Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Starr: Coalitions and Future War
Harvey Starr, Coalitions and Future War: A Dyadic Study of Cooperationand Conflict (Beverly Hills, Calif: Sage Publications, 1975).
War is a driver and not only a driven variable. Countries that have been allies during war are more likely to be allies in the future.
“This hypothesis propose that war coalition partners will comprise dyads that in future mutual war involvement are more likely to be allies and much less likely to be enemies. In testing this hypothesis we will also be testing the assumption that the war coalition experience is important and ‘unique’. If the war coalition experience, as will be tested below, does not produce future patterns of behavior different from other contemporary and comparable forms of experience then we should not be focusing on war coalitions but upon some other, broader, experience. The assumption, implicit so far, is that the war coalition, as a form of international cooperation, is in some way a unique experience. Thus, in testing the above hypotheses we are testing two things: that war coalitions produce a special type of international experience; and that this experience is unique by producing future patterns of war involvement which tend heavily towards continued allied behavior” (8-9).
“Our working hypothesis may now be refined. We may propose that War Coalition Participant dyads will produce ‘t+k’ that are unique—that are statistically different from the patterns produced by Belligerent dyads and Non-Participant dyads. Moreover, War Coalition Participant dyads will be more likely to be come Allies at ‘t+k’, and less likely to become Enemies at ‘t+k’ than Belligerent dyads or Non-Participant dyads” (13).
“The most compelling result we have produced so far—the strongest influence—is that of simply being a war coalition partner. That fact is related to an overwhelmingly non-belligerent set of future relationships with one’s war coalition partners. After that we find a variety of tendencies, albeit weak ones, which explain to some degree why 28.3% of the War Coalition Participant dyads that do become involved in future war become involved as Enemies (Or, why 13.5% of all War Coalition Participant dyads ‘go bad,’ and become Enemies in the future)” (50).
This quote is from this publication: Skjelsbaek, K (1971): “Shared membership in interngovernmental organizations and dyadic war, 1865-1964” pp31-61 in E H Fedder [ed] The United Nations: Problems and Prospects. St Louis: Center for International Studies
‘The probability of a pair of nations becoming involved in war may be compared to the probability of persons getting lung cancer. In absolute terms both probabilities are very low. However, if a person smokes cigarettes, and a pair of nations substantially reduces its number of shared IGO memberships, the probabilities of getting lung cancer and fighting on opposite sides in a war, respectively, are relatively much higher than they would otherwise have been” (51).
“Finally, the very striking difference in groups based on different Major Power-Minor Power composition was revealed. Simply, dyads composed of two major powers were more likely to become Enemies in the future. Of the total 624 War Coalition Participant dyads, 84 were composed of two major powers. Of these Major/Major dyads, a full 36% became Enemies at t+k…Above analyses clearly indicate that major/major dyads are more likely than other dyads to become Enemies. However, after this there is very little that can be said for major/major dyads. They differ from minor/minor dyads across almost every hypothesis, and do so by producing no relationships with most of the variables” (52).
“If we look at three of the four best discriminatory variables—major power/minor, border, lastwar—we may be understandably pessimistic in observing that they offer a gloomy picture indeed. None of these variables are truly manipulable in the policy relevant sense that they can be altered easily by the conscious actions of officials. This argues for war as being a heavily ‘systemic’ phenomena, built into the status hierarchy of the international system via the major power/minor power dimension and relationships” (59).
Wright: A Study of War
Quincy Wright, A Study of War, Abridged ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).
Quincy Wright’s quantitative and philosophical treatise on various aspects of international conflict is rightfully decisive in the field. It represents a very early attempt (before data was even readily available) to take a macro-level account of the causes of different kinds of international conflict. However, to my chagrin, I boarded the plane with the abridged version of the book, which leaves out some of the most critical quantitative results which are said to be located in the appendix.
The famous Deutsch quote from the foreword: “War, to be abolished, must be understood. To be understood, it must be studied” (xii).
“In the broadest sense war is a violent contact of distinct but similar entities. In this sense a collision of stars, a fight between a lion and a tiger, a battle between two primitive tribes, and hostilities between two modern nations would all be war” (5).
