Books of Note

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible
By Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, John Wiley & Sons, 2007, 308 pp.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times correspondent Stephen Braun and former Washington Post bureau chief Douglas Farah write for a broad audience in this book. Progressing in a roughly chronological manner, they describe the success and methods of Victor Bout, whose arms trafficking network has supplied warlords and rebels in Africa, pro- and anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, U.S. operations in Iraq, and most recently Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and radical militias in Somalia. The authors suggest that the best chance to capture Bout, using an early form of rendition, passed when a U.S. team assembled toward the end of the Clinton administration began collapsing after the September 11 terrorist attacks and after a British operation failed to find Bout on an airplane landing in Athens in February 2002. In the epilogue, they conclude that “Bout’s empire endures, now an implacable fact of life on the world stage.”

Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime
By Barry Kellman, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 392 pp.

In addressing the threat of a bioweapons attack in the future, Barry Kellman, professor of international law and director of the International Weapons Control Center at DePaul University College of Law, assesses and offers recommendations on a danger he views to be potentially cataclysmic yet largely ignored. Globalization, aided by rapid progress in the biological sciences, has left the world woefully unprepared for such an attack, the consequences of which could extend beyond immediate casualties to include widespread panic and substantial economic damage. To confront the situation, Kellman argues for wide-scale reform in the areas of attack prevention, detection and response, and threat assessment, as well as communications among organizations operating throughout the global system. Despite the considerable tasks ahead, Kellman posits that, by fundamentally altering our perspective on the role of international law in addressing the threat, comprehensive legal reforms can drastically improve our ability to mitigate a significant global danger.

The Creation of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons: A Case Study in the Birth of an Intergovernmental Organization
Edited by Ian R. Kenyon and Daniel Feakes, T.M.C. Asser Press, July 2007, 342 pp.

Written and edited by the Chemical Weapons Convention’s (CWC) diplomatic midwives, this reference work follows the convention’s negotiation and the Preparatory Commission’s work in establishing the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The book illustrates the complexities that arose in turning the CWC’s often vague mandate, constructed out of compromises, into a functioning organization with a staff that is simultaneously competent and geographically diverse. Drawing on the OPCW’s archives and the authors’ personal experiences, the study neglects no detail. It will surely serve as a rich primary source for research on the OPCW in particular and on intergovernmental organizations in the broader sense, as well as offering “lessons learned” to diplomatic practitioners.

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