Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics
TL;DR: The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation (concessions, compensations, and other inducements) to detach and neutralize potential adversaries.
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...
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TL;DR: The regional upheaval of recent years has demonstrated that several local players have great influence on events in the Middle East, sometimes greater than the more remote great powers do, if only b....
Abstract: The regional upheaval of recent years has demonstrated that several local players have great influence on events in the Middle East—sometimes greater than the more remote great powers do, if only b...
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21 Sep 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that state-centric tools to study regionalism have precluded us from uncovering regional forms of engagement under hierarchical relations of empires, and highlight the lack of conceptual tools to capture historical continuity in the regional fabric of world politics.
Abstract:
Scholars have long grappled with the puzzle as to why some regions become peaceful and resilient while others crumble into perpetual insecurity. Much of the scholarship that they produced viewed regional formations as extensions of the state system. This work argues that state-centric tools to study regionalism have precluded us from uncovering regional forms of engagement under hierarchical relations of empires. They have privileged great power politics, at the expense of the political agency of non-state actors, such as minority communities, constitutional assemblies, and political parties, among others. This work highlights the lack of conceptual tools to capture historical continuity in the regional fabric of world politics. The bulk of the article engages in the methodology of concept development for regional fracture, in an effort to advance comparative regional studies historically and systematically. The concept development is then applied in the context of the Eastern Anatolian region of the late Ottoman Empire.
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Cites background from "Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How We..."
...Within realist scholarship on balancing and alliance politics, wedging (Crawford 2011) is one concept comparable to regional fracturing....
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TL;DR: This paper argued that relations of competing great powers with the ruling group in smaller states determine the fate of asymmetric alliance and pointed out that the survival strategies of key ruling groups in those countries are crucial for asymmetric alliances.
Abstract:
Why do some smaller states signal to move away from the US-led liberal order? We look at the ruling group survival in smaller allies to answer this pressing puzzle. Despite accepting the merit of systemic explanations, we simply argue that the ruling groups in smaller states engage with revisionist powers in the international system to sustain and enhance their privileged positions in the domestic policy setting. Hungary, a NATO member, and Pakistan, a traditional ally of the United States, have long been showing signs of shifting toward the China/Russia axis. We explain the behavior of Hungary and Pakistan during the 2010s by focusing on the survival strategies of key ruling groups in those countries. We simply argue that relations of competing great powers with the ruling group in smaller states determine the fate of asymmetric alliance.
1 citations
12 Sep 2019
TL;DR: The Nordic countries interact with Russia not only in the Baltic Sea region but also in the Barents region and the Polar Arctic as discussed by the authors, and the Nordic countries face difficult dilemmas in this new situation.
Abstract: The Nordic countries interact with Russia not only in the Baltic Sea region but also in the Barents region and the Polar Arctic. In order to get a full picture of the underlying dynamics, individual Nordic Russia-relations should be studied in a comprehensive framework. The framework applied here is one of great power wedging in regional dynamics. With geopolitical differences and mutual idiosyncracies, the Nordic soil has traditionally been fertile for great powers seeking to 'divide and rule', and Russia has apparently succeeded since about 2000. However, in the wake of Russia's involvement in the Ukraine conflict and the election of Donald Trump as US president, geopolitical interests seem to be converging with fairly even threat perceptions being found in Nordic capitals. This will strengthen security and defence cooperation, although a common Nordic Russia-policy is unlikely. All four countries, in particular Sweden, face difficult dilemmas in this new situation.
1 citations
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...5 Crawford 2011....
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Book•
01 Jan 1960
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a theory of interdependent decision based on the Retarded Science of International Strategy (RSIS) for non-cooperative games and a solution concept for "noncooperative" games.
Abstract: I. Elements of a Theory of Strategy 1. The Retarded Science of International Strategy 2. An Essay on Bargaining 3. Bargaining, Communication, and Limited War II. A Reorientation of Game Theory 4. Toward a Theory of Interdependent Decision 5. Enforcement, Communication, and Strategic Moves 6. Game Theory and Experimental Research III. Strategy with a Random Ingredient 7. Randomization of Promises and Threats 8. The Threat That Leaves Something to Chance IV. Surprise Attack: A Study in Mutual Distrust 9. The Reciprocal Fear of Surprise Attack 10. Surprise Attack and Disarmament Appendices A. Nuclear Weapons and Limited War B. For the Abandonment of Symmetry in Game Theory C. Re-interpretation of a Solution Concept for "Noncooperative" Games Index
7,845 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1972
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of international politics, describes the struggle for political power, and discusses balance of power, international law, disarmament, and diplomacy. But this theory does not consider the role of women in international politics.
Abstract: Offers a theory of international politics, describes the struggle for political power, and discusses balance of power, international law, disarmament, and diplomacy.
3,179 citations
TL;DR: The authors show that there will exist negotiated settlements that rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight under very broad conditions, under the assumption that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it.
Abstract: Realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war. Against this view, I show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight. Popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain. Essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms. The first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it. The second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain. Historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible.
3,062 citations