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This is an up-to-date, authoritative account of the development of U.S. policy toward the New International Economic Order Nieo from its inception in 1974 through the Eleventh Special Session of the General Assembly in August-September 1980. Mr. Olson concentrates on the latter stages of the North-South dialogue, analyzing U.S. policy in the conte

The author advocates a more unified Western response to the peace process. However, since the Gulf War both Europe and the United States have gone their own mutually exclusive ways, the United States with the Madrid/post-Oslo process, Europe with the twenty-seven-nation Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Agreements signed in Barcelona in 1995. This is bad for the peace process and Western relations and ignores the importance of Western cooperation in meeting future economic and political conflicts in the Mediterranean area.

Lebanon is the most recent example of an all too frequent modern tragedy, the small nation rent by internal division and external intervention: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Uganda. And as with all tragedies, the agony is both unique and universal.Understandably, Americans are deeply troubled by the latest chapter in Lebanon's ordeal, for we have a religious, moral, political, and, for millions of Lebanese-Americans, profound familial investment in the country. America's involvement is older by far than the modern state of Lebanon, having originated in the early nineteenth century and grown stronger with American relief efforts during the Christian-Druse battles of 1860 and the establishment of the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut) in 1864.

It is not a joking matter, but the state of Middle East politics is nothing if not absurd. Which is to say that, to the Westerner at least, the most recent rearrangement of alliances, conflicts, and rivalries follows no readily apparent pattern of loyalty or consistency—either religious or political. The Iran-Iraq war seems to have crystalized the fragmented Arab world into two opposing blocs, those siding with non-Arab Iran and those backing Saddam Hussein. But Libya and Syria, the two most pro-Soviet countries, have sided with anti-Communist, anti-Soviet Khomeini. On the other hand the Imam is opposed by the two anti-Soviet monarchies of lordan and Saudi Arabia and the non-Communist Gulf states led by pro-Soviet Iraq. The two monarchies might be expected to oppose Iran's revolutionary regime but hardly to ally themselves with a regime no less revolutionary in its own way than Iran. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was the 1958 Iraq revolution that murder ed King Faisal II, ruler of Iraq and cousin to King Hussein. We find Sunni Libya, which has sought to embarrass Alawite president of Syria Assad by stirring up opposition among the Sunni majority of Syria, united with Assad to give aid and comfort to the Shiite leader of Iran. Syria and Iraq, which are hostile to each other, are ruled by the two extant leaders of thp Baath or Renaissance party dedicated to the unity of the Arab peoples. We find Soviet-client Iraq allied with the most proAmerican states, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, against the most anti-American state, Iran. Soviet weaponry provides the security of the Arab axis against American weaponry provided to the shah. Meanwhile, Iran credits the U.S. with starting the war, even though Iran is being attacked with Soviet weaponry.