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Survival: Global Politicsand StrategyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsur20

Book reviewsCaroline Kennedy a , Philip Windsor b , RobertCooper c , Robert G. Bell d , Lewis A. Dunn e

, Bill Mcsweeney f , Derek Davies g & ColinaMacdougall ha Lecturer in Soviet Foreign Policy ,University College of Wales , Aberystwythb London School of Economics & PoliticalScience ,c Foreign and Commonwealth Office , Londond United States Senate Committee on ArmedServices , Washington, DCe Assistant Vice President, ScienceApplications International Corporation ,McLean, VAf Centre for Peace Studies , Dubling Consultant Editor, Far Eastern EconomicReview, and Editor in Residence, East‐WestCenter, Hawaiih Financial TimesPublished online: 03 Mar 2008.

To cite this article: Caroline Kennedy , Philip Windsor , Robert Cooper , RobertG. Bell , Lewis A. Dunn , Bill Mcsweeney , Derek Davies & Colina Macdougall(1991) Book reviews, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 33:1, 84-96, DOI:10.1080/00396339108442577

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Book reviewsPerestroika Annual: Volume 2Edited by Professor Abel G. Aganbegyan. McLean, VA: Brassey's (US), 1990.312pp. $23.95.

In the astonishingly short space of time since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power,the political and social climate within the Soviet Union has undergone what canonly be described as a transformation. The power of the Communist Party of theSoviet Union has fragmented, political groupings have proliferated and civilsociety is in transition. In its external affairs, Moscow has presided over dramaticchanges in its foreign-policy agenda: the withdrawal of troops from Eastern Eur-ope, the acceptance of a reunited Germany into NATO and the commitment tosignificant cuts in the Soviet defence budget all testify to radical reform under theauspices of 'new thinking'. This collection brings together the opinions of leadingSoviet figures, from politicians, academics and even sportsmen, who, in theiressays, espouse the ideas which underpin the perestroika process.

The annual is divided into seven sections which deal variously with the impactof perestroika upon social and political issues, the economy, science, religion, cul-ture, ecology and sport.

In the chapters which deal with the new political thinking, substantial contri-butions are made by Gorbachev's former ideologue, Vadim Medvedev, and oneof the Soviet President's leading advisers, Georgi Shakhnazarov. Medvedev'sessay deals with the ideological precepts which inspired the attempts to reform theParty and society. While accepting the need for the Party to relinquish some of itspower, he nevertheless mounts a spirited defence of the 'leading and guiding' roleof the Party, claiming that any attempt to weaken the Party represents 'a threat toperestroika and society as a whole'. Given the fact that Article Six, which enshrinedthe leading, guiding role of the Communist Party, has now been relinquished andthat the Party effectively self-destructed during the early months of 1990,Medvedev's belief in it may be outmoded. Nevertheless, even if many of his ideashave been superseded by events, the chapter remains interesting because of itsrejection of the traditional Marxist perspective of viewing the world in terms ofclass, and because of its espousal of'interdependence' and 'all human values'. It isapparent that, in Medvedev's opinion, the doctrines of the 'class struggle' and'autarky' are no longer viable. Shakhnazarov aligns himself with this point of view,rejecting the notion of class struggle, and writing that 'the two basic socio-economic systems have more in common than differences'.

This theme is reinforced in Bessmertnykh's writings on foreign policy. Perceiv-ing the international order in terms of class is forcibly rejected in favour of a viewbased on the primacy of the state. The 'priority of national interests over all others'is conceded. Bessmertnykh also analyses the now familiar themes of Gorbachev'sforeign policy - the primacy of the political over the military, the non-utility ofnuclear weapons and the necessity for arms control. The chapter also addresses keyissues in the history of Soviet foreign policy, such as the origins of the Cold Warand the decision to deploy ground forces in Afghanistan. He poses the question asto whether a more democratic decision-making process might have led to different

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outcomes; while no answer is attempted, the very questioning of Soviet decision-making reveals the extent to which glasnost has pervaded the study of history.

Bromlei's chapter on ethnic relations is less than satisfactory. While demonstrat-ing an admirable awareness of the complexity of the ethnic issue in the USSR andthe processes through which the various groups became bound to Moscow, heunfortunately adopts a superficial approach to the issue of resolving ethnic con-flicts. Bromlei writes of the need to harmonize ethnic relations, but provides littleclue as to how a leadership dedicated to perestroika can reconcile its democraticambitions with the continual denial of what the Baltic Republics perceive as theirdemocratic rights.

