International Security and Conflict
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International Security and Conflict

Bruce Russett, Bruce Russett

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International Security and Conflict

Bruce Russett, Bruce Russett

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This important collection of classic articles and papers presents a variety of perspectives on key topics in international security and conflict. These include how the structure of the international system constrains nations' choices, how domestic politics may affect decisions on war and peace, how individual and small group behaviour can affect foreign policy, and how international organizations can affect the security of states and peoples. Some of the selections are classics, but most represent recent research and analysis. They draw on international scholars working from different kinds of theories (realist, liberal-institutionalist and constructivist) and research methods to ask why nation-states may fight violently or stay at peace.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351926560

Part I
How the Structure of the International System Constrains Nations’ Choices

[1]
Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001

ROBERT JERVIS Columbia University
From the most remote ages onward, the peoples have perpetually assailed one another for the satisfaction of their appetites and their egotistical interests [and their fears]. I have not made this history, and neither have you. It is.
(Georges Clemenceau, December 29, 1918 quoted by Osiander 1994, 265)
A new science of politics is needed for a new world. [Tocqueville (1835) 1945, 7]
War and the possibility of war among the great powers have been the motor of international politics, not only strongly influencing the boundaries and distribution of values among them, but deeply affecting their internal arrangements and shaping the fates of smaller states. Being seen as an ever-present possibility produced by deeply rooted factors such as human nature and the lack of world government, these forces were expected to con-tinue indefinitely. But I would argue that war among the leading great powers—the most developed states of the United States, West Europe, and Japan—will not occur in the future, and indeed is no longer a source of concern for them (Mueller 1989; also see Adler 1992; Duffield 2001; Goldgeier and McFaul 1992; Jervis 1991/1992; Mandelbaum 1998/1999; Shaw 1994; Singer and Wildavsky 1993; Ullman 1991; Van Evera 1990/1991). The absence of war among these states would itself be a development of enormous proportions, but the change goes even farther because war is not even contemplated. During the Cold War peace was maintained, but this was due to the fear that if the superpowers did not take care, they would indeed fight.
Now, however, the leading states form what Karl Deutsch called a pluralistic security community, a group among whom war is literally unthinkable—i.e., neither the publics nor the political elites nor even the military establishments expect war with each other (Deutsch et al. 1957; also see Adler and Barnett 1998; Melko 1973). No official in the Community would ad-vocate a policy on the grounds that it would improve the state’s position in the event of war with other members. Although no state can move away from the reliance on war by itself lest it become a victim, the collectivity can do so if each forsakes the resort to force.
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. Winston Churchill exaggerated only slightly when he declared that “people talked a lot of nonsense when they said nothing was ever settled by war. Nothing in history was ever settled except by wars” (quoted by Gilbert 1983, 860–1). Even cases of major change without war, such as Britain yielding hegemony in the Western Hemisphere to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, were strongly influenced by security calculations. Threatening war, preparing for it, and trying to avoid it have permeated all aspects of politics, and so a world in which war among the most developed states is unthinkable will be a new one. To paraphrase and extend a claim made by Evan Luard (1986, 77), given the scale and frequency of war among the great powers in the proceeding millennia, this is a change of spectacular proportions, perhaps the single most striking discontinuity that the history of international politics has anywhere provided.
Two major states, Russia and China, might fight each other or a member of the Community.1 But, as I discuss below, such a conflict would be different from traditional wars between great powers. Furthermore, these countries lack many of the attributes of great powers: their internal regimes are shaky, they are not at the forefront of any advanced forms of technology or economic organization, they can pose challenges only regionally, and they have no attraction as models for others. They are not among the most developed states and I think it would be fair to put them outside the ranks of the great powers as well. But their military potential, their possession of nuclear weapons, and the size of their economies renders that judgment easily debatable and so I will not press it but rather will argue that the set of states that form the Community are not all the great powers, but all the most developed ones.
Other states generally seen as Western also could fight, most obviously Greece and Turkey. Despite their common membership in NATO, the conflicts of interest are severe enough to lead each to contemplate war with the other. Neither is a leading power so this does not disturb my argument, although a thought-experiment that would transform them into such states without diminishing their animosity would.

CENTRAL QUESTIONS

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?

CONTINUED THREATS

The fact that the United States is not menaced by the most developed countries obviously does not mean that it does not face any military threats. Indeed, even before September 11 some analysts saw the United States as no more secure than it was during the Cold War, being imperiled by terrorists and “rogue” states, in addition to Russia and China.2 But even if I am wrong to believe that these claims are exaggerated, representing the political and psychological propensity for the “conservation of enemies” (Hartmann 1982; Mueller 1994); these conflicts do not have the potential to drive world politics the way that clashes among the leading powers did in the past. They do not permeate all facets of international politics and structure state-society relations; they do not represent a struggle for dominance in the international system or a direct challenge to American vital interests.
Even the fiercest foes of Russia, China, or the rogues do not see them as ready to launch unprovoked attacks against the United States or other members of the Com-munity, let alone as out to control the world. Russia and China are not seeking to replace the United States; any clash will come out of these countries’ desire for a sphere of influence and the American belief that such arrangements are inappropriate in today’s world—at least for others. Thus while there are reasons why the United States might fight the PRC to protect Taiwan or Russia to protect the Baltic republics, these disputes are not like those that characterized great power conflicts over the past three centuries. The United States is defending not traditional national interests, let alone vital ones, but, in seeking what Wolfers (1962, 73–6) called “milieu goals,” upholding values such as democracy, self-determination, and rejection of coercion as a means of changing the status quo. These may be deeply held both for their intrinsic value and for their role in maintaining America’s worldwide reach, but they are more akin to the concerns of imperial powers than to sources of conflict between equal major powers.

