New Titles from the Brookings Institution Press

New Titles from the Brookings Institution Press include the following:

• Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World
• Global Non-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism: The Impact of UNSCR 1540
• Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb by Charles L. Pritchard

Beyond Preemption
Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World
Ivo H. Daalder, ed.

c. 180pp., Brookings Institution Press, 2007
Paper Text, 978-0-8157-1685-3, $19.95

Book Description: America's three most recent wars—in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq—have raised profound questions about when to use military force, for what purpose, and who should make the decision whether to go to war. These crucial questions have been debated around the world with increasing intensity, and by beginning to provide important answers, Beyond Preemption moves the debate forward in significant ways.

During the past three years, the contributors to this volume have engaged in a global dialogue with political officials, military figures and strategists, and international lawyers from around the world on when and how to use force and in what way its use can best be legitimized. They found consensus that the world has changed so dramatically that much of the old way of thinking about when and how to go to use force to deal with new challenges has become largely obsolete.

Drawing on these high-level discussions, Ivo Daalder and his colleagues make specific proposals for how to forge a new international consensus on the vexing questions about the use of force, including its preemptive use, to address today’s interrelated threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and humanitarian crises. In Beyond Preemption, the authors also consider the critical matter of how these strategies could be best legitimized and be made palatable to domestic audiences and the international community at large.

Global Non-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism
The Impact of UNSCR 1540
Olivia Bosch and Peter van Ham, eds.

c. 253pp., Brookings Institution Press, Chatham House, and the Clingendael Institute, 2007
Paper Text, 978-0-8157-1017-2, $24.95

Book Description: Adopted in April 2004, UN Security Council Resolution 1540 obliges all states to take steps to prevent non-state actors from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction, related materials, and their means of delivery for terrorist purposes. The United Nations thus placed itself firmly in the center of one of the world's key international security challenges. In this important book, noted scholars and policymakers examine a broad range of counter-proliferation measures, such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, within the scope of the resolution, and discuss its impact on the bioscientific community, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the International Atomic Energy Agency, trade and customs, and the role of the UN.

UNSCR 1540 calls on each state to prioritize and systemize its legal frameworks for curtailing proliferation. Its adoption raises many questions. How are the resolution's provisions being made operational and enforceable? Will 1540 make up for the inadequacies of the existing non-proliferation treaty regimes? Could it, in fact, serve as the foundation for a new system of international governance that effectively stifles proliferation, terrorism, and illicit trafficking? The complex issues highlighted in Global Non-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism will prove relevant for years to come.

Failed Diplomacy
The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb
Charles L. Pritchard

c. 228pp., Brookings Institution Press, 2007
Trade Cloth, 978-0-8157-7200-2, $26.95

Book Description: North Korea's development of nuclear weapons raises fears of nuclear war on the peninsula and the specter of terrorists gaining access to weapons of mass destruction. It also represents a dangerous and disturbing breakdown in U.S. foreign policy. Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb offers an insider's view of what went wrong and allowed this isolated nation—a charter member of the Axis of Evil—to develop nuclear weapons.

Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard was intimately involved in developing America's North Korea policy under Presidents Clinton and Bush. Here, he offers an authoritative analysis of recent developments on the Korean peninsula and reveals how the Bush administration’s mistakes damaged the prospects of controlling nuclear proliferation. Although multilateral negotiations continue, Pritchard proclaims the Six-Party Talks as a failure.

Pritchard's chronicle begins in earnest with suspicions over North Korea's uranium enrichment program in 2002, leading to the demise of the Clinton-era Agreed Framework. Subsequently, Pyongyang kicked out international monitors and restarted its nuclear weapons program. Pritchard provides a first-hand account of how the Six-Party Talks were initiated and offers a play-by-play account of each round of negotiations, detailing the national interests of the key players—China, Japan, Russia, both Koreas, and the United States. The author believes the failure to prevent Kim Jong Il from "going nuclear" points to the need for a permanent security forum in Northeast Asia that would serve as a formal mechanism for dialogue in the region.