It is over fifty years since a young scholar named Hans J. Morgenthau sought refuge in the United States, and forty years since the publication of his influential text, Politics Among Nations. Morgenthau's ‘theory’ of political realism figures prominently in the academic study of international relations during these years and shows no sign of disappearing. Many of those scholars who differ markedly from Morgenthau regard it as worthwhile or.at least necessary to respond to his arguments. If perhaps for no other reason than that it is an appealing target, Morgenthau's political realism remains an important subject of evaluation for even its most serious and most severe critics.

The notion of the sovereign was one response to social disorder; obsession with witchcraft was another. Neither reaction is far distant from us. Not long ago public-spirited men condemned large numbers of innocents on witchcraft charges which they, and in many cases their victims, believed to be true. What was illusory was explained by an elaborate mythology to which rulers, jurists, and academics devoted detailed study. What was not the case was exactly described in learned and reputable volumes. A modern founder of the notion of sovereignty, Bodin, was familiar to many of his contemporaries for the handbook on witchcraft that he published in 1586. Demons and spirits might be a source of disorder. Its cure, in Bodin's view, lay in the creation of a supreme centralized power.

In 1918 Harold Nicolson in discussing the problem of political intelligence observed that ‘any forecast of diplomatic development must inevitably deal, not with concentric forces, but with eccentric tendencies; such data as are available emerge only from a mass of heterogeneous phenomena, mutually conflicting, mutually overlapping, and striving each towards some distinct and often incompatible solution’. At the time Nicolson was writing the Foreign Office was embarking upon an early attempt to assist diplomacy through analysing these eccentric tendencies and coordinating the information emanating from the heterogeneous phenomena of foreign affairs. The vehicle for this experiment was the Political Intelligence Department (P.I.D.), and its experience contains elements common to intelligence activity throughout this century: the need for co-ordination which in turn leads to a struggle for control of the co-ordinating body, the suspicion aroused in traditional departments by any group involved in intelligence work, the pressure of the Treasury to cut costs even at the expense of useful intelligence operations, and the struggle between the prime minister's office and the Foreign Office for the control of policy. Since the turn of the century there had been a growing awareness of the need for foreign intelligence, a development which finally resulted in the creation of an espionage service in 1909 (the ancestor of the Secret Intelligence Service). This department, however, concentrated on military related intelligence. During the First World War it became evident, particularly to Lord Hardinge, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, that while there were numerous sources of political intelligence, no systematic method had been established for collecting and collating this information, verifying it against collateral sources, and synthesizing the result in succinct reports which would be of value to the policy-makers. Military intelligence was clearly the preserve of the Admiralty and the War Office, and the Foreign Office decided to establish that political intelligence fell within its purview. In the process of establishing Foreign Office primacy in this sphere, Hardinge had to fend off attempts by Lord Beaverbrook who as Minister of Information tried to use his personal political clout to control such intelligence. This was, however, only one of several bureaucratic difficulties, the P.I.D. was forced to struggle with. Finally in 1920 the P.I.D. was closed through a combination of financial and bureaucratic pressures. During its brief existence, though, it was able to prove the utility of a centralized body concerned with political intelligence. In some ways it presaged the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (J.I.C.), which in a more sophisticated and elaborate way is meant, to achieve the same ends.

The reform of the United Nations, and particularly of its budgetary procedures and Secretariat staffing, is a matter of considerable current interest among students and practitioners of international organization. These issues form part of what has for some years now been referred to as the financial crisis at the United Nations. This was the subject of a one-day conference at the United Nations held late last year. What follows is a summary of the discussion at that conference, reproduced here in order to reach a wider audience.

These last ten years have witnessed a remarkable development of Chinese academic writing on International Relations. The late Premier Zhou Enlai had recommended the expansion of such studies in 1964 on his return from a tour of Africa after having found the relevant Chinese expertise weak and ill-informed. But the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 not only prevented that development, but along with most other intellectuals those few scholars engaged in the subject were humiliated and persecuted. Since 1977, in common with the other social sciences, International Relations has begun to flourish. Although it is a fairly new independent subject of study more than five hundred scholars are engaged in a variety of research institutes and several universities offer courses in it. As in the other social sciences, research in International Relations is carried out under the general guidelines of serving China's long term policies of modernization and the open door.

International relations scholars have long enjoyed an uncomfortable relationship with the concept of sovereignty. It has appeared as conceptually forbidding territory, journeys into which are likely to yield only a formalistic or unduly legalistic understanding of international relations, too close to the dignified trappings, and too remote from the efficient workings, of the international system.

It is not surprising that international crises have become a subject of intensive study in the nuclear age. The example of Sarajevo stands as an awesome warning of the repercussions which can flow from an apparently minor incident. The Cuban missile crisis seemed for a time to suggest guidelines by which crises could be successfully 'managed', but the dangers of generalizing from an optimistic reading of that unique case have come to be widely appreciated.

These five volumes are indicative of the current diversity of the literature of arms control. Although they can all be pigeon-holed as being about arms control they approach the subject from a variety of perspectives.