Prologue

Aglance at the morning newspapers or television news broadcasts is all we need to be convinced that the darkest, most destructive elements in human nature are given continuous expression in the conduct of international relations. War, and other forms of mass killing in the service of a political cause, mounting on occasion to the level of genocide, are the regular stuff of contemporary international political life. Some of this violence, or the threat of it, may, from an ethnic or national group's standpoint, be justified on the basis of more or less well-defined purposes or “interests.” But other killing seems little more than the naked expression of hatred and aggression, usually as part of a cycle of vengeance or retaliation for previously experienced victimization.

The nuclear-weapons competition, led by the United States and the Soviet Union, has done a great deal to focus the attention of students of international relations upon the dark, irrational dimensions of human nature, that domain of human psychological life which psychoanalysts have been exploring for nearly a century. The purposeful development of weapons so destructive that their possessors are deterred from using them out of fear of unacceptable retribution is not itself irrational. But the world has witnessed something more than simple deterrence. The United States and the Soviet Union have tried to use nuclear weapons for purposes of political coercion and dominance (Kincade, 1985). They and the other nuclear powers have developed weapon systems ever more technologically sophisticated, as if real advantage could be gained, wars won, or countries defended through the use of nuclear devices. This behavior runs so counter to scientific knowledge and ordinary good