It is always unnerving when someone announces that mankind is just now going through “a true watershed period”—that one generation has an essentially different vocation from that of any other. When this verdict is delivered by a leading contemporary intelligence and policy adyisor such as W. W. Rostow, one's only protection from psychological disaster is to recall Eve's remark to Adam that their's was a time of “great transition.”

This is not to deny that we can and must try to “make some shape out of the major experiences through which we have all passed since 1945” — or since some other date. If reason is to rule in any measure, we can and must impose some shape upon the political experiences and problems into which we seem likely to be moving for the next decades.

No task in political science or diplomatic analysis is more baffling and uncertain than that of political prediction. To say that we are at a watershed in the unfolding of contemporary international relations is to postulate the existence of deep running social and political forces so powerful that they will carry international society into a new era. That important forces exist affecting international politics is beyond dispute; that these aspects of the present day world are capable of transforming the relations among men and nations is far less susceptible of proof.

It is sobering to look back to the dominant views concerning international society which were prevalent two decades ago. First, many saw in the establishment of the United Nations the possibility of removing power politics and rivalries among states from the international scene.