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The authors present a model of the relationship between the spread of new military technologies and the occurrence of war. A new technology could shift the balance of power, causing anticipatory war as one side tries to prevent the other from obtaining it. When one side already has it, war is more likely when the shift in power is large, likely, and durable. When neither side has it, war is more likely when the expected shift is asymmetric (e.g., one side is more likely to get it) and when the two sides fear that a war will occur once one of them has it. The authors illustrate the model with historical examples from the spread of firearms (the Musket Wars in precolonial New Zealand) and of nuclear weapons (the end of US nuclear monopoly and the 1967 Six-Day War). A broader implication is that major power competition can unintentionally cause wars elsewhere.

Strategy in the Missile Age first reviews the development of modern military strategy to World War II, giving the reader a reference point for the radical rethinking that follows, as Dr. Brodie considers the problems of the Strategic Air Command, of civil defense, of limited war, of counterforce or pre-emptive strategies, of city-busting, of missile bases in Europe, and so on. The book, unlike so many on modern military affairs, does not present a program or defend a policy, nor is it a brief for any one of the armed services. It is a balanced analysis of the requirements of strength for the 1960's, including especially the military posture necessary to prevent war. A unique feature is the discussion of the problem of the cost of preparedness in relation to the requirements of the national economy, so often neglected by other military thinkers. Originally published in 1959. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

I define the concept of preventive war, distinguish it from preemption and other sources of better-now-than-later logic, and examine numerous conceptual issues that confound theoretical and empirical analyses of prevention. I then consider the argument that democracies rarely if ever adopt preventive war strategies because such strategies are contrary to the preferences of democratic publics and to the values and identities of democratic states. I examine a number of historical cases of anticipated power shifts by democratic states, and analyze the motivations for war and the mobilization of public support for war. The evidence contradicts both the descriptive proposition that democracies do not adopt preventive war strategies and causal propositions about the constraining effects of democratic institutions and democratic political cultures.

Although formal work on war generally sees war as a kind of bargaining breakdown resulting from asymmetric information, bargaining indivisibilities, or commitment problems, most analyses have focused on informational issues. But informational explanations and the models underlying them have at least two major limitations: they often provide a poor account of prolonged conflict, and they give an odd reading of the history of some cases. This article describes these limitations and argues that bargaining indivisibilities should really be seen as commitment problems. The present analysis then shows that a common mechanism links three important kinds of commitment problem: (1) preventive war, (2) preemptive attacks arising from first-strike or offensive advantages, and (3) conflicts resulting from bargaining over issues that affect future bargaining power. In each case, large, rapid shifts in the distribution of power can lead to war. Finally, the analysis elaborates a distinctly different mechanism based on a comparison of the cost of deterring an attack on the status quo with the expected cost of trying to eliminate the threat to the status quo.For helpful comments and criticisms, I thank James Fearon, Hein Goemans, Lisa Martin, Sebastian Mazzuca, Branislav Slantchev, and seminar participants at the University of Montreal–McGill Research Group in International Security, the Institute in Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine, and University of California, Santa Barbara. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (SES-0315037).

Large and rapid power shifts resulting from exogenous economic growth are considered sufficient to cause preventive wars. Yet most large and rapid shifts result from endogenous military investments. We show that when the investment decision is perfectly transparent, peace prevails. Large and rapid power shifts are deterred through the threat of a preventive war. When investments remain undetected, however, states may be tempted to introduce power shifts as a fait accompli. Knowing this, their adversaries may strike preventively even without conclusive evidence of militarization. In fact, the more effective preventive wars are, the more likely they will be launched against states that are not militarizing. Our argument emphasizes the role of imperfect information as a cause of war. It also explains why powerful states may attack weaker targets even with ambiguous evidence of their militarization. We illustrate our theory through an account of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

We develop a formal model of bargaining between two states where one can invest in a program to develop nuclear weapons and the other imperfectly observes its efforts and progress over time. In the absence of a nonproliferation deal, the observing state watches the former's program, waiting until proliferation seems imminent to attack. Chance elements—when the program will make progress and when the other state will discover this—determine outcomes. Surprise proliferation, crises over the suspected progress of a nuclear program, and possibly “mistaken” preventive wars arise endogenously from these chance elements. Consistent with the model's predictions and contrary to previous studies, the empirical evidence shows that the progress of a nuclear program and intelligence estimates of it explain the character and outcomes of most interactions between a proliferant and a potential preventive attacker. Counterintuitively, policies intended to reduce proliferation by delaying nuclear programs or improving monitoring capabilities may instead encourage it.

When do states acquire nuclear weapons? To address this question, a strategic theory of nuclear proliferation must take into account the security goals of all of the key actors: the potential proliferator, its adversaries, and, when present, its allies. To acquire nuclear weapons, a state must possess both the willingness and the opportunity to proliferate. Willingness requires the presence of a grave security threat against which no ally offers reliable protection. Opportunity requires that the state pursuing nuclear weapons possess high relative power vis-à-vis its adversaries or enjoy the protection of a powerful ally. Whereas a relatively weak state without a powerful ally lacks the opportunity to develop a nuclear capability, one with such an ally lacks the willingness to do so. Therefore, only powerful states or relatively weak states with allies that do not guarantee fulfillment of at least some of their key security goals will acquire the bomb. These claims are supported by the overall pattern of nuclear proliferation as well as detailed analyses of the Soviet, Iraqi, Pakistani, South Korean, and West German nuclear development cases.

The George W. Bush administration's national security strategy, which asserts that the United States has the right to attack and conquer sovereign countries that pose no observable threat, and to do so without international support, is one of the most aggressively unilateral U.S. postures ever taken. Recent international relations scholarship has wrongly promoted the view that the United States, as the leader of a unipolar system, can pursue such a policy without fear of serious opposition. The most consequential effect of the Bush strategy will be a fundamental transformation in how major states perceive the United States and how they react to future uses of U.S. power. Major powers are already engaging in the early stages of balancing behavior against the United States, by adopting \"soft-balancing\" measures that do not directly challenge U.S. military preponderance but use international institutions, economic state-craft, and diplomatic arrangements to delay, frustrate, and undermine U.S. policies. If the Bush administration continues to pursue aggressive unilateral military policies, increased soft balancing could establish the basis for hard balancing against the United States. To avoid this outcome, the United States should renounce the systematic use of preventive war, as well as other aggressive unilateral military policies, and return to its traditional policy governing the use of force-a case-by-case calculation of costs and benefits.

Some scholars argue that established great powers tend to launch preventive wars to halt and reverse power transition processes, while others argue that it is the rising great powers that initiate revisionist challenges. Through the application of the preventive war model and the theory of strategic competition, this article argues that we should identify the initiation of a hegemonic war in the agency of established great powers during power transition processes and that hegemonic confrontations, in the age of nuclear weapons, are limited to the diplomatic domain where great powers will compete for relative strategic influence in the world. The argument is then applied for a re-examination of China–USA relations as this provides a novel ground for testing its explanatory power. Based on our findings, the article further argues that the USA has been the instigator of a preventive strategic competition against China aimed to halt and reverse the ongoing power transition process.