bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Edmund Burke and the theory of international relations
Authors: Vincent R. J.
Published: October 2009

Burke did not count himself a theorist. Metaphysics, abstraction, was stuff for professor So If the speculation of the classroom was brought too close to the life of politics the result was unsettling, dangerous, revolutionary. Politicians should be people of practice not theory, attending to circumstance before principle, working within a tradition not innovating, reforming before countenancing revolution. They should be concerned with the whole of human nature and not just with human reason, with feeling as well as with thought.
Government-in-exile: the transfer of Polish authority abroad in September 1339
Authors: Coutouvidis J.
Published: October 2009

In the early hours of 18 September 1939, before crossing the Roumanian frontier, the Polish foreign minister sent the following instructions to Poland's ambassadors in London and Paris.

The military situation in Poland in the current conflict is such as to necessitate the transfer abroad of the seat of the President of the Republic and of the Government. The Polish Government has the honour to inform the Government of His Britannic majesty that it is today contacting the Government of the French Republic concerning the extraterritorial exercise of its powers on French soil.
Political democracy, state strength and economic growth in LDCs: a cross-national analysis
Authors: Weede Erich
Published: October 2009

While economic growth is not a sufficient condition for the elimination of hunger and abject poverty, it certainly looks like a necessary condition, particularly in the poorest countries (Ahluwalia, Carter and Chenery? 1979), So economic growth is desirable, and desired, in the third world (irrespective of one's evaluation of the effects of growth in industrialized, high income countries). As well as pressures for growth? there are internal and external pressures for the democratization of the political systems of less developed countries. Yet some authors claim that democracy and economic growth are incompatible. A strong version of the incompatibility thesis is maintained by the sociologist Andreski (1969: 266): ‘Democracy is compatible with rapid economic growth only in countries which already have enough resources to make heavy investment a relatively painless process. There is no case of a democratic government breaking through a vicious circle of misery and parasitism.’ Though qualifying the incompatibility proposition and restricting it to ‘later phases of development’, Huntington and Nelson (1976: 42–3) similarly argue that ‘… higher levels of political participation tend to produce lower rates of economic growth’. While political participation is not identical to democracy, the latter obviously permits the former. If democracy and growth were indeed incompatible in LDCs (or some subgroup thereof), then a major problem of choice has to be faced.
Reflections on the ‘new’ economic nationalism
Authors: Mayall James
Published: October 2009

What is the student of politics to make of the revival of protectionism and the new mood of economic nationalism of which it is widely held to be a symptom? It is reasonably clear why nationalism raises problems for economists: for orthodox Marxists it entrenches false consciousness and delays the final crisis of capitalism; for liberals it frustrates the optimal allocation of resources by substituting group sentiment for the rational pursuit of individual self-interest and by endowing political frontiers with an economic significance to which their economic theory is opposed. But it is not self-evident that the assumptions on which the great neo-classical systems are built are the most helpful for understanding the phenomenon of economic nationalism or for evaluating the nature of the problem which it poses for international society. Since Marx himself was profoundly uninterested in the great debate between free trade and protection, while contemporary Marxist-Leninist governments all pursue economic policies which are unambiguously nationalist, I shall confine myself to the debate within the liberal tradition.
The law of the sea: some reflections on Caracas
Authors: O'connell D
Published: October 2009

The biggest and most complicated international conference of all time began in Caracas in mid 1974 and after a ten weeks session was adjourned to meet again in Geneva for a similar period in 1975. The purpose of the conference is to recodify the Law of the Sea, with the aim of reconciling the competing maritime interests of nations and restraining growing international tension over the uses of the sea and the seabed. It is indicative of the pace of the world we live in that this vast diplomatic undertaking has been found necessary only fifteen years after the 1958 Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea. That Conference thought it was codifying and stabilizing the rules of law for a long period, if not in perpetuity, in respect of the freedom of the high seas, the rights of coastal States in the territorial sea and to the continental shelf, and conservation of fisheries.
E. H. Carr and international relations
Authors: Evans Graham
Published: October 2009

No-one seriously doubts the importance of E. H. Carr in the history of the study of international relations. The publication of The Twenty Years' “Crisis, 1919–1939, in 1939 marked a turning point in international theory, ending, as it did in Britain, the dominance of the more traditional ‘pro-gressivist’ or ‘idealist’ schools of thought characterized in the writings of, for example, Norman Angell, Bertrand Russell, Alfred Zimmern, Arnold Toynbee, G. Lowes Dickinson and others. The bulk of Carr's work in the field was written in the twenty or so years between 1936 (when he accepted the Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth) and 1955 (when he accepted a Fellowship at Trinity, his old Cambridge College), and since then his energies have been concentrated on his abiding concern with the history of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, he is still an important figure in the field and although international relations has not been his life' work, his unique contribution to its understanding, ensures him a permanent place in the British tradition of international studies.
Inflation: an international monetary problem or a national social phenomenon?
Authors: Zis George
Published: October 2009

