Introduction

Abstract

In September 1970 I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Institute [now International Institute] for Strategic Studies (IISS), held that year in Evian, France. Many strategic analysts of distinction were present and formal papers were offered on the theme Europe and America in the 1970s.¹ Those I recall being present included Professor Klaus Knorr, Professor Albert Wohlstetter, US Senator Charles Mathias, Dr. Theodor Sommer of Die Zeit, M. Michel Tatu of Le Monde and Professor (now Sir) Michael Howard (who is one of my former teachers and who had most kindly nominated me for membership of the Institute a few years earlier). In the company I found at Evian I was thus very much a junior figure and was known, if at all, for a recently-published work on diplomatic history,² rather than for having achieved any distinction in strategic studies. So I was, I thought, expected to know my place. And on the whole I did not misbehave. But the Conference coincided with the first major international crisis involving terrorism and this made a deep and lasting impression on me. Just as in September 2001, several airliners were almost simultaneously hijacked, though on this occasion bargaining rather than suicide missions was the objective the terrorists had in view.