The books under review both deal with interesting topics in an intelligent manner. They are similar in that they highlight the importance of individuals in foreign policy decision making, and both study individuals with some methodological rigor, chiefly using the examination of operational codes to explain the beliefs and perceptions of individuals.

In Chinese Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Decision-Making, Huiyun Feng seeks to understand Chinese decision making in order to explore the broader question of the extent to which a rising China and the United States may engage in conflict in the future. The author conducts a historical analysis of the roots of Chinese strategic thinking during three major wars—the Korean War (1950–53); the Sino-Indian War (1962); and the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979)—and discovers that China followed the norms of a defensive strategic culture. Extrapolating from this analysis, the author argues that China is not an aggressive state, bent on dominating others and seeking global primacy. It is not, in theoretical terms, a state that behaves as threateningly as offensive realists would predict. In essence, offensive realism assumes that states react to anarchy in an aggressive manner, seeking to enhance their power and control over others. This creates a dynamic in which conflict is hard to avoid and cooperation is hard to achieve. By contrast, defensive realism assumes that states react to anarchy by taking actions to defend their interests, eschewing more aggressive foreign policy behavior. This creates a dynamic wherein cooperation, while still difficult to achieve, is possible.

The argument of the book—that Chinese decision makers have followed the norms of a defensive strategic culture—is not trivial. First, it challenges the theoretical view of offensive realists. Thus, it adds to the debate between offensive and defensive realists by offering an empirically-based challenge to the notion that states act in line with offensive realism. Second, scholars and policymakers are very interested in how a rising China will behave in world politics. Some scholars even predict a coming war between China and the United States—the type of predictions that helped animate this book. Yet, Feng's conclusion suggests that all these concerns are exaggerated and that Chinese leaders are shaped by a defensive strategic culture and actually display a preference for peaceful strategies.

Feng reaches these conclusions using an interesting methodological approach. She analyzes the operational codes of China's decision makers to explore the extent to which Confucianism was in play in past, key decisions and to examine the belief systems of six key Chinese leaders. The analysis reveals that all of them (except Mao) have been more cooperative and friendly than the world average. This underscores the notion that most Chinese leaders were shaped by and reflect the defensive strand of Confucianism much more than its offensive strand. The author's historical analysis of the beliefs of these leaders and their behaviors adds gravity to the argument.

While the work is important and well done, one can raise two critical issues. First, the work is backward looking. It examines the behaviors of Chinese leaders in the past, and it concludes that China's behavior is more likely to conform with defensive realist expectations. Yet, we can ask fairly if a book that draws its conclusions from past behavior can tell us if China's behavior will conform with defensive realist expectations in the future. In the past, China was weaker and its policy had not switched to a global, Open Door policy until the 1980s. Thus, it had neither the strength nor the global orientation to pursue a strategy in line with offensive realism. In the past years, however, it has gained in strength and altered its global orientation, which creates ample opportunities to pursue offensive realist behaviors. One might say that this will be the true test of how it sees its role in the world.

The second question is about grand strategy. Scholars often assume that states pursue one or another grand strategy, that they undertake a fairly consistent approach toward world politics, based on key foreign policy beliefs, across a long period of time. Yet, that may not be the case at all. Of course, it may be that in some regions or at certain junctures in history, certain grand strategies have been predominantly at play. The Cold War may be a case in point in which both sides roughly pursued an approach of containment, even if that approach had different incarnations at different times.

At the end of the day, however, my sneaking suspicion is that randomness all too often parades as design and that serendipity belies control. The behavior of states, even great powers, seems to be a messy affair, shaped not only by a mesmerizing mix of complex factors within the “black box” of decision making but also by a bewildering farrago of external realities to which states must react, sometimes without much preparation, sometimes without much care. It may be a historical truism that all great powers start with grand ideas but end up with a mouthful of reality.

Alas, it is not clear that China has pursued one strategy or the other, or any strategy at all. It may just as well be improvising, reacting to the complexity of world politics and trying to navigate multiple pressures and interests at both the domestic and international level. Hence, China may well be highly cooperative in the global political economy but far less so on Iran, for instance, and offensive in the area of energy security but defensive with regard to the global environment. Or it may not have a well-conceived approach, consistent over time, in any of these areas, but rather a shifting set of priorities and approaches. Therefore, this book would have benefited from more analysis of the possibility that an absence of a clear grand strategy may actually be in play.

In When Leaders Learn and When They Don't, Akan Malici also emphasizes that individuals matter in world politics, using Mikhail Gorbachev and Kim Il Sung in the period of the end of the Cold War as case studies. Malici contends that a strong explanation of international relations cannot dispense with a good analysis of key leaders, and that a key aspect of international relations hinges on how leaders represent themselves and their enemies to the broader national and global audience. In fact, the author assails the prevailing view in some quarters that scholars should abstract away from the individual level of analysis. Certainly, this is a central notion in international relations theory, which largely assumes that the preferences of states are invariant.

