Contents -- 1. FRACTURES AND FAULTLINES IN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY -- The Making of the 'West' and the Contender State Challenge -- Systemic and Transnational Rivalries -- Industrial Competition and Capitalist Discipline -- 2. INTEGRATION AND RIVALRY IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST -- Cold War Antecedents of European Integration -- Anglo- American Redistribution and State Formation in the Middle East -- The Resurrection of the Strong State in France -- 3. AMERICA'S CRUSADE IN ASIA AND THE EURO- ATLANTIC RIFT -- The Illusion of an Atlantic Europe -- Asian Killing Fields: Indo- China and Indonesia -- Gaullist France and the Remaking of the Post- War Atlantic Order -- 4. THE SPECTRE OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY -- May 1968 and the New Freedom -- The Middle East and OPEC as New Contenders -- The Drive for a New International Economic Order -- 5. TRANSNATIONAL RIVALRIES AND THE NEOLIBERAL TURN -- Contending Forces in the Strategy of Tension -- Disciplining the Heartland in the Interregnum -- Neoliberal Civil Society against the State -- 6. FROM PINOCHET TO THE REAGAN DOCTRINE -- Latin America's Contender State Experience and Atlantic Rivalry -- Oligarchic Privatisation in the Debt Trap -- Attacking the Weak Links of the 'Third World': Africa and Central America -- 7. THE RAPALLO SYNDROME AND THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET UNION -- The USSR as a Contender State -- Atlantic Rivalries in the New Cold War -- Rival Responses to Gorbachev's New Look -- 8. AMERICA OVER EUROPE IN THE BALKANS CRISIS -- Social Forces in the Clinton Globalisation Offensive -- Rival Responses to the Crisis in Yugoslavia -- Americanisation of the European Union against the United States? -- 9. THE RISE OF CHINA AS THE NEW CONTENDER -- China's Reintegration into the Capitalist World Economy -- The Asian Crisis and the Disruption of the Japan- centred Order.

The Asia- Pacific Geopolitical Triangle - The US, Japan and China -- 10. ENERGY CONFLICTS IN THE POST- SOVIET ERA -- From 'Iran - Contra' to the First Gulf War -- Struggles over Caspian Energy Resources and the 'New Silk Road' -- Afghanistan, 11 September, and the Invasion of Iraq -- 11. FROM HUMAN RIGHTS TO THE GLOBAL STATE OF EMERGENCY -- The Aesthetics of Imperialist Geopolitics -- Rival Concepts of Human Rights -- From Humanitarian 'Just Wars' to the Global War on Terror -- References -- Index -- About the Author.