Globalizing the GATT: The Soviet Union's Successor States, Eastern Europe, and the International Trading System (review)

158 SAISREVIEW per se. Today's changes, while apparently threatening, will be overcome in the future by a return to socialism in a more politically democratic form. Consequently , Harbel advocates a purer form of socialism for Cuba and a restoration of Guevara's Utopian programs to build a "new Cuban man." While naive and idealistic in her attitudes towards the changes in Europe, Harbel does rightly suggest that Castro's rule by force has been damaging and contrary to the dictates of socialism. While she says "no to perestroika," she encourages glasnost in Cuba. Harbel believes that political democracy is necessary for the revolution's revitalization. Castro's continued obstinacy, however, is not fully investigated by Harbel. In fact, she neglects the possibility that political democracy in Cuba may bring on Castro's fall and the end of the revolution. Instead, she only discusses how the revolution's ossification has threatened workers' and women's rights and has brought on the need for an allinclusive system of economic planning. A discussion that does not at least question Castro's legitimacy makes for an incomplete analysis of the island's social and political situation. Harbel pulls back on this issue so as not to call into question the legitimacy of socialism in Cuba. This would be clearly antithetical to her own political agenda. Harbel's study of Cuba's present crisis offers a unique socialist perspective. Her analysis goes beyond the blind support liberal writers have historically accorded the revolution by focusing on how it has collapsed into a static bureaucratic failure. She suggests that the revolution will perish without political democracy and an infusion ofrevolutionary commitment. On the other hand, she remains handicapped by her own politics and cannot seem to put her biases aside. In short, she wants to see socialism succeed in Cuba by encouraging a sort ofCuban glasnost without a concomitant liberalization ofCuba's economy. Many argue that Gorbachev failed in the Soviet Union because glasnost was not buttressed by perestroika. It is unfortunate that Harbel has not learned this profound lesson. Globalizing the GATT: The Soviet Union's SuccessorStates, Eastern Europe, and the International Trading System. By Leah A. Haus. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1992. 141 pp. $10.95/Paperback, $28.95/Hardcover. Reviewed by John E. Osborn, M.I.P.P., SAIS, 1992. Leah Haus's book, Globalizing the GATT, implicitly accepts two premises that will likely foreshadow much of the course of international relations during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century: the political integration ofthe former communist bloc into the West cannot occur without providing substantial economic opportunity for the denizens of the East, and economic opportunity cannot be fostered without ensuring meaningful access to world trade markets. Both of these premises are inarguably valid. Absent prosperity and the concomitant development of a stable professional and managerial class, democracy will not likely flourish. Absent the establishment of trading relationships that assure access to BOOK REVIEWS 159 raw materials, finished goods and services, as well as a ready market for their products, prosperity will not arrive in Eastern Europe for some time to come. Haus analyzes the trade policy problems presented by this process of economic integration by focusing exclusively on accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Western European intransigence on the issue ofagricultural subsidies may yet sound the death knell for the entire GATT system, but this has not deterred the author from undertaking this task. Though Haus readily acknowledges the present frailty of the GATT, she maintains that accession to the Agreement by the states of Eastern Europe is essential to their economic prosperity and political stability. Haus argues convincingly that, during the last fifty years, the West has been inconsistent in its opposition to GATT membership applications from the communist bloc states. GATT rules mandating nondiscrimination and reciprocity were designed to promote trade among market economies; the very nature ofnonmarket economies is such that terms ofagreement with them will undermine at least one of these norms. Notwithstanding these basic economic realities, Haus contends that the United States has discriminated in its degree ofreceptiveness to eastern bloc GATT applications largely on the basis of poUtico...