Constructing States, Constructing the International

Abstract

Secular Morality and International Security: American and British Decisions about War. By Maria Fanis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. 240 pp., $63.18 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11755-0). Why leaders decide to use military force has long been a central concern for those who study international relations (IR). The scholarly literature has examined a vast array of causes or reasons (depending on your methodological assumptions), stretching from the psychological, to the economic, to the cultural. Competing IR theories endlessly debate this question, with little agreement in sight. Maria Fanis asks that central question, why state leaders choose war or diplomacy in their conflicts with each other. Rather than a tired rehearsal of disciplinary positions, she provides a clear and empirically grounded answer: state leaders make decisions about force because of moral impulses that arise from the narrative histories of their own communities. Situating herself in a broadly constructivist framework, Fanis argues that it is not free-floating global or international norms that structure decisions, but state-based norms that connect to the histories of particular communities. Her approach thus complements and advances the work of others who have emphasized the importance of state identity for constructivist explanations of war and peace (Lang 2002; Steele 2008). The strength of Fanis' work is in her detailed empirical investigation. As the subtitle of the work indicates, the book focuses on American and British decision making. Rather creatively, she chooses cases from the nineteenth century and, even more creatively, chooses cases in which war did (for example, the War of 1812) and did not take place (for example, the Oregon crisis). This results in four rich and …