The aims of this paper are (a) to construct probability models for peacetime and wartime alliance formation, (b) to provide international political interpretations of the probability models, and (c) to obtain some policy implications from these models.

Since Horvath and Foster published their seminal work in 1963 on probability models of wartime alliance sizes, no further research has been undertaken to elaborate their ideas (except for Yamamoto, 1974; and Yamamoto and Bremer, 1980), even though varied probability models have been applied to the analysis of war occurrences (see Richardson; Singer and Small, 1972; and Wilkinson) and of peacetime alliance formation (see McGowan and Rood, and Siverson and Duncan). Horvath and Foster found that the frequency distribution of wartime alliance sizes is accounted for by a Yule distribution which has a long tail (meaning that large alliances are likely to form in war) and that a Yule distribution can be derived from a process in which a war alliance will acquire new members with.a probability directly proportional to its current size (i.e., the number of participating nations in the alliance) and in which the members of alliances are not allowed to leave until war ends.

The injection of a western world-view into a research field has never been more apparent than in the study—or rather9 the non-study—of crisis initiation. The status quo orientation of western strategic thought has led to a predisposition to view international crises as generically ‘bad’ and disruptive processes. The utilization of crises as a foreign policy instrument has long been perceived as taboo, despite the enormous diversity of crisis theory and research, and despite the locus of crisis at the ‘center of gravity’ between peaceful and violent interactions among states.

The 1980 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference will chiefly be remembered for the inability of the delegates to agree on a final document. There were several visible reasons for this, some related to the immediate political concerns of the participants, some linked to the nature of the treaty itself. The statements of the participating states indicated that they held differing conceptions of the purposes of the treaty, and possessed very diverse views on the action that should be taken to achieve them. Four sets of assertions dominated the discussions: that the nuclear states had not fulfilled their obligation to negotiate measures of nuclear disarmament as specified in Article VI of the treaty; that the advanced industrial states had not fulfilled their obligations to assist and encourage the global development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy contained in both Articles IV and V of the treaty; that the attempts by the United States government to discharge its obligations under the 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act by threatening to terminate fuel supply contracts to both treaty parties and non-parties, unless they accepted International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards on all their nuclear installations, was inequitable and improper (the same accusation was also directed at Canada); and that the major danger of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and Africa originated in the threats posed to the states in these regions by the regimes in Israel and South Africa. One issue on which there did appear to be agreement, however, was that the safeguards regime foreshadowed by Article III of the treaty had functioned satisfactorily, in that no Feaches of it had been reported to the Review Conference by the IAEA. Yet the differing interpretations of the balance of rights and obligations contained in the treaty masks a much deeper set of issues: what precisely is the problem of nuclear proliferation, to what extent is the predominant diplomatic rhetoric of nuclear non-proliferation discussions unrepresentative of the real concerns and interests of the participants, what was and is the relationship between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and does the NPT itself address (or was it ever intended to address) the problem of nuclear proliferation in the form in which it seems likely to be encountered in the 1980s?

In the history of relations between the worlcfs leading states since the end of the eighteenth century certain features stand out prominently. One is that infrequent wars have alternated with long periods of peace. From the 1760s to the 1790s these states were at peace; from the 1790s to 1815 they were at war; from 1815 to 1854, peace; 1871 to 1914, peace; 1914 to 1918, war; 1918 to 1939, peace; 1939 to 1945, war; and since 1945 another 36 years of peace already. Another feature, no less pronounced, is that each of these infrequent wars has been more demanding and devastating for all participants, more nearly total, than that which preceded it. In these respects, as also in a third on which I shall enlarge later on, international conduct in the past 200 years has differed from international conduct in all earlier times, when states were more or less continuously engaged in wars that remained limited in scale – and so much so that the rise of the modern system may safely be traced back to the end of the eighteenth century.

