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Article: Iran and Iraq at War.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 27, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NOW that a ceasefire is killing off the flourishing little industry of Gulf-war watching, expect a rush of books summing up the conflict. One worth reading, by Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, starts with the proposition that a war reflects the people waging it. They examine the Gulf war-the way it was fought, how the stakes were defined, what costs were accepted-to see what it reveals about the society and political systems of Iran and Iraq.
This approach yields an attractively neat explanation of what triggered off the war: the two governments' opposite attitudes to the use of force. The Iranian government, flushed with the success of revolution, believed that ...