Richard H. Ullman
Essay
Fall
1983
The Reagan Administration is at war with Nicaragua. Like other wars the United States has fought since 1945 it is an undeclared war. It is also a small war. No U.S. serviceman has yet fired a shot, but American-made bullets from American-made guns are killing Nicaraguans, and the President of the United States has made the demise of the present Nicaraguan government an all-but-explicit aim of his foreign policy.
Essay
Summer
1979
It scarcely requires congressional votes of no confidence or a change of administrations in London to signal that time has run out on the Rhodesian policy the American and British governments have pursued so doggedly for more than two years. There now sits in Salisbury a black Prime Minister, Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the resounding victor in April's election in which nearly two-thirds of his country's adult population-for the first time-cast ballots. The election was indeed far from perfect. It was conducted on the basis of a constitution which had been approved in a referendum excluding blacks. It excluded major claimants for power. But its results underline the fact that whatever the ideal political preferences of Rhodesia's people, most of them want peace most of all, and a majority of them are prepared to rest their hopes on Bishop Muzorewa as the best available means of bringing it about.
Essay
Apr
1978
By the time this journal is in its readers' hands, the American Congress may have been called upon to decide whether Uganda's coffee should be barred from entering the United States. Its decision will hold great importance for Uganda, for the United States, and for the international system. At stake will be the issue of whether or not the richest and most powerful of sovereign states is justified in using its economic power unilaterally to force the government of a smaller and weaker state to alter the way it treats its own subjects. The questions raised come cascading forward: Why should rich North Americans interfere in the internal affairs of a poor African state? How would that interference relate to other American interests and policies - in Africa and elsewhere? What is the larger significance for the international system of such use of an economic instrument - a coffee boycott - for a political purpose?
Essay
Oct
1976
"Trilateralism"-nature abhors labels but men insist on them-is the latest attempt both to describe and to prescribe for the relationship between the United States and the other principal democratic, industrialized, market-economy states. Under the aegis of the so-called Trilateral Commission-an organization of influential private citizens from these countries-it has been the focus of a well-organized effort over the past four years to propose a set of solutions to many of the principal common problems of international society. Trilateralism has explicitly been embraced by the Democratic candidate for the presidency as a central theme of his foreign policy. Recently it has also become a staple of Secretary of State Kissinger's speeches. Its connotations of symmetry and order-the triangle is one of the most aesthetically satisfying of geometrical forms -contrast strikingly with the pervasive lack of evident order in human affairs.
Essay
Jan
1975
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), long an amorphous but powerful force present in the wings, has emerged from October's Arab summit conference at Rabat as a leading formal actor in the tangled relationships of the Middle East, a role reinforced by the PLO's reception at the United Nations in November. In one sense, this is a desirable development. Ever since the basic configuration of Middle Eastern international politics was set in the aftermath of World War II the Palestinians have been deprived not only of statehood, but also (and concomitantly) of the physical and moral resources which come with formal authority. In an era when in some parts of the world statehood is increasingly becoming an empty shell, the nation-state is alive and vigorous in the Middle East and elsewhere in the developing world. In this sense, therefore, the Palestinians deserve their place in the sun.
Essay
Jul
1972
In his first speech to the General Assembly, the leader of Peking's delegation to the United Nations, Chiao Kuan-hua, stated on behalf of his government: "I once again solemnly declare that at no time and under no circumstances will China be the first to use nuclear weapons." And he continued: "If the United States and the Soviet Union really and truly want disarmament, they should commit themselves not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. This is not something difficult to do."
