Showing papers in "International Security in 2011"

After Unipolarity: China's Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline

Abstract: The emerging transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar distribution of global power presents a unique and unappreciated problem that largely explains why, contrary to the expectations of balance of power theory, a counterbalancing reaction to U.S. primacy has not yet taken place. The problem is that, under unipolarity and only unipolarity, balancing is a revisionist, not a status quo, behavior: its purpose is to replace the existing unbalanced unipolar structure with a balance of power system. Thus, any state that seeks to restore a global balance of power will be labeled a revisionist aggressor. To overcome this ideational hurdle to balancing behavior, a rising power must delegitimize the unipole's global authority and order through discursive and cost-imposing practices of resistance that pave the way for the next phase of full-fledged balancing and global contestation. The type of international order that emerges on the other side of the transition out of unipolarity depends on whether the emerg...

Graceful Decline?: The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment

Abstract: There is broad scholarly consensus that the relative power of the United States is declining and that this decline will have negative consequences for international politics. This pessimism is justified by the belief that great powers have few options to deal with acute relative decline. Retrenchment is seen as a hazardous policy that demoralizes allies and encourages external predation. Faced with shrinking means, great powers are thought to have few options to stave off decline short of preventive war. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, however, retrenchment is not a relatively rare and ineffective policy instrument. A comparison of eighteen cases of acute relative decline since 1870 demonstrates that great powers frequently engage in retrenchment and that retrenchment is often effective. In addition, we find that prevailing explanations overstate the importance of democracies, bureaucracies, and interest groups in inhibiting retrenchment. In fact, the rate of decline can account for both the extent a...

The Rubicon Theory of War: How the Path to Conflict Reaches the Point of No Return

Abstract: A major paradox in international relations is the widespread fear and anxiety that underlies the security dilemma in times of peace and the prevalence of overconfidence or “false optimism” on the eve of war. A new theory of the causes of war—the Rubicon theory of war—can account for this paradox and explain important historical puzzles. The “Rubicon model of action phases,” which was developed in experimental psychology, describes a significant shift in people's susceptibility to psychological biases before and after making a decision. Prior to making decisions, people tend to maintain a “deliberative” mind-set, weighing the costs, benefits, and risks of different options in a relatively impartial manner. By contrast, after making a decision, people tend to switch into an “implemental” mind-set that triggers a set of powerful psychological biases, including closed-mindedness, biased information processing, cognitive dissonance, self-serving evaluations, the illusion of control, and optimism. Together, the...

The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision

Abstract: President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromanaging and mismanaging matters. Civilian supremacists, in contrast, argue that the primary problem is ensuring that well-informed civilian strategic guidance is authoritatively directing key decisions, even when the military disagrees with that direction. A close reading of the available evidence—both in published accounts and in new, not-for-attribution interviews with the key players—shows that the surge decision vindicates neither camp. If President Bush had followed the professional supremacists, there would have been no surge because his key military commanders...

Muslim "Homegrown" Terrorism in the United States: How Serious Is the Threat?

Abstract: Since the September 11 attacks, analysts and public officials have expressed growing concern about the potential of Muslim citizens and residents of the United States to plot attacks within the country's borders—a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “homegrown” terrorism. To assess this apparent threat, it is necessary to examine what is known about the willingness and capacity of Muslim Americans to execute deadly attacks in the United States. Three conditions, either alone or together, could contribute to an increasing threat of homegrown terrorism. The first concerns what is known about the radicalization of Muslim Americans and whether a surge in arrests in 2009 indicates a growing trend in Muslim American terrorism. The second relates to the capacity of aspiring militants to avoid detection as they prepare attacks. The third depends on the skills of aspiring terrorists and therefore their capacities to execute increasingly sophisticated attacks. The analysis should be generally reassuring to those co...

States in Mind: Evolution, Coalitional Psychology, and International Politics

Abstract: The use of evolutionary models to examine political behavior in international relations has been the subject of much debate, but serious scholarly work has generally been lacking, in part because the causal mechanisms have not always been clearly explicated. An evolutionary psychological framework can correct this deficit and benefit research in at least three major areas of international relations: (1) how political groups such as states are perceived and represented by individuals and groups; (2) how coalitional action is facilitated among states; and (3) sex differences in coalitional behavior. Hypotheses are offered in each of these areas to more clearly demonstrate the psychological mechanisms that are the bridge between evolutionary theory and political behavior in the international system. The social and political landscape of the ancestral environments in which humans evolved strongly suggests that the psychological architecture of humans possesses specialized design for coalitional living that co...

Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics

Abstract: States use wedge strategies to prevent hostile alliances from forming or to disperse those that have formed. These strategies can cause power alignments that are otherwise unlikely to occur, and thus have significant consequences for international politics. How do such strategies work and what conditions promote their success? The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation—concessions, compensations, and other inducements—to detach and neutralize potential adversaries. These kinds of strategies play important roles in the statecraft of both defensive and offensive powers. Defenders use selective accommodation to balance against a primary threat by neutralizing lesser ones that might ally with it. Expansionists use selective accommodation to prevent or break up blocking coalitions, which isolates opposing states by inducing potential balancers to buck-pass, bandwagon, or hide. Two cases—Great Britain's defensive attempts to accommodate Italy in the late 1930s a...

