North Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 245 Clearly the Chinese army is being modernized in ways that are qualitatively different from the Maoist era. These broad changes are significant for China's modernization and for international politics. Joffe's book provides concrete examples and a valuable analysis of these changes. North Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns. By Richard B. Parker. New York: Praeger, 1987. 225 pp. $35.95/cloth, $14.95/paper. Reviewed by Ian L. Todreas, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Richard B. Parker's North Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns is a remarkably lucid exploration of North Africa's historical, political, and economic development and the implications of this for U.S. foreign policy. Leaving no aspect of the region untouched, Parker's book follows a bipartite structure (as indicated by his subtitle), first investigating regional tensions and then strategic concerns in North Africa. Profiling each country of the Maghreb, the first four chapters present a comprehensive overview ofeach country's colonial history, economic base, influential leaders, and international disputes. As a former foreign service officer, Parker worked on or in North Africa for twenty-eight years. Having served as ambassador to two of the four countries he analyzes, Parker is a knowledgeable diplomat, well qualified to interpret the current economic statistics provided and sensitive to the force of the national identities shaped by each country's turbulent history. Often, his personal acquaintance with political leaders and his focus on specific trends and indexes add insightful angles to an otherwise straightforward geopolitical sketch. North Africa's strategic concerns vis-à-vis U.S. interests is the second, more problematic half of Parker's study. Parker must resolve the inherent paradox of U.S. foreign policy in North Africa that concerns the American public and its policymakers alike. North Africa's relative, almost marginal, importance to the United States, compared with U.S. vital interests, must be reconciled with the obligation of U.S. leaders to examine, anticipate, and respond to actual and potential developments in North Africa. On the one hand, Parker emphasizes that the Maghreb hosts influential members of the Third World community and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and two moderate Arab leaders who have been willing arbitrators in past Middle Eastern deadlocks. In addition, the region is replete with strategic airports and seaports that protect sub-Saharan and Mediterranean access and thus contribute to the security of neighboring vital interests. On the other hand, while Parker devotes individual chapters to interpreting the significance of the Islamic revival, conflicts over the Western Sahara, and relations between North African countries and the major powers, he sees no need for immediate or even future U.S. action. In the final analysis, after acknowledging and expounding on the importance of the region and its delicate tensions, Parker cautions against reacting to the problems of North Africa. 246 SAIS REVIEW Policymakers should exercise patience and due respect, since "to a large extent , the people of North Africa will solve their own problems, and they will do it in their own way." Synthesizing the two halves of Parker's North Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns, the reader cannot avoid being struck by the strength of the presentation of North African tensions and their origins and by the reserve of the discourse and advice addressing U.S. foreign policy initiatives. In Search of Arab Unity: 1930-1945. By Yehoshua Porath. London: Frank Cass, 1986. 376 pp. |32.50/cloth, $14.95/paper. Reviewed by Davidf. Pervin, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Pan-Arabism has been, or was, one of the most popular ideologies in the Arab world. The roots of its popularity lay in the historical image of Arab unity and strength of the early caliphates and in its promise that, with the reattainment of unity, so too would the strength return. During its heyday in the 1950s and early 1960s, pan-Arabism was a considerable force in Arab politics, buttressed by the union of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958. Cracks in pan-Arabism appeared with the dissolution of the UAR in 1961; the 1967 defeat to the Israelis was a further setback. By the late 1970s it was...