Among India's foreign policy crises since independence the most intense were in the military-security issue-area. Some, like the concentration of Indian and Pakistani forces on the Kashmir and Punjab borders in July 1951, de-escalated without war. Others, like the disputed claims over the Rann of Kutch in the early months of 1965, led to limited military hostilities followed by stalemate. Still others culminated in war with India's principal neighbours - with Pakistan in 1947–9, 1965 and 1971, and with China in 1962. All of these conform to the definition of a crisis along the peace-war continuum:

Over the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in the practice of banks located in one country accepting deposits denominated in the currency of another country. Initially, the banks involved were mainly located in western Europe and hence they were often referred to as “eurobanks” and the network which they comprised was called the Eurocurrency System. It is estimated today that the assets available to the System exceed †200 billion. Originally, the U.S. dollar was the main currency involved, but deposits denominated in deutsche Marks and other European currencies are also becoming important. In addition, the prefix “euro” is now somewhat misleading, since many of the banks engaging in this practice are located in the Bahamas, Singapore, Bahrain and other non-European countries. However, the bulk of activity does involve financial institutions in western Europe, so for convenience I shall continue to refer to the system as the Eurocurrency System.

In the last three years or so the Nine have been more active in promoting consultation, co-ordination and occasionally common action in the realm of the external relations of the European Community than in fostering the integration process within the Community. However, a good deal of this activity has been procedural in nature rather than substantive and at times such modest progress as has been achieved has been extolled beyond its due, if only to conceal the lack of progress on the internal side. Moreover, it is as well to remember that each of the Nine member governments continues to rely mainly upon its nexus of bilateral relations for promoting its own particular interests with the outside world. Thus to focus on the external relations of the Community per se is to highlight only part - and not necessarily the most significant part - of the spectrum of the external relations of individual members. Nevertheless, the inauguration of a new European Commission on the 6 January 1977 provides a convenient moment to assess the state of the Community's external relations1 and, in particular, to try and separate the achievements of substance from those of a more shadowy or procedural nature.

When it became Britain's turn on 1 January 1977 to fill the presidency of the European Community for six months, it should have been the moment she had been waiting for, so long had been the struggle to join the Common Market in the first place. Much depended on how Britain filled the role. How much might be implicit at the end of this discussion of the state of the world economy as it approaches the 1980s. The world economy is in a serious malaise, but the malaise in the European Community has been of longer duration.

When French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in January 1923, ostensibly as a result of Germany falling behind schedule in the reparation deliveries of timber and telegraph poles, “something as far reaching in its effects as the declaration of war in 1914 or the conclusion of the armistice in 1918” had occurred. The often acrimonious Anglo-French debate over the interpretation of the Treaty of Versailles and the role of Germany in post-war Europe had reached a decisive stage. The British government, by not participating in the occupation, at last acted on its belief that an economic restoration of Germany was of paramount importance to the revival of the European and indeed world economies, while France grimly persisted in implementing the Treaty of Versailles by securing the Ruhr as a productive pledge. The ultimate French failure to enforce her will on Germany marked the end of French hegemony in Europe and the reemergence of Germany as a great power and a “central support” of the European economic system.

Historians are bound by the historically conditioned values that shape their judgments of what are important facts and their interpretations of those facts. This is especially true for ‘official’ historians who must serve both their craft and their government. David Carlton points to this process in the course of evaluating the official history of the development of Britain's nuclear arsenal.1 Unfortunately, Dr Carlton diminishes the effectiveness of his position by the manner in which he chooses to illustrate it.

A Head-on collision between two national movements; a clash between Western and Oriental cultures; disputes over territories, borders, maritime rights, property and refugees; intense mutual suspicion engendered by a long and tortuous history of strife; highly distorted images of the adversary; a chronically unstable pattern of regional politics; the intrusion of Great Power rivalry and a spiralling arms race: these are only some of the ingredients which account for the complexity and uniqueness of the Arab-Israeli conflict and make the Middle East the most volatile and explosive sub-system of the international political system. Here, in Michael Howard's phrase, is a “hell-brew to end all hell-brews”. The problem is a political scientist's paradise; a statesman's nightmare; and, for the military specialist, a matter for grisly, but absorbing concern.