Book Reviews : The Dimensions of Nations. By R. J. RUMMEL. (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1972. Pp. 512. $20.00.)

• Author: Gurston Dacks
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297402700122
• Published date: 01 March 1974
• Date: 01 March 1974
• Subject Matter: Articles

198
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright once spoke of
old myths and new realities. Perhaps one of the realities ignored by the authors of
these books which does explain the continued presence of U.S. troops overseas is
simply that the United States is carrying out a long established policy (probably
dating from the Spanish American War) of fighting its wars overseas and not on
home soil. The nuclear age has imposed the dual urgency of keeping wars at non-
nuclear levels and on foreign soil, necessitating the stationing of troops in farflung
places ready to do conventional battle wherever the U.S. feels itself challenged, and,
perhaps, likely to succeed. Surely the experiences of Korea and Vietnam indicate
the purposes for which American soldiers serve overseas. They are neither benign,
nor peacekeeping, nor do they necessarily deter a determined opponent. They are
instead, instruments of a foreign policy which has relied heavily on the use of force
when it could be used with impunity on foreign soil. Both books would have bene-
fited by abandoning the peacekeeping myth and acknowledging the probability that
the U.S. keeps forces stationed abroad so that our wars will be fought there, and
not here.
CAROL F. Goss
California State College, San Bernardino
The Dimensions of Nations. By R. J. RUMMEL. (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications,
1972. Pp. 512. $20.00.)
&dquo;Grouping nations, objects, individuals, or cases by types is a basic step in
describing phenomena and building a science.&dquo; Proceeding from this premise,
Rudolph Rummel and his colleagues in the Dimensionality of Nations project set
out to identify those attributes of political systems which could most effectively
group them in terms of shared characteristics which could account for their inter-
national behavior.
The first of the three phases of this massive undertaking, the identification of
dimensions and typing of nations, is reported in The Dimensions of Nations. Con-
sidered on its...