Volume 11, Number 2, 1980

EN:

In the study of international relations, as indeed in all of the social sciences, reflections about the future are becoming increasingly numerous. They indicate frequently moreover a desire for systemization through recourse to rigourous techniques and procedures: the Delphi technique, the construction of scenarios, Systems analysis, operations research, decision matrices, graph theory, game theory, etc. This leads us to conclude often that the forecasting approach in international relations is undergoing a major quantitative and qualitative evolution.

We seek to show however in this analysis that, contrary to appearances, forecasting research in international relations is characterized above all today by great epistemological weakness and by a remarkable incoherence, and that it is not therefore, for the most part, equal to its pretensions. We will attempt to determine why this is the case and if this situation is likely to change. In doing so, we will seek to identify both the possibilities and the limits of forecasting in this field.

EN:

Margaret Doxey has argued that there exists a "rhetoric gap" between the lofty pronouncements of Canadian governments on the question of human rights violations by other governments in the international System and the actions of the Canadian government. This paper argues that specific external constraints will hamper any attempt by governments in Ottawa to transform the rhetoric of official statements into direct policy action. This paper examines Indonesian-Canadian relations during the 1970s as a case study, and concludes that economic, strategic and diplomatic imperatives and interests proved more compelling than concerns over the treatment of political prisoners by the government of General Suharto, or concerns over the Indonesian invasion of Timor. The specific case study suggests a more general observation about human rights and Canadian foreign policy : that where trade-offs must be made, economic and diplomatic interests will tend to prevail over concerns about human rights violations.

EN:

Following upon the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea begun in 1973, the principal maritime States of the world assumed exclusive national jurisdiction over a 12- mile zone extending from their coastlines and a 188-mile economic zone beyond territorial waters. Together they constitute the more familiarly referred to « 200-mile zone ». This new practice radically changed the political geography of the oceans, lessened the area within which the freedom of the seas exists, diminished by more than a third the surface area of the high seas and dealt a heavy blow to the fishing xpeditions of foreign trawlers. Canada is one of the principal users and one of the most vigourous defenders of the 200-mile principle for geographical reasons as much as for economic or political ones. The excessive exploitation of the seabed has been felt to be a threat for a portion of the population of the Eastern part of Canada. A firm policy criticized for being somewhat unilateral has enabled Canada to eliminate foreign fleets from its 200-mile zone. Over a period of 30 years the International Commission for North-West Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF) attempted to introduce a positive international cooperation in order to eliminate the anarchic excessive exploitation. It was replaced in 1979 by the North-West Atlantic Fisheries Organization. A major dispute exists between France and Canada with respect to the delimitation of the economic zone of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, French land since 1604. More generally, the question is posed as to how long the 200-mile principle will prevail in this new political geography of the oceans.

EN:

Just as reflection on international development is suffering from a certain shortness of breath, so are the dynamics of technico-industrial growth becoming weaker. This study seeks to demonstrate how this double falling off originates in the weaknesses manifest in the energy reasonings of the mechanical logic which latter directs the ideology and the material basis of economic and social development.

After having first summarized the classical'paradigm of mechanical growth, the study recapitulates the principal argumentation of the theoretical model of the thermodynamicists of development and of their critique of the classical paradigm. The study also stresses how both eliminate from their analyses of the process of the economic ans social development of nations that human energy of the unexpected and the contradictory that is born of the meeting of multiple historical experiences, of the impacting of the « similar » and the « different » and which produces, as the ultimate mutation, the ecumenical history of the international dynamic. The perspective brought to the area of study may be summarized therefore by this question both so simple and at the same time so complicated: how does one sustain the diversity of cultures, respect the experience of Others, live with them without reducing them to silence, without co- opting them, without thinking that all the roads of History lead toward us.