Introduction to Chapters 20 to 22

Summary

The previous fifteen chapters have explored the structural changes that Asia, the Middle East, and Europe had undergone during the decades leading up to the late 1970s. In Asia, reunified Vietnam replaced the rising China as a revolutionary power, while India transformed its internationalism into a national quest for great power status. In the Middle East, the Arab–Israeli conflict went through four major wars. Israel emerged as an unacknowledged regional power, Egypt ensnared the global Cold War in the region but realized the futility of allying closely with the Soviet Union, and the Palestinians managed to put their struggle for nationhood on the international agenda despite repeated military and political defeats. Asian–African Internationalism, Non-Alignment, and pan-Islamism all formulated alternatives to the Cold War bloc system.