Search results

In the 21 years since the conclusion of the Second World War, a complicated, piecemeal framework of trading arrangements under various international organizations has been created. Now there is concern, internationally and domestically, as to whether this framework is a durable basis for expanded world trade.

The paper deals with racism based on colour as a factor in international relations. White racism has created a vertical schism in the international system as well as in several national subsystems. The revolt of the non-white peoples against white racism, both at the systemic and at the subsystemic level has led to a global race conflict which threatens to undermine the stability of the international system. Neither the 'class theory' nor the 'caste theory' explains the social stratification represented by contemporary colour racism; it must be regarded as an independent sociological category. One solution to the problem of global racism lies in a structural reorganization of the economic relations between the white and the non-white peoples, along with the promotion of global communication with effective feedback across the colour line. It is also necessary to substitute the new paradigm of world order for the old paradigm of national sovereignty.

A common theme of all the books under review is the neglect of change by scholars in the social sciences generally, and especially in the study of international relations. A number of reasons are offered in explanation of this. One is that change is hard whereas continuity is comparatively easy. What stays the same over time is simpler to map than that which changes. In any young science static comes before dynamic analysis. (Gilpin, p. 4) Another reason for the neglect of change is the dead weight of tradition. The argument in the volume is that established theoretical approaches to the field have over-emphasized continuity at the expense of change.' (Buzan and Jones, p. 2; see also Holsti et al., p. xvii) A third reason is the decline in grand theory. (Gilpin, p. 4) We are reluctant to ask big questions about society any more and are concentrating on small and middle-sized ones. Fourthly, of course, there is the now well-known western bias in the study of international relations, and a parochialism which allows no purchase on the non-western systems whose study would be important for a theory of international political change. (Gilpin, p. 5) A fifth reason for the failure to do justice to change is anti-intellectualism. The search for laws of change is futile because of the uniqueness, and complexity of historical events. (Gilpin, pp. 4–5) No order can be imposed on the empire of circumstance. Finally, there is the idea that the conservatism of the western practitioner of political science conditions his or her treatment of the subject. (Gilpin, pp. 6–7) A preference for stability, or for, at most, orderly social change, makes it difficult to give a proper account of the radical change that would make the life of the observer uncomfortable. It is not surprising, says Chris Farrands, that one looks in vain to conservative thinkers for 'an account, still less a theory, of international social change'. (Buzan and Jones, p. 87)

Oil is a highly political commodity and has more than once taken the centre of the stage in international affairs. This is not surprising in view of its importance in industry and transportation as well as for military activities. Mesopotamian oil was a crucial consideration in a number of the political settlements in the Middle East after the First World War, with the French, British and Americans playing the leading roles, just before that war the British navy had converted to oil, and Britain considered the security of her oil supplies to be an important objective of foreign policy. She had no domestic production. In the 1920s the United States began to fear that her oil reserves were becoming dangerously depleted and she also felt that her security as well as her prosperity depended on obtaining control of oil abroad. The United States sought access to oil concessions in the Middle East, and the diplomatic skirmishes were sharp as the British and Dutch tried to keep her out, not merely from the Middle East, but from south-eastern Asia as well, where production was dominated by the Dutch. Thus oil was an important source of controversy in the foreign policy of a number of countries in the inter-war period.