This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Change Without War, given by Alistair Buckin, was originally broadcast in 1973.

We dwell for the moment in a less strife-laden international order than that through which my generation has passed.

It is a minor but noteworthy fact that the past few months,

that is since Congress Force President Nixon to halt American bombing in Cambodia,

is almost the first time in the past 42 years

since the Japanese marched into Manchuria in 1931

that a great power has not been involved in armed conflict somewhere in the world.

There is also another source of reassurance.

We have solved the principal problems of legitimacy created by the Cold War,

one or two Chinas, a united or divided Germany, two or one Vietnam's.

Much of my earlier lectures in this series were concerned

with the cycle of change we are entering and the problems it presents. Tonight, I would

like to speculate about how we may control and adapt to further changes, for we cannot simply

be content with our achievements. They have, after all,

been terrible conflicts, famines or depressions in periods when neither ideology or legitimacy was a prime

issue. Let me start tonight with a thumbnail sketch of what I think the framework of power

may be by the end of the 1970s. The Soviet Union and the United States will

develop a series of specific understandings to keep their strategic relationships stable and to

attempt to restrain conflict in areas where they cannot escape commitment, notably Europe and

the Middle East. The structure of strategic power will

remain bipolar, though it will gradually have to adapt itself to the inclusion of China as a partner

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