The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International OrderCreate the Politics of Empire. By Harold James.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 166p. $24.95.

This book has a clear argument. History shows that globalizationneeds a system of international and domestic rules for advancingtrade, making possible cross-national exchanges of labor andcapital, promoting economic growth, and achieving peace. The lateststage of globalization, from the end of the Cold War until September11, is not an exception. Indeed the 1990s were a decade of intensediscussion on new international rules and institutions (epitomizedby the creation of the World Trade Organization). At the same time,the promotion and implementation of an international regulatorysystem will inevitably breed discontent and tensions in differentareas of the global system. Some countries, groups, or individualsperceive the new regulatory system as imposing on them patterns ofbehavior and distributive relations proper of or advantageous todominant countries, groups, and individuals. This generates areaction against the globalizing process (and the regulatory systemsthat justify and support it). Each phase of the globalizationprocess has ended in conflict, either in the form of an interstaterivalry that degenerated into war, or in the form of an asymmetricalconflict degenerating into terrorism (with the assassination ofindividuals representing universal symbols, such as New Yorkers in2001 or the Austrian Empress “Sissi” one century earlier in1894).