European-Union

In a world economy dominated by Europe, North America and East Asia, competition and contention among the three regions (the 'Triad') shape global economic relations to a significant extent. How the triadic relationships unfold in the future will have a major impact on the distribution of power, wealth and opportunity for the citizens of these regions, and for the world at large.

The economic relationship between the European Union (EU) and East Asia is becoming an important structural feature of the world economy, and Christopher M. Dent, Senior Lecturer in Economics and European Studies at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside makes a commendable effort at drawing together the threads of the emerging EU - East Asian inter-regional tapestry.

Dent's latest book offers a thorough analysis of the present state of Eurasian economic relations, and their historical development, primarily in a post-war context. He examines bilateral, inter-regional and multilateral dimensions of EU - East Asia 'economic diplomacy' with frequent reference to the wider triadic framework. Developments at the sub-national, state and regional level that influence the EU - East Asia economic relationship are identified.

In the concluding sections to most chapters, different theoretical perspectives from the field of international political economy are applied to enhance the reader's understanding of the substantive issues covered. The theoretical perspectives chosen from the field of international political economy - neorealism, neoliberalism, and Marxism - serve to highlight the strengths and weaknesses inherent in each approach.

The first chapter sets out the theoretical perspectives and introduces some of the economic themes echoed throughout the text. Following an overview of recent events up to 1998 in EU-East Asia economic relations, Dent details the development of 'economic diplomacy' between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and South Korea. These relationships are all subjected to a rigourous treatment, backed up with a good many statistical and economic data presentations.

The economic development prospects and future challenges facing the East Asian states are reviewed, with consideration to the impact and implications of the 1997-1998 financial crises that enveloped Asia. The role of regionalism in both East Asia and Europe, and the evolution of inter-regional co-operation mechanisms also are covered. The inter-regional dimension provided by the Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM), is discussed, as are challenges related to its future development. The concluding chapter considers the future prospects of the EU-East Asia economic relationship.

Dent's principal argument is that the EU must give greater priority to the promotion of its economic relationship with East Asia, a relationship that could have a significant impact on the international economic system in the twenty-first century. As the weakest component of the triadic link, the EU risks future 'geoeconomic marginalisation' as the transpacific axis endures into the twenty-first century. Dent argues that the EU and major East Asian powers therefore must assume greater responsibilities for managing the international economic order, in part to counter the continuing influence of the United States in the global economy.

The text demands a careful reading, as Dent has peppered important insights throughout the narrative. A short review cannot do the study justice, but his treatment of EU - China relations is noteworthy. Dent makes a convincing case that China's accession to the WTO will have an unprecedented impact on international economic relations.

Of relevance to the current effort to launch a new round of trade negotiations, Dent considers the EU-US initiative to include new issues (environment, investment, labour, etc.) traditionally regarded as matters of domestic economic policy as unwelcome by China. Given its sensitivity to managing its own internal affairs, and the existing suspicions among developing countries about the inclusion of new issues, China becomes a formidable force against the further extension of the multilateral trading system. Mr. Pascal Lamy, EC Trade Commissioner, has acknowledged this recently, and urged that a new round be launched if possible before the formal WTO accession of China is completed.

Dent also points out that it is likely China will request WTO dispute panels targeting the EU anti-dumping regime, and deploy other multilateral instruments to further open the EU market for its products. In this regard, China will be joining with other states in the region, such as Indonesia, which are becoming more determined to overturn the European and American anti-dumping regimes. It is clear that access to the EU textile and clothing market, among others, will be a flash point in the future.

He also takes note of the key role in Chinese domestic and foreign economic policymaking played by the provincial authorities. The internal dynamics of Chinese political economy are rarely highlighted in western policymaking circles, where it is still assumed that Beijing really does hold all the power cards. Dent, however, realises this is a flawed perspective and proposes an eyes-open approach to engaging in economic diplomacy with China. Brussels would do well to heed him on this point, and take his counsel on developing a more robust engagement strategy for reinforcing the EU in East Asia as a whole.

