Between Peace and War

40th Anniversary Revised Edition

Richard Ned Lebow

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030434427
• eBook ISBN: 9783030434434
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Relations internationales

This is an updated edition of the now-classic original of the same title. It has three new substantial chapters: a prologue, a chapter on new evidence on World War I, and an epilogue. The updated edition contains the now-famous typology of international crisis, the original critique of deterrence, the emphasis on agency, and the turn to political psychology to explain sharp departures from rational policy-making. The new chapters update and reevaluate these arguments and approach a critical hindsight assessment in light of post-Cold War developments.

© The Author(s) 2020

R. N. LebowBetween Peace and Warhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43443-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Richard Ned Lebow¹

(1)

War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

Richard Ned Lebow

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Underlying Versus Immediate Causes of War

Following the example of Thucydides, students of war have distinguished between underlying and immediate causes of war. The former refers to the long-term causes of hostility and tension between states, the latter, to the proximate issues or crises that actually trigger war. For Thucydides the underlying causes were the ones that really mattered. This is made clear in his treatment of the origins of the Peloponnesian War.¹ Thucydides attributed the conflict to the growth of the Athenian Empire, its need for expansion, and the fear this inspired among other Poleis, especially Sparta. In his view, this situation made war inevitable. If it had not come in 431 B.C., touched off by Athenian involvement in the war between Corinth and Corcyra, some other event would sooner or later have brought the two hegemons of ancient Greece to blows. The proximate causes of war were important only in so far as they determined the timing of the conflict.²

The logic and clarity of Thucydides’ exposition have left its imprint upon the development of Western thought about conflict. Subsequent students of war have not only distinguished between underlying and immediate causes of war but have also generally followed Thucydides in treating the underlying causes as the more important of the two. Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, and Marx all represent this tradition.³ For a contemporary example of the pervasive influence of this conception one need only look at the historiography of World War I. Historians hotly debate the responsibility of the various nations for the war but are in surprising agreement about the overriding importance of the underlying causes of the conflict. The prevailing view is that the assassination of the archduke was merely one of many events that could have triggered a war that would have been extremely difficult to avoid.⁴

Psychological experiments support the hypothesis that people tend to increase their estimates of the probability of an outcome once it has occurred.⁵ Baruch Fischoff, a psychologist, speculates that one cause of this is that “it is quite flattering to believe, or lead others to believe, that we would have known all along what we could only know with outcome knowledge, that is, that we possess hindsightful foresight.”⁶ The historian Georges Florovsky sees the tendency toward determinism as implicit in the process of retrospection itself: “In retrospect, we seem to perceive the logic of the events which unfold themselves in a regular and linear fashion according to a recognizable pattern with an alleged inner necessity. So that we get an impression that it really could not have happened otherwise.”⁷

The Thucydidean analysis of conflict unquestionably encourages whatever predisposition exists to describe events as more unavoidable than they were. By emphasizing the importance of long-term or underlying causes of conflict it prompts investigators to identify and highlight the particular strands of development that appear to have led to the events whose origins they wish to explain. Other strands of development that might have led to different outcomes are often ignored. According to R. H. Tawney, this problem is endemic to the historical discipline. “Historians,” he writes, “give an appearance of inevitability to an existing order by dragging into prominence the forces which have triumphed and thrusting into the background those which they have swallowed up.”⁸ The treatment of futures that might have been is relegated to science fiction.⁹

The extent to which “creeping determinism,” as Fischoff calls it, colors our thinking can be seen by examining the outcome and significance of the Cuban missile crisis. Had that crisis led to war the next generation of historians, assuming there was one, would have portrayed the crisis and the war that followed as the natural even inevitable result of almost twenty years of Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Ideology, the nuclear arms race, competition for spheres of influence, and domestic payoffs of aggressive foreign policies would all have been described as important underlying causes of the war. In retrospect, World War III would appear as unavoidable as World War I.

Fortunately, the Cuban confrontation did not lead to war. It may actually have been a catalyst of détente, a sobering lesson for both superpowers that encouraged them to seek less dangerous ways of coping with mutual tensions. If Soviet-American relations continue to improve, future historians may even see the crisis as the turning point of the Cold War. The Cuban crisis might thus have lent itself to two radically different historical interpretations depending on its outcome, an outcome according to most students of the crisis that was touch-and-go.¹⁰ A different man at the helm in either Washington or Moscow (what if Nixon had won the 1960 election?), the choice of the airstrike option instead of the blockade, yet another act of insubordination by either military establishment—a change in any one of a hundred conditions could have led to a different outcome.

The fact that the management of the Cuban crisis determined whether or not the United States and the Soviet Union went to war and may also have influenced the subsequent pattern of relations between them indicates that the immediate cause of war, and crisis in particular, is an important independent variable in international relations. The proximate causes of conflict may even be as important as the underlying ones if a crisis can determine whether longstanding tensions are ultimately eased or lead to war.

The premise that crises can be turning points in international conflicts is the overarching theme of this book. By examining the relationship between crisis and war we shall seek to determine the extent to which crisis influences the course of a conflict as well as the manner in which this occurs. In keeping with this objective, three specific areas of investigation were selected. The first of these, the origins of crisis, is perhaps the most difficult problem to come to grips with analytically as crises are the outgrowth of national and international developments whose roots may go back years if not decades. Just where should the researcher limit his search for the causes of a particular conflict? Take the case of World War I. Should we begin our analysis with the formation of the Franco-Russian alliance, an event that intensified German fears of encirclement, or with the independence of Serbia, an important catalyst of Slavic nationalism, or even further back with the economic and social changes that gave rise to nationalism and ultimately threatened the very existence of multiethnic dynastic states? Each is a valid starting point depending upon the approach and level of analysis that is adopted.

The analyst must also determine when a crisis begins. In some cases this is obvious. The July crisis, to continue with our example, began, in retrospect, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which provided Austria-Hungary with the pretext for her ultimatum to Serbia. Even so, most statesmen at that time were not concerned for the peace of Europe until they learned of the terms of the Austrian ultimatum. Some cases are more ambiguous. Munich, for example, was an acute crisis that built up slowly, waned, and built up again in response to a series of inflammatory speeches by Hitler and ethnic clashes within Czechoslovakia. It is difficult to determine any given point along the tension curve that was so qualitatively distinct as to clearly mark the onset of crisis. Having acknowledged these conceptual problems, it is still reasonable to seek to ascertain if the onset of crises is associated with any particular pattern of domestic and international conditions and whether identification of these conditions can help to predict the onset of crisis.

The second focus of research is the outcome of crisis. The central question here is why some crises are resolved by diplomacy while others result in war. Are such outcomes determined by the particular nature of crisis? To what extent are they a function of decisions made during the course of the crisis itself? We should also like to know just how crises lead to war. When is war the result of a deliberate decision to advance the nation’s vital interest by force of arms? When is it the result of miscalculation? Is miscalculation associated with particular underlying organizational structures and patterns of policy-making? If so, is it possible to predict the performance of a political system in crisis or suggest ways of improving crisis performanc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. The Origins of Crisis
• Part II. The Politics of Crisis
• Part III. Crisis and International Relations
• Back Matter