A Casual reading of contemporary news reports suggests that during the past decade economic issues have taken on growing importance in the relations of non-Communist developed countries. The disputes between the United States and Japan over textiles, between the United States and the European Economic Community over agricultural trade, and between France and Germany over currency alignments come readily to mind. It is perhaps symbolic of the enormous success of early postwar foreign policy that issues no graver than these play such a prominent part in relations among countries that, earlier in the century, were sporadically at each other's throats.

The greatest convulsion in Chinese politics since 1949, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, has subsided. The Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), held in April, 1969, seems to have been one of the final steps in consolidating the fruits of the revolution. It involved, above all, an unprecedented scale of upheaval in the party leadership and the party organization.

In one of the landmark contributions to the strategic literature of the late 1950's, Albert Wohlstetter advanced the disquieting thesis that the vulnerability of our strategic retaliatory force (then consisting largely of overseas-based manned bombers and rather primitive, unhardened IRBM's) to a well-orchestrated Soviet surprise attack had come to suggest worrisome implications for continued U.S. security. The credibility of a deterrent posture, he pointedly emphasized, presupposed the ability of the deterring power to convey to its opponent an absolute certainty that any attack, however massive, would be answered by an unacceptably devastating reprisal.

Although the literature on political development has been remarkably insightful, hopes for a science of “nation-building” have not been realized. While numerous works have described the effects of traditional patterns, ethnic and linguistic cleavages, and rapid mobilization, and have investigated factors such as culture, bureaucracy, ideology, and parties, we have learned very little about how to alter favorably the political conditions these have fostered. Political scientists, more often than not, have documented obstacles to, and failures in, political change desired by leaders in new states, rather than explored strategies whereby such change might be realized.

The publications listed above exemplify the debate over national priorities that is gathering mass and momentum in the United States. With respect to each, we shall indicate the perspective of the author(s), scope of the work, and thrust of conclusions. We shall then suggest some broader sources and implications of this debate and its end product, the allocation of resources.