Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth-Century Europe by Alice s> Teichova Herbert Matis , Jaroslav P�tek (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I85 the pressureon the Administrationcausedby a Congressionalvote mandating the Administration to break both international solidarity and international law that the US itself had made in binding UN Security Council resolutions. While these factorsshould be familiarto those vested in the subject(although this volume improves on my own, which to my own surprise,does not spell out the vital NATO issue), the real attractionis in the way Daalder presents the internal policy debate in response to this confluence of factors. The President himself and Daalder's boss, National Security Advisor Anthony Lakeemerge very favourably.Lake, especially,(and somewhatsurprisinglyto me) emerges as the key player - in Daalder's characterization, the 'policy entrepreneur'(p. I7 ), whose guileunderpinnedtheAdminstration'seventual policy success. The positive view of Lake connects with the second point of significant interest in the book - the footnote battle against Holbrooke. The campaign begins in footnote 2 to the introduction, where 'there is much about the US decision to change course, especially regarding policy formation in Washington that is not in Holbrooke's detailed account of his crucial negotiating role' (p. 3). The emphasis on the personal and limited aspect of Holbrooke's account is the firstthrust of several that lace the footnotes to come, such as that in footnote 49 to chapter four, in which he declares that 'Holbrooke's claims [. ..] are wrong' regardingLake'sapproach to the use of air powerthusbolsteringthe latter,once more (p. I36). Finally, and quite unexpectedly, the book presents a very useful sketch of the war on the ground. Presumably compiled from the daily reports and analyseshe was receivingat the NSC, Daalder outlinesthe shape and scope of militaryoperationsin the latterstagesof the war both the Serbianattempt to finish the war by the end of 1995and the Croatian and Bosnian Army operations in the summer of 1995. While this sketch remains far from complete it places too much emphasis on the US perspective (asmight be expected) and mis-characterizessome aspects (such as the Croatian commitment to continuing joint operations with their Bosnian Army allies in September 1995) this account is a usefuladditionto the publishedmaterial on the topic, to date. Department of WarStudies JAMES Gow King'sCollege London Teichova, Alice; Matis, Herbert and Patek,Jaroslav (eds).Economic Change and theJVational Question in Twentieth-Century Europe.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. xvi + 433pp. Notes. Figures. Tables. Bibliographicalreferences .Index. ?45.??: $74.95. THE editors are to be congratulated for having compiled a collection of essentially eminently readable and informative essays on a representative cross-section of European, and in the case of Russia, Eurasian states. The editorsarealsoto be commended forensuringthatmethodologicalconsistency has been maintained throughoutthe volume. The collective theme that binds them together is, as suggestedby the title, an investigationof the relationship i86 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 between the politicsof national identityand changes in the mode of economic production. As most scholarsof the politics of nationalismrecognize, studyof the relationshipbetween economic change and nation buildingetal., although acknowledged to be important, is often relegated to the marginsin favour of an emphasisupon territory,language and culture.In theirvariousways, each of the contributorsgoes some way to redressingthis imbalance. Nine of the twenty-two chapters deal directly with East-Central Europe, (the postcommunist ) Balkans, and the former Soviet Union, and thereforewill be of particular interest to readers of this journal. However, reading of the remainderof the chapterswill facilitateworthwhilecomparativestudy. As is often the case with an edited volume, the essaysare not of a uniform standard. Yet, there is none that in any significant way detracts from the overallthrustof the volume. Problemsfallinto fourcamps. On occasion some of the contributorstelescope events into a handful of paragraphs.This is the case with the contribution of Erik Buyst on Belgium, where post-I992 developments deservedgreatercoverage, and withJaroslav Patek,who could and should have spent more time considering the relationship between the politics of nationalism and economic matters in contemporary Slovakia. In both cases these omissions are a real pity, because both authors clearly have the abilityto complete the task. Secondly, some of the chapters are marred by clumsy syntax. It is never easy for editors, translatorsand proof-readersto identify and correct all such errorsin pieces submittedby authorswho are writing in a foreign language. On the other hand, there is a certain unevenness in...