This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC wreath lectures.

This lecture in the series The Two-Edged Sword, given by Lawrence Martin, was originally

broadcast in 1981.

Events in the Persian Gulf over the past few years have reminded us how Western Europe's

expensive direct investment in its security could be seriously outflanked by a successful blockade or embargo on oil supplies.

Oil, and the much more ancient strategic significance of the Middle East, as the meeting place of three continents,

make this area a keystone for global strategy.

Two distinguishable processes are at work there.

One, the pursuit of the world's dominating ideological and political power struggle between the East-West camps, led by the United States and the Soviet Union.

And the other, the painful emergence of a pattern of security relations among the newly fled states of the area.

In this respect, the Middle East is merely the most significant microcosm

of an evolution at work throughout the so-called third world,

an evolution that will determine the strategic shape of the world for decades to come.

The European and strategic nuclear balances I have discussed so far in these lectures are

expensive, dangerous, and fluid, but partly for these reasons they have so far been stable,

in that there has been little war or little change in political alignment in the developed world.

It is in the third world that not only the indigenous nations, but also the powers of the

developed world have shed most blood since 1945.

This is not surprising, for there is nothing to prevent it.

The organizing structure of deterrence and confrontation that has stabilized the blocks around

the superpowers in the developed world

has no parallel in the third world.

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