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Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics

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The idea behind this book is a good one: Moynihan attempts to bring light to the ethnic troubles that plagued the world at the time of publication in the early 1990s (which seem to have become even more acute now) by delving into some of the origins of this problem. He essentially focuses on two themes: ethnicity, ethnic identity and the persistence and predominance of ethnic loyalties (as opposed to class loyalties); and national self-determination, particularly how to define this term and the international legal conundrums this concept has caused since it first became a part of mainstream political parlance about a century ago. In its initial sections, the book does succeed in shedding some light on the role of ethnicity and self-determination in the political history of the last hundred or so years, and how essential they have been to international relations, even if often ingored by mainstream scholarship-especially during the cold war-which tended to focus almost exclusively on ideology and political "realism" a la Henry Kissenger (which, as Moynihan points out, was far from realistic). Perhaps the best thing about this book is that is offers a good introduction to the problems of ethnicity in international politics, and provides an excellent reference list of sources for further reading on the subject. As an introduction, however, it suffers from being superficial at times. At times it seems as though Moynihan implicitly accepts the "primordial" thesis on ethnicity and nationalism, for he cites without critical commentary the all-too-common lament of many journalists and other armchair experts who bewail the "ancient ethnic hatreds" burning in some remote corners of the world. He doesn't really look into the fact that ethnicity politics and the ensuing nationalism tend to be the product of contemporary political agitation which often have little to do with historical fact. Although he mentions the general multiethnic harmony of certain pre-nationalist communities, e.g. in Central Europe, he doesn't really go anywhere with this. This the general fault of this book: its disjointed approach. At times Moynihan goes into excessive detail on certain examples while skimming over other cases. In addition, the text is riddled with extensive quotations (some as long as two to three pages) of other works or his own previous works on this subject. Since the book was based on a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1991, I can only assume that he rather hurriedly adapted the text for publication. This is unfortunate, for this could have been a really top-notch work on a very important subject.

For me, a trained American political scientist, this book is a work of genius by one of our nation's foremost geniuses of the art of the political and sociological sciences. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is a renaissance man of sorts: His resume is long, varied, cross-disciplinary and distinguished. We have heard his voice ripple across the political and sociological landscape on more than just a few occasions: Always warning against taking the easy quick-fix route to social problem-solving, always warning against making the facile interpretations to domestic and international policy.

More often than not, it has been his lone voice that has left a ringing echo in the wilderness. And just as was the case when Richard Clark sounded the alarm on terrorism, many of us in the State Department heard him but we just were not tuned into the same frequency: terrorism just seemed so far-fetched that we thought the guy was some kind of kook. The same is true with Pat Moynihan: We have all heard his spiel but just were not always tuned into the same frequency.

Recall that it was his analysis that backed up the famous (or infamous depending on ones position on the issue) Coleman Study that set U.S. Education policy for a generation. It was his prediction too that suggested that there would be a social meltdown in the black family and he gave all the reasons why. It happened exactly as he predicted, and black leaders are still chasing their tails and firing at each other in a circular firing squad, in perpetual denial about the things Moynihan had made crystal clear in this respect a decade before the meltdown occurred. Then, he opposed the Reagan "Communist scare" because of the Cuban and Soviet follies into Angola: To Moynihan this excursion was a joke that would simply hasten the fall of the USSR, which is exactly what it did. His advice to the US government: to ignore it, actually got him "eased-out" from his post as Ambassador to the UN. And finally he was one of only a handful of experts that predicted the fall of the Soviet Union at least a decade before it actually happened: Making clear that it would be due to ethnic fragmentation as much as to anything else.

Never did he "read the tea leaves" more accurately, nor have his predictions about the role and importance of ethnicity been more prescient than in the claims set forth in this book. He has localized the source of the disturbance as being the preoccupation with the internationally voguish term "self-determination of independent people." Yet, when the term "people" are examined closely (or even the terms nation and state for that matter), he finds the same thing that Vlamik Volkan found: that people are bound together as much by their vulnerabilities and "chosen fears and insecurities" as they are by language, race, customs and a shared history. (Patrick Geary also found the same in this book Myth of Nations.) And chosen fears, grievances, and animosities have a very, very long half-life: They seem never to die. These aspects - international ethnic fears and grievances - seem to be a part of international relations that lies below the radar, too close to the ground to sweep up into the net of current techniques.

Yet, it is the same phenomenon that Amy Chua (with only a slight but important twist) has dealt with in her excellent book "A World on Fire." Chua shares Moynihan's concern about the volatility of ethnicity, but adds that when social stratification and a class hierarchy are imposed on top of it (which is most of the times) it becomes down right explosive.

So in this book, we were not just warned again, but given a new vocabulary to consider in our search and research of ways to deal with this recurring Kryptonite. A phenomenon that is repeatedly being resurrected with great pain and angst in the post-modern era.

Five stars