Moscow: Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2008, 152 p.

The peer-reviewed study is undoubtedly relevant, as North Africa has always been considered an important strategic platform for international competition and cooperation. Historically, the North of Africa was the gateway through which caravan routes went and its connections with Europe and Asia were carried out, which, on the one hand, allowed the peoples of the Black continent to use it profitably in their interests, and on the other, exposed them to unprecedented pressure from European, Arab, and Ottoman conquerors. The local population was forced not only to struggle, but also to look for ways of survival and their own specific ways of development, which became possible after independence in the second half of the XX century. This was the subject of V. I. Gusarov's analysis.

In the first chapter, "Initial levels of independent development and the search for ways to overcome backwardness", the author provides the main indicators of socio-economic development of the Arab countries of North Africa; describes the transformation processes that depended on external and internal factors; summarizes data in order to develop a certain formula for moving forward based on the experience of a single country (the experience of Tunisia is proposed).. The author gave a detailed picture of the North African reality of the late XX century. There are seven countries in the region with a total area of 9550 thousand square kilometers, or 70% of the entire Arab world, where more than 300 million people live (by the end of 2007). The monograph does not consider the eighth State of the region - the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), formed in 1976 and recognized by more than 70 states of the world. However, the UN decision was challenged by Morocco and Mauritania, which claim the territory of this former Spanish colony.

By historical standards, the states of the region are still "young": formally independent became Royal Egypt-in 1922 (in fact-in 1952), royal Libya-in 1951 (in fact-in 1969), Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco-in 1956, Mauritania-in 1960., Algeria - in 1962. Before that, they were politically independent, and for various reasons were backward agrarian states, on the territory of which the sands of the Sahara for thousands of years turned into desolation once flourishing civilizations there. Here, life glimmers only in oases and in territories that were hard-won from the desert.

The main indicators of the socio-economic development of the studied countries given by V. I. Gusarov are indeed "evidence of backwardness": by the 1960s, about one-tenth of the population was employed (mainly in auxiliary work) in their industry, and there was no manufacturing industry, the products of which would have been imported to the Russian market.

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export; small artels predominated, using primitive means of production. It was only in the 1960s that Morocco began to stand out, where 60% of exports began to consist of phosphates found there, and Libya, from where high-quality oil found in its depths flowed abroad since 1961 (66% of exports). In the rest of the region, agricultural products accounted for 60 to 99% of exports (p. 10-11).

I would like to emphasize that those enterprises whose products were in demand on the foreign market were mainly owned by foreign capital, a kind of" foreign enclave in an extremely backward agricultural economy", as V. I. Gusarov correctly says (p.10). The rest eked out a miserable existence using primitive means of production. And only those of them who were in the Mediterranean zone or on the desert caravan routes of the African transit got success. The majority of the local population was disenfranchised, had no job, was not protected socially, starved and prayed to God (Allah) for a better fate.

The national elites who came to power under these conditions remained virtually under the" watchful eye " of yesterday's colonialists, whose political and economic activities are still applauded by Western researchers, in contrast to the author of the peer-reviewed monograph.

As a result of the victory of the revolution of July 23, 1952 in Egypt, power also fell into the hands of representatives of the military intelligentsia, who implemented many anti-capitalist reforms, which deprived the local large bourgeoisie and part of the middle class of support for foreign capital. The overthrow of the royal regime in Libya on September 1, 1969, followed by radical internal changes and the expulsion of the colonialists from the country allowed Libyans to "turn their shoulders", although this did not free them from the traps of the world capitalist market and its oil situation. But it took years and decades to finally determine the" own " path of development in both Egypt and Libya. A little later, in 1956, Sudan, Tunisia and Morocco gained independence, whose leaders, although they took into account the national characteristics of their countries, actually repeated what the revolutionaries of Egypt and Libya did. The process of introducing capitalist relations into the sphere of production was very slow, says V. I. Gusarov, because it developed in conditions of extreme backwardness. At the same time, North African leaders managed during the 1960s and 1970s. find your formulas and your platform for radical transformation.

G. Nasser in Egypt, M. Gaddafi in Libya, H. Boumediene in Algeria followed the path of violent nationalization, which led to the creation of a comprehensive public sector in the economy, which gave a powerful impetus to national development in those years. I note, however, that the public sector could not do anything with its main rival - large capital, which by the end of the XX century had everywhere gained the upper hand over the administrative and planned economy. Morocco and Tunisia tried to find a framework for the coexistence of the public sector, foreign and private capital, encouraged investment, no matter from whom they came, but the overall dynamics of development somehow slowly developed in favor of private rather than state capitalism.