The propensity to privilege international over domestic explanations is not limited to the rational actor model. It is also true of the more modern and/or parsimonious international relations theories of neorealism and neoinstitutionalism. Kenneth Waltz, for instance, prefers to study state behavior using an “outside-in” approach that focuses on the structure of the broader system than an “inside-out” approach that explains state behavior by referring to domestic factors. The “outside-in” approach emphasizes that good or bad states would suffer a similar fate because of the difficult situation in which they must operate. Neorealism assumes that anarchy pushes states to behave in similar ways, irrespective of individual leaders or domestic dynamics. For Waltz, the intentions and preferences of actors do not matter because outcomes in international relations can rarely be explained by them, and we cannot derive useful theoretical generalizations from them.

In fact, most international relations theorists recommend that the analyst give priority to international explanation and use other theories, such as those of domestic politics, only as needed to explain anomalies. They believe that we need not examine domestic factors or individuals in order to understand government behavior and outcomes in world affairs, or that we cannot explain them adequately with parsimonious models cast at higher levels of analysis.

Malici confronts this prevailing view in international relations theory. He believes that the search for parsimony actually is too costly or, more specifically, that the “search for parsimony is a diversion from the areas in which much of the relevant political explanatory action does occur” (p. 17). The antidote to this prevailing problem, according to the author, is to develop “a better understanding of the agents of political action” (p. 17). In particular, to accomplish this task, he develops a psychological theory of foreign policy decision making in the context of strategic interactions.

Much excellent work exists on psychology and international relations—although, certainly, much room exists for expanding this area of study. Yet, the novelty of this book lies in linking psychology to game theory. Malici, in effect, seeks to illuminate how individual leaders represent themselves and others over time using a psychological approach, and then he seeks to understand what this means for strategic interaction (game theoretical dynamics) over time in terms of change and continuity of those relations. This cross-fertilization is important. And it is true that we have excellent work on game theory and excellent work on ideational variables such as perceptions and beliefs, but that the two literatures do not often meet. As such, the author is offering us interesting bridging work and interdisciplinary exploration.

Like Feng, Malici utilizes the study of operational codes in order to understand the beliefs and perceptions of leaders. Malici, in particular, also uses content analysis via use of the verbs in Context System to analyze the public statements of leaders. Of course, content analysis has its detractors, and this author openly discusses problems with this analysis. A central problem revolves around whether or not strategic politicians say what they mean. In other words, can studying their language provide insight into what they really believe? We could debate this issue for some time, but, at bottom, we do not have many methods for evaluating what leaders really think over time. We cannot psychoanalyze them, and even if we could, that method would also have its drawbacks. Thus, it is fair to say that content analysis, despite its drawbacks, offers a sensible approach to the study of the beliefs of leaders.

In essence, then, Malici uses this method, as well as a general study of these two leaders over time, to assess their views and perceptions. He finds that Gorbachev assumed significant stature as an individual, and that he engaged in an important learning process that altered his beliefs and, in turn, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union (p. 131). He became more cooperative, more global, and more amenable to positive interaction with the West and to change at home. Meanwhile, the same method applied to Kim Il Sung reveals that his beliefs remained static and that, in turn, not much changed in North Korean foreign policy.

Malici believes that in using his method and approach to the study of individuals, he offers an approach to the study of change that is absent in mainstream international relations theory. In his view, this cannot be attained when individual agency is abstracted away—we lose insight into how agency alters dynamics in world politics.

The author's work is innovative, but one seeks greater explanation for why he focuses on the individual level of analysis as opposed to the numerous other variables that shape decision making. Why is it not better to use multiple perspectives and models at multiple levels of analysis to try to explain decision making? Why privilege individual variables? Is it not the case that structures also shape individual decision making, be it group dynamics, the market, or anarchy? And if one wants to link the study of the individual to game theory, which is a noble and interesting task that adds meat to game theory's often slender accounts, does this not, however, raise the issue of rationality? If individuals are complex, can game theoretical accounts that assume rationality really capture their role? Does a thicker account of the individual raise questions about the usefulness of the rationality assumption?

In sum, Feng and Malici both offer a novel, albeit incomplete, approach to the study of the foreign policy decision making process by placing individual leaders on the analytical center stage. By doing so, they are able to fill important gaps in the literature, but in the process they raise important theoretical questions about the fruitfulness of integrating the individual level of analysis into our explanations of foreign policy decision making. Without any doubt, these questions need to be more rigorously addressed in future works.