One aspect of international relations which interested Martin Wight particularly was the functioning of what are called systems of states. That has also been an area of my especial interest since the late 50s. It was the focus of the discussions of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics. The committee was organized in the late fifties to bring, together people from different disciplines, practitioners as well as scholars. Herbert Butterfield and Martin were the founders and guiding spirits of the early years of the committee, and I was one of the original members. It was a collective enterprise: members submitted papers which left as questions those points on which the author did not feel certain of the answers. Martin told me that the most stimulating and interesting work he did during the 60s was writing papers for the committee and taking part in its discussions.

Member governments of the European Community have frequently urged the necessity of closer cooperation and collaboration in meeting the challenge posed by new technologies and in countering the lead achieved by the United States and Japan. After delays which seemed almost to contradict any sense of urgency, the Council of Ministers of the Community agreed to a multi-annual Framework Programme of Scientific Research in 1983. A critically important element of that Programme, the European Strategic Programme of Research and Development in Information Technology (ESPRIT), was agreed only after further extensive delays in February 1984. The renewal and extension of the Framework Programme was proposed by the European Commission in early 1986 but was finally agreed only in September 1987, the delay having been caused by the opposition of Britain, France and West Germany, the three member states largely responsible for the protracted negotiations on ESPRIT in 1984. Much attention has been paid to the history of the Framework Programme and ESPRIT, but the budgetary aspects of the decisions, aspects that were highly significant in delaying agreement, especially on the part of Britain and West Germany, have tended to be ignored.

On 22 June 1946 the Government of India asked that the treatment of Indians in South Africa be placed on the agenda of the Second Part of the First UN General Assembly. This was the first dispute to be taken to the General Assembly and it resulted in the UN's first attack on South Africa. From the perspective of the 1990s the only striking thing about the 1946 UN resolution is its mild tone and the limitation of its criticism to South Africa's, policies relating to just one group. However, from the perspective of 1946 it is remarkable that the UN should even have discussed South Africa's treatment of her Indian citizens, let alone have decided by a two-thirds majority that she had failed to treat them in conformity with. her international obligations and the relevant provisions of the UN Charter.

During his eight years in office Ronald Reagan attempted not only to dominate the US political scene but to establish a clear neo-conservative agenda for the American nation. When he came to power he had two main objectives. The first was to roll back the hand of government, for as he put it, ‘the ills of a nation stem from a single source: the belief that government… has the answer to our ills’. The second was to rebuild America's position in the world after the so-called ‘decade of neglect.’ Naturally, Reagan delighted the new right with his attacks on liberalism at home and the Soviet Union abroad. However, one suspects he frightened an equal number by raising issues (like abortion) which many had long thought settled, while implying that the only solution to complex international questions was American firepower. And even though many American intellectuals may have despised the new President for his apparent simple-mindedness, his optimism about the American future and his heroic view of the American past did much to endear him to a large cross-section of the American people. Reagan believed in the American dream and attempted to convince his fellow citizens that they ought to believe in it too.

If there is a single event since the end of the Second World War that has seriously punctured America's sense of confident invulnerability it is, surely, not the withdrawal from Vietnam—that could always be explained away as a masterful reassessment of the nature of the communist threat—but the taking of American hostages by Islamic fundamentalists in Teheran in 1979. That event, more than any other, showed that America's faith in modernization, foreign aid, and a gradual injection of political liberalism as a means of drawing nations into the western orbit rested on brittle foundations. Until the Shah's overthrow Iran had seemed the perfect ally; despite the anti-libertarian blemishes of the Shah's regime, Iran had a prosperous middle class, a formidable standing in the region, a sound economy based on expensive oil, and was emerging from what was thought to be the constricting effect of Islam.