Strategically placed on the global chess board, as well as controlling vast oil resources, the Middle East was one of the main theatres of Cold War. In the 1950s the Soviet Union had taken advantage of Arab Nationalists' disillusion with British and French Imperialism, along with the emerging Arab-Israeli conflict, to establish relations with Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The United States responded by moving in to shore up the Western position. Confrontation was inevitable. Superpower Intervention in the Middle East was written in 1978, when this confrontation was at its height. The book's main theme focuses on how the superpowers became competitively involved in local Middle East conflicts over which they could exercise only limited control, and the risks of nuclear confrontation of the kind which occurred at the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The threat to Western oil supplies is also examined. This is a fascinating work, of great relevance to scholars and students of Middle Eastern history and political diplomacy, as well as those with an interest in the relationship between the Western superpowers and this volatile region.

First published in 1990, National Security and International Relations provides a concise analysis of the problem of national security in the twentieth century. It examines the criteria by which states decide what level of security they want to seek in an uncertain and essentially Hobbesian world, and why some states tend to underinsure, while obsessively insecure states overinsure, frequently making others more insecure in the process. In the wake of two world wars and the threat of nuclear destruction, the book argues that war was becoming as much a source of insecurity as the intentions of other states. It then explores the different approaches attempted during the twentieth century to ameliorate or ideally escape from the security dilemma. These range from international regimes, to the restructuring of the international politics of Western Europe so as to substitute cooperation for conflict, and U.S. and Soviet attempts to render nuclear competition safer through arms control and confidence building measures. Of special value to students of International Relations and Strategic Studies, this book will also interest those keen to understand the challenges embodied in Gorbachev's 'new thinking' in foreign policy.

Strategically placed on the global chess board, as well as controlling vast oil resources, the Middle East was one of the main theatres of Cold War. In the 1950s the Soviet Union had taken advantage of Arab Nationalists' disillusion with British and French Imperialism, along with the emerging Arab-Israeli conflict, to establish relations with Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The United States responded by moving in to shore up the Western position. Confrontation was inevitable. Superpower Intervention in the Middle East was written in 1978, when this confrontation was at its height. The book's main theme focuses on how the superpowers became competitively involved in local Middle East conflicts over which they could exercise only limited control, and the risks of nuclear confrontation of the kind which occurred at the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The threat to Western oil supplies is also examined. This is a fascinating work, of great relevance to scholars and students of Middle Eastern history and political diplomacy, as well as those with an interest in the relationship between the Western superpowers and this volatile region.

First published in 1990, National Security and International Relations provides a concise analysis of the problem of national security in the twentieth century. It examines the criteria by which states decide what level of security they want to seek in an uncertain and essentially Hobbesian world, and why some states tend to underinsure, while obsessively insecure states overinsure, frequently making others more insecure in the process. In the wake of two world wars and the threat of nuclear destruction, Peter Mangold argues that war was becoming as much a source of insecurity as the intentions of other states. It then explores the different approaches attempted during the twentieth century to ameliorate or ideally escape from the security dilemma. These range from international regimes, to the restructuring of the international politics of Western Europe so as to substitute cooperation for conflict, and U.S. and Soviet attempts to render nuclear competition safer through arms control and confidence building measures. Of special value to students of International Relations and Strategic Studies, this book will also interest those keen to understand the challenges embodied in Gorbachev's 'new thinking' in foreign policy.

A history of power politics from the construction of the German battlefleet to Gorbachev's 'new thinking'. The unwillingness of all the Great Powers to recognise that war, in Ivan Bloch's 1899 phrase, had become 'impossible except at the price of suicide', resulted in two unprecedentedly great wars. These in turn gave impetus to a decline of power politics which gathered pace after 1945. Nuclear weapons imposed a straitjacket which Soviet revisionism was unable to break out of. Moral revulsion, technological advance and economic growth facilitated the emergence of a norm-based 'accomodatory' culture, which now offers a basis for a wider post-Cold War order.