Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community by Dan Ravin;Yossi MelmanReview by: John C. CampbellForeign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Fall, 1990), pp. 194-195Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044572 .

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194 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Superpower policies and strategies get due attention, but the focus is on the local scene and reemerging threats to security from economic crisis,

political breakdown and hypernationalism. The authors look with interest and even anticipation on the re validation of some old familiar terms, the "Balkan powder keg" and the timeless "Eastern Question."

YUGOSLAVIA: SOCIALISM, DEVELOPMENT AND DEBT. By David A. Dyker. New York: Routledge, 1990, 201 pp. $67.50. THE REALITY AND THE MYTH. By France Bucar. Antigonish (Nova Scotia): St. Francis Xavier University Press, 1989, 336 pp.

Dyker's book is a history of the Yugoslav economy and official economic theories and policies from World War II to the present, replete with statistics and keen in its observations and criticism. He holds out little hope for successful economic reform without basic political change. The Reality and the Myth is a general treatise on the communist system and its inability to adapt to reality without giving up its essence, the monopoly of power.

The argument is familiar but the illustrations taken from the Yugoslav experience?with special attention to the myths of "socialist self

management" and the nationalities question?are particularly interesting. The author is a Slovene who previously held public office in Yugoslavia.

MOSCOW AND GREEK COMMUNISM, 1944-1949. By Peter J. Stavrakis. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press, 1989, 243 pp. $28.95.

This is the best attempt yet at penetrating the mysteries of Soviet policy in Greece during the tangle of local politics, Balkan rivalries and great

power strategies that marked the closing phases of World War II and the

opening phases of the Cold War. Using Greek communist sources to

supplement recently opened British and American documents, plus all available memoirs, Stavrakis constructs a very plausible account of what Stalin was up to at each stage of the on-again, off-again civil war. The

primary Soviet material is of course unavailable and there remain areas of

uncertainty?the Stalin-Tito relationship or the place of the Slav Macedonian movement in northern Greece in the calculations of various

players?questions the author fills in rather too confidently with firm conclusions. But the book stands as a fine work of research.

The Middle East

John C. Campbell EVERY SPY A PRINCE: THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF ISRAEL'S INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY. By Dan Ravin and Yossi Melman.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990, 450 pp. $22.95.

Written by two Israeli journalists, this history is neither complete nor

based on primary sources (which necessarily remain secret), but it is

investigative journalism of the first rank. It gives the most expansive account yet of the Mossad, its leading personalities (both spymasters and

spies), striking exploits and bumbling failures since independence. If the narrative has gaps, it also has revelations as it runs through cases such as

the Lavon affair, the nuclear program, the assassinations of Arab enemies, the rescue of Ethiopian Jews, the Pollard embarrassment and Irangate.

Neither a whitewashing nor an indictment, the book shows how well, on

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RECENT BOOKS 195

most but not all occasions, the intelligence agencies have served Israeli interests.

A NEW ISRAEL: DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS, 1973-1988. By Bernard Avishai. New York: Ticknor 8c Fields, 1990, 420 pp. $22.95.

The "new" Israel came into being with the trauma of the Yom Kippur War, the self-destruction of Labor Zionism and the coming to power of Menachem Begin and the Likud. These essays, a running critique of Israeli

politics and a commentary on the Arab-Israeli conflict written for The New York Review of Books and other publications, were new at one time but are now mainly of interest only in measuring the author's judgments against what has happened since. His introduction, while continuing the critique, revises some earlier conclusions and raises questions that Israel's leaders and the American Jewish establishment have declined to face.

INTIFADA: PALESTINE AT THE CROSSROADS. Edited by Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock. New York: Praeger, 1990, 347 pp. $55.00.

The theme is the struggle for Palestinian national liberation from "colonial" rule, of which the uprising since December 1987 is seen as the latest and most powerful phase. Most of the contributors are professionals in the occupied territories (in sociology, economics, political science, public health, etc.), and they write as scholars and firsthand observers as well as

supporters of the intifada. There is much interesting material on the

respective roles of villagers, urban workers, the merchant class and Palestinian women, as well as on the competing secular and Islamic wings of the nationalist movement.

CULTURE AND CONFLICT IN EGYPTIAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS: A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF. By Raymond Cohen. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1990, 208 pp. $27.50. The author's theme is that cultural incompatibility underlies the failure

of Israel and Egypt to develop friendly and cooperative relations even after their peace treaty. He illustrates his argument with well-chosen examples of abortive proposals for negotiations, misunderstandings of motives, miscal culations of the effects of one side's moves on the other, and deep-seated obstacles inherent in the traditions of the two peoples. He argues the case

brilliantly, showing the need to revise conventional thinking on many past episodes in the bilateral relationship. In attacking the "myths" on both

sides, however, he inevitably downplays the real conflicts of interest that are more than the product of differing cultures and casts of mind.

KUWAITS FOREIGN POLICY: CITY-STATE IN WORLD POLITICS. By Abdul-Reda Assiri. Boulder (CO): Westview Press, 1990, 193 pp. $31.50.

A Kuwaiti scholar surveys his country's policies since independence, with

emphasis on the need for both flexible diplomacy and extra-regional, great-power support in times of crisis in order to survive amid larger and

stronger neighbors. Bland but not superficial, the book catches the essence of the dangers and dilemmas facing Kuwait and gives a straightforward, documented account of the country's success in meeting them. There is no

comparable systematic work available in a Western language.

SOVIET STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. By George W. Breslauer and others. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990, 320 pp.

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