Book Review: Gabriel Siles-Brügge, Constructing European Union Trade Policy: A Global Idea of Europe
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Author | Sumbul Parveen |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020881717726852 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
86 Book Reviews
perspective as it interprets history on the political and military balance of power.
However, the analysis reflects a certain bias in favour of the European perceptions
of world order and based upon them the American perceptions of world order as
the book, in most of its chapters, foregrounds the European structure, and that
remains the point of departure and explanations of various kinds of world order
followed from there.
In large measure, the work succeeds in providing a history of the concept of
world order, albeit through a realist and a European lens. Kissinger’s reading of
the alternatives of the existing world order betrays his understanding of the Asian
system. The analysis therefore veers towards historical generalizations about Asia
and its inhabitants and suffers from oft-repeated portrayals of the non-Western
world. Also, at various places in the book, the author mentions that the Asians
have adopted the Westphalian notion of territorial sovereignty, he fails to impress
upon the reader that world order based upon such notions was implanted during
the colonial period. However, the book surely adds to the literature available on
geopolitical ordering of the world and the author’s experience at the helm of the
United States foreign policy during the peak of the Cold War and at crucial junctures
of Vietnam War, Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the Paris Peace accords is reflected
in his analyses.
References
Chaturvedi, S., & Painter, J. (2007). Whose world, whose order? Spatiality, geopolitics
and the limits of the world order concept. Cooperation and Conflict, 42(4), 375–395.
Huntington, S. (1996). Clash of civilizations and the remaking of the world order. New York,
NY: Simon & Schuster.
Sorensen, G. (2006). What kind of world order? The international system in the new
millennium. Cooperation and Conflict, 41(4), 343–363.
Krishnendra Meena
Assistant Professor, Centre for International Politics,
Organization and Disarmament
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi
India
Gabriel Siles-Brügge, Constructing European Union Trade Policy: A Global
Idea of Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 258 pp. $115.
DOI: 10.1177/0020881717726852
The book is a combination of theoretical rigour and profound empirical research.
It aims to underscore the nature of the European Union’s (EU) trade policy and it’s
changing inclination towards global trade in recent years, particularly since the
2006 ‘Global Europe’ Communication which led the EU to abandon an informal and
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