In 1980 Ronald Reagan expressed his idea of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in one short sentence: “We win, they lose.” Twelve years later, his immediate successor at the White House, George H W Bush, was satisfied that the task had been accomplished: “A world once divided into two armed camps now recognises one, sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America.” The cold war was officially at an end. That period too is now over. Its death knell sounded on the (...)

Resistance against Israeli occupation and Egyptian repression has a long history in the Sinai peninsula. Now escalating Islamist violence has erupted in a fury of revenge against decades of misrule.

The establishment of Israel owes much to the Soviet Union and the wide range of support diplomatic, demographic and military it offered the young state.