ABSTRACT
This book began by stating that knowledge is a unity, but that understanding can be advanced only by breaking up the universe of knowledge into intellectually manageable parts. That part which might be called international relations was described as being ‘concerned with the study of the nature, conduct of, and influences upon, relations among individuals or groups operating in a particular arena within a framework of anarchy, and with the nature of, and the change factors affecting, the interactions among them’. 1 Examination of this segment called international relations was then further broken down into study of the behaviour of, and interactions among, certain particularly significant groups in international relations, the groups known as states. This behaviour was shown as being affected, among other influences, by the relationships or interactions between the state under study and other bodies similarly acting on the international stage; but the interactions were seen as being significant in relation to the state in question and were not themselves the primary focus of interest. An alternative way of looking at international relations is to regard the interactions, their nature, how they change and why, as being central; and this will suggest questions, and possible answers, of quite a different kind from those that have been considered so far.
