From the global reach of television to the danger of global warming, from the green revolution to the massive deployment of nuclear weapons, advances in science and technology have become the most powerful and persistent forces leading to societal change. This is the first comprehensive attempt to show how changes in science and technology affect the world political system - and are affected by it. Eugene Skolnikoff, who has devoted his professional life as an academic and policymaker to this subject, examines the impact of science and technology across the entire range of relations among nations, including security and economic issues, environmental questions, international economic competitiveness, the spread of weapons technology, the demise of communism, the new content of dependency relations, and the demanding new problems of national and international governance. Skolnikoff shows how the structure and operation of scientific and technological enterprises have interacted with international affairs to produce the dramatic evolution of world politics witnessed in this century, particularly after World War II. He questions, however, whether the underlying principles of the nation-state system have been appreciably changed as a result, and concludes that, with few exceptions, the fundamental assumptions of international affairs have not been altered. The "elusive transformation" remains just that - the present international system is likely to continue without basic change for the foreseeable future.