The international relations of the Middle East have long been dominated by uncertainty and conflict. External intervention, interstate war, political upheaval and interethnic violence are compounded by the vagaries of oil prices and the claims of military nationalist and religious movements. Fred Halliday sets this region and its conflicts in context, providing on the one hand, a historical introduction to its character and problems, and, on the other, a reasoned analysis of its politics. In an engagement with both the study of the Middle East and the theoretical analysis of international...

This book is a study of the foreign policy of South Yemen, the most radical of Arab states, from the time of its independence from Britain in 1967 until 1987. It covers relations with the west, including the USA, and with the USSR and China, and also highlights South Yemen's conflicts with its neighbours, North Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The author provides a detailed analysis of the foreign relations of one of the USSR's closest allies in the Third World and shows how conflicts within the country relate to changes in foreign policy. South Yemen has traditionally not been an easy country...

This work provides a critique of existing understandings of the Cold War prevalent in international relations, and offers an alternative perspective on the Cold War founded on a historical materialist approach. The focus of the text's argument is an analysis of what we mean by politics and international relations and how such assumptions have come to determine our understanding of the Cold War. The author focuses on the relationship between state and society. Viewed from this perspective, the state and modern conceptions of politics can be seen as products of a capitalist modernity, in which...

Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen tells a story of a Yemeni hereditary elite which was overthrown in the 1962 revolution in North Yemen. For over a millennium, they had enjoyed exclusive rights to the leadership of the Imamate, the religiously sanctioned state. Following the violent removal from power of King Faysal of Iraq in 1958, the overthrow of the Yemeni Imamate - the longest lasting Hashimite rule in the Middle East - confirmed the decline of Hashimite power (held by ruling generations claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad). However, rather than concentrating on recent...

The relation of revolutions to international relations is central to modern history. Revolutions have, as much as war or nationalism, shaped the development of world politics. Equally, revolutions have been, in cause, ideology and consequence, international events. By putting the international politics of revolution centre stage, Fred Halliday's book makes a major contribution to the understanding of both revolution and world politics.

Beneath the millennial shine of political optimism and technological advance lurk a set of deep uncertainties: global inequality is growing; weapons of mass destruction are spreading; strident assertions of identity divide peoples and states; overall, there is a marked lack of effective co-ordination and reduced confidence in the power of people, ideas and democratic processes to achieve change. This important book by a leading observer of International Relations provides a critical but cautiously optimistic assessment of the state and prospects of the world at 2000.