Knorr: The War Potential of Nations

Knorr, Klaus Eugen. The War Potential of Nations. Greenwood Press Reprint, 1978.

 “This book is meant to contribute to a theory of war potential.  The term ‘war potential’ is used frequently in literature, press, lectures, and classroom discussion, yet its meaning is usually hazy and the literature to which the student might turn for consultation is inadequate” (vii).  The book is interested in economic, industrial, and morale components of war potential.

“Military means is one of the instruments through which nations attempt to settle international conflicts of interest.  Since the instrument is used to influence the behavior of other nations, military power is necessarily relative to that of other nations…Military power is subject to change for two reasons.  A nation’s power may rise or fall because there are changes in the power constituents of other nations or because there is a change in its own means of waging war” (19). 

“Short of battle, there is no precise test or measurement of mobilized military power” (28).

“In this sense, ‘war potential’ is simply a collective term for all the relevant elements of military strength other than the armed forces themselves” (40).

“For example, the following list of components have been drawn up by five different authors:”  (40):

This is Nicholas Spykman in America’s Strategy in World Politics: 

“(1) Size of territory; nature of frontiers; size of population; absence or presence of raw materials; economic and technological development; financial strength’ ethnic homogeneity’ effective social integration’ political stability’ and national spirit.” (40) 

This is Morgenthau in In Defense of the National Interest:

“(2) Geography; natural resources; industrial capacity; military preparedness; population; national character; national morale; quality of diplomacy.” (41) 

This is Gulick in Administrative Reflections from World War II:

“(3) Manpower; raw materials; capital investments; science, technology, and research; organizations and institutions (including government and economic and social institutions).” (41) 

This is Steinmetz:

“(4) Population (size and structure); size of territory; wealth; political institutions; leadership; national unity and cohesion; respect and friends abroad; moral qualities.” (41)

This is Fischer:

“ (5) Political factors:  geographical position; size of state and number and density of population; organizational skill and cultural level; kinds of frontiers and attitudes of neighboring countries.  Psychological factors:  economic flexibility and inventive skill; perseverance and adaptability of the population.  Economic factors:  fertility of soil and mineral wealth; industrial organization and stage of technology; development of commerce and transportation; and financial strength” (41).

This list is debilitating.  So the author makes three broad categories:  economic capacity, institutional acumen, and war motivation.

“If it is hard to measure and compare the ready striking power of nations, it is still harder to measure and compare their war potential and hence their total military power, of which potential is a major, and at most time the predominant, part…How can we measure administrative competence, motivation for war, and economic capacity?  How can the various components of these aggregates be measured?  Even if we could measure the three broad constituents of potential, how can we measure and compare the total war potential so long as our units of measurement are incommensurable?” (47).

Miller: States, Nations and the Great Powers

Miller, Benjamin. 2007. States, Nations, and the Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace. Cambridge studies in international relations 104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“”I argue that if we approach the question of war and peace from the regional perspective, we may gain new insights which are otherwise obscured. The new theory developed here thus offers an explanation of the variations between war and peace within and among regions. It explains why some regions are particularly war-prone , while others are so peaceful that war among the regional states has become practically unthinkable” (1).

“What I call the ‘state-to-nation-balance’ is the key underlying cause that affects the disposition of a region toward war…The state-to-nation balance refers to the degree of congruence between the division of the region into territorial states and the national aspirations and political identifications of the region’s peoples. This balance also refers to the prevalence of strong versus weak states in the region. There is a nation-to-state imbalance when there is a lack of congruence between states and national identifications and at least some of the regional states are weak states” (2).

“…I argue that the old and apparently irreconcilable divide between systemic and regional/domestic explanations of state behavior may be bridged, and this books offers a theoretical synthesis that shows how a fruitful and compelling theoretical coexistence may be created within different schools of IR scholarship, and between IR scholarship and comparative politics” (3).

Both regional and global drivers explain the occurrence of international conflict. “Regional/domestic factors are responsible for hot outcomes; global factors are responsible for cold outcomes” (13).

Argues that there are “outside-in” and “inside-out” explanations for the cause of international conflict. The main drawback of these accounts is that they don’t take each other into consideration.

The author argues that most previous theory has treated the causes of war and peace as being separate. Instead, we should be looking at why certain regions are more or less war-prone than others, which takes into consideration both drivers of peace and war.

Dupuy: Understanding War

Trevor N Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon House, 1987).

