Written as though compiled shortly after the war's conclusion, this imaginary history of the Third World War describes why, where, and when it would be fought, and what its effects would be.

By romanticizing the Cold War as a Olong peace, O we lose perspective on the full range of conflict dynamics that engulfed the lives and livelihoods of people in the Third World. Episodes of violence and human suffering have increased and spread, encompassing ever more states and social groups. Many regions have seen such a serious deterioration of conditions that OnormalO politics are clearly impossible. Third World War examines the patterns of political violence throughout the world during the Cold War and analyzes them collectively as conflict processes within the global system. It shows that warfare was not randomly distributed, but was centered on six protracted conflict regions that together accounted for 80 to 90 percent of all forms of political violence during that time--a magnitude of violence that rivals the destruction of the previous two world wars. Through societal theories of identity, conflict, and development dynamics, supported by a broad range of quantitative evidence, the author explores how armed conflict and the politics of insecurity lead to policy changes, arrested development, and, ultimately, state failure. He concludes with policy implications and a brief assessment of the prospects for peace in the global system.

This is a study based on interviews with leading French journalist, Christine Ockrent, where de Marenches, head of the French Secret Service for eleven years, expresses personal views on the invisible war - the East-West conflict - and on the wars in the Middle East, African relations, Cambodia and Libya, terrorism and the Greenpeace affair. The book concludes with his own master plan for the West.

An alarming, deeply reported analysis of how close--and how often--the world has come to nuclear annihilation, and why we are once again on the brink.

As the war in Europe entered its final months, we teetered on the edge of a Third World War. While Soviet forces smashed their way into Berlin, Churchill ordered British military planners to prepare the top-secret Operation Unthinkable - the plan for an Allied attack on the Soviet Union - on 1 July 1945. The plan called for the use of the atomic bomb and Nazi troops if necessary: more than merely controversial, as the extent of the Holocaust was becoming clear.A haunting study of the war that so nearly was, Walker offers a fascinating insight into the upheaval as the Second World War drew to a close and the Allies' mistrust of the Soviet Union that would blossom into the Cold War.

The Cold War in the Third World explores the complex interrelationships between the Soviet-American struggle for global preeminence and the rise of the Third World. Those two distinct but overlapping phenomena placed a powerful stamp on world history throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Featuring original essays by twelve leading scholars, this collection examines the influence of the newly emerging states of the Third World on the course of the Cold War and on the international behavior and priorities of the two superpowers. It also analyzes the impact of the Cold War on the developing states and societies of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Blending the new, internationalist approaches to the Cold War with the latest research on the global south in a tumultuous era of decolonization and state-building, The Cold War in the Third World bring together diverse strands of scholarship to address some of the most compelling issues in modern world history.

Winning the Third World examines afresh the intense and enduring rivalry between the United States and China during the Cold War. Gregg A. Brazinsky shows how both nations fought vigorously to establish their influence in newly independent African and Asian countries. By playing a leadership role in Asia and Africa, China hoped to regain its status in world affairs, but Americans feared that China's history as a nonwhite, anticolonial nation would make it an even more dangerous threat in the postcolonial world than the Soviet Union. Drawing on a broad array of new archival materials from China and the United States, Brazinsky demonstrates that disrupting China's efforts to elevate its stature became an important motive behind Washington's use of both hard and soft power in the "Global South." Presenting a detailed narrative of the diplomatic, economic, and cultural competition between Beijing and Washington, Brazinsky offers an important new window for understanding the impact of the Cold War on the Third World. With China's growing involvement in Asia and Africa in the twenty-first century, this impressive new work of international history has an undeniable relevance to contemporary world affairs and policy making.