[Richard Nephew, The Art of Sanctions. A View from the Field. Columbia University Press. Chichester. New York, 2018. 216 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

International sanctions often arouse lively discussion between those who defend them as a legitimate instrument of state-to-state interaction and those who consider that their application has had little effect other than to increase the suffering of entire populations through no fault of their own.

When asked if these sanctions, which may be of various kinds but are mainly economic in nature, are of any use, Richard Nephew answers that it depends. And this is not an evasion, but rather a defense of his own tools by a mechanic of U.S. diplomacy (Nephew was director for Iran at the National Security committee and deputy coordinator for sanctions at the State department ): "Sanctions do not fail or succeed. Rather, sanctions help or fail to achieve the desired end result of a sanctioning state (...) Tools can only perform well when they are employed with the right strategy; you can't accuse the saw if it fails to do the work of a screwdriver".

Nephew is not a theorist of sanctions, but a "practitioner"; the content of his book comes from experience ("A view from the field" is the subtitle of the book). This experience makes him convinced of the usefulness of these measures, provided they are applied in an appropriate manner. He basically gives the example of two cases: that of Iraq, where the sanctions did not achieve the desired goal due to a bad approach to international pressure, which finally led to war in 2003, and that of Iran, where the regime of punitive measures on the Islamic Republic had its effect and in 2015 an agreement was signed to curb the Iranian nuclear program.

An active participant in the Iran sanctions architecture, Nephew expands especially on the case of negotiations with Tehran, after first touching briefly on the Iraq chapter. From all this he draws conclusions and presents his own decalogues on how sanctions should be approached if they are to be effective. In the last pages he tries to advise how to conduct a new sanctions package on Iran, to control its missile program and contain its activity abroad through proxies, but without breaking the agreement reached (JCPOA) as the Trump Administration has done; how to manage the pressure on Russia in relation to Ukraine; and how to confront the attitude of North Korea. It does not address other situations that the discussion on sanctions is well aware of, such as Trump's harshness towards Cuba, in the framework a decades-long embargo that has not produced changes on the island, or the encirclement of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Rules for successful sanctioning

Nephew's main conclusion is that " knowledge of one's opponent, his tolerances and his vulnerabilities, is the most important predictor of the chances of success of a strategy that focuses on sanctions (...) In fact, for sanctions to work, one really must know the enemy better than the enemy knows himself".

That is what, in his opinion, went wrong in Iraq. The sanctions were certainly effective, in that they prevented Saddam Hussein from returning to a program of weapons of mass destruction, but they did not prevent a war. This was because they did not take into account the psychology of the leader, who was willing to endure any subject of suffering -which he passed on to the population, without fearing that they might take power away from him- rather than admit that he did not have the powerful arsenal that supposedly made him one of the regional leaders. The international community did not understand how important it was for him to maintain this simulation, in his claim to credibility and prestige, above the pressure of any sanctions package.

There were other shortcomings in the Iraqi process, according to Nephew: maximum sanctions were applied from the beginning, with no room for an incremental policy, and over time there was a shift in the goal from wanting to avoid rearmament of the regime to a change of the regime itself (even if Saddam Hussein had accepted the conditions that were set, Washington would not have accepted his continuity in power).

These mistakes led to a better understanding of the mechanisms at play, which were refined in the attention with Iran. Nephew points out that a good understanding of the country targeted by possible sanctions must take into account its political institutions, macroeconomic and financial system, trade relations, cultural values, recent history, demographics and the population's access to external sources of information. This will make it possible to identify the vulnerabilities and the threshold of pain that the government of the day is willing to absorb. Then both the sanctions and the assumptions themselves must be continually recalibrated, following a well-defined strategy. It is also important that the State targeted by the sanctions is clearly presented with the conditions necessary for the pressure to be lifted, framework of a negotiation with clear terms. Finally, there must be a willingness to help the State under pressure to get out of a labyrinth whose exit it may not perceive, or even to accept lower objectives if they are also a reasonable result .

The author states that the three most common causes of failure of a sanctions regime are: falling short, going too far, and confusing objectives. These labels can easily be applied to past processes, but it is not so easy to fix the steps of coercive diplomacy of this subject in ongoing conflicts or conflicts that may occur in the future.

Thus, Nephew himself would not have full guarantees of success with the sanctions he suggests for a new negotiation with Iran in order to limit its missile program and its actions through groups such as Hezbollah. At odds with the Trump Administration, he would have preferred to maintain the 2015 nuclear program agreement (known by its acronym JCPOA) and the consequent lifting of the previously implemented sanctions regime, in order to move on to different sanctions seeking that other goal. It remains to be seen how useful Trump's move will be, but it is difficult to believe that Tehran will give up these other actions because of pressure that would not be so international in any case (China and Russia only lent themselves to a front against Iran because Iran's becoming a nuclear power was at stake).

[I. H. Daalder & James M. Lindsay, The Empty Throne. America's Abdication of Global Leadership. Public Affairs. New York, 2018. 256 p.]

review / Salvador Sánchez Tapia

The arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in January 2017 has unleashed a significant flow of publishing house that continues to this day, and in which numerous pens question, in substance and form, the new tenant of the White House from different angles.

In this case, two authors from the field of American think tanks , close to Barack Obama - one of them served during his presidency as US ambassador to NATO - offer us a very critical view of President Trump and his management at the head of the US executive branch. With the solid support of numerous quotes, statements and testimonies collected from the media, and in an agile and attractive language, they compose the portrait of an erratic, ignorant - in one passage they highlight without palliation his "ignorance on many issues, his unwillingness to accept advice from others, his impulsiveness, and his lack of critical thinking skills" -, arrogant and irresponsible president.

The authors of The Empty Throne argue that President Trump's deeds and words show how he has broken with the traditional line of U.S. foreign policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, based on the exercise of leadership oriented toward collective security, the opening of global markets and the promotion of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and which has result highly beneficial to the United States. Trump, they argue, would have abdicated that leadership, embracing instead another purely transactional policy, made by a simple calculation of interest.