“Students of military art and military science have long sought fundamental laws or theories that would explain the interactions of military forces in combat and the outcomes of battles” (xxi). This book attempts to highlight these patterns, as the authors believe that they occur regularly. The focus of the study is military history.

“Although no one can possibly know now what the next war will really be like, there can be no question that the emotional, conceptual and intellectual aspects of combat through the ages are basically the same in war after war…Over the past twenty-five years I have, I believe, identified thirteen unchanging operational features or concepts, which I call “The Timeless Verities of Combat” (1).

Blainey: The Causes of War

Blainey, Geoffrey. 1973. The Causes of War. New York: Free Press.

This book is a wide ranging exploration of the causes of war and peace. The author refers to its structure as an "intellectual detective story" (vii), and proceeds to explore and adjudicate a large chunk of extant literature, keeping some insights, and tossing others away.

The book begins with a claim that, "for every thousand pages published on the causes of wars there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace" (3). Many of the theories explored in the first two chapters are arcane, and are not explorations of the causal dynamics of international conflict, but rather the identification of a certain possibly correlated variable (ie., there is a certain amount of energy that a society has, and it can be for international conflict or domestic, or that this energy can be used in building the economy, or that there is a process of jingoism, war and then weariness, which eventually leads to more war (87), etc).


Theories of war explore, in part, perceptions about the likelihood of victory, finding that many who perceive wars to be winnable and short are likely to engage. Though, when this happens from two sides, it becomes problematic, as both sides cannot win.

"A prediction of a war about to be fought is thus a crystallization of many moods and arguments, each of which has some influence on the decision to make war" (54).

Potential alliances also inform the decision to go to war.

There was previously a relationship between wars and the deaths/succession of monarchs.

Few wars are started in December and January.

The discussion of balance of power is interesting. Is it the balancing of power that makes for more peace, or is it the hegemon that makes for a peaceful environment? This is a crucial question in the study of international conflict. "The idea that an even distribution of power promotes peace has gained strength partly because it has never been accompanied by tangible evidence. Like a ghost it has not been captured and examined for pallor and pulsebeat" (112).

On the interaction of diplomats: "In peace time the relations between two diplomats are like relations between two merchants. While the merchants trade in copper or transistors, the diplomats' transactions involve a variety of other issues which they have in common. A foreign minister or diplomat is a merchant who bargains on behalf of his country. He is both buyer and seller, though he buys and sells privileges and obligations rather than commodities. The treaties he signs are simply more courteous versions of commercial contracts"
(115).

"Wars usually end when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength, and wars usually begin when fighting nations disagree on their relative strength" (122).

“One may suggest that nations, in assessing their relative strength, were influenced by seven main factors: military strength and the ability to apply that strength efficiently in the chosen zone of war; predictions of how outside nations would behave in the event of war; perceptions of internal unity and of the unity or discord of the enemy; memory or forgetfulness of the realities and sufferings of war; perceptions of prosperity and of ability to sustain, economically, the kind of war envisaged; national and ideology; and the personality and mental qualities of the leaders who weigh the evidence and decide for peace or war” (123).

Skipped book 3.

Singer: Correlates of War: I

Singer, JD. 1978. The Correlates of War. New York: Free Press.

The Correlates of War project has provided much literature and remains a foundational cut in the study of global conflict. Singer is obviously the god-father of this project, and, while it has found many detractors, it has undoubtedly moved the debate about state instability and war in new directions.

Volume one of the series represents Singer's own work, primarily. It begins by exploring some of the potential cause of war, such as arms build-up, and the logic behind such transactions. It explores issues widely, arguing for the normative study of conflict following a scientific method. It is also adequately, in my opinion, cautious about the veracity of what can be known in the field of conflict, as well as more broadly within the social sciences; the projects is intentionally titled the "correlates" and not the "causes".

When he moves into discussions of prediction, he argues for more thorough use of computer simulations in place of games, intuition and other methods where assumptions are not made as explicit as possible. Through computer simulations, scholars must make the variables, parameters and theories used in their models explicit. This is seen as being valuable.

The experiments in this book are directed at wars between nations. Some basic and standard statistical methods are used to explore bivariate and multivariate relationships between independent variables as they explain the output of war.

Much of the book reads pedantically.

Gilpin: The Theory of Hegemonic War

Gilpin, R., 1988. The Theory of Hegemonic War. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18(4), 591-613.