Wright tends to analyze things in fours, typically with an analysis that takes a social, psychological, technical and legal frameworks. In terms of definitions, he substitutes philosophical for technological. The definitions of war from different frameworks are the following:
Sociological: “…socially recognized form of intergroup conflict involving violence”
Legal: “……usually followed Grotius’ conception of war as ‘the condition of those contending by force as such’” (5).
Philosophy: have focused on the “…degree in which military methods are employed” (6). Here he quotes Clausewitz.
Psychological: “…ignoring form, have found the substance of war in the degree of hostile attitude in the relation of states” (6).
“Whatever point of view is selected, war appears to be a species of wider genus” (7).
“Combining the four points of view, war is seen to be a state of law and a form of conflict involving a high degree of legal equality, of hostility, and of violence in the relations of organized human groups, or, more simply, the legal condition which equally permits two or more hostile groups to carry on a conflict by armed force” (7).
“It is to be observed that this definition implies sufficient social solidarity throughout the community of nations of which both belligerents and neutrals are members to permit general recognition of the behaviors and standards appropriate to the situation of war. Although war manifests the weakness of the community of nations, it also manifests the existence of that community” (7).
There is a general and persistent attempt to trace out a conceptual framework—across time—that can help to identify and map out different components of armed international conflict. Much of this is of no interest to me.
The causes of war, by social system:
Technological: “…war is a violent encounter of powers, each of which is conceived as a physical system with expansive tendencies…War occurs whenever the tension, arising from pressures and resistances on a given frontier, passes beyond the tolerance point and invasion occurs” (108).
Legal: “War may…be conceived as the consequence of the diversity of legal systems. Each state, because it claims legal sovereignty, assumes that its law must prevail whenever it extends, even on the high seas, over foreign territory, or over aliens” (110).
Sociological: “Wars may…be considered consequences of the contacts of diverse cultures” (111).
Psychological: “The tendency for individuals to concentrate their loyalties upon a concrete group and to concentrate their aggressive dispositions upon an external group makes it possible that an incident in the relations of the two groups will acquire a symbolic significance and stimulate mass reactions which may produce war” (113).
“With much oversimplification and with decreasing accuracy as civilization develops, it may be said that wars usually result (1) technologically, because of the need of political power confronted by rivals continually to increase itself in order to survive, (2) legally, because of the tendency fo a system of law to assume that the state is completely sovereign, (3) sociologically, because of the utility of external war as a means of integrating societies in time of emergency, and (4) psychologically, because persons cannot satisfy the human disposition to dominate except through identification with a sovereign group” (114).
“Explanations of war from the deterministic and voluntaristic points of view differ in degree rather than in kind, and they tend to approach each other as the knowledge and intelligence of the entity which initiates war approach zero or infinity. Determinism is a function either of matter or of God. Man, being superior to unconscious matter and lower than the angels, can exercise uncertain choices. If a government had no knowledge at all of the external word, its reactions would be entirely determined by the natural law defining the behavior of entities of its type in contact with an environment of the type within which it exists. It would have no more freedom than would a particle of matter obeying the laws of gravitation and inertia. On the other hand, if a government had perfect knowledge of the universe in which it exists, it would be able to frame policies and adopt methods which were certain to succeed without disabling costs. Proposals which did not conform to these conditions would not be accepted. Wars arise unpredictably because governments know something but not everything. Their image of other governments, of the world situation, and even of themselves, upon which their policies, decision, and actions are based, is always in some measure distorted” (115).
“Wars arise because of the changing relations of numerous variables—technological, psychic, social and intellectual. There is no single cause of war. Peace is an equilibrium among many forces. Change in any particular force, trend, movement or policy may at one time make for war, but under other conditions a similar change may make for peace. A state may at one time promote peace by armament, at another time by disarmament; at one time by insistence on its rights, at another time by a spirit of conciliation. To estimate the probability of war at any time involves, therefore, an appraisal of the effect of current changes upon the complex of intergroup relationships throughout the world” (351).
