Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

Nuts and bolts for the social sciences

A Study of War.

The sources of military doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the world wars

Wedge strategies seek to divide alliances or to prevent them from forming. Despite their importance in balance of power politics, they have not received systematic attention in security studies. This article corrects that problem. First, it develops a concept of wedge strategy that connects it to balancing behavior and shows how the phenomenon can help to explain “alignment anomalies” in international politics. Second, it mounts an intensive study of the deviant case of Spanish alignment in 1940–41, demonstrating that a British wedge strategy was a necessary and proximate cause of that alignment anomaly, which was an outcome of great consequences for the conduct and conclusion of the Second World War. It concludes by returning to basic conceptual issues, discussing the implications of thinking theoretically about wedge strategies for two facets of international security: the relationship between appeasement and balancing and the power politics of neutrality.

Wedge Strategy, Balancing, and the Deviant Case of Spain, 1940–41

Students of strategy are all familiar with Sun Tzu's advice to divide an enemy from his allies, and Napoleon's boast that if he had to make war he preferred it be against a coalition. 1 These refle...

The Strategic Consequences of Alliance Discord

(2002). Kennedy and Kashmir, 1962–63: The perils of pivotal peacemaking in South Asia. India Review: Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 1-38.

Kennedy and Kashmir, 1962–63: The perils of pivotal peacemaking in South Asia

This article examines the challenges allies face in coordinating diplomatic efforts to accommodate and peel off their main enemy's potential allies. It elucidates the key dimensions, and the underlying coordination dynamics, of this problem of “concerted accommodation,” and it develops propositions about the conditions that shape the efficacy of such efforts. The argument links allies’ strength to their divergent or convergent assessments of the target state's ability to tip the war toward victory or defeat. Divergent assessments foster weak allied efforts that are likely to fail, but when allies agree that the target is a potential “war-tipper,” they will support their concerted accommodation policy with more robust cooperation that is more likely to work. The causal arguments and mechanisms are examined in a paired comparison analysis of two First World War cases: the Entente's efforts to induce (1) Ottoman neutrality and (2) Italian intervention.

Timothy W. Crawford

Papers

Wedge Strategy, Balancing, and the Deviant Case of Spain, 1940–41

The Strategic Consequences of Alliance Discord

Kennedy and Kashmir, 1962–63: The perils of pivotal peacemaking in South Asia

The Alliance Politics of Concerted Accommodation: Entente Bargaining and Italian and Ottoman Interventions in the First World War

Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention