International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’.

At the beginning of the 1990s the European political scene is in a state of rapid transformation. While the East–West conflict may not be over, it is clearly undergoing a fundamental change from an ideologically charged contest to a ‘normal’ competition between major actors in the anarchical international system. This change may well entail the elimination of some of the most dangerous threats to peace, whilst at the same time generating requirements for a new framework of European and East–West security. As the ideological conflict fades, so the bipolar alliance system which, in spite of all its shortcomings, burdens and injustices, provided some measure of stability to Europe, is also about to vanish.

The objective of this paper is to identify the process by which military research and development (R&D) priorities affect the evolution of major sectors of the civil economy in capitalist states. Military priorities channel a significant proportion of the resources that capitalist societies devote to R&D: for the United States in the period 1982–4, military R&D amounted to 28.9 per cent of gross domestic expenditure on R&D. The nature of military priorities favours some areas of technological development over others, and when these favoured areas are opened up for military purposes, it is often possible to build a major civil industry on the resultant technology. Examples of this process include nuclear power, civil aviation, space satellites and computers. Some, though by no means all, of the commanding heights of civil economies are thus powerfully shaped by the opportunities created by specifically military R&D.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to look at the United Nations Security Council and certain of the 646 resolutions and 232 public vetoes (vetoing 192 draft resolutions) cast between 1946 and the end of 1989, and to discover in what ways both it and they have been legally and politically relevant and significant. Security Council resolutions are, of course, passed by majority vote. This had to be 7 out of 11 votes until the end of 1965 when the Council was enlarged from 11 to 15. Security Council resolutions have had since then to be passed by at least 9 votes: these can only be vetoed by the five Permanent Members (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China) if the resolution would otherwise have been passed. By the end of 1989 the veto total for each Permanent Member (the Peoples Republic of China took over the China seat in 1971) was as follows: Soviet Union 114; United States 67; United Kingdom 30; France 18 and China 3.