This is an innovative and thoroughly researched book that starts off with an important observation about aesthetics, power, and international relations. Brent Steele notes that at a fundamental level, states present themselves aesthetically no differently than people do. Individuals put on nice clothes, style their hair, or wear makeup. They do so to feel better or to project a certain positive image of themselves to others, often also to gain strategic benefits, as in the context of a date or job interview. States, Steele stresses, are no different: they too care a lot about their aesthetic and their self-image. They, too, dress up to feel better and, in particular, to feel secure and in control. Obvious aesthetic examples here range from military parades on national holidays to the staging of Olympic games. Idealized and ideological as they often are, these aesthetic practices contribute to the forging of national identity, as well as to a particular aesthetic self-presentation and outward projection.

Political aesthetics, then, has the function of makeup: to let a state appear differently than it otherwise would—more united, for instance, or more ethical, or more powerful. The resulting aesthetic practices are, however, far more than merely “cosmetic.” They are, as Steele convincingly shows, part of the ways in which a state uses its power to “deploy its material and strategic resources in global politics” (p. 9).

Steele is primarily interested in what happens when a state's aesthetic—and its related sense of self—is being challenged: when sudden events expose the vulnerabilities that linger underneath the carefully established façade. He focuses in particular on challenges from actors other than states and on how the ensuing moments of counterpower—often emerging by surprise—can lead to important political dynamics.

The assumption here is a logical consequence of the original observation: If power is at least in part projected not just materially but also through aesthetics, then this aesthetic construction can also be challenged (p. 46). Steele discusses several categories of aesthetic power and counterpower. He does so by drawing on unusually wide sets of literatures. He is as much in command of realist and liberal international relations scholarship as he is of poststructural approaches and debates in security studies, aesthetics, and philosophy.

The book's empirical illustrations are just as impressive. Steele investigates the issues at stake through several case studies, ranging from the Vietnam War to the war on terror. In both of these cases, it is obvious how images—as, for instance, Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize–winning “napalm girl” of 1972 or the more recent pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib—challenged the official aesthetic presentation of the war effort. The images in question not only generated major political debates but also exerted considerable political influence. These two cases also reveal how power needs an aesthetic dimension to have integrity and to function well. Once this aesthetic “makeup” is challenged power can easily reveal itself in its “naked” and “ugly” form—and thus undermine itself (p. 194).

One example warrants particular attention because it illustrates both the potential and the limits of aesthetic power and counterpower. Immediately following the devastating Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, portrayed the response of the international community—and implicitly also of the United States—as “less generous than before” (p. 94). The reaction in the United States was immediate and very defensive, with various government officials and private commentators strongly objecting to having the United States portrayed as “stingy.” A day later, the US government made the remarkable move of tripling its pledged amount of aid. Steele believes that this was a classical example of aesthetic counterpower: Egeland, even if unintentionally, had challenged the sense of self of the United States and its aesthetic presentation as a caring and generous nation. The result was a substantial political reaction to realign state policy with its aesthetic.

This example, compelling as it is, also reveals the difficulties of understanding aesthetic power: It is not easy to empirically “prove” its existence. Steele has not been able to do so in this particular case. He knows that here are important unanswered questions. How exactly did aesthetic counterpower influence—consciously or subconsciously—US officials and their decision to massively increase the aid package? And how exactly did the ensuing psychological dynamics interact with other possible influences, such as new factual evidence of the tragedy or domestic political pressure?

This is a courageous book. The author takes on a bold topic and does so in a way that will not be liked by everyone. Although the last decade has seen an aesthetic turn in international relations scholarship, the resulting debates have had only limited impact on more conventional approaches. Proponents of the latter largely see no links between aesthetics and politics or between art and logic. A scholarly text is meant to display a reasoned argument. It should not be tainted with arbitrary aesthetic preferences. The result of these attitudes is that many otherwise important scholarly debates are unable to recognize—yet alone discuss—how aesthetics is essential to global politics.

Steele rectifies this shortcoming and does so in a compelling way. He shows that aesthetics goes to the heart of power. Here, too, he is courageous, knowing that not everyone will approve of his chosen way of demonstrating so. This is the case, for instance, when he shows that classical realists and poststructuralists have far more in common than commonly assumed: a key preoccupation with power, albeit, of course, articulated from a different vantage point. He uses both Hans Morgenthau and Michel Foucault—two scholars who are not usually mentioned in the same breath, or, if so, then on opposite sides of the debate—to demonstrate how speaking truth to power is a way of challenging the state's aesthetic self-presentation. But following Morgenthau's realism and Foucault's discursive understanding of society, Steele also recognizes that a state has a range of powerful material and aesthetic means to keep individuals aligned with its politics. They range from discrediting dissenting intellectuals to providing various benefits to commentators who speak truth for power, rather than to power. Steele is, as a result, particularly concerned that “power contaminates the truth.”

The closer academics get to power, Steele believes, the more they are unable to critically examine the political issues they seek to understand (p. 120). Scholars who engage in policy debates and the people who shape them will undoubtedly not like this part of the author's argument. He shows here that academics who cooperate with a state can derive distinct benefits from doing so, such as career advancement and funding opportunities or the thrill of being taken seriously and shaping policy. More importantly, being caught in an entire web of understanding politics—including a related language—makes it all but impossible to keep the necessary critical distance to avoid being co-opted into the prevailing statist discourses. The resulting scholarship is, then, no longer the truth but a manifestation of power used to control others (p. 123).

The task of academics, Steele insists, is to document what actually happened, as faithfully as possible, without being seduced by the temptation to advise the prince (pp. 130–1). One might not need to present the issues at stake quite as black and white. Policy-relevant scholarship can coexist with approaches that consciously create a distance from government in order to speak truth to power. But this does not detract from the fact that Steele's Defacing Power is one of the best examples of the latter: a form of aesthetic counterpower itself.