To reduce, and ultimately stabilize at lower levels, the rate of price inflation is rapidly becoming the main economic objective of all industrialized countries. For policy makers inflation is currently a problem as serious as was the problem of unemployment during the inter-war years. Yet, governments' attempts to control inflation have not on the whole been successful. This relative failure may well be attributed to a wrong diagnosis of the nature of the problem, leading to the application of inappropriate cures. Economists have advanced a variety of diagnoses of the causes of inflation which have provided the bases for various policy prescriptions. Essentially, however, there are two schools of thought.
“…times that try men's souls” – the United States after Vietnam
Authors: Dunn David
Published: October 2009

For those who believed that the Vietnam war ‘ended’ in January 1973 with the signing of the Paris agreements, the events of the spring of 1975 must have come as a profound shock. Alternatively, for those who believed that the Paris agreements were no more than a pause on the way to the inevitable, these same events would seem to be eminently predictable. The implications of the American defeat in South East Asia are clearly a matter for the long term and one does no more than state the obvious by saying that the long term implications have yet to unfold. However, even from the short term perspective, there is much one can say about the Vietnam conflict, in terms of both its internal consequences and its impact on America and international society. Over the years, Vietnam has been held to be responsible for the end of Lyndon Johnson's career, for the so-called ‘Great Society’, for the growth of student radicalism and civil unrest. Whether and to what extent any or all of these links can be demonstrated are questions for the future. What of the present? In surveying the events of the spring of 1975 one recalls the words of Thomas Paine, written almost two centuries ago: “These are the times that try men's souls”. The point is not without a certain irony in the present context, for the American bicentennial celebrations which began in Concord, Massachusetts, were overshadowed by the scenes of evacuation and collapse in South East Asia.
The relevance of ancient history to the contemporary study of international politics
Authors: Purnell Robert
Published: October 2009

The implied assumption about Ancient History, which in the present discussion will comprise mainly Graeco–Roman history, is that ‘relevance’ obtains. What this will chiefly mean is that in some sense history does teach lessons, and that specifically Ancient History has lessons to teach students of international affairs at the present day. A massive assumption, it may be thought. Some suggestions towards a defence of the proposition appear later. What might seem more readily defensible is the view that it is the present which may illuminate the past. Here the lessons of history, if we admit them, become retrospective. If Winston Churchill in certain aspects of his career in the 1930s resembled the orator Demosthenes in the fourth century B.C. pronouncing his Anti-Philippics, even more revealingly, perhaps, in enhancing contemporary understanding of the latter period, did Demosthenes fulfil the role of Winston Churchill in his “wilderness years”.
Oil and International relations
Authors: Penrose Edith
Published: October 2009

Oil is a highly political commodity and has more than once taken the centre of the stage in international affairs. This is not surprising in view of its importance in industry and transportation as well as for military activities. Mesopotamian oil was a crucial consideration in a number of the political settlements in the Middle East after the First World War, with the French, British and Americans playing the leading roles, just before that war the British navy had converted to oil, and Britain considered the security of her oil supplies to be an important objective of foreign policy. She had no domestic production. In the 1920s the United States began to fear that her oil reserves were becoming dangerously depleted and she also felt that her security as well as her prosperity depended on obtaining control of oil abroad. The United States sought access to oil concessions in the Middle East, and the diplomatic skirmishes were sharp as the British and Dutch tried to keep her out, not merely from the Middle East, but from south-eastern Asia as well, where production was dominated by the Dutch. Thus oil was an important source of controversy in the foreign policy of a number of countries in the inter-war period.
Philosophical idealism and international politics: a reply to Dr Savigear
Authors: Nicholson Peter P.
Published: October 2009

Dr Savigear's ‘Philosophical Idealism and International Politics: Bosanquet, Treitschke and War’ is especially welcome because this important topic has not been much discussed. However, on a subject so complex and controversial, some disagreement is to be expected. I shall suggest that Dr Savigear's argument requires qualification because it underemphasizes the cosmopolitanism which provides continuity to this aspect of Idealist moral and political philosophy.
Economic relations among Comecon members under the 1976–80 plans
Authors: Kaser Michael
Published: October 2009