Veto Players, Nuclear Energy, and Nonproliferation: Domestic Institutional Barriers to a Japanese Bomb

Abstract: The basic insight of the “veto players” literature from comparative politics—the more veto players, the more policy rigidity—has been nearly absent from the study of nuclear proliferation. Yet, when states need mutual agreement among a large number of veto players, this greatly lengthens the odds against radical nuclear policy change. The veto players perspective helps to explain the historical resilience of Japan's fifty-year pursuit of a complete nuclear fuel cycle for exclusively peaceful purposes. Although a long line of Japan observers have focused on statements by Japanese politicians suggesting the possibility of redirecting some of the country's large nuclear estate toward military ends, Japan's traditional nuclear policy has in fact become increasingly entrenched over the years, given the rising number of institutionalized veto players in its nuclear policymaking arena. This point is relevant not only to the long-standing question of whether Japan will acquire nuclear weapons, but also to the pos...

Europe's Troubles: Power Politics and the State of the European Project

Abstract: The 1990s were years of great optimism in Europe. As the Europeans were putting the finishing touches on their economic community, observers predicted that political and military integration would soon follow. Optimism has turned to pessimism since the turn of the century, however. Most analysts believe that the economic community is in crisis, and hardly anyone predicts the creation of a political or military counterpart to it. Why has the European project run into trouble and what does the future hold? The answers to these questions are largely to be found in the distribution of power. It was the overwhelming power of the Soviet Union that drove the Western Europeans to consider a variety of integration initiatives and to build and maintain the European Community (EC) during the Cold War. In 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived them of a compelling geostrategic reason to pursue further integration or even to preserve their economic community. As a result, the Europeans have made no real effort...

The Collapse of North Korea: Military Missions and Requirements

Abstract: In North Korea, the upcoming leadership transition in the Kim Jong-il regime will be a precarious time for the Kim family’s hold on power. A collapse of the North Korean government could have several dangerous implications for East Asia, including “loose nukes,” a humanitarian disaster, a regional refugee crisis, and potential escalation to war between China and the United States. To respond to a collapse and these problems, neighboring countries may perform several military missions to stabilize North Korea. These include the location and securing of North Korean weapons of mass destruction, stability operations, border control, conventional disarmament, and combat/deterrence operations. Assuming that collapse occurs in a relatively benign manner, military missions to stabilize North Korea could require 260,000 to 400,000 troops. If collapse occurs after a war on the peninsula, or if it sparks civil war in North Korea, the number of missions—and their requirements—would grow. Because of the size and complexity of these missions, and because of the perils associated with mismanaging them, advance and combined planning is essential. Combined planning should include those actors (e.g., China, South Korea, and the United States) that could otherwise take destabilizing action to protect their own interests.

Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience

Abstract: Why did the United States and Iraq find themselves in full-scale conflict with each other in 1990–91 and 2003, and in almost constant low-level hostilities during the years in-between? The situation was neither inevitable nor one that either side, in full possession of all the relevant information about the other, would have purposely engineered: in short, a classic instance of chronic misperception. A combination of the psychological literature on perception and its pathologies with the almost unique firsthand access of one of the authors to the decisionmakers on both sides—the former deputy head of the United Nations weapons of mass destruction inspection mission in the 1990s, the author of the definitive postwar account of Iraqi WMD programs for which he and his team debriefed the top regime leadership, and a Washington insider in regular contact with all major foreign policy agencies of the U.S. government—reveals the perceptions the United States and Iraq held of each other, as well as the biases, mi...

India's Nuclear Odyssey: Implicit Umbrellas, Diplomatic Disappointments, and the Bomb

Abstract: Why did India merely flirt with nuclear weapons in the 1960s and 1970s only to emerge as a nuclear power in the 1990s? Although a variety of factors informed India's prolonged restraint and subsequent breakthrough, new evidence indicates that India's “nuclear odyssey” can be understood as a function of Indian leaders' ability to secure their country through nonmilitary means, particularly implicit nuclear umbrellas and international institutions. In the 1960s and 1970s, India was relatively successful in this regard as it sought and received implicit support from the superpowers against China. This success, in turn, made acquiring the bomb a less pressing question. At the end of the Cold War, however, nonmilitary measures ceased to be viable for India. In the late 1980s, waning Soviet support and the failure of Rajiv Gandhi's diplomatic initiatives led to the creation of India's de facto nuclear arsenal. In the 1990s, India developed a more overt capability, not simply because the pro-bomb Bharatiya Janat...

Saddam, Israel, and the Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified?