“The essential idea embodied in Thucydides’ theory of hegemonic war is that fundamental changes in the international system are the basic determinants of such wars. The structure of the system or distribution of power among the states in the system can be stable or unstable. A stable system is one in which changes can take place if they do not threaten the vital interests of the dominant states and thereby cause a war among them…An unstable system is one in which economic, technological, and other changes are eroding the international hierarchy and undermining the position of the hegemonic state” (592).

Gilpin highlights three characteristics of hegemonic stability theory from the above quotation. The first, is that hegemonic stability theory relies on a different set of drivers than does other systemic level theories of the cause of war: it relies on exploring the broader changes in political and economic drivers. Secondly, states in an international system, broadly speaking, will interact strategically. Finally, hegemonic war does change and threaten the stability and structure of the international system.

“In summary, according to Thucydides, a great or hegemonic war, like a disease, follows a discernible and recurrent course. The initial phase is a relatively stable international system characterized by a hierarchical ordering of states with a dominant or hegemonic power. Over time, the power of some subordinate state begins to grow disproportionately; as this development occurs, it comes into conflict with the hegemonic state. The struggle between these contenders for preeminence and their accumulating alliances leads to a bipolarization of the system…As this bipolarization occurs the system becomes increasingly unstable, and a monic war, like a disease, displays discernible symptoms and follows an inevitable course.” (594-5).

Van Evera: Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict

Van Evera, S., 1999. Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict, Cornell University Press.

“What caused the great wars of modern times? Of those causes, which h were preventable? What are the likely causes of future wars, and how can those wars best be prevented?” (1).

Van Evera puts fourth 5 hypotheses that are followed up upon in distinct chapters:

“H1. War is more likely when states fall prey to false optimism about its outcome.
H2. War is more likely when the advantage lies with the first side to mobilize or attack.
H3. War is more likely when the relative power of states fluctuates sharply—that is, when windows of opportunity and vulnerability are large.
H4. War is more likely when resources are cumulative—that is, when control of resources enables a state to protect or acquire other resources.
H5. War is more likely when conquest is easy.” (4).

H1: “…war is more likely when governments exaggerate their own chances of winning crises and wars, or when they underestimate the cost of war. If the losing side could foresee the outcome, it would often decline to fight” (5).

H2: “…war is markedly more likely when the first side to mobilize or attack has the advantage…It leads states to launch preemptive attacks to prevent an opponent from getting in the first blow. It also leads states to conceal their capabilities and grievances, from fear that open displays of strength or grievance could trigger another’s preemptive attack” (5).

H3: “…fluctuations in the relative power of states…cause war by tempting states to launch preventative attack, by accelerating diplomacy to unsafe speeds, and by making agreements less valuable” (5).

H4: “…war is more likely when resources are cumulative…Some resources are highly cumulative…Others are less so…States must compete more fiercely for control of more cumulative resources, because their gain or loss spells further gains or losses. Hence the greater the cumulatively of conquerable resources, the greater the risk of war” (5).

H5: “…war is far more likely when conquest is easy” (5).

“How much war can these five hypotheses explain? I argue that the causes of war they identify are potent when presented, but four of the five [all except false optimism] are rather rare in the real world, especially in the modern world. Thus they explain only a moderate amount of history as such. They explain a great deal of history, however, if they are recast as hypotheses on the effects of false exceptions of the dangers they frame. In fact, these misperceptions are common: states often exaggerate the size of first-move advantages, the size of windows of opportunity and vulnerability, the degree of resource cumulatively, and the ease of conquest. They then adopt war causing policies in response to these illusions” (6).

The author then discusses the difference between gross power and fine-grained power.

Faber and Gowa: Politics and Peace

Faber, H. & Gowa, J., 1995. Politics and Peace. International Security, 20(2), 123-146.

“First, we find that there is no statistically significant relationship between democracy and war before 1914…Our analysis shows that it is only after 1945 that the probability of war or serious disputes is significantly lower between democratic states than between members of other pairs of states” (124).

“the democratic peace literature advances two explanations for the distinctive behavior of democracies. One is based on norms, the other on checks and balances. In this section, we argue that neither provides a compelling explanation of the peace that is said to prevail between democracies” (126).

“The evidence we analyzed suggests that the democratic peace is of relatively recent origin. Indeed, it coincides with the Cold War. Whether the post-1945 result is the product of common polities is, at best, unclear. The onset of the Cold War precipitated strong common interests among a relatively large number of democratic states” (145).

