Recent BooksSeptember/October 2019 233Eastern Europe and Former
Soviet RepublicsMaria Lipman
Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and
With the Rest
BY ANGELA STENT. Twelve, 2019,
448 pp.S
tent is a veteran Russia watcher
who has served in senior positions
in the U.S. government. She hardly
quali¿es as an apologist for Russian
President Vladimir Putin, but she gives
him ample credit for achieving his main
foreign policy goals: reasserting Russia’s
position as a global player, protecting the
country’s sovereignty, gaining respect
from non-Western actors, and overcoming
the West’s attempts to isolate Russia. To
Stent, a historical outlook is indispens-
able for understanding Putin’s foreign
policy. For centuries, she explains, the
country’s vast territory and lack o
natural borders have bred a deep-seated
sense o vulnerability. Putin saw the
West as taking advantage o the weak-
ness caused by the Soviet collapse, and
he responded by craftily exploiting his
Western rivals’ missteps and lack o
unity. Eventually, these tactics aided
Russia’s resurgence on the global stage.
He has been particularly successful,
Stent notes, in handling relations with
China and the countries o the Middle
East. Stent devotes far less space to
Putin’s policy failures: the high cost o
his clashes with the West, Russia’s lack
o any real allies, and the country’s
persistent economic weakness. In some
respects, Putin’s Russia looks a bit likeSugar, Cigars, and Revolution: The
Making of Cuban New York
BY LISANDRO PÉREZ. New York
University Press, 2018, 400 pp.
Given the long-running antagonism
between the two countries, it is a little
surprising that the Çags o Cuba and
the United States are so similar. But
Pérez observes that there is a good
reason for the shared red, white, and
blue: the Cuban Çag was designed in
Manhattan. In the nineteenth century,
New York hosted a thriving transna-
tional community o Cubans, the
Çag-designing revolutionary general
Narciso López among them. In those
years, prosperous Cuban investors
manufactured, ¿nanced, and traded
sugar and cigars in Cuban and U.S., as
well as global, markets. Cuban émigrés
also organized to liberate their home-
land from despotic Spain, some
lobbying for U.S. annexation and
others battling for full independence.
The Cuban founding father José Martí
lived in New York for much o his
adult life. Writing for several Latin
American newspapers, Martí mixed
admiration for American industrious-
ness and liberty with criticism o the
United States’ social shortcomings and
forebodings about U.S. imperial
pretentions. Pérez vividly describes
how the tightly knit Cuban émigré
community reproduced the political
cleavages and social mores o its
homeland. Although some émigrés
absorbed New York’s urbane demo-
cratic modernity, the intransigence and
intolerance inspired by Spanish rule
endured in Cuban political culture,
abroad and at home.