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Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today by Angelo Codevilla. Hardcover: 480 pages. (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2000), Amazon.com $27.95.

Review by Ryan Setliff

Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today is a energetic defense of the Swiss and their role as a non-belligerent neutral power in WWII. This thorough and well-documented book challenges the myth of Swiss collaboration with the Nazis and charges the Clinton Administration for obfuscation of historical fact and betraying the national interest. The Swiss have been wrongly slandered, scapegoated and extorted for their role in WWII as a neutral power, and were no more culpable for the Holocaust than the United States was. They had nothing to gain from declaring war on Germany, and it would have only meant more loss of life. As Winston Churchill recalled, "of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right distinction... She has been a Democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."

With the precision of a veteran intelligence analyst, the respected Angello Codevilla offers an accurate assessment of Switzerland's geostrategic situation with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown on economics, political, and military considerations for the tiny alpine nation before and during WWII.

The Swiss people have a proud past and are one of the more unique countries in Europe, since it's a confluence of cultures situated on the Alps at the ceiling of Europe. Switzerland encompasses cantons that speak four languages including French, German, Romansch, and Italian. Swiss confederates united against the counts of Habsburg on the Rütli back to 1307. Their confederation began to grow and take shape as an alliance against the domineering Hapsburg dynasty as the Holy Roman Empire was slowly withering away. The Swiss patriarch is William Tell who personifies their patriotic spirit. The Swiss have a firey zeal for local self-government and have preserved their relatively decentralized federal body politic. Over the years, the Swiss have gained some renown for their reputation as international bankers and fine craftsman whether it is as manufacturers of precision machinery, watches or firearms. Today, the Swiss have a prosperous market economy—with one of the highest standards of living in the world and they continue their traditions of local self-government. So, one may wonder why the freedom-loving Swiss were bullied and slandered as Hitler's willing executioners by the mass media around the turn of the century?

Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe by Martin Merideth. (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2002.) Hardcover: 243 pages. Amazon Price: Available Used.

Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe chronicles the tyrannical rule of Robert Mugabe, from his heyday as a revolutionary guerilla who was captured an imprisoned to a victorious leader in what was initially to be a coalition government in the 1970's with Ian Smith's Rhodesian white colonials, the various black factions, and Mugabe's ZANU party in unity. Recently he said he could be a "black Hitler ten-fold" in a political speech. By the early 1980's, Mugabe eschewed the idea of a coalition government, opting instead for total consolidation of rule by his party. Mugabe through Machiavellian manipulations managed to scapegoat the political opposition in the public eye through deceptive propaganda. Thereafter, he justified bloody purges ostensibly for the purposes of stifling his contrived threat of a coup d'etat. Mugabe's violence obviously only served to swell political opposition—both white and black. Browbeaten white farmers gradually dropped the conciliatory posturing as their farms were confiscated and family members were murdered.

Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters With Nation Building (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001), Retail: $19.95.

Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters With Nation Building is a terse analysis and overview of Clinton foreign policy maladministration. It succinctly captures his sad legacy of nation building efforts in the 1990s. Driven by naïve Wilsonian idealism, perhaps rosy views of human nature, and a quixotic fixation with seeing "democratic enlargement," the Clinton State Department presided over one foreign policy boondoggle after the other. Nation building efforts in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo were all entered with the best of intentions. Nonetheless, the end results were spurious victories with limited successes and arguably outright failures in some cases where intervention caused more harm than good. Some contests deemed triumphs are perhaps Pyrrhic victories at best. In such cases, US/UN/NATO babysitting (i.e. peacekeeping) has been deemed semi-permanent, political tripwires are everywhere, and an uneasy peace ensues.

Christianity and War: And Other Essays Against the Warfare State by Laurence Vance. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006) Amazon.com Price: $8.95

Review by Ryan Setliff

Christianity and War: And Other Essays Against the Warfare State is a trenchant collection of thirteen essays by Laurence Vance, which has one fundamental and reverberating theme-opposition to the warfare state that robs us of our liberty, substance, and sometimes our lives. Vance takes issue with mindless evangelicals that twist Scripture and are persistently in the amen corner of the warfare state. Vance itinerates the just war theory of Murray Rothbard, and reminds us that: