Showing papers in "International Security in 1990"

Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War

Abstract: Scholars of security affairs can stop their dreary quarrels over military doctrine and balance assessments, and turn their attention to finding ways to prevent global warming and preserve the ozone layer. European leaders can contemplate how to spend peace dividends. This chapter assesses this optimistic view by exploring in detail the consequences for Europe of an end to the Cold War. It examines the effects of a scenario under which the Cold War comes to a complete end. The chapter argues that bipolarity, an equal military balance, and nuclear weapons have fostered peace in Europe. It offers an explanation for the peacefulness of the post-World War II order. The chapter examines the theories underlying claims that a multipolar Europe is likely to be as peaceful, if not more peaceful, than Cold War Europe. The peace-loving democracies theory holds that domestic political factors, not calculations about military power or the international economic system, are the principal determinant of peace.

War and the State in Africa

Abstract: that in Africa, as elsewhere, states will eventually become strong. But this may not be true in Africa, where states are developing in a fundamentally new environment. Lessons drawn from the case of Europe show that war is an important cause of state formation that is missing in Africa today. The crucial role that war has played in the formation of European states has long been noted. Samuel P. Huntington argued that “war was the great stimulus to state building,” and Charles Tilly went so far as to claim that ”war made the state, and the state made war.”’ Similarly, two of the most successful states in the Third World today, South Korea and Taiwan, are largely ”warfare” states that have been molded, in part, by the near constant threat of external aggression. However, studies of political development and state consolidation in Africa and many other parts of the Third World have all but ignored the important role that war can play in political development. The role of war has not been examined because the vast majority of states in Africa and elsewhere in the world gained independence without having to resort to combat and have not faced a security threat since independence.2

Is War Obsolete?: A Review Essay

Abstract: T h e forty-five years that have now passed since the end of World War I1 without interstate war in Europe is the longest such period in its post-medieval history.' Many scholars and commentators have attributed the present \"long peace\" among the major powers to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. When President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought, they were only reiterating what has become an almost universally accepted piety in current public and scholarly discussion of international relations.2 John Mueller's Retreat from Doomsday3 advances a much stronger thesis: major war was already becoming obsolete by the time of the First World War;

Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War

Abstract: World War 11, social scientists have devoted considerable attention to the problem of military coercion.’ This interest is due in part to nuclear weapons, which are seen as better suited to inflicting punishment on civilian societies than to attacking battlefield targets directly. However, coercion is also important in purely conventional conflicts, because states may still conduct strategic air offensives against their adversaries. The American bombing of Vietnam is a classic example of conventional coercion. Throughout the war, the United States used its powerful air forces to strike at the North Vietnamese homeland, for the purpose of altering Hanoi’s behavior on the battlefield and position at the negotiating table. Although the desirability of bombing the North generated heated debate at the time, the task here is to use this case to identify when coercion will succeed or fail.2

The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914

Abstract: war need not be the product of deliberate decision-that it can come because statesmen ”lose control” of events-is one of the most basic and most common notions in contemporary American strategic thought. A crisis, it is widely assumed, might unleash forces of an essentially military nature that overwhelm the political process and bring on a war that nobody wants. Many important conclusions about the risk of nuclear war, and thus about the political meaning of nuclear forces, rest on this fundamental idea. This theory of “inadvertent war” is in turn rooted, to a quite extraordinary degree, in a specific interpretation of a single historical episode: the coming of the First World War during the July Crisis in 1914.’ It is often taken for granted that the sort of military system that existed in Europe at the timea system of interlocking mobilizations and of war plans that placed a great emphasis on rapid offensive action-directly led to a conflict that might otherwise have been avoided. George Quester’s view is typical of the way the issue is treated in much of the political science literature. ”World War I,” he writes, ”broke out as a spasm of pre-emptive mobilization schedules.”2

Technology, Military Advantage, and World War I: A Case for Military Entrepreneurship

Abstract: itary dimension of grand strategy, statesmen face they adopt an offensive or a defensive doctrine?‘ I I n formulating the mila crucial decision: should How most effectively can one approach this question? Should leaders first assess the technological state of the art, to see whether it favors offense or defense, and adapt their doctrines and grand strategies accordingly? Or should they determine independently their best grand strategy, and expect or direct that their military leaders will create the necessary supportive military advantage, be it offensive, defensive, or both? The answer depends on where one believes military advantage comes from. The ”bottom-up” approach posits that there is-at any given momenta ubiquitous technological condition that determines, exogenous to the actors, whether offense or defense has the advantage. The ”top-down” alternative recommends that advantages are manufactured and destroyed by the

Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe

Abstract: Professor Mearsheimer’s essay, ”Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,”’ seems to me to be almost a caricature of neo-realism. One simply can’t deal with international politics at the level of theoretical abstraction and dogmatism exhibited here. The paper has all the elegance of a mathematical theorem, and just about as much relevance to reality. The flat statement that bipolarity breeds more stability than multipolarity is the orthodox structural realism of Kenneth Waltz, and is otherwise based on a misor non-reading of history. Had Mearsheimer been influenced by Raymond Aron instead of Kenneth Waltz, he would have stated the opposite, as Aron‘s ideal-type of bipolarity was derived from the Peloponnesian War, whereas Waltz’s comes from the postwar system. Here’s the rub: maybe the stability of that system comes (a) from nuclear weapons, (b) from the specific features of the two superpowers; for after all in a bipolar system these features are likely to affect decisively the outcome of the contest (war or peace)-which may help explain why so many bipolar contests have led to war, and only a few have not. Therefore, the remark that “when an equal bipolarity arose and nuclear weapons appeared, peace broke out. This correlation suggests that the bipolarity theory, the equality theory, and the nuclear theory of the

Revising the SIOP Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes

Abstract: During the preparation of this article, the authors conducted interviews with many of the principals involved in the recent development of U.S. strategic nuclear employment policies and plans. These included senior civilian officials and military officers from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Department of Defense, the National Security Council (NSC), the Strategic Air Command (SAC), and the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (OJCS). Material in this article for which sources are not otherwise cited was obtained in these interviews.

Long Memories and Short Fuses: Change and Instability in the Balkans

Abstract: I T h e Balkans have traditionally been a region of instability and ferment, and with the end of the Cold War, long-standing conflicts are likely to re-emerge. During the nineteenth century the region was continually a site of great power rivalry, as Britain, Russia, and Austria sought to extend their influence in the areaor to block other powers from doing so. The volatile combination of great power ambition and assertive nationalism in the area contributed directly to the outbreak of World War I, and earned the region the reputation as \"the powder keg of Europe.\" The collapse of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires at the end of World War I left a host of ethnic and territorial conflicts unresolved and created a number of new ones. The Cold War, with its emphasis on \"tight\" bipolarity, tended to dampen many of these tensions and conflicts, though it did not entirely eliminate them. Polemics between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia over Macedonia periodically flared up; the Romanian treatment of the Hungarian minority was a source of disagreement between Romania and Hungary; discontent among the Turkish minority in Bulgaria led to several waves of emigration and poisoned Bulgarian-Turkish relations; and Yugoslav-Albanian relations were marred by differences over the Albanian minority in the Yugoslav area of Kosovo. Still, as long as the bloc system existed, it acted as a residual, if diminishing, constraint on these tensions. The end of the Cold War, however, threatens to remove this constraint. As both superpowers are increasingly preoccupied with other pressing agendas and less inclined-or able-to act as hegemonic

From Law Enforcement to Dispute Settlement: A New Approach to Arms Control Verification and Compliance

Abstract: I A principal obstacle to American acceptance of nuclear arms control agreements has been the difficulty of ensuring compliance. Substantive issues have taken a back seat while U.S. negotiators have expended vast intellectual and political energies negotiating verification measures that would reduce uncertainties about Soviet compliance. Now the Soviets, in a dramatic reversal of position, have agreed to farreaching and intrusive verification measures. In the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty negotiations, the Soviet Union was prepared to go even further than the United States in accepting various forms of on-site inspection. This is an extraordinarily hopeful development, but not, as its proponents seem to argue, because on-site inspection would permit the United States to prove violations of treaty norms. Instead, if the climate of openness in U.S.Soviet relations continues, inspection measures can be focused on the real problem of living under a complex treaty regime: the management of a continuing stream of disputes about the interpretation and application of its rules and practices. The argument requires a review and reassessment of U.S. policy and attitudes towards arms control verification and compliance. Antonia Handler Chayes and Abrarn Chayes

Back to the Future, Part III: Realism and the Realities of European Security

Abstract: In ”Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” John Mearsheimer gives an allegedly ”realistic” and certainly pessimistic forecast. * One definition of an optimist is “a person who says this is the best of all possible worlds.” A pessimist can be defined in precisely the same terms. Mearsheimer, lamenting the passing of the Cold War, qualifies as a pessimist. His classical “realist” proposition is that states must inevitably fight one another in the unceasing anarchic struggle for power and security. Whether that proposition is in fact accurate or realistic, however, is a question about which observers have profound disagreement. If we all act as though the world is an arena of raw struggle, red in tooth and claw, we can surely make it so. Mearsheimer’s remedies-continued reliance on nuclear weapons and their proliferation, and on the continued deployment of American and Soviet military forces in Europe-would help to make his prophecy self-fulfilling. It is pernicious and erroneous as well as pessimistic to pretend that there is no alternative. Mearsheimer’s argument implies that institutions and ideologies are irrelevant; only the “realities“ of power competition matter. Thus how we govern ourselves, and how our adversaries and former adversaries govern themselves, makes no difference to the prospects for war-avoidance. But do we really believe that about the demise of Soviet communism? Moreover, he conveniently ignores the vast and powerful network of institutions that have been painstakingly built up to help keep West Euro-

Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis: Should We Swallow Oral History?

