David Kay's Misconception of My Theoretical Concepts

Abstract

BECAUSE of my own concern with the subject I turned with interest to David A. Kay's artide in the Summer I969 issue of this journal on States National Security Policy and International Organizations: A Critical View of the Literature.' To my surprise I found my recent study of The United Nations and United States Security Policy (Washington: Brookings Institution, I968) selected as major example of one type of theoretical perspective in that literature, which in point of fact is not my approach at all. Anyone rash enough ito commit views to a book is, of course, fair game for all thonest criticism and the rules of the game require that such criticism be accepted with good grace. It is a little harder to be gracious about an unfavorable judgmenit on the useffulness of one's brain child; but that is, after all, a matter of opinion with which one can disagree. It is mildly frustrating to find one's efforts criticized for not being some other kind of book, but that (judging from many reviews in scholarly journals) is an occupational hazard that one learns to accept. To be interpreited as having written from a theoretical perspective that is ithe opposite of one's viewpoint is, however, a much more serious matter; and -the rules of the game in ithis case would seem to permit the defense to be heard since the issue is not one of opinion but of fact. Kay's concern was to assess the contribution of two different theoretical perspectives to the study of the role of national policy in the United Nations. He was thus not reviewing my study (as he notes on p. 758), which is a historical rather than a itheoretical analysis of the relatonship between the United