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.

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.

The opening stages of the Third World War are more confusing and terrible than those of any war in history. Hundreds die in the Indian Parliament in Delhi. The President of Pakistan is assassinated. A US military base comes under an unprovoked missile strike. US President Jim West soon discovers a chilling link between these attacks. He tries to forge a path of peace, knowing that if he chooses confrontation thousands will be killed. Mary Newman, his young and brilliant secretary of state, disagrees. She is convinced that America needs to attack - and swiftly. No one is yet aware that the war has already begun. One by one, the very powers West has counted as allies become enemies, and the comfortable lives of citizens in affluent societies - perhaps typical of readers of this book - are about to collapse in physical and emotional devastation. Jim West finds himself fighting a war of a ferocity and scale previously unknown. Detail by authentic detail Humphrey Hawksley captures the ominous feel of a world heading towards its own destruction.

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.