Over the past few years Vendulka Kubálková and Albert Cruickshank have produced a substantial and wide-ranging oeuvre on the issue of Marxism and international relations. Their first work, Marxism–Leninism and Theory of International Relations, published in. 1980, stressed the importance of engagement between these two bodies of thought, and this theme is restated in a more composed manner in their later Marxism and International Relations. The themes of these books have been reiterated in article forms and most recently in their essay “The ‘New Cold War’ in ‘critical International Relations studies’” (in the July 1986 number of this Review). There is much that is disputable in their writings and their recent essay on the new cold war is no exception: but, before turning to some debatable aspects of their interpretation of the debate on the New Cold War, it may be worth emphasizing the points of more general value in their work.

It took some time for Labour and Conservative politicians to come to terms with the modest though useful role that Britain performed in Asia after the withdrawal from the Indian sub-continent. Old perceptions and postures were slow to fade aways a fact that was clearly demonstrated by their response to the ANZUS treaty. For three years nostalgia and a desire to remain a global power distorted their assessment of this new pact in the western Pacific. They were far more myopic on this occasion than their military and civilian advisers, who found it easier to adjust to the post-imperial situation.

In the foreign policy arena, decision-making represents that area of governmental action where domestic and foreign interests intermesh. Regardless of size, resources or power, all states operate in an international environment not of their own making and not under their own control. This international system creates and limits the state's possible actions and reactions. At the same time, all those involved in national foreign policy making act in a domestic context which shapes the national interest and the choice of options. Given this Janus-like position, nations respond to common problems but evolve distinctive and different methods of handling them. A comparison between British and American practice reveals striking parallels and contrasts.

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.

In this essay I examine the main characteristics of the proposals which have been put forward over the past few years for the reform of international institutions, particularly the United Nations. The latter's social and economic arrangements in particular have been subject to a series of incisive, hard hitting reports—the most recent being Maurice Bertrand's Report of December 19851—which have themselves become almost a matter of routine: nothing changes, even the intelligence and perception of the criticism. This essay is intended to provide a part of the answer to the question of why nothing is ever done. In addition to difficulties arising from the interests of states and organizations which are involved, there are also a range of problems arising from different conceptions of what international organizations are and can do. This essay deals with the latter. The conceptions dealt with are those found in the writings of students of international organization, largely British and American, rather than in the words or deeds of practitioners. The nature of the link between scholarly writing and the practice of international relations is itself complex and contentious and is not explored in this essay. The minimalist assumptions are made, however, that disagreements among scholars make it less likely that practitioners will agree to co-operate, and that scholarly reconciliation is at least a first step towards practical improvement.

NATO has been a fixed point in international politics for forty years and is part of the basic framework of relations between the West and the Soviet Union. NATO present form owes much to the milieu of the late 1940s which gave it birth and to crucial developments in its early years. Important insight into the character of the alliance can be gained by examination of the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty itself. It has emerged from recent scholarship that those who created the Treaty were at variance not only on the details of the Treaty, but also on the fundamental nature of the alliance they were creating: its purpose, and the means by which it could best achieve that purpose. Important studies have highlighted the debate upon the issue of the obligation to assist a member if attacked (Article 5 of the Treaty) and the mutual assistance clause (Article 3). The debate on membership of the Atlantic Pact, and particularly the criteria to apply when assessing potential members also raises fundamental questions but it has been less exhaustively studied. There is especially a lack of detailed study of the development of British views, which were of some importance given the pivotal initiatory role the British played in the negotiations, now widely recognized. The British official documents reveal not only the development of ideas on aspects of the North Atlantic Treaty in debate within the British government, but also provide much information on the course of the Treaty negotiations and the views of the other participants, to supplement that available in the published sources. This information results from the close contacts between the British Embassy in Washington and the State Department, and Britain's close ties with the West European participants through the Brussels Treaty organization.

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’.

