One aspect of international relations which interested Martin Wight particularly was the functioning of what are called systems of states. That has also been an area of my especial interest since the late 50s. It was the focus of the discussions of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics. The committee was organized in the late fifties to bring, together people from different disciplines, practitioners as well as scholars. Herbert Butterfield and Martin were the founders and guiding spirits of the early years of the committee, and I was one of the original members. It was a collective enterprise: members submitted papers which left as questions those points on which the author did not feel certain of the answers. Martin told me that the most stimulating and interesting work he did during the 60s was writing papers for the committee and taking part in its discussions.

Although few in number and limited in scope, Kant's writings on international relations have had a lasting influence and have given rise to a wide range of interpretations. Kant's famous pamphlet, Perpetual Peace, has been seen as advocating federalism, world government, a League of Nations-type security system and outright pacifism. Underlying much of the debate on Kant lies a divergence over the relationship between what might broadly be called the ‘statist’ and the ‘cosmopolitan’ sides of Kant's writings. On one side, there are those who argue that Kant is primarily concerned with order at the level of interstate relations. Kant, it is argued, did not want to transcend the state system but to improve it. He wanted to subject the international anarchy to law and to find a solution to the problem of war but in a way which would not sacrifice the essential autonomy and independence of states.

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’.

Whatever happened to Human Rights? Like you, I think it is an odd title for a lecture; but in the end I settled for it rather than the alternative which sounded even odder—whatever has not happened to Human Rights since their grand eruption, forty years ago? Only ten years before that, the expression was still unfamiliar in the English-speaking world. The expression ‘The Rights of Man’ was familiar enough, but it did not necessarily mean the same thing and I cannot see that it was often seriously used with the same intention. ‘Human Rights’ only began to come into use through the second half of the Second World War. It was found apt for describing what the United Nations conceived themselves as fighting for, and what they undertook to do something constructive.about when the fighting was over. They gave it prominence in general terms in their Charter of principles and plans for the post-war world, and left the working-out of the Human Rights details to a committee (the embryo of the present Human Rights Commission). After about two years’ work, its draft Declaration then went back to the UN's debating mills and after being not too badly messed about was accepted nem con by the. General Assembly on 10 December 1948. An idea which, depending on your cultural point of view was either impressively old or excitingly new, had gone into orbit.

The discipline of International Relations has long had an uneasy relationship to revolution. Hannah Arendt's remark that the twentieth century has been shaped by wars and revolutions is often quoted, but it is striking how, within the institutionalized research and teaching on International Relations, these two historically formative processes receive differential treatment. Courses, journals, departments and institutes on war are plentiful. Study of war, in its historical, strategic and ethical dimensions, as well as in policy terms, is central to the academic study of IR. Revolutions, by contrast, enjoy a marginal existence. Standard textbooks and theoretical explorations devote little space to them. There is no journal specializing in this question. We have yet to meet the Oliver Cromwell Professor of Revolutionary Studies: there are no invitations to speak at the Thomas Paine International Institute for the Comparative Study of Revolutionary Change.

At the beginning of the 1990s the European political scene is in a state of rapid transformation. While the East–West conflict may not be over, it is clearly undergoing a fundamental change from an ideologically charged contest to a ‘normal’ competition between major actors in the anarchical international system. This change may well entail the elimination of some of the most dangerous threats to peace, whilst at the same time generating requirements for a new framework of European and East–West security. As the ideological conflict fades, so the bipolar alliance system which, in spite of all its shortcomings, burdens and injustices, provided some measure of stability to Europe, is also about to vanish.

Western Europe's status and impact within the contemporary international arena is a matter of contention and debate, reflecting its often elusive and intangible nature. On the one hand, enthusiasm for the notion of a ‘European foreign policy’ and for the idea that Western Europe can play a constructive role in the world is evident both in academic analysis and in the pronouncements of West European political leaders. On the other, there is often a yawning gap between the promise or the prescription and the reality of European disunity and pluralism. One possible reason for this gap between enthusiasm and reality is that concepts fail us when the discussion turns to Western Europe's international role: the notion of ‘Europe’ or ‘Western Europe’ is often taken to be consubstantial with the European Community, and the notion of a European ‘foreign policy’ carries with it a conceptual framework which is inseparable from the state-centric view of world politics. Thus, the idea of ‘Western Europe’ as an international actor of the conventional state-like kind based on the EC leads inevitably into the analysis of European Political Co-operation as a pro to-foreign policy; it can extend into evaluation of the ‘external relations’ encompassed by the Treaty of Rome; and it may entail a consideration of the potential for further development in the security field by the European members of NATO. At its most ambitious, it might lead to the proposal that these three areas could be combined to produce an integrated, state-like policy mechanism. Although there are few who would explicitly argue that the EC is on the verge of emerging as a ‘European state’, it is the ideal type of a state-based foreign policy which lies behind much contemporary analysis of Western Europe's international status.

Member governments of the European Community have frequently urged the necessity of closer cooperation and collaboration in meeting the challenge posed by new technologies and in countering the lead achieved by the United States and Japan. After delays which seemed almost to contradict any sense of urgency, the Council of Ministers of the Community agreed to a multi-annual Framework Programme of Scientific Research in 1983. A critically important element of that Programme, the European Strategic Programme of Research and Development in Information Technology (ESPRIT), was agreed only after further extensive delays in February 1984. The renewal and extension of the Framework Programme was proposed by the European Commission in early 1986 but was finally agreed only in September 1987, the delay having been caused by the opposition of Britain, France and West Germany, the three member states largely responsible for the protracted negotiations on ESPRIT in 1984. Much attention has been paid to the history of the Framework Programme and ESPRIT, but the budgetary aspects of the decisions, aspects that were highly significant in delaying agreement, especially on the part of Britain and West Germany, have tended to be ignored.

