In A television interview not long after the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, President Kennedy observed that both the United States and the Soviet Union had made serious miscalculations in the Cuban affair. “I don't think we expected that he [Khrushchev] would put the missiles in Cuba,” he said, “because it would have seemed such an imprudent action for him to take He obviously thought he could do it in secret and that the United States would accept it.”

In the classical literature of diplomatic history, the balance-of-power concept occupies a central position. Regardless of one's interpretation of the term or one's preference for or antipathy to it, the international relations scholar cannot escape dealing with it. The model is, of course, a multifaceted one, and it produces a fascinating array of corollaries; among these, the relationship between the number of actors and the stability of the system is one of the most widely accepted and persuasive. That is, as the system moves away from bipolarity toward multipolarity, the frequency and intensity of war should be expected to diminish.

Official economic doctrine in the Soviet Union continues to hold fast to the view that growth conquers everything. A rapid rise in the level of economic output remains the magic key to the solution of all problems facing the Soviet Union, large and small alike. First of all, of course, economic growth at the highest possible rate remains an indispensable goal, in the official viewpoint, if the USSR is to be assured a firm position in the forefront of major world powers. There was surely no doubt in Stalin's mind that only a forced pace of growth in the economic capabilities of the Soviet state could prevent a dangerous backward drift in the international power position of Soviet Russia. This theme, as we know, was utilized by the former dictator to the hilt in his fierce drive to mobilize the physical and human resources of his country, and to motivate the political elite, for an all-out campaign against the strategic threat to the survival of the state that he considered to be inherent in economic backwardness.

The emergence of the Yugoslav commune is a significant aspect JL of the distinctive political system that has been developing in Yugoslavia since 1950. The Serbian term opština—općina in Croatian—historically referred to a specific area, defined by the collectivity or commonalty of the land and the inhabitants' use thereof. In the prewar period the term lost this meaning and signified only an administrative unit, such as a borough, district, municipality, or community.