that converges upon common interests between states. The essay dwells upon the link between independent diplomacy and negotiated bargaining, on one hand, and dependent diplomacy and convergent bargaining, on the other.

American grand strategy has undergone repeated changes in recent years. This essay clarifies the nature of those changes and offers an explanation for them. US foreign policymakers have had four basic strategic alternatives: a strategy of disengagement; a strategy of balance of power; a strategy of primacy; and a strategy of liberal internationalism. The Bush administration experimented with two of these strategies, and initiated two major strategic adjustments after coming into power: the first, early in 2001, by moving from Clinton's liberal internationalist approach towards a strategy of realism; the second, after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, by moving from a realist approach towards a strategy of American primacy. International structural pressures cannot explain why either of these changes occurred. The real explanation lies in the influence of distinctive policy ideas, as promoted by leading state officials. The irony of this twofold strategic adjustment is that the realists of the Bush administration have returned to many of the Wilsonian assumptions that characterised the Clinton years.

D.A. Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 257 pp.

F. Jawara and A. Kwa, Behind the Scenes at the WTO: The Real World of International Trade Negotiations (London, Zed Books, 2003), 329 pp.

Amrita Narlikar, International Trade and Developing Countries: Bargaining Coalitions in the WTO (London, Routledge, 2003), 238 pp.

American actions since the collapse of the trade talks at Cancún have suggested that trade conflicts can no longer be solved simply by a bilateral bargain with the EU that is then imposed, with a few side payments, on the other members of the WTO. The emergence of the G-21 (with its fluctuating membership) has at least opened up the possibility that trade negotiations may move away from the US–EU duopoly that has characterised them for so long towards a set of bargaining arrangements that are more multilateral. It may be that the real beneficiaries of these changes will be the emerging countries such as Brazil, China and India, all prominent in the leadership of the G-21, rather than the least developed countries. Thus, for example, opening up trade in sugar could benefit Brazil and harm Mauritius.

RANDAmerica's Role in Nation-Building: from Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003)

Imaging Iraq

On the back cover of this book there is a warm endorsement of its contents by none other than Paul Bremer, effectively the US Governor General of Iraq from May 2003 until June 2004. He claims to regard the book as ‘a marvellous “how to” manual for post conflict stabilization and reconstruction. I have kept a copy handy for ready consultation since my arrival in Baghdad.’ Events in Iraq during the past year would suggest either that he misplaced his copy of the book early in the occupation – or simply chucked it behind a sofa when he realised that it no longer told him what he wanted to know.

The following exchange builds upon, and reassesses, the intellectual trajectory of Robert Jervis since The Logic of Images. It is organised around three interrelated sections that, tentatively, squeeze out the gist of Jervis' contribution to IR during his three and half decades of remarkable scholarship. The purpose, however, is not to offer a comprehensive view of Jervis' work; instead I want to set signposts that will help us get smoothly into his ‘system of thought’ and substantiate the salience of his account. In the first section, we concentrate on issues of images and (mis)perceptions. Here, Jervis reasserts that political psychology, a crucial site of relevance of actors' behaviour, is perfectly amenable to a rigorous analysis, and should thus be granted a pivotal role in understanding the dynamics of world politics. Insights of political psychology, with their various implications, are taken up into the next section, the rationale of which is to dialogically sketch out the paradoxical ethos of deterrence theory. The third section, on complexity theory, brings forward the breadth of Jervis's reorientation, characterised by a systematic integration of various ideas that have been at the centre of his endeavour since the 1980s. We use contemporary world politics as a thread that connects the aforementioned segments of the discussion and thereby gives the journey its overall coherence.

The words used to describe things sometimes tell us less about the thing itself and more about those telling the story: and in the case of the words ‘American Empire’ one could more or less tell in the past that the story was being told by a critic. Not any longer. Indeed, since 9/11 those who have been at the forefront of promoting the idea have not been radical opponents on the left but defenders of the United States on the neo-conservative right. Under conditions where the US dominates the earth like no other power, Empire they argue not only describes what America has become – even though its own leaders invariably fail to recognise the fact; it also indicates to us what has to be done if we are to tackle the threat posed by catastrophic terrorism. And in this the United States now needs to do what it normally does worst: namely learn from the history of other great powers. As one of the new gurus of Empire has suggested, in a world of failed states and terrorist threats, the US has to abandon the idea that it is unique and see how its predecessors, the British and the Romans, created the conditions of order before.

It is an empire without a consciousness of itself as such, constantly shocked that its good intentions arouse resentment abroad. But that does not make it any the less of an empire, with a conviction that it alone, in Herman Melville's words, bears ‘the ark of liberties of the world.

If all history according to Marx has been the history of class struggle, then all international history, it could just as well be argued, has been the struggle between different kinds of Empire vying for hegemony in a world where the only measure was success and the only means of achieving this was through war. Indeed, so obvious is this fact to historians – but so fixated has the profession of International Relations been with the Westphalian settlement – that it too readily forgets that imperial conquest, rather than mere state survival, has been the principle dynamic shaping the contours of the world system from the sixteenth century onwards. Empires, however, were not just mere agents existing in static structures. They were living entities that thought, planned, and then tried to draw the appropriate lessons from the study of what had happened to others in the past.

The United States dominates the world as no state has. It emerged from the Cold War the world's only superpower, and no geopolitical or ideological contenders are in sight. Europe is drawn inward and Japan is stagnant. A half-century after their occupation, the United States still provides security and garrisons troops in Japan and Germany – the world's second and third largest economies. US military bases and carrier battle groups ring the world. Russia is in a quasi-formal security partnership with the United States, and China has accommodated itself to US dominance, at least for the moment. For the first time in the modern era, the world's most powerful state can operate on the global stage without the counterbalancing constraints of other great powers. We have entered the American unipolar age.

American foreign policy has been recently dominated by the venture into Iraq. This has not gone well. Most criticism has focused on ‘mistakes’ – there were not enough US troops, or they were of the wrong type, the Iraqi army was mistakenly disbanded after it surrendered, looting was not anticipated, oil expectations were unreal, the US depended too much on Iraqi exile claims, and so forth. Indeed, these were mistakes. 250,000 troops trained also in police roles would have made a difference. So might Iraqi army units converted into security police. So might better planning all round. But the mistakes were only the surface phenomena of a more profound American failure. The Iraq venture was doomed from the outset by the attempt to create what some neo-conservatives styled a ‘New American Empire’. This exaggerated American powers, made facile historical comparisons with previous Empires, mis-identified the enemy, and mis-identified the century we live in. This early twenty-first century attempt at Empire is failing. There will not be others.