“War tends to increase both in frequency and in severity in times of rapid technological and cultural change because adjustment, which always involves habituation, is a function of time” (352).
Quincy Wright’s quantitative and philosophical treatise on various aspects of international conflict is rightfully decisive in the field. It represents a very early attempt (before data was even readily available) to take a macro-level account of the causes of different kinds of international conflict. However, to my chagrin, I boarded the plane with the abridged version of the book, which leaves out some of the most critical quantitative results which are said to be located in the appendix.
The famous Deutsch quote from the foreword: “War, to be abolished, must be understood. To be understood, it must be studied” (xii).
“In the broadest sense war is a violent contact of distinct but similar entities. In this sense a collision of stars, a fight between a lion and a tiger, a battle between two primitive tribes, and hostilities between two modern nations would all be war” (5).
Wright tends to analyze things in fours, typically with an analysis that takes a social, psychological, technical and legal frameworks. In terms of definitions, he substitutes philosophical for technological. The definitions of war from different frameworks are the following:
Sociological: “…socially recognized form of intergroup conflict involving violence”
Legal: “……usually followed Grotius’ conception of war as ‘the condition of those contending by force as such’” (5).
Philosophy: have focused on the “…degree in which military methods are employed” (6). Here he quotes Clausewitz.
Psychological: “…ignoring form, have found the substance of war in the degree of hostile attitude in the relation of states” (6).
“Whatever point of view is selected, war appears to be a species of wider genus” (7).
“Combining the four points of view, war is seen to be a state of law and a form of conflict involving a high degree of legal equality, of hostility, and of violence in the relations of organized human groups, or, more simply, the legal condition which equally permits two or more hostile groups to carry on a conflict by armed force” (7).
“It is to be observed that this definition implies sufficient social solidarity throughout the community of nations of which both belligerents and neutrals are members to permit general recognition of the behaviors and standards appropriate to the situation of war. Although war manifests the weakness of the community of nations, it also manifests the existence of that community” (7).
There is a general and persistent attempt to trace out a conceptual framework—across time—that can help to identify and map out different components of armed international conflict. Much of this is of no interest to me.
The causes of war, by social system:
Technological: “…war is a violent encounter of powers, each of which is conceived as a physical system with expansive tendencies…War occurs whenever the tension, arising from pressures and resistances on a given frontier, passes beyond the tolerance point and invasion occurs” (108).
Legal: “War may…be conceived as the consequence of the diversity of legal systems. Each state, because it claims legal sovereignty, assumes that its law must prevail whenever it extends, even on the high seas, over foreign territory, or over aliens” (110).
Sociological: “Wars may…be considered consequences of the contacts of diverse cultures” (111).
Psychological: “The tendency for individuals to concentrate their loyalties upon a concrete group and to concentrate their aggressive dispositions upon an external group makes it possible that an incident in the relations of the two groups will acquire a symbolic significance and stimulate mass reactions which may produce war” (113).
“With much oversimplification and with decreasing accuracy as civilization develops, it may be said that wars usually result (1) technologically, because of the need of political power confronted by rivals continually to increase itself in order to survive, (2) legally, because of the tendency fo a system of law to assume that the state is completely sovereign, (3) sociologically, because of the utility of external war as a means of integrating societies in time of emergency, and (4) psychologically, because persons cannot satisfy the human disposition to dominate except through identification with a sovereign group” (114).
“Explanations of war from the deterministic and voluntaristic points of view differ in degree rather than in kind, and they tend to approach each other as the knowledge and intelligence of the entity which initiates war approach zero or infinity. Determinism is a function either of matter or of God. Man, being superior to unconscious matter and lower than the angels, can exercise uncertain choices. If a government had no knowledge at all of the external word, its reactions would be entirely determined by the natural law defining the behavior of entities of its type in contact with an environment of the type within which it exists. It would have no more freedom than would a particle of matter obeying the laws of gravitation and inertia. On the other hand, if a government had perfect knowledge of the universe in which it exists, it would be able to frame policies and adopt methods which were certain to succeed without disabling costs. Proposals which did not conform to these conditions would not be accepted. Wars arise unpredictably because governments know something but not everything. Their image of other governments, of the world situation, and even of themselves, upon which their policies, decision, and actions are based, is always in some measure distorted” (115).
