The contents of this work are more diverse than its title indicates. Beyond its primary discussion of “neutralist” tendencies, both ideological and political, in Syria from the eve of independence during World War II to the collapse of the Syrian–Egyptian union in 1961 (the conclusion deals more briefly with the post-1961 years), the study contains sections analyzing the evolving structure of neutralist policies over the same period in other Arab states, in particular Egypt and later the United Arab Republic (UAR). It also gives considerable attention to the global development of neutralist thought, to the contributions of Nehru of India and of Tito of Yugoslavia, and to the international conferences (Colombo, 1954; Bandung, 1955; Belgrade, 1961) at which the nonaligned bloc took shape. The latter dimension of the study is made possible by the impressive range of sources consulted by the author. In addition to a wide array of published Arabic works as well as materials from the British and American archives, the author has used Russian, Polish, and (most intensively and fruitfully) Indian archival materials.

The result is a work of originality and value. Its detailed discussion of the initial Arab opening to the USSR during World War II, when both Egypt and Syria established formal diplomatic relations with the USSR, as well as its analysis of neutralist tendencies in both Syria and Egypt in the late 1940s and early 1950s, adds historical depth to the understanding of a phenomenon generally viewed as commencing only in the mid-1950s. The substance and contribution of various political tendencies within Syria, the Baעth Party in particular, to the country's increasingly neutralist trajectory is closely analyzed, as is the distinction made by most Syrian ideologues between the nonalignment in international alliances that they were advocating and their rejection of Soviet-style communism as a socioeconomic system.

The study gives great emphasis to identifying the different shades or nuances of neutralism espoused in the Arab world at different points in time: for example, initially a “calculative-pragmatic nationalist neutralism” aimed at using Great Power rivalries to achieve local nationalist goals, somewhat later the “anti-Western neutralism” fueled particularly by Arab resentment over Western policy in regard to Palestine, and later the “positive neutralism” of the UAR that attempted to use the Cold War to Arab advantage. The sections on India's seminal role in the emergence of post World War II neutralism and in the Afro–Asian nonaligned movement, based as they are on a rich assemblage of Indian primary materials, are extremely valuable in their situating Arab neutralist tendencies in the wider global context in which they emerged and by which they were influenced. These and other strengths make the work an important contribution and a worthwhile read for all those interested in post World War II Arab politics.

However, the wealth of new material found in the study is sometimes poorly organized and digested. Overall, the text is somewhat disjointed; juggling Syrian politics, Egyptian politics, and global neutralist trends makes for chapters containing sections on radically different subjects. As is the case with almost all Western academic studies of modern Arab politics that, due to political constraints, are not able to draw on Arab archival materials, the study is stronger on rhetoric and public positions than on illuminating the internal process of Arab governments' policymaking. Especially in the later chapters, the reports cited from the Indian and Polish archives are sometimes insufficiently analyzed and critiqued, their contents reported and cited at length without evaluation of the accuracy of their specifics or the value of their overall interpretations.

The study is also substantively imbalanced. It gives far more attention to Syrian attitudes toward and relations with the USSR than to the corresponding evolution of Syrian thought and policies in regard to the opposite pole of the Cold War rivalry, the Western powers. Several major memoirs and studies dealing with Syria's troubled relations with the Western powers in the 1950s have apparently not been consulted; they are unmentioned either in the notes or in the bibliography. This finding leads to significant gaps in the discussion of Syria's relationship with the West from the later 1950s onward. In particular, the discussion of the “Syrian crisis” of late 1957 is incomplete, not fully evaluating the pressure the United States and its Middle Eastern associates mounted against Syria in 1957 or adequately explaining the eventual resolution of the crisis at the United Nations.

The sections of the study dealing with neutralist policies in Egypt and the UAR also present problems of coverage and interpretation. The text needed some discussion of Egypt's initial flirting with Cold War “neutralism” as a ploy in its relations with Great Britain and the United States in 1953–54 (pp. 16–18) to provide a fuller picture of the evolution of Egyptian foreign policy under the Nasserist regime. Similarly, the brief discussion of the Lebanese civil war of 1958 and of U.S. intervention in the same (pp. 207–8) makes no mention of the involved UAR–U.S. negotiations that preceded U.S. intervention. The text's account of the road to Egyptian–Syrian union in late 1957 to early 1958 is both incomplete and misleading: to credit Nasser with having “orchestrated” the union “through his Baעathist allies” (pp. 194–95) misrepresents the convoluted dance in which the Syrian military, not the Baעth, inaugurated the drive for unity and an initially reluctant Nasser agreed to full Syrian–Egyptian union—to the dismay of Baעthist leaders when brought face to face with the practical consequences of their rhetoric. For all its strengths of range and sources, the study's goal of explaining the ideological basis and political evolution of neutralism in Syria, Egypt, the UAR, and the international arena is only partially realized.