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Journal ArticleDOI

Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics

18 Mar 2011-International Security (The MIT Press)-Vol. 35, Iss: 4, pp 155-189
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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Book
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
T. V. Paul1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that balance of power theory has become irrelevant to understanding state behavior in the post-Cold War international system dominated by the United States and argue that second-tier major powers such as China, France, and Russia have refrained from undertaking traditional hard balancing through the formation of alliances or arms buildups.
Abstract: Analysts have argued that balance of power theory has become irrelevant to understanding state behavior in the post-Cold War international system dominated by the United States. Second-tier major powers (such as China, France, and Russia) and emerging powers (such as Germany and India) have refrained from undertaking traditional hard balancing through the formation of alliances or arms buildups. None of these states fears a loss of its sovereign existence as a result of increasing U.S. power. Nevertheless, some of these same states have engaged in soft-balancing strategies, including the formation of temporary coalitions and institutional bargaining, mainly within the United Nations, to constrain the power as well as the threatening behavior of the United States. Actions taken by others in response to U.S. military intervention in the Kosovo confiict of 1999 and the Iraq war of 2003 offer examples of soft balancing against the United States.

398 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

362 citations

Book
01 Jun 1976

345 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relevance of scholarly work on the causal concept of power is explored with regard to the following topics: potential vs actual power, interdependence, military power, positive sanctions, the zero-sum model of politics, and the distinction between deterrence and compellence as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Recent refinements in social science thinking about power could be used to revitalize this approach to understanding international relations The relevance of scholarly work on the causal concept of power is explored with regard to the following topics: potential vs actual power, interdependence, military power, positive sanctions, the zero-sum model of politics, and the distinction between deterrence and compellence The tendency to exaggerate the fungibility of power resources, the propensity to treat military power resources as the1 “ultimate” power base, and the emphasis on conflict and negative sanctions at the expense of cooperation and positive sanctions, are still common in international relations scholarship The most important need is for recognition that the absence of a common denominator of political value in terms of which different scopes of power can be compared is not so much a methodological problem to be solved as it is a real-world constraint to be lived with

321 citations