Having, like most citizens of the developed society read, heardand seen as much as I could of the stirring events unfolding in the Eurasian empire, I cannot, even now (8 September 1991) saymore than what I have thought since the crisis began. This is that,on the one hand, the collapse of Marxism-Leninism and of its political emobodiments had, if I may make a pun, and moreoverin French, been déjà prévu. Marxism-Leninism is dead and buriedeverywhere (with such eccentric exceptions as China and Cuba. But, as in the old song, one can well ask ‘where have all the Marxists gone?’ and ‘When will they ever learn, when will theyever learn?’).

AS RECENT EXPERIENCE IN THE GULF WAR HAS AGAIN confirmed, dependence on foreign supply of military equipment and munitions can lead to an alarming vulnerability. At risk are the national armed forces and their effective prosecution of combat, and since in any military engagement, the place, dimensions, duration, and intensity of battle are not necessarily of their choosing, a second level of salience is added to this risk. A key lesson of the Falklands and Gulf wars, arguably the two most technologically intensive wars to date, is that modern weapons depend crucially on a comprehensive array of logistic support and its timely delivery and reliability.

WRITING A LETTER FROM IRELAND TOUCHES ON CERTAIN sensitivities because Ireland is a geographic unit in search of political expression. There has always been some doubt about political ownership. Between 1800 and 1921 it was, of course, part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Let us say for the present that Ireland now belongs to that small group of political entities - like Korea and Cyprus - which ‘enjoys’ the condition of partition. And that part of Ireland whence this letter is written, Northern Ireland, has been placed in some sort of historical context by a former leader of the Nationalist Party, Eddie McAteer, when he said of it: ‘and now we are sadly the last imperial aspidistra in the British window.’

THERE ARE SOME DATES AND EVENTS WHICH REMAIN engraved in the collective memory of a people. In Algeria these are: 1 November 1954, which sparked the eight-year long War of Liberation; 5 July 1962, which witnessed the end of French rule over the country after 130 years of colonial settlement; and 12 June 1990, which signalled the withering away of the monopoly of power exercised by the ruling party - the National Liberation Front (FLN) - following the holding of the first ever free and competitive local elections in the history of independent Algeria. No doubt, on 12 June 1990 the Constitution of 23 February 1989, which fundamentally transformed the political and social system of Algeria, achieved its most spectacular application. These elections aimed at the renewal of seats in the Councils of both APC: Assemblées Populaires Communales (constituencies), and APW: Assemblées Populaires de Wilayat (provinces). For the first time, Algerians were offered the freedom to choose their representatives from among lists of candidates sponsored by several newly-legalized parties alongside the FLN, and for the first time, the FLN tasted defeat.

REGIONALISM AS A THEORY EVADES CONSISTENT assessment. Attempts to build a grand theory, such as those undertaken by Ernst Haas and Philippe Schmitter, or more recently in more parsimonious style as in consocational elites analysis or the international regimes theory, have not fully succeeded. One can even speak of a neglect of regionalism as a subject of academic study. Yet, on the other hand, a new wave regionalization is apparent in the real world, and despite decades of abandonment of integration projects, an interest in regionalism is growing.

RECENT EVENTS IN EASTERN EUROPE HAVE GENERATED A large degree of uncritical triumphalism amongst certain Western commentators. The collapse of the communist regimes in these countries as the result of their failure to manage their economies and the consequent demand on the part of their citizens for more accountable government, has led many to link the struggle for democracy with a desire for capitalism. Some writers have gone so far as to portray the demise of ‘actually existing socialism’ as the culmination of ‘a universal human evolution in the direction of free societies’ grounded in ‘the empirically undeniable correlation between advancing industrialisation and liberal democracy’.