Mansfield and Snyder: Democratization and the Danger of War

Mansfield, E. & Snyder, J., 1995. Democratization and the Danger of War. International Security, 20, 5-38.

It is generally held that democracies do not go to war with one another. It is such a cornerstone of common sense that the concepts finds itself embedded in foreign policy decisions and explanation. While it is more than likely true that a world of stable and mature democracies is generally more peaceful for all, these authors contend, it is not the case that simply a democratic regime necessitates stability. The authors argue that democratic transitions are actually quite dangerous periods of instability. “In this transitional phase of democratization, countries become more aggressive and war-prone, not less, and they do fight wars with democratic states” (5).

Transitioning democracies are generally more likely to fight wars than either mature autocracies or mature democracies.

“Much of the research on the democratic peace has relied on statistical tests, which indicate that democracies become involved in wars about as frequently as other states, but that by reasonably restrictive definitions, they have never fought each other” (9).

These authors use the same database and argue that there is statistical significance that democratizing states do go to war. The distinction between democratic and democratizing states is crucial. “We consider states to be democratizing if, during a given period of time, they change from autocracy to either anocracy or democracy, or if they change from anocracy to democracy. Conversely, states are autocratizing if they change from democracy to autocracy or anocracy, or from anocracy to autocracy” (9). “We found that democratizing states were more likely to fight wars than were states that had undergone no regime change” (12).

de Mesquita: The War Trap Revisited

de Mesquita, B., 1985. The War Trap Revisited: A Revised Expected Utility Model.”. The American Political Science Review, 79(1), 156-177.

“An expected utility approach to the study of international politics offers both the opportunity to deduce propositions about international conflict, and, through the application of admittedly crude indicators, to evaluate the usefulness of those propositions as explanations of actual behavior” (156).

“My main objective here is to reconstruct the model so that it reflects risk through the introduction of concavity or convexity into the utility functions. In doing so, it is imperative that the model give each actor the opportunity to have a differently shaped utility function, with the extremity of the function’s curvature embodying the extremity of the decision maker’s willingness (or reluctance) to take chances” (156). The second goal of this piece deals with the relative subjectivity of actor’s perceived utility: de Mesquita attempts to build the model to avoid interpersonal comparisons.

This addition to The War Trap was then explored through game theory rationalist models using both the convex and concave curves for either risk averse or risk acceptant actors to determine the relative utility different actors put in potentially conflictual contexts.

Kirshner: The Changing Calculus of Conflict?

Kirshner, J., 2007. The Changing Calculus of Conflict? Security Studies, 16(4), 583-597.

Kirshner addresses Brooks Producing Security text in four parts. Firstly, he looks at what the book has added to the field. Next, he critically evaluates those potential contributions. Thirdly, he questions the underlying theme of the book: that the globalization of production has altered the cost of conflict. His main contention is that the argument si oversold. Finally, Kirshner argues about how globalization may be possibly altering the changing nature of conflict.

Brooks argues that the globalization of production is fundamentally a more important and causal phenomena affecting the world today, more important, than, for example, international trade. “In particular, the fragmentation of the production process across some states is fundamentally different from simpler forms of transnational production (and an entirely different animal from overseas investments in extracting raw materials)” (584). Brooks also points out that the embellishment of truly autarchic defense production is now so costly as to be prohibitive. “Interdependence is not uniformly good or bad but influences international politics in different ways depending on its interactions with additional variables” (586).

Kirshner does not believe that Brooks is ultimately successful in explaining how much the calculus of conflict has changed in the face of globalization. While Brooks is clear that globalization of production does imply three problems: namely, the impossibility of fully autonomous defense production, reduced benefit economically for military adventure and deep regional economic integration, he doesn’t make the case for how strongly these three security questions may affect the changing calculus of conflict in globalization.

Maoz and Russett: Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace

Maoz, Z. & Russett, B., 1993. Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946-1986. American Political Science Review, 87(3), 624-638.

“Democratic states are in general about as conflict—and war—prone as non-democracies, but democracies have rarely clashed with one another in violent conflict. We first show that democracy, as well as other factors, accounts for the relative lack of conflict. Then we examine two explanatory models. The normative model suggests that democracies do not fight each other because norms of compromise and cooperation prevent their conflicts of interest from escalating into violent clashes. The structural model asserts that complex political mobilization processes impose institutional constraints on the leaders of two democracies confronting each other…” (624). They find that democracy has a mitigating effect on conflict, that both of their models support this causally and that the normative model is more robust.

