Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs (review)

In this sweeping book, Breslin explores the fascinating interplay of "pleasure" and "pain" in international politics throughout 2,000 years of history. Breslin considers how leaders of ancient and modern Asian, European, and North American civilizations variously employed wealth, food, flattery, bribery, sex, luxury, and trade (pleasure) alongside military force (pain) in efforts to exert control over foreign peoples and resources. The author depicts civilizations of ancient China, Persia, and Rome, and of medieval and Renaissance Byzantium and Venice, as highly successful at both manipulating human desires and using "stern measures" in order to achieve their goals. U.S. leaders as well have productively balanced the two approaches, whereas the British ultimately failed: "The fall of the modern Anglo-Norman empire can be traced to a culturally arrogant colonial policy and disastrous military engagements on the continent of Europe" that stemmed from British leaders' hedonistic inability to resist the "fleshpots of Paris" and, in turn, the pleas of France for British intervention in World War I (127-128).

Breslin's findings serve a prescriptive function. He argues that "the use of pleasure has almost never led to the downfall of a nation and the ruination of all its people," whereas "policies of pain have invariably crippled aggressor nations, immiserating all and sundry in the process." It is, hence, "absolutely imperative to think beyond force and the principle of pain when considering government policy. Were pleasure in its culturally relevant setting acknowledged adequately as an effective diplomatic tool and often a cheap and safe one at that, then pain, which is ever more costly and deadly, might lose both its primacy and whatever shreds of legitimacy it may still have in this nuclear age" (ix-x).

Beyond Pain transcends academic disciplines in several respects. Macrohistorical in scope, the book's policy orientation places it within a political science tradition. Breslin's use of "pain" and "pleasure" as organizing constructs parallels recent academic trends aimed at illuminating ties between culture and power in all areas of human life. Breslin delves into works of literature, science, and even Chinese cooking in efforts to explain the character and meaning of events. He selectively employs Foreign Office memoranda of the Public Record Office to inform his discussion of British policy, while relying on published secondary sources for most of his synthetic study.

Because the book's scope is so ambitious, specialists in every area will likely quibble with Breslin's findings. Cultural theorists may question his neglect of Foucault, whose seminal writings on the social construction of pleasure and pain inspired two generations of thinkers across several continents.¹ International relations specialists may wonder, given the acknowledged failures of Thomas Jefferson's embargo policy (1807-1809) and of the Western powers' appeasement of Germany (1938-1939), exactly when the "carrot" gives way to the "stick" in international politics and how policymakers should strategize such a shift. A discussion of how seemingly peaceful means of imperial control have often cloaked political and cultural violence against colonial peoples—as when the United States established a "protectorate" over Cuba in 1898—would also have proven helpful. Breslin cites the Cuba episode as an example of Americans eschewing military for diplomatic solutions (144). But he ignores the corrosive long-term effects of U.S. paternalism, which ultimately spawned a violent, anti-American revolution that undermined U.S. hegemony and prompted extreme countermeasures, including a protracted U.S. economic embargo and a foiled campaign to overthrow or kill Fidel Castro. (That embargoes themselves are treated as instruments of pleasure, rather than pain, ignores the devastating human tolls that so-called "nonviolent" coercion can wreak). On the whole, however, Breslin should be applauded for his willingness to ask bold questions and to cross disciplinary boundaries in an effort to fathom the complexities of...