This new way of conceiving international politics, based on the logic of competition and domination, would be justified by the Trump administration with the argument that the old one has been highly pernicious for the United States, since it has allowed friends and allies to obtain important profits at the expense of American prosperity.

Paraphrasing Trump's America First campaign slogan, the authors argue that this new policy will result, rather, in an America Alone, and will instead benefit China, assuming that it will be to China that nations will look for a new leader.

To support their thesis , the authors review the management of Donald Trump in the year and a half between his inauguration in early 2017 and the book's publication date in 2018. In their argument they review the management of the presidents the nation has had since the end of World War II, and compare it to that put in internship by the Trump administration.

An important part of the criticism is directed at the controversial presidential style displayed by Donald Trump, which has been evident even before the elections, and which is evident in facts such as the withdrawal of the usual label in the world of international relations, especially hurtful in his relations with friends and allies; the lack of interest shown in coordinating an orderly transition with the Obama administration, or the making of certain decisions against his national security team or even without consulting its members.

Not to acknowledge these facts would be to deny the evidence and question the inescapable reality of the unease that this new way of dealing with nations with which America shares so many interests and values, such as those of the European Union, or others such as Japan, Canada or Australia, firm allies of the United States for decades, produces in many people. However, there is room for some criticism of the arguments.

First of all, and leaving aside the lack of time perspective to make afinal evaluation of Trump's presidency, the authors make a comparison between the first year and a half of the current president's term and those of all his predecessors since the end of World War II to demonstrate Trump's return to the America First policy prevailing until Roosevelt. This contrast requires certain nuances because, based on the common denominator of the international leadership strategy that all of Trump's predecessors practiced, the country experienced in this time moments of greater unilateralism such as that of George W. Bush's first term, along with others of lesser global presence of the country such as, perhaps, those of the presidencies of Eisenhower, Ford, Carter and, even, Obama.

In Obama's case, moreover, the fundamental differences with Trump are not as great as they seem. Both presidents are trying to manage, in order to mitigate, the loss of relative American power caused by the long years of military presence in the Middle East and the rise of China. It is not that Trump believes that the United States should abandon the ideas of global leadership and multinational interaction; in fact, while he is accused of leaving traditional allies to their fate, he is reproached for his rapprochement, almost complicity, with others such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. Rather, what he intends is to exercise leadership, but, of course, dictating his conditions so that they are favorable to the United States. From inspirational leadership to leadership by imposition.

The question is, is it possible to maintain leadership under these conditions? According to the authors, no. In fact, as a consequence of this "abdication of American leadership", they offer two scenarios: the return to a world in which no nation leads, or the emergence of another nation - China, obviously - that will fill the vacuum created by this abdication.

The authors do not consider a third option: that of traditional allies adapting to the new style of leadership, albeit reluctantly, out of necessity, and in the confidence that one day, the Trump presidency will be history. This idea would be consistent with the premise set out in the book, and with which we concur, that American leadership remains indispensable, and with the very recognition at the end of the book that there is some substance to the grievances that Trump presents and that the president's attitude is leading many of America's friends and allies to reconsider their defense spending, to rethink the rules of international trade to make them more palatable to America, and to take a more active role in resolving major global challenges.

Time will tell which of the three options will prevail. Even considering the challenges of attention with the current White House incumbent, the United States remains bound to its traditional partners and allies by a dense network of common interests and, above all, shared values that transcend individuals and will outlast them.

[Amil Saikal, Iran Rising: The survival and Future of the Islamic Republic. Princeton University Press. Princeton, 2019. 344 p.]

review / Ignacio Urbasos Arbeloa

Since its constitution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a conflictive actor, isolated and misunderstood by the international community and, to a greater extent, by its regional neighbors. Its origin, revolutionary in character and antagonistic to the Shah's pro-Western model , completely changed the geopolitics of the Middle East and the role of the US in the region. Both the Hostage Crisis and the bloody war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq left deep wounds in Iran's foreign relations. More than 40 years after the Revolution, the country remains in a dynamic that makes the normalization of its international relations impossible, always under the threat of armed conflict or economic sanctions. In this book, Amin Saikal describes in depth the ideological and political nature of the Ayatollahs' regime with the intention of generating a better understanding of the motivations and factors that explain their behavior.

The first chapters develop the concept of governance devised by Ayatollah Imam Khomeini, known as Velayat-E Faqih or Governance of the Guardian of Islam. A model defended by a non-majority faction of the revolution that managed to impose itself by the charisma of its leader and the enormous repression on the rest of the political groups. The political system resulting from the 1978 Revolution tries to confluence the Shiite teachings of Islam and a representative model with institutions such as the Majlis (parliament) or the President that to some extent simulates Western liberal democracy. This model is unique and has never been imitated despite the efforts of the Islamic Republic to export it to the rest of the Muslim world.

In the internship, the system has proven to subject Iranian politics to schizophrenia, with a constant struggle between the power of the clerics -Supreme Leader and committee of Guardians- versus the executive and legislative power elected through elections. This tension, dubbed as Jihadi-Itjihadi (conservatism-flexibility) by Khomeini himself, has result be a resounding failure. The lack of clarity in the roles that religious groups play in the system results in unlimited power to repress and eliminate political opponents, as the house arrest of Khatami or Moussaoui demonstrates. This struggle generates duplicities at all levels with the omnipresence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) in the armed forces, intelligence, social services and public enterprises. The lack of political transparency generates corruption and inefficiencies that hinder the development of an Economics that does not lack the human capital and natural resources to prosper.

Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the evolution of the system after the death of leader Khomeini in 1988 and the end of the war against Iraq. This new context allowed new ideas to entrance the Iranian political discussion . The controversial appointment of the ultraconservative Ali Khamenei in 1989 as the new Supreme Leader meant reinforcing authoritarianism and the rigidity of religious power, but now without the undisputed leadership exercised by Khomeini. The presidency of Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative, marked the beginning of a trend within Iran that advocated normalizing the country's international relations.

However, it was Khatami who, since 1997, bet on a reconversion of the system towards a real democracy respecting Human Rights. His staff bid to improve relations with the US failed when it was met with excessive distrust on the part of the Bush Administration. Not even Iran's exemplary response to the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York with an official condemnation of the attack and even a minute's silence observed by 60,000 people in Tehran on September 13, 2001 was enough for G.W. Bush to reconsider Iran as a part of the United States. Bush to reconsider Iran as part of the famous Axis of Evil that it constituted along with Syria, North Korea and Sudan. Despite achieving an average economic growth of 5% of GDP under his presidency, the lack of reciprocity from the international community created a complete rift between the reformist president and the conservative faction led by the Supreme Leader.

The period from 2005 to 2013 was marked by the presidency of the ultra-conservative Ahmadinejad, who ended without Khamenei's confidence after failing in economic subject and bringing Iran to the brink of armed conflict. During this period the IRGC grew to dominate a large part of the ministries and 70% of Iran's GDP. His controversial reelection in 2009 with accusations of fraud by the civil service examination generated the green movement, the largest protests since 1979, which were harshly repressed.

Rouhani's arrival in 2013 could have been a historic occasion by aligning for the first time since 1988 the vision of a moderate president with that of the Supreme Leader. Rouhani, a pragmatic moderate, assumed the position with the goals of improving the living conditions of Iranians, reconciling relations with the West, increasing minority rights and relaxing control over society. In foreign policy subject , the Supreme Leader assumed the need to reach an agreement on the nuclear program knowing that, in its absence, an economic improvement in Iran would be very difficult. The JCPOA, although imperfect, allowed for a rapprochement between the West and Iran. The arrival of Donald Trump blew up the agreement and with it the harmony between Supreme Leader Khamenei and Rouhani, who now faces a growing conservative civil service examination as he considers his foreign policy a failure.

For the author, it is essential to understand the battle between elected institutions and religious institutions. Iranian politics works like a pendulum between the dominance of conservative factions protected by the religious and reformist factions boosted by elections. If benefits are offered to reformist moderates when they are in power, the chances of bringing about political change in Iran are greater than if conservatives are treated as harshly, argues Amin Saikal in the fourth and fifth chapters. Moreover, there is a correlation between those who know the West and those who do not. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, the main representatives of the hardliners, have never visited Europe or the USA, while Rouhani, Khatami or Sharif are fluent in English and Western culture.

With a population under 30 years of age accounting for 50% of the total and a growing modernization of society in Tehran, the demands for reforms seem unstoppable. According to Amin Saikal, an intransigent policy with Iran when there is a willingness to open up only generates mistrust and reinforces the most conservative positions. Trump's policy with Iran, he concludes, demonstrates a lack of knowledge and understanding of its society and political system.

[Bruno Maçães, Belt and Road. A Chinese World Order. Penguin. Gurgaon (India), 2019. 227p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

Having covered the moment of literature devoted to present the novelty of the Chinese New Silk Road project , Bruno Maçães leaves aside many of the specific concretions of the Chinese initiative to deal with its more geopolitical aspects. This is why Maçães uses the name Belt and Road throughout the book, instead of its acronyms - OBOR (One Belt, One Road) or the more recently used BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) - because he is not so much referring to the layout of the transport connections as to the new world order that Beijing wants to shape.

Through this economic integration, according to Maçães, China could project power over two thirds of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, in a process of geographic cohesion of Eurasia to which this Portuguese politician and researcher has already dedicated his previous work.

Compared to other essays on the New Silk Road, this one focuses a lot on India (this is the case in its general content, but also in this review we have used a special edition dedicated to that country, with a particular introduction).

Maçães grants India the role of core topic in the Eurasia integration project . If India decides not to participate at all and, instead, to go for the alternative promoted by the United States, together with Japan and Australia, then the Chinese design will not reach the dimension desired by Beijing. "If India decides that life in the Western order will be better than under alternative arrangements, the Belt and Road will have difficulty achieving its original ambition," the author says.

Maçães believes, however, that the West is not all that attractive to the subcontinent. In that Western order, India can only aspire to a secondary role, while the rise of China "offers it the exciting possibility of a genuinely multipolar, rather than merely multilateral, world in which India can legitimately hope to become an autonomous center of geopolitical power," at least on a par with a declining Russia.

Despite these apparent advantages, India will not go all the way to either side, Maçães predicts. "It will never join the Belt and Road because it could only agree to join China in a project that was new. And it will never join a US initiative to rival the Belt and Road unless the US makes it less confrontational." So, "India will keep everyone waiting, but it will never make a decision on the Belt and Road".

Without Delhi's participation, or even more, with resistance from the Indian leadership, neither the US nor China's vision can be fully realized internship, Maçães continues to argue. Without India, Washington may be able to preserve its current model of alliances in Asia, but its ability to compete on the scale that the Belt and Road does would collapse; for its part, Beijing is realizing that it alone cannot provide the financial resources needed for the ambitious project.

Maçães warns that China has "ignored and disdained" India's positions and interests, which may end up being "a major miscalculation". He believes that China's impatience to start building infrastructure, because of the need to demonstrate that its initiative is a success, "may become the worst enemy".

He ventures that the Chinese may correct the shot. "It is likely - perhaps even inevitable - that the Belt and Road will grow increasingly decentralized, less China-centric," he says, commenting that in the end such a new Chinese order would not be so different from the structure of the existing Washington-led world order, where "the US insists on being recognized as the state at the apex of the hierarchy of international power" and leaves some autonomy to each regional power.

While Maçães places India in a non-aligned status plenary session of the Executive Council, he does foresee an unequivocal partnership between India and Japan. In his view it is a "symbiotic" relationship, in which India sees Japan as its first source of technology, while Japan sees the Indian navy as "an indispensable partner in its efforts to contain Chinese expansion and safeguard freedom of navigation" in the region's seas.

