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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01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather, one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deformation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1
512 citations
302 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors call for a research program focused on the dynamics of global power politics, rather than linking realpolitik to structural-realist theoretical frameworks or the putatively anarchical character of world politics, they treat power politics as an object of analysis in its own right.
Abstract: We call for a research program focused on the dynamics of global power politics. Rather than link realpolitik to structural-realist theoretical frameworks or the putatively anarchical character of world politics, the program treats power politics as an object of analysis in its own right. It embraces debate over the nature of global power politics among scholars working with distinctive approaches. It sees the structural contexts of power politics as highly variable and often hierarchical in character. It attenuates ex ante commitments to the centrality of states in global politics. And it takes for granted that actors deploy multiple resources and modalities of power in their pursuit of influence. What binds this diverse research program together is its focus on realpolitik as the politics of collective mobilization in the context of the struggle for influence among political communities, broadly understood. Thus, the study of the dynamics of collective mobilization—the causal and constitutive pathways linking efforts at mobilization with enhanced power—brings together approaches to security studies in a shared study of power politics.
89 citations
TL;DR: The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the present by Christopher Layne as discussed by the authors is a collection of influential articles on the history of the United States' foreign policy.
Abstract: The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. By Christopher Layne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 290p. $29.95. For over a decade, through a series of influential articles, Christopher Layne has been the leading advocate within the academy of an entirely new and much more detached foreign policy strategy for the United States, one based upon what he calls “offshore balancing.” In The Peace of Illusions, Layne puts his argument in book form, addressing conceptual as well as historical and policy issues.
87 citations
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose an alliance compensation theory to explain why some states that receive a nuclear security guarantee move towards, and sometimes back away from, nuclear weapons, and argue that allies become more likely to engage in nuclear behavior when they doubt the reliability of the security guarantees they receive from their major power patrons.
Abstract: Why do some states that receive a nuclear security guarantee move towards, and sometimes back away from, nuclear weapons? To answer these questions, I propose alliance compensation theory. I argue that allies become more likely to engage in nuclear behavior when they doubt the reliability of the security guarantees they receive from their major power patrons (e.g., the United States and the Soviet Union). Specifically, I show that allies evaluate the strength of these guarantees by referring to their patron’s overseas conventional military deployments and foreign policy doctrines – in short, its strategic posture. When the nuclear-armed patron implements undesirable conventional military redeployments (e.g., unilateral troop withdrawals), the ally loses confidence in the patron’s earlier pledges to provide it with military support in a future nuclear crisis. These doubts encourage the ally to adopt policies that range from signaling an interest in an nuclear arsenal to activating a nuclear weapons program. Allies that covertly undertake nuclear activities are seeking to produce an independent deterrent. Allies that overtly engage in nuclear behavior are also bargaining over the terms of their patron’s security guarantees. I further argue that the interaction of two variables – the ally’s economic and security dependence on the patron – affect the major power’s ability to force the ally to credibly renounce nuclear weapons acquisition. To test this argument, I include three main cases on West Germany, Japan, and South Korea in addition to narrower cases on the United Kingdom, France, and Soviet allies. I also draw on statistical analysis to investigate the relationship between conventional military withdrawals and the likelihood of US allies to engage in nuclear behavior.
58 citations
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TL;DR: A swift-paced, absorbing account of the dangerous political maneuvers that engaged America with both China and the Soviet Union during the years between 1948 and 1972 was given by Chang.
Abstract: Winner of the 1991 Stuart L. Bernath Prize, sponsored by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. ---------- "A swift-paced, absorbing account of the dangerous political maneuvers that engaged America with both China and the Soviet Union during the years between 1948 and 1972...Chang's account is impressively documented with once-classified records...This is a scrupulously detailed history, scholarly and at the same time filled with incident, insight, and personality...Chang paints a fascinating picture."--San Francisco Chronicle
54 citations
03 Apr 2013
TL;DR: The two volumes edited by Benjamin Frankel (with their around 900 pages) provide almost everything that anyone might want to know about Realism as discussed by the authors, despite what many of its critics have been saying (especially since the end if the Cold War).
Abstract: NOD & Conversion - "Taken together, the two volumes edited by Benjamin Frankel (with their around 900 pages) provide almost everything that anyone might want to know about Realism." CHOICE "The material ... is well written despite being prepared by many authors...it is worth the price for its bibliography alone." Political Studies - "A concise yet penetrating introduction by the editor sets the stage for the contemporary debate within the Realist school...This work shows how Reaalism is still vital and robust, despite what many of its critics have been saying (especially since the end if the Cold War.
54 citations
Book•
30 Jun 2000
TL;DR: Appeasement in International Politics as mentioned in this paper analyzes five case studies from the past 100 years and concludes that appeasement succeeds or fails depending on the nature of the adversary, the inducements used on the antagonist, and the existence of other incentives for the adversary to acquiesce.
Abstract: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 Since the 1930s, appeasement has been labeled as a futile and possibly dangerous policy. In this landmark study, Stephen Rock seeks to restore appeasement to its proper place as a legitimate--and potentially successful--diplomatic strategy. Appeasement was discredited by Neville Chamberlain's disastrous attempt to satisfy Adolf Hitler's territorial ambitions and avoid war in 1938. Rock argues, however, that there is very little evidence to support the belief that dissatisfied states and their leaders cannot be appeased or that appeasement undermines a state's credibility in later attempts at deterrence. Rock looks at five case studies from the past 100 years, revealing under what conditions appeasement can achieve its goals. From British appeasement of the United States near the beginning of the twentieth century to American conciliation of North Korea in the early 1990s, Rock concludes that appeasement succeeds or fails depending on the nature of the adversary, the nature of the inducements used on the antagonist, and the existence of other incentives for the adversary to acquiesce. Appeasement in International Politics suggests the type of appeasement strategy most appropriate for various situations. The options range from pure inducements, reciprocity, to a mixture of inducements and threats. In addition to this theoretical framework, Rock's explicit comparison of appeasement and deterrence offers important guidelines for policymakers on when and how to implement a strategy of appeasement. At a time when the strategy of engagement plays an increasingly central--and controversial--role in U.S. foreign policy, Appeasement in International Politics reestablishes the long-discredited use of inducements as an effective means of preventing conflict.
54 citations
TL;DR: The trouble with carrots: Transaction costs, conflict expectations, and economic inducements as discussed by the authors, is a classic example of the problem with carrots in economic inducement, and it has been studied extensively in the literature.
Abstract: (1999). The trouble with carrots: Transaction costs, conflict expectations, and economic inducements. Security Studies: Vol. 9, Power and the Purse: Economic Statecraft, Interdependence, and National Security, pp. 188-218.
53 citations