The concept of the “security dilemma” is applied to alliance relations in multipolar and bipolar systems. The dilemma involves a choice between support or nonsupport of allies, and tension between fears of entrapment and abandonment. It interacts with the adversary security dilemma in which the choice is between firmness and conciliation toward the opponent. The multipolar interaction is illustrated by a survey of the 1904–1914 period, the bipolar by reference to the contemporary crisis in NATO. The alliance security dilemma is more severe, and places more constraints on allies' policies toward adversaries, in multipolar than in bipolar alliances. The weakness of the dilemma in the contemporary system is a major reason for the current persistence of conflict in NATO.

The article develops an expected-utility model of extended deterrence and tests it on 54 historical cases. Successful deterrence is associated with close economic and political ties between the defender and the state it is trying to protect, and with a local military balance in favor of the defender. Deterrence success is not systematically associated with the presence of a military alliance, with the overall strategic military balance, with possession of nuclear weapons, or with the defender's firmness or lack of it in previous crises. If deterrence fails, only alliance and the military value of the state under attack are associated with the defender's willingness to go to war.

The U.S. Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on war and peace argues that nuclear deterrence is conditionally morally acceptable. Their concluding message is therefore not an exhortation to nuclear pacifism. The author argues, first, that the bishops' conditional moral acceptance of deterrence does not follow from their premises and the evidence presented to them; second, that this justification of deterrence, even if consistently arrived at, does not sanction current U.S. deterrence policy; third, that the conditions the bishops place on deterrence are incompatible with the type of deterrence they attempt to justify; and fourth, that there is no serious attempt currently being made to meet these conditions. The moral obligation that follows for those who take the bishops' principles seriously is nuclear conscientious objection.

While the Soviet system has demonstrated an unusual degree of immunity to the worldwide upsurge of ethnic self-assertion, rising national consciousness among both Russian and non-Russian populations poses a growing, although not necessarily unmanageable, problem for the Soviet leadership. Several issues bearing directly on the resources, power, and status of different nationalities lie at the heart of current debates: the nature and future of the federal system; the pace and pattern of economic development; access to positions of political power; demographic policy; and cultural and linguistic status. Over the long term, the political mobilization of ethnicity is likely to be constrained by both intrinsic and systemic factors, encouraging national elites to focus on strategies and goals that will enhance their power within the system rather than challenging it directly.

This review article interprets Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality as a radical argument for community. It demonstrates the continuity between this volume, in which the particular community and its own moral understanding is the foundation of justice, and Walzer's study of international relations in terms of universal human rights m Just and Unjust Wars. It questions the appropriateness of Walzer's conception of community, of membership, and of shared moral understanding for heterogeneous and differentiated modern societies, and in particular for the United States. It defends liberalism, with its indirect market relations and legal formalism, against Walzer's communitarian challenge, with its substantive agreement among members about the meaning, value, and distribution of goods.

The authors of three recent books attempt to account for Soviet military developments by exploring a wide range of possible explanations. In Soviet Strategic Forces, Berman and Baker adopt a“requirements“approach; they argue that the Soviet strategic posture has developed mainly in response to threats generated by the West. Andrew Cockburn, in The Threat, maintains that internal factors—in particular, bureaucratic politics and the workings of the military-industrial complex—are responsible for Soviet weapons decisions. David Holloway's more eclectic explanation, in The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, describes both the internal and external determinants of Soviet military policy. The evolution of Soviet regional nuclear policy, and particularly the deployment of the SS-20 missile, can be accounted for by several different explanations—indicating a problem of overdetermination of causes. One way to resolve this problem is by adopting a framework developed by James Kurth to explain U.S. weapons procurement. It suggests that the“modes of causation” for Soviet weapons decisions are generally the opposite of those for American decisions. This generalization is consistent with what an analysis based on the relative strengths of state and societal forces in the two countries would predict.