As for Europe, Maçães sees it in the difficult position "of not being able to oppose an international economic integration project , while being equally incapable of joining as a mere participant" in the Chinese initiative, in addition to the germ of division that the project has already introduced into the European Union.

From Bangladesh to Pakistan and Djibouti

Despite the differences indicated above, Maçães believes that the relationship between China and India can develop positively, even if there is some element of latent conflict, encouraged by a certain mutual distrust. The commercial linkage of two such immense markets and production centers will generate economic ties "called to dominate" world Economics by the middle of this century.

This movement of goods between the two countries will make Bangladesh and Myanmar the center of a major trade corridor.

For its part, Pakistan, in addition to being a corridor for the exit to the Indian Ocean from western China, will be increasingly integrated into the Chinese production chain. In particular, it can supply raw materials and basic manufactures to the textile industry that China is developing in Xinjiang, its export gateway to Europe for goods that can optimize rail transport. The capital of that province, Urumqi, will become the fashion capital of Central Asia in the next decade, agreement to Maçães' forecast.

Another interesting observation is that the shrinking of Eurasia and the development of internal transport routes between the two extremes of the supercontinent may lead to the North Sea container ports (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg) losing weight in the trade between Europe and China at the expense of a greater transit of those in the Mediterranean (Piraeus, in particular).

The author also ventures that Chinese infrastructure works in Cameroon and Nigeria can help facilitate connections between these countries and Doralé, the port that China manages in Djibouti, which, through these trans-African routes, could become "a serious rival" to the Suez Canal.

If in Djibouti China has its first, and for the moment only, military base outside its territory, it should be kept in mind that Beijing can give a possible military use to other ports whose management it has assumed. As Maçães reminds, China approved in 2016 a legal framework that obliges civilian companies to support military logistics operations requested by the Chinese Navy.

All these are aspects of a suggestive book that does not allow itself to be carried away by the determinism of China's rise, nor by an antagonistic vision that denies the possibility of a new world order. The work of a European who, although he served in the Portuguese Foreign Ministry as director General for Europe, is realistic about the weight of the EU in the design the world.

[Condoleezza Rice, Amy B. Zegart, Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity. Hachette Book Group. New York, May 2019]

REVIEW / Rossina Funes Santimoni

Every year Stanford Graduate School of Business offers their students a seminar in Political Risk. The classes are taught by former U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the renowned academic Amy B. Zegart. Motivated by their students, they decided to turn their classes into a book in order to allow more people and organizations to navigate the waters of political risk.

The work entitled Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity is divided into ten chapters. The authors start by explaining the contemporary concept of political risk. Consequently, theoretical framework is added as they advance in the explanation, in this way making it useful for the reader in order to understand, analyze, mitigate and answer efficiently to political risks. Their ultimate objective is to provide functional framework that can be utilized in any organization or by any person to improve political risk management. 

Rice and Zegart define the twenty-first-century political risk as the probability that a political action could significantly affect a company's business. Nowadays, the public and the private sphere are constantly changing and evolving. Everything is more complex and intertwined. Governments are no longer the only ones playing an important role in business decisions. The authors emphasize how companies need to efficiently deal with the political risks spawn by an increasing diversity of actors, among which is anyone with access to social average. In order to illustrate the latter, the authors make use of real-life examples, for instance the Blackfish Effect. It is named after a low-budget investigative documentary with the same title that depicted how SeaWorld Entertainment's treatment of killer whales harmed both the animals and their human trainers. The film that started with one woman reading a story about orcas triggered political action at the grassroots, state and federal levels, ending up with devastating consequences from which the company has still not recovered up to now. These cascading repercussions of the film have been denominated the Blackfish Effect. 

The work is well equipped with more examples about distinguished companies' experience. Among the organizations cited are Lego Company Group, FedEx, Royal Caribbean and Nike. Some have excelled in dealing with political risk and some have failed. However, both sides of the coin are useful to learn and to understand how the convoluted world of political risks management work.

Nowadays, risk generators perform at five intersecting levels including individuals, local organizations and governments, national governments, transnational organizations, and supranational and international institutions. Therefore, today's risks are different from the old ones, even if those still persist. With this in mind, Rice and Zegart shed a light on these days' top ten political risks: geopolitics, internal conflict, policy change, braches of contract, corruption, extraterritorial reach, natural resource manipulation, social activism, terrorism and cyber threats.

Nevertheless, even if the theory is laid out, the question still haunts us: Why is good political risk management so hard? The authors dedicate a whole chapter investigating it and conclude that there are "Five Hards". Political risk is hard to reward, hard to understand, hard to measure, hard to update, and hard to communicate. Therefore, in order to succeed at its management, one must get right the four basics: understanding, analyzing, mitigating and responding to risks. Rice and Zegart devote the remaining four chapters of the book expanding on each basic and, again, employing examples to better illustrate their knowledge.

The thing about political risks is that they are always there. They are imminent and we can do nothing more than try to prevent them and learn from them, to use the present in order to make the best of it for the future. It is not about predicting the future, which is impossible. "No one ever builds a disaster recovery plan that allows for the destruction of everybody in the office at 8:45 am. That is never the plan," assures Howard W. Lutnick, CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald on how the company dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attack aftermath. Paradoxically, Rice and Zegart maintain that the best way to deal with crises is not having them. Henceforth, they dedicate a whole chapter to providing key takeaways in order to better respond to crises. Politics has always been an unpredictable business. There is no one that can discern accurately how human history is going to unfold. However, the authors are convinced that managing political risks does not have to be pure guesswork and that being prepare is essential and can improve companies performances in a great deal.

Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity completely revamps the way we reflect on the topic. It is easy to notice both authors proficiency in the field. On one hand, the past experiences of former U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice serve as anecdotes to elucidate the build-up of the theoretical framework. It is valuable to have such a person to act as a primary source that has lived among other high-end characters and important people in history. On the other hand we have Professor Amy B. Zegart, who with her natural eloquence excels in conveying the importance of political risk management nowadays. Consequently, everyone can get a precious lesson from this book, ranging from students that are interested in navigating the sphere, to everyday workers, company owners and public servants.

