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Abstracts
Admiral Stansfield Turner, one of the best-known Americans in the field of national security studies and a former director of Central Intelligence, starts his article by pointing out that more than 35,000 nuclear warheads exist in the world today. Taking as the basis of his recommendations that unsettling fact, he examines conceptions and misconceptions tending to impede nuclear disarmament in this post-Cold War age. Admiral Turner concludes with a considered, persuasive argument for a step-by-step process, which he terms "strategic escrow," leading not to total disarmament, but rather to significant reductions in the numbers of nuclear power arsenals.
As the second installment in its presentation of the Triangle Institute for Security Study's January 1998 confenence on public opinion and American foreign policy, Professor Goodnight's paper introduces the reader to "argument spheres" in the field of communication studies. He focuses on standards for the evaluation of argument in different contexts and how contemporary argument styles place public discourse — on foreign affairs issues, for example — at risk. Of interest in his presentation are his analytical methods and concerns.
Introduced by comment on policy from a former senior Department of State official concerned with Nigerian affairs, the narrative by American Diplomacy editor Henry Mattox recounts his experiences in that country, not as a diplomat, but in the status of a Fulbright scholar teaching history at an up-country university. Some of his experiences he found rewarding; some he found to be not all that much fun. Read on to find out which was which.