Thirteen years – almost to the day – after formulating its Basic Principles of the International Socialist Division of Labour, at a ‘Summit’ of Communist Party First Secretaries (in Moscow in June 1962), Comecon established its Agreed Plan for Multilateral Integration Measures, at a meeting of Heads of Government in Budapest in June 1975. The causes of delay to economic integration within Eastern Europe's trading bloc have been political, but the foundation of the body in 1949 was as political in origin as was the renewed impetus given to economic collaboration by the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Indeed, as a brief retrospective readily shows, international politics have been instrumental in every turning-point in Comecon's life of 27 years (one fewer than its nearest Western counterpart the O.E.E.C, since 1961 the O.E.C.D.).
The tradition of appeasement in British foreign policy 1865–1939
Authors: Kennedy Paul M.
Published: October 2009

IF the policy of “Appeasement” is inextricably associated in the historical consciousness with the efforts of Neville Chamberlain's government to preserve peace with the dictators in the 1930s, its origins have been recognized by numerous writers as going back many years before the immediate crises concerning the Sudetenland, Prague and the Polish Corridor. Some have traced its roots to the failure to prevent Japanese aggression in 1931 or Italy's attack upon Abyssinia in 1935; others, with more sense of the positive side of “Appeasement", have focused upon the attitude of the British government and public towards Germany during and after the Versailles settlement; while Mr Gilbert, going a little further back in time, has argued that “appeasement was born” at the moment of the British declaration of war in 1914. Few, if any, commentators have suggested that one should seek the beginnings of “Appeasement” before that event, however.
SALT II and the strategic balance
Authors: Gray Colin S.
Published: October 2009

Because arms control negotiations and agreements may serve many ends, not all of which will be fully supportive one of another, the assessment of their value and implications must be inconclusive. For so long as a broad commitment to detente policies remains the general line of foreign policy, then for so long is a SALT II treaty close to inevitable. In terms of the identifiable political, strategic and economic benefits of the SALT exercise thus far – six years on – it is debatable whether or not SALT has any justification beyond the fact of its existence. Even unproductive institutions can be costly to dismantle. Before exploring the possible strengths and weaknesses of a putative SALT II regime, it is worth recalling the ends that SALT,could serve.
The growth and structure of international trade since the Second World War
Authors: Briscoe Lynden
Published: October 2009

The most remarkable feature of international trade in the post-war period has been its expansion. The few figures available for the early post war period suggest that this had probably started by the end of the 1940s. Following the Korean war boom, the volume and unit price of goods entering international trade rapidly increased, reaching a peak in 1951. There was a slight setback in the volume of trade the following year, but it picked up quickly, whereas prices continued to fall for several years. It is with the period thereafter – from 1953 to 1973 – that this essay will chiefly be concerned. The analysis will examine trade from the point of view of its change overall, its commodity composition, and relative commodity prices. It will consider why the situation after the Second World War has been so different from that in the inter-war period and why, in spite of general expansion, underdeveloped countries have been so dissatisfied with their position in international markets.
British foreign policy: a review of some recent literature
Authors: Barber James P.
Published: October 2009

THERE must now be a case for classifying books on post-war British foreign policy as ‘whodunnits’. Certainly everybody is agreed about the victim. Britannia, the once proud, imperious mistress of the seas and a mighty empire, lies exhausted and bereft, a mere shadow of her former self. Of course she is not exactly dead, but plainly a terrible catastrophe has befallen her. Her continued survival appears to rest on a humiliating dependence on others. Far away are those heady days of 1946 when Abdullah, the ruler of TransJordan could be summoned to London to be told that the British Government had decided that his country was to be an independent state and he was to be its King, and when, perhaps even more remarkable in the light of present circumstances, the British gave £100 million in economic aid to West Germany.
India's devaluation of 1966: linkage politics and crisis decision-making
Authors: Brecher Michael
Published: October 2009

Among India's foreign policy crises since independence the most intense were in the military-security issue-area. Some, like the concentration of Indian and Pakistani forces on the Kashmir and Punjab borders in July 1951, de-escalated without war. Others, like the disputed claims over the Rann of Kutch in the early months of 1965, led to limited military hostilities followed by stalemate. Still others culminated in war with India's principal neighbours - with Pakistan in 1947–9, 1965 and 1971, and with China in 1962. All of these conform to the definition of a crisis along the peace-war continuum:
Economic interdependence and the Eurocurrency System
Authors: McKenzie George
Published: October 2009

