Small, isolated states in a rapidly reconfiguring world: challenge, threat or incentive?
✍ Scribed by Randall Baker
- Book ID
- 101291450
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 170 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0271-2075
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The world is going through geopolitical and global economic recon®gurations for which history has little precedent. This is true of the nature of these changes as well as the speed with which they are occurring. Many of them are also piecemeal, pragmatic, and unclear in terms of where they are heading. Politics and economics become inextricably enmeshed in this process. However, one clear result is the expansion of huge regional trading blocs. The small states (or microstates) have only a peripheral part to play in this formal process, though their links with their big neighbours are essential to their survival. In some cases the vulnerability of smallness is also being exploited to create strategic and legal hazards for the major players. The continuing peripheralization of small countries can only make this sinister aspect of the relationship sharper and more threatening to micro-state sovereignty and survival. The nature of this problem is examined in this conceptual article to point out the need for clear incorporation of the micro-states in the agglomeration process.