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"Balance of Power"
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Unanswered Threats
Why have states throughout history regularly underestimated dangers to their survival? Why have some states been able to mobilize their material resources effectively to balance against threats, while others have not been able to do so? The phenomenon of \"underbalancing\" is a common but woefully underexamined behavior in international politics. Underbalancing occurs when states fail to recognize dangerous threats, choose not to react to them, or respond in paltry and imprudent ways. It is a response that directly contradicts the core prediction of structural realism's balance-of-power theory--that states motivated to survive as autonomous entities are coherent actors that, when confronted by dangerous threats, act to restore the disrupted balance by creating alliances or increasing their military capabilities, or, in some cases, a combination of both.
Consistent with the new wave of neoclassical realist research,Unanswered Threatsoffers a theory of underbalancing based on four domestic-level variables--elite consensus, elite cohesion, social cohesion, and regime/government vulnerability--that channel, mediate, and redirect policy responses to external pressures and incentives. The theory yields five causal schemes for underbalancing behavior, which are tested against the cases of interwar Britain and France, France from 1877 to 1913, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) that pitted tiny Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Randall Schweller concludes that those most likely to underbalance are incoherent, fragmented states whose elites are constrained by political considerations.
eBook
Diplomacy of quasi-alliances in the Middle East
Quasi-alliance refers to the ideation, mechanism and behavior of policy-makers to carry out security cooperation through informal political and security arrangements. As a \"gray zone\" between alliance and neutrality, quasi-alliance is a hidden national security statecraft. Based on declassified archives and secondary sources, this book probes the theory and practice of quasi-alliances in the Middle East. Four cases are chosen to test the hypotheses of quasi-alliance, one of which is the Anglo-French-Israeli quasi-alliance during the Suez Canal War of 1956.
Book
The Atlantic realists : empire and international political thought between Germany and the United States
No detailed description available for \"The Atlantic Realists\".
eBook
United States Hegemony and the Foundations of International Law
Successive hegemonic powers have shaped the foundations of international law. This book examines whether the predominance of the United States is leading to foundational change in the international legal system. A range of leading scholars in international law and international relations consider six foundational areas that could be undergoing change, including international community, sovereign equality, the law governing the use of force, and compliance. The authors demonstrate that the effects of US predominance on the foundations of international law are real, but also intensely complex. This complexity is due, in part, to a multitude of actors exercising influential roles. And it is also due to the continued vitality and remaining functionality of the international legal system itself. This system limits the influence of individual states, while stretching and bending in response to the changing geopolitics of our time.
eBook
International Relations Theory of War
\"This book tries to answer two key questions. The first is why certain periods are more prone to war than others. The other is why certain wars that involve polar powers end with their territorial expansion whereas other wars end in their contraction or maintaining their territorial status. In conclusion, it is asked whether the polarity of the system affects these two outcomes, and if so, how\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Intentions in Great Power Politics
Why the future of great power politics is likely to
resemble its dismal past Can great powers be confident
that their peers have benign intentions? States that trust each
other can live at peace; those that mistrust each other are doomed
to compete for arms and allies and may even go to war. Sebastian
Rosato explains that states routinely lack the kind of information
they need to be convinced that their rivals mean them no harm. Even
in cases that supposedly involved mutual trust-Germany and Russia
in the Bismarck era; Britain and the United States during the great
rapprochement; France and Germany, and Japan and the United States
in the early interwar period; and the Soviet Union and United
States at the end of the Cold War-the protagonists mistrusted each
other and struggled for advantage. Rosato argues that the
ramifications of his argument for U.S.-China relations are
profound: the future of great power politics is likely to resemble
its dismal past.
eBook
The Origins of Major War
One of the most important questions of human existence is what drives nations to war-especially massive, system-threatening war. Much military history focuses on the who, when, and where of war. In this riveting book, Dale C. Copeland brings attention to bear on why governments make decisions that lead to, sustain, and intensify conflicts.
Copeland presents detailed historical narratives of several twentieth-century cases, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. He highlights instigating factors that transcend individual personalities, styles of government, geography, and historical context to reveal remarkable consistency across several major wars usually considered dissimilar. The result is a series of challenges to established interpretive positions and provocative new readings of the causes of conflict.
Classical realists and neorealists claim that dominant powers initiate war. Hegemonic stability realists believe that wars are most often started by rising states. Copeland offers an approach stronger in explanatory power and predictive capacity than these three brands of realism: he examines not only the power resources but the shifting power differentials of states. He specifies more precisely the conditions under which state decline leads to conflict, drawing empirical support from the critical cases of the twentieth century as well as major wars spanning from ancient Greece to the Napoleonic Wars.
eBook