Can cultural differences between states affect the chances of success of deterrence strategy? If so, what differences are relevant and how do they influence outcomes? The following paper seeks to suggest some answers to these questions in the context of a discussion of the crisis that preceded the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Much as I admire E. H. Carr's work in the international field, I intend to question the main assumption upon which it is based: namely, that it is power which always has decided and always will decide major political issues. In this respect my argument points in the same direction as two earlier lectures in this series, although my method of approach is different from theirs. My aim is to show with some precision why power, as used in political theorizing, is not only an inadequate but a confusing and even a deceiving notion. And I will begin by indicating the three main areas in which the confusions and deceptions arise.

In January 1981, an article by Professor Roy E. Jones, entitled The English school of international relations: a case for closure', appeared in this Review.1 Immediately after its publications the late Professor Northedge asked a seminar of research students at the London School of Economics for their views on the article. To his. obvious chagrin, no one, including myself, responded. On several occasions during the next years Professor Northedge drew attention to the challenge laid down by Professor Jones. Did this persistent questioning indicate a concern that Professor Jones should be answered—and, in which case, why did he not take this task upon himself? If he had, and if, as has been suggested, Professor Northedge believed that there was an ‘English school’, but that he was not part of it, then he would have had to show both that the gap between himself and the rest of the ‘school’ was greater than the differences between other members, and, at the same time, that all the scholars under review, himself included, belonged to a common discipline. This analysis would go beyond description; it would require not only a clear demarcation of the several different ways in which his colleagues had understood international politics, but also an attempt to distinguish between ‘school’ and ‘discipline’ and their relationship to the field of International Relations. Such an exercise would be philosophical in nature, and Professor Northedge's well-known empiricism would not, I submit, have been helpful. To demonstrate, as this paper attempts to do, that the scholars in question can be characterized by their differing philosophical approaches would refute Professor Jones' major thesis that there is an English school of international relations. It also seriously undermines his substantive criticisms, for obviously the non-existence of the ‘English school’ makes the question of its wrong-headedness irrelevant.

The principal challenge for US nuclear deterrence policy in an era of mutual assured destruction capabilities has been to use the threat of nuclear retribution to deter Soviet actions that, however aggressive, do not directly threaten American national survival. The United States seeks to use nuclear threats to deter not only all-out nuclear attack on the United States, but major nuclear or conventional aggression against NATO and also limited, presumably counterforce, blows against America. Nuclear weapons are to serve as an umbrella protecting not only America's cities and society, but US allies and US military forces as well.

Discussions of the likelihood of nuclear conflict often encounter an argument which this writer first heard expounded in 1972 by the eminent economist and conflict researcher Kenneth Boulding. The admission that the likelihood of a major nuclear exchange cannot be absolutely excluded requires, according to this argument, the formal assignment of a positive probability, however small, to such an event. This, in turn, appears to constitute a de facto acceptance of the ultimate inevitability of such a catastrophe, at some time and under some conditions. This argument is often deployed as one among a number of points used in support of strenuous efforts to secure international agreements on nuclear arms limitation, reduction or abolition.

Most early attempts to assess Soviet behaviour in the defence and foreign policy fields perforce used historical methods, perhaps better known to political scientists under the title of the 'rational actor model', or assumed implicitly or explicitly a 'balance of power' framework, or imposed a 'world domination' totalitarian scenario for Soviet decision-making and setting of national goals.

Conflict analysis has been making steady strides over the last decade. Admittedly it is not easy to define 'conflict analysis', 'conflict studies', or any of the other phrases used as near synonyms. 'Conflict and co-operation' subsumes virtually all social interactions. Roughly it can be said to be characterized by two themes: first, that conflict is a generic phenomenon which appears at all levels of social system from the interpersonal to the inter-national; second, that social phenomena can be analysed by the methods of the classical social sciences which primarily means the formulation of testable theoretical generalizations and their testing.