[Winston Lord, Kissinger on Kissinger. Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership. All Points Books. New York, 2019. 147 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

At the age of 96, Henry Kissinger sees another book published that is largely his own: the transcription of a series of lengthy interviews regarding the main foreign actions of the Nixon Administration, in which he served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. Although he himself has already left extensive writings on those moments and has provided documentation for others to write about them - as in the case of Niall Ferguson's biography, the first volume of which appeared in 2015 - Kissinger has wanted to return to that period from 1969-1974 to offer a synthesis of the strategic principles that motivated the decisions then adopted. No news is provided, but there are details that may be of interest to historians of that period.

The work does not respond to a last-minute desire on Kissinger's part to influence a particular reading of his bequest. In fact, the initiative to keep the dialogues transcribed here did not come from him. It is, however, part of a wave of vindication of the presidency of Richard Nixon, whose strategic vision in international politics was tarnished by Watergate. The Nixon Foundation promoted the realization of a series of videos, which included several interviews with Kissinger, conducted throughout 2016. These were conducted by Winston Lord, Kissinger's close partner during his time at the White House and at the State department , together with K. T. McFarland, then an official under him (and, for a few months, issue two of the National Security committee with Donald Trump). More than two years later, this conversation with Kissinger is now published in a small, short book. His last books were "China" (2011) and "World Order" (2014).

Kissinger's oral account here deals with a few issues that were at the center of his activity as the great architect of U.S. foreign policy: the opening to China, détente with Russia, the end of the Vietnam War and greater involvement in the Middle East. Although the conversation goes into detail and provides various anecdotes, what is substantial is what can be extracted beyond these specifics: the "reflections on diplomacy, grand strategy and leadership" indicated in the book's subtitle. It could be tiresome to read again the intrahistory of a diplomatic performance on which the protagonist himself has already been prolific, but on this occasion reflections are offered that transcend the specific historical period, which for many may already be far away, as well as interesting recommendations on decision-making processes in leadership positions.

Kissinger provides some clues, for example, as to why the National Security committee has been consolidated in the United States as an instrument of the President's foreign action, with an autonomous -and sometimes conflictive- life with respect to the State department . The Nixon Administration was the driving force behind it, following the suggestion of Eisenhower, whose vice-president Nixon had been: interdepartmental coordination in foreign policy could hardly be done from a department -the administrative office of State-, but had to be carried out from the White House itself. While the National Security Advisor can concentrate on those actions that are of most interest to the President, the Secretary of State is obliged to be more dispersed, having to attend to a multitude of fronts. Moreover, unlike the Defense department 's greater readiness to follow the commander in chief, the State department apparatus, accustomed to elaborating multiple alternatives for each international issue, may take time to fully assume the direction imposed from the White House.

In terms of negotiating strategy, Kissinger rejects the idea of privately setting a maximum goal and then cutting it little by little, like slices of salami, as the end of the negotiation is reached. Instead, he proposes setting from the outset the basic goals that one would like to achieve - perhaps adding 5%, since something will have to be conceded - and spending a long time explaining them to the other party, with a view to reaching a conceptual understanding. Kissinger advises understanding what moves the other party and what their own objectives are, because "if you impose your interests without linking them to the interests of the others, you will not be able to sustain your efforts", given that at the end of the negotiation the parties must be willing to support what has been achieved.

As on other occasions, Kissinger does not claim sole credit for the diplomatic successes of the Nixon Administration. While the press and some in academia have given greater credit to the former Harvard professor, Kissinger himself has insisted that it was Nixon who decisively shaped the policies, the maturation of which the two had previously pursued separately before collaborating in the White House. However, it is perhaps in this book where Kissinger's words most praise the former president, perhaps because they were made in the framework of an initiative born from the Nixon Foundation.

 "Nixon's fundamental contribution was to establish a patron saint of foreign policy thinking that is seminal," Kissinger says. According to him, the traditional way of approaching U.S. foreign action had been to segment issues in an attempt to solve them as individualized problems, making their resolution the issue itself. "Nixon was - leaving aside the Founding Fathers and, I would argue, Teddy Roosevelt - the American president who thought of foreign policy as grand strategy. For him, foreign policy was the structural improvement of the relationship between countries so that the balance of their self-interest would promote global peace and U.S. security. And he thought about this in relatively long-range terms."

Those who have little sympathy for Kissinger -a character of passionate defenders but also of staunch critics- will see in this work another exercise of self-complacency and exaltation typical of the former advisor. To remain at that stage would be to waste a work that contains interesting reflections and I believe it completes well the thinking of someone of such relevance in the history of international relations. What staff affirmation the publication may have refers rather to Winston Lord, who is claimed here as Kissinger's right-hand man at the time: in the first pages there is a complete photo of the interview between Nixon and Mao, whose margins were cut off at the time by the White House so that Lord's presence would not bother the Secretary of State, who was not invited to the historic trip to Peking.

[Francisco Pascual de la Parte, The returning empire. The Ukrainian War 2014-2017: Origin, development, international environment and consequences. Editions of the University of Oviedo. Oviedo, 2017. 470 pages]

review / Vitaliy Stepanyuk[English version].

In this research on the Ukrainian war and the Russian intervention in the confrontation, the author analyzes the conflict focusing on its precedents and the international context in which it develops. For that purpose, he also analyzes with special emphasis Russia's relations with other states, particularly since the fall of the USSR. Above all, this study covers Russia's interaction with the United States, the European Union, the neighboring countries that emerged from the disintegration of the USSR (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania...), the Caucasus, the Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan...), China and Russia's involvement in the Middle East conflict. All these relations have, in some way, repercussions on the Ukrainian conflict or are a consequence of it.

