Small States in International Politics
| Author | William E. Paterson |
| DOI | 10.1177/001083676900400107 |
| Published date | 01 March 1969 |
| Date | 01 March 1969 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Small
States
in
International
Politics
William
E.
Paterson
1967
will
probably
rate
as
the
’annus
mirabilis&dquo;
of
the
small
state
in
inter-
national
politics.
Not
only
did
Israel,
North
Vietnam
and
Rhodesia
success-
fully
defy
larger
Powers,
but
their
success
was
accompanied
by
a
dramatic
increase
in
the
literature
dealing
with
the
foreign
policies
of
small
states.
Among
the
more
important
of these
works
were
Burton
Benedict’s
Problems
of
Smaller
Territories,
Daniel
Frei’s
Neutralität
-
Ideal
oder
Kalkiil?,
Hans
Rudolf
Kurz’s
Bewaffnete
N eutralität,
Gustav
Daniker’s
Strategie
des
Klein-
staats
and
David
Vital’s
The
Inequality
of
States.!
This
flood
of
literature
is
in
marked
contrast
to
past
years
when
studies
like
Annette
Baker
Fox’s
minor
classic
The
Power
of
Small
Statues
scarcely
raised
a
ripple
of
interest in
a
discipline
fascinated
by
the
super-
powers.2
In
my
discussion
of
the
role
of
the
small
state
I
propose
to
concentrate
on
Vital’s
work
since
it
is
both
the
most
ambitious
and
most
readily
available
of
the
books
I
have
mentioned.,,An
analysis
of
Vital’s
book
seems
partic-
ularly
timely
since
much
of
his
rather
gloomy
view
of
the
power
of
small
states
is
based
on an
examination
of
the
Czech
experience.
The
most
serious
weakness
in
Vital’s
treatment
is
his
failure
to
define
ade-
quately
what
he understands
by
the
term
’small
Power’.
His
discussion
of
the
problem
of
definition
is
both
cur-
sory
and
lacking
in rigour.3
His decision
to
take
the
term
to
mean
a
state
with
an
upper
limit
of
population
of
10-15
million
in
an
economically
advanced
country
and
a
population
of
20-30
million
in
that
of
an
underdeveloped
country
is
arrived
at
in
a
manner
that
he
himself
calls
’frankly
subjective
if
not
arbitrary’.4
4
While
Vital
refrains
from
setting
a
lower
limit,
he
confident-
ly
asserts
that
’such
micro-powers
as
Western
Samoa
surely
constitute
yet
another
class of
states
with
reasonably
distinct
and
characteristic
problems
of
their
own’.5
This
assumption
is,
in
the
absence
of
close
argument,
at
least
questionable;
for
instance,
the
preoc-
cupations
of,
and
constraints
on,
Ice-
landic
foreign
policy
are
strikingly
similar
to
those
of
Norway.
Indeed,
the
difference
between
the ’
international
position
of
Sweden,
which
is
a
member
of
the
Group
of
Ten
and
a
middle
range
military
Power,
and
almost
any
developing
country
is
surely
greater
than
that
between
a
small
and
a
micro
Power.
Vital’s
failure
to
estab-
lish
a
class
of
small
states
obviously
distinct
in
their
external
relations
from
other
states
weakens
the
whole
book.
At
one
point
when
talking
about
cri-
teria
for the
strength
and
effectiveness
of
governments
he
appears
to
use
it
as
a
mere
synonym
for
new
state.6
The
end
result
is
that
one
is
continually
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