American foreign policy has recently become a favorite target-area for attacks upon an alleged moralizing and legalistic habit which ignores or condemns national interest. The criticism runs the whole gamut of our relations with the world outside, focusing with final virulence upon our effort to find peace in the United Nations. It covers most of the nation's history, tracing the decline from “realism” to moralistic fantasy back to the moment when the genius of the Federalists began to be corrupted by Jeffersonian sentimentalism. The vast complex of today's foreign relations furnishes innumerable points of assault. A folly of self-righteousness has led us—so the indictment reads—into tragic error in China, in Korea, in the Near and Middle East, even (though here some of the accusers desert) in Europe. We give quixotically where we should sell; but our purse-strings are tied with moral scruples where we should be lavish. Shrinking from the open use of power, we enter into wasteful and entangling alliances where we should keep a free hand. Crusading in the name of democracy and disregarding the limits of our resources, we undertake to assist peoples anywhere to establish free governments in the face of intervention from Moscow. We take up arms for the utopian aims of an international organization set up in postwar zeal for a new era and maintained at our expense. A course in this literature of calamity leaves us wondering how the nation has survived. It sounds like the dirge for a fallen empire.

The determination of military policy can be generally conceived as a matter of answering, in order, two questions: for what purposes is military power required, and how much is required? Unfortunately, these questions are more easily asked than answered. The first—military power for what and against whom?—is complicated by the fact that the government is usually confronted with a variety of foreign policy contingencies, many of which seem to call for different kinds of military establishments. The second question—how much military power?—is complicated by the fact that the government must usually allocate its resources among many national values, of which military security is only one. These complicating factors, one a condition of international politics and the other a condition of domestic politics, appear to be as inescapable as the two questions themselves. Consequently, some insight into present and future problems of civil-military relations may be gained by examining the influence of these conditions in the past.

The first general strike in the history of England, with its mass labor action, was bound to attract strong interest from the workers' state which proclaimed as its rallying cry: “Workers of All Countries, Unite!” Soviet concern for the British working class followed logically from the active participation of Marx and Engels in the movement, and the continued attention shown by Lenin to this important “section” of the “world proletariat.”

Western observers remain fundamentally divided on the motives behind Soviet policy toward the West. An examination of these motives must be based on understanding elite opinion in the U.S.S.R. on East-West issues, as well as the scope of political conflict and consensus. The writings and public comments of prominent Soviet foreign policy officials over the last decade reveal a broad spectrum of views and persisting signs of political tension on issues of arms control policy, foreign trade and economic ties, and competition with the West in the Third World. Reform-minded officials have pressed for expansion of cooperation with the West as a matter of practical self-interest in the age of nuclear weapons and advanced technology. More conservative officials have resisted efforts to mute competition and have sought to preserve more insular policies. Proponents of expanded ties to the West openly pressed their case when détente flourished in the early 1970s, and many of their arguments found reflection in statements by the Soviet leadership. The arguments of conservative spokesmen have resonated anew, however, as East-West tensions have mounted since the late 1970s.

Since Stalin's death in 1953, Russia's leaders have every four or five years convened the nominally supreme body of the Soviet Communist Party, its Congress, to ratify policy guidelines and power shifts. Khrushchev lent excitement to the Congresses he presided over, launching surprise attacks on domestic and foreign Communists who were critical of his unorthodox traits. At the 20th Congress in 1956, the Party First Secretary went beyond the text of an anti-Stalin report that had earlier been agreed upon in the Kremlin and he implicated rival associates in cases of Stalinist misrule. The same foes, eliminated from high places in 1957, were just as suddenly brought under heavy criticism by Khrushchev's group at the extraordinary 21st Congress in 1959 and the 22nd Congress in 1961. A delegation of observers from Communist China headed by Premier Chou En-lai walked out of the 22nd Congress after their Albanian clients were unexpectedly assailed for heretical beliefs close to those held in Peking. In contrast, dramatic challenges and disclosures were missing from the 23rd Congress, which the successors of Khrushchev organized in 1966. The flat nature of the proceedings underlined the fact that a cycle of renewal in post-Stalin politics had been superseded by what was essentially a cycle of consolidation.

During the past several years, the Western world has been treated to the arresting spectacle of a long-isolated Soviet power bloc emerging, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum, from its autarkic hibernation into the dazzling limelight of international economic competition. The most dramatic aspect of this emergence, no doubt, has been the Soviet adoption of foreign aid to less-developed countries as a useful and appropriate instrument of national policy.

AS the revived study of the politics of tropical Africa by Americans enters its second decade,1 scholars have on the whole tempered youthful enthusiasm with an adolescent awareness of the complexity of their subject.