The book is structured, as the author himself explains in its first pages, in such a way as to allow different ways of reading it. For those who wish to have a general knowledge of the Ukrainian question, they can read only the beginning of the book, which gives a brief description of the conflict from its two national perspectives. Those who also want to understand the historical background that led to the confrontation can also read the introduction. The second chapter explains the origin of Russian suspicion towards liberal ideas and the Western inability to understand Russian concerns and social changes. Those who wish to assimilate the conflict in all its details and understand its political, strategic, legal, economic, military and cultural consequences should read the rest of the book. Finally, those who just want to understand the possible solutions to the dispute can skip directly to the last two chapters. In the last pages, readers can also find an extensive bibliography used to write this Issue and some appendices with documents, texts and maps relevant to the study of the conflict.

The Ukraine problem began in late 2013 with the protests in Kiev's Maidan place . Almost six years later, the conflict seems to have lost international interest, but the truth is that the war continues and its end is not yet in sight. When it started, it was a shock no one expected. Hundreds of people took to the streets demanding better living conditions and an end to corruption. The international media made extensive coverage of what was happening, and everyone was aware of the news about Ukraine. Initially held peacefully, the protests turned violent due to repression by government forces. The president fled the country and a new, pro-European oriented government was established and accepted by the majority of citizens. However, this achievement was met by Russian intervention in Ukrainian territory, which resulted in the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula, in an action that Russia justified on the grounds that they were only protecting the Russian population living there. In addition, an armed conflict began in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian troops and a Russian-backed separatist movement.

This is just a brief summary how the conflict originated, but things are certainly more complex. According to the book, the Ukrainian war is not an isolated conflict that happened unexpectedly. In fact, the author argues that Russia's reaction was quite presumable in those years, due to the internal and external conditions in the country, generated by Putin's attitude and by the Russian mentality. The author lists warnings of what could happen in Ukraine and nobody noticed: civil protests in Kazakhstan in 1986, the Nagorno Karabakh War (a region between Armenia and Azerbaijan) started in 1988, the Transnistrian war (in Moldova) started in 1990, separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (two regions of Georgia).... Russia usually supported and helped the separatist movements, claiming in some cases that it had to protect the Russian minorities living in those places. This gave a fairly clear idea of Russia's position towards its neighbors and reflected that, despite having initially accepted the independence of these former Soviet republics after the collapse of the USSR, Russia was not interested in losing its influence in these regions.

Russian instincts

An interesting idea sample in the book is the fact that, although the USSR collapsed and Soviet institutions disappeared, the yearning for a strong empire remained, as well as distrust and rivalry with Western powers. These issues shape Russia's domestic and foreign policy, especially defining the Kremlin's relations with the other powers. The essence of the USSR persisted under another banner, because the Soviet elites remained undisturbed. One might think that the survival of these Soviet inertias is due to the ineffective reform process sustained by the Western liberal powers in the USSR after its collapse. But it should be noted that the sudden incursion of Western customs and ideas into a Russian society unprepared to assimilate them, without a strategy aimed at facilitating such change, had a negative impact on the Russian people. By the end of the 1990s, most Russians thought that the introduction of so-called "democratic reforms" and the free market, with its unexpected results of massive corruption and social deterioration, had been a big mistake.

In that sense, Putin's arrival meant the establishment of order in a chaotic society, although it meant the end of democratic reforms. Moreover, the people of Russia saw in Putin a leader capable of standing up to the Western powers (unlike Yeltsin, the previous Russian president, who had had a weak position towards them) and bringing Russia to the place it should occupy: Russia as a great empire.

One of the main consequences of the Ukrainian conflict is that the context of relations between Russia and the Western powers has frozen dramatically. Although their relations were bad after the collapse of the USSR, those relations deteriorated much further due to the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin adopted suspicion, especially of the West, as a basic principle. At the same time, Russia fostered cooperation with China, Egypt, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, India, Brazil and South Africa as a means of confronting NATO, the EU and the United States. On the one hand, President Putin wanted to reduce the weight of Western powers in the international economic sphere; on the other hand, Russia also began to develop stronger relations with alternative countries in order to confront the economic sanctions imposed by the European Union. Due to these two reasons, Russia created the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), formed in May 2014, with the goal of building economic integration on the basis of a customs union. Today, the EAEU is composed of five members: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

In addition, Russia has strongly denounced NATO's expansion into Eastern European countries. The Kremlin has used this topic as an excuse to strengthen its army and establish new alliances. Together with some allies, Russia has organized massive military trainings near the borders of Poland and the Balkan countries. It is also working to create disputes among NATO members and weaken the organization.

In particular, the Ukrainian conflict has also shown the differences between Russian determination and Western indecisiveness, meaning that Russia has been able to carry out violent and illegal measures without being met with solid and concrete solutions from the West. Arguably, Russia uses, above all, hard power, taking advantage of economic (the sale of oil and gas, for example) and military means to dictate the actions of another nation through coercion. Its use of soft power occupies, in some ways, a subordinate place.

According to some analysts, Russia's hybrid war against the West includes not only troops, weapons and computers (hackers), but also the creation of "frozen conflicts" (e.g., the Syrian war) that has established Russia as an indispensable party in conflict resolution, and the use of propaganda, the media and its intelligence services. In addition, the Kremlin was also involved in the financing of pro-Russian political parties in other countries.

Russian activity is incomprehensible if we do not take into consideration the strong and powerful propaganda (even more powerful than the propaganda system of the USSR) used by the Russian authorities to justify the behavior of the Government towards its own citizens and towards the international community. One of the most commonly used arguments is to blame the United States for all the conflicts that are occurring in the world and to justify Russia's actions as a reaction to an aggressive American position. According to the Russian media, the allegedly main US goal is to oppress Russia and foment global disorder. In that sense, the general Russian tendency is to replace liberal democracy with the national idea, with great patriotic exaltations to create a sense of unity, against a definite adversary, the states with liberal democracies and the International Organizations.