At the end of the twentieth century, many in North Africa spoke of the "Tunisian miracle", calling on" other " Arabs to follow suit. The author elaborated on this "miracle", showing its positive and negative aspects. Yes, much has been done in Tunisia to liberalize the economy, create a stable society, and turn the country into a zone of "peaceful coexistence" of various political, social and spiritual trends. However, there are still many unresolved social and other problems. And in my opinion, the experience of implementing the slogans of the "jasmine" revolution of Tunisian President Ben Ali, despite all its positive assessment, is still too early to recommend for export.

The second chapter- "The impact of globalization and regionalization on North African countries" - consists of three sections.

The first section examines the integration processes that emerged in the Arab countries in the 20th century. Unfortunately, these processes have not led to anything positive: the Arabs are still divided economically, do not have a single currency, a single political structure, and are experiencing enormous external pressure, which has not yet been offered anything as an alternative.

V. I. Gusarov examined in detail the opportunities that would give North Africans their economic integration, listed everything that was done to implement this idea. But even when the leaders of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia announced the creation of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) in February 1989, it took a decade to develop and implement the plan. According to the author's calculations, the share of integration projects by the end of the year will be

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In the twentieth century, up to three-quarters of the objects included in them and from half to two-thirds of the total investment volume accounted for them (p.62). But, apparently, the partners expected a greater effect from these investments in Samara than they received by the end of the 20th century. It is not without reason that Tunisian President Ben Ali, while in Morocco in May 1999, admitted that HE HIMSELF was in a state of" relative hibernation", although the existence of the Union was caused by the" urgent need "to unite in an era" when no one can develop alone " (p.63).

In the second section, V. I. Gusarov tried to show what benefits the Arabs could get from " the rapidly developing involvement of many sectors of the economy and infrastructure... in the world economic relations and in the world information space", which he called "globalization" (p. 63). These benefits, listed by the author on pages 64-70, are reduced to the fact that only the private sector should benefit from globalization, whose income could be used for social programs, especially for the poor population, which makes up the majority of the Maghreb. The author carefully calculated the inflow of foreign investment to the North African region: it increased from $ 3,452 million in 2000 to $ 5,569 million in 2004 - more than one and a half times (161.3%). Foreign investors invested the lion's share in Sudan ($1,511 million), Egypt ($1,253 million), Algeria ($882 million), and Morocco ($2,825 million) (p. 69).

I will focus on some features of the globalization "raid" of the Western "golden billion" on the once-colonial South, which V. I. Gusarov almost does not say. Despite all the scale of privatization projects, which are mainly carried out by methods of financial expansion, the main goal of this sophisticated international robbery, in my opinion, is the absorption by supranational corporations of the nascent, but not yet very strong capital of the former "overseas territories" with all the resulting negative consequences for the countries that are the objects of attention of the new economic aggressors. It becomes clear that the respite granted to the Arabs by yesterday's "imperialist forces" in the second half of the twentieth century, when these forces focused on the struggle against the Soviet Union and were engaged in the redistribution of captured wealth, by the beginning of the twenty-first century. it's over. And the military-political colonialism of the past centuries is being replaced by post-industrial world liberalism, called globalization for the "rest" of the world.

"Artificially injecting billions of dollars into the economy and banking sector will not help to get out of the global crisis," Gaddafi, the leader of the Libyan revolution, said, for example, on November 21, 2008. - In fact, we are witnessing the collapse of the private sector in capitalist countries, and attempts to return to the public sector in these countries will not give any result. Now the common man has no confidence left in either governments or the existing economic and political structures" (cit. by: www.itar-tass.com. Pulse of the Planet, 21.11.2008).

In the third section, summing up the results of the half-century of socio-economic development of the countries under study, V. I. Gusarov did not rule out "serious contradictions, mainly in the sphere of trade, between the South and the North" (p.70), which may cause a globalization "storm" in the world. In fact, we are already witnessing this "storm". The crisis has begun.

In the third chapter, "Urgent unresolved problems at the turn of the century", the author highlighted the "demographic explosion" that still shakes North Africa: over 50 years (1950 - 2000), the population of Algeria increased 3.5 times, Egypt - 3.3, Libya-more than 5, Mauritania-3.5, Tunisia - 2.7 times, and the total population of the region increased from 52.7 million to 176.6 million people, or 3.3 times (p. 75).

I agree with V. I. Gusarov that the situation is particularly alarming in Egypt, where rapid population growth has created a threat to the country's economic security. Indeed, the Nile River is one, the Sahara Desert is all around, and it is not possible to curb the high birth rate, as I saw firsthand when I visited Egypt at the end of 2008. Residents need extra hands in the household, and they do not mind that giving birth to too many children, they doom themselves to a half-starved existence. "The situation is such," said one gray-haired Egyptian, " that a social explosion can occur at any moment. But even if another new young leader like Nasser were introduced to the pyramid nation, which by the end of 2008 was close to 80 million people, and he announced new reforms, no one would believe him. We've been through it all... and today we hope only for the will of Allah!" Hence, apparently, the activation of extremist and Islamist groups, whose membership is replenished at the expense of young people under the age of 24, who make up about 60% of the population in Egypt (p. 77). It is young people who are the main contingent of participants in the "bread", "sugar" and other riots that swept through the 1970s and 1980s. for Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Blood flowed freely as they were suppressed.

