Jake manages a bookstore in Brooklyn. Miriam is a secretary at a Philadelphia law firm. Both grew up in Israel and emigrated to build new lives in America. Neither knows the other exists, until the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad uses their identities in an operation to assassinate a high-ranking Hezbollah commander in Doha, Qatar. Now Hezbollah plans to kill them both.

This volume discusses the evolution of the British-protected Gulf states during the 1960s and explains how these small Shaikhdoms moved towards independence. Based on extensive research using British documents from the Public Records Office and selected American documents from the National Archives, this book investigates the relationship between British officials and Arab Gulf Shaikhs. At the beginning of what was to be their final years as guardians of the Gulf, British officials pressed for political progress, co-operation among the Shaikhdoms and improvements in education and health care. At the same time, Foreign Office officials continued to safeguard specific British economic interests and the political interests of the Western Alliance.

Set against a backdrop of concerns about the potential break-up or radical change to the global world order, this volume sets out to investigate the use of sports mega-events by a number of emerging states. Sports mega-events, it is argued, can be understood as a key component in states’ ‘soft power’ strategies, that is, their attempts to showcase their nations on the international stage, increase their power relative to others via non-coercive means and to increase trade and tourism. Many studies on soft power simply cite the concept’s founder (Joseph Nye) and make little attempt at unpicking the mechanisms behind its creation. This volume does this by shining a light on emerging economies and by putting forward a soft power ‘ideal type’ to aid researchers in understanding the strategies employed by states in advancing their interests.