Book Reviews and Notices : Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power. By EDWARD H. BUEHRIG. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1955. Pp. x, 325. $5.00.)

• Published date: 01 December 1956
• Author: Fred A. Sondermann
• Date: 01 December 1956
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295600900420
• Subject Matter: Articles

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lems which confront it. The &dquo;core of the current American debate&dquo; is
rather neatly exposed as that area where the argument over domestic policy
and that over foreign policy meet.
Moving logically from the problem of democratic foreign policy to the
presuppositions and institutions and concluding with an assessment of its
new dimensions, two themes are developed. The first is concerned with
the growing impact of external events on American society during the past
half-century. In the second, the reader is moved to the heart of the analy-
sis, &dquo;whether the traditional political equipment of the [democratic] com-
munity is adequate&dquo; to cope with the international problems it must face.
Essentially, the question being posed is whether the institutions of the
United States, conditioned by a history of introspection, can be effective
in meeting external problems in a far more primitive community where
the units are not people but states. The difficulties of so doing are naturally
enhanced, but not fundamentally changed, by the fact that some of the
members of the world community are dictatorships.
One could wish that Mr. Beloff had been as thorough and satisfying
in proposing ways in which the United States and other democracies might
use their systems to solve foreign policy problems as he has been perceptive
and cogent in explaining the difficulties inherent in democratic procedures.
The reader is left without a real guide to the future improvement of these
procedures. That democracies, as opposed to dictatorships, &dquo;do not always
make the most of their counterbalancing advantages&dquo; -
such as a greater
freedom to make contacts and better understand the rest of the world -
is hardly more than a partial alternative.
In short, what the author has done in his lecture series is to present a
valuable and readable analysis of the problems confronting democratic
foreign policy with particular emphasis on the United States while evi-
dencing...