Another interesting topic is the author's explanation of how different Russia's view of the world, security, relations between nations or the rule of law is compared to Western conceptions. While the West focuses on defense and enforcement of international law, Russia claims that each country is manager of its own security and takes all necessary measures in this regard (even if it contradicts international law or any international treaty or agreement ). Definitely, what we see today is a New Cold War consisting of a bloc of liberal-democratic states, tending towards the achievement of extensive globalized trade and finance, against another bloc of major totalitarian and capitalist-authoritarian regimes, with a clear tendency towards militarization.

Successes and outlook

The book offers a deep and broad view of what Russian foreign policy is today. It highlights the idea that the Ukrainian conflict is not an isolated dispute, but a conflict that is embedded in a much more complex network of circumstances. He makes it clear that international relations do not function as a structured and patterned mechanism, but as a field where countries have different views on how the world is governed and what its rules should be. We could say that there is a struggle between a liberal vision supported by the West, which emphasizes international cooperation and the rejection of power as the only way to act in the international sphere, and a realist vision, defended by Russia, which explains foreign affairs in terms of power, state centralism and anarchy.

One of the book's strengths is that it sample the different positions of very different analysts, with criticisms of both Russian and Western activities. This allows the reader to examine the conflict from different perspectives and to acquire a comprehensive and critical view of the topic. In addition, the financial aid text financial aid to learn and understand the real state of affairs in other countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, regions little known in Western society.

This is an excellent research work , which allows to examine the complicated reality surrounding the war in Ukraine and to deepen the study of the relations between nations.

[Bruno Maçães, The Dawn of Eurasia. On the Trail of the New World Order. Allen Lane. Milton Keynes, 2018. 281 pp]

review / Emili J. Blasco

The discussion on the emergence of Eurasia as an increasingly compact reality, no longer as a mere geographical description that was conceptually a chimera, owes much to the contribution of Bruno Maçães; particularly to his book The Dawn of Eurasia, but also to his continuous proselytizing to different audiences. This Portuguese diplomat with research activity in Europe notes the consolidation of the Eurasian mass as a single continent (or supercontinent) to all intents and purposes.

"One of the reasons we have to start thinking about Eurasia is because this is how China is increasingly looking at the world (...) China is already living a Eurasian age," says Maçães. What is new about it, he says, "is not that there are such connections between continents, but that, for the first time, they work both ways. Only when the influence flows in both directions can we speak of an integrated space." The Silk Belt and Road Initiative, especially its overland route, sample that China is no longer looking only to the Pacific, but is also contemplating new routes to Europe.

Maçães urges Europe to adopt a Eurasian perspective, for three reasons: because Russia and China have one; because most of the big foreign policy issues of our time have to do with how Europe and Asia are connected (Ukraine, refugee crisis, energy and trade); and because all the security threats of the coming decades will play out in a Eurasian context. Maçães adds a final reason why Europe should become more actively involved in the Eurasian integration project : it is the way to combat the forces of disintegration that exist within Europe itself.

From the various considerations included in the book, some suggestive ideas could be highlighted. One is that Russia's historical identity problems, straddling Europe and Asia - to see itself as different from the Europeans and at the same time being attracted by the modernity of the West - are now being replicated in the East, where China is on its way to creating a second pole of economic growth and integration in the supercontinent. If Europe is one of the poles and Asia (China and the other successful countries of the Far East) the other, then what is Russia, if it does not fully respond to the European and Asian identities?

The Silk Belt and Road Initiative gives geopolitical importance to Central Asia, as Maçães reviews. Thus, China needs a clear dominance of Xinjiang, its westernmost province and the gateway to the Central Asian republics. The land route to Europe cannot exist without the Xinjinag segment, but at the same time the exhibition of this Uyghur-majority territory to trade and modernization could accentuate its separatist aspirations. Just northwest of Xinjiang is the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, a vast country of great agricultural value, where Chinese attempts to buy land are being viewed with high suspicion from its capital, Astana. Maçães estimates that if Russia were to try to reintegrate Kazakhstan into its sphere of influence, with the same vehemence it has done with Ukraine, "China would not stand aside."

Not only are the East Coast (European peninsula) and the West Coast (Pacific coast) moving closer together, but the connections between the two also improve logistical conditions in the interior of the supercontinent. This is precisely one of the objectives of the Silk Belt and Road Initiative: as Chinese companies have moved away from coastal business hubs to lower labor costs, they are moving further away from ports and therefore need better land connections, thus contributing to the shrinking of Eurasia.

[Roberto Valencia, Letter from Zacatraz. Libros del K.O. Madrid, 2018. 384 pp]

review / Jimena Villacorta

The story of El Directo - a young Salvadoran who at the age of 17 was attributed with 17 murders, was in and out of jail and was finally sentenced by his fellow gang members - serves as a canvas for an even bigger picture: the serious social problem posed by violent gangs in Central America, particularly in El Salvador.

Roberto Valencia, a Spanish journalist who has lived in the Central American country for nearly 20 years, has dedicated time and effort to tackling this problem in depth as a reporter for "El Faro," an award-winning Salvadoran news portal . Letter from Zacatraz (as the local media call the maximum security prison of Zacateoluca) is a journalistic account that, through a concrete story, exposes the broader picture of a truly complex reality.

On September 11, 2012 was the first time Valencia sat down to talk with Gustavo Adolfo Parada Morales, alias El Directo, someone who for years had captured the attention of the media, despite the existence of thousands of other young people involved in gangs. That contact staff encouraged the journalist to look for other testimonies, until fill in a book that gathers the direct voice of Parada and that of people who knew him, based on interviews with those who loved him, like his mother or his wife, and with those who confronted him, like some judges.

The result of an unwanted pregnancy, El Directo was born on January 25, 1982 in the city of San Miguel. Barely two decades later, he was already the most dangerous and feared man in El Salvador, or at least that is how the media portrayed him. A member of the Pana di Locos, a clique of the Mara Salvatrucha, he became the main public enemy. From the age of 17, accused of as many murders (of which he only admitted to six) and various other crimes, El Directo was in three juvenile detention centers and nine prisons. He had the opportunity to start a new life in Costa Rica, but he blew it. He did not make it to the United States. He was free for several months, but it wasn't long before the police recaptured him.

