Military relations between the United States and the Soviet Union over the past decade exhibit an apparent paradox: professed mutual interests in parity yielding in practice to a competitive military buildup. The paper examines four hypothetical explanations—denoted respectively as the hypotheses of mirage, momentum, victory, and spillover—in the context of conventional military force development. While certain valid elements are identified in each hypothesis, the author concludes that it is the appeal of spillover, the non-fighting functions of conventional military advantage, which despite a mixed payoff may be regarded as the most significant determinant of Soviet behavior. The evolution of force levels and military budgets, and the political purposes and activities of the U.S.S.R. in the First and Third Worlds, provide the data for analysis.

How large is the Soviet gross national product (GNP) relative to our own? A third as large? Half? Two-thirds? Which of the estimates is correct? As the unique solution, none of them, unfortunately. Nor need we search for other numbers: these are probably the best of the lot, and in any case, the reply would be the same. The problem is not one of data, or of definitions, or of estimating methods. Such problems do exist and present difficulties of their own, but the inescapable and immovable barrier to the unique solution in US-USSR national output comparisons is the crucial fact of differences in the structures of the American and Soviet economies. In general, in comparisons of different economies or of the same economy at different times, diverse structures create what the economist calls an “index-number problem.” The worst of it is, the “problem” is insoluble.

The proliferation of new sovereign states, well over sixty since World War II, has created language problems on a scale unknown in the past. In many of the emergent lands there is a great diversity of tongues, with none of them predominant. Ethnic and tribal rivalries quite often are so acute that the choice of any one language over the others would evoke stubborn opposition and fan already existing resentments. For example, Nigeria with some two hundred distinct languages simply saw fit to adopt English as the over-all official medium, although several important vernaculars are employed for primary education and local administration.

The quotations from Charles A. McClelland and Graham T. Allison represent two distinct approaches to the study of international relations: (i) international system analysis; and (2) foreign policy analysis. Essentially, international system analysts seek to explain interactions between nations by phenomena such as their prior interactions and the structure of the system. Foreign policy analysts, on the other hand, seek to explain foreign policy behavior as the output of subnational organizations following standard operating procedures or engaging in a problem-solving search. Given the international system and foreign policy approaches as contrasting points of departure, the goals of the present study are:

Between 1944 and 1948, six European countries experienced Communist seizures of power. Three were enemies and three friends and allies of Soviet Russia during the war; four were Slav countries; five were predominantly peasant with some remnants of feudalism; with the exception of industrial Czechoslovakia, their prewar record in democratic government was far from exemplary. In all of them, however, the Communists were successful.

What were the components of Communist success and democratic defeat? The case of Czechoslovakia shows clearly that the active interest and impressive display of Soviet power in contrast to the West's hesitant policy not only formed the background but were the chief bases for Communist successes in Eastern Europe. Careful, professional infiltration of democratic institutions and the wishful thinking of the democrats did the rest.

Renzo De Felice's most recent publications, Mussolini il duce and Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, have caused considerable consternation among both the lay and academic public. De Felice has suggested that generic fascism, and particularly Italian Fascism, may have displayed some progressive and revolutionary features. He goes on to suggest that Italian Fascism shared some affinities with the traditional “left.” Most of these contentions are well supported in the specialized literature; while they may cause some political discomfort, they should generate little intellectual resistance. The discussion concerning sensitive political issues has caused scholars to neglect some important methodological theses which De Felice is prepared to defend. The most critical issue turns on the role and legitimacy of generalizing over an ill-defined generic fascism. De Felice has attempted to restrict the characterization “fascist” to one or two strictly European regimes. The article concludes that there are no methodological grounds for such a restriction.

The creation of the Cominform in the summer of 1947 marked an important stage in the development of communism in Europe. The precise reasons that led the leaders of Soviet Communism to revive a public form of co-operation between several Communist parties remain to this day uncertain. What is obvious is the use to which the Cominform has been put during its brief existence up to now. It has acted as an added catalyst of social and political change in the satellite countries. Its resolutions, like the one on the occasion of the expulsion of Yugoslavia from that body, have laid down the broad lines of policy to be pursued by the People's Democracies on such vital issues as the question of collectivization of agriculture, the “nationalist deviation,” etc. The original concept of the Com-inform included, undoubtedly, creation of the appearance of complete autonomy of the Communist parties in Eastern Europe. The language of the speeches at the founding meeting and the choice of the seat for the new organization, outside of the Soviet Union, testify as to the serious attempt to present the collaboration between the Soviet Union and her Communist allies under a veneer of equality. If the picture thus presented seemed to lack realism to the Communist leaders from Poland or Yugoslavia, it is unreasonable to assume that the propaganda effect of the establishment of the Cominform was entirely lost upon the masses who had, since the end of the war, joined the ranks of the ruling parties in the satellite states.

