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: This paper examined the communications of two Canadian police associations in Toronto and Winnipeg and described how police unions tactically engage with multiple forms of media to disseminate strategic narratives that reflect police identity and ideology, which serve to favourably delineate the role of police in their communities while sidestepping critical views.
Abstract:
The political communications of police unions in the digital age deserve more attention from criminologists. This article examines the communications of two Canadian police associations in Toronto and Winnipeg. Using multimodal discourse analysis, we describe how police unions tactically engage with multiple forms of media to disseminate strategic narratives that reflect police identity and ideology. We conceptualize the mobilization of ‘thin blue line’ narratives and maintenance of a ‘blue wall of silence’ as forms of boundary work, which serve to favourably delineate the role of police in their communities while sidestepping critical views. The proliferation of digital media amplifies the unions’ capacities to influence local politics by undermining elected authorities and community activists while advancing a police-centric view of society.
7 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that exclusion from economic institutions affects economic cooperation between members and non-members, and that such exclusion also affects political cooperation, since excluded countries generally seek closer political ties with institutional members in order to gain access to an excluding institution.
Abstract: International institutions are understood as one of the best means of achieving inter-state cooperation. This perspective omits the effects of institutional creation on non-members. We know that exclusion from economic institutions affects economic cooperation between members and non-members. I argue that such exclusion also affects political cooperation. Excluded countries generally seek closer political ties with institutional members in order to gain access to an excluding institution. But if non-members are rivals with members, exclusion may result in worsening political ties. Evidence from the global trade regime supports the argument. Case studies of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Chinese institution-building in the Asia-Pacific illustrate the theory. Statistical analysis of the near-universe of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) and countries' voting affinities in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) demonstrates the theory's generalizability. These findings caution against the view that a decline in multilateral cooperation may be offset by preferentialism.
7 citations
Book•
06 Nov 2015
TL;DR: The Second Nuclear Age is characterized by a greater diversity of nuclear-armed states, the emergence of regional nuclear rivalries, and dramatic asymmetries in capability and interest between regional nuclear powers and other states inside and outside their regions as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: : Over the course of the 21st century, the international environment is likely to evolve in ways that present unprecedented challenges to the national security of the United States. One of the greatest of these challenges will be the need to protect U.S. interests amid the proliferation of nuclear weapons to a rising number of regional powers. This trend, which some scholars and security analysts have described as the Second Nuclear Age, is characterized by a greater diversity of nuclear-armed states, the emergence of regional nuclear rivalries, and dramatic asymmetries in capability and interest between regional nuclear powers and other states inside and outside their regions.1 The United States has important interests in the regions in which this process is underway. Consequently, risks are increasing that U.S. leaders will find it necessary to confront emergent nuclear-armed regional adversaries states with a handful of nuclear weapons and strong antipathies toward the United States or its regional friends and allies.2
6 citations
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper studied how China pursues this strategy and how it disrupts potential countervailing response in its quest for regional hegemony, which is an important strategy for China.
Abstract: Wedging is an important strategy for China to disrupt potential countervailing response in its quest for regional hegemony. Yet, little has been known about how China pursues this strategy and the ...
6 citations
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that Africa holds the key to the minerals that will be required to supply desires of the 21st century middle classes globally, including an emerging African middle class.
Abstract: China has sought friendship with many nations of Africa, and some of these relations have increased and deepened over time. The West, including the NATO countries and particularly the United States, also have developed a presence in Africa. Mostly, the West and China have managed to work without conflict across Africa, sometimes in different locations. The world is governed largely by four trading blocks: the United States of America, China, the Russian Federation, and now the European Union upon ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon. Each is grappling for global and regional hegemony, for regional alliances, sustainable sources of energy and other raw materials, and shares of emerging markets for the consumer goods they all produce. America and China are leading this race. China and the United States both are investing aggressively on the continent of Africa, but in different ways, at least visibly. The natural resources and the African labour that China will harvest for its manufacture of goods as the “factory to the world” in the final analysis will benefit the United States and American consumers more than any other country or population. The cash Americans use to pay for this consumption enriches China, especially its rising middle class. Africa is a place where both super powers collaborate, sometimes in seemingly different ways, for a common benefit. This is “competitive convergence.” Africa holds the key to the minerals that will be required to supply desires of the 21st century middle classes globally, including an emerging African middle class. Africa is a place where factories that pollute the environment will increase in number as they decrease within America and China; an emerging market for the sale of goods made by China at prices that will reflect an increasing economy of scale, and Africa is situated at a geographic crossroads between Asia and Europe. All of these conditions will work together to keep a lasting peace between China and The West.
6 citations
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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