Over the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in the practice of banks located in one country accepting deposits denominated in the currency of another country. Initially, the banks involved were mainly located in western Europe and hence they were often referred to as “eurobanks” and the network which they comprised was called the Eurocurrency System. It is estimated today that the assets available to the System exceed †200 billion. Originally, the U.S. dollar was the main currency involved, but deposits denominated in deutsche Marks and other European currencies are also becoming important. In addition, the prefix “euro” is now somewhat misleading, since many of the banks engaging in this practice are located in the Bahamas, Singapore, Bahrain and other non-European countries. However, the bulk of activity does involve financial institutions in western Europe, so for convenience I shall continue to refer to the system as the Eurocurrency System.
The external relations of the European Community—shadow and substance
Authors: Goodwin Geoffrey
Published: October 2009

In the last three years or so the Nine have been more active in promoting consultation, co-ordination and occasionally common action in the realm of the external relations of the European Community than in fostering the integration process within the Community. However, a good deal of this activity has been procedural in nature rather than substantive and at times such modest progress as has been achieved has been extolled beyond its due, if only to conceal the lack of progress on the internal side. Moreover, it is as well to remember that each of the Nine member governments continues to rely mainly upon its nexus of bilateral relations for promoting its own particular interests with the outside world. Thus to focus on the external relations of the Community per se is to highlight only part - and not necessarily the most significant part - of the spectrum of the external relations of individual members. Nevertheless, the inauguration of a new European Commission on the 6 January 1977 provides a convenient moment to assess the state of the Community's external relations1 and, in particular, to try and separate the achievements of substance from those of a more shadowy or procedural nature.
Great Britain and the Ruhr Crisis, 1923–1924
Authors: Williamson D. G.
Published: October 2009

When French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in January 1923, ostensibly as a result of Germany falling behind schedule in the reparation deliveries of timber and telegraph poles, “something as far reaching in its effects as the declaration of war in 1914 or the conclusion of the armistice in 1918” had occurred. The often acrimonious Anglo-French debate over the interpretation of the Treaty of Versailles and the role of Germany in post-war Europe had reached a decisive stage. The British government, by not participating in the occupation, at last acted on its belief that an economic restoration of Germany was of paramount importance to the revival of the European and indeed world economies, while France grimly persisted in implementing the Treaty of Versailles by securing the Ruhr as a productive pledge. The ultimate French failure to enforce her will on Germany marked the end of French hegemony in Europe and the reemergence of Germany as a great power and a “central support” of the European economic system.
Churchill and the approach to Mussolini and Hitler in May 1940: a note
Authors: Knight Jonathan
Published: October 2009

Historians are bound by the historically conditioned values that shape their judgments of what are important facts and their interpretations of those facts. This is especially true for ‘official’ historians who must serve both their craft and their government. David Carlton points to this process in the course of evaluating the official history of the development of Britain's nuclear arsenal.1 Unfortunately, Dr Carlton diminishes the effectiveness of his position by the manner in which he chooses to illustrate it.
The laws of war and moral judgment
Authors: Nardin Terry
Published: October 2009

Reflection on the laws of war seldom fails to produce misgivings. On the one hand, it seems clear that practices as ugly as those of warfare must be regulated, if only to secure society against the emergence of unchecked brutality. Yet when the rules that have been devised toward this end are examined, doubt is cast upon even this cheerless justification by the extent of the violence and destruction with which they are compatible. The laws of war seem to condone the use of force in pursuit of indefensible policies, as well as to allow a degree of suffering by those affected by war that is often disproportionate to the apparent advantages to be had from fighting. Even the few restraints the laws do require are frequently ignored. The result is scepticism concerning every aspect of the laws of war: their effectiveness, their legal validity (and thus their very existence as rules of law) and their defensibility in terms of the requirements of morality from which they appear so often to deviate. Such scepticism is only strengthened by reflection on the vagaries of criminal enforcement and punishment, which at times are not only ineffective, but also introduce their own special injustices. It is a scepticism well expressed in the observation that if international law is at the vanishing point of law, then the laws of war are at the vanishing point of international law. The excesses of present-day warfare have given particular impetus to one aspect of this attitude toward the laws of war, that based upon doubts concerning their moral adequacy.
To the western front: British war plans and the ‘military entente’ with France before the first world war
Authors: Wilson K. M.
Published: October 2009

In November 1914 the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence produced a ‘Report on the Opening of the War’. In his notes towards this Report, Julian Corbett maintained that “our arrangements with the French Naval and Military Staff … fettered our freedom of action”, with the result that “our Army … became committed as an integral part of the allied line and we had to forego all the advantages of operating independently on a line of our own and at our own selected moment, in order to break into the German scheme after it had developed”.
Inflation: a constraint on foreign policy?
Authors: Oppenheimer Peter M.
Published: October 2009

The problem of inflation has been a major preoccupation of Western governments in the 1970s. Has it affected their foreign policy? More particularly, has U.K. foreign policy been affected by the much faster than average rate of inflation prevalent in Britain?