At a time when proposals for a European strategic force centering on Anglo-French nuclear cooperation are once again the subject of serious official discussions, it would seem appropriate to raise a number of more general issues about the making of defense policy in Western Europe today.

The problem of stability in politics can be viewed from various angles. One possible approach is to regard a number of power units at different points of time and note if any change in their relationship has occurred. This raises the question about measuring political power; and some scholars will doubt the advisability of asking such a question. Hedley Bull argues that political science is in danger of being “distorted and impoverished by a fetish for measurement.” He favors a return to the classical tradition, and some of his arguments are certainly persuasive.

Military strategy is of all the human sciences at once the most ancient and the least developed. It could hardly be otherwise. Its votaries must be men of decision and action rather than of theory. Victory is the payoff, and is regarded as the most telling confirmation of correct judgment. There is no other science where judgments are tested in blood and answered in the servitude of the defeated, where the supreme authority is the leader who has won or can instill confidence that he will win.

Some modicum of theory there always had to be. But like much other military equipment, it had to be light in weight and easily packaged to be carried into the field. Thus, the strategic ideas which have from time to time evolved have no sooner gained acceptance than they have been stripped to their barest essentials and converted into maxims. Because the baggage that was stripped normally contained the justifications, the qualifications, and the instances of historical application or misapplication, the surviving maxim had to be accorded a substitute dignity and authority by treating it as an axiom, or, in latter-day parlance, a “principle.”

The immense increase in the costs and risks of using military force to pursue political aims has once again focussed attention on the available ways of effecting changes in the international status quo by non-violent means. This is the subject of “peaceful change,” which has for some years troubled the minds of those concerned to reduce the resort to violence in international affairs.

The international status quo is embodied in several thousand treaties and understandings that mark out the current distribution of values and resources among nations. But this distribution is subject to constant pressure for revision as the needs and ambitions of nations change.

THE idea that peaceful adjustment of the relations of states may result from contention among them Claude believes to be hopelessly outmoded. The presence of nuclear weapons means that any equilibrium of states, however stable it may seem, is not nearly stable enough. The task of the theorist and the statesman alike is to introduce order from above, to replace the “invisible hand” by which adjustments are contrived in systems of self-regulation with something a little more substantial. Here the juxaposition of our two authors enlivens the subject. F. H. Hinsley considers the notion of spontaneous equilibrium to be a liberating idea. He applies the eighteenth century's beautiful system of natural harmony to the world of the present and is delighted with the result. Though large-scale war would now be devastating, we need not worry. Nuclear power is absolute and nuclear states, competent to control the instruments of power at their disposal, deter each other absolutely.

The historical role of the working class has recently been subject to reassessment. Frequently repudiated are the Marxist views that the proletariat constitutes either, as Marx's and Engels' classic scheme would have it, the revolutionary social force in capitalist societies, or, as Lenin believed, the pre-eminent element in a revolutionary alliance with the poorest strata of the peasantry, or, finally, as Mao holds, the leadership cadres needed to mobilize the downtrodden peasant masses into conscious, revolutionary action. Consider, for instance, the meager role attributed to the working class in Barrington Moore's brilliant effort, in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, to delineate three historical routes to modernity.

The trend toward economic rationality in the USSR has not beenconfined to domestic issues alone. It is also manifest in the search for more advantageous and efficient procedures in foreign economic relations, specifically aid and trade with the third world. In this search for ways to secure tangible gains, Soviet relations with the developing countries are entering a new phase, in which economic considerations of profit are challenging the hitherto dominant political motivations.

Political surprise provides a double stimulus for social scientists. An unexpected regime change, an unanticipated revolution—indeed, any political event that is both dramatic and unforeseen—forces us to analyze not just the origins of the change itself but the origins of our own amazement. The political surprises that emerged in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s have, accordingly, compelled us to ask not simply why events unfolded as they did but why our predictive theories left us unprepared. The five essays collected here address both of these questions and therefore offer insights about both politics and scholarship.

The broad question posed here is how authority is distributed in the world and what shifts may be occurring in its pattern of distribution. Mainly, of course, authority is today allocated according to the Western State System, characterized in its legal mechanics by territorial rule among equals and in its political philosophy by consent of the governed. Conveniently dated from the Treaty of Westphalia and the French Revolution, the system is now more widespread than ever before.

Most historians of the Weimar Republic, fully occupied with the domestic affairs of the Brüining government in its crucial place between democracy and dictatorship, show little interest in Germany's foreign policy of the early 1930's. If they do devote some attention to it, their evaluation tends to be highly negative, regardless of their political or national sympathies. Observers who can be classified as liberals, socialists, Nazis, and nationalists—at odds among themselves on virtually every other question—all voice strong criticism of the Brüning diplomacy.