Normative Model:

Two assumptions: “States, to the extent possible, externalize the norms of behavior that are developed within and characterize their domestic political processes and instiotutions” and “The anarchic nature of international politics implies that a clash between democratic and nondemocratic norms is dominated by the latter, rather than by the former” (625).

Structural Model:

Two assumptions: “International challenges require political leaders to mobilize domestic support to their policies. Such support must be mobilized from those groups that provide the leadership the kind of legitimacy that is required for international action” and “Shortcuts to political mobilization of relevant political support can be accomplished only in situations that can be appropriately described as emergencies” (626).

They also explore other possible explanations for the observed peace between certain countries. It could be determined by relative wealth. It could also have to do with alliances since WWII. These are taken into consideration in their statistical model.

They then explore the IV of democracy using Polity IV numbers and the DV of war using COW numbers. They find that their three hypotheses stand up to scrutiny (H1: general Dem Peace, H2: Norm model, H3: Structure model) and that the normative model is more robust than the structural model.

Mansfield: The Distribution of Wars Over Time

Mansfield, E., 1988. The Distribution of Wars Over Time. World Politics.

“Political scientists and other scholars have displayed a lively interest in the distribution of wars over time. A variety of research has been conducted on the subject, and the implications of these studies are important: only through empirical research can we hope to identify patterns, trends, and possible causes of warfare…In this paper, I shall try to determine the extent to which various well-known empirical findings concerning the distribution of war over time are sensitive to the particular data set employed. I then will present preliminary tests of some additional hypotheses concerning the factors influencing the probability of war, and ascertain whether—and, if so, how—the results depend on the inclusion of all wars or only of wars involving major powers” (21).

Mansfield makes the point that different data sets about war come to different conclusions about the causes of war and the conditions of peace based on what is coded as being a war and what is not coded as being a war. This clearly affects the results of different statistical analyses. The causes for this discrepancies lies with three things: how to define war, the level at which war is analyzed and finally how wars are dated (27-8).

He fits the data of the various authors to a Poisson distribution and finds that they mostly fit nicely, though de Mesquita’s did not.

Mansfield also compares Kondratieff cycles and the onset of great-power wars. Goldstein argues that there is no correlation between either upswings or downswings in the economy and the onset of war. Other authors disagree and argue that there is a correlation between upswings and war. Mansfield argues (briefly) that there is a correlation between long-range economic cycles and wars.

He tests the relationship between trade interdependence and war. Mansfield finds that there is an increased likelihood of war when a country moves either from being more open vis-à-vis trade or less open and conflict.

He tests the relationship between hegemony and war and finds that there is a correlation between the existence of a hegemon and the increased likelihood of war, though his overall finding is that this is not significant and that the existence of a hegemon nether necessitates peace or war.

Van Evera: The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War

Van Evera, S., 1984. The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War. International Security, 9(1), 58-107.

“This article will argue that the cult of the offensive was a principal cause of the First World war, creating or magnifying many of the dangers which historians blame for causing the July crisis and rendering it uncontrollable. The following section will first outline the growth of the cult of the offensive in Europe in the years before the war, and then sketch the consequences which international relations theory suggests should follow from it. The second section will outline consequences which the cult produced in 1914 and the final section will suggest conclusions and implications for current American policy” (58).

When offensive is prioritized in military strategy, this can be problematic it does not conform to events on the ground. In the advent to WWI, the prevailing thinking was that offensive fighting would win the day, and that any battle would be over quickly as the invention of more and more brutal means of killing people had created an irrational exuberance about their deployment. This proved to be catastrophic, as long, trench-based battles emerged. The predicted short slot turned quickly into a muddy quagmire.

The remainder of the article supports the notion that the “cult of the offensive” was a clear driver of the brutal nature of WWI, which is in line with Jervis’ formulation concerning offensively minded worlds being more dangerous.

Mearsheimer: Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War

Mearsheimer, J., 1990. Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War. International Security, 15(1), 5-56.

“The profound changes now underway in Europe have been widely viewed as harbingers of a new age of peace. With the Cold War over, it is said, the threat of war that has hung over Europe for more than four decades is lifting…This article assess this optimistic view by exploring in detail the consequences for Europe of an end to the Cold War. Specifically, I examine the effects of a scenario under which the Cold War comes to a complete end” (5).