WHEN men define the future as radically unprecedented, how can they prepare to cope with it? Statesmen have traditionally been students of history, on the assumption that history is full of precedents for the future. But even when statesmen are ready to agree that reading history may be useless, it is not easy to find substitutes. Statesmen are not likely to prefer learning from science fiction. Many of them are now prepared to accept at one level of consciousness that thermonuclear weapons have made history obsolete as a guide to action; but there is no agreement on whether adequate substitutes for history have been created.

On November 17, 1969, after a three-year delay, the United States and the Soviet Union initiated Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Involving strategic systems and policies vital to the security of both superpowers, their allies, and the world, these talks have the potential of becoming the most important series of United States-Soviet negotiations since World War II. They can affect not only the military-technical aspects of the strategic balance but United States-Soviet political relations and the future role of nuclear weapons. Given the complexity and sensitivity of the subject, it is not surprising that negotiations are still continuing. Even if an early, limited agreement is reached, SALT meetings can be expected to span a period of many years.

The Russian Research Center was established February 1, 1948. It is supported by the Carnegie Corporation on a grant covering the period until July 1, 1953. The Research Center is an integral part of Harvard University and the senior members of its staff are all members of the Harvard faculty. Although the Center is not directly concerned with instruction, there is close cooperation with the Soviet Program of the Committee on International and Regional Studies, and a number of members of the Center staff teach in this program.

The contrast between brave American words in support of colonial aspirations and United States military aid in support of colonial powers putting down native insurrection is painfully sharp. Checking the spread of Soviet imperialism and liquidating the remnants of old-style European imperialism are objectives which seem to stand in the way of each other. Military security can apparently be purchased only at the price of popular hostility in the colonial world. And friendship may prove unpurchasable at any price.

Foreign policy making always involves a reconciliation of not wholly compatible goals, but the dilemma which United States colonial policy poses in Asia is peculiarly distasteful. What we face there today we might tomorrow face in Africa or the Pacific islands. Some action has to be improvised in the Far East at once. But this crisis also requires the United States to remove the conditions which will present similar predicaments elsewhere in the future.

Social science writings have one thing in common with products of the artistic spirit—they readily lend themselves to dating by their “stylistic” traits. This is not a preferred manner for dating scientific products. Science, like technology, is generally regarded as cumulative in its development. To the extent that this is so, it is possible to place a scientific work in its historical position by examining the stage of knowledge that it reveals. However, the store of social science knowledge grows very slowly indeed. The result is that much of social science impresses one as being modern more by virtue of various stylistic traits than by demonstrable additions to, or modifications of, our stock of substantive (or methodological) knowledge.

Authoritarian regimes repress to prevent mass resistance to their rule. In doing so, regimes’ security forces require information about the dissidents who mobilize such resistance. Political competition, which fuels partisan rivalries, offers one solution to this problem by motivating civilians to provide needed information to security forces. Yet civilians share information about any political opponents, not just dissidents, which creates a challenge for regimes that want to target dissidents. Drawing on novel archival data from the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, a period that included civilian collaboration with repression, this article presents evidence that close pre-coup political competition is associated with more frequent repression and more targeting of non-dissidents. The author uses pre-coup democratic elections to measure political competition and addresses the challenge of estimating political preferences unaffected by repression. Qualitative evidence and further quantitative tests probe implications of the partisan rivalry mechanism and account for alternative explanations.

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.

Foreign policy decision making is the result of a complex political process in which the political values and style of the chief executive play a large part. The case of Canada's decision, in 1963, to acquire nuclear weapons illustrates that external events and pressures generated by Canada's international obligations were processed through complex political interactions. The Government of Prime Minister Diefenbaker was unable to take the nuclear weapons decision because of two splits in the Cabinet, only one of which was pertinent to nuclear weapons policy. The decision was taken by Leader of the Opposition Pearson alone and in conformity with his personal values, because of his political style which commanded deference. The approach used combines historical detail with political analysis.

A Wave of rising expectations has engulfed the underdeveloped areas of the world, and in its wake there remains an intense desire for economic advancement and national recognition. Until recent years the relatively luxurious level of living in the West, particularly in the United States, served as a natural focal point in the search for a pattern of economic life that would lead to growth in these areas. Since World War II, and particularly since about 1955, when the USSR adopted a stepped-up “trade and aid” program among the less-developed areas, increasing attention has been directed to the Soviet pattern of growth and the Soviet answer to “imperialism.”

Seven years have passed since the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco in the month of June 1945. In that short time, events have disproved some of the most important assumptions about the postwar world on which the 1945 decisions were based.

Efforts have been made, notably in the improvisations of the Korea police action, in the creation of the Interim Committee, and in the Uniting for Peace Resolution, to adapt the structure conceived at San Francisco so that it would more closely meet the needs of the world as it emerged from the crucible of World War II.