Over the past few years Vendulka Kubálková and Albert Cruickshank have produced a substantial and wide-ranging oeuvre on the issue of Marxism and international relations. Their first work, Marxism–Leninism and Theory of International Relations, published in. 1980, stressed the importance of engagement between these two bodies of thought, and this theme is restated in a more composed manner in their later Marxism and International Relations. The themes of these books have been reiterated in article forms and most recently in their essay “The ‘New Cold War’ in ‘critical International Relations studies’” (in the July 1986 number of this Review). There is much that is disputable in their writings and their recent essay on the new cold war is no exception: but, before turning to some debatable aspects of their interpretation of the debate on the New Cold War, it may be worth emphasizing the points of more general value in their work.

NATO has been a fixed point in international politics for forty years and is part of the basic framework of relations between the West and the Soviet Union. NATO present form owes much to the milieu of the late 1940s which gave it birth and to crucial developments in its early years. Important insight into the character of the alliance can be gained by examination of the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty itself. It has emerged from recent scholarship that those who created the Treaty were at variance not only on the details of the Treaty, but also on the fundamental nature of the alliance they were creating: its purpose, and the means by which it could best achieve that purpose. Important studies have highlighted the debate upon the issue of the obligation to assist a member if attacked (Article 5 of the Treaty) and the mutual assistance clause (Article 3). The debate on membership of the Atlantic Pact, and particularly the criteria to apply when assessing potential members also raises fundamental questions but it has been less exhaustively studied. There is especially a lack of detailed study of the development of British views, which were of some importance given the pivotal initiatory role the British played in the negotiations, now widely recognized. The British official documents reveal not only the development of ideas on aspects of the North Atlantic Treaty in debate within the British government, but also provide much information on the course of the Treaty negotiations and the views of the other participants, to supplement that available in the published sources. This information results from the close contacts between the British Embassy in Washington and the State Department, and Britain's close ties with the West European participants through the Brussels Treaty organization.

The study of international organization has frequently involved a discussion of the skills necessary for effective leadership. Such an orientation flows from the notion that effective leadership may be ‘the most critical single determinant of the growth in scope and authority of international organization’. Thus there has long been a bias toward the study of dynamic executive heads, those who are either international organization founders or at least leaders during periods of rapid organizational growth. Indeed the characteristics of such leaders (often referred to as the skills of institutionalization and identified with the names of Haas and Cox) are frequently taken to be the characteristics of the ideal executive head.

This is an attempt at analysing the political philosophy of international relations in a very short span of time, so I do not propose to discuss questions of method. Indeed I may sound dogmatic, but that is merely because I shall not have the time to exhibit my diffidence.

I hope that I have not given offence by my title. No one is a legitimate target of terrorism. I mean that thinking about terrorism involves thinking about who is and who is not a legitimate target for political force.

The ideological divide which informs the current superpower competition, and the nuclear context in which that competition takes place, reinforce the tendency of the superpowers to view other actors in the system with covetous eyes. These two factors also have a great bearing on how the United States and the Soviet Union are perceived by the Third World states.