After the summit meeting in Moscow in June 1974, Dr. Kissinger called for a national debateon the issue of strategic arms and arms control. No such debate has taken place. It has been overtaken by the more immediate issues of inflation, the liquidity of the international banking system, and the extent to which Arab oil profits can be reduced, offset or recycled. But these more immediate issues are, in turn, dependent on what happens in the Middle East with its tripleproblem of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict, the oil weapon, and Soviet ambitions to control the world's economic jugular, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The ability of the United States favorably to influence the resolution of these issues depends upon the strength of its ties with other countries with similar interests and its economicand military potential. Thus, we are once more brought face to face with the interdependence ofour economic and our national security policies.

In classical political thought, politics and art were alike since both were works of the practical, not the speculative, reason, within whose ample scope there was great room for things to be otherwise. Art and politics differed because politics was limited by its end, and therefore freed from the absolute indifference of pure possibility which looked to existence only as an alternative, as something which had no need of existence whatsoever, even though it was the ultimate origin of change. Art, on the other hand, was limited by the esthetic perhaps, but was not restricted by the requirement of definite being —a two-headed man, a green nose, a flying cow, any conceivable combination of sounds, shapes, or colors were thus quite possible artistically. Their reality depended on the creativity of the artist and his will to make.

In recent years, scholars have been increasingly applying “behavioral” approaches to the study of Chinese politics. One interesting strain of this is the work of Lucian Pye and Richard Solomon, who stress the study of Chinese “political culture” analyzed mainly in terms of an “authority crisis.” Solomon's explication is the more detailed and elaborate. Part of his thesis is that harmony and peace are “basic and enduring political values in the Confucian tradition,” and therefore “questions of the handling of social conflict constitute a major area of tension in the Chinese political culture.” The Chinese hopes for order and believes that this comes about only through strong authority; without such authority there is luan, “chaos.” But the means required to exercise authority create resentment, and resentment becomes the basis for more luan.

In late 1927 the Communist Party of South Africa learned with surprise and shock that the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow had drafted a radical new policy for its distant affiliate in southernmost Africa, the only communist party south of the Sahara. The new policy, focused upon the slogan, “an independent native South African republic, as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' government with full, equal rights for all races, black, colored, and white” seemed to a majority of the small multiracial membership of the South African party to be directly counter to the old policy which, after a difficult process of internal disagreements and tactical reorientation, was bringing its first significant wave of recruits and support among the black majority of the country. The slogan proposed from Moscow, quenching dreams of socialism, generated widespread opposition within the party, but an unhearing Comintern decreed in October, 1928, that the South Africans must accept the new line. The consequences of the imposition of the new slogan and the subsequent bolshevization of the party shook the Communist Party of South Africa to its roots.

Jacques Ellul today lives and works in the French city in which he was born over sixty years ago, Bordeaux. His public life has two major aspects. First, he is a scholar, with degrees in history, sociology, and law. Before the Second World War he was director of studies at the University of Strasbourg until his dismissal by the Vichy government. Now he is professor of history and sociology of institutions at the University of Bordeaux. During the war he was active in the Resistance, and after the Liberation had the chance to begin a promising political career when he served for two years as deputy mayor of Bordeaux under Jacques Chalban-Delmas. But he abandoned that prospect to devote his time fully to teaching and writing. He has written more than twenty books and more than a hundred articles.