Concrete prescriptions are also lacking in the section on the Soviet economy.Wholesale advocation of the free-market system, price and currency reform are allendorsed, as is conversion of the military into civilian industry. This conversionapparently will be stimulated by cuts in military budgeting. It is predicted that themilitary budget will be cut by 50% in the next five years. This would have beenwildly optimistic even before the Soviet authorities had to take into account thecost of withdrawal from Eastern Europe; written, as it is, with this knowledge tohand, the claim is simply fatuous. What might be saved through cutting procure-ment programmes is sure to be lost on housing, feeding and employing redundanttroops. The peace dividend is not a panacea for the Soviet economy.

The final sections on religion, culture, ecology, sport, the Armenian earthquake andan opinion poll are somewhat chaotic. The lowest point is reached in a chapter whichis no more than a verbal presentation of statistics - what is presented in four pagescould have been tabulated in half a page. Of the last six articles, two are of most note:the revival of Christian beliefs is forcefully described in one chapter by a Christianpastor (in itself a remarkable testament to the power of glasnost), while, in a ratherquirky chapter, the importance of sport to the perestroika process is discussed.

The collection of essays presented here is of mixed quality. What binds themtogether and makes the whole worth reading are the hopes that the authors expressregarding the process of reform currently under way in the Soviet Union. Unfortu-nately, the perestroika process is not actually producing the economic resultsdesired. Perhaps this book, written in an earlier spirit of optimism, should beregarded not as what is, but as what is hoped for.

CAROLINE KENNEDYLecturer in Soviet Foreign Policy, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth

Soviet-British Relations since the 1970sEdited by Alex Pravda and Peter J.S. Duncan. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1990. 263pp. £30.00.

It is difficult to write sensibly about Anglo-Soviet relations, for a number ofreasons. There is the difficulty of context: the stuff of which such relations aremade derives very largely from the United Kingdom's membership of multilateralorganizations such as NATO and the European Community. However, there isalso the UK's particular role within these organizations to consider - its closerelationship with Washington in terms of the first, which can make it a valuableinterlocutor for Moscow on occasion, and its less than enthusiastic approach to

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integration in terms of the second, which might relegate it to a more or less mar-ginal role as President Gorbachev tries to construct a 'Common EuropeanHouse'. There is the difficulty of assessing what actually matters. For the UK, theSoviet Union bulks overwhelmingly large when it comes to security, but has beenof declining importance until very recently in economic and cultural terms. For theUSSR, on the other hand, the UK hardly provides a major cause for concern overits security, but was seen until recently as a politically hostile country which it wasnonetheless worth cultivating in the cultural and even economic and technologicalfields. There is the difficulty of determining whether the historical record makesany sense: are the violent oscillations of the past likely to continue, or has somekind of breakthrough been made in establishing a more stable relationship? Thenthere is the final difficulty: scarcely anything has been written about the subject. AsAlex Pravda points out in the Introduction, the fullest body of information andcomment in recent years consists of the reports of the House of Commons ForeignAffairs Committee.

The book that Pravda and Duncan have edited overcomes these problemsimpressively. It is eminently sensible. All contributors maintain a tone of cool andcogent scrutiny - indeed it says much for the editors that so many different auth-orities have come together to produce what reads as a single book rather than aseries of disjointed essays. They do, however, cover a great many subjects; and,inevitably perhaps, one sometimes wonders which are central to the main theme ofthe book - the way that the USSR and the UK see each other and the configurationof interests shaping their relations - and which are rather peripheral. Mike Bowkerand Peter Shearman have, for instance, contributed an interesting chapter on theUSSR and the British Left, but apart from laying to rest the myth that the Cam-paign for Nuclear Disarmament was some kind of Soviet front organization, whatit really shows is that relations between 'leftish' groups in the UK and other groupsin the USSR have roughly followed the pattern of relations between the two statesas a whole. Anna Dyer provides an empirical guide to doing business with theUSSR - admittedly written at a time when the Soviet credit rating was a good dealhigher than it is today, but a clearly structured guide nonetheless. Yet one would beless surprised to see it in the book-pack of a company representative than in a vol-ume concerned with the themes indicated above. Such quibbles apart, though, allthe principal considerations of what is involved in the dealings between the twocountries are thoroughly and coolly examined.

The first section is concerned with perspectives. Sir Curtis Keeble, in a generalhistorical analysis of developments since the Russian Revolution, discerns a cycli-cal pattern, in which outbursts of optimism were followed by periods of disil-lusion and mistrust, but offers some indication that such a pattern might nowchange. Peter Duncan and Michael Clarke get to grips with the notoriously difficultissues of Soviet perspectives on Britain and British perspectives on the USSR,respectively. The issues pose problems because it is hard not to generalize, particu-larly when drawing on patchy sources, ultimately under the control of the SovietCommunist Party, or insubstantial ones like opinion polls. Both writers dis-tinguish admirably between the many questions involved, and show that atti-tudes over one question can be quite different from attitudes simultaneously heldover another. One surprise for this reviewer at least was to see how seriously theUSSR still takes the UK.

