Editors' Note

Editors’Note N o w that the Cold War is over, it is time for the United States to rethink its grand strategy, say Barry Posen of MIT and Andrew Ross of the Naval War College. They seek to sharpen the debate by characterizing the four grand strategies that compete in current U S . discourseneo -isolationism, selective engagement, cooperative security, and primacy-und identifying their pros and cons; by examining the U S .grand strategy of recent years; and by speculating on what might cause the United States to choose a more coherent and integrafed grand strategy. Nuclear proliferation is the subject of the following two articles. Scott D. Sagan of Stanford Universitynotes that the question of why states seek to build nuclear weapons has scarcely been examined, although it is crucial to efforts at preventing proliferation. He challenges the traditional realist assumption,accepted uncritically by many scholars and policymakers, that states seek to acquire or develop nuclear weapons primarily for militay and strategic reasons. Sagan examines alternate explanations for the demand for nuclear weapons. Recent waves of pessimism about the proliferation of nuclear weapons are the subject of an article by David J. Karl, recently of the School of International Relations at the Universityof Southern California.He argues that pessimists do not adequately explain why the spread of nuclear weapons is likely to have bad consequences, nor do they sufficiently support their arguments. The analogies that pessimists draw from the Cold War,he says, are misleading when applied to the context in which new nuclear states may emerge and act. Our next two articles take us to Africa. Jeffrey Herbst of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School notes that failed and failing states in Africa cause millions to suffer. Herbst argues that the international response to this problem, which has generally focused on how to resurrect these states, is misguided. There is, he writes, both a need and an opportunity in Africa to explorealternatives to existing nation-states, both with and without current assumptions regarding the nature of sovereignty. The West seems more inclined to encourage regional peacekeeping in African conflicts than to intervene itself. Herbert Howe of Georgetown University‘s School of Foreign Service examines the advantages posited for regional peacekeeping in light of the experience of the military intervention in Liberia’s civil war by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)Cease-fireMonitoring Group, known as ECOMOG. He draws sobering lessons for future interventions by regionalforces. Intermfrond Secuvity, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 3-4 01996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3 International Security 21:3 1 4 Finally, the democratic peace thesis is further debated in our correspondencesection. Charles Gochman of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Political Science challenges certain points argued by Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa in their Fall 1995 article in this journal; Farber and Gowa reply. NOTE TO CONTRIBUTORS International Security welcomes submissions on all aspects of security affairs. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, with notes double-spaced at the end. A length of 5,000-10,000 words is appropriate. To facilitate review, authors should send these copies to the Managing Editor with a brief abstract, should refrain from identifying themselves in their manuscripts, and should follow the International Security styleskeet , available from the journal's editorial offices: fax (617) 496-4403 or e-mail .For more guidance, see "How to Write for International Security: A Guide for Contributors" (Fall 1991). Current contents,an index to Vol.1-20, the stylesheet and Contributors' Guide and other useful information can be found on our websites. The journal's homepage is maintained by MlT Press at . ...