When a number of economic and political problems co-exist, it is tempting to discern linkages between them and even, perhaps, to see these linkages as inevitable. Such diagnoses are sometimes correct; but as a rule they cannot be relied upon. This is true even when attention is confined to economic issues alone. The connection, for instance, between global inflation and the energy problem in the 1970s is complex and subtle, but not close.
The new international economic order: trade policy for primary commodities
Authors: Kirkpatrick C. H. , Nixson F. I.
Published: October 2009

The demands of the less developed countries (LDCs) for a fundamental reform of the economic, commercial and financial relationships between themselves and the rich, developed economies have dominated international affairs for the past three years. In April–May 1974, the sixth Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations called for the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and similar appeals have been made on a large number of occasions since then. 1976 was marked by UNGTAD IV meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in May and the commencement of the deliberations of the Conference on International Economic Co-operation (the so-called North-South Conference) meeting in Paris, originally scheduled to end in December 1976, but reconvened for a final session at the end of May 1977
Domestic politics of Japan's foreign policy: a case study of the ratification of the non-proliferation treaty
Authors: Frankel Joseph
Published: October 2009

Although our theorizing about the making of foreign policy is meant to be of general application, it is based predominantly upon Western, often only United States practices. The purpose of this paper is to look in some depth into a case study of foreign policy-making in Japan in order to ascertain to what extent the analytical categories evolved in the West apply and what peculiarities of the Japanese political system need to be considered. More specifically, I shall test the simple hypothesis that in all ‘democratic’ systems1 the substance of the domestic processes shows great similarities while their forms greatly differ.
Three approaches to the international system some: ontological and epistemological considerations
Authors: Little Richard
Published: October 2009

In recent years, the use of systems terminology has become widespread in international relations literature. This development has precipitated both confusion and controversy – confusion about what exactly is meant by a systems approach and controversy about whether the approach provides any new insights for the international relations specialist. The confusion and controversy spreads across the methodological divide which exists in the discipline; both traditionalists and behaviouralists are in disagreement about the nature of a systems approach and its potential utility.
A double omission
Authors: Kubálková V. , Cruickshank A. A.
Published: October 2009

The title of the article is intended to focus the attention of Western writers on international relations theory upon two aspects of this rapidly growing research area. Rather than meeting with an incomprehensible neglect it is our argument that the aspects referred to might well be accorded one of the key places. Failure to do so, it our contention, when transferred from considerations of theoretical efficiency into the no less precarious realm of practical policy, might well have proportionately hazardous implications. We would beg forbearance, however, if within the necessarily limited scope of this article only a very perfunctory and sketchy outline of the meaning and implications of the omissions can be given. The sole purpose of this article is to provoke interest in these particular areas rather than to supply the deficiencies – a task which clearly could only be undertaken in the expanded context of a major work.
Consensus and cleavage in Labour's perception of the world: A method for investigating attitude structure and group similarity
Authors: Brier Alan , Robins Lynton
Published: October 2009

The work presented in this paper arises from a study of foreign policy formation in the British Labour Party and its behaviour towards the issue of British membership of the European Economic Community.1
Environmental characteristics and organizational ideology: UNCTAD—the lessons of 1964
Authors: Ansari Javed A.
Published: October 2009

THE United Nations Conference on Trade and Development came nto existence in 1964. Its creation was viewed with a degree of cautious enthusiasm by the Third World and with a certain amount of apprehension by the rich countries. Its performance has dampened the enthusiasm and heightened the apprehension. Its contribution to substantive changes in trade policies has not been spectacular. Whatever improvement in commodity prices and hence in the terms of trade of the poor countries that occurred in the early 1970s was attributable to fortuitous circumstances – not to a negotiated settlement between the rich and poor countries, enabling the latter to retain a larger portion of the gains from trade. Can we3 therefore3 say that UNGTAD has been ineffective? That it has failed to perform its global task? And if so, what is the cause of this failure? Is the organizational ideology unsuitable in the sense that it is not representative of the national objectives of viable coalitions among UNGTAD constituents? Or has the leadership failed to evolve a strategy which links the pursuit of specific sub-goals to the transformation of the system in accordance with the organizational ideology? This present paper attempts to look at the first question and to venture an opinion on the effectiveness of UNGTAD in the light of these findings.
Order and international society: the real realism?
Authors: Griffiths Martin
Published: October 2009

