What are Chinese scholars writing about internal developments in the Soviet Union? Are they positive or negative in their assessments of each stage of Soviet history, from the early leadership of Lenin to the recent accession of Gorbachev? What are the consequences that changing Chinese attitudes are likely to have for Sino-Soviet relations? After a quarter-century of the Sino-Soviet split, foreign observers no longer need to grasp at tiny straws of information, or to rely solely on a small number of official documents and authoritative articles. The study of new, published sources can add substantially to our understanding of international perceptions in the socialist world, and can bring us nearer to the elusive goal of learning about debates on foreign policy in communist-led countries. Academic journals and books from the late 1960s in the Soviet Union, and from 1979 in China, present an impressively detailed and intriguingly lively literature on the problems of socialism in the other country. Having previously examined Soviet writings on China, I will introduce Chinese publications on the Soviet Union in this article.

In the 1970s, discussion of the international economy frequently turned to the emergence of a “new protectionism” among the industrial countries after the accomplishments of trade liberalization in the 1960s. International organizations such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) documented an increase in trade barriers erected against imports of manufactures. The protectionism was “new” in two respects: (1) it was directed against dynamic exporters of manufactured goods (especially Japan and the newly industrializing countries) that had recently become important elements in world trade; (2) the means of protection were nontariff barriers —quotas, voluntary export restraints, and a host of governmental impediments to competitive trading practices.1

If a consensus exists in the literature on international economic sanctions, it is that attempts to use economic instruments to achieve political objectives are likely to fail.1 This widely shared conclusion has been based on the analysis of a number of highly visible but unsuccessful attempts, including the League of Nations' sanctions against Italy in 1935–1936, the Arab boycott of Israel, U.S. sanctions against the Castro regime, United Nations sanctions against Rhodesia, and most recently, U.S. sanctions against the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan and the imposition of martial law in Poland.

Thanks to the vigor of the dependency school's attack on the established “developmentalist” framework for studying change in the Third World, debates going on today in development studies are perhaps the most interesting and important in the field of comparative politics. The debates are interesting because, both methodologically and substantively, a wide range of new issues has been raised in a field that by around 1970 had become relatively moribund. They are important because, in the Third World especially, the mainstream developmentalist models earlier formulated in the United States—such as those sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)—have been angrily discarded by many in favor of politically explosive explanations of underdevelopment that lay the manifold problems of these areas squarely at the feet of Western imperialism (and, in the case of the Latin Americanists heading this school, at the doorstep of Washington in particular). Thus, there are acutely perceived moral and political dimensions to this clash of paradigms for the study of Third World development, beyond the intellectual, or academic, interest that such controversy is sure to excite.

Engels once remarked in a letter to Marx, that it really looks as if old Hegel is directing History as World Spirit from his grave, and with the greatest conscientiousness lets everything spin out twice, once as great tragedy, and the second time as running farce, Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, Barthelemn for Saint-Just, Flocon for Carnot, and Mondkalb with the top dozen most debt-ridden lieutenants for the little corporal and his roundtable of marshals. Thus, as for the 18th Brumaire—we've been there before.1

The oil crises of the 1970s ended a distinct historical period in the control of oil. While the demise of the first oil regime is clear to all, the nature of that regime itself is less well understood. What, in particular, was the distribution of power among the actors in the regime? What were the structures and goals of this system during the long period (approximately the first seventy years of the twentieth century) during which petroleum became vital to industrial society and emerged as the most important commodity in world commerce?

The focus and context of the great powers' interest in the Persian Gulf has altered —often subtly, sometimes dramatically —since Britain established its hegemony in the region in the 19th century. Britain engaged in a lucrative trade, but primarily sought to protect imperial communications and the approaches to India. Today, it is oil that gives the region its strategic importance. For a number of years after World War II, Britain remained the paramount power in the area, maintaining maritime peace, handling the external affairs of the Gulf sheikhdoms, mediating local disputes, dominating trade. Since Britain's withdrawal from the Gulf in 1971, the situation has become somewhat more messy.