Geographic Regions
In thinking about the future, it is impossible to account for each of the 6 billion people on earth, let alone for the almost 200 countries into which they are grouped. Yet those people and countries are not a homogeneous mixture and it is useful to understand something about the differences among them. Fortunately for a list of 50 books, it is possible to learn something about the important differences by grouping them into geographical regions of roughly similar characteristics. For the purposes of this inaugural list, the regions that seem important to understand when thinking about the longer-range future are: the European Union, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, China, India, and Russia. The latter three, of course, are individual countries, but represent large land masses and large populations.
Understanding the European Union: A Concise Introduction - 2002
John McCormick
Learn more (Palgrave)
In the aftermath of two World Wars (and the Cold War), there have been several experiments in regional integration as a means of reducing tensions that can lead to international conflict. None of these experiments is as important at this point as that represented by the European Union. As McCormick says, “Some argue that the European Union could provide a model that might eventually lead to the breakdown of the state system, and to its replacement by a new community of bigger political and economic units and networks.” At the least, as a stepping stone toward global governance, this could pave the way toward providing global public goods for the betterment of the global human condition.
This book gives the history and progress of the European Union, including the logic of integration itself. The idea of European unity is not new (and was undermined with the rise of the state system), but was reinvigorated beginning with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. The biggest steps since then have been 1986 Single European Act that (among other things) created a single market and opened the borders among participants, and the 1992 Treaty on European Union (or Maastricht treaty) that paved the way for a common currency. Rejection of the European Constitution in May, 2005 was a backward step and emphasizes the uneven progress that has been made. This is a good discussion of the issues and tensions surrounding full integration and membership in the European Union and whatever its outcome, it will be an important chapter in the evolution of global integration.
The Rise of China - 1993
William H. Overholt
Learn more (W. W. Norton & Company)
This book, written in 1993, argued that China’s economy would continue to grow because of “superior strategies in four areas: economics, politics, administration, and financial markets.” In economics their strategy gave priority to industries and sectors where limited government investments would produce rapid growth, they encouraged foreign investment, and they gave priority to light and medium industry. In politics, contrasted with Russia’s strategy of making economic reforms all at once, China’s strategy carefully sequenced the reforms; in administration, China also moved slowly to build up institutions that would enable it to control inflation; and in financial markets, China’s encouragement of bond markets provided a mechanism for soaking up excess money that threatened inflation. Overholt argues how each of these strategies (and other factors, including the crucial role of Hong Kong) contributed to China’s success up to that point and why they were likely to continue to fuel a growing economy in future years.
One of Overholt’s important conclusions for thinking about the future is the notion that economic reform should precede political reform. China appears to be unique both in taking that path and in achieving a modicum of both. There are also interesting chapters on the tensions that China’s economic advance have produced with its regional neighbors and with the United States. Finally, there is a chapter on risks to China’s continued progress (none of which have yet surfaced). This book is interesting not only because of its insights into China’s economy, but also both because of its success in foreseeing at least 12 years into the future and because it presents details of an approach to development that is different than the “Washington Consensus” that had prevailed for so long as the most appropriate means for helping developing countries reform their economies.
China’s Second Revolution: Reform After Mao - 1987
Harry Harding
Learn more (Brookings Institution Press)
This book addresses the origin, content, accomplishments, implications for the international community, and prospects of the reforms that have been and are taking place in China since the days of Mao Zedong. Harding argues that China has followed “a strategy of starting with programs that were likely to produce dramatic increases in production and standards of living, delaying measures that would have the most disruptive impact on the economy, and launching reforms on a nationwide scale only after they have proved successful in local experiments.” In a first set of reforms between 1978 and 1984, Harding describes economic reforms that have “expanded opportunities for private and collective ownership in both agriculture and urban services, offered greater autonomy to enterprise managers, given economic incentives to both peasants and workers, and assigned market forces a greater role in the production, circulation, and pricing of commodities.” In the areas of foreign trade, reforms “allowed foreign investment within restricted organizational formats and established special economic zones along the coast of southeast China to attract export-processing enterprises from abroad.” In the political sphere reform was characterized by “an explicit repudiation of the principal ideological tenets of the Maoist period, greater freedom and predictability in the daily lives of ordinary Chinese citizens, greater creative latitude in scientific and academic pursuits, and greater pragmatism, institutionalization, and consultativeness in national policymaking.” Subsequent reforms have expanded these initial reforms and, in Harding’s opinion, “even if reform should falter, the main outlines of China’s current international orientation will probably continue throughout the rest of the century and beyond.” Written in 1987, the century he referred to was the 20 th century, but his prognosis has not been invalidated in the years since.