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In the following section, dealing with the various dimensions of the Soviet-British relationship, there are two outstanding chapters, one by Margot Light onthe political and diplomatic dimension, and one by Michael Kaser on traderelations, which also has an excellent statistical appendix. The strength of MargotLight's chapter lies in her ability to relate the question of what policy objectivesactually are to that of how policy is made, and she makes a number of subtle andtelling points, some of them unfortunately in the footnotes. The strength ofMichael Kaser's chapter lies in his setting of British trade relations within theinternational economic context. It is a first-class 'compare-and-contrast' piece ofwork. Christoph Bluth's chapter on the security dimension provides a good exam-ination of Soviet-British interaction within the wider NATO context and showshow the USSR regards British nuclear forces quite differently from its view of theAmerican arsenal, but the chapter suffers from the occasional chronological/conceptual muddle. Finally, John Morison skilfully combines analysis and advo-cacy in his survey of cultural relations. Considering his analysis of the impedi-ments on both sides, it is surprising that there are any cultural relations at all.Whereas the Soviet impediments have been largely political, the British obstacleshave been mostly economic. Now that change in the USSR has removed most ofthe political restrictions he argues strongly that it is time for the British govern-ment to be a lot less niggardly.

These are the areas of consideration. The editors draw them together in a con-clusion which is lucid but a touch cautious. Perhaps that is the price for havingproduced a sensible book - but anyone wishing to engage in a more visionaryapproach would still find it indispensable.

PHILIP WINDSORLondon School of Economics & Political Science

A German Identity 1770-1990By Harold James. London: Weidenfeld Publishers Ltd, 1990. 257pp. £16.95.

'What makes a nation a nation?' Harold James asks at the start of his book. Thequestion is relevant not just for Germans today, but also for the British and theFrench, for those who think of themselves as Europeans, and for many others too:Russians, Arabs and Yugoslavs, to name just a few. Germany and national identityare good subjects for students of strategic studies: Germany because of its key stra-tegic position; national identity since it is one of the factors that determines whofights for whom and why.

Harold James's answer to this question is original, penetrating and full of strik-ing insights. The main theme of A German Identity is the role that has been playedby economics in forming the idea of a German identity, and the problems that thishas caused. James argues that during the nineteenth century, when the Germanstate was created, economic progress was one of the main objectives of unificationand also one of the binding forces for the nation. Born out of a customs union,brought up on formidable efforts in science and industry, Germany saw economicsboth as a raison d'etre for the nation and also as the route to national power. Thefailure of this approach, first in World War I and later in the Weimar Republic, ledto an alternative cultural, ethnic nationalism. When that brought even greater dis-

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aster to the nation, Germany returned - James argues - to a muted version of theeconomic doctrine. Or rather, in the post-war period, to two versions, since Eastand West Germany adopted different ideas of the nation, both with a certain econ-omic content.

James makes a persuasive case for this interpretation. He also argues that econ-omics does not work as a basis for national identity (instead he agrees withMadame de Stael: 'Political institutions alone are capable of forming the characterof Nations'). If identity is based on economics, then economic failure will bring onan identity crisis. And, as Germans were already arguing in the nineteenth century,the nation-state is not a natural economic unit. An economic doctrine seems tolead either to expansionism on the pre-war model or to submerging the nation in awider unit - the post-war version. Finally, an economic approach to nationhoodwill always be vulnerable to moral attack on the grounds that materialism isunworthy of the nation.

The above is no more than a crude summary of James's subtle and many-layeredargument. He does not claim that German identity has been a matter only of econ-omics - the cultural strand is also prominent - but he does make a powerful casethat economics is one of the strongest threads in the fabric of German identity.

This is also a book about Germany's place in the international system. Thatplace has always been in the middle. As a consequence, when Europe has pros-pered, so has Germany. When Europe has been divided - during the Cold War orthe Thirty Years War - Germany has been divided; when Europe has played thegame of great-power politics, Germany has employed it with devastating effect.

History books are not meant to predict the future. But the progress of Germanunification, beginning with economic migration, proceeding first to economic andmonetary union and only later to political and constitutional union, seems to illus-trate James's theme perfectly. Which is a more important symbol of Germanytoday - the flag or the Deutschmark? Which institution is more central to thenational life - the Bundestag or the Bundesbank} And yet, as James suggests, theeconomic strain is more muted today than in the past. The refugees from the Eastcame not just for better living conditions, but also for freedom of travel, of infor-mation and for freedom from the Stasi. And Germans feel an increasing attach-ment to political as well as economic institutions: the Federal Presidency and theConstitutional Court in particular.

