It is only natural that a period anxiously seeking to wrest peace from the threat of nuclear extinction should look nostalgically to the last great successful effort to settle international disputes by means of a diplomatic conference, the Congress of Vienna. Nothing is more tempting than to ascribe its achievements to the very process of negotiation, to diplomatic skill, and to “willingness to come to an agreement”—and nothing is more dangerous. For the effectiveness of diplomacy depends on elements transcending it; in part on the domestic structure of the states comprising the international order, in part on their power relationship.

INDIA'S experiment with democratic institutions is still only an experiment. Although India adopted a parliamentary system when she achieved independence in 1947 and has thus far been able to maintain her democratic institutions with much more success than some other newly independent Asian nations, no observer can have complete confidence in their stability. Indians have had to adjust from the role of natives in a country occupied by an imperialist power to that of citizens in a democracy, and the adjustment has not been easy. Traditional attitudes have a way of persisting and are not always readily accommodated to a parliamentary system of government.

The outsider who presumes to instruct specialists in the needs of a field which is theirs and not his is very like the bachelor who dares to lecture parents on the requirements of child-rearing: having learned everything secondhand, he is in frightful danger of talking nonsense and, what is worse, of thinking it sagacity.

Two things encourage me to undertake the risk: (1) The difficulties which beset the study of international politics do not seem to me peculiar to that field alone, but are encountered firsthand and in substantially the same form in other fields of which I have direct knowledge. (2) It is apparent from even a casual exposure to the field that its own practitioners are currently in a stock-taking mood in which they seem eager to scrutinize their own product and to have its value assessed. This mood of disquiet has also begun to express itself in proposals for new general approaches to the field, new areas of inquiry, new schemes for collating and analyzing data, explorations into questions once thought remote from the concerns of international politics, and other such developments signifying vitality and a lively spirit of inquiry. The two works which provide the occasion for this essay are items in point, but many others could be cited.

The Communist conquest of China has been the topic of a heated American debate. This debate has been concerned mainly with American politics, and has often been based more on opinion than on knowledge and has dealt more with political argument than with historical fact. The result has been a good deal of confusion and of misinformation, which is always hard to eradicate. However, as we gain more perspective on the events of the Chinese tragedy, it is becoming possible to reconstruct the basic story of the fall of China.

This story cannot be understood merely by tracing Chinese postwar developments: the moves of the Chinese Communists, the obvious weaknesses of the National government, the question of American support to the Nationalist side, and of aid given by the Russians to their fellow Communists. These developments have to be seen against the double background of world Communism and the modern history of China. The Communist victory in China is but one case of a worldwide struggle, the special problems of which must be examined within the setting of the Communist system, its general aims, its strategy and tactics, its use of dogma, and its inner conflicts.