The purpose of investigating the conflict over the Western Sahara is to trace and analyze its impact upon the political stability of the northwest region of the African continent. Chapter I provides background information on the Western Sahara. Chapter II discusses the international political developments affecting the Western Sahara. Chapter III discusses the positions of Morocco, the Polisario, Algeria, and Mauritania; Chapter IV analyzes those of Spain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Chapter V describes the role of the OAU in dealing with the conflict. The internal economic development of the involved parties has been disrupted because they were obliged to appropriate funds to purchase arms for the exigencies of the war. Ending the conflict depends upon improving relations between Morocco and Algeria.

This study presents the thesis that religious cleavages in Lebanon have been the major factor behind most of the country's problems since the achievement of independence in 1943. The coming of the Palestinians in 1948 and in the 1970s upset Lebanon's delicate sociopolitical balance between Christians and Muslims in favor of the latter. The study's four chapters describe the origins of Lebanon's religious groups, the arrival of the Palestinians, Lebanon's emergence as the sole Palestinian guerrilla base, and the outbreak and aftermath of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1976. Finally, suggestions are made for the resolution of the continuing Christian-Muslim conflict, notably the alternatives of federalism and confederalism as possible future political arrangements for Lebanon.

This paper addresses the influence of a mechanistic world view of East-West relations. The "classic" model of mechanism orders reality into a relationship akin to a simple clock or pump. In the model, discrete and unmodifiable parts, with no natural functional relationship to each other, are balanced and engineered into functional unity. This study shows how "environmental" conditions at the international level (ambiguity, complexity, and prolonged conflict) limit the ability of policy makers to define objective limits to containment, influencing them instead to follow the universal application of the "logic" of mechanism--that any imbalance must be checked by the container.