Abstract: Bruce Allyn, James Blight, and David Welch should be congratulated for a splendid review of some of the most important findings from their joint research on the Cuban missile crisis, including the conferences they helped organize in Hawks Cay, Cambridge, and MOSCOW.’ They have performed an invaluable service for both historians and political scientists. Nevertheless, the research methodology that Allyn, Blight, and Welch (henceforth AB&W) have used is not without its drawbacks. Although their work has given us a much better understanding of the American side of the Cuban missile crisis, I am not sure we yet have a better understanding of the Soviet side. Indeed, our “knowledge” of certain aspects of the Soviet role may, if anything, be more confused than before. The reservations I express below, though applied to the AB&W article, are intended as general notes of caution.

Bullying and Bargaining: The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America

Abstract: I U n d e r the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Nicaragua came to be seen as a test case of the ”Reagan Doctrine,” which espoused support for armed resistance movements against revolutionary Marxist regimes in the Third World.’ Early in his second term in office, President Reagan himself publicly declared his intention to remove the Nicaraguan government “in the sense of its present structure’’ and to force its Sandinista leadership to ”cry uncle.”* Five years later, on April 25, 1990 the Sandinistas peacefully delivered the reins of government to a U.S.supported opposition coalition, while steps were taken to demobilize the contra guerrilla army which had served-along with an economic embargoas a lever of U.S. coercion against the Nicaraguan government. A decade of acrimonious conflict between the United States and Nicaragua thus appeared to draw to a close, as the Sandinistas’ considerable political, social, and military power-while hardly eliminated-was displaced from the commanding heights of Nicaraguan society. This denouement was celebrated in Washington, which clearly had expected a different outcome. Not surprisingly, both sides in the decade-long policy debate over Nicaragua were quick to claim that their respective positions had been vindicated by the government change in Managua. While contra supporters claimed victory for the Reagan Doctrine, and advocates of the Arias Peace Plan heralded the triumph of negotiations and diplomacy,

Air Defense of the United States: Strategic Missions and Modern Technology

Abstract: Strategic air defense of the United States was a high-interest topic in the 1950s and early 1960s. The concern was Soviet intercontinental bombers, and the United States had a substantial national air defense system. But by the mid-60s, any concern of attack by aircraft was eclipsed by the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The lack of a means to effectively defend against these missiles caused a conscious decline in our air defense capability. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983 caused a resurgence of interest and controversy about national ballistic missile defense. A by-product of this national debate has been some rekindling of interest in the companion problem of strategic air defense. The interest in air defense has also been rejuvenated by the recent rapid advances in the technology of air-breathing vehicles. The United States has been the major innovator with the development of modern cruise missiles and stealthy manned aircraft.’ Other nations will certainly follow the U.S.

Beyond Mutual Recrimination: Building a Solid U.S.-Japan Relationship in the 1990s

Abstract: T h e United States and Japan entered the 1990s with both the security and the economic sides of their relationship at some risk. The Washington Post headlined a “low point” in bilateral dea1ings.l A New York TimeslCBS NewsfTokyo Broadcasting System poll reported that 58 percent of Americans found ”the economic power of Japan” to be “a greater threat to the security of the United States these days” than “the military power of the Soviet Union,” with only 26 percent believing the opposite. And citizens of each nation overwhelmingly saw the other as its ”strongest competitor. ’Q At the elite level, there has been a rise of ”revisionists” in both countries stressing Japan’s strength and uniqueness, and the divergence of Japanese and American interest^.^ An outgoing State Department official even played I . M. Destlev and Michael Nacht

Estimating Soviet Military Force Levels: Some Light from the Past

Abstract: R e c e n t Soviet disclosures of current military force levels,' and Mikhail Gorbachev's announcement of a major unilateral force reduction,2 had an interesting precedent some thirty years ago. In January 1960, Nikita Khrushchev disclosed for the first time since World War I1 the manpower strength of the Soviet armed forces, and dramatically announced a planned reduction by one-third over the next two years3 Today, in an era of expanding glasnost, reconnaissance satellites, on-site inspection to verify the dismantling of Soviet intermediaterange missiles, and Soviet offers of extensive verification of force levels and agreed reductions, it may not be easy to conjure up a picture of the task that the United States had then to evaluate his claim. A special intelligence estimate (following as an Appendix on pp. 110-116) was prepared at that time to assess Soviet force levels. This article presents

CIA Estimates of Soviet Military Spending

Abstract: The stated purpose of Franklyn D. Holzman’s article in the Fall 1989 issue of International Security was “to evaluate the CIA’S estimates of defense spending (ME) as a share of Gross National Product (GNP).”’ In reviewing the methodologies used to estimate Soviet defense spending, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) statements over the last ten years on the level of and trends in ME, Holzman finds “what appear to be inconsistencies in the estimates.” He then goes on ”to explain how the inconsistencies . . . could have developed,” concluding with: 0 a suggestion that political compromise by CIA with DIA led to 0 an overstatement by CIA of ME and, thus, ME/GNP, which in turn 0 ”contributed to U.S. foreign policy decisions that were not in this nation’s best interests” (Holzman, p. 103).