Given the relevance of this historical analysis to current events there was noneed for the publishers to release an updated version less than a year after the orig-inal. (By this criterion, a further revision would already be required.) The revisedversion does, however, include a particularly interesting final paragraph. HereJames points out the similarity between Germany's economic doctrine ofnationhood and the idea of the European Community. Both combine a cloudyidealism with a certain appeal to materialism; both attempt to create an identityaround economic success rather than political institutions. Perhaps the Com-munity is, at bottom, a German conception with its origins in the myths of theHoly Roman Empire.

ROBERT COOPER

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London

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The Hidden Cost of Deterrence: Nuclear Weapons AccidentsBy Shaun Gregory. London: Brassey's (UK), 1990. 255pp. £29.95.

When a visitor to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington first sees the seem-ingly endless list of names of American servicemen killed in that conflict, thereaction is typically one of shock. No matter how many contemporaneous tele-vision reports one might have seen of American casualties in Vietnam, the Wall'saggregation of these individual deaths drives home the 'hidden costs' of that war ina manner for which few visitors find themselves prepared.

Shaun Gregory's excellent book on nuclear-weapons accidents produces a simi-lar effect with respect to this subject. No matter how many television reports onemay have seen of bomber crashes or burning Soviet submarines or explosions atmilitary facilities, the reader is unprepared for the sheer volume of the book's com-pilation of nuclear-weapons accidents - a listing that takes up nearly 50 pages. Aswith the casualty toll in Vietnam, the cost of these accidents was 'hidden', notbecause they were covered up, but because they had not been comprehendedbefore as a collective whole.

In reading Gregory's book, the shock one experiences that so many nuclear near-misses have occurred is accompanied by relief that no accidental detonation hasever taken place. Is this perfect record due to good luck, or to the prudent foresightof the designers of these weapons? Gregory's answer is that it is some combinationof both: 'The success of nuclear weapons safety has been to prevent such accidentsfrom triggering an accidental nuclear detonation. It would be misleading toassume, however, that nuclear weapons accidents do not constitute a danger to thegeneral public because, thus far, an accidental nuclear detonation has been pre-vented.' (p. 82)

Gregory wisely eschews a simplistic appeal for nuclear disarmament and insteadrecommends a useful set of measures to reduce both the incidence and the conse-quence of nuclear-weapons accidents. These range from broad policy prescrip-tions (pursuing a deMIRVing initiative in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks toproduce a more robust strategic balance and thereby reduce the need for a perma-nently high degree of weapons readiness), to far more mundane ideas (removingfinancial limits on the military's liability for nuclear accidents).

A particularly cogent insight of the book is its discussion of what the author calls'the dilemma of weapons readiness versus weapons safety'. Gregory draws twoconclusions concerning this relationship: first, nuclear accidents are more likelywhen considerations of nuclear readiness dominate this trade-off; and second, therequirement for high readiness levels will always mean that nuclear weapons willnot be as safe as human ingenuity could make them.

The accuracy of these observations was underscored at a hearing of the ArmedServices Committee of the US Senate in May 1990, when the directors of three USnational weapons laboratories stunned the audience by recommending that thenuclear short-range attack missile (SRAM-A) be taken off alert and put into astand-by posture that would reduce the exposure of the system to possible acci-dents. A few weeks after the hearing, the Air Force announced that the SRAM-Apeacetime nuclear alert missions were being discontinued.

This decision was not based on new information about the design of the war-head. Rather, it reflected a reassessment of the appropriate balance betweensafety considerations and military needs given trends in the security environment.

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In February 1990, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that with the recent posi-tive changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, 'the risk of nuclear deterrence fail-ing is assessed to be low and at this moment to be decreasing.'

As the Senate Armed Services Committee noted in its report on the Fiscal Year1991 Defense Authorization Act, the reduced prospect that US nuclear weaponsmight have to be employed may afford an opportunity to reconsider past reluc-tance to utilize certain positive control measures, such as the installation of per-missive action links on US nuclear weapons at sea and the installation of post-launch destruct mechanisms on US ICBM and SLBM. The Committee directedthe President to submit a report in 1991 evaluating these two options. The Com-mittee also called for parallel US and Soviet reviews of their respective nuclearcommand and control (or 'failsafe') procedures and recommended expanded useof the existing US/Soviet Nuclear Risk Reduction Centres.

There are a few rough spots in Gregory's book. As he himself notes, the analysisis biased towards US nuclear accidents, since the US record is far more available tothe public than that of the other nuclear powers. The assertion in the very first sen-tence in the book that '[i]t is more than 25 years since nuclear weapons accidentswere the subject of close scrutiny by the nuclear powers' is not substantiated. In thecase of the United States, at least, his accusation of'apparent disinterest' does adisservice to the thousands of US military leaders, defence officials, operationalpersonnel and weapons designers who concern themselves day in and day out withnuclear-weapons safety and security. Finally, one occasionally comes across anerror of fact. For example, the first US ICBM - the Atlas D - was not deployed inunderground silos.

