International politics

International politics lends itself rather more than most college courses to different types of treatment, as the variety of textbooks on the subject amply demonstrates. No one can presume to say in absolute terms which is the best, although any teacher or student may have his personal prefer ence. This book embodies my own conception of the course, based upon some thirty years of experience in teaching it.

In my opinion, the kind of understanding which a student should ac quire of international politics ought to relate to basic facts and principles, to the more permanent rather than to the transient. He needs to understand forces and pressures behind contemporary events. He must find out, or at least try to find out, what makes the world go round in the way that it does. In this quest for the how and why of world politics, he will en counter some principles of conduct and relationships which, by general admission, have universal application; he will also make contact with less certain areas of international life where opposing theories or points of view have been advanced.

The substance or gist of international politics is the actions or policies of nations; if nations did nothing outside their respective boundaries there would be no international politics to be studied. The necessary point of attack then, in order to gain an understanding of the subject, is the conduct or behavior of states. Admittedly, this is a complex matter; to explain conduct in concrete situations is more difficult than to discern those forces and pressures which explain behavior in a general way.