WILL THE SECURITY COMMUNITY LAST?

Predictions about the maintenance of the Community are obviously disputable (indeed, limitations on people’s ability to predict could undermine it), but nothing in the short period since the end of the Cold War points to an unraveling. The disputes within it do not seem to be increasing in number or severity and even analysts who stress the continuation of the struggle for world primacy and great power rivalries do not expect fighting [Huntington 1993; Kupchan forthcoming; Waltz 1993, 2000; however, Calleo (2001), Layne (2000), and Mearsheimer (1990, 2001) are ambiguous on this point]. If the United States is still concerned with maintaining its advantages over its allies, the reason is not that it believes that it may have to fight them but that it worries that rivalry could make managing world problems more difficult (Layne 2000; New York Times, March 8, 1992, 14; May 24, 1992, 1, 14). The Europeans’ effort to establish an independent security force is aimed at permitting them to intervene when the United States chooses not to (or perhaps by threatening such action, to trigger American intervention), not at fighting the United States. Even if Europe were to unite and the world to become bipolar again, it is very unlikely that suspicions, fears for the future, and conflicts of interest would be severe enough to break the Community.
A greater threat would be the failure of Europe to unite coupled with an American withdrawal of forces, which could lead to “security competition” within Europe (Art 1996a; Mearsheimer 2001, 385–96). The fears would focus on Germany, but their magnitude is hard to gauge and it is difficult to estimate what external shocks or kinds of German behavior would activate them. The fact that Thatcher and Mitterrand opposed German unification is surely not forgotten in Germany and is an indication that concerns remain. But this danger is likely to constitute a self-denying prophecy in two ways. First, many Germans are aware of the need not only to reassure others by tying themselves to Europe, but also to make it unlikely that future generations of Germans would want to break these bonds even if they could. Second, Americans who worry about the residual danger will favor keeping some troops in Europe as the ultimate intra-European security guarantee.
Expectations of peace close off important routes to war. The main reason for Japanese aggression in the 1930s was the desire for a self-sufficient sphere that would permit Japan to fight the war with the Western powers that was seen as inevitable, not because of particular conflicts, but because it was believed that great powers always fight each other. In contrast, if states believe that a security community will last, they will not be hypersensitive to threats from within it and will not feel the need to undertake precautionary measures that could undermine the security of other members. Thus the United States is not disturbed that British and French nuclear missiles could destroy American cities, and while those two countries object to American plans for missile defense, they do not feel the need to increase their forces in response. As long as peace is believed to be very likely, the chance of inadvertent spirals of tension and threat is low.
Nevertheless, the point with which I began this section is unavoidable. World politics can change rapidly and saying that nothing foreseeable will dissolve the Community its not the same as saying that it will not dissolve (Betts 1992). To the extent that it rests on democracy and prosperity (see below), anything that would undermine these would also undermine the Community. Drastic climate change could also shake the foundations of much that we have come to take for granted. But it is hard to see how dynamics at the international level (i.e., the normal trajectory of fears, disputes, and rivalries) could produce war among the leading states. In other words, the Community does not have within it the seeds of its own destruction.
Our faith in the continuation of this peace is increased to the extent that we think we understand its causes and have reason to believe that they will continue. This is our next topic.

EXPLANATIONS FOR THE SECURITY COMMUNITY

There are social constructivist, liberal, and realist explanations for the Community which, although preceding from different assumptions, invoke overlapping factors.3

Constructivism

Constructivism points to the norms of non-violence and shared identities that have led the advanced democracies to assume the role of each other’s friend through the interaction of behavior and expectations.4 In contradistinction to the liberal and realist explanations, this downplays the importance of material factors and elevates ideas, images of oneself and others, and conceptions of appropriate conduct. The roots of the changes that have produced this enormous shift in international politics among some countries but not others are not specified in detail, but the process is a selfreinforcing one—a benign cycle of behavior, beliefs, and expectations.
People become socialized into attitudes, beliefs, and values that are conducive to peace. Individuals in the Community may see their own country as strong and good—and even better than others—but they do not espouse the virulent nationalism that was common in the past. Before World War I, one German figure could proclaim that the Germans were “the greatest civilized people known to history,” while another declared that the Germans were “the chosen people of this century,” which explains “why other people hate us. They do not understand us but they fear our tremendous spiritual superiority.” Thomas Macaulay similarly wrote that the British were “the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw” and were “the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the causes of political improvement,” while Senator Albert Beveridge proclaimed that “God has made us the master organizers of the world.”5 These sentiments are shocking today because they are so at variance from what we have been taught to think about others and ourselves. We could not adopt these views without rejecting a broad set of beliefs and values. An understanding of the effects of such conceptions led the Europeans, and to an unfortunately less...

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