Nonetheless, The Hidden Cost ofDeterrence makes an important contribution topublic knowledge about and appreciation for the issue of nuclear-weapons acci-dents. Shaun Gregory's study reminds us that however tempted we may be by theadage: 'out of sight; out of mind', nuclear-weapons safety is too important for ourpublics not to be informed and involved. As a slogan popular with some bumpersticker devotees reads: 'One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day'.

ROBERT G. BELLUnited States Senate Committee on Armed Services, Washington DC

Western Europe and the Future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation TreatyEdited by Peter Lomas and Harald Müller. Brussels: Centre for EuropeanPolicy Studies and Frankfurt: Peace Research Institute, 1989. 144pp. 550 Bfr.

On 20 August 1990, the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)gathered in Geneva for the fourth NPT Review Conference. Virtually all of theparties present indicated their support for the NPT, while agreement was reachedon important steps to strengthen global nuclear non-proliferation efforts (e.g., onrequiring acceptance of'full-scope' safeguards on all peaceful nuclear activities in arecipient country as a condition for nuclear supply). Nonetheless, agreement on aconsensus Final Document was blocked by the Mexican delegation in the earlymorning hours of 15 September, in an apparent attempt to link negotiation of acomprehensive ban on nuclear testing (CTB) to extension of the NPT in 1995.

The essays in this volume provide a thoughtful starting point to assess the impli-cations of the 1990 Review Conference for extension of the NPT. Equally import-

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ant, they highlight possible contributions by European countries - individuallyand within the broader process of European Political Co-operation - both to exten-sion of the NPT and to efforts to head off the further spread of nuclear weapons toSouth Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. This European perspective is par-ticularly welcome in a field still largely defined by American writings and shapedmostly by US actions.

In 1995, the parties to the NPT will determine by a majority vote whether toextend the NPT 'indefinitely, or . . . for an additional fixed period or periods'.The issues likely to be at the heart of the debate already were clear in 1990 and areconcisely summarized in John Simpson's essay. Critical to the result will be thetension Simpson notes between countries that view the NPT primarily as a vehicleto block the 'horizontal' spread of nuclear weapons and those that view it essen-tially as a means for nuclear disarmament. This tension has moderated in recentyears, with progress in arms control as well as a greater appreciation by developingcountries that their own security would be adversely affected by nuclear prolifer-ation. But the breakdown of consensus in 1990 over the CTB issue shows that thistension still has the potential to lead to great difficulties in 1995.

Prospects for a successful NPT extension also depend on whether additionalcountries deploy nuclear weapons, thereby weakening the security rationale for theTreaty. Essays by Peter Lomas on Israel and the Arab countries and on Pakistanrightly stress that 'there will be no nuclear solution without a political one, and viceversa'. Both the current Gulf Crisis as well as Benazir Bhutto's removal asPakistan's prime minister, however, probably make the prospects for political pro-gress even dimmer. On a more upbeat note, David Fischer explains the logic thatmay yet lead South Africa to join the NPT. If Pretoria takes that step, adequateassurances concerning its prior nuclear activities will be important to preserve theNPT's credibility.

A recurrent theme is what can be done by the countries of Europe to support theNPT and nuclear non-proliferation. As Alexander Kelle and Harald Miillerremind us, there are striking blemishes on the non-proliferation record of Euro-pean countries, especially regarding control of nuclear exports. Weaknesses inthis area could take on more significance, they note, with the creation of a singleEuropean internal market in 1992. To counter that danger, a related essay byMiiller provides a very good checklist of measures and procedures that all Euro-pean governments could take to ensure rigorous export controls. The possibilitiesand limits regarding European co-operation on nuclear non-proliferatiori andextending the NPT are also discussed, with stress laid on expanding the use ofEuropean Political Co-operation. France's readiness to accept a common Com-munity statement on nuclear non-proliferation and the NPT prior to the fourthReview Conference, as well as its participation as an observer at the Conference,suggest that further thinking about Europe's non-proliferation role could beespecially timely. It also could be very helpful, as Kelle and Miiller argue, instrengthening US and Soviet efforts.

Virtually all of the essays in this volume originated as conference papers. For themost part, they share the virtues and vices of such papers, quickly sketching issuesbut not examining them in great depth. Given European ties to the nuclear pro-grammes of both Argentina and Brazil, it also would have been desirable toaddress Europe's role in Latin America. Overall, however, this set of essays com-

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prises a valuable European contribution to the pursuit of a more effective nuclearnon-proliferation strategy and to long-term extension of the NPT in 1995.

