Harold Sprout

Environmental factors in the study of international politics

Japanese abroad.... The factor of geographic isolation during ... two thousand years has helped fashion national traits which eventually, and ahnost inevitably, led Japan to political isolation and to crushing defeat in war&dquo; (our italics) (5, pp. 5, 8). Fifth, from a standard treatise on resources, the assertion that invention of the basic steel furnace (which made it possible to produce good steel from the acidic ores of Alsace-Lorraine) &dquo;led inevitably to Germany’s industrial hegemony on the con-

Geopolitical Hypotheses in Technological Perspective

Great wars, the rise and decline of empires, observed differences in the power and influence of nations, and in general the uneven levels of national achievement in international politics have inspired much speculation and hypothesis-building. Men have felt the need for satisfying explanations of past events and patterns, and even greater need for plausible hypotheses with which to approach the future. The last seventy-five years or so have witnessed a bumper crop of hypotheses designed to account for or to anticipate the ordering of political relationships in the society of nations. One characteristic of most of these activities has been a persistent search for the “master variable” that would provide a simple yet plausible and satisfying basis for explaining or predicting the ordering of political relationships among nations.

Geography and international politics in an era of revolutionary change

datum of their subject. Every nation-state has a territorial base, a spatial section of the earth’s surface in the idiom of geographic science. Territory is one of the absolute requisites of statehood. In nearly all international transactions involving some element of opposition, resistance, struggle, or conflict, the factors of location, space, and distance between the interacting parties have been significant variables. This significance is embodied in the maxim, &dquo;Power is local.&dquo; That is to say, political demands

In Defense of Diplomacy

PUBLICATION of Politics Among Nations is another important milestone in the development of systematic studies of international political phenomena into an established and recognized branch of higher learning. Comparison of this impressive treatise with any work published before 1914 reveals in dramatic fashion how much ground has already been covered. Before World War I, as Grayson Kirk has described,1 the study of international relations was largely carried on in the sterile atmosphere of international law and conventionalized diplomatic history. The crusade for the League of Nations opened up a new field and gave great impetus to the study of world organization. This newcomer practically stole the show during the 1920s. But the course of world events did not fulfill the bright hopes fostered by schemes for disarmament, outlawry of war, collective security, judicial settlement of disputes, and codification of international law. Teachers and writers, however, continued to play the same old records, which sounded more and more unconvincing as the dictators prepared the stage for another world war. Gradually during the 1930s, and against great initial resistance, a few pioneers chopped a new trail through the forest. Frederick Schuman was one of those pioneers. The first edition of his International Politics2 swept a fresh breeze of new thinking into the academic classrooms of the middle 1930s. Frank Simonds and Brooks Emeny followed with a different but equally realistic approach in The Great Powers in World Politics, first published in 1935.8

Pressure Groups and Foreign Policies

NATIONAL policies, brought into being through acts of constitutionally competent organs of government, are end-products of a process. This process may have been simple or complex, brief or long drawn out. It may have involved a mere handful of individuals or millions of them. It may have taken place in the public view or wholly or partially in secret. The infinite variety of combinations in which these variables occur, together with the inadequacy of the evidence usually available, renders it extraordinarily difficult to analyze the forces involved in the inception and adoption of public policies. Nowhere are these difficulties more formidable than in the sphere of international relations. But some progress toward an analysis of these forces is believed to be possible in spite of these difficulties. And, at some risk of oversimplification and consequent distortion, an attempt will be made to classify the different types of organized groups whose interests impinge upon the international relations of the United States, and to analyze some of the methods which these groups utilize in their efforts to influence American diplomacy and legislation.

Changing Power Relations in the Pacific

But events even then were eating away the foundations of England’s global dominion. Far-reaching changes were taking place in the distribution and balance of power. In no sector were the results destined to be more unsettling than in the region of the Pacific Ocean. Omens of change were everywhere becoming visible in the early nineties. The United States Navy was emerging from a prolonged decline following our Civil War. Plans were on foot for an isthmian canal that would not only connect our widely separated continental seaboards but also incalculably extend American influence in the Pacific. Rival empire builders were busily staking out claims in the South Seas. The is-