Kees van der Pijl is a Fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex. His books include The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion (Pluto, 2010), the Deutscher prize-winning Nomads, Empires, States (Pluto, 2007), Global Rivalries from the Cold War to Iraq (Pluto, 2006) and The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (new edition, 2012).