Contemporary balance-of-power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity. Kenneth Waltz's theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors, which this article characterizes as chain-ganging and buck-passing. To predict which of these two policies will prevail, it is necessary to complicate Waltz's theory by adding a variable from Robert Jervis's theory of the security dilemma: the variable of whether offense or defense is perceived to have the advantage. At least under the checkerboard geographical conditions in Europe before World Wars I and II, perceived offensive advantage bred unconditional alliances, whereas perceived defensive advantage bred free riding on the balancing efforts of others.

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British military policy between the two world wars

Chain gangs and passed bucks: predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity

~ Offensive military doctrines threaten international stability.’ World War I vividly illustrates how a crisis can spark a major war that might have been avoided if the major players had had defensive rather than offensive doctrines. Similarly, throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Army’s offensive doctrine in Europe fueled the arms race and heightened threat perception. The choice between offensive and defensive military doctrines is at least as important now as during the Cold War. Although restructuring military doctrines along defensive orientations will not erase ethnic hostilities or suspend territorial appetites, it could remove one of the structural impediments to cooperation in the post-Cold War world. Yet an adequate explanation for why states choose offensive or defensive military doctrines remains elusive. Many scholars credit civilian policymakers with formulating doctrine wellsuited to the state’s strategic environment, and blame the armed services’ parochial interests for the sometimes disastrous choice of offensive doctrines.2 However, using illustrations from doctrinal developments in the French army during the 1920s and 1930s, this article challenges this portrait of the role of civilians and military in choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines. Even during times of increased international threat, I argue, the international system is indeterminate of choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines; civilians intervene infrequently in doctrinal develop-

Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars

: Military historian Williamson Murray has prepared this selected bibliography as a guide to the vast body of military histories and as a reading program that could extend our understanding and comprehension of that terrible, yet intriguing, human phenomenon that is war. JAWP) is making it available to those individuals in DoD and the Services who feel that history can shed light on the problems they confront today. The bibliography is derived from the substantial literature on European and American military history The works were chosen for a variety of reasons: quality of scholarship, point of view subject matter, and readability. They are categorized by period and subject matter, and given a rating by the author. The first chapter contains an annotated list of twenty-five books that Dr. Murray considers essential to the library of a warfighter, scholar, or student of military history.

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Military History: A Selected Bibliography

Introduction The interrelated issue of military structure and effectiveness confronts planners and commanders with some of the most intractable intellectual issues associated with organizational behavior. The realities of preparing forces to kill and to face death in the service of the state create problems with no analogues in other forms of social interaction. It is easier to define the behaviors one wishes to discourage in individuals – cowardice, flight, and non-cooperation – than to define the positive performance of complex organizations, which all armed forces inevitably become. ‘The primary object of organization,’ wrote General Sir Ian Hamilton, ‘is to shield people from unexpected calls upon their powers of adaptability, judgment, and decision.’ Yet other commanders have observed that individual and organizational flexibility is essential to military success. Despite a sizeable theoretical literature on organizational efficiency, military effectiveness remains an ill-defined concept. For some civilian and military analysts, effectiveness is tied to the social structure of military organizations. The sociological approach focuses on factors such as unit cohesion, group solidarity, small–unit leadership, and Kameradschaft . Similar research seeks to link effectiveness to non-material factors like esprit, staying power, and the will-to-fight. Outside of the small-unit focus, the sociological focus– regardless of whether the methodology is quantitative or descriptive – may provide special insights into the likely performance of large-scale military organizations, since it focuses on such problems as the normative aspects of officership, recruitment, military socialization, morale and political attitudes, and troop trainability.

British military policy between the two world wars

Citations

Chain gangs and passed bucks: predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity

Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars

Military History: A Selected Bibliography

The Effectiveness of Military Organizations

Does military culture matter

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