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An Introduction to the Strategy of Statecraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Morton A. Kaplan
Morton A. Kaplan
Affiliation:
The department of political science at Ohio State University
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Extract

The term “statecraft” is used here in a sense which is stronger than that of “diplomacy” as used, for example, by Harold Nicolson. In its present meaning it includes the construction of strategies for securing the national interest in the international arena, as well as the execution of these strategies by diplomats. In a day when the world is being divided between two great power blocs, when neutrality is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain, when statecraft is invading the economic and cultural aspects of social existence, as well as the political and military, when most great problems of domestic life must be reconsidered with regard to their bearing on the international situation, few, if any, can doubt its importance. The successful or unsuccessful conduct of statecraft may settle the fate of our way of life; and, given the possibilities of modern war, it may, in a deeper sense, settle the question of whether any type of civilized life, ours or the Soviets', can survive.

Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , July 1952 , pp. 548 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Nicolson, Harold, Diplomacy, London, 1939, pp. 13–16.Google Scholar

2 The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Hartshorne, Charles and Weiss, Paul, eds., Vol. v, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, p. 221.Google Scholar

3 Bradley, F. H., Appearance and Reality, London, 1908, p. 139.Google Scholar

4 See Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society, New Haven, Conn., 1950.Google Scholar

5 Nagel, Ernest, “Principles of the Theory of Probability,” Vol. I, monograph 6, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Chicago, 1939, pp. 60–74.Google Scholar

6 Carnap, Rudolf, The Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago, 1951, I, 161ff.Google Scholar

7 Reichenbach, Hans, The Theory of Probability, Berkeley, Calif., pp. 376ff.Google Scholar

8 “Historicus,” pseud., “Stalin on Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, XXVII (January 1949), 175–214.

9 See Leites, Nathan, The Operational Code of the Politburo, New York, 1951, esp. pp. 33 and 58–60.Google Scholar

10 Neumann, John von and Morgenstern, Oskar, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Princeton, N.J., 1944, pp. 40–48.Google Scholar

11 “X,” pseud., “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, xxv (July 1947), 566–88. The well-known statement of President Truman to the effect that Soviet promises are not worth the paper they are written on is also à propos.

12 See almost any request by the military, particularly the Air Force, for funds from Congress.