If hell, as Thomas Hobbes once said, is truth seen too late, the road to hell must now be paved twice over with the thousands of books claiming to discover the ‘truth’ about Russia.

The formulation and execution of economic policy towards the Soviet block has generally been based on the presumption by Western governments of the inevitable and demonstrable economic superiority of capitalist over communist systems. Expectations derived from theoretical analysis of the misallocation of economic resources that would obtain in an economy lacking a rational price system appear to be sustained by empirical investigation of the Soviet Union. The impossibility of ensuring consistent and optimal plans, the failure to meet demand in terms of both quantity and quality of consumer goods and the requirement of excessive inputs of factors and resources per unit of output in both industry and agriculture compared with the mixed economies have been well documented, and appear to be endemic in Eastern Europe. Although it is more difficult to make international comparisons of dynamic efficiency due to the lack of an appropriate conceptual framework, both theoretical and empirical analyses appear to sustain the conventional orthodoxy. Material balances planning, and in particular the system of factor rewards prevailing in the U.S.S.R., give rise to expectations of bias against technical progress. The most comprehensive investigation into the sources of technological progress in the Soviet Union shows that in the period 1945–65, only 11 per cent of the technologies then in use had been internally generated, the rest being imported from capitalist sources. It has been estimated that, the technology gap between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. may be between 10 and 25 years. The impressively high growth rates achieved by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and early 1960s, it is further claimed, are not evidence of the eventual dynamic superiority of the planned system, as Soviet economists insist, but are no more than a reflection of the low level of economic development which the Soviet economy had attained by the beginning of the period of the Five Year Plans. Once abundant and under-utilized factors of production were fully absorbed into the economy, the requirement of the extensive growth model for large inputs of labour and capital per unit of output would cause a deceleration of growth rates. Statistics for the 1970s appear to bear out the prediction.

…This paper is based on my personal experience during the six years, from the beginning of 1945 until the end of 1950, when I was responsible for Austrian affairs at the British Foreign Office. That period included being what the film industry might call our ‘continuity man’ for the Treaty negotiations in their active phase, from 1947 to 1950. For it is worth emphasizing that, while eight years were to elapse between the start of the negotiations and the actual conclusion of the Treaty, virtually all the real negotiation took place in the first half of the period: after which, another four years and more were to pass without any substantial development over the Treaty itself, until this was with comparative suddenness resurrected, and signed, very much in the form in which it had been left in 1950. My account will therefore give due weight to the initial years when the Treaty was under intensive negotiation, involving as this did several hundreds of meetings at various levels, from Foreign Ministers to experts and specialists, nearly all of which I took part in. (They included a special 4-power Treaty Commission in Vienna, which by a nice coincidence started work here exactly 33 years ago today [16 May, 19801.)

1980 was not a good year for detente. The year began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing state of East-West relations was reflected at the year's end in a deadlocked C.S.C.E. Review Conference in Madrid. The second phase of the Conference began with a sombre declaration by the United States' delegate that ‘detente does not today exist’ though it remains ‘an objective to be sought’. The invasion of Afghanistan gave sustenance to those who had been arguing for some time that detente was merely, in the words of Senator Jackson, ‘appeasement in its purest form’. For many indeed, like Mr. Kampelman, Afghanistan signalled the final end of detente. Others could argue however that the fact that the Madrid Conference could take place at all in such a political atmosphere, thus maintaining the momentum of the ‘Helsinki process’, is a clear indication that detente is at least alive if not well.

The last ‘great debate’ in international relations theory occurred in the 1960s, was concerned primarily with matters of method rather than substance, and eventually was called off due to lack of interest. The battle between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘scientists’ was short-lived. The so-called ‘post-behavioural’ revolution in political science conceded some part of the traditionalist case, but the more significant factor in the conclusion of the debate was the prevalence of an attitude of live and let live. Tolerance over method is a virtue in a relatively underdeveloped discipline, for who can predict the shape of future knowledge or the potential sources of insight? Unfortunately, a by-product of tolerance over methodological issues has been the development of such differences over matters of substance that the existence of a coherent discipline is called into question. Perhaps a new ‘great debate’ is called for, this time on matters of substance.

Over twelve years have passed since the Autumn of 1968, when the gathering momentum of the campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland forced the re-opening of the unanswered questions and unfinished business of Anglo-Irish relations, on reluctant governments in Dublin, London, and Belfast. The activities of the Civil Rights Movements – especially the march in Derry on October 5, 1968 – and the reactions to them of the Stormont Government, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and groups of protestant ultras, conventionally provide the turning point after which the intractable realities of Northern Ireland's problems showed themselves afresh. A protracted and murderous war of attrition, which continues to this day, was the result.