The school of thought known as Realism (with a large R) has been a central focus of debate in international theory. Nevertheless, its content and epistemological status (and therefore the criteria for its evaluation) remain elusive. In part this is due to the variety of contexts and debates within which Realism has been discussed in the field. In the 1930s and 1940s the debate was framed around a Realist-Idealist axis. In the 1970s Realism was contested by liberal analyses of the causes and consequences of an allegedly growing global interdependence. In the 1980s there emerged a three-cornered debate between competing Kuhnian ‘paradigms’, among which Realism dominated. Given that the meaning of Realism has been partly constructed by historically variable theoretical and political issues, its identity has also varied over time. If, however, one chooses to think about Realism outside of these various contexts within which it has been both defined and evaluated, it remains unclear how such diverse thinkers as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Carr, Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz can coherently be considered as part of a single tradition of thought. Sensitivity to their differences may be a virtue for the historian of ideas, but it runs the risk of undermining the point of the exercise! Despite these problems, which are only partially corrected by distinguishing between types of Realism (notably classical and ‘neo’ or ‘structural’ varieties), most scholars would agree with Alan James that Realism is a school whose members harbour shared assumptions about the primacy of states as international actors, the separation of domestic and international politics, and who describe the latter in terms of anarchy and a concomitant ubiquitous struggle for power and security.
Re-evaluating the Washington Loan Agreement: a revisionist view of the limits of postwar American power
Authors: Burnham Peter
Published: October 2009

The Financial Agreement signed between the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom on the 6th December 1945 (popularly known as the Washington Loan Agreement, and hereafter referred to as ‘the Agreement’) is widely interpreted as an agreement which imposed fundamental constraints on British external economic policy and is even seen as a benchmark in postwar international relations signalling the subordination of Britain to the level almost of a client state of the United States.
Pluralism in international political theory
Authors: Jackson Robert H.
Published: October 2009

Martin Wight once claimed there was no international political theory worthy of the name. In this I believe he was mistaken. But he also maintained, as Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts put it, that ‘the most fundamental question you can ask in international theory is, What is international society? Hedley Bull likewise drew a basic distinction, as several contributors to the volume edited by J. D. B. Miller and the late R. J. Vincent remind us, between the system of states and the society of states. Each of these volumes takes up Wight's question and explores Bull's distinction in various ways, most of them engaging and enlightening. For an overview of the main approaches and controversies in the study of normative international relations today one could scarcely do better than consult them.
From power politics to social change: an alternative focus for international studies
Authors: Scholte Jan Aart
Published: October 2009

Our social circumstance is fundamentally changing, so we are told on this historical morning after the Cold War. What was formerly called the ‘Second World' has suddenly disappeared;apartheidappears to be in final retreat; class structures and gender relations are said to be undergoing substantial shifts; there are increased hopes for disarmament and a wider demilitarization of international life; existing state boundaries and to some extent also the nature of the state itself are deeply in question. At the same time, we of the late twentieth century are allegedly experiencing a world-wide upsurge in religious revivalism, an unprecedented global ecological awareness, a shift from states to markets and from globalism towards regionalism in the organization of the world economy, cascading democratization across the continents and so on. There is widespread talk of ‘a new world order’, of the emergence of what is variously called ‘post-industrial’, ‘post-capitalist’ or ‘post-modern’ society, and of ‘the end of history’. Symptomatic, too, of the pervasively felt sense of transition are insistent calls for new theories, new language, new politics, new institutions and new norms that will be equal to the challenges posed by this purportedly revolutionary world situation. True, sceptics might well argue that dynamism and upheaval of the kind that we are witnessing today constitute defining features of modern social life, and that our generation is but the latest in a long string t o succumb to a secular millenarian delusion that it has been granted the historical privilege of living through the dawn of a new epoch. However, whether they adopt a prophetic or an agnostic stance on the matter, most commentators would agree that the question of social change sits high on the agenda of current world affairs.
John Quincy Adams and the ethics of America's national interest
Authors: Russell Greg
Published: October 2009

This essay examines John Quincy Adams' diplomatic and ethical thinking and explores the implications of this legacy for the exercise of American power in contemporary world affairs. Both as America's most accomplished Secretary of State i n the nineteenth century, and through his voluminous public and private papers, Adams helped to identify the normative foundations of the national interest. In particular, he defined the limits of America's obligations to defend human rights and t o intervene on behalf of revolutionary principles in the quarrels of distant nations. Attention focuses here upon Adams' contribution to historic debates concerning: (1) individual and national rights which must be defended if freedom is to be maintained; (2) the basis for American neutrality in the 1790s; and (3) the claims upon American diplomacy generated by the independence movements of South American and Greek patriots.
Nation and community in the international order
Authors: Black Antony
Published: October 2009

It is obvious that today the facts of international relations do notfitinto any general framework of which people are aware (perhaps they never have). As descriptions, concepts such as state, sovereignty, federation seem more than ever stabs in the dark. In prescriptive political theory, we are even more at sea. Old prescriptive certainties such as nationhood must be conceded to be at best the most provisional of guides to action. The interface between domestic sovereignty and international organisations (and what a wilderness of phenomena that term is supposed to describe) needs to be comprehended anew. This is urgent if we are to make sense of, and have a sense of direction through, the problems of the European Community, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, not to mention a host of problematic multi-ethnic polities as diverse as India and Iraq. Wherever we look in the world today, the relationship between ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘community’ seems to be in crisis: from the Balkans to Canada, from Scotland to Kurdistan. This no more has the appearance of an aberration from some historical norm than does the tie between state and nation in previous European history. It makes more sense to regard both as shifting patterns of collective human consciousnesses. The idea that there is something ‘out there’, ‘given’, that preordains human beings to live in nations, and nations t o form states, was certainly a myth; and as a myth had a certain real force. The problem today is, first, that the myth is reviving in some places at just the time when it is being swept aside in others (in parts of the European Community, for example); and, secondly, that the idea of imprescriptible national rights seems to be a postulate of democracy whenever the majority in a territory embrace it, and at the same time a recipe for carnage and the vilest known abrogation of all other human rights. The revival of this nationalist idea around 1990 has also to be set beside the real feelings of belonging that arise amongst groups other than nations; which, whenever they do have such a feeling of corporate identity, we may describe by the general term ‘communities’.
Containing uncertainty: options for British nuclear strategy
Authors: Heuser Beatrice
Published: October 2009

For NATO's first four decades the overwhelming threat to its members' security arose from the enormous military strength of the Soviet Union … the allies were unable to match the numerical levels of the Warsaw Pact's conventional armaments and manpower. This … underlined the key role of nuclear weapons in deterrence, ensuring that the cost of aggression was plainly too high for any attacker to contemplate.
System or Society?
Authors: James Alan
Published: October 2009

The choice of name given to or adopted by a collectivity is often immaterial. It probably does not matter much whether a new football team, for example, is called the Braves or the Valiants. All that is needed is some distinctive terminology, by whch the group in question can easily be identified. Sometimes, however, a name may be meant to reflect some substantive qualities, aspirations, or associations which are already connected with or claimed by the collectivity. The names adopted in 1947 by the two successor states to Britain's empire on the Indian sub-continent, for instance, were seen to be significant. Both India and Pakistan had their own reasons for wishing to be so called. Burma's 1989 translation into Myanmar was perhaps indicative of the same kind of consideration.
The Maastricht Treaty, Economic and Monetary Union and the neo-realist research programme
Authors: Grieco Joseph M.
Published: October 2009

With the Treaty on European Union, or the Maastricht Treaty, into force in November 1993, the member-states of the European Community (EC) appeared to be embarking on a far-reaching enterprise to enhance the authority of Community institutions. Continuing a process that had begun with the Single European Act (SEA), into force in 1987, Maastricht increased the powers of the European Parliament. It established mechanisms whereby EC countries were to seek to improve policy coordination in such diverse areas as social affairs, high technology, border controls, immigration, and anti-crime efforts. It committed the EC members to work toward the establishment of a common foreign and security policy. Most importantly, it laid out a path and timetable for qualified EC members to achieve Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by the end of the 1990s.
The changing Israeli strategic equation: Toward a security regime
Authors: Inbar Efraim , Sandler Shmuel
Published: October 2009

Israel is situated in the Middle East, which is not a zone of peace but rather of turmoil. In contrast to the West where peace has become the norm, the Middle East exists in a different socio-political time zone. It is war-prone and the use of force still evokes remarkable popular support. The Middle East, similar to other Third World regions, displays a greater propensity for intra- and inter-state conflict as compared to the environments of the developed states. Therefore, the Middle East is not about to be transformed into what Karl Deutsch called a ‘security community’, where recourse to arms is not acceptable for the resolution of inter-state conflict.
Morgenthau's struggle with power: the theory of power politics and the Cold War
Authors: Nobel Jaap W.
Published: October 2009

‘What one can say in an original way about foreign policy is extremely limited. You can apply the basic principles to new situations, but essentially one says the same thing all over again in a different geographic, political, and military context.’ These are the words of Hans J. Morgenthau, spoken towards the end of a life devoted to the study of international politics. Yet was it that simple? And did Morgenthau really say the same things all over again in different geographic, political, and military contexts?
Rethinking justice and fairness: the case of acid rain emission reductions
Authors: Albin Cecilia
Published: October 2009