Official boycotts of trade by individual countries and UN sponsored economic sanctions against South Africa have been on the international agenda for a good many years. India and Pakistan were the first countries to declare an official boycott of trade with South Africa in the early 1950s although Pakistan withdrew her boycott in 1956. As long ago as 1963 some twenty-five countries,, largely in Africa and Asia, had declared an official boycott against South Africa, In addition attempts to organize unofficial voluntary consumer boycotts against South African products such as fresh and canned fruit, wine etc., began as long ago as 1959 in Britain and the Scandinavian countries. Since 1973 there has been an embargo on oil sales to the Republic by the Arab members of OPEC and a UN embargo on arms sales in 1977, Voluntary consumer boycotts have failed to reduce the level of sales in Western countries. Even in the case of countries that officially boycott South Africa, trade has not been eliminated entirely if one looks at official statistics. But besides officially recorded trade, there is a good deal of trade via intermediaries. It is well known, for example, that South Africa continues to recieve some arms supplies from Western countries in this way. In the case of oil, while 90 per cent of South Africa's supply came from Iran, which refused to join a partial embargo until the Shah's fall, most of the balance is still supplied by countries like Bahrain, Oman, Quatar and the United Arab Emirates, which subscribe to an official embargo. This oil gets to South Africa, probably without the knowledge of the governments concerned, via intermediaries of the major international oil companies. The vulnerability of South Africa to an oil embargo will be discussed at some length later.

By mid-1947 the division of Europe had acquired clear momentum and definable contours, yet it had not yet fully congealed. The period was a transitional one, moving away from the contexts of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements which anticipated post war great power collaboration in Europe, and moving toward the complete Stalinizatioh of eastern Europe and the concomitant linking of western Europe to an American led economic and security order. Yet despite the recent Soviet backed ouster of Nagy in Hungary in May, some elements of a pan-European fabric remained intact if uncertain The Four Power negotiations over Germany's future were continuing and the allied occupation machinery remained in place. The establishment of the Economic Commission for Europe in May 1947 provided at least an institutional framework for considering recovery problems on a pan-European rather than an east-west basis. And during this pre-Cominform period the east European states appeared to anticipate some independence in foreign affairs, as suggested by the initial expressions of interest by Czechoslovakia and Poland in responding to Secretary of State Marshall's aid initiative.

Over the past two decades, psychologists, economists, and political scientists have developed a substantial literature on diplomatic bargaining. Its descriptive and normative development has substantially increased our understanding of the fundamentals of bargaining structures and strategies, outlined the fundamental choices facing negotiator and hypothesized an array of variables to explain outcomes.

The recent opening of official archives has permitted many new insights into the complex process which led to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949. One of these concerns the role of the Scandinavian countries, both as actors in their own right, and as pawns in the policy calculuses of the leading western powers. Recently Geir Lundestad has documented in great detail the role which Scandinavia played in American foreign policy in the 1945–49 period and especially in relation to the Atlantic Pact negotiations. In comparison, the position of Scandinavia in Britain's security policy in the period concerned is very little known.

The present international monetary regime has been characterized as a ‘non-system’, an assessment containing an important element of truth from both the economic and juridical standpoints. Indeed, the (more or less) freely floating exchange rate regime which has prevailed in fact since the upheavals of 1971–73 and in law since 1978 is not so much a system as a collective admission that no system is really feasible in the context of the present world economy. A close look at the present order, however, reveals a very interesting phenomenon the importance of which, unfortunately, is sometimes obscured because it is not reflected in any formal legal structure: this is the de facto division of the world into a two-tier order consisting of industrialized states on the one hand, which generally maintain flexible exchange rates, and developing countries on the other hand, which typically have chosen to fix their exchange rates (either against one of the major currencies, or else against a basket of currencies).

With the demise of the Federation of the West Indies in 1962 and the failure of the parties to agree to a ‘truncated’ federation in the smaller Eastern Caribbean islands, the British Government was confronted, for the first time, with the issue of how best to treat the decolonization of island micro-states.

The question of the Israeli settlement in the occupied territories has become a focal point for the political system, an issue of ‘high politics’ affecting values and symbols important to Israeli society as a whole. Indeed, the settlement issue may be described as having a significant bearing both on the domestic scene and on Israel's posture In the international arena. Domestically, it has been a subject of acute controversy and intense power straggles. Externally, the. settlements have aroused widespread international opposition and criticism.

