ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Raymond Aron's scientific contribution to the theory of International Relations. The scope of Aron's work has always caused his commentators and his disciples to despair. Aron's ambition was doubly paradoxical—but he was a master at paradoxes—his thought was both bold and modest. Aron always carefully indicates the difference between 'power politics' as it unfolds in a milieu which is dominated by the risk of force among competing units, and the use of coercive power within a domestic community by a state which has the legitimate monopoly of this power. Aron has never systematically examined what possibilities remain for reconciling the imperative and those constraints. Aron himself, ever since his Introduction to the Philosophy of History which determined his conception and his method, has taught us the futility of prophecy, the impossibility of grasping the whole of reality, the role of events and accidents.