The objective of this paper is to identify the process by which military research and development (R&D) priorities affect the evolution of major sectors of the civil economy in capitalist states. Military priorities channel a significant proportion of the resources that capitalist societies devote to R&D: for the United States in the period 1982–4, military R&D amounted to 28.9 per cent of gross domestic expenditure on R&D. The nature of military priorities favours some areas of technological development over others, and when these favoured areas are opened up for military purposes, it is often possible to build a major civil industry on the resultant technology. Examples of this process include nuclear power, civil aviation, space satellites and computers. Some, though by no means all, of the commanding heights of civil economies are thus powerfully shaped by the opportunities created by specifically military R&D.

What does it mean to think like a Realist? The question is important in the study of international politics. According to a recent survey of the field, more than 90 per cent of the hypotheses tested by behaviourists in international politics were Realist in conception. A wider survey of the field taken in 1972 (which included those more historically inclined) identified the American Realist Hans Morgenthau as the leading scholar of international relations and his Politics Among Nations as the leading book. The overwhelming majority of other prominent postwar general theorists have worked inside the Realist tradition.

On 22 June 1946 the Government of India asked that the treatment of Indians in South Africa be placed on the agenda of the Second Part of the First UN General Assembly. This was the first dispute to be taken to the General Assembly and it resulted in the UN's first attack on South Africa. From the perspective of the 1990s the only striking thing about the 1946 UN resolution is its mild tone and the limitation of its criticism to South Africa's, policies relating to just one group. However, from the perspective of 1946 it is remarkable that the UN should even have discussed South Africa's treatment of her Indian citizens, let alone have decided by a two-thirds majority that she had failed to treat them in conformity with. her international obligations and the relevant provisions of the UN Charter.

The student of international relations seeks from Clausewitz not a theory of politics but an analysis of war. For some 150 years those who have sought to understand war have turned to Clausewitz—to find inspiration or to condemn him, to borrow or to steal from him, to quote or to misquote him. He has been called upon to support particular wars and strategies, to take sides in the Cold War and to throw light on nuclear deterrence. He has been both venerated and vilified, and frequently misunderstood. Few have ignored him altogether.

While the threat and use of force remain elements or even possibilities in world affairs, the political importance of the defence industries will be substantial. Defence industries must be viewed as significant because of the contribution that they make to allowing states to deter attack and to use force. But they also have an economic and technological significance. In the UK, France and the US, defence equipment represents about 10 per cent of total manufacturing output. Equipment orders from home and abroad provide employment for around 500,000 people in the UK, at least 300,000 in France, and over two million in the US. The US Department of Defence, the Pentagon, employs 134,000 people just to procure equipment worth about $130 billion involving 15 million contracts a year. Defence equipment is big business and is particularly important today in the aerospace, electronics and shipbuilding sectors. Between a quarter and a third of professional technologists and scientists in Britain, France and the US work in the defence sector.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to look at the United Nations Security Council and certain of the 646 resolutions and 232 public vetoes (vetoing 192 draft resolutions) cast between 1946 and the end of 1989, and to discover in what ways both it and they have been legally and politically relevant and significant. Security Council resolutions are, of course, passed by majority vote. This had to be 7 out of 11 votes until the end of 1965 when the Council was enlarged from 11 to 15. Security Council resolutions have had since then to be passed by at least 9 votes: these can only be vetoed by the five Permanent Members (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China) if the resolution would otherwise have been passed. By the end of 1989 the veto total for each Permanent Member (the Peoples Republic of China took over the China seat in 1971) was as follows: Soviet Union 114; United States 67; United Kingdom 30; France 18 and China 3.

During his eight years in office Ronald Reagan attempted not only to dominate the US political scene but to establish a clear neo-conservative agenda for the American nation. When he came to power he had two main objectives. The first was to roll back the hand of government, for as he put it, ‘the ills of a nation stem from a single source: the belief that government… has the answer to our ills’. The second was to rebuild America's position in the world after the so-called ‘decade of neglect.’ Naturally, Reagan delighted the new right with his attacks on liberalism at home and the Soviet Union abroad. However, one suspects he frightened an equal number by raising issues (like abortion) which many had long thought settled, while implying that the only solution to complex international questions was American firepower. And even though many American intellectuals may have despised the new President for his apparent simple-mindedness, his optimism about the American future and his heroic view of the American past did much to endear him to a large cross-section of the American people. Reagan believed in the American dream and attempted to convince his fellow citizens that they ought to believe in it too.

The term ‘Special Relationship’ can give the false impression that Britain and the US have related to each other in an unchanging way since the forging of close bonds during World War II. If, like the present author, one chooses to use this terminology it is important to identify how the relationship has changed over the years.

This article focuses on the period 1961–67, which was an important period of transition. In 1961, Suez notwithstanding, it was possible for British leaders to continue to think in terms of drawing on unique links with the US, some of which had been forged in World War II and still existed, others which had been developed in their common struggle against communism. By 1967 some of these links had been broken and others greatly weakened for a variety of reasons. Britain's relative world power had continued to decline, thus reducing her usefulness to the US; Britain began to look seriously to the EEC for its future and away from the US, which, for its part, was becoming increasingly preoccupied with Vietnam and the Far East in general; the economic structure Britain and the US had designed to manage the free world's. economy and in the direction of which they had cooperated extensively began to breakdown; and finally after the Kennedy–Macmillan friendship there was no really close relationship between British and American leaders until the mid-1970s. Before looking at this period of transition, however, it is necessary to review an earlier era when the Special Relationship was unquestioned.