LEWIS A. DUNNAssistant Vice President, Science Applications International Corporation,McLean, VA

Unneutral Ireland: An Ambivalent and Unique Security PolicyBy Trevor C. Salmon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. 347pp. £37.50.

Dr Trevor Salmon's contribution to the literature of Irish neutrality is bydefinition substantial - Irish foreign policy attracts little interest from foreignscholars and, aside from the ambiguous case of Northern Ireland, it captures theattention of only a handful of home specialists. Apart from a standard work by Pat-rick Keatinge, Salmon's is the first serious academic study of neutrality to appearin many decades. If only for that reason we should be grateful!

Salmon places his study in a conceptual framework of post-war neutrality in gen-eral and, as his awkward title suggests, he casts a cold eye over a subject which hasgenerated much heat among the political parties and tendencies since Ireland'sfirst application to join the Economic Community in 1961. He examines the poli-cies of Switzerland, Sweden and Austria in order to construct what he calls the'European model', a set of variables against which to test the Irish claim to peace-time neutrality (he excludes Finland on the dubious, if literally correct, groundsthat it is not universally accepted as neutral). These variables are: (i) due diligencein maintaining inviolability of territory; (ii) recognition of neutral status by others;(Hi) disavowal of external help in a future conflict; (iv) protection of freedom ofaction in the political, military and economic fields; (v) a positive and impartialattitude to the amelioration of world problems and impartiality towards the ColdWar; and (vi) the state's attitude to national identity and unity.

After an initial discussion of Ireland's record during World War II, in which henotes (after Robert Fisk) 160 violations and a general partiality to the UK, Salmonjudges that Ireland was not neutral, but 'non-belligerent'. It hardly matters to dis-pute the label; the fact is that Sweden and Switzerland, against which Ireland'srecord is measured, were themselves guilty of violations of probably equal import.Who is to judge? Not Salmon, who does not explore them seriously or weigh themin the balance against the Irish. His position here - and it is the major criticism ofhis book - is almost essentialist, as if the boundaries of neutrality were absolutelyfixed, and not the fluid, messy reality which applied in wartime. This is still true inthe 1990s, and would have been obvious between times had the stability of theCold War not lent neutrality an extrinsic and spurious objectivity.

Salmon applies his six criteria to Ireland during several periods of history andconcludes that Ireland fails the test. However, the value of these criteria is ques-tionable. The last two make little sense in a purportedly rigorous methodology.Most attention is paid to his fourth criterion - the degree to which freedom ofaction is maintained. Under this heading, Salmon considers the manner in whichthe neutral country protects its political, economic and military freedom in peace-time. His discussion of Ireland's relative dependence in these spheres and of thesleight-of-hand by which the EC countries in the Single European Act - at Ireland'srequest - allowed Ireland to claim that the military aspects of security were

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excluded from the Act's aspirations to develop a security dimension is detailed andexcellent. There is much here that will be of benefit to future scholars, though thematerial might have been made more accessible had it been organized thematicallyrather than chronologically.

In his attempt to build a case against Irish neutrality, Salmon relies too heavilyon the utterances of Irish politicians both in and out of office, without offering anycriterion by which such comments can be evaluated. This reliance on quantityrather than quality of evidence enables him to avoid the question of whether or notthere is an official policy of neutrality, and to what extent such a declaration mightthrow light on the nature of Irish neutrality.

Since 1961, all Irish governments have subscribed to the policy laid down in thatyear by Prime Minister Sean Lemass: Ireland is not a member of a militaryalliance, but accepts the obligation to participate in a future defence arrangementwithin the EC. The consistency of this position is beyond doubt; what it signifies inrelation to Ireland's right to be termed 'neutral' is that Ireland claims non-alignment today - like Sweden - but does not aspire to permanent neutrality asdo Switzerland and Austria. Clearly, this official position can be described as suigeneris. That is indeed Salmon's conclusion, but it could have been reachedequally from an analysis of official declarations by the Irish government.

The shortcomings of Salmon's book might have been avoided had he been ableto consult two recent contributions to the topic: Efraim Karsh's Neutrality andSmall States (Routledge) and Harto Hakovirta's East- West Conflict and EuropeanNeutrality (Clarendon). Though they also came too early to take account of theimpact of the end of the Cold War and the threat of 1992 on the norms and con-duct of neutral countries, their attempts to construct a theory of neutrality areinstructive: (a) for the failure to achieve it; and (b) for the light their researchthrows on the individual nature of each country's policy and the elasticity of theconcept of neutrality throughout the post-war period. The world has changed forneutrals and aligned alike. But for neutrals, that change reveals the ambiguity anddependence which has always been at the core of their 'independent' foreign pol-icy. It is hardly surprising or particularly significant that Irish neutrality is suigeneris, when that is the condition of all neutral states.

