Four areas in the world are at present or potentially major power centers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and Communist China. In all four, productivity is on the increase and the political system performs relatively well its integrating and decisionmaking functions. Despite major differences among them which need not be examined here and various weak spots which might reverse trends, these four areas are likely to be in a position to play major roles in political, economic, and cultural international affairs in the coming decade. In contrast, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Tropical Africa, and Latin America are apt to remain power vacuums during this period, owing to their lack of unity, political instability, economic stagnation, and cultural heterogeneity.

It has become customary to begin a discussion of the nature and present state of the discipline of international relations with a number of complaints. This article will not abandon the custom; indeed, its purpose is, in the first place, to state the conviction that many of the problems we face in our field can be solved only by far more systematic theoretical work than has been done in the past—a conviction shared by most writers. Secondly, however, I will try to show that recent approaches to a general theory of international relations are unsatisfactory, because each one is, in its own fashion, a short cut to knowledge—sometimes even a short cut to a destination that is anything but knowledge.

The growth of economic relations between the states of the Soviet bloc and the underdeveloped countries of Afro-Asia since 1953 has provoked widespread attention and concern in the West. This development is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a reflection of the larger role which Soviet leaders have assigned to economic activities in the conduct of foreign relations.

To those concerned with the process of political development, Israel's transition in its first decade from Jewish self-government under the Mandate to independent statehood is stimulating and fascinating. For Israel is sufficiently small in size and scope to be utilized as a laboratory for close observation of phenomena relevant to an understanding of political development in countries struggling toward national sovereignty in Africa, the Near East, and Asia.