ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two scenarios that are accepted as being generally credible. In the first place, there is no need to assume an explicit decision, either before the crisis or at the outbreak of the regional conflict, on the part of either superpower to engage in direct military action against the other superpower. Such military action might well occur for various reasons, including the pressure of perceived military needs, a breakdown in the diplomatic requisites for crisis management or the inability of decisionmakers to trace the consequences of current decisions. Second, European involvements in the military confrontations initiated or fuelled by the superpowers would not spring from clearly defined decisions based on careful assessment of the costs and benefits of defending the bloc leaders’ Third World interests. It is, in fact, ridiculous to suppose that the European stakes in the political future of Iran or the outcome of the Arab-Israeli conflict would even remotely justify the consequences.