“I argue that the p0rospects for major crises and war in Europe are likely to increase markedly if the Cold War ends and this scenario unfolds. The next decades in a Europe without the superpowers would probably not be as violent as the first 45 years of this century, but would probably be substantially more prone to violence than the past 45 years” (6).

“Specifically, the absence of war in Europe since 1945 has been a consequence of three factors: the bipolar distribution of military power on the Continent; the rough military equality between the two states comprising the two poles in Europe…and the fact that each superpower was armed with a large nuclear arsenal” (6-7).

“Four principal scenarios are possible. Under the first scenario, Europe would become nuclear-free, thus eliminating a central pillar of order in the Cold War era. Under the second scenario, the European states do not expand their arsenals to compensate for the departure of the superpowers’ weapons. IN a third scenario, nuclear proliferation takes place, but is mismanaged; no steps are taken to dampen the many dangers inherent in the proliferation process…In the fourth and least dangerous scenario, nuclear weapons proliferate in Europe, but the process is well-managed by the current nuclear powers. They take steps to deter preventative strikes on emerging nuclear powers, to set boundaries on the proliferation process…This outcome probably provides the best hope for maintaining peace in Europe” (8).

He then highlights the possibility of three counter arguments being posited. The first is the standard liberal claim that economic interdependence will reduce conflict. The second is democratic peace considerations. The third involves a degree of collective self-awareness amongst Europeans. “But the theories behind these arguments are flawed, as I explain; hence their prediction of peace in a multipolar Europe is flawed as well” (8).

The pre-1945 Europe was quite violent because there were no nuclear weapons and there was a multipolar world. The post 45 world was more peaceful because of bipolarity. “A bipolar system is more peaceful for three main reasons. First, the number of conflict dyads is fewer, leaving fewer possibilities for war. Second, deterrence is easier, because imbalances of power are fewer and more easily averted. Third, the prospects for deterrence are greater because miscalculations of relative power and of opponents’ resolve are fewer and less likely” (14).

Mearsheimer supports these theses in the remainder of the text.

Mearsheimer and Walt: An Unnecessary War

Mearsheimer, J. & Walt, S., 2003. An Unnecessary War. Foreign Policy, 134(1), 2003.

*this was a word document version of the article, so pagination may be problematic

“In the full-court press for war with Iraq, the Bush administration deems Saddam Hussein reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational. Such a man, when mixed with nuclear weapons, is too unpredictable to be prevented from threatening the United States, the hawks say. But scrutiny of his past dealings with the world shows that Saddam, though cruel and calculating, is eminently deterrable” (1).

The main argument of those that support the preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that Saddam could not be trusted with nuclear weapons and that, for this reason alone, he had to go. Even though proponents of the preemptive attack on Saddam acknowledged that the war could lead to a costly occupation, they believed that a nuclear armed Saddam was not tolerable.

Mearsheimer and Walt explore the notion that Saddam was a mad-man. They find that the Iran-Iraq war of the 80s was defensive, from the Iraqi perspective. The invasion of Kuwait can also be seen as being rational: Kuwait was being non-compliant and diplomatic alternatives were exhausted and the US seemed to signal that it would not involve itself in the matter. What about Saddam’s use of chemical and biological weapons on his own people? That calculation taken on the part of Saddam was also through a metric that didn’t see those people possibly responding in a way that would be damaging to Saddam’s critical interests. The calculation of using WMDs against Western targets would be radically different. Also, Saddam used these chemical and biological weapons at a time when we were, and remained, friends of him and Iraq. The US can contain Iraq, even a nuclear armed Iraq, as it did the Soviet Union.

What about the possibility of a “nuclear handoff”? (7). Firstly, Iraq and al Qaeda have no substantive proven connection. In fact, prior to 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and al Qaeda were in a state of war as the former was a secular Arab nation and the later proponed theocracy. Secondly, if Iraq wanted to secretively transfer a nuke to a terrorist organization, it would be difficult to imagine that the weapon would not be ultimately traced back to Saddam.

“If the United States is, or soon will be, at war with Iraq, Americans should understand that a compelling strategic rationale is absent. This war would be one the Bush administration chose to fight but did not have to fight. Even if such a war goes well and has positive long-range consequences, it will still have been unnecessary. And if it goes badly—whether in the form of high U.S. casualties, significant civilian deaths, a heightened risk of terrorism, or increased hatred of the United States in the Arab and Islamic world—then its architects will have even more to answer for” (9).

