Overseas bases go against the American grain. Associated in popular imagination with the emanations of nineteenth-century imperialism, their retention today seems anachronistic, their expansion sinister. Yet this nation has held a global grid of bases since the 1940s; and though shrunk from 150 major naval and air bases in its cold war heyday to a mere 30 today, it remains the underpinning of U.S. global strategy. However reluctantly, the United States has assumed a global commitment, and it has fashioned a strategy of containment to sustain it. American bases abroad are the physical manifestations as well as the emotive symbols of that historic strategy. As such, they help not only to identify America's place in a changing world but also to determine whether such change warrants a reorientation of strategy.

As our train passed through the flat, grayish city of Nanking last December, a retired Chinese high school principal spoke about the uncertain future of his home, Hong Kong. What would happen to one of the world's great colonial anachronisms when Great Britain's ninety-nine-year lease ran out in 1997? After months of secretive negotiations between China and Great Britain, the former schoolmaster was optimistic: The Chinese Communists were too smart to risk undermining Hong Kong's stability by, say, moving in troops. They understood that to act precipitously toward always-anxious Hong Kong could mean chaos, and they appreciated the economic benefits of preserving Hong Kong as a window on the West for trade, technology, and capital.

How has the government of Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, so often described as a madman, survived the denunciations of Western powers, the insults of Arab leaders, and the opposition of Libyan dissidents for almost fifteen years? What are his goals, his sources of support, and the prospects for his country? The answers to these questions lie in the personality of Qaddafi himself, the history of the country he leads, the nature of the regime he has imposed, and the international system in which he operates.

Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi is, by his own admission—indeed, at his own insistence—a revolutionary. He prides himself on being considered an outlaw in a world where, as he sees it, the law itself is unjust.

The Western Sahara is an unlikely place for a war. A former Spanish colony, this area—about the size of Colorado— is classic desert country, almost totally barren as far as the eye can see. In the afternoon the winds sweep in and sand seeps through a cotton turban and into the throat, making every word a chore. At this time, life in the settlements slows down and people seek shelter from the heat and the sand until well past four o'clock.

But a war there is, and it is one in which the United States is playing a pivotal role. The war pits Morocco against the Polisario Front—acronym for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro— the guerrilla group that recently entered its second decade of fighting in the Western Sahara.