BILL MCSWEENEYCentre for Peace Studies, Dublin

City on the Rocks: Hong Kong's Uncertain FutureBy Kevin Rafferty. New York: Viking Press, 1989. 518pp. £15.95.

Since it fell under the British flag in 1841, Hong Kong has been a real success storyfor only about three decades, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. During its firstcentury, which ended with its occupation by the Japanese, Hong Kong was a minorentrepot, tethered to its foundation as an opium port. It began its post-World WarII revival under the stimulus to industrialize for export provided by the exodus ofentrepreneurs and capital fleeing from Mao Zedong's Army, the UN embargo ontrade with China, and the demand for supplies triggered by the Korean War.

Kevin Rafferty sketches in the historical background, leading up to Hong Kong'shigh point at the end of the 1970s, when the British were persuaded that they

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should make a move to sheathe the Sword of Damocles hanging over Hong Kong'sfuture - the 99-year lease on the New Territories due to expire in 1997. He is lesscertain in his coverage of developments since 1982 when Margaret Thatcher paid adisastrous visit to Beijing. Against the advice of her Foreign Office, she insistedthat the 'unequal treaties' ceding the other parts of Hong Kong (the island itselfand the peninsula of Kowloon) were valid in international law.

A year later, Mrs Thatcher was forced to retract, writing to Beijing to concedethat the negotiations on the future should be allowed to make some progress byadmitting the hypothesis that the whole of Hong Kong would be returned to Chi-nese sovereignty in 1997. The result was that the 1984 Joint Declaration, whichoutlined the handing back of a Hong Kong ruled by Hong Kong people (Beijing'sphrase), guaranteed a very large degree of autonomy, democratic freedoms and acontinuance of capitalism for at least 50 years.

This remains an admirable statement of intent (more, a binding internationalagreement). Tragically, however, it soon became evident that China was intentthat sovereignty should be seen to be handed over, it therefore made demands,duly ceded, which violated both the spirit and the letter of the Declaration. It alsobecame obvious that London was limply acquiescent to Beijing's pressures. HongKong could only watch while the guarantees explicit or implicit within the Declar-ation and subsequent UK pledges - of an elected legislature, of an independentjudiciary, of a truly Supreme Court, of political, religious and press freedoms andso on - were systematically eroded.

Hong Kong's (almost unqualified) success story was over, and the smell ofbetrayal gradually grew stronger. The 3.2 million British/Hong Kong passportholders denied residence in the UK have hardly been mollified by the offer of250,000 passports to the most socially acceptable (to British society, that is) of theofficial and entrepreneurial elite. Morale, particularly in the police and the civilservice, has plummeted. Crime is on the rise, as is the blatant power of the triadgangs. The brain drain continues to accelerate. The governor, Sir David Wilson,while protesting that he does not bow to Beijing, cannot hide the fact that hisadministration undertakes no initiative without its approval.

In May 1990, the latest in a bewilderingly large number of recent Foreign andCommonwealth ministers with special responsibilities for Hong Kong, FrancisMaude, attacked the 'Jeremiahs' who voiced worries about the future. Two factorsremained important for post-1997 confidence, he claimed: any intervention by Bei-jing would breach the Joint Declaration (China so far had stuck to its internationaltreaties), and China had a massive stake in the Hong Kong 'economic dynamo'.

Doubtless the Jeremiahs would answer that the Basic Law, the mini-constitutioncovering Hong Kong as part of China, departs so widely from the terms of the JointDeclaration, which it supersedes, that Beijing will be able legitimately to interferemassively in the running of Hong Kong (as indeed it is doing already). Secondly,the 'golden goose' argument so dear to Hong Kong's own public and commercialestablishments has had its neck wrung by Beijing. China has made it clear that,given a choice between a vibrantly prosperous Hong Kong, which might beaconattractively to Chinese dissidents, and a Hong Kong economically in decline butsecurely under China's sovereignty, it would choose the latter. Since the events inTiananmen Square, Beijing has said or done naught for Hong Kong's comfort orconfidence. Quite the contrary.

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The 30-odd years of Hong Kong's storeyed success have attracted a varied andoften disappointing selection of authors, resulting in a chapter or two in jet-settravel books, a clutch of pedestrian economic treatises, a scattering of coffee-tablevolumes, an armful of arrogant, rarely elegant, romances of incestuous strife, highfinance and low morals, plus third-rate Yellow Thread Street blood and thundernovels. But now the city has fallen on hard times, it is attracting more seriousstudy. Kevin Rafferty retells Hong Kong's rags-to-riches-to-reckoning storycompetently enough. His book demonstrates his earlier years as a developmentaljournalist, specializing in charting Third World problems. This of course entails alot of pedestrian trundling through the statistics from the macro-economic scene toinvestment and trade figures, including long lists of Hong Kong's world-bestentries in the export record book.