Levy: The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace

Levy, J., 1998. The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace. Annual Reviews in Political Science, 1(1), 139-165.

“I organize this review and assessment of the literature on the causes of war around a levels-of-analysis framework and focus primarily on balance of power theories, power transition theories, the relationship between economic interdependence and war, diversionary theories of conflict, domestic coalitional theories, and the nature of decision-making under risk and uncertainty” (139).

Dependent Variable: War: Large-scale violence between political units. “To differentiate war from lesser levels of violence, they generally follow the Correlates of War Project’s operational requirement of a minimum…of 1000 battle-related fatalities” (141).

System level explanations for war: Realism. The main division in realism is the debate between hegemonic theories and balance of power theories. Hegemonic theories downplay the role of anarchy and focus on power transition and allows for hierarchy. Liberalism: trade interdependence and peace.

Societal Level Theories: Democratic peace and its off-shoots, some Marxist examples, regime type and its comparison to propensity for war.

Individual Level Theories: “Individual-level theories assume (a) that external and internal structures and social forces are not translated directly into foreign policy choices; (b) that key decision-makers vary in their definitions of state interests, assessments of threats to those interests, and/or beliefs as to the optimum strategies to achieve those interests; and (c) that differences in the content of actors’ belief systems in the psychological processes through which they acquire information and make judgments and decisions and in their personalities and emotional states are important intervening variables in explaining observed variation in state behaviors with respect to issues of war and peace” (157).

In terms of general trends, there has been a move away from great power types of conflict, and a move towards small-scale conflicts. There is also an increase in research focused on “…rivalries, bargaining, territorial contiguity, trade…” (159).

Jervis: Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace

Jervis, R., 2002. Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace. American Political Science Review, 96(1), 1-14.

“The motor of international politics has been war among the leading states” (1).

“But I would argue that war among the leading great powers…will not occur in the future, and indeed is no longer a source of concern for them” (1).

“Security communities are not unprecedented. But what is unprecedented is that the states that constitute this one are the leading members of the international system and so are natural rivals that in the past were central to the violent struggle for security, power, and contested values”
(1).

“Five questions arise. First, does the existence of the Community mean the end of security threats to its members and, more specifically, to the United States? Second, will the Community endure? Third, what are the causes of its construction and maintenance? Fourth, what are the implications of this transformation for the conduct of international affairs? Finally, what does this say about theories of the causes of war?” (2).

Does the Community mean the end of security threats? Of course not entirely, though they become quite unlikely among the Community.

Explanations for the origin and continuation of the Community: Constructivists: changing norms and identities; Liberals: increased information, the base of power is very broad, the public will suffer from war and they make the decisions, more likely to be linked via trade, international organization membership; Realists: American hegemony is what ties the Community together, nuclear weapons make war a “feckless option” (7).

“Whatever its explanation, the very existence of a security community among the leading powers refutes many theories of the causes of war or, at least, indicates that they are not universally valid. Thus human nature and the drive for dominance, honor and glory may exist and contribute to a wide variety of human behaviors, but they are not fated to lead to war” (11).

“For most scholars, the fundamental cause of war is international anarchy, compounded by the security dilemma…As we have seen, different schools of thought propose different explanations for the rise of the Community and so lead to somewhat different propositions about the conditions under which anarchy can be compatible with peace. But what is most important is that the Community constitutes a proof by existence of the possibility of uncoerced peace without central authority. Because these countries are the most powerful ones and particularly war-prone, the Community poses a fundamental challenge to our understanding of world politics and our expectations of future possibilities” (11).

Deutsch and Singer: Multiple Power Systems and International Stability

Deutsch, K. & Singer, J., 1964. Multiple Power Systems and International Stability. World Politics, 16(3), 390-406.

“In the classical literature of diplomatic history, the balance-of-power concept occupies a central position.” (390) This article explores the IV of the number of independent actors in a system against the DV of system stability.

“Stability may, of course, be considered from the vantage point of both the total system and the individual states comprising it. From the broader, or systemic, point of view, we shall define stability as the probability that the system retains all of its essential characteristics; that no single nation becomes dominant; that most of its members continue to survive; and that large-scale war does not occur. And from the more limited perspective of the individual nations, stability would refer to the probability of their continued political independence and territorial integrity without any significant probability of becoming engaged in a ‘war for survival.” (390-1)

There is a comparison between probabilistic concepts of stability and classical notions of stability, specifically that of Richardson. “Richardson’s stability referred simply to any set of conditions under which the system would return to its equilibrium state” (391). Kaplan’s definition of equilibrium is slightly different. In Richardson’s formulation, systems can be stable even if there is transition, like, for example, the increase of armament spending as a percentage of GDP as long as it’s consistent across countries. Kaplan is interested in being consistent with the variable that is the focus of the study.

