The South West Africa Cases presented the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with a choice not only between the parties to the suit but also between rival claims about the nature of international law itself. Perhaps every case presents the Court with a choice of some degree between jurisprudential foundations, but in the South West Africa Cases the choice is striking.

The Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) devoted its major efforts from the endof July 1965 until April 1968 to negotiating the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, spending little time on other arms control measures in the sessions throughout this period. In May 1968 the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics jointly presented the draft treaty to the First (Political and Security) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. After lengthy debate and acceptance of several amendments to meet the wishes of nonnuclear states the Treaty reached its final form on May 21, 1968, and was “commended” in General Assembly Resolution 2373 (XXII) of June 12, 1968.

At the present time scientific opinion has shifted to the view that man can, in certain circumstances and at certain places, modify at least local weather conditions in limited ways. Many believe that man can dissipate certain “cold” fogs in limited areas for short periods; that he can increase rainfall or snowfall by perhaps ten to fifteen percent in a local area in narrowly limited circumstances; that he can probably convert hail into less dangerous forms of precipitation, also in narrowly limited circumstances.1 Some experiments are being conducted to learn more about such phenomena as hurricanes and lightning. Man still needs to learn much more and to develop faster computers before he can begin to think of safely undertaking intentional modification on anything more than a local and highly selected basis. Nevertheless, it is clear that even the limited effects thus far produced do not stop at some predetermined boundary; both nationally and internationally attempts to modify weather can be expected to cause dislocations and friction.

For the past two decades the nation-state in Western Europe has been on the defensive as a principle of political organization and the nationalism which sustains it has been held in disrepute. The assailants have been both internal, reacting against the increasing centralization which comes first with nation building and later with modernization, industrialization, and increasing welfare activity, and external in the form of federalist, neo-functionalist, and supranationalist claims against the nation-state. These latter claims challenge the material adequacy of the nation-state to fulfill the security and welfare demands of the modern age and die moral validity of the principle of nationalism at whose door has been laid the responsibility for the bellicosity, aggression, war, and destruction which plagued the European Continent during the first half of this century.

Except for the subfield of comparative regional integration, international organization as an area of study is notorious for its lack of systematic and testable theory. This situation has been created less by a deficiency of techniques for quantitative analysis than by the absence of attention to theoretical conceptualization and its necessary accompaniment, the imaginative use of data to test hypotheses. There is little shortage of case studies, abstract theorizing, or sophisticated quantitative techniques, but systematic testing of important concepts is rare. Much of the literature in the field fails even to ask relevant and important theoretical questions. The “Mount Everest Syndrome”–studying international organizations “because they are there”–has afflicted the field for too long.

There appears to be a growing consensus among those engaged in research in the international organization field that regional integration has been the most stimulating area of research for the last ten years because of the conscious efforts of the major theorists in this area to develop and test hypotheses concerning the dynamics of organizational development. There is consensus also that the rest of the field could profit by developing a more conscious concern with the dynamics of organizational development. Robert O. Keohane’s “Institutionalization in the United Nations General Assembly” represents a substantial attempt to provide the framework for a model of organizational development applicable to the United Nations.

To be criticized for not laboring the obvious should perhaps be regarded as a compliment. As careful readers of my article will undoubtedly be aware, I do not assume that governments enter into the United Nations political process “only as objects or implementors of United Nations action after the outputs have been determined by the Organization.” (Kay, p. 952.) My point is quite different: that outcomes in international organizations such as the General Assembly depend not only on governmental interaction but also on the context within which such interaction takes place. Organizational variables help to define that context. Since so many writers have ignored organizational variables in analyzing international organizations, I have attempted, as I said, to “redress the balance”—”without denying the less-onesided formulations of realist theory.” (Keohane, footnote 3.)

Stanley Hoffmann, Joseph Nye, and Karl Kaiser have all stressed the significance of the external environment in determining the attractiveness of a regional plan; Ernst Haas has acknowledged that he neglected this in his earlier model of the integrative process. I shall argue here 1) that a particular element in the external environment has been the key incentive for Sweden’s position in current negotiations for a Nordic customs union and connected economic package and 2) that an evaluation of this same external factor will be crucial for Norway’s and Denmark’s decision.

In his recent research note Philippe Schmitter calls attention to what he feels are drawbacks in some operational measures of regional integration that Ernst B. Haas and I had proposed earlier and proposes some alternatives. I would like to comment briefly on two of his measures.

The Security Council held its 1456th and 1457th meetings on November 1 and 4, 1968, at the request of the United Arab Republic and Israel to discuss the situation in the Middle East. Representatives of Israel and the United Arab Republic were invited to take part in the discussions without the right to vote.

The report of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the tenth General Conference of the Agency covered the period from July 1, 1965, to June 30, 1966. During that time the Agency’s membership increased from 92 to 96; the new members were Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, and Panama.

The period under review was marked by further growth in IAEA’s safeguards activities. In June 1966 the Agency provisionally approved special procedures for safeguarding reprocessing plants. During the year the number of safeguards agreements approved by the Board increased from 24 to 29. One new agreement covered a major nuclear power station in the United Kingdom.