Of the several public dialogues currently being carried on in the United States, the controversy over military strength and disarmament may be both the most important and the most confusing. Its importance is obvious; it is an interesting commentary on the vital nature of armament-disarmament policy that the literature in the field is burgeoning almost as fast as the literature about the Civil War on its 100th anniversary. But, if the importance is obvious, the confusion is becoming equally so.

In any personal dictatorship or tyranny, one thing is certain: some day there will be a succession crisis. That dread day casts a long shadow before, influencing the period of dictatorial rule by anticipation. There is inherent in dictatorship a succession cycle: first, a period of stable dictatorial rule; then, a succession crisis; finally, a resolution of the crisis or a dissolution of the political system. Some dictatorial regimes experience a series of personal dictatorships; the Soviet regime, for example, has twice gone through the cycle, and now has its third dictator. This historical experience affects the general character of the entire succession cycle. Serious inquiry into the succession to Khrushchev requires us to consider the general character of the succession cycle in the Soviet system as well as the particular factors that are likely to influence the course and outcome of the Khrushchev succession crisis.

On October 5, 1937, in the heart of America's isolationist belt, President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the dictators and called for a concerted international effort to quarantine the aggressors. His words drew the excited attention of the world and raised high the expectations for an immediate revision of America's neutrality policy. An opportunity was quickly provided Roosevelt to implement his new policy when the signators of the Nine Power Treaty were invited to Brussels to confer over Japan's undeclared war against China. These developments roused the ire of the American isolationists but brought fresh hope to those who believed a policy of resistance would restrain the dictators. For the next several weeks in this year of decision the balance swung away from the appeasers towards the resisters. For a time, because of American participation, the Brussels conference seemed to hold high promise for the success of the latter group. Then, as the United States backed away, the appeasers returned to lead Europe along the road to Munich.

POOR old Trotsky,” Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike once remarked, “his unhappy ghost seems to have found its only refuge in this country.” While Ceylon is not the only refuge of Trotsky, it is certainly the most hospitable, for nowhere else has his image inspired so successful a following. On two occasions since Ceylon has become independent, one or another of the Trotskyite parties has acted as the principal opposition to the government, and in one instance one of them governed Ceylon in coalition with a party of the Center. Ambitious, dedicated, expressive of the needs of the people, and possessing perhaps the most astute and distinguished leadership of any of the parties in Ceylon now that Bandaranaike has unfortunately been assassinated, the Trotskyite movement seems to have installed itself as a permanent part of Ceylonese politics.

Machiavelli begins his Discourses by observing that “the curious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents.” The Political Foundations of International Law runs this hazard, as it is both a splendid pioneering venture and vulnerable to all sorts of criticism. Although it most suggestively studies the theoretical interaction of law and politics, it provides scant doctrinal support. Although it brilliantly applies systems analysis and prudently uses decision-making theory, structural functional approaches, institutional studies, and a subtle form of historicism, it flirts outrageously with the relevance of game theory to the role of law in international affairs. Although it advances its views of international jurisdiction with unprecedented sophistication, it resorts to amateurish simplification when it discusses the United Nations Charter or the major European regional organizations. In sum, Political Foundations is at once profoundly provocative and frustratingly unrealized. However, its achievements are so much greater than its defects that it warrants high praise and mild rebuke.

Although the Asian and African peoples have often alleged that the Western nation-state produced untold injustices in the lessadvanced portions of the world, these same peoples are now eagerly using the same organization to order their political and social affairs. Indeed, it is not difficult to find national rivalries in Africa and Asia that exceed the historic rivalries of Europe. The new nations have taken on Western political patterns with a fervor, and sometimes a ruthless purposefulness, that have seldom been equaled. Very few advancing peoples are content with anything less than a nation, and very few new nations have been more successful than their Western counterparts in erecting supranational agencies for political or economic purposes. Professor Emerson has provided us with a remarkable account of the paradoxical simplicity and the unlimited complexity to be found in the spread of the nation-state among the Asian and African peoples.

It was a great shock to the American public to learn that during the Korean War some American prisoners had co-operated with their captors. It was obvious that they had acted under pressure, and it came as a surprise both that helpless prisoners had been subjected to such pressures and that Americans had yielded to them. It had long been taken for granted that prisoners of war would be treated according to the gentleman's code (except, possibly, for isolated outrages). It was overlooked that modern totalitarianism had never recognized the gentleman's code but had denounced it as a fraud, meant to facilitate the exploitation of the masses.

It is now more than a hundred years since the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, precipitating four years of terrible conflict. Since then, the question of who was responsible for the opening salvo of the Civil War has continued to occupy the attention of publicists, polemicists, politicians, and scholars.

Perhaps the central dilemma in national security policy is how to A reconcile the obvious potency of nuclear weapons for purposes of deterrence with their dubious utility as instruments of defense—i.e., for fighting a war at tolerable cost in case deterrence should fail. In prenuclear days, deterrence was more or less a function of an efficient capacity for defense, but with the new technology deterrence may be accomplished with capabilities and threats that do not correspond to the capabilities and strategies most suitable for rational military action. This dichotomy forms the leading theme of Deterrent or Defense, by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, one of Britain's leading military analysts. The book is a collection of articles written mostly during the past three or four years, and concerned chiefly with military problems of NATO. As in many books of this sort, the articles overlap to some extent and are not always consistent. Leaving aside the inconsistencies for the moment, Liddell Hart's basic position can be stated briefly. Strategic nuclear airpower is useful for deterring an all-out nuclear attack on the United States or a full-scale conventional assault on Western Europe. But it has no value whatever for purposes of defense, because the inevitable result of the actual use of such weapons is simply “mutual suicide.” Even though it would be “lunacy” for the United States to initiate thermonuclear war in response to a Soviet attack in Europe, the Russians' fear of such a response probably is still strong enough to deter them from all but limited actions. Hence, the major problem facing NATO is to develop an effective non-suicidal defense against limited aggression. The book's greatest merit lies in its contribution to the solution of this problem.