E. H. Carr's Nationalism and After, which first appeared in 1945, receives little note in our recent discussions of nationalism. That it seems to have been forgotten is unjust; t i is certainly wrong on my own part. I know that I read this book in my youth, and that I was greatly impressed by it. What however had impressed me at the time was a kind of general characteristic of the book and of the intellectual orientation of its author: the fact that it was clearly about the real world. I was not at all used to that.

Perpetual peace projects constitute a largely undervalued intellectual tradition that has attracted many polemical arrows. One of the most frequent criticisms levelled at the projects is that their authors too often abandon themselves to utopianism. Yet this tradition has proved to be much more influential than is generally recognized: contemporary international organizations, from the League of Nations to the United Nations, from the European Parliament to the International Court of Justice, were sketched out, if only in embryonic form, in these perpetual peace projects. Yet it is rare to find their authors numbered among the founders of internationalist theory.

The death of Hirohito on 7 January 1989 provided the Japanese with an opportunity of reappraising the Showa era, as Hirohito's reign is called in the Japanese calendar. This lasted for sixty-two years, which the press described as years of ‘turmoil and drastic changes.’ While the role of the Emperor and, to a greater degree, the role of the military in imperial Japan have been long-running themes for historians, intellectuals, and journalists, Hirohito's death certainly encouraged the publication of a large number of books, including reprints of works about the Pacific War, from semi-official histories, the memoirs of some of the leading decision makers and a series of histories of Japan from 1868 to 1945. Television programmes showed for two full days panel discussions by historians and documentary films of the Showa era—a series of bloody wars in China and eventually with the Americans, the British and the other Allied powers, leading to unconditional surrender and occupation.

A study of justice in world politics must begin with the question: what is it and why study it? I will argue that justice is constitutive of social life generally and that various practices of justice are operative in world politics. Normative issues arising from the Gulf War are used to illuminate the argument. A major war is always a tragedy but it is also an opportunity to reexamine our received ideas about war as a human transaction. My approach is that of a political scientist and not a moral philosopher: I am more interested in the practices than the theories of normative international relations.

All great powers have a grand strategy—including great powers on the verge of collapse. Each power develops its code of national security ends and means differently. Among the myriad factors which explain particular grand strategies, the most important consideration is the distribution of power capabilities in the international system. Regardless of each state's desire to operate independently—to be master of its own grand strategy—the structure of world politics offers little latitude to do so. As in the case of decision-making processes in organizations and bureaucracies, the international system imposes its own constraints and incentives on the security goals of individual states. Primarily addressing the international environment, however, systems theory ‘provides criteria for differentiating between stable and unstable political configurations.’ The first objective of this essay is to explore the role of structure as an indirect influence on the behaviour of its constituent actors, in this case, states. ‘The effects [of structure] are produced in two ways: through socialization of the actors and through competition among them.’

Whatever else the twentieth century is remembered for, one development which will assuredly rank high on the international list is the huge change which has occurred in the world's political configuration. In one quick but limited burst immediately after the First World War, the multinational empires which lay within Europe were largely recast in the shape of about a dozen successor states. And in the decades following the Second World War a series of more wide-ranging happenings on the other four continents saw the dismantling of colonial empires in a manner and on a scale which was truly heroic. Within one life span, the great European-based imperial edifices, which had hitherto seemed so permanent a part of the firmament, either collapsed or were abandoned. In their wake came getting on for 100 new states, leaving the map makers hard put to keep up with the tumble of events. Only now, as the century enters its final years, is the pace of this historical process relaxing.

It has not been easy for those in the relatively new field of international relations to find an intellectual niche, and a great deal of ink has been spilled in debates about the nature, sources and role of the discipline. The most basic area of the debate is between the largely British-based historical traditions and the North American behaviourist and ‘scientific’ schools. No doubt many international historians have winced at the vague phrase ‘history shows us that...’, which still appears in some textbooks. And no doubt international relations theorists have despaired of international history monographs in which the author appears to fail to draw any general conclusions after years of painstaking study in the archives. In institutions of higher education the professionals continually struggle to get the balance right between the different elements of an international relations degree, and the paucity of departments devoted solely to international relations is witness to the still ambiguous place of the discipline in the academic world. despite unrelenting student demand—but it also shows that the discipline is very much alive, vigorous, developing and innovative. It is also fairly obvious that intellectual disciplines do not have to be mutually exclusive, and perhaps one of the closest, even symbiotic, relationships is the key one between the study of international history and international relations, particularly foreign policy analysis.