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United States National Security Policy and International Organizations: A Critical View of the Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

David A. Kay
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Extract

This review essay will focus on four central questions which the author believes to be closely related to the problem of progress in the study of international organizations. These questions, narrowed to fit the scope of this essay, are the following: 1) What has been the role of international organizations in the national security strategy of the United States; 2) what has been the impact of the United States in the international organizations of which it is a member; 3) what has been the impact of participation in international organizations on the range of United States choices and methods in the foreign policy area; 4) what impact have changes in the shape of the international political system had upon United States participation in international organizations and upon those organizations' impact on the United States. This analysis will concentrate only on studies relevant to these themes.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Summer 1969 , pp. 755 - 765
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1969

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References

1 For thorough bibliographies see Rudzinski, Alexander, Selected Bibliography on International Organization (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1953)Google Scholar; Speeckaert, G. P., Select Bibliography on International Organizations (Brussels: Union of International Associations, 1965)Google Scholar; and Yalem, Ronald J., “The Study of International Organization, 1920–1965; A Survey of the Literature,” Background, 05 1966 (Vol. 10, No. 1), pp. 1–56Google Scholar.

2 The two most exhaustive accounts are: Weiler, Lawrence D. and Simons, Anne Patricia, The United States and the United Nations: The Search for International Peace and Security (New York: Manhattan, 1967)Google Scholar; and Russell, Ruth B., The United Nations and United States Security Policy (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1968)Google Scholar. Of special importance because of its conscious attempt to relate the United Nations to the wider arena of international politics and its use of a theoretical construct, the national interest, to explain and/or prescribe changes in United States policy is Bloomfield, Lincoln P., The United Nations and US. Foreign Policy: A New Look at the National Interest (rev. ed.; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967)Google Scholar. Also of importance because of its quasi-official character as an authorized statement of the Kennedy-Johnson view of United States policy toward the United Nations is Gardner, Richard N., In Pursuit of World Order: E7.S. Foreign Policy and International Organizations (rev. ed.; New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar.

3 A major example of this approach, and the one that this essay proposes to focus upon, is Russell.

4 Russell, p. 11.

5 Ibid., p. 23.

6 Ibid., pp. 444–445

7 Ibid., p. 420.

8 This is obviously not intended to be the full-scale review which Ruth Russell's book deserves but an assessment of what its perspective contributes to the study of the role of national policy in international organization. Miss Russell has provided a detailed and accurate account of United States policy in the United Nations on a wide range of issues which is the task that she set out to accomplish.

9 A superb example of this type of analysis as well as of what it can add to the understanding of national policy is to be found in Hoffmann, Stanley, Gulliver's Troubles, Or the Setting of American Foreign Policy (Atlantic Policy Studies) (New York: McGraw-Hill [for the Council on Foreign Relations], 1968)Google Scholar.

10 For a discussion of both the relationships between the state of the international system and the role of the United Nations and of a number of possible models of future systems see Young, Oran R., “The United Nations and the International System,” International Organization, Autumn 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 4), pp. 902–922CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Russell, p. 444.

12 For a similar argument with reference to this type of model see Young, , International Organization, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 917–918Google Scholar.

13 In this connection see the suggestive categories of Young in ibid., p. 912.

14 Bloomfield, p. 9.

15 Ibid., p. 21.

16 Ibid., p. 27.

17 Ibid., p. 42.

18 There is included in an appendix a brief description of ”The Mechanics of U.S. Participation in the United Nations.” But the appendix is not integrated into the structure of the analysis. (Ibid., pp.247–258.)

19 Ibid., p. 239.

20 For a fascinating discussion of this phenomenon from the perspective of cultural evolution see Farb, Peter, Man's Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968)Google Scholar.

21 Osgood, Robert E., Alliances and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

22 For thorough bibliographies see Padelford, Norman J., “A Selected Bibliography on Regionalism and Regional Arrangements,” International Organization, 11 1956 (Vol. 10, No. 4), pp. 575–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yalem; and the selected bibliographies included in the quarterly issues of International Organization.

23 In this category are included such works as the following: Buchan, Alastair, NATO in the 1960's (New York: Frederick A. Praeger [for the Institute for Strategic Studies], 1963)Google Scholar; Kaufman, William W. (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar; Kissinger, Henry A., The Troubled Partnership (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965)Google Scholar; Knorr, Klaus (ed.), NATO and American Security (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Osgood, Robert, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Stanley, Timothy W., NATO in Transition: The Future of the Atlantic Alliance (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965)Google Scholar.

24 One such approach which with some elaboration would provide a challenging framework for the reanalysis of much of the data of the policy prescription school is to be found in Stanley Hoffmann, “Discord in Community: The North Atlantic Area as a Partial International System,” in Wilcox, Francis O. and Haviland, H. Field Jr, (ed.), The Atlantic Community: Progress and Prospects (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963), pp. 3–31Google Scholar.

25 The major study in this category and the one that this review focuses upon is Fox, William T. R. and Fox, Annette B., NATO and the Range of American Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967)Google Scholar. This essay, however, is not intended to be the thorough review which this significant work deserves.

26 Ibid., p. 77.

27 Haas, Ernst B., Tangle of Hopes: American Commitments and World Order (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1969)Google Scholar.