“Wars arise because of the changing relations of numerous variables—technological, psychic, social and intellectual. There is no single cause of war. Peace is an equilibrium among many forces. Change in any particular force, trend, movement or policy may at one time make for war, but under other conditions a similar change may make for peace. A state may at one time promote peace by armament, at another time by disarmament; at one time by insistence on its rights, at another time by a spirit of conciliation. To estimate the probability of war at any time involves, therefore, an appraisal of the effect of current changes upon the complex of intergroup relationships throughout the world” (351).
“War tends to increase both in frequency and in severity in times of rapid technological and cultural change because adjustment, which always involves habituation, is a function of time” (352).
Lee Ray: The Measurement of System Structure
“The Measurement of System Structure,” in Measuring the Correlates of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).
“We can think of few words that are so causally and imprecisely used as system and structure; this semantic permissiveness has even gone so far as to see them used interchangeably. Thus any pattern, order, or regularity—real or imagined—in the referent world may well be graced with the label ‘system’ or ‘structure.’ We mean, of course, to sue them rather more carefully here. By system, we mean an aggregation of social entities that share a common fate (Campbell 1958), or are sufficiently interdependent to have the actions of some consistently affect the behavior and fate of the rest. In addition, our definition of system is clearly distinct from those that focus on ‘systems of action’ and thus fail to specify which social entities constitute the system (Singer 1971). By the structure of the system we mean the way in which relationships are arranged, but this definition leaves unclear the distinction between two kinds of relationships, that is, those based on comparisons between and among states or other entities and those based on links or bonds between them. For example, if we refer to the concentration of military industrial capability in the international system, we are focusing on a structural attribute based on comparisons of the attributes of states. However, if we focus on the bipolarity of the system, we are then discussing a structural attribute that arises out of the links and bonds among states. It should also be pointed out that these two kinds of structural attributed are related in the sense that variation in one may produce variation in the other. For example, a concentration of military-industrial capability in the hands of two dominant states in the system may well lead to its bipolarization” (99-100).
“We have already mentioned one distinction that we find useful, that is, the distinction between structural attributes based on comparisons among states and those based on linkages and bonds. Both kinds of structural variables order states…either vertically or horizontally” (101).
This chapter is very interesting for my work and it contains a slew of relevant citations that need to be checked and reviewed.
“We can think of few words that are so causally and imprecisely used as system and structure; this semantic permissiveness has even gone so far as to see them used interchangeably. Thus any pattern, order, or regularity—real or imagined—in the referent world may well be graced with the label ‘system’ or ‘structure.’ We mean, of course, to sue them rather more carefully here. By system, we mean an aggregation of social entities that share a common fate (Campbell 1958), or are sufficiently interdependent to have the actions of some consistently affect the behavior and fate of the rest. In addition, our definition of system is clearly distinct from those that focus on ‘systems of action’ and thus fail to specify which social entities constitute the system (Singer 1971). By the structure of the system we mean the way in which relationships are arranged, but this definition leaves unclear the distinction between two kinds of relationships, that is, those based on comparisons between and among states or other entities and those based on links or bonds between them. For example, if we refer to the concentration of military industrial capability in the international system, we are focusing on a structural attribute based on comparisons of the attributes of states. However, if we focus on the bipolarity of the system, we are then discussing a structural attribute that arises out of the links and bonds among states. It should also be pointed out that these two kinds of structural attributed are related in the sense that variation in one may produce variation in the other. For example, a concentration of military-industrial capability in the hands of two dominant states in the system may well lead to its bipolarization” (99-100).
“We have already mentioned one distinction that we find useful, that is, the distinction between structural attributes based on comparisons among states and those based on linkages and bonds. Both kinds of structural variables order states…either vertically or horizontally” (101).
This chapter is very interesting for my work and it contains a slew of relevant citations that need to be checked and reviewed.
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