The recent and ongoing crises in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and southern Africa have been and continue to be approached in very different ways by the United States and its West European allies. Richard J. Payne shows how the many future challenges to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and the NATO countries will have to be adapted to a new and less confrontational world, emphasizing the international economic situation over political or ideological factors. Payne maintains that despite years of divergent views on how to handle Third World trouble spots, strains...

The recent and ongoing crises in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and southern Africa have been and continue to be approached in very different ways by the United States and its West European allies. Richard J. Payne shows how the many future challenges to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and the NATO countries will have to be adapted to a new and less confrontational world, emphasizing the international economic situation over political or ideological factors. Payne maintains that despite years of divergent views on how to handle Third World trouble spots, strains...

Converging revolutionary changes in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and in southern Africa radically transformed the international political environment in which Third World countries had formulated and implemented their policies toward South Africa. These changes also focused attention on the need for democratic reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. By removing apartheid's legal underpinning, the South African government made a major and largely unanticipated step toward creating a relatively egalitarian and nonracial society. Dismantling the more intractable...