William T. R. Fox

Interwar International Relations Research: The American Experience

What is today in the United States conventionally known as international relations is a subject different in content and emphasis from its counterpart of even two decades ago. Much of what seemed important in 1929 seems irrelevant, and some of it even trivial, in 1949. Another twenty years may perhaps bring a similar judgment on work now being done. But we ought at least to be aware of the direction in which we have been moving if we are to control the future development of the field. In 1930 the following statement passed unchallenged in a discussion among some of Amerias leading social scientists: “The emotional drive is so highly developed in the kind of person who goes into the international relations field that it often leads to unclear thinking.” The implication that no one without this drive could conceivably be persuaded to enter the field is a commentary on the disesteem with which international relations research was then regarded.

Geopolitics and International Relations

As academic specialties geopolitics and international relations have quite separate intellectual antecedents, and scholars working in the two fields have often not had the same value premises, the concern of this essay is to describe the paths by which the two lines of inquiry were led to converge in the years before, during and after World War II, to identify the distinctive geopolitical perspectives which were then incorporated into the intellectual armory of the international relations scholars and to assess their impact and their subsequent adaptation to the changed post-World War II world.

Contact Angles at Liquid‐Liquid‐Air Interfaces

Angles at the points of contact of a number of liquid‐liquid‐air systems were measured. A new method of measuring the interfacial tension is presented. The work of adhesion between the phases is determined. A new theory of spreading is offered.

Frederick Sherwood Dunn and the American Study of International Relations

As a legal officer in the Department of State in the 1920s, Frederick S. Dunn developed a curiosity about the decision-making process of which he was a part. The dissatisfaction which he felt with prevailing explanations of state behavior, and particularly with single-factor explanations, was the spur to a lifetime of scholarly activity. His quest for greater knowledge relevant to the ordering and control of foreign affairs was to lead him successively to Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Princeton Universities and far afield from the methods and subjects of interest to his colleagues in international law; but there was a forty-year continuity of interest in a set of questions whose answers would lead to improved decision-making.

Civil-Military Relations Research: The SSRC Committee and Its Research Survey

In June 1952 a Social Science Research Council committee was established to take stock o? research on civil-military relations and make proposals with respect to the further development of research in this area. The members of the committee were not entirely satisfied with the phrase “civil-military relations” as describing the focus of their attention, but it was understood that the committees interest lay in research bearing upon those problems of public policy which were posed by the prospect of a continuing high mobilization even in peace time, and by the continuing necessity for a careful coordination of military, diplomatic, and industrialization policy.

The truth shall make you f ree : one student's appreciation of Quincy Wright

article of faith and a personal moral imperative. Two world wars and a quarter-century in which the world had, as he saw it, teetered on the edge of nuclear catastrophe did not shake his faith or erode his keen sense of responsibility to help discover the conditions of peace. He never blinked the reality of unresolved contemporary conflict; but his long-range optimism and faith in the possibility of a better world order buoyed him up in a life of scholarship on the grand scale. This typically American faith in the practical benefits of new knowledge was shared by men like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; some of its roots may be traced in Quincy Wright’s own family-for example, his great-grandfather, Elizur Wright, who appears in the Dictionary of American Biography. Elizur Wright resigned his mathematics

Science, Technology and International Politics

As the supexpowers of the 1960s have been discovering that they can neither make war on nor make peace with each other, the arms race between them has been giving way to a space race, itself part of a larger science and technology race. The space industry is today one of the worlds greatest, even though -there are only two major customers for its product, the governments of the Soviet Union and of the United States. Leadership in that industry is a hallmark of superpower status, but the entrance fee and the annual dues are both so high that the space club will remain small. The Soviet-American science race is only the most dramatic reason for a student of world politics to pay close attention to changes, and especially to differential changes, in the worlds science and technology. There is probably no other resource that can be made to serve so many alternative national purposes as a nations scientific and technical manpower. There is no better indicator of tomorrows wealth and power than todays science capability. Indeed, this resource is so fungible and so precious that if one wanted to plot the position of states of the world in the 1980s along a curve of economic advancement (and of per capita influence in world politics), a very good measure would be the

War and Change in World Politics.

Preface Introduction 1. The nature of international political change 2. Stability and change 3. Growth and expansion 4. Equilibrium and decline 5. Hegemonic war and international change 6. Change and continuity in world politics Epilogue: change and war in the contemporary world Bibliography Index.

Political Theory and International Relations.

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a states domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies.

Discussions and Reviews : The management of power: a review: Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations

tions, &dquo;looms as the central issue of our time&dquo; (p. 5). In this attractively modest and clearly written book Claude examines in turn &dquo;balance of power,&dquo; &dquo;collective security,&dquo; and &dquo;world government&dquo; as concepts for coping with this issue. He does not, however, make quite clear for whom the management of power is a central issue and by what criteria of centrality it is recognized as central. Professor Claude sees &dquo;power&dquo; as a kind of unguided missile which, unless we manage it, may yet blow us all up. Unfortunately, the &dquo;we&dquo; who must do the managing lack the power to manage this power. &dquo;We&dquo; also lack the sense of solidarity and the institutions for common action, for &dquo;we&dquo; include men of influence in the United States and men of influence in the Soviet Union and men of influence in every other country whose governors may in our time have a button to press. To make matters still more difficult, some of us may also lack the disposition under every circumstance to avoid pressing that button, for the world interest in avoiding world extinction can hardly assert itself so long as any of the parochial button-pressers recognize any other interest as primary. Finally, even with the best will in the world some of us may lack the wit to manage thermonuclear