It is a commonplace observation—certainly among practicing members of the foreign policy community, but also among academic students of world politics—that policy-makers have seldom given much heed to the writings of theorists on international relations. Particularly in recent years, when academic writing on international relations has grown increasingly technical in nature and more impenetrable to a reader without specialized training in one or more social science disciplines, the theorist as theorist has had little communication with the policy-maker. It is also true that many practitioners, and many from the academic side as well, would tend to agree that, by and large, the policymakers have not missed much.

The quotations from Charles A. McClelland and Graham T. Allison represent two distinct approaches to the study of international relations: (i) international system analysis; and (2) foreign policy analysis. Essentially, international system analysts seek to explain interactions between nations by phenomena such as their prior interactions and the structure of the system. Foreign policy analysts, on the other hand, seek to explain foreign policy behavior as the output of subnational organizations following standard operating procedures or engaging in a problem-solving search. Given the international system and foreign policy approaches as contrasting points of departure, the goals of the present study are:

During the Tet holiday of 1968, North Vietnamese troops launched massive attacks on a large number of South Vietnamese cities. Why?

International conflict has been accounted for in many different ways—in terms of aggressive “instincts,” territoriality, population growth, the search for basic resources or seaports, the protection of trade routes, psychopathological deviations, plunder and profit, a drive for imperialist control, and so forth. Some theorists have considered grievances, competition, anxieties, tension, threat, and provocation to be of special importance. Others have laid heavy emphasis upon national power or capability, military preparedness, strategic considerations, and the competition for dominance.1 No doubt most if not all of these variables are relevant, but this recognition does not help much in the development of a theory of war, its dynamics, and contributing causal networks. In the long run all factors need to be pulled together in some systematic way. A serious difficulty emerges from the fact that the various “causes” that contribute to war tend to be highly interactive, that is, they affect each other in various ways and often in many different directions. The problem is to find out, if possible, which variables are contributing most to international violence and in what proportion. The purpose of this paper is to take an early step in this direction by reporting on some empirical research currently under way and by presenting some tentative findings which suggest partial explanations and some implications and difficulties for national policies.

During the past decade policy makers and academic observers have become increasingly aware of the political importance of economic relations, especially among the advanced industrialized states. Some of this awareness came precipitously when monetary crises threatened not only individual currencies such as sterling, the franc, or the dollar, but also the basic structure of the international monetary system. Some of this awareness was more incremental, as with the growing fear that neomercantilist trade policies might result in a reversal of the postwar policies of trade liberalization pursued by the Western industrialized states.

While engineers, economists, and doctors can often prescribe a remedy for an undesirable situation by inference from a general theoretical construct, the architects of foreign policies rarely, if ever, have had such an advantage. Yet, the availability of a general theoretical construct could yield numerous benefits. To the degree that the theory were reliable and general, the foreign-policy maker would be able to deal with a wide range of concerns with confidence, at a minimum cost. For such a theory would allow him to know precisely what information would be needed to analyze the situation and how the information could be used to infer a prescription which would, with a high probability, get the desired results.

Confusion and misconceptions about the state and nature of “theory” have reached monumental proportions in the field of international relations. This situation is debilitating both because it misleads academics and policymakers alike about the contributions that can be made by theorists of international relations and because it operates to set back serious efforts to pursue theory in the field. Accordingly, I write in an effort to cut through some of this confusion and to set the problems of constructing theories about international phenomena in perspective. Specifically, I wish to explicate the following theses in these pages:1

International relations analysts now use a wide range of ideas and techniques. Concepts and styles of reasoning clearly reflect work in economics, organizational behavior, social psychology, operations research and many other fields. Facts thought relevant are the facts customarily used in these other fields. Methods for relating facts to each other and to ideas are increasingly those of logic, statistics and mathematics. What are the implications of this diversity for foreign and defense policy? The only necessary implication is for the length and variety of the menu international relations analysts can offer the policy person. There is no necessary implication for how important or satisfying he will find the offerings.

Ever since Plato advocated his ideal of a philosopher-king, the intellectual has sought to guide the destinies of state. Sometimes he has been openly explicit in articulating advice, as with Machiavelli. More often, however, the intellectual has abjured so crass a role. Instead, he has sought to influence through private persuasion or has rendered counsel indirectly through scholarly essays. Only in China did the dichotomy between scholar and statesman disappear some two thousand years ago with emergence of a political system that monopolized bureaucratic control in the hands of the literati, that infinitesimally small proportion of the population that could master the classical adages which comprised the examinations for entrance into government. Elsewhere the sword proved to be mightier than the pen, at least in determining affairs of state.

Approaches to the study of international relations employ a wide variety of concepts and indicators. The interrelationships among these concepts often are specified in conceptual schemes, models, or theories. This supplementary issue of World Politics presents several approaches to international relations theory which utilize familiar concepts, such as decision-making, crisis, and interdependence, and also concepts (frequently borrowed from other disciplines) that are less familiar, e.g., entrepreneurial and consumer roles, free riders, and externalities. The diversity of approaches and the variety of models specified by the contributors led the co-editors to commission an index focusing on concepts and the variables used to tap the concepts (indicators) rather than a more traditional listing of names, places, and events.