Realist approaches to international politics raise the possibility that external policies based on expanding military power may undermine the economic bases of that power. The links between external strategy and economic performance can be classified as fiscal (macroeconomic effects), structural (microeconomic and structural effects), and protectionist (effects on foreign economic policy). The case of prewar Japan suggests that, for countries at an intermediate position in the international power hierarchy and in the international division of labor, the positive effects of external ambition on economic performance may dominate. Other cases—National Socialist Germany, contemporary developing countries, and the postwar superpowers—seem to confirm that international position is a principal determinant of these effects.

The notion that the attitudes of the American public vis-a-vis the Soviet Union are driven essentially by emotion, and that they are more extreme and volatile than those of the government itself, is widely believed but may not be valid. While the public typically desires a combination of tough and conciliatory policies, it also tends to express, at any given moment, particular concern about whichever of the two it feels is most slighted in U.S. policy. Thus, the public will tend to seek conciliatory behavior from hawkish administrations while preferring a tough stance from administrations it deems dovish. By so doing, the public is likely to have a moderating effect on official behavior toward Moscow. The proposition is tested with reference to shifts in public approval of presidential Soviet policy, and certain implications are suggested for the manner in which political leadership perceives of its mandate.

Theories of development are derived from readings of history. Modern historical research challenges many of the basic beliefs about how economies develop. More specifically, recent research suggests that the lessons drawn from the history of industrialization in England are highly misleading. The article thus challenges the empirical foundations for much of classical and Marxian development theory.

The concept of the “reactive state” is useful in understanding the foreign economic policy behavior of Japan and certain other middle-range powers deeply integrated in the global political economy, particularly during periods of economic turbulence when international regimes do not fully safeguard their economic interests. The essential characteristics of the reactive state are two-fold: (1) it fails to undertake major independent foreign-policy initiatives although it has the power and national incentives to do so; (2) it responds to outside pressure for change, albeit erratically, unsystematically, and often incompletely.

In the Japanese case, reactive state behavior flows from domestic institutional characteristics as well as from the structure of the international system. Domestic features such as bureaucratic fragmentation, political factionalism, powerful mass media, and the lack of a strong central executive have played an especially important part in Japanese financial, energy, trade, and technology policy formation since 1971.

The implementation of the Final Solution is discussed in terms of the divergent interpretations characteristic of the “functionalists” and the “intentionalists.” The routines of two sets of implementors are described: the mass liquidations perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen an the “barbaric-civil orderliness” of the bureaucrats carrying out the deportation of the German Jews. In the final section, Lifton's concept of the medicalization of the killings is introduced, with attention also to his thoughts on “doubling” and the extension of his concerns “beyond Auschwitz” to the sphere of nuclear catastrophe.