For fifty-five years, the United States and Saudi Arabia were solid partners. Then came the 9/11 attacks, which sorely tested that relationship. In Thicker than Oil, Rachel Bronson reveals why the partnership became so intimate and how the countries' shared interests sowed the seeds of today's most pressing problem--Islamic radicalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, declassified documents, and interviews with leading Saudi and American officials, and including many colorful stories of diplomatic adventures and misadventures, Bronson chronicles a history of close, and always controversial, contacts. She argues that contrary to popular belief the relationship was never simply about "oil for security." Saudi Arabia's geographic location and religiously motivated foreign policy figured prominently in American efforts to defeat "godless communism." From Africa to Afghanistan, Egypt to Nicaragua, the two worked to beat back Soviet expansion. But decisions made for hardheaded Cold War purposes left behind a legacy that today enflames the Middle East. Looking forward, Bronson outlines the challenges confronting the relationship. The Saudi government faces a zealous internal opposition bent on America's and Saudi Arabia's destruction. Yet from the perspective of both countries, the status quo is clearly unsustainable.

Using a comparative case study method, Scott examines the historical, intellectual, and ideological origins of the Reagan Doctrine as it was applied to Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. Scott draws on many previously unavailable government documents and a wide range of primary material to show both how this policy in particular, and American foreign policy in general, emerges from the complex, shifting interactions between the White House, Congress, bureaucratic agencies, and groups and individuals from the private sector."--

Written by nearly 25 authorities in the field, the Handbook of Global International Policy focuses on public policy issues among and within nations on every continent-comparing approaches and applications to real-world problems. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the subject, the Handbook reviews former and emerging U.S. decision-making foreign policies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, and Haiti rebel conflicts and restored relations among Eritrea, the Sudan, and Ethiopia Spanish enclaves in Northern Africa pre- and post-Cold War policies in East Asia, including North and South Korea arms control and disarmament programs around the world ongoing risks in the Middle East nationalism and its effect in Slovenia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia peacekeeping efforts in Eastern Europe by Russia civil and military relations between North-Rhine Westphalia and the European Union England's public relations effort regarding European unity integration and national conflicts of the Zapatista movement in Mexico Columbia's attempts to apply military control and civil laws to combat internal problems the findings of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Project case and more! With over 1000 key literature citations and illustrations, the Handbook of Global International Policy serves as timely reading for public administrators and public policy experts, political scientists, economists, sociologists, attorneys, and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines.