On the 24th of Dhu-al-Qa'da in the Islamic year 309, the 26th of March in the Christian year 922, a man was executed for religious crimes in the city of Baghdad in Iraq. Baghdad at that time had been the seat of Muhammad's political successors, the caliphs, since the middle of the eighth century and was the capital of much of die Islamic community. As a political institution, the caliphate was sunni, modeled on the surma, or path, of Muhammad— at least in theory.

Last November nearly two thousand conferees from the United States and twenty-six Caribbean nations gathered in that most Caribbean of all cities, Miami. The occasion was the annual conference on trade, investment, and development in the Caribbean Basin—die seventh such conference to date. This year, however, there was a difference. President Reagan had announced his Caribbean Basin Initiative in February of 1982 at a meeting of the Organization of American States; and on August 5, 1983, following often delicate negotiations with Congress and a score of governments, the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act became law.

According to a 1982 report prepared for the governor of New York by Joseph A. Califano, Jr., former secretary of health, education, and welfare, the number of heroin addicts in New York City had increased by 50 per cent since 1978. A Rand Corporation study quoted in the Califano report indicated that heroin addicts averaged 167 crimes a year. And the trends in both were upward.

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.

Opposition politics in India have come to resemble those celebrated marriages of film stars: the initial blaze of publicity, the enormous public attention, the fervent oaths of fealty, then the brief honeymoon, when past recriminations are forgotten, areas of commonality are discovered, and each party tries to convince a credulous media and a skeptical public that this time around it can work. And through it all (to push the metaphor a little further) the "other woman"—she who wrecked the previous marriage—looks on with a quiet smile.

In May, 1974, the Indian Government detonated a "peaceful nuclear explosion." The device contained heavy water supplied by the United States and plutonium that had been reprocessed from the spent fuel of a research reactor supplied by Canada. That event shocked the governments involved in international nuclear commerce into greater efforts to prevent the diversion of civil nuclear assistance to military purposes. By 1976, France and West Germany had joined the United States in pledging not to export facilities for the production of plutonium. Two years later the major suppliers agreed upon guidelines intended to ensure that international safeguards would be applied to all sensitive nuclear exports.

Prior to World War II, American national security policy was formed by a loosely connected elite that generally operated from a business-financial base in the northeastern United States. It was from this group that secretaries of state and war were drawn and among this group that serious long-range thinking on important security issues was undertaken. The power of this community continued after the war, probably reaching its zenith in the 1950s, when an important change occurred. Unversities like Harvard, Yale, and Chicago gained prominence at this time, but the more interesting phenomenon was the emergence of so-called "defense intellectuals" at places like the Rand Corporation and other think tanks.

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.