As for the longer-range future, while admitting other plausible scenarios, Harding suggests that “[A] return to Maoism is implausible, as is the revival of a highly centralized economic system or a tightly controlled political order. Increasingly, the choice for China is whether it is possible to stop at moderate reform or whether it will be necessary to move toward further economic and political liberalization.”
China’s economic strategy, in particular, has been based on growth of the internal Chinese market and thus in sharp contrast to the export-led growth strategy followed by other East Asian tigers (and promoted by the “Washington Consensus”). As such, China’s strategy is an important example in thinking about economic globalization.
India: Emerging Power - 2001
Stephen Philip Cohen
Learn more (Brookings Institution Press)
“This book examines the proposition that India is becoming a major power.” “It is not yet a dominant military or economic power, although its capabilities in these spheres are rising. Rather, it is a state with great cultural and civilizational influence and an increasingly skilled political and strategic leadership that is learning to exploit India’s strengths. It also has a diaspora that constitutes a potential asset for the Indian state.” Cohen says, “India most closely resembles China in its current reemergence as a major state, although it trails far behind in many respects.”
Cohen goes back through two thousand years of India’s history to detail its generally bureaucratic mindset and its remarkable ability to absorb and assimilate its various conquerors over its long history. He points out that a generation ago, India bet on the Soviet Union (during the Cold War), economic autarky, and military might. It lost all three bets and is still recovering from those losses today. The book details India’s ongoing domestic disturbances (arising from its 20 language groups, 50,000 castes, and 500,000 villages), its remarkable economic growth over the last few years, its continuing conflict with Pakistan over the Kashmir region, its status as a nuclear power, its relations with neighboring countries (especially China), its emergence as a well-educated, high-technology power, and its growing relationship with the United States. In all, Cohen believes that from the Indian perspective, the ideal world would consist of many great powers, each dominant in its own region, and pledged to avoid interference across regions and India, of course, would be the great power in its region. He can also see that these hopes are achievable with the right decisions in a few critical areas.
Modern Latin America - 2005
Thomas E. Skidmore
Learn more (Oxford University Press)
As did most areas of the earth, Latin America had its colonial phase, but most Latin American countries gained their independence (primarily from Spain and Portugal) in the early 18 th century – well before most other countries. Skidmore describes five post-colonial phases in the transformation to modern Latin America. The first two phases (1880 – 1900 and 1900 – 1930) were characterized by import-export growth leading to significant prosperity for some and to growth of large-scale cities. The Great Depression hit the Latin American countries hard, led to a number of military coups and to a period (1930 – 1960s) of import-substituting industrialization (ISI). In the fourth phase (1960s – 1980s), stagnation in ISI due primarily to continued dependence on imported capital goods led to government changes and several highly repressive regimes. Skidmore says the current phase (1980s – 2000s) has been characterized by economic crisis (primarily due to oppressive debt burdens), neo-liberal reform, some economic recovery, and increasing democracy. Case studies of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, the Caribbean, and Central America are used to explore each of these phases to identify similarities and differences among Latin American countries. In the Epilogue, Skidmore explores what these similarities and differences might bode for the future.
Skidmore says one of the most important factors in determining the future is the size and growth of Latin America’s populations. Unless it can get population growth under control he feels the prospects for economic growth are not good, though he sees continued urbanization as a force for population control. In economics, he sees a growing and healthy skepticism of the neo-liberal approach, but nothing yet to replace it. He notes that no major political shifts in Latin America have been directly brought about by the workers and the possibility of peasant revolts is difficult to measure. The middle classes have tended to side with the upper class in crises and he says the tendency is “to favor coups in a crisis but elections when the dust clears.” The church bears watching because the Catholic monopoly on Christianity in the region has been undermined by the rapid inroads of Protestantism, led by well-organized Evangelicals. The military in the 1990s has withdrawn (primarily with the end of the Cold War) and Marxism has lost its appeal across the entire region. As for capitalism, Skidmore notes it’s checkered history in Latin America and its not clear that the current capitalists in this most inequitable region are interested in improving the social welfare of their societies. He concludes that, as in the past, the fate of Latin America will depend largely on its relationship to the centers of international powers.
An interesting appendix has an analytic framework that is useful for comparative analyses of patterns in Latin America, along with several sample comparisons.
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - 1989
David Fromkin
Learn more (Owl Books)
To understand the Middle East, this book may seem an odd choice, but as one reviewer said, “No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East.” Fromkin’s book covers the period from 1914 to 1922 and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As the book jacket says, “Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when everything – even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism – seemed possible and oil was not a political issue, Fromkin shows how the choices narrowed and the Middle East began along a road that led to the endless wars and the escalating acts of terrorism that continue to this day.”