The authors explore the amount of interactions that can possibly take place between different countries as the amount of poles increase in the international system. This obviously takes the form of an exponential growth curve.

Next, they explore the “Share of Attention” that can be offered by countries that is, “available for conflict” (396).

“Thus, if some minimum percentage of a nation’s external attention is required for that nation to engage in behavior tending toward armed conflict, and the increase in number of independent t actors diminishes that share that any nation can allocate to any other single actor, such an increase is likely to have a stabilizing effect upon the system” (400).

“In the long run, according to this model, even multi-polar systems operating under the rules of balance-of-power policies are shown to be self-destroying, but both in the short and the long run the instability of tight bipolar systems appears to be substantially greater. It seems plausible that, if the spread of nuclear weapons could be slowed down or controlled, a transition from the bipolar international system of the early 1950’s to an increasingly multipolar system in the 1960’s might by mankind some valuable time to seek some more dependable bases for world order” (406).

Rowe: The Tragedy of Liberalism How Globalization Caused the First World War

Rowe, D., 2005. The Tragedy of Liberalism How Globalization Caused the First World War. Security Studies, 14(3), 407-447.

“Liberal theory is not sufficiently grounded in international trade theory to show how globalization generates constraints on military force, nor does it adequately link these constraints to strengthened peace” (407). This study will use H-O models of trade to explore how increased economic interdependence does actually constrain the decision making capabilities of military. Also, it concludes that, far from being a driver of peace, liberalism was actually one of the main causes of WWI.

“This conclusion that globalization pacifies international relations is not just premature, it is wrong. It is premature because modern liberal scholarship suffers from two important shortcomings. First, the relationship between globalization…and international peace remains theoretically underdeveloped…Second, empirical studies of globalization and peace have been dominated by large-N statistical analysis. These analyses cannot, by themselves, establish causation. They need to be complemented by qualitative studies that trace the causal processes imputed by liberal theory to the outcomes it predicts. By and large, however, these qualitative studies have yet to be carried out” (408).

“Liberals identify at least three closely related means by which globalization pacifies society. First, globalization generates powerful new social classes with vested interests in peace…Second, globalization endows societies with pacific social and personal values that constrain the state’s ability to generate and wield military force…Third, globalization enhances the political importance of these pacific values by liberalizing and democratizing society” (410-1).

He draws from Rogowski’s Commerce and Coalitions, where an exploration of the relationship between domestic social groups and their response to changes in trade will depend on whether the country is more endowed with labor or land and whether it is capital rich or poor. “The more citizens can earn from using their resources elsewhere, the less willing they become to surrender these resources to the state; the greater their demands for compensation; and, by implication, the more constrained the state’s ability to generate force” (413). With more trade, people become more wealthy and expect higher returns on their work, and thus it is harder to generate an army. “Globalization will enhance the state’s ability to use the country’s scarce resources to build military power by lowering the domestic relative prices and incomes earned by the country’s scarce resources, but it will impede the state’s ability to use the country’s abundant resources to build military power by raising the domestic relative prices and incomes earned by the country’s abundant resources” (413).

The rest of the paper explores early 19th century globalization and how European governments were unduly constrained to build military forces and they should have to avoid the Great War.

“Liberalism’s logic linking globalization’s constraints against war to international peace suffers at least three significant flaws. First, it assumes that a state’s security is determined solely by its external environment…Second, the liberal argument implicitly assumes that constraining states from threatening or using military force always enhances international peace..Third, this article has thus far assumed that globalization constrains all states equally…however, these constraints should vary according to whether the state uses the country’s abundant or scarce economic resources to build military power…In sum, globalization’s tendency to generate systemic internal constraints on military force does not necessarily lead to a more stable and peaceful international system but can instead…generate systemic insecurity as all major powers become less able to mobilize their countries’ abundant resources…undermine the ability of powers to practice effective deterrence…magnify the importance of defensive alliances…magnify the threat posed by states that are at least constrained by deepening integration into the world economy” (431-3).