A major problem in managing and ultimately resolving many environmental issues, transboundary and global in particular, is how to tackle the fundamental questions of distributive justice and fairness involved. Little systematic reflection and research have been devoted to these issues. The problem of acid rain is a prime example. Strategies to abate acid rain must, among other requirements, be viewed as fair and just if they are to be politically accepted, implemented and honoured in the long term. Research and actual negotiations in this area to date have, by contrast, focused almost exclusively on the generation and analysis of emission reduction strategies which areeffectivein economic and, more recently, environmental terms.
Alliance and the British way in warfare
Authors: Freedman Lawrence
Published: October 2009

The British Way in Warfare was the title of a book by Basil Liddell Hart published in 1932. It was an elaboration of ideas first propounded a year earlier in a celebrated lecture on ‘Economic Pressure or Continental Victories’ to the Royal United Services Institute. Like many of his generation, the more Liddell Hart reflected on his own encounter with war (he had been gassed and wounded at the Somme), the more he became convinced that such folly must not be repeated. This required transforming the very conduct of war. With equal conviction he believed that he had hit upon some answers. These appeared as general principles of strategy—the ‘indirect approach’—and a particular policy for his own country— ‘limited liability’. He claimed that he was doing little more than distilling the essence of a long–standing national approach. This was ‘the British Way in Warfare’.
Articulating an alternative: the contribution of John Burton
Authors: Dunn David J.
Published: October 2009

Taken together, these four volumes comprise the Conflict Series, and represent the fruits of work completed by John Burton, with others, in the last years of his formal academic career in the United States, at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, and at the Center for Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia. Burton has now ‘retired’ (though he still writes vigorously) to his native Australia, and that event, together with the appearance of these works, prompts this synoptic evaluation of them in the context of Burton's life and previous work. What makes this particularly interesting in the case of John Burton is that his career has been less than singular; first a civil servant, then a diplomat, then an academic, he moved from Australia, then to the United Kingdom and thence to the United States, with various stops along the way. Though he has written a great deal—books, articles and conference papers—and was a key participant in the organization of the peace research movement in the 1960s, especially the International Peace Research Association and the Conflict Research Society in the United Kingdom (and is described on the back cover of CRP as ‘the founder of the field of conflict resolution’), he was never a professor during his extended residence i n the United Kingdom at, first, University College, London, and then at the University of Kent, achieving that status only later, at George Mason University.
Postmodernism, ethics and international political theory
Authors: Cochran Molly
Published: October 2009

A group of writers have taken up Nietzsche's hammer against the constructions of contemporary international theory. Postmodern approaches problematize the dominant understanding of international relations as a world of sovereign states which demarcate inside from outside, order from anarchy, identity from difference. More generally, they challenge the notion of sovereignty as an ahistorical, universal, transcendent concept, be it applied to the sovereign state, the sovereign individual or a sovereign truth. Sovereignty and the dichotomies regulated by its power are mechanisms of domination and closure which limit the play of political practice. It is the aim of these writers to hammer away at these limitations, opening space for plural and diverse practices in world politics.
Keeping governments out of politics: transnational securities markets, regulatory cooperation, and political legitimacy
Authors: Underhill Geoffrey R. D.
Published: October 2009

The emergence of transnational markets in securities issuance and trading is a dramatic development in the contemporary financial services sector with larger consequences for national policy-making. The liberalization of access to domestic securities exchanges, the progressive reduction of regulatory restrictions leading to product innovation such as derivatives trading, the growing involvement of transnational banks in securities dealing, and the elimination of capital controls have all combined to yield rapid change over the past fifteen years. The process is, however, relatively poorly researched. Folklore about the global markets abounds but much remains to be done to put the global integration of the markets into perspective and understand its complexity. Specifically, there has been a failure to analyse the consequences of the liberalization and transnationalization of financial markets for democratic political systems in an increasingly global market economy.
Explaining defence policy: the Mitterrand years
Authors: Menon Anand
Published: October 2009

Defence is a policy sector central to international relations. If war and conflict lie at the heart of traditional, Realist analyses of interstate relations, this derives in no small part from the claim that states are continually putting themselves in a position of readiness to wage such wars and triumph in conflict. If, as some commentators maintain, the nature of military doctrine, and national defence policies—offensive or defensive—can condition the nature of interstate relations, an explanation of the nature of national defence policies is vital in order to fully comprehend the nature of international relations.