In 1899 a little-known, now long-forgotten, Polish revolutionist named Waclaw Machajski published a small book, The Evolution of Social Democracy, which provoked consternation in the nascent Marxist movement in Russia. Its thesis was that the new messianism of socialism masked an ideology of discontented intellectuals, and that the new socialist society would simply replace one ruling class with another, so that the workers would still remain exploited, albeit this time by a new class of professional leaders.

The countries with underdeveloped economies are primarily peasant countries and their national unity is quite new and fragmentary. The uneducated classes are rooted mainly in local territorial and kinship groups; sometimes they are the dependents of feudal magnates to whom are directed whatever wider loyalties they have. They do not have the strong sense of nationality which drives the leaders of their country, who are often the creators of the new nation and not merely of the new state. These leaders are strong and creative persons who have broken away from the bonds of the old order—the bonds of kin and family and local territory.

None of the perplexing problems of contemporary international affairs has given rise to more confusing discussion than the relationship of Soviet ideology to the foreign policy of the USSR. The very vagueness of the term “Soviet ideology,” or “Communist ideology” (and are they synonymous?), the uncertainty to what extent this uncertain force motivates the makers of Soviet policies, have compounded our difficulties in understanding the behavior of one of the world's two superpowers. Are Russia's rulers motivated by cynical power politics? Are they ideological fanatics? Is tlie content of their ideology the gospel of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, or something else? Questions can be compounded ad infinitum.

Four areas in the world are at present or potentially major power centers: the United States, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and Communist China. In all four, productivity is on the increase and the political system performs relatively well its integrating and decisionmaking functions. Despite major differences among them which need not be examined here and various weak spots which might reverse trends, these four areas are likely to be in a position to play major roles in political, economic, and cultural international affairs in the coming decade. In contrast, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Tropical Africa, and Latin America are apt to remain power vacuums during this period, owing to their lack of unity, political instability, economic stagnation, and cultural heterogeneity.

Modern Turkish history furnishes numerous examples of active participation by the military in politics. The so-called “Young Turk Revolution” of 1908, in fact, may well be regarded as the prototype of Near Eastern military coups of this century. A decade later, Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk] and other army officers took the lead in creating a nationalist Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the multinational Ottoman Empire. Since the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, however, the Turkish army has abstained from any such obvious role on the political stage.

It has become customary to begin a discussion of the nature and present state of the discipline of international relations with a number of complaints. This article will not abandon the custom; indeed, its purpose is, in the first place, to state the conviction that many of the problems we face in our field can be solved only by far more systematic theoretical work than has been done in the past—a conviction shared by most writers. Secondly, however, I will try to show that recent approaches to a general theory of international relations are unsatisfactory, because each one is, in its own fashion, a short cut to knowledge—sometimes even a short cut to a destination that is anything but knowledge.

THE importance of nuclear deterrence in the modern world does not require exposition. It became an issue of extended public discussion after the speech on massive retaliation by Secretary of State Dulles, who in the opinion of this writer came closer to an adequate theory of deterrence than most of his critics. This article will develop the view that the threat of counterattack is the best strategy against the possibility of aggression and that a nuclear counterattack is the most effective version of that strategy.

From the American point of view, the strategy of deterrence, and the related principle of limiting to tolerable proportions whatever conflicts become inevitable, tend to spring from the premise that the favorable results of a total war can never be sufficient to justify its cost. Such a war, according to that conception, would be too big, too allconsuming, to permit the survival even of those final values, like personal freedom, for which alone one could think of waging it. It need not be certain that it would turn out so badly; it is enough that mere is a large chance that it would.

Communist China is the most populous country in the world and the largest after Canada and the Soviet Union, but its influence in international affairs, mainly because of its economic backwardness, is still far from commensurate to its great size and strategic location. How long will this continue to be true? The question takes its immediacy from the speed with which the economy of another Communist giant, the Soviet Union, was transformed.

Can the paths of African nationalism be shaped by white communities? And, if so, in what direction might African nationalism be led? These are questions which puzzle white governments in all parts of Africa. Though African nationalism may be recognized as having its own inner dynamics, and to be an inevitable growth, no matter how hostile the Western powers and white settlers may be to it, yet tJiere is an assumption underlying the policies of most governments in Africa that the particular paths which African nationalism will follow can be shaped by the kinds of alternatives which the white communities offer to it.

