Global changes during the 1980s promoted a rising group of regional powers, with economic and military development having produced a new form of independence for certain states in the developing South. Using a conceptual framework that focuses on the role of Emergent Regional Powers in the international system, the author uses as a model for analysis the important Gulf States Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Through various themes he examines their efforts during the period 1988-1991 to expand their capabilities and to encourage international regimes sympathetic to their interests. The book considers growing tensions in the Gulf after 1988 and the significance of the Kuwait crisis, and surveys the Allied Iraqi war and the dismantling in 1990-91 of much of Iraq's power, which redefined relations in the Gulf and in the wider region.

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral).