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.

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 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.

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.

In 1919 the world's first chair in international politics was founded at Aberystwyth. Now fifty-six years later a British Journal of International Studies achieves publication. The journal is timely – even overdue. It has predecessors of high quality in the United States, in Canada, in India, in Norway and in many other countries. The subject is taught widely in Europe, in Japan and many countries of Asia, in Africa and Latin America, more recently in Eastern Europe, and throughout the United States; but in the United Kingdom, though it is represented in some twenty-four universities and in several polytechnics, it is taught extensively only in eight of these institutions. It seemed appropriate, in the first number of the new journal, to review the somewhat hesitant cultivation of the field in this country, and to consider how the subject generally appears to be moving. The paper accordingly begins with a quick survey of evolution n i a changing historical context, examines recent explorations of methodology and expansion of range, and makes some comments about directions of advance which in the opinion of the writer seem promising or likely to be fruitful.

The purpose of this essay is to provide a brief overview of the theory and practice of counterinsurgency in the Third World since World War II. Given the obvious limitations of space, descriptions of particular COIN (counterinsurgency) campaigns have been avoided except to illustrate an argument. Furthermore, this essay concentrates primarily on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrines and methods. This is not to underestimate the contributions – both theoretical and practical – made by the former colonial powers in attempting to crush the impulse to national liberation in the Third World. But the European powers – with the recent exception of Portugal – had, by the beginning of the 1960s, neither the capability nor (following a number of humiliating setbacks) much enthusiasm for further military adventures in the Third World. There have, of course, been exceptions – the French in Mali, Britain in Borneo and the Anguilla affair – but these pale into insignificance when compared with the American counterinsurgency effort in the Third World, which began to gather impetus just as the major European colonial powers were abdicating their former role as Third World policemen.1

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.

The first difficulty facing an enquiry into the Richardson theory, apart from the quirky and unconventional style of Richardson's own presentation of his ideas (and I am emphatically not referring to his use of mathematics), is to decide precisely what the theory refers to. Richardson seems first to formulate his model in terms of the relationship between the rate at which a state acquires additional armaments and the level or stock of armaments at that moment in time in its possession and that of its presumed, probable opponent. He does this, reasonably enough, by connecting the rate at which each state acquires armaments directly and positively to the level of its opponent's stock of armaments and negatively to its own, and to a term independent of the size of stocks.

In discussing the scholarly work of Henry Kissinger, the obvious temptation is to examine the work of the scholar in the light of the politician's activities; and I intend to yield to it. There are, equally, reasons for doing so, which I shall suggest later. It should also be clear that one can not hope, in an article of this length, to do justice to the full seriousness of his works, their manifold complications and changes of well-argued position, the scope of the considerations which he has brought to bear. The aim will be the more modest one of trying to assess the nature of the contribution he has made to thinking about the major international problems of contemporary world order.

It is probably fair to say that the work of Professor Richard Rosecrance represents the outstanding attempt of recent years to produce a general model of international relations and the making of foreign policies, based on the evidence of historical research. His book Action and “Reaction in World Politics drew inductively from the historical evolution of the international system an analysis of the processes of that system. His latest book, International Relations: Peace or War?, summarizes the historical analysis of the earlier work and elaborates on its general discussion of foreign policy making, especially by drawing upon recent theoretical work by other authors. In both these books Rosecrance tries to explain the developments of international politics in terms of the long historical perspective, to show how fundamental changes in the nature of states and the international environment have altered the nature of relationships between states. The question to be explored here is the viability of Rosecrance's model and his explanations, examined in the light of a particular historical development which he

A paradox haunts the career of Paul-Henri Spaak, and one that is characteristic of Belgian foreign policy in general. For Spaak, the man who was nicknamed ‘Mr. Europe’ for the contribution that he made to the post-war movement for European integration was also the man who, as Foreign Minister of the inter-war governments of van Zeeland and Pierlot, was associated with the policy of Belgian ‘independence’. That policy is usually seen as the direct antithesis of integration.

Man was not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to put his finger on the problem and then to keep within the limits of the comprehensible. Goethe

NEW fields of academic study often appear to develop along the lines of Rostow's stages of economic growth. The preconditions for take-off are established by isolated pioneers who see the emergence of trends and opportunities before they have captured public attention. With public recognition of the need for greater understanding and a more informed basis for action, the new field is given a powerful shove into the take-off stage. Academic investment in it rises, constituent firms publish their prospectuses and set about attracting customers. If the investment effort is widespread and substantial, a minor boom may occur and leave in its wake some excess capacity.

On Sunday 2 August 1914 the Liberal prime minister, Asquith, received a note from Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne in which the Conservative leaders offered their ‘unhesitating support’ to the Government in any measures it might consider necessary for the object of supporting France and Russia. Of this communication the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, wrote in his memoirs: “The message was first read and then laid aside; it could have no influence on our discussion. ” In a recent article, Donald Lammers has concluded that “the state of our information does not justify ascribing a high or determining importance to Conservative statements and actions in connection with the British decision to go to war”. In doing so he has added his name to those of Robert Blake, Roy Jenkins, Keith Robbins, Samuel Williamson and Cameron Hazlehurst, who have in his words maintained that “the Conservative letter counted for almost nothing and the relentless march of events almost everything in the way of changing or settling ministerial minds” in the European crisis of late July and early August 1914.

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.

Since the end of World War II social commentators have attempted to explain why Germany was so susceptible to Nazi rule. One sociologist has argued that the social structure that existed in Germany at the end of the First World War made it likely that Germany would take a totalitarian rather than a democratic road to modernity. Others have argued that the breakdown of the stratification system permitted the Nazis to prey upon the fears of the newly atomized individuals who joined in the mass movement. Still other studies have focused either on the whole country or on the different regions to explore in detail how the Nazi movement grew and which elements of the population were most prone to join it. These works have ranged from descriptive case studies to more analytic, but conflicting, voting studies. But the analyses of the mass represent only one half of the equation which may explain why the Nazis came to power and, perhaps more significantly, why they managed to retain the loyalty of the populace even when it was apparent that Germany would lose the war that the Nazis initiated. The other part of the equation is Adolf Hitler whose “ability not only to win over the majority of the German people, but to lead them so completely astray, has no precedent in history”. No other revolutionary mass movement, neither bolshevism in Russia nor communism in China, has been so much the product of its leader as was national socialism in Germany.

Is there such a subject? The study of Allied diplomacy has been slow to establish itself, partly because the bulk of the American and British records have only recently become available, but mainly because of the debate about the origins of the Cold War – the contemporary equivalent of the war-guilt question. Because of the paucity of Soviet material it has in practice turned into an argument about American policy and has not, of course, been confined to the wartime period. The search for origins, turning-points and causes employs the advantage of hindsight in deciding what is relevant. It, therefore, tends to overlook the side issues, dead ends and the short-term nature of much wartime diplomacy. Nobody would deny the importance of the origins of the Cold War or of wartime American-Soviet relations. Yet it is misleading to see Allied diplomacy solely in terms of this one theme. There is room for an attempt to examine some other wartime issues and to indicate topics worthy of further exploration. In the rest of this article, therefore, the Cold War will as far as possible be ignored.

Bernard Bosanquet spent the First World War at his cottage in Oxshott, in Surrey, and from here he measured the implications of the conflict for his philosophy of the state. The result of this reflection is available to us in the letters which he wrote during the war, and a variety of lectures and papers. His ideas, therefore, have a general interest to students of international theory.

Since the appearance of Fritz Fischer's Griff nach der Weltmacht in 19611the study of German history has not been the same. His strong views and the evidence he presents on the question of German responsibility for World War I naturally provoked controversy. But the impact of his book has another equally important, and, at first glance, less apparent aspect. Fischer gave great prominence to economic affairs and the role of various pressure groups. Whether his views on German war guilt are accepted or not, Fischer's approach to history, his attempt to break out of the bonds of diplomatic, purely political and intellectual history and emphasize its economic and social strains, has encouraged a multitude of young German historians to take a fresh look at their past. They have concentrated on the last 100 years, but this method can of course be more widely applied. Since the days of Ranke the writing of German history has been directed towards the analysis of political events and increasingly since the turn of the century towards the study of the history of ideas. After an early and promising start in Germany, social and economic history was either neglected, or studied merely in isolation without reference to politics.