Library of International Relations – serie

Many people in the world today believe Bush's war against Saddam Hussein is only about oil. Iraq has the second biggest petroleum reserves in the Middle East, and America's relations with its prime supplier Saudi Arabia have turned sour in the wake of 9/11. Invading Iraq, so many argue, is merely colonising an oil field. Oil has transformed the world and remains the most important resource of our age. It has made the wealth of millions of people - from Venezuela to Norway via the Persian Gulf - and holds their futures in its fortunes. The Middle East is the earth's greatest petroleum depot. It is also the most explosive region in the world today. Now more than ever, with the global economy under severe threat, oil is of prime geopolitical concern. Crude Power provides a comprehensive analysis both of the world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and of the very dangerous way politics and economics play themselves out in the oil game - as producers and consumers tug at each others' interests. It is a tug of war: Oystein Noreng explains what all concerned are fighting for.Placing OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) into its wider world context, he examines in detail how shifting oil prices affect everything from international trade balances to inflation rates. In the current political climate of the Middle East and Central Asia, with anti-Americanism and the threat of terrorism in such countries as Saudi Arabia running high, oil holds the future of the world economy as well as thousands of lives in its hands. Crude Power is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with the fate of the world today, and that most important of issues: the interplay of power and money in the Middle East and beyond.

Roby C Barrett casts fresh light on US foreign policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy, illuminating the struggles of two American administrations to deal with massive social, economic, and political change in an area sharply divided by regional and Cold War rivalries. With a dramatic backdrop of revolutionary Arab nationalism, Zionism, indigenous communism, teetering colonial empires, unstable traditional monarchies, oil, territorial disputes and the threat of Soviet domination of the region, this book vividly highlights the fundamental similarities between the goals and application of foreign policy in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations as well as the impact of British influence on the process.Drawing on extensive research in archives and document collections from Kansas to Canberra, as well as numerous interviews with key policy makers and observers from both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Roby C Barrett explores the application of the Cold War containment policy through economic development and security assistance.Within the broader context of the global Cold War struggle, the Greater Middle East also held the potential as the flashpoint for nuclear war, and Barrett analyses fully the implications of this for international relations. In the process, this book draws some unexpected conclusions, arguing that Eisenhower's policies were ultimately more successful than Kennedy's, and offers an important and revisionist contribution to our understanding of the Cold War and the Middle East.

How do we engage with the pressing challenges of xenophobia, radicalism and security in the current political climate? The widely felt sense of insecurity in the West is shared by Muslims both within and outside Western societies. Growing Islamic militancy and the subsequent increased security measures by Western powers have contributed to a pervasive sense among Muslims of being under attack both physically and culturally. "Islam and Political Violence" brings together current debates on the uneasy and potentially mutually destructive relationship between the Muslim world and the West and argues that we are on a dangerous trajectory, strengthening dichotomous notions of the divide between the West and the Muslim world.

The relationship between the USA and the People's Republic of China (PRC) was the defining factor in the Cold War in Asia - the potentially explosive conflict which, as seen in the Korean War, brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. The PRC had not become 'Titoist' as some hoped and remained firmly within the Soviet international orbit. But how did Great Britain and the Republic of China (ROC) fit into this potentially lethal global jigsaw? Steve Tsang has illuminated the history of a seemingly obscure corner of international relations and politics but which was, to contempories, at the heart of global survival. He has carried out extensive research in unique Chinese- and English-language sources, both official and private.

Bringing together specialists from the fields of international relations, history and politics, this work attempts to answer three main questions regarding the 20th century. It considers what the century's salient characteristics have been, what else is ending as the century ends, and whether Churchill was right in calling it a "disappointing century". As the contributors address these issues, they also discuss whether it has been an American century or a "nuclear" century, and whether it marks the "end of history", the triumph of Western liberalism, or merely the end of the Cold War.

Nationalism was regarded as a positive force shaping "modern" societies and states but in Europe it has been overshadowed by the disasters of two world wars. Outside Europe it has continued to enjoy a heyday throughout the 20th century. Covering Turkey, Iran, Abghazia, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Afganistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, this study lays bare the counter-forces unleashed by the project of nationalist modernization, and the stimulation of identity politics as the result of ruthless repression of minority languages, culture, traditions and religion - the life-blood of minority ethnicity. This study examines how these policies, which include Islam as the basis of nation-building in, for example, Pakistan and the post-Pahlavi Iran, have strengthened identity politics and the movements for opting out of the nation.

The Middle East has a very distinctive diplomatic structure. This text surveys the diplomatic relationships and the foundations of foreign policy-making among the principal players in the region - Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Morocco. It also explores the Middle East policies of four leading external powers who have played such a crucial role in the region - the US, Britain, France and Russia. Rendered all the more relevant by the sound and fury surrounding America's new attitudes to the region, the work presents a comparative survey which should be essential for specialists on the Middle East, diplomatic history and international relations.

This is a study of the Lome convention - the principles upon which all relations between the states of the European Union and ACP countries are based. It charts the changing focus, shifting concerns and broader changes at the global level in international relations.

Great Britain's decision to withdraw its forces from the Gulf was a turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. Now regional players had to find rules of common coexistence. With the US immersed in the Vietnam war and the Soviet Union pursuing a policy of caution, there was no world power waiting to succeed Britain. As a result, Gulf politics "went local". This book examines how Iran influenced efforts to reorder the Gulf's political landscape. Its central argument is that a better understanding of the new Gulf order can be achieved by emphasizing local concerns and the degree to which regional powers influenced the policy of external powers in those times.