Over the last few years the term common security has come into widespread use in debates about military policy. To date, however, this potentially important concept has not acquired any clear or generally accepted meaning. It is used by a variety of writers with quite different purposes in mind, and is therefore in danger of degenerating into an empty phrase. This article tries to bring common security into sharper focus. It starts by examining the general meaning of common security in terms of its core insight that the security of states in the contemporary international system is fundamentally interdependent. It goes on to test this meaning against the contents of four recent books all of which specifically address the idea. The discussion centres on the possible linkages between common security as an overall policy objective on the one hand, and a variety of specific policies for implementing it—including disarmament, arms control, minimum deterrence, and non-provocative defence–on the other. The next section makes the argument that a combination of minimum deterrence and non-provocative defence provides the most logically convincing implementation strategy for common security.

The undisputed proliferation of international organizations has been interpreted in several ways by members of the scholarly community. Probably most see the explosion in numbers and kinds of actors as a peripheral development; in the realist and neo-realist tradition, the primacy of the state and the state system remains largely unaffected. Others are sceptical of what the trend means and so have developed research agendas examining more closely international organization influence on states and impact on issues. Yet few international relations scholars have paid attention to what this proliferation means for relations among various organizations and its effects on states. However, with so many of these organizations involved in economic development activities, it is very likely that these organizations willingly and sometimes unwittingly encounter each other particularly in Third World countries. Rumours abound of IGOs and NGOs ‘stumbling over each other’ in the capitals of Sahelian countries vying for the attention of too few government officials, leading to negative impacts on policy. In Indo-China, Gordenker finds ‘increasing friction and clogging’ from the rapid expansion of United Nations High Commission for Refugees activities, as they intersect with the International Red Cross, Unicef, and private voluntary organizations. Yet not all interaction is conflictual. Nongovernmental aid agencies in Thailand co-operate closely, as do the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Kenya.

In the forty years since the Second World War there have been many situations which have been widely viewed as military occupations—that is, where the armed forces of a country are in control of inhabited territory beyond the recognized boundaries of their own state. Hungary in 1956, the Israeli-occupied territories since 1967, Namibia since 1968, northern Cyprus since 1974, Western Sahara since 1975 and Kampuchea since 1978 have been among the territories which have been designated as ‘occupied’ in UN General Assembly resolutions.

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 study of international organization has frequently involved a discussion of the skills necessary for effective leadership. Such an orientation flows from the notion that effective leadership may be ‘the most critical single determinant of the growth in scope and authority of international organization’. Thus there has long been a bias toward the study of dynamic executive heads, those who are either international organization founders or at least leaders during periods of rapid organizational growth. Indeed the characteristics of such leaders (often referred to as the skills of institutionalization and identified with the names of Haas and Cox) are frequently taken to be the characteristics of the ideal executive head.

This is an attempt at analysing the political philosophy of international relations in a very short span of time, so I do not propose to discuss questions of method. Indeed I may sound dogmatic, but that is merely because I shall not have the time to exhibit my diffidence.

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.

Whether the literature is new or old, two observations have repeatedly been made about intervention. The first is that intervention is a ubiquitous and endemic feature of the international arena. Guelke argues, for example, that intervention is ‘inherent in the nature of international society’ and, more recently, Bull sums up the views of a series of authors who all agree, he says, that intervention is a ‘built-in feature of our present international arrangements’. Not only do the great powers persistently intervene in the domestic affairs of small states such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, but there is also a tendency for small states to interfere inside each other's boundaries. Egypt, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam and a host of other small states have all conducted policies of intervention. It is also argued, moreover, that as the global economy becomes more interdependent, the potential for intervention is constantly on the increase. The decision to extend or refuse credit facilities, for example, can be seen as a very effective mechanism for intervening in the domestic affairs of the state.

This article seeks to take further some themes that were touched on in an exchange of views that the author had with Gerald Segal in the Review in 1985. It aims to widen the scope of the theoretical discussion, to stipulate a more specific target for criticism and to clarify why the issues under scrutiny are so important.