More recently, however, Rafferty, based in Tokyo, has been involved infinancial journalism, enabling him to give good accounts of the affairs of a smallselection of the big business houses. These chapters are, however, somewhat bitty.The book sometimes gives the impression that it has been put together from thefiles; its pages only stir to life when the author is reporting his own sojourns inHong Kong. The dramatic Jardine story, for example, misses out many of itsvicissitudes in the 1960s. Altogether the author Jan Morris, who has made farfewer trips to the city, paints a better written, more cohesive picture in her book,Hong Kong/Xianggang (New York: Viking, 1988).

In the passages on the prospects for the future (and many of these seem to havebeen added to the text in the light of Tiananmen), Rafferty is properly indignantabout Hong Kong's probable fate, and his demands for an undoing of the greatbetrayal are only reasonable. These days, however, it would have been more appro-priate if he had directed his representations to Beijing.

DEREK DAVIESConsultant Editor, Far Eastern Economic Review, and Editor in Residence,East-West Center, Hawaii

China Changes FaceBy John Gittings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 290pp. £17.50.

It was bad luck for John Gittings that China Changes Face had gone to press just asBeijing's patriarch, Deng Xiaoping, rolled out the tanks in Tiananmen Square tocrush the democracy movement in June 1989. Events in the Soviet bloc, too, havechanged the way the world views China. But it is a mark of the quality of this bookthat it does not appear seriously outdated by these events.

In his chapters on Chinese intellectuals and the new attitudes, Gittings sets outthe strains on the old system that the reforms were producing. Combined with hisanalysis of the factions within the Party, the book makes it only too clear that adenouement could have been on the cards, though he - along with most others -would probably not have predicted the size and ruthlessness of the slaughter.

Although the book is about China after the communist victory in 1949, morethan half of it is devoted to the period from 1978 onwards, when Deng launchedhis economic and social reforms. Communist China's first years are dealt withfairly briefly, although Maoism in its various manifestations is discussed at somelength. Events are related in roughly chronological order, but the book essentially

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focuses on themes - the Party, scholars, the Open Door policy, the end of ideology- rather than upon the historical sequence of events. This is at all times an interest-ing and original book, not least because the author seems to be trying to explainChina to himself as much as to the reader. In the early 1970s, particularly, manyWestern intellectuals were dazzled by the apparent idealism that actually seemedto work. Were they - or we - taken in, Gittings wonders?

Was there something to be said for the Cultural Revolution and for Maoismafter all, especially in light of the greed and corruption that have overtaken Chinasince? After all, Mao was not wrong when he believed that Chinese intellectualsnever wanted to dirty their hands with manual work, and 'barefoot' doctors andteachers sounded like a good idea for any developing country. But too many badthings happened during the Cultural Revolution, too many talents were wastedand too much time was lost which could have been spent building a decent econ-omy and education system, for many people to want to defend Maoism.

Gittings deals separately with the later years of the Cultural Revolution, from1971 to 1976, a period of relative calm after the earlier violence. He seems almostto wish that China was still like that, but admits the problems. During those yearsChina became steadily poorer, intellectual values were despised and the antics ofthe Gang of Four (Mao's wife and her henchmen) would have been comic if theyhad not been so destructive. Worst were the dreadful injustices done in the nameof ideology and Party power.

The China of the late 1980s became a different world, reflecting a new set ofvalues. The Chinese, particularly the young, were dazzled by the fashions, culture,technology and gadgetry of the outside world from which they had been cut off forso long. Ordinary people paid little attention to politics, got on with their lives andtried to make themselves more comfortable.

Those years were a time of fast-growing materialism, but also of new ideas.Inevitably, as Chinese scholars travelled the world and studied in the West, thenotion of personal freedom and responsibility came to mean more. A handful ofintellectuals - such as the leading dissident Fang Lizhi - could no longer stomachrule by an ignorant, narrow and arbitrary Communist Party.

Was it only China's leaders, as Gittings writes, who felt ambivalent about thereform? He seems not too happy about it himself. But the testimonies of the writershe describes - Fang and others, like Liu Binyan, who uncovered Party scandals andwere severely punished for it - are enough to challenge any idealistic view of thestricter past. Liu, for example, was condemned as a rightist for 22 years because hewrote about bureaucratic bungling at a bridge construction site.

The years of reform were far from perfect, but the worst injustices of the pastwere avoided. At least the voices of such as Liu could be heard. Now the shuttershave come down again, and the corrupt and nepotistic Party is trying to rebuild theold ideology of self-sacrifice for the people, and the media simply echo the leaders.If China is ever to mature, choice and debate will have to be restored, even ifmaterialism accompanies them.

COLINA MACDOUGALLFinancial Times

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