Through Parada's life, the author projects the phenomenon of gangs in El Salvador. He emphasizes how this phenomenon affects mainly the lower classes, while the rest of society does not realize the full magnitude of the problem and, therefore, is not interested in seeking a solution. How is it possible, Valencia asks, that a society like the Salvadoran one, with 6.5 million inhabitants, tolerates an average of 10 homicides per day, not to mention numerous other crimes, in a country where 1% of the population are gang members.

The repressive measures applied by the right-wing (ARENA) and left-wing (FMLN) governments have not improved the gang problem. Gangs have been growing, both outside and inside detention centers, many of which are in a deplorable state. Precisely the condition of the prisons aggravates the status: the infrastructure is damaged, there is great insalubrity and overcrowding is extreme. In most of the prisons, gang leaders have a large part of the control and from there they dominate their respective organizations. "El Salvador's prison system is the most overcrowded in the hemisphere, a statement certified by the Organization of American States," says Valencia.

El Directo was imprisoned several times, where he was seriously wounded on multiple occasions, sometimes by the Mara Salvatrucha, who declared him a traitor and threatened to kill him, and other times by police and prison employees. After a few months in jail, he decided to reform and renounce his activity in the MS. This brought him various opportunities, but he returned to prison. He was finally killed in 2013, at the age of 31, by members of his new gang, La Mirada Locos, because he had been accused of ordering the murder of someone in the organization whose wife he had been having an affair with.

It is interesting to note how in a country where a large number of crimes are registered, for at least ten years the case of El Directo had absolute priority in the media, which often exaggerated Parada's criminal record. "We live in a country where big murderers have been granted amnesty. Drugs circulate with relative freedom and, despite the fact that police officials have said that there are important names in business, the state apparatus and the army involved in drug trafficking, we have not seen any arrest at that level", says to Valencia the President of the Central American University, José María Tojeira. And he adds: "Income tax evasion is a widespread vice among the wealthiest sectors. The police is still managed with a significant Degree of corruption. Deputies are pardoned or investigated for acts in which the life or honor of other citizens have been severely threatened". For his part, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, Archbishop Emeritus of San Salvador, regrets that journalists, commentators, analysts and politicians repeat over and over again, "like a church choir, the false refrain of 17 years, 17 murders". In his opinion, "perhaps they went too far in exhibition and arrogance", according to Valencia.

Roberto Valencia concludes that the problem with the media is that at first they were benevolent towards the gangs, and then they magnified the phenomenon, without talking about the repressive measures and policies used to combat them.

Carta desde Zacatraz is not a condescending book, but the criticism does not stifle all hope. It warns that Salvadorans have become accustomed to living with this problem. Today it is more common to avoid certain places that are known to be dangerous than to try to fight for the betterment of the country. But he encourages confidence that shattered lives like El Directo's will serve to make new generations want something better for themselves.

[Justin Vaïsse, Zbigniew Brzezinski. America's Grand Strategist. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 2018. 505 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter, is one of the great names in U.S. foreign policy in recent decades. In some respects comparable to Henry Kissinger, who also went directly from the University - where both were colleagues - to the Administration, the latter's greater renown has sometimes obscured Brzezinski's degree program . Justin Vaïsse's biography, written with access to Brzezinski's staff documentation and first published in French two years ago, highlights the singular figure and his own thinking of a man who was a continuous presence in the discussion on US action in the world until his death in 2017.

Born in Warsaw in 1928 and the son of a diplomat, Brzezinski arrived with his family in Canada during World War II. From there, he went to Harvard and quickly rose to prominence in the academic community in the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen and lived for the rest of his life. If in the 1940s and 1950s, the leading positions in the Administration were nurtured by an older generation that had led the country through the war and established the new world order, in the following decades a new group of statesmen emerged, in many cases from the leading American universities, which at that time had acquired an unprecedented preeminence in the gestation of political thought.

This was the case of Kissinger, born in Germany and also emigrated with the war, who was first National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, and also under Gerald Ford. The next president, Jimmy Carter, brought Brzezinski, who had advised him on international issues during the election campaign, to the White House. The two professors maintained a respectful and often cordial relationship, although their positions, ascribed to different political camps, often diverged.

For biographical reasons, Brzezenski's original focus - or Zbig, as he was called by his collaborators to overcome the difficulty of pronouncing his surnamewas on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Relatively early on he came to the conclusion that the USSR would be unable to maintain the economic pulse with the West, so he advocated a "peaceful engagement" with the Eastern bloc as a way of accelerating its decomposition. This was the doctrine of the Johnson, Nixon and Ford Administrations.

However, from the mid-1970s, the USSR faced its evident decline with a headlong rush to try to resettle its international power, both in terms of strategic arms and its presence in the Third World. Brzezinski then shifted to a tougher stance toward Moscow, which brought him into frequent confrontation with other figures in the Carter Administration, especially Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Carter had come to the White House in January 1977 with a certain speech of appeasement, although he was still belligerent in terms of human rights. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 reinforced Brzezinski's thesis .

Carter's short presidency gave little room for the National Security committee to score special triumphs. The biggest, albeit the joint work of the presidential team, was the signature the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. But the fiasco of the attempted rescue of the hostages at the Tehran Embassy, which was not Brzezinski's direct responsibility, weighed down an Administration that could not have a second term.

Situated on the right of the Democratic Party, Brzezinski is described by Vaïsse as a "fellow traveler" of the neoconservatives (the Democrats who went over to the Republican side claiming a more robust defense of U.S. interests in the world), but without being a neoconservative himself (in fact, he did not break with the Democratic Party). In any case, he always remarked his independence and was difficult to pigeonhole. "He was neither a warmonger nor a pacifist. He was hawkish and dovish at different times," says Vaïsse. For example, he opposed the first Gulf War, preferring extreme sanctions, but was in favor of intervening in the Balkan War.

After leaving the Administration, Brzezinski joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington and maintained an active production of essays.