Students of International Economic Relations, and Asian and European Studies will find the volume offers insights to the challenges facing East Asia, and the potential role the EU can play in the region.

Asia and Europe are becoming more and more important to one another, and yet scholarship about their relations remains thin. This book fills an important gap, by offering a comprehensive and timely analysis of the economic linkages among the key protagaonists from the two regions. It is especially important for developing theoretically based understandings about the nature of regionalism and region-to-region relations, providing alternative readings from among key perspectives. Written in an elegant style and replete with detailed information and useful tables, this book is a must for those interested in Asia, Europe and the political economy of regional issues.

I found this book a useful reference work for the original texts concerning the political study of EU integration history & theory.

Wow! This man knows how to write a book on EU law! No one captures the flair and significance of Europe like he does. The chapter on "The Tragedy of Europe" brought tears to my eyes. Why did they not listen?! Why did this have to happen! Nelsen knows and he tells you. I recommend this book to all, not just Norse love gods, but to all humanity!

This long-awaited review of archival records dealing with the Hungarian uprising of 1956 is destined to appear on numerous Cold War historians' bibliographies. It is a meticulously researched study, a grand example of erudite scholarship in its truest sense. Dr. Granville's examination of declassified documents is exhaustively and exhaustingly thorough. However, it is written by someone who is neither a politician nor a member of the "intelligence community," but, rather, an academic. As such, it is often sterile and passionless, lacking bones, blood and breath.

Dr. Granville's book is without question a first-rate, well-researched monograph. She uses Hungarian documents that even Hungarians have not read, sometimes presenting them in dialogue form (Chapter 3). The books reads like a novel in some places. I strongly disagree with the previous review.

It is a little disconcerting to follow the review of such a distinguished authority as Herr Tietmeyer but here goes.

The Annual Hayek Lecture Series is one of the major events of the year for the Institute of Economic Affairs, the London based free market think-tank. In 1999 the Institute invited Herr Otmar Issing, previously member of the board at the Bundesbank and currently an Executive member of the European Central Bank, to deliver the lecture. Professor Her Issing chose as his subject, Hayek, Currency Competition and European Monetary Union.

It is instructive some thirteen weeks after the introduction of the Euro to revisit this text and see how his argument holds up.

The lecturer begins with an acknowledgement of Hayek's contributions in several areas of politics and economics before consideration of his seminal paper for the IEA, "Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Infation", and the later paper, "Denationalisation of Money".

In what follows Issing lays out as he sees it the essential concepts of Hayek's proposal before proceeding to establish through carefully argued analysis, a connection with the single European currency.

In his conclusions to the paper Issing suggests that having a single European Central Bank and a single European currency are the true heirs to hayek's legacy given that they will accomplish what Hayek himself had set out as his ultimate objectives.

Issing's case here is a travesty of the Hayek proposal, based as it is on the selective interpretation and misuse of the texts to substantiate his argument. In fact, if anything the single currency will do more harm than good as it is now in use in a European Union which does not have a single market, and where there are many barriers to internal trade and factor mobility. The so-called independence of the central bank is a falsehood. Consider the similar independence of the Bundesbank when Chancellor Kohl established the exchange rate between East and West German currencies. The continued high level of unemployment in the East of that country is a lingering testament to that political interference.

Similarly, the independence of the Central Bank cannot be guaranteed as the current jockying for positions by the French President, among others shows.

Having said that, this book provides a stimulating look inside the mind of a central banker, whose mindset now reflects that of the institution that employs him. Despite the attempted hijacking of the ideas of a great economist, this book deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in monetary economics.

Once again Otmar Issing has demonstrated his brilliance with this profound and insightful lecture, which debunks many myths surrounding currency competition while, at the same time, reaffirming the value of a currency firmly rooted in a culture of price stability. It is a real pleasure to read. It should be required reading for students of monetary econmics and all those interested in the conduct of monetary policy.

I read this book when in a Russian Liturature class. At the time I had a Russian girlfriend who actually lived in the apartment complex where the story took place. This made it interesting. It is in the same class and genre as "The Inspector General" or "Oblomov".

