*** MARC ROUSSET: La nouvelle Europe Paris-Berlin-Moscou. Le continent paneuropéen face au choc des civilisations. Editions Godefroy de Bouillon (40 rue de la Croix Nivert, F-75015 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 47340297 - Fax: 47340596 - email: godefroydebouillon@free.fr). 2009, 538 pp, €37. ISBN 978-2-84191-231-0.
“In tomorrow's world, dominated by China, India and the United States, cooperation, partnership and an alliance between Europe and Russia will be vital'… This is clearly an unusual book expressing ideas that that some will interpret with suspicion as highly provocative. The author does not think much of the European Union that has arisen from Monnet's vision, describing himself as following more in the wake of Charles de Gaulle and being “the champion of national independence and the continentality of Europe in the face of a market-based, technocratic EUism". Marc Rousset is an erstwhile captain of French multinational industry. He describes the European Union as ungovernable, open, dominated by America and without any real soul. He says it is leading Europeans down a blind alley where they will be powerless. Why? Because the EU would be nothing more than a sub-unit of a "transatlantic empire directed by the United States," and this would go so far, argues the author, that "Europe's main political and geopolitical enemy would be the United States of America". Washington can rely on the United Kingdom, "an exclusively Atlantic European power, the living presence of the Anglo-Saxon world at the side of Europe, a power which historically opposed all attempts to unify continental Europe, an outpost of and aircraft carrier for the United States against Europe".
To escape from this nightmare, Marc Rousset goes back to the old ideas that were so highly prized by the (former) European powers, and which fed into a hellish period in history that was only interrupted in the wake of the Second World War because of the intuition of Monnet and the action of the "founding fathers" of Europe. What is the author suggesting? To develop the Paris-Berlin-Moscow political and economic axis in order to "smash the political and trade axis between New York, London and Frankfurt," with a Frankish 'Carolingian' Europe - the capital of which, of course, would be Strasbourg… - which would keep itself at equal distance from, and develop equally good relations with, Russia as with the United States. This would make it possible to assert European identity and bring together "a vast pan-European continent with two centres, the Rhine and Moscow, in a multipolar world distinct from the universal empire of the American-centres unipolar world". Marc Rousset argues that the forming of such an axis would have a positive impact in all the areas he examines in the book, namely geopolitics, economics, immigration from outside Europe, Islam and Islamic terrorism ("ethnically, Russians are basically white and Christian," he states, adding that: "It is only the United States that has a gut hostility to Russia and wants Muslim Turkey to join the European Union in order to put an end to the identity and geopolitical coherence of the pan-European unification project"…), the control of energy sources, oil pipelines and gas pipelines in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, the importance of Siberia for 'pan-Europeans' against China and, in the future, the possibility of an alliance between China and Japan. The author also suggests that Esperanto should be made the common pan-European language because Esperanto, which was invented by a Slav from Poland, is the only language "able to beat the Anglo-American language at its own game of simplicity and utilitarianism". A genuinely unusual book from start to finish, equally disturbing and surprising…
Michel They
*** LIUBOU YAVIDE-REVIRON: Les relations énergétiques entre l'Union européenne et la Russie. Dépendance ou interdépendance. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole polytechnique, F-75005 Paris.
email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). "Entreprises & Management" series. 2008, 225 pp, €21-50. ISBN 978-2-296-06407-2.
In his 'Behind the News' series, Ferdinando Riccardi regularly makes it crystal clear that the European Union and Russia have to form new partnerships in the energy domain with the aim being, for the EU to ensure secure access to Russia's huge oil and gas reserves, and the aim for Russia of gaining the investment it requires to develop its energy industry. A Belarussian who studied in France, the author, Liubou Yavide-Reviron, reaches the same conclusion after exploring in his book both the nature and the specificities of energy relations between the EU27 and Russia, the energy situation of either side and future prospects. The author demonstrates that relations between Brussels and Moscow in the energy field are characterised by a 'very strong inter-dependence which will last for a long tine into the future,' although, because they are both aware of this, the EU and Russia are both 'trying to reduce their dependence on each other.' There are no real viable alternatives for either side, however, so needs must…
(MT)
*** Documents. Revue du dialogue franco-allemand. Bureau International de Liaison et de Documentation (50 rue de Laborde, F-75008 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 43661605 - Fax: 42935094 - email: revue@bild-documents.org - Internet: http://www.revuedocuments.com ). 2009, No. 2, 80 pp, €7. Annual subscription: €35 (France), €39 (elsewhere).
The special issue in this copy of the review of Franco-German dialogue is devoted to the EU's initiatives to foster neighbourly feelings along the EU's borders with countries along the Mediterranean (under the 'Union for the Mediterranean) and with countries to the East through the European Neighbourhood Policy, that opens the door to a 'variable geometry Europe,' not to mention the Balkans States and developping counties in Africa, Asia and South America. With regard to the Balkans, historian Nicolas Moll explains why Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation are clearly a 'motivating factor' for the Balkans States but are certainly no model.
(MT)
*** RICHARD BONNY: False Prophets. The 'Clash of Civilisations' and the Global War on Terror. Peter Lang Ltd (Evenlode Court, Main Road, Long Hanborough, Witney, Oxfordshire OX29 8SZ, UK. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "The Past in the Present" series, No. 5. 2008, 352 pp. ISBN 978-1-906165-02-4.
Professor of Modern History at Leicester University, Richard Bonney teasles apart the Bush years in this book, with the scientific nature of the research providing maximum weight to the facts he slammed. Looking at the attitudes of the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom under Tony Blair in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the author systematically analyses the way the strongly ideological advisors - the Neo-Cons and their allies on the Christian right and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States - were able to take over foreign policy in the only superpower left in the world. He explains how they and their allies among lazy newspapers and incredibly superficial online media were able to sing the praises of their policy and silence their opponents or ever make them out to be traitors to the homeland. The book also examines with the same devastating rigour the impact of this slippage in terms of loss of civil liberties in the name of the "war on terror" that gradually stripped Western democracies of freedom and made them less liberal, and the sufferings endured by ordinary folk in Afghanistan and Iraq. A model in its genre!
(PBo)
*** AUGUST PRADETTO: Intervention, Regimewechsel, erzwungene Migration. Die Fälle Kosovo, Afghanistan und Irak . Peter Lang (see above). "Strategische Kultur Europas" series, No. 5. 2008, 121 pp, €18.50. ISBN 978-3-631-58415-6.
Through three case studies, this book examines armed intervention, change of military regime and forced migration. Professor of politics at the International Policy Institute of Helmut-Schmidt University (the German Armed Forces' University in Hamburg), the author analyses the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq war in order to reveal the humanitarian impact of these military incursions. The results described in the book leads to a negative assessment in all three cases, challenging both the motives for intervention and its effectiveness.
(EPi)