Connelly's first book, "A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era", examines the international diplomacy of Algerian independence. It is a revisionist account that analyzes the transnational networks through which Algerian statesman struggled for liberation, rather than adopting a traditional focus on the national aspects of the movement. Foreign Affairs magazine observes that "Connelly weaves into his story the changing roles of the United States, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia; the ebb and flow of FLN relations with the soviet bloc; and much more". "A Diplomatic Revolution" is notable in locating fundamental shifts in international society as occurring during the Algerian independence movement, arguing that "population growth, environmental scarcities, international institutions, new media, and, not least, the conscious agency of colonized peoples were already combining to cause radical change— of a recognizably new kind— when some might assume the international system was frozen into an ideological contest between East and West". The book has also been revised and translated into French as "L'arme secrète du FLN": "Comment de Gaulle a Perdu la Guerre d'Algérie."