It is obvious that today the facts of international relations do notfitinto any general framework of which people are aware (perhaps they never have). As descriptions, concepts such as state, sovereignty, federation seem more than ever stabs in the dark. In prescriptive political theory, we are even more at sea. Old prescriptive certainties such as nationhood must be conceded to be at best the most provisional of guides to action. The interface between domestic sovereignty and international organisations (and what a wilderness of phenomena that term is supposed to describe) needs to be comprehended anew. This is urgent if we are to make sense of, and have a sense of direction through, the problems of the European Community, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, not to mention a host of problematic multi-ethnic polities as diverse as India and Iraq. Wherever we look in the world today, the relationship between ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘community’ seems to be in crisis: from the Balkans to Canada, from Scotland to Kurdistan. This no more has the appearance of an aberration from some historical norm than does the tie between state and nation in previous European history. It makes more sense to regard both as shifting patterns of collective human consciousnesses. The idea that there is something ‘out there’, ‘given’, that preordains human beings to live in nations, and nations t o form states, was certainly a myth; and as a myth had a certain real force. The problem today is, first, that the myth is reviving in some places at just the time when it is being swept aside in others (in parts of the European Community, for example); and, secondly, that the idea of imprescriptible national rights seems to be a postulate of democracy whenever the majority in a territory embrace it, and at the same time a recipe for carnage and the vilest known abrogation of all other human rights. The revival of this nationalist idea around 1990 has also to be set beside the real feelings of belonging that arise amongst groups other than nations; which, whenever they do have such a feeling of corporate identity, we may describe by the general term ‘communities’.

Radical changes in the international arena in recent years have shattered many of the time-worn accounts of political order on the European continent. As the axis along which international politics evolves continues to shift, not only are states and international institutions being re-ordered into a new hierarchy of power, authority and influence but the changes are also affecting the organization of international political space. In the process, many traditional features of the international political arena are becoming outdated. In particular, (in)security, a central concern of states since early modernity, is giving way to economic growth, integration, cooperation and interdependence. Whereas ‘bipolarity’ used to describe the structure of Europe ‘hegemony’ and ‘hierarchy’ are now more accurate terms for analyzing the distribution of power on the continent.

Contemporary theorists of international politics do not see the world in the same ways nor do they agree on what is important to know, or how to know it. Disagreements are partly due to the increasing complexity of the world, but also derive from the development of many different viewing points. Some are geographic and cultural (Americans often view the world differently than, say, Japanese), but other perspectives come from different epistemological starting points and from different assumptions as to what constitutes reliable or useful knowledge, and how to create it. Debates in the 1960s revolved around problems of methodology. Today, we see in addition arguments over metaphysics, the purposes of theoretical activity (understanding versus praxis, for example), and a whole host of other divisive questions.

There can be little doubt that the conflict between the UN-authorized and US-led Multinational Coalition and Iraq at the start of 1991, as a result of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime's decision in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait, has produced profound changes in the political and diplomatic environment of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Mashriqi and Maghribi political attitudes. The new atmosphere of confidence amongst the governments and peoples of the Arab states of the Gulf is clear evidence of these changes, as is the dejection felt in capitals such as Amman, Sanaa and Tunis where government support for the Coalition was less than wholehearted.

The development of the academic study of international relations has been peculiarly conditioned by traditions of thought. Martin Wight was the first theorist to reject the binary dualism of the founding traditions of realism and idealism, as he believed it to be ‘the reflection of a diseased situation’. In its place Wight constructed three traditions of Realism, Rationalism and Revolutionism.

These served as the foundations for his lectures on international theory given at the London School of Economics in the 1950s which, as Brian Porter acknowledges, ‘have been more heard about than heard’. Due to the relative paucity of Wight's printed legacy, scholars have had to piece together the fragments of his ideas on international theory. With the publication of these twelve lectures there is now a rich resource to be mined, and for this reason, the academy of international relations owes a considerable debt to the editors, Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight, for preserving and transmitting these remarkable orations on international theory.

The last fifty years were bloody and dismal for many war-torn regions of the world. The end of the Second World War ushered in a new era of local and ‘limited’ wars throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. Hardly a day went by without a war, civil or international, claiming its victims somewhere on our planet. Yet Europe experienced a ‘Long Peace’ (J. L. Gaddis). The direct confrontation of the superpowers, the Soviet and US tanks on either side of the inner German border, immunized Europe from the plague of war. In the great wrestling match between East and West, Europe was the prime prize, and too much was at stake for all sides to allow any wars, even minor wars, to erupt anywhere on this continent.1

Chiefly for the wrong reasons, diplomacy has recently made some notable incursions into international relations programmes at British universities. For, in the field of money-spinning taught Master's degrees, this subject has been perceived as a crowd puller. Out there, beyond the European Community with its aggravatingly-low fee levels, are, it is calculated, many who will be attracted by an MA with 'diplomatic' in its title. With some ground, it is believed they see that sort of degree as a passport to a position in the much-sought-after diplomatic ranks. Furthermore, in the same regions lie beginning diplomats who could be said to need some vocational underpinning, not to mention those longer-employed in diplomacy who would benefit in mid-career from intellectual refreshment. The British Statue of Education beckons, its own distinctive torch held high aloft. And, to ensure that its light does not go unnoticed, Vice-Chancellors despatch glossy brochures to the British Council and their recruiting officers, hot foot, to distant parts.