Philip Towle is a retired Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge and a former Director of the Cambridge Centre of International Studies. Before Cambridge he held posts at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Australian National University. He is the author or editor of 14 books and 37 chapters in other publications. His books include Arms Control and East-West Relations (1982), Enforced Disarmament (1997), Democracy and Peacemaking (2000), Going to War (2009), History, Empathy and Conflict (2018).

Introduction Part 1 1. Culture and Intervention 2. Politics and Religion 3. The Strategy of War by Proxy 4. Should the West Arm Guerrillas? 5. The British Debate about Intervention in Yugoslavia 6. Forecasting the Outcome of the Gulf War 7. The PGM Revolution in Weaponry Part 2 Introduction 8. Blackett and Nuclear weapons 9. Winston Churchill and British Disarmament Policy 10. Arms Control and declining Powers 11. The Soviet Union and the Biological Weapons Convention 12. Autocrats and MDW 13. Forced Disarmament Without War 14. Minimum Deterrence and Democratic Verification Conclusion

In this book, some of Philip Towle's major contributions are brought together to shed light on the Cold War and its aftermath.
Topics include the build-up of chemical and nuclear weapons, the attack on New York's World Trade Center in 2001, intervention in overseas conflicts and the role of the Church. The first section concentrates on the ways in which the West has interfered in conflicts around the world from the Vietnam War to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and explains why intervention worked in former Yugoslavia but not in countries such as Vietnam, Afghanistan or Libya. The second section focuses on arms control and disarmament, how they were linked to intervention - particularly through the fear of terrorism - and how and why some arms control measures succeeded, and some did not.
Intervention and Disarmament: In a Culturally Diverse World is useful for postgraduates and scholars interested in international affairs and warfare in the modern world.