A Russian (Soviet) apartment complex. One apartment becomes available. Who will get it - Voinovich (the writer) and his pregnant wife, or the colonel, who wants to add it on to his apartment to put his new American toilet in? A short yet classic Russian comedy.

A reviewer before me said Turgenev came in the footsteps of the other great Russians. He might have been after Gogol, whom was the first master of fiction to turn to realism, but he was basically a frontrunner of both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (and Chekhov). At Gogol's death in 1852 Turgenev wrote an eulogy on Gogol and published the short-story cycle "A Sportsman's Sketches", and was banished to his estate. After this he went abroad and spent most of his time in Paris, where he more than anybody made Russian literature known to the outside world. His greatest novels were "A Nest of Gentlefolk", "On the Eve" and of course "Fathers and Sons". "A Month in the Country" is a pleasant and amusing play of the day, and his very best. One that later also highly inspired Chekhov. Further reading recommended: "The Essential Turgenev".

In the footsteps of other such amazing Russian authors comes Turgenev, and his wonderfully written play 'A Month in the Country.' If you love Russian literature of this time period, and you like Love triangles, and plays, then this story can not go wrong.

This book is clearly written and logically organized. It contains much good information with insightful commentary. Professor Bailey's book is a must-read for anyone interested in environmental issues, not only in Europe, but anywhere.

This magisterial work certainly exceeds all expectations - a highly-qualified Fulbright scholar, Ms. Bailey has been a long-time European resident, and has a sensitive, reader-based approach to a highly sensitive topic. Two thumbs up.

In recent years, quite some books have been published on the Soviet Union in the pre-war period. They have all gratefully used soviet archives to give an insight on the situation of the socialist state on the eve of World War II. They all help to explain the debacle that the initial period of War proved to be for the Red Army. Roger Reese wrote his "Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers", giving a social history of the Red Army up to the clash with Germany, focussing on morale and training. David Glantz covered the physical state of the Red Army in "Stumbling Colossus" and Gorodetsky in "Grand Delusion" focuses on diplomacy and politics.

In "Plans for Stalin's War Machine", the Norwegian Lennart Samualson makes an effort to put the economic planning of the three pre-war Five-Year Plans in perspective with the military planning and military doctrine. He argues, not quite surprisingly, that the armed forces have always dominated economic planning. Central figure in the book is Tukhachevsky, successively chief of staff, commander of the Leningrad military district and deputy people commissar (minister) for defence, only to fall victim to Stalin's Great Terror in 1937. Tukhachevsky was the main architect of the Soviet military doctrine of 'deep battle'. Deep battle was the Red Armies way to overcome a trench warfare. Huge forces of modern equipment (tanks, aeroplanes and artillery) would crush the enemy's lines. Meanwhile, great forces of airborne troops would make sure the enemy would get surrounded and would siege main communication and transport point in the hinterland. After this policy got adopted in the early 1930's, it was up to the soviet industry to supply the army with the requested amounts of tanks, aeroplanes and artillery.

As Samuelson points out, things went dearly wrong. The reason for this failure lies in the fact that the Soviet Union couldn't afford to invest heavily in the defence industry. It therefore chose a to set up a dual industry: in case of war, civil industry would transform itself to war industry. Tanks could easily be build on the framework of a tractor of car, Tukhachevsky argued. After 1937 the Soviet Union abandoned this tactic because the civil industry didn't seem able to deliver the goods the Red Army ordered. Just as things get tense - there's a war closing in - the author speeds up his book.

It takes half the book to cover the six years from 1925 to 1931, in which the Red Army basically was wondering how it would survive any war, given the deplorable state of the soviet economy. It than decided that there was no real war threat at all, since none of the likely enemies were able to form any real danger. But as things get really interesting - after all the war forms a real test for the soviet idea's on tactics, the quality of it's weapons, troops and newly build industry - the book gets less and less detailed.