Abstract: Efforts to understand Saddam Hussein's strategic thought have long been hampered by the opacity and secrecy of the Baathist regime. Newly available, high-level Iraqi archival documentation demonstrates that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Saddam viewed nuclear weapons through a fundamentally coercive, revisionist lens. He had long hoped to wage a grinding war of attrition against the Israeli state, and he believed that Iraqi acquisition of the bomb would neutralize Israeli nuclear threats, force the Jewish state to fight at the conventional level, and thereby allow Iraq and its Arab allies (with their larger economic and population base) to prosecute a prolonged war that would displace Israel from the territories occupied in 1967. These findings have implications for the existing theoretical literature on the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation, as well as for the growing body of work on “nuclear alarmism.” The Iraqi case undermines the thesis that states proliferate primarily because of d...

Revisiting Osirak: Preventive Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation Risks

Abstract: Thirty years after the Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor in June 1981 the consequences for Iraq's nuclear weapons program remain hotly debated. A new history of this program, based on several new Iraqi sources, yields a net assessment of the impact of the Israeli attack that differs from prevailing accounts. The attack had mixed effects: it triggered a covert nuclear weapons program that did not previously exist, while necessitating a more difficult and time-consuming technical route to developing nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding gross inefficiencies in the ensuing program, a decade later Iraq stood on the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability. This case suggests that preventive attacks can increase the long-term proliferation risk posed by the targeted state.

A Crude Threat: The Limits of an Iranian Missile Campaign against Saudi Arabian Oil

Abstract: The United States and its Persian Gulf allies have been increasingly concerned with the growing size and complexity of Iran's ballistic missile programs. At a time when the United States and its allies remain locked in a standoff with Iran over the latter's nuclear program, states around the Persian Gulf fear that Iran would retaliate for an attack on its nuclear program by launching missiles at regional oil installations and other strategic targets. An examination of the threat posed by Iran's missiles to Saudi Arabian oil installations, based on an assessment of Iran's missile capabilities, a detailed analysis of Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure, and a simulated missile campaign against the network using known Iranian weapons, finds no evidence of a significant Iranian missile threat to Saudi infrastructure. These findings cast doubt on one aspect of the Iranian threat to Persian Gulf oil while offering an analytic framework for understanding developments in the Iranian missile arsenal and the vulnerability of oil infrastructure to conventional attack.

Sea Powers, Continental Powers, and Balancing Theory

Abstract: In their article, Jack Levy and William Thompson argue that leading sea powers have neither the capability nor the incentive to threaten the domestic political order of other major powers, and are thus more likely to be bandwagoned with as a supplier of global public goods and potential ally against continental threats than balanced against (pp. 16–18).1 This argument is plausible, and their data set supports their hypotheses (pp. 30–36). As such, this response does not represent a wholesale criticism of Levy and Thompson’s work; on the contrary, it recognizes that “Balancing on Land and at Sea” represents a major contribution to alliance theory and the broader realist research program. There are, however, aspects of the argument that require development. Below, I discuss three dimensions of Levy and Thompson’s article that could be strengthened and therefore merit further scholarly attention. I then reconsider how their andings might be related to wider theoretical debates that, at present, Levy and Thompson consider inadequate.

The Security Curve and the Structure of International Politics: A Neorealist Synthesis

Abstract: Realist scholars have long debated the question of how much power states need to feel secure. Offensive realists claim that states should constantly seek to increase their power. Defensive realists argue that accumulating too much power can be self-defeating. Proponents of hegemonic stability theory contend that the accumulation of capabilities in one state can exert a stabilizing effect on the system. The three schools describe different points along the power continuum. When a state is weak, accumulating power increases its security. This is approximately the situation described by offensive realists. A state that continues to accumulate capabilities will eventually trigger a balancing reaction that puts its security at risk. This scenario accords with defensive realist assumptions. Finally, when the state becomes too powerful to balance, its opponents bandwagon with it, and the state's security begins to increase again. This is the situation described by hegemonic stability theory. These three stages d...

Civil War Settlements and the Prospects for Peace

Abstract: In “Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?” Monica Duffy Toft questions whether policymakers are correct to have a strong preference for terminating civil wars through negotiated settlements.1 Her main endeavor is to undertake a statistical analysis that compares the effect of negotiated settlements, military victories, and ceaseares/stalemates on war recurrence and on the state’s level of democracy and economic growth. With respect to war recurrence, which is the focus of this letter, she ands that negotiated settlements are largely ineffective, that civil wars ending in military victory by one side are less likely to recur, and that rebel victories produce the most durable settlements (pp. 7–8). Toft’s purpose is not only to understand these phenomena but also to provide policymakers with guidance (p. 22). She recommends that third parties should pay greater attention to security-sector reform (SSR) during negotiations, leading to settlements that can credibly guarantee both beneats from cooperation and harm from defection; failing that, support in pursuit of victory, especially rebel victory, may be a worthy objective for policymakers (p. 36). Given that the stakes and risks of external intervention in a civil war are high, it is worth reoecting on the merits of Toft’s results and recommendations. I suggest below that her andings on war recurrence and the stability of rebel victories are not dependable and helpful for policy purposes. Advice to policymakers on war termination ought to be based on case studies that explore causal relationships and examine the role actually played by policymakers in seeking to end civil wars.