It is a particular honour to give this lecture because Martin Wight was a man of great distinction who has left a legacy of enduring achievement, whether it was at Chatham House, here at the LSE, or at the University of Sussex where he was Dean of the first School of European Studies in a British university. I do not know which particular writings he will be most remembered for, but I think his Power Politics will be perhaps most familiar to the general student of international affairs. His own writing and thinking did evolve over time, and I do not think there is anything to be ashamed of in that. Many people were surprised that somebody who could write so realistically and hard-headedly about international affairs could have been a conscientious objector during the war years. But it may be that strange combination which constitutes his distinctive contribution to the study of international affairs. When Power Politics first appeared as a Chatham House booklet in 1946, it was quite easy to categorize Wight's thinking and writing with the realist or the conflict interpretation of international politics, but as the years passed, his writing was much more inclined to show an understanding and awareness and a sensitivity to the internationalist cooperative interpretation and the revolutionist solidarity interpretation. He was, however, a pessimist, I think it is fair to say, about international affairs. You could say, looking around in international affairs there are continuing good grounds for pessimism.

How does one live according to reason if the other, the alien, the foreigner whether remote or nearby may burst into one's world at any moment?

Raymond Aron, Peace and War

Diplomacy has been particularly resistant to theory. What knowledge we do have of the practice and principles of diplomacy is largely drawn from the works of former diplomatists like Abraham de Wicquefort's L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions (1681), Frangois de Callières' De la Manière de Négocier Avec les Souverains (1716), Ernest Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice (1917) and Harold Nicolson's Diplomacy (1939).1 Conveying a view of diplomacy as a specialized skill of negotiation, these works seek to ‘maxim-ize’ that skill for the benefit of novices entering the profession. Understandably, their histories of diplomacy tend to be sketchy and rather anecdotal, and their theories of diplomacy, when they do exist, usually consist of underdeveloped and implicit propositions. Moreover, since the authors were serving governments at the apogee of imperial power, they were not interested in looking too widely and too deeply into a past which might undermine the foundations of skilful negotiation—order, continuity, and ‘common sense’.

In 1983, for almost the first time since the end of the Second World War, defence became a major party political issue at a general election. In that year it was one of the major campaign issues between the political parties and, according to one poll, ranked second only to unemployment as an issue influencing voter behaviour. Indeed, poll evidence indicated that the Conservatives held an unprecedented and overwhelming 54 per cent lead over Labour on the question of British retention of nuclear arms. Furthermore, of those who thought of defecting from the Labour Party, 42 per cent gave defence as the main reason. Such figures as these suggest strongly that by 1983 the inter-party consensus which had governed defence issues since 1945 had broken down, particularly in view of the fact that the question of defence had not been raised as an issue affecting voting intentions in the 1979 election. The breakdown of consensus may thus be judged by the emergence of defence as a party political issue. It might even be said that in 1983 it was an electiondeciding issue, especially when one set of policies could be represented by opponents as being contrary to the continuation of British membership of NATO, the one issue on which all parties were agreed. Defence thus moved from being a peripheral issue to one at the centre stage of the election campaign and it had a major impact on the outcome of the election. However, the.demise of inter-party consensus was not reflected in the electorate as a whole, which chose to continue to support the tried, and trusted policies of the past rather than adopt the radical alternative presented by the Labour Party, If a new consensus is to emerge—and it is beyond the limits of this particular paper to consider whether a consensus in defence policy is desirable—then all parties will have to review their present policies. However, before turning to the reasons for the breakdown, it is instructive to consider the nature of the post-1945 consensus and the origins of its apparent demise.

The principle that no sovereign state should intervene in the affairs of another state is enshrined in almost all international agreements made since World War II. For instance, the Charter of the Organization of American States of 1948 contains, in Article 15, the declaration that

No State or group of states has the right to intervene directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State, or against its political, economic and cultural elements.

Hedley Bull's contribution to the theory of international relations is considerable; and nowhere more acute than in the distinction which he made between the concept of a system of states and that of an international society. His definitive formulation is set out in Chapter I of The Anarchical Society. ‘Where states are in regular contact with one another, and where in addition there is interaction between them sufficient to make the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other, then we may speak of their forming a system.’ ‘A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.’

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in an intense and often deeply hostile contest for predominance in the international system. The dedication by each superpower of its most valued technological, engineering and economic resources first to acquiring and thereafter to ceaselessly enhancing a comprehensive inventory of nuclear arms, is an especially prominent and important manifestation of USA-USSR rivalry.