The final chapter on "Economic Planning in Terror and War, 1937-41" shows us a huge amount of tables. The tables show the planed production for the third Five Year Plan (1937-1942). But as Samualson had so well explained previously, actual spending hardly ever followed the plans made in advance by Gosplan, the central planning agency. Apparently, Samualson couldn't find enough archival evidence on the state of the Soviet economy in the thrird Five-Year Plan.

Meanwhile the reader has gotten spoiled by quality material. And most of all, the weak evidence presented by the author doesn't seem to prove his conclusion that in the final pre-war years, the soviet economy succeeded quite well in supplying the Red Army with vast amounts of tanks, aeroplanes, artillery and ammunition. In fact, the first period of war for the Red Army knew larges shortages of supplies, partly because warehouse had been build close to the border and were destroyed by the Germans, partly because of a very weak transport system. Any good mobilisation plan would have dealt with the transport problem. Since he couldn't provide sufficient information on the final period covered by his book, Samuelson should have limited it to the period of 1925-1937. That way, he certainly would have gotten five stars.

In this detailed book, based on newly opened Russian archives, Lennart Samuelson studies Soviet military and economic planning from 1925 to 1941. He shows how the Soviet leadership integrated defence into their general economic planning and decision-making, and how well the defence industries met military requirements.

With the first five-year plan, the Soviet Union developed an advanced industrialised civilian economy. The vital machine building, automobile, tractor, chemical and aircraft industries could be swiftly mobilised in case of war. Samuelson argues that this did not lead to what could be called a 'militarised economy', because the USA, France, Italy and Germany made similar preparations for the demands of total war.

He also discusses Soviet strategic thinking. In the 1918-21 War of Intervention, the armies of fourteen capitalist states invaded Russia, trying to overthrow the revolutionary Government. This naturally confirmed the Soviet leadership's belief that these states would inevitably attack the new socialist state again. The debate raged - could the Soviet Union defeat such an attack? In 1927, Marshall Tukhachevskii, then Chief of Staff, said that the Soviet Union would be defeated, "unless the European revolution will come to our rescue." In 1936, when he was Deputy Defence Commissar, he agreed with Trotsky that Nazi Germany would definitely defeat the Soviet Union. This consistent defeatism was hardly appropriate to a leading figure. Further, Tukhachevskii wanted the military, not civilians, to run military-industrial planning, a clear threat to the Party's leadership of the country.

Samuelson concludes, "With regard to industrial mobilisation, it [the Soviet Union] was certainly ahead of Germany - having adopted the best methods and techniques for preparing the economy in general, and industry in particular, for the test of wartime production conditions." He sums up, "The presently available data give on the whole a more balanced and well-equipped Red Army on the eve of Operation Barbarossa than in the historiography of past decades."

Certainly, any rational thinking American is completely flabbergasted by the atrocities Stalin commited in the very long twenty-four years he reigned in the Soviet Union. And naturally any thinking person would want to know why a person would commit these atrocities.

Ulam's excellent biography puts into perspective how a seemingly under-educated person such as Stalin could fill the void left by a giant of a person like Lenin. The part of the book that is most insightful is the chapters describing the power stuggle that took place "after" V.I. Lenin's death. You really start to understand how a gifted author and orator such as Leon Trotsky lost the battle for Lenin's mantle to Stalin. A person can even begin to sypathize for Stalin, but then the author describes what happened after Stalin became the maximum leader of the USSR in 1929. Of course everyone knows what happened after 1929, collectivization, purges, show trials of Bukharin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, and the assasination of Leon Trotsky. Ulam's book is quite lengthy, but it is well worth the read, I would recommend this book to anyone.

This is quite simply a masterful book. Ulam gives the impression of having read, pondered, and put in context everything ever written in any language by and about Stalin, the other Bolsheviks, and their close contemporaries in the USSR and Europe. And yet he is anything but tedious. He is as fine a writer as any historian around -- lucid, incisive, authoritative, serious and yet with a very witty, very dry irony. His tone is ideally suited for writing about historical figures, especially such grotesque ones as Stalin and his cohorts.

