cover image Warpaths: The Politics of Partition

Warpaths: The Politics of Partition

Robert Schaeffer. Hill & Wang, $22.95 (306pp) ISBN 978-0-8090-9663-3

Schaeffer, who works for Greenpeace in Washington, D.C., shows how the superpowers promote partition as a peaceful means of transferring governance to indigenous groups under colonial rule or military occupation; in the postwar decade alone, Korea, China, Vietnam, Palestine and Germany were divided thus, and later Pakistan and Cyprus. Yet, he argues, this relatively recent geopolitical development has not only failed to achieve its goals but has encouraged regional conflict, superpower intervention and the threat of nuclear war. Schaeffer points out that of the approximately 20 occasions when the U.S. has threatened to use nuclear weapons, most have involved recently divided states engaged in conflicts with their ``sibling neighbors,'' and that the pattern of Soviet nuclear threat has been similar. Despite these failures, partition continues to be advanced as a political solution and, according to the author of this incisive study, a number of other countries (including, probably, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Israel) will be divided or redivided in coming years. (Feb.)