Stephen Biddle on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

The conduct of war is among the most important acts of the state. Inthe last century alone, failure in this undertaking has toppledgovernments and imposed hostile occupation under a conqueror's rulefor hundreds of millions from Paris to Warsaw and Tokyo to Jakarta.Military failure in World War I destroyed the Ottoman,Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires and created a host ofnew states in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in their stead. Alliedmilitary victory in World War II made global superpowers of theUnited States and the Soviet Union, and split Germany into twocountries; the success of Soviet arms ended Latvian, Lithuanian, andEstonian independence, and resulted in a generation of subjugationunder Soviet satellite rule for the peoples of Eastern Europe.Pyrrhic victory in two world wars exhausted Britain and brought anend to its global economic hegemony. Failure in internal war hastoppled governments from Afghanistan to Vietnam; variations in theconduct of such wars can mean the difference between decades ofmisery in grinding stalemates as in Lebanon or in a rapid, decisiveconclusion as in Rwanda's.

The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas. Edited by Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 440p. $75.00.

Realists see systemic competition as the key to international politics and expect states to converge on something like “best practice” under this competitive pressure. For realists, this should be especially true for military practices, where the penalties for suboptimality are most severe. Realism thus predicts rapid and comprehensive diffusion of military methods, with all quickly emulating the state of the art as demonstrated by the strongest. This view is shared by policymakers who worry about technology transfer and its security implications: Can America preserve its current advantages in the use of networked information and precision weaponry as technology and ideas spread to potential challengers?