Why do states use military force to capture and occupy lands beyond their borders? Lawson believes, sensibly enough, that the impetus to expand results from domestic problems. To argue the point, he presents a case study from the early nineteenth century-Muhammad 'Ali's three expansionary campaigns between 1810 and 1835 - hoping thereby to avoid the passions of a contemporary conflict.
So far so good. Trouble arises when Lawson gets into specifics. He displays the political scientist's usual limitations when it comes to writing history, deriving his information from secondary sources and making the most basic factual mistakes (the early nineteenth century, he writes, was "a period untainted by the distortions of European imperialism"). Worse, he ignores the internal conflicts arising from authoritarianism, ideology, and personal ambition in favor of class conflict and the other preoccupations of theoretical Marxists. Just what a primrose path this leads Lawson down becomes apparent when he applies his ideas to Saddam Husayn's invasion of Kuwait: this aggression, we learn, had nothing to do with Saddam's wanting to control the oil market or terrify neighbors, but resulted from the Iraqi privatization program of the 1980s which created a "powerful class of wealthier private interests" that posed a "serious potential challenge" to Saddam's rule! To protect himself from his rich subjects, Saddam invaded. Not for the first or last time, theory (or better yet, what Herman Kahn called "educated incapacity") blinds a specialist to plain and obvious reality.
