Political Behavior and International Tensions

Extract

Organized efforts to deal with the problem of war through channels other than those of traditional diplomacy seem peculiarly subject to frustration. Perhaps this is inevitable. Certainly it is common. The current disappointment with the achievements of UNESCO, which Professor Dunn examines in the opening pages of his book, is only the most recent and most obvious instance of the dismay which sometimes follows upon the discovery that the star to which the wagon supposedly has been hitched is, after all, a decidedly earth-bound horse. The fervor that often accompanies a desire to “do something” about international understanding seems to invite a kind of oversimplification that leads inevitably to disillusionment and despair. Social scientists are by no means immune from this affliction, although it is not peculiar to them. The myopias of academic specialization, confronted with the tremendous complexities of such a task in applied social science, may encourage a neglect of the limitations of particular specialties and produce oversimplifications at their peripheries.