The growth of economic relations between the states of the Soviet bloc and the underdeveloped countries of Afro-Asia since 1953 has provoked widespread attention and concern in the West. This development is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather a reflection of the larger role which Soviet leaders have assigned to economic activities in the conduct of foreign relations.

Several reasons for the welcome growth in serious public discussion of military affairs are apparent. Americans are increasingly realizing that we are terribly vulnerable. Military preparations can no longer be deferred until after the onset of hostilities, making it more important that we analyze carefully in peacetime what our preparations should be. The magnitude of our defense effort has so increased that it naturally draws more critical scrutiny. Above all, what we do in defense interacts crucially with our foreign policy. To these considerations that obviously stimulate discussion, we must add another that weakens an inhibition against it. Critics need defer far less than formerly to military expertise.

The emergence of the United States as a world power at the opening of the twentieth century found the nation ill-prepared to assume the burdens imposed by its new status. For American military and naval leaders, possession of an island empire stretching across 7,000 miles of ocean from San Francisco to the Philippines and almost to the mainland of Asia created new and serious problems. Slowly, during the first years of the century, the Army and Navy evolved a military strategy which would ensure the defense of these islands while supporting the foreign policy shaped by the nation's civilian leaders.

The association of states known as the Commonwealth of Nations has received little attention from students of international politics. Outside the Commonwealth the association has, on the whole, been ignored; alongside other institutions and alliances, its significance is not great; and the foreign policies of the ten states that now belong to it can to a large extent be accounted for, except in the case of Britain, without reference to the fact of their membership. Within the Commonwealth there has been study of it, but the impulse behind this has been provided less by intellectual curiosity than by the desire to see it prosper: British students have been themselves in the grip of the myth of the Commonwealth, which has become in Britain, along with much else, a totem which it is scarcely good form to examine with an innocent eye.

Theoretically and etymologically, “communism” means “from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.” Marxian literature looks to a future society in which, influenced by the appropriate economic, political, and social institutions, the individual will conform to this precept in his production and consumption activities. As Communist parties have striven for and achieved political power in the twentieth century, their tactical maneuvers at what presumably are way-stations along the road to pure communism have overlaid the term “communism” with a bewildering array of political and economic dogmas and practices.

To those concerned with the process of political development, Israel's transition in its first decade from Jewish self-government under the Mandate to independent statehood is stimulating and fascinating. For Israel is sufficiently small in size and scope to be utilized as a laboratory for close observation of phenomena relevant to an understanding of political development in countries struggling toward national sovereignty in Africa, the Near East, and Asia.

The last several decades have each been broadly characterized by one or two central economic questions. In the 1920's the central problem was international capital transfers, or reparations and war debts; in the 1930's, the international spread of unemployment and destabilizing speculation; in the late 1940's, after the war, reconstruction; in the 1950's, defense economics and growth.

Not only can we identify them; it is on the whole fair to say that the central problems of the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's have been solved. International capital transfer is accomplished by preventing war debts from accumulating, paying limited reparations in kind, and furnishing the capital needed for reconstruction, and in part for economic growth, as grants or on liberal loan terms.

In June 1957, when he sent this book to the publisher, Max Lerner must have been very tired. The jacket blurb says the preparation took more than twelve years, and this strikes one who has been working at the book for eight months as probably an understatement. As nearly as a lone individual can do, Lerner seems to have read almost everything about the United States. The “Notes for Further Reading” alone occupy 43 pages of small type. Portions of the manuscript were checked by no less than 142 “experts”: historians, government officials, musicians, journalists, social scientists, poets, architects, foundation officers, and others.

Every profession is occasionally inflicted with challenges which loom large. The challenge may take the form of a book which purports to produce a fundamental revision—in economics these would include Keynes' General Theory, Hicks's Value and Capital, Samuelson's Foundations; or, in the narrower field of international economics, Meade's Trade and Welfare. Or it may be a methodological revolution. Or both. Older members of the profession may try to ignore the challenge. And some of these challenges, ignored, oblige by disappearing. Others have to be faced, sooner or later.