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: Christensen et al. as discussed by the authors argued that the most prevalent component of the debate is the assessment of China's overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional powers.
Abstract: Since the early 1990s, American scholars and strategists have debated whether the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will pose a security threat to the United States and its regional interests in East Asia in the next few decades. Although many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of the debate is the assessment of China’s overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional powers. So conferences have been held and papers written discussing whether China would become a “peer competitor” or “near peer competitor” of the United States in the military arena, or a “regional hegemon” towering over its cowed neighbors and threatening American interests in a region of increasing importance to the United States.1 Posing Problems without Catching Up Thomas J. Christensen
244 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: The authors examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes, and challenges the presumption that Europe was destined to enjoy checks and balances while China was preordained to suffer under a coercive universal status.
Abstract: The Eurocentric conventional wisdom holds that the West is unique in having a multi-state system in international relations and liberal democracy in state-society relations. At the same time, the Sinocentric perspective believes that China is destined to have authoritarian rule under a unified empire. In fact, China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656–221 BC) was once a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. Both cases witnessed the prevalence of war, formation of alliances, development of the centralized bureaucracy, emergence of citizenship rights, and expansion of international trade. This book, first published in 2005, examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes. This historical comparison of China and Europe challenges the presumption that Europe was destined to enjoy checks and balances while China was preordained to suffer under a coercive universal status.
235 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2006
229 citations
Book•
02 Feb 2009
TL;DR: Taliaferro and Ripsman as mentioned in this paper discuss the limits of neoclassical realism in explaining foreign policy preferences and state mobilization in the age of mass politics, and present an interactive approach to explain foreign policy preference.
Abstract: 1. Introduction: neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman 2. Threat assessment, the state, and foreign policy: a neoclassical realist model Steven E. Lobell 3. Neoclassical realism and strategic calculations: explaining divergent British, French, and Soviet strategies toward Germany between the world wars (1919-39) Mark R. Brawley 4. Neoclassical realism and identity: peril despite profit across the Taiwan Strait Jennifer Sterling-Folker 5. Neoclassical realism and the national interests: presidents, domestic politics, and major military interventions Colin Dueck 6. Neoclassical realism and domestic interest groups Norrin M. Ripsman 7. Neoclassical realism and resource extraction: state building for future war Jeffrey W. Taliaferro 8. Neoclassical realism and state mobilization: expansionist ideology in the age of mass politics Randall L. Schweller 9. The limits of neoclassical realism: additive and interactive approaches to explaining foreign policy preferences Benjamin O. Fordham 10. Conclusion: the state of neoclassical realism Norrin M. Ripsman, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro and Steven E. Lobell.
215 citations