Critique internationale - Content
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Georges-Henri Soutou, La guerre de Cinquante Ans. Les relations Est-Ouest, 1945-1990 Paris, Fayard, 2001, 767 page
Davis (Mike), Late Victorian Holocausts. El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, Londres, Verso, 2001, 464 pages.
Erlmann(Veit), Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination. South Africa and the West, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, 312 pages.
Wacqant (Loïc), Corps et âme. Carnets ethnographiques d’un apprenti boxeur, Marseille, Agone, 2000, 270 pages.
Ikhtilal Mizan al-Sultah wa al-Sarwah fi Sudan. Al-Kitab al-Aswad [Les déséquilibres du pouvoir et de la richesse au Soudan. Le livre noir] sl [Khartoum], sd [mai 2000], sans maison d’édition, 90 pages.
Mouffe (Chantal) ,The Democratic Paradox, Londres, Verso, 2000,143 pages.
Rosoux (Valérie-Barbara), Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales. Le recours au passé dans la politique étrangère de la France à l’égard de l’Allemagne et de l’Algérie, de 1962 à nos jours, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2001,403 pages.
[French China policy. From the myth of the privileged relationship to the syndrome of normalization]
Although it does not stem from an original project, one can speak of a specific French China policy. Ever since Paris and Beijing established diplomatic ties in 1964, the bilateral relationship has usually been evaluated in France according to this founding event and its supposed outstanding reach. But this interpretation of de Gaulle's gesture is a myth. Thus bilateral tensions arising from human rights abuses in China or from French arms sales to Taiwan are always solved in very provisional ways. In sum, repeated phases of crisis and normalization follow from the myth of a privileged relationship. The latest of these occurred in 1997, with the establishment of a "global partnership". The latter has yet to improve France's share of the Chinese market, which is a poor outcome given that France ranks third amongst China's bilateral financial backers.
[The Ottoman Empire: Nomads and borders in the 18th and 19th centuries]
With the emergence of European modern nation-states in the 18th century, the Ottoman state was pushed to fix its borders and sedentarize nomads whose presence within the empire had, until then, served the state. Ironically, this policy resulted in increased mobility. First, territorial losses produced a flood of refugees who had to be settled, inducing a sort of domino effect. Also, populations were displaced for various reasons, including punitive actions. But this policy of sedentarization did not necessarily involve coercion since the state negotiated with chiefs of the nomadic tribes, who were often willing collaborators. It is thus difficult to establish a distinction between the state and society in this process. And the state, confronted with the question of national construction, did not manage to overcome the ethnic and religious diversity of society.
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[Consuming one's capital, suffering one's geography: Until when?]
The democratic transition in Brazil has been followed by rampant inflation, the causes of which are not only economic in nature. The federal structure of the country and the fact that democratization, which began at the level of the federated states, was slow to reach the center were also important factors. For a long time, the various states made great gains from their relative autonomy, which was most important with respect to monetary policy due to the absence of a truly centralized monetary authority. Likewise, stabilization, which involved the concentration of monetary power in the central bank, succeeded largely for political reasons: exasperated with hyperinflation, the voters were no longer swayed by populism; and, astutely, President Cardoso made use of the electoral calendar to bring the state governments into line.
[The question of the state and impossible recentralization]
Since 1991, the question of the state has not been a central concern of leaders in Moscow. Federalism had been - and still is - considered to be a handicap. Serious reflection has not been devoted to the fundamental problem of regional government in a federal state. While Putin has indeed turned to the issues of the state and governance, his approach and his methods are inappropriate to the present context. Contrary to Putin's view, the problem today is not "recentralization versus decentralization", but rather the management of the established fact of strongly autonomous regional and local leaders. The reformation of federalism and regional arrangements has been, thus far, a failure.
[The management of the old Empire, or the vestiges of power]
During its ten-year life span, the "new" Russia has moved between vacillating policy positions with regards to the former Soviet Union. Contrary to Serbia in ex-Yugoslavia, nationalist sentiment has not erupted in post-Soviet Russia. Instead, the latter has expressed unrealistic enthusiasm for the West. But disappointment arising from economic demise and the limits of Western assistance has led to increasingly imperial practices, which have been influenced by emergent ultra-nationalism. These are facilitated by the weak economy and failing policies of the former Soviet republics and their vulnerability to ethnic claims in their respective territories, which Russia has often used to its own ends. Since then, we have seen a new swing of the pendulum, although it has proved less dramatic than the first one.
[Russia and the West: from illusion to disenchantment]
Following in the wake of the Gorbachev period, Russia expected much from its relations with the West. Disillusion followed quickly, due to exaggerated expectations and increasing asymmetries between Russia and the West regarding economic, political, and military resources. As of 1996, and with the replacement of Kozyrev by Primakov as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Russia began to insist upon its national interests and to promote the idea of a multi-polar world. But this policy met with failure when the war in ex-Yugoslavia ended. Putin's ascension to power is associated with a drive for independence with respect to the Western powers, or even the desire for a determining position in a multi-polar world, which evokes images of de Gaulle