In his article on ‘The enigma of Martin Wight’ (Review of International Studies, i, 1981, pp. 15–22), Michael Nicholson makes some questionable assertions. One concerns the object of international studies. He says, ‘Surely the point of studying international relations or any other aspect of human behaviour is to improve the human condition not to stand as passive spectators deploring the appalling standard of play’ (p. 19). He goes on to doubt whether Wight's position was really that of the passive spectator, but on the revealing ground that a man who had such a big impact on others could hardly have been in the business for its ‘entertainment value’ (p. 20). I find this a remarkable pair of alternatives: improvement or entertainment! There seems no place here for the scholar, the man dedicated to finding out how the world works because he is fascinated by it. Nor is account taken of the vocation of teaching, the desire just to pass on to others the understanding one has gained. Of course, I am sure Nicholson would say that his remarks were not an exhaustive account of the possibilities. But what he does seem to be, saying is that the scholar must also be concerned about making the world a better place. I see no ground for this position. It implies a moral deficiency in those who are simply devoted to learning or who do not believe in the possibility of progress. This is a large claim.

International Politics has been available as part of the Open University's programme of studies for the best part of ten years. During that time several hundred students have experienced this area of study in the unique form of learning and teaching that has come to be the hallmark of Open University courses. It would be interesting to know how the first generation of graduates with an International Politics course behind them respond to that experience, as they have studied a branch of the social sciences that is regarded as especially difficult and demanding in its scope, so much so that an earlier generation of scholars thought the subject to be unsuited to undergraduate study. We have come a long way since then, however, and the typical Open University student is rather different from the conventional undergraduate, bringing to his study more worldliness perhaps—no bad thing in the study of political matters—and a deeper appreciation of the subtleties of human behaviour But this advantage over the student coming straight into higher education from sixth form or college of further education has to be set against the disadvantages of a probable lack of method and discipline in study and of having to receive and assimilate complex ideas at the end of a day of full-time non-academic work, for Open University students are part-time and will do most of their study in the surroundings of their own homes. These circumstances influence the designers of Open University course. In the market place of adult education the consumer is sovereign. Certainly in large urban areas many different educational bodies compete for the adult student and Open University courses have to be designed with this competition in mind. Programmes of study must be carefully structured to provide for set amounts of material to be mastered in a limited period of time. There has also to be clear direction to courses, with signposts in the form of self-assessment exercises and suitable pauses built into course texts to allow for ‘digestion’ and to ensure that the right route is followed. To achieve these ends packages of learning materials are prepared by Open University staff and mailed to students in their own homes, supported usually by a course reader, some set books, and reinforced by the back-up of television and radio. This form of learning parallels conventional methods only in that periodical tutorials with groups of students are conducted by the Open University's part-time tutorial staff.

The United States security guarantee to Western Europe enshrined in the North Atlantic Treaty has been not only the most important and enduring of American foreign policy commitments since the late 1940s, but also the least controversial Few critics have challenged the view that the Atlantic Alliance is vital to American security. The manner in which the commitment has been implemented, however, and in particular the extent to which it requires a substantial presence of American conventional forces in Europe has been much more controversial Indeed, the troop deployment policy of the Executive Branch has been challenged by Congress on several occasions. The first challenge came in 1951 when leading members of the Senate questioned both the legitimacy and the wisdom of President Truman's decision to send US troops to Europe. During the latter half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, the issue arose once again as Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield articulated doubts about the need to maintain the existing troop level in Europe. From 1966 to 1970 Mansfield introduced several Sense of the Senate Resolutions advocating troop reductions; in 1971 and again in 1973 and 1974 he pressed amendments to legislation which, had they been approved, would have mandated reductions.

Siam's only effective contribution to the war in Asia was to act as a jumping-off ground for the invasion of Burma and as a base for Japanese forces operating in Malaya, Yet this small country found itself at the centre of an increasingly acrimonious debate between London and Washington. This was no briefer simple misunderstanding between allies. The. problem began in 1942 and dragged on well into 1946, Its real cause was obviously not the conduct of the Siamese9 but sharply contrasting perceptions of previous roles in Asia and of national interests in the post-war world. It was a dispute that demonstrated how difficult it was to get Anglo-American political and military collaboration in South-East Asia., as long as Britain remained an imperial power9 at the very time when the war was engendering in Europe a remarkable degree of co-operation between the two countries.