Regions and Powers : The Structure of International Security (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Rating:
Summary: A Great net study
Review:
In the great debate with Huntingtons `civilizations' thesis this book argues that the world is divided into `regions' and powers' With a sole superpower, the U.S and a series of Great powers(the EU, Japan, China etc...) and a number of regional powers(India etc...). This book explains that rather then simply seeing the world as a clash of civilization, rather each region can be carved up and explained and conflicts understood within the regional framework. While this approach works nice on paper, it also contains a few obvious problems. While it is true that most relations in Asia are regional and certainly don't extend into Africa and that the world has lost its bi-polar nature since the fall of the Soviets, it is also true that certain transnational movements such as Islam, do in fact extend beyond region. For instance, this book sees Afghanistan as an `insulator' keeping Asia(India) away from the middle east. So for this book the Pakistan-India conflict is simply a regional outgrowth of two regional powers. Realism would seem to agree. Yet the truth is that Pakistan fanned the flames of Islamic fundamentalism all across Asia and Turkey is once again dabbling in pan-Turkism in central Asia, even stretching to the Uigurs of China. These phenomenon's, not to mention the presence of Arab volunteers in Chechnya and Bosnia, seem to contract the thesis here. Nevertheless this book is a wonderful framework where regions such as Africa(sub Saharan) and South America(an underconflictual region) and be seen to have transformed themselves in the post-cold war world. A book of interest to anyone trying to understand international relations in the coming century.

Seth J. Frantzman