No doubt - this book gives excellent, up-to-date information (published in 2000) about the societal developments and current political situation & tendencies in both Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. The book is very logically composed: Each country is introduced with a brief on history, geography and politics. Mr. Derleth manages to explain politically complex issues in a fairly simple way, and each country's chapter has a helpful geographical map showing regions and cities.

Having read this book, the reader is certain to have a solid understanding of the political climate and current problems of the countries mentioned above. Very good.

I like two particular details: a. In each chapter, politically important people in the respective countries are described and introduced with a small CV (less than half a page each).

b. Furthermore, Derleth has added to each country's chapter a very helpful overview of related and relevant internet adresses where one can obtain additional information on a variety of political issues. Thanks for this detail.

However: My reason for giving this book only four stars instead of five are: 1. A slightly clearer point of view would be helpful in some of the chapters. For example, in the Bulgaria section, crime is described a couple of times as being on the rise, but in the very end is is said that under the current government, crime is down. I fully understand what the author means, namely that the crime wave seems to get under control by the ODF government, but on a couple of occasions there are some unclarities. Another way of putting it would probably solve these things.

2. Some more maps... Although each country's section is introduced with a good map, this good book could benefit from just a few more illustrations. Why not some photos/pictures of the most important figures? OK, most of us now very well how e.g. Yeltsin looks like, but why not in each country's section bring four or five photos/pictures of the most important persons in both historical and political sense?

That's it. Summa Summarum: If you want fresh and up-to-date info on politics in Russia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary, buy this book. Other readers may find the number of maps fully satisfactory, it's a matter of taste. The most important thing is that everything is explained in a way so that even a person knowing absolutely nothing about these four countries will obtain a solid and useful knowledge, on history as well as politics.

Professor Derleth's book is an excellent primer on former Soviet bloc countries that have been trying to establish constituional governments and free-market economic systems. Using Bulgaria, Russia, Hungary, and Poland as examples, Professor Derleth answers the question, "Why has the progress towards this goal has been uneven among these countries?"

He gives a thorough overview of the political systems, party systems, and electoral systems in each country, then demonstrates how the design of those systems directly affects outcomes in the transition process. Taking Russia for example, he demostrates how the checks and balances between the President and the parliament are strongly tilted towards the president. This system that gives the president so much power has caused instability when the president has tried to impose policies that lacked legislative support.

In taking this comparative approach, Derleth looks at historical similarities and differences, but he also examines the reforms that have been implemented and how they differ from one country to the next. If one wants to clearly understand the politics of countries in this region, this book offers a clear and concise way to do so.

I particularly enjoyed the overviews of the history of each country, but also found them quite telling about the contemporary situation in each countries today. For example, Derleth writes of Bulgaria, "As a result of Bulgaria's almost slavish alliance with the former Soviet Union, it has most of the latter's economic, politicial and social problems . . . this political and economic legacy has made it difficult to create a civil society, democratic institutions, and a market economy based on the rule of law."

What makes this book so useful is how it shows the inseperable relationship between politics and economics. Without the right kind of political reform, economic reform is doomed to fail. For example he shows how political battles in Bulgaria have prevented crucial economic reforms, such as privatization.

He also does not ignore cultural factors. He notes that one cultural factor that has led to Hungary's success is its previous economic and cultural links to the West. However, while Derleth considers the importance of culture, his book offer hope beyond the all-too-common refrain that countries are victims of their history. This book shows that there are right ways to establish political and econmomic systems, and that doing it the right way can direcctly lead a country towards freedom and prosperity -- regardless of their history.

One can take this lesson and apply it to any underdeveloped country. Derleth's approach is to look at the country's economy and ask such questions as, "To what extent have enterprises and property been privatized? How open and competitive are markets? What is the legal enivronment in the area of invesments?

Look at a country's political system, and ask such questions as "Is there a democratic, multiparty systems with free and fair elections? Do citizens have civil rights such as free speech and freedom of assembly?

Derleth leaves readers with hope for this region, noting that legal rights are being strenghtened, economic reforms are being implemented, and even former communists are learning to play politics in a democratic setting.