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In the long run, demographic growth in North African countries will continue. According to the estimates of Western statistical publications cited by V. I. Gusarov, by 2050 the population of Algeria may exceed 50 million people, Egypt-1 million, Libya-10 million, Morocco-50 million, Sudan-60 million, Tunisia-10 million people (p. 78). This will undoubtedly exacerbate the socio-economic problems within North African countries and create enormous problems for neighboring Europe, where the next Afro-Arabs will rush in search of a better life.

V. I. Gusarov devoted a separate section of his monograph to emigration from the countries of North Africa, where he described in detail, on 22 pages, the history of the problem, its causes, dynamics, distribution by degree of qualification of migrants, settlement in European, Arab and other countries of the world, the amount of earnings and currency receipts at home. The turn of the 1980s-1990s, according to the author's conclusion, was marked by a sharp increase in the scale of emigration flows in different regions of the world. For example, the main flow to Western Europe comes from Algeria, Morocco, Turkey and the former republics of Yugoslavia. In 2005, Arabs, together with immigrants from other Muslim countries, accounted for between 15 million and 20 million people in Western Europe (p. 97), creating enormous ethnic, religious, criminal and other problems there, including the formation of parallel illegal power structures.

At the turn of the century, the monograph states, virtually all the countries of North Africa faced a new problem - the use of their territories as a transit springboard for the transfer of illegal immigrants from Tropical Africa to Europe. The most" breakthrough " in this regard were the coasts of Morocco, where Spain is "just a stone's throw" away, and Libya, where in September 2006 alone, the authorities arrested 1,481 and expelled 37,668 people trying to enter Europe, mainly through Italy. A conference of European and African Ministers on migration was held in Tripoli in November 2006. They agreed to coordinate efforts to prevent illegal flows of African emigrants to Europe, but, concluded V. I. Gusarov, even in the case of coordination on emigration problems, their causes will only multiply, and the number of people leaving Africa will increase, which, I add, will cause a "headache" for both North African leaders and European ones. Apparently, the whole world needs to help Africans create human conditions for living at home, then they will not run away to earn money.

In the fourth chapter - "Problems of North Africa at international and regional conferences" - V. I. Gusarov noted that in the period 1956-2006, the socio-economic situation in the region under consideration was discussed at dozens of forums, called (by the first letters of the English designation of the region) MENA-summits. He highlighted the four meetings held in Casablanca, Amman, Cairo and Doha in 1994-1997 on pan - Arab issues, and the two meetings held in Marrakesh in 1997-1998 on Mediterranean affairs. After describing the debates in detail and analyzing the decisions of these events, the author noted the different approaches of the Arabs to the topics discussed, as well as the differences between them and the European participants, as a result of which he concluded: "Many countries around the world, including the United States and Russia, have made strenuous efforts to make regional leaders understand the possibilities of peace. But they didn't understand, or rather, they didn't understand, but not all the leaders, or all the leaders didn't understand all the possibilities of the world. And the confrontation resumed" (p. 121).

Let me clarify: the confrontation was and still continues, because it was impossible to expect anything else: the Arabs and Africa as a whole defend their interests, the West defends theirs, and attempts by the European Union to "fasten" the Mediterranean Arabs to their plans on their own terms have caused legitimate opposition in the past and are still causing it now. The West, as in previous centuries, is trying to benefit from interaction with Afro-Arabs, and they want to have equal relations with everyone. In the meantime, the Mediterranean Arab countries, which are not even associated members of the European Union, "provide it with a significant foreign market, and the EU is the main market for many of these countries," V. I. Gusarov states (p. 131).

The study identified many common challenges that North African countries could address together if they stepped up their own integration projects and made internal changes and made bolder use of existing opportunities. I agree with V. I. Gusarov that " the first 50 years of development did not give the Arabs any major achievements that radically change the situation, neither integration into the SAM, nor the search for internal development reserves. North Africa is entering the second fiftieth year of its independent history with highly differentiated results, although they are more positive than what the Afro-Arabs started with" (p. 136).

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I do not think that we should applaud the course of full privatization at the expense of reducing the public sector, as well as fatally throw ourselves under the wheels of globalization, as the author of the monograph says in some places. Apparently, the current leaders of Afro-Arab countries, who determine the path of development of their peoples, must find a balance between both.

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