At the beginning of World War I, Europeans thought the war would be over in a matter of weeks, that the Ottoman Empire would finally collapse, and that it would be divided up among the Great Powers to conclude “the Great Game.” With access to archives of previously secret documents and private papers, Fromkin shows how those ideas changed as the war wore on and the Ottoman Empire proved more resilient than expected. In the end, the remnants of the Ottoman Empire became the only “spoils” of World War I, so arguments over the division of the Empire became much more intense. In addition, the European thirst for dominion slackened severely among the general population. The result for the British was that by 1922 when they committed to the program for remaking the Middle East – they no longer believed in it. By destroying the old order in the region irrevocably and taking a half-hearted approach to reform, Fromkin says the Allies left the 20 th century Middle East in a situation similar to Europe’s in the 5 th century and “[I]t took Europe a millennium and a half to resolve its post-Roman crisis of social and political identity: nearly a thousand years to settle on the nation-state form of political organization, and nearly five hundred years more to determine which nations were entitled to be states.”
Russia in Search of Itself - 2004
James H. Billington
Learn more (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)
Billington is the U.S. Librarian of Congress and an expert on Russia. Rather than look at the economic arc of post-Cold War Russia he has chosen to look at the internal cultural dialog that is taking place in Russia. At this point Communism has been largely discredited and the appliques of democracy and capitalism are running into cultural resistance. Billington, however, notes that Russia has something of a history of being able to adapt significant changes abruptly, as they did with Byzantine religious and artistic models a millennium ago and Communism in the early part of the 20 th century. Further, he argues that “no nation ever poured more intellectual energy into answering the question of national identity than Russia and he implies that we won’t really know how Russia will settle out until today’s Russians have settled that question.
Billington has been privy to a good deal of the debate about national identity that has been raging since the early ‘90s. Unlike the past, he says that this debate has neither been driven from the top down nor has it been set by an intellectual giant such as Andrei Sakharov or Alexander Solzhenitsyn. An indication of the confusion among the Russian people was a poll in which some 80% of the population “completely agreed” that democracy was important. At the same time over 70% also “completely agreed” that strong authoritarian rule was important. For people interested in the longer-range future, Billington speaks of three provisional conclusions that emerge from his study: 1) “the range of distinctly possible future identities for Russia should include alternatives that are both far better and far worse than any presently anticipated,” 2) “the balance of probabilities points toward an eventual outcome considerably better than is generally thought possible,” and 3) “an enduring positive identity will be possible only if Russians are able harmoniously to synthesize Western political and economic institutions with an indigenous recovery of the religious and moral dimensions of their own culture.”
African Politics and Society: A Mosaic in Transformation - 2004
Peter J. Schraeder
Learn more (Thomson/Wadsworth)
Schraeder describes Africa as a “rich mosaic of diversity” and emphasizes the point by noting that “African leaders have employed capitalism, Marxism, socialism, and Islamic revivalism as the bases for creating a wide variety of political regimes, including monarchies, military dictatorships, Islamic republics, and liberal democracies.” He includes North Africa in his study and begins with the past by describing three broad historical periods – the precolonial era (prior to 1884), the colonial era (1884 – 1951) and contemporary independence (1951 – present). The main feature of the precolonial era was that (apart from the slave trade) the continent was doing pretty well, fueled from the 11 th century on by a growing trans-Saharan trade network. All that came to a screeching halt during the colonial era, characterized importantly by resource extraction and the imposition of arbitrary nation-state boundaries. Although Africa is still impacted today by its colonial history, it is also impacted significantly by its legacy from the Cold War as an ideological battlefield for proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The book covers the sociocultural environment in Africa, including the roles that ethnicity and class play and the role of ideology in the politics of development. Governance is covered, including the ongoing tension between state power and underdeveloped but growing civil societies, the prominent role that militaries have played, and the growing number of democratic experiments being carried out. Also covered is the role that foreign relations have played, especially the ongoing role that foreign powers play, both directly and indirectly. Most interesting from the longer-range standpoint, however, is a section on theoretical perspectives. Here, Schraeder covers the two main competing theories – the liberal tradition and the critical tradition. The former holds the vision of the development of free-market democracies in Africa and has undergone significant evolution in the face of ongoing failures on the continent. The critical tradition questions the long-standing liberal tradition and, in its most extreme form, emphasizes that true development will occur only after revolutionary struggles and the creation of populist regimes throughout the continent. Without suggesting how Africa will progress, Schraeder sees reason for optimism: “For every military coup d’etat there exists a transition to civilian rule, such as in Benin, where 19 years of military dictatorship (1972-91) were replaced by democracy (1991-present). For every civil war there exists a case of conflict resolution, as in Mozambique, where a peace accord signed in 1992 ended nearly 30 years of guerrilla warfare. For every ethnic conflict there exists a well-meaning attempt to create multi-ethnic cooperation, such as South Africa’s democratization under the leadership of president Nelson Mandela … and his successor.”
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