The relevance of history

The title of this essay may sound odd, if not inexplicable. ‘Entering the future backwards’ —the quotation comes from the French poet, Paul Valery and it seems to me to have utility in this context in both a theoretical and practical mode. Theoretical, because the term reminds us that as scholars and teachers we have an obligation when we reflect upon a confused and alarming present to think historically, i.e., to ask ourselves what is unique about our current global circumstances. We can only do this by probing the past to determine whether there are any significant parallels which might illustrate an understanding of the present. But the idea that states and statespersons—apart from scholars—enter the future backwards also has some substance: after all, politicians—understandably—confronted by unexpected cataclysmic change attempt to understand that change in terms of traditional assumptions about the structure, process and philosophical bases of international society. They may do it intuitively, but they do it none the less. And this, one might argue, applies to the scholarly community as well.

International non–governmental organizations and their influence over policy in international relations have become subjects of scholarly attention in recent years. One sector of the international policy-cum-analytic community that has received little attention, however, is that group of nationally based non-profit independent policy research institutes—popularly known as ‘think tanks’. This is a strange omission. Foreign policy think tanks and institutes of international affairs are of interest to the wider debates in international relations for two reasons. On the one hand, they aspire to be participants—if mostly marginal ones—in the foreign policy making process. On the other hand, notwithstanding the tension between these two roles, some contribute directly to international relations as a field of study. Yet a common theme prevails. All foreign policy institutes are founded upon a conviction that ideas are important. Researchers and executives of institutes, as well as their corporate, government and foundation supporters, often believe that their intellectual input into policy debates makes a difference. While this can be the case, we suggest that it is less so than many advocates often assume.

This is according to Protocol. More briefly ‘Dear Anthony meet me at Geneva. Yrs. Cleopatra’

Very few of the figures who held responsibility for the making and direction of British foreign policy in the 1930s did so with much benefit to their subsequent historical reputations. Three of the four men who occupied the post of Foreign Secretary after the General Election of 1931 appeared in the cast list of the ‘Guilty Men’, vilified by the triumvirate of left-wing journalists who wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Cato’ in the dramatic summer of 1940. That vilification has been only partially redeemed by the efforts of later revisionist biographers. Certainly, Sir John Simon, Sir Samuel Hoare and Lord Halifax all left the Foreign Office with their political reputations lower in the public mind than at the time of taking office. The exception to this experience was, of course, the case of Anthony Eden who, at the time of his resignation in February 1938 after more than six years as a member of the National Government, stood, in Churchill's famous words, as the ‘one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender’. The making of his reputation had begun in the early 1930s when Eden occupied only subordinate office within the administration. Yet an examination of the making of British foreign policy in the years 1931–5 will show that popular perceptions of Eden's position and of an apparently serious rift between him and his departmental superior were somewhat misleading.

This article argues the case for a new approach to the analysis of regions. It highlights how a region is constantly being denned and redefined by its members in a permanent discourse with each member attempting to identify itself at the core of the region. The core is defined in both territorial and functional terms and this definition necessarily involves a manipulation of knowledge and power. This region building approach utilizes the literature on nation-building and the genealogical writings of anti-foundationalists. It does not, however, attempt to place the study of regions in international relations on a new footing or replace what are arguably the two dominant approaches in the existing literature: an ‘inside-out’ approach focusing on cultural integration and an ‘outside-in’ approach focusing on geopolitics. Rather, it aims to extend the ongoing debate by asking questions about how and why the existence of a given region was postulated in the first place, who perpetuates its existence and with what intentions, and how students of regions, by including or excluding certain areas and peoples, help to perpetuate or transform a given region. After sketching the divergent approaches used to analyze regions, the second part of the article identifies how the two dominant approaches have comprehended Northern Europe, and it then uses the region-building approach to criticize and supplement their findings.

The high level of protection for the textile, clothing and footwear industries in the developed countries is well recognized in the literature. What is not so well recognized is the significant variations in the level and form of protection accorded them and the crucial role that international forces have played in shaping the variations. The studies that do focus on international factors deal with the largest state and therefore provide little insight into trade protection in smaller states. These shortcomings persist despite the fact that trade protection is perhaps the most intensively studied phenomenon in political economy. This paper attempts to plug these gaps in the literature through the study of textile, clothing and footwear industries in Canada.

Historical analogies

On 2 August 1990, much to everyone's surprise, Hitler invaded Kuwait. The ensuing conflict was mired in history—as Francis Fukuyama might say—or at least in historical analogy. The ruling analogy was with the Second World War; more exactly, with the origins and nature of that war. George Bush's constant reference during the Second Gulf War was Martin Gilbert's Second World War, a monumental construction well described as ‘a bleak, desolate evocation of the horrors of war, a modern Waste Land, an unremitting catalogue of killing, atrocity and exiguous survival’. The paperback edition of this exacting volume weighs three pounds. The text runs to 747 pages. Understandably, the President stashed his copy on board Air Force One. ‘I'm reading a book’, he informed an audience in Burlington, Vermont, in October 1990, ‘and it's a book of history, a great, big, thick history of World War II, and there's a parallel between what Hitler did to Poland and what Saddam Hussein has done to Kuwait’. As Paul Fussell has reminded us, the wartime refrain was Remember Pearl Harbor. “ ‘No one ever shouted or sang Remember Poland’? Not until 1990, that is. Of course, Bush himself had served in that war, as he was not slow to remind the electorate: he flew fifty-eight missions as a pilot in the Pacific. For those who wondered what he knew of Poland, Gilbert's book—at once a chronicle of remembrance and an indictment—told him this: