International Politics

Turning Point Spring 1947

A broke and weary Britain could no longer uphold its traditional interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and told Washington so in early 1947. Communist guerrillas in Greece held much of that impoverished country, and the Soviet Union pressured Turkey for territories and control of the strategic Turkish Straits. President Truman felt we had to take up the burden and articulate a new policy and new U.S. national interests. It was a massive shift to globalism. Truman told a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, that the United States must not only aid Greece and Turkey but more generally block Communist expansion. "[I]t must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjuga-tion by armed minorities or by outside pressures," said Truman. "Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events." Truman thus made official the policy that had been brewing in Washington for months. The United States would not return to isolationism but would actively oppose the Soviets worldwide. It was a new role for the United States, a much bigger and stronger one than Wilson or FDR had envisioned: permanent and global U.S. military and political activity. A few weeks later, at the 1947 Harvard commencement, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a massive program of U.S. aid to help war-torn Europe recover. Almost unnoticed at the time, this began foreign aid as a permanent part of U.S. foreign policy. The Marshall Plan, which began in 1948, pumped some $12 billion into Europe and was a major part of the U.S. effort to contain Communist expansion. It also started West Europe on the road to economic integration.At this same time a quietly influential State Department official lay down the U.S. ideo-logical line for the entire Cold War and coined the word "containment." George F. Kennan spoke Russian and had long studied Soviet behavior. Serving in our Moscow embassy, he developed a strong dislike and mistrust of the Soviet Union and Stalin. During World War II, when we were allies, few in Washington would listen to Kennan's warnings that Stalin would be aggressive and expansionist after the war. With the start of the Cold War, Washington listened. Kennan turned an internal 1946 cable into an article for the influential Foreign Affairs quarterly. "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" appeared in the July 1947 issue and portrayed the Soviet Union as expansionist for both ideological and geopolitical reasons. The Soviets feared and hated the West and sought to subvert democratic governments, wrote Kennan under the anonymous byline "X." (As a U.S. diplomat who dealt with Moscow, he didn't want his name used, but it soon leaked.) U.S. strategy should be "a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world," Kennan urged. If held long enough, this would "pro-mote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power." Kennan, who died at age 101 in 2005, could note with satisfac-tion that his policy finally worked. U.S. policy for the more than 40 years of the Cold War was thus begun in the spring of 1947.

4.2 Explain the national interests in forming a continental republic.

After independence, U.S. national interests were redefined to suit the new nation isolated on the edge of a continent. The weak Articles of Confederation had to be scrapped because they left us vulnerable to the European presence still in North America. The 1787 Constitution "provide[d] for the common defense" by a more centralized government that maintained an army and navy, which, for most of U.S. history, were very small. We felt threatened by the Spaniards in Florida, the French in Louisiana, the British in Canada, the Russians in Alaska, and revolution-aries in Mexico. We gained most of these territories (except for Canada) with force and/or cash. By the 1840s Americans were convinced that they had a manifest destiny deter-mined by God to claim and populate most of North America. National-interest think-ing underlay each step. The United States was nervous about sharing the continent with major European powers. With most of the continent populated by Americans, we would have little to fear. Land and unlimited immigration would make America a great power. And underneath was the old contingent necessity argument: If we did not take it, someone else would. The new technologies of the nineteenth century—the railroad and telegraph—made possible a continental republic. George Washington, even as the French Revolutionary Wars raged, defined the U.S. national interest as staying out of Europe's wars. In 1793 Washington declared neutrality, abrogating our 1778 alliance with France. With this, we got Britain to sign Jay's Treaty in 1794 and remove its forts in our West. Neutrality also prevented a divisive issue—for or against the French Revolution—from polarizing U.S. politics. Americans were pouring into the now French-held Louisiana territory, and France had wars enough in Europe. Jefferson's $15 million purchase from the cash-strapped Napoleon in 1803 (without congressional authorization) doubled the size of the United States. It was hard to stay neutral and carry on commerce with Europe—we wanted to sell grain to the Continent—and this led to the War of 1812 with Britain, in which we tried to seize Canada. Several U.S. invasion attempts were repelled, Canadians note proudly. Some historians argue that we lost the War of 1812 but never admitted it. The British burned down the Capitol and White House and left; they never counted it as a war. Guerrilla warfare plus $5 million in cash persuaded Spain to cede Florida to us in 1819. With the independence of Latin America from Spain and Portugal, President Monroe issued his famous 1823 doctrine that told European powers to keep out of our hemisphere and we would keep out of theirs. Threat of force against the British in Oregon (which included present-day Washington State) was mainly bluster, but it worked in 1846. American settlers in Texas started a war that we settled in 1848 by taking the West and giving Mexico a paltry $15 million. Cash alone, $7.2 million, bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. Even Union diplomacy during the Civil War—the second bloodiest conflict of the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars—was successful. Britain, whose interests in cotton almost pushed it to recognize the Confederacy, was dissuaded by Lincoln's freeing of the slaves. Britain had for decades worked against slavery worldwide, so Lincoln's move made British recognition of the South morally impossible. As the Civil War raged, the French took advantage of U.S. weakness to set up a brief monar-chy in Mexico. With the war over, the United States told them to scram, and they did. Overall, U.S. foreign policy from independence through most of the nineteenth century was a spectacular success. Keeping the European powers distant, buying up their North American holdings cheap, and applying measured doses of force, the small, vulnerable United States grew into a continental republic, as planned. By the 1890s, however, the West had been won. Until then, policy goals had been clear, rational, limited, and feasible, for they focused American interests on this continent. The next era presented policy dilemmas and goals that were not nearly as clear and limited, for they focused on the other hemisphere. In the late 1890s, America started defining its national interests to include major activity overseas, and this brought a dispute that continues to the present over exactly what U.S. strategy in the world should be. How should we make our way in the world?

Chap.4 Americas Changing National Interest

Americans had a national interest even before they became a nation. As the 13 colonies evolved, they saw their interests differently from those of Britain. London wanted cheap raw materials, a closed market for British products, no undue expenses for de-fending the colonies, and colonial taxes to pay the colonies' defense and administrative costs. The French and Indian War had cost a bundle and mostly served the interests of the colonists. Colonies should pay for themselves, figured London; they should not drain the royal treasury. The American colonists wanted to sell their products to anyone, not just to Britain. They wanted to manufacture their own goods, not just buy British goods. They wanted the Crown to provide free security to let them expand westward. And they didn't want to pay taxes. (They still don't.) Years before 1776, American and British national interests (see the Concepts box) had begun to diverge, leading straight to the Declaration of Independence.

Conepts of Ideology And Foreign Policy

An ideology is a belief system or theory that aims to improve society. Usually ideologies end in "ism," as in liberalism, conservatism, socialism, communism, or Islamic fundamentalism. The opposite of ideology is pragmatism, but it is often in the service of an ideology. Even Americans have ideological motives, a combination of free market, democracy, and Christianity. Top leaders often do not seriously believe their proclaimed ideology but use it as a mask for self-interest. Ideological foreign policies seldom last. Revolutionary countries may start out trying to export their ideology, but when it costs too much, it is minimized. Soviet foreign policy started ideologically, but very quickly Marxism-Leninism became entwined with Soviet national inter-est. Russia was the first socialist country, so its interests were the same as socialism's—the line Lenin and Stalin used on gullible Communists around the world. What's good for Russia is good for socialism, they argued. This was ideology masking national interest. Stalin made massive ideological flip-flops: First ignore the Nazis (early 1930s), then work against the Nazis (mid-1930s), and later make a deal with the Nazis (1939). Stalin offered ideological excuses to cover up his mistakes and retain power. Take ideological foreign poli-cies with a grain of salt. They are usually either temporary fanaticism or disguised self-interest.

Diplomacy: National Security Council.

As the United States geared up for the Cold War, Congress streamlined and partially centralized foreign and defense policy making with the National Security Act of 1947. The act set up the Central Intelligence Agency and provided for a National Security Council composed of the president, vice president, and secretaries of state and defense. Various presidents have used the NSC differently, some a little and some a lot. Over the decades, though, its centralized power has grown, and it has developed a large staff to assist the president. By the time of the Nixon administration, the NSC staff—which was not mentioned in the 1947 law—had become more impor-tant than the NSC itself or the regular departments. The head of this staff is called the national security advisor, appointed by the president as a personal as-sistant and not accountable to Congress. This advisor may have the president's ear more than anyone else in foreign policy. The president picks these advisors and their helpers mostly from academia and the military. The most famous (and probably most effective) was Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, who soon eclipsed Secretary of State William Rogers. Bush 43 relied more on National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice than on Secretary of State Colin Powell. After 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took the policy lead; Powell did public relations and was replaced by Rice for Bush's second term. The NSC staff has advantages that enhance its power. First, it is in the White House, not across town. It is an information clearinghouse, receiving all State, Defense, and intelligence cables and reports. It is small and thus moves faster and leaks less; the president can trust it. Many in Congress and the conventional departments are vexed that the NSC, which started as a simple policy-coordinating device, has turned into an unaccountable superagency.

Idealism

Basing foreign policy on moral, ethical, legal, or world-order principles.

Chapter 7 From Colonialism to Decolonization

Chapter 7 reviews the dramatic transformation of former colonies with the rise and fall of 500 years of imperialism. India, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya illustrate the sweep of decolonization. South Africa is especially interesting because, even though independent, for nearly a century it remained structurally and psychologically colonial. It also shows how the end of the Cold War deprived the two sides of their respective outside backers, forcing them into accommodation.

Geography Colonialism

Colonialism is first a legal condition wherein a land lacks sovereignty; ultimate lawmaking authority resides in a distant capital. London controlled the laws governing India, Paris those of Indochina, and Brussels those of the Congo. Second, the "natives" were kept politically powerless, as the imperial power deemed them too backward and ignorant. It is startling to make a list of non-European countries that were never colonies, for the list is awfully short: Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Japan. China and Iran were reduced to semicolonial status. Colonialism often involved economic exploitation by the imperial country. The colonies supplied cheap agricultural and mineral raw materials, which the imperial country manufactured into industrial products that enriched it. Marxists argue that colonies were captive markets that were kept poor to benefit imperialists. Actually, most colonies cost imperial governments more to administer and defend than they earned. Individual firms, to be sure, often made lush profits.

4.1 Explain the national interests behind U.S. independence.

Colonists had come to America to live free and get rich: "life, liberty, and the pur-suit of happiness." Any government that gets in the way of these rights is bad—in this case, Britain. The writers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 also saw an opportunity: the likely assistance of France, which had an interest in weakening Britain and gaining an American ally and trading partner. The Americans sought sovereignty, again in the words of the Declaration, to "have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do." The founding patriots pursued America's national interests rationally by several interlocking strategies aimed at getting Britain to recognize the new "United States." Anticipating a fight, they mobilized and equipped colonial militias. They sought both military and diplomatic support from France, Spain, and any other European power that might have a grudge against Britain. Franklin went to Paris to promise a U.S. alliance and trade and to try to foment a war in Europe that would tie down the British. The French, following their own national interests, saw a chance to weaken the British and provided vital aid—weapons, troops, military advisors, and even a fleet. The United States was born with French help. The colonial war cost Britain too much, so London settled in 1782. To clinch the deal, Franklin secretly told London that the United States really sought no alliance with France, so it was easier to set the colonies free. The United States double-crossed France. In pursuing vital national interests, realism—not sentiment—rules. All in all, early U.S. foreign policy was brilliant: A weak, new country gained independence and recognition by the major European powers.

War Powers Act of 1973

Congressional attempt to limit president's use of troops in hostilitiesPassed in 1973 The War Powers Act of 1973 was written as a response to the conflict in Vietnam which lasted over 15 years without an official declaration of war. Congress wanted to reign in the power of the commander-in-chief to send troops abroad without their consent. The War Powers Act requires that the President notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops and limits their presence to 60 days without an authorization of force or a declaration of war. Though the Act was vetoed by President Nixon, Congress overrode the veto.

Pentagon

Defense Department main building.

Pentagon

Defense Departmentmain building

Tatars

Descendants of the Mongols (not "Tartars").

clientelism

Distributing funds in exchange for political support.

partition

Dividing a country along ethnic or religious lines.

Diplomacy :Presidents and Their "Doctrines"

During the Cold War, U.S. presidents articulated policies that journalists dubbed their "doctrines." The policies were seldom that simple, and calling them "doctrines" makes them sound more clear-cut than they were. Nonetheless, they are convenient handles to help us remember who stood for what. Notice that all these doctrines are just variations on the first, the Truman Doctrine, sometimes called the "containment" policy, from George Kennan's 1947 article. The overall goal of U.S. foreign policy did not change much: Stop communism. Only the intensity and costs changed. President Years Doctrine Truman( 1945-1953)-Contain the expansion of communism, presumably everywhere. Eisenhower(1953-1961)-Use nukes and spooks to prevent Communist or other radical takeovers. Kennedy(1961-1963)-Respond flexibly to communist expansion, especially to guerrilla warfare. Johnson(1963-1969)-Follow through on Kennedy Doctrine by committing U.S. troops in Vietnam. Nixon(1969-1974)-Supply weapons but not troops to countries fighting off communism. Ford(1974-1977)-Continue Nixon Doctrine. Carter(1977-1981)-Make clear to Soviets that Persian Gulf is a vital U.S. interest. Reagan(1981-1989)-Sponsor anti-Communist guerrillas who are trying to overthrow pro-Soviet regimes.

Alarmism

Exaggerating dangers to promote a policy.

Diplomacy: Detente

French for "relaxation of tensions," in traditional diplomatic usage, détente meant that two countries moved a step away from armed hostility. That was all. It did not mean they established a new, peaceful relationship. Nixon used the term in the early 1970s, however, to suggest an era of U.S.-Soviet peace. Overused and oversold, détente became a dirty word by the 1976 presidential campaign, implying giving in to the Russians, and was never used after that. Historian Gordon Craig and political scientist Alexander George emphasized that the move from hos-tility to trust takes many steps, all of them reversible. In classic diplomacy, the first step away from armed tension was détente. If the process went further, the two countries achieved a rapprochement, French for approaching each other to establish reasonable relations. If that worked, they might go on to reach an entente, a mutual understanding of who had what turf. And if that succeeded, one side could offer the other a goodwill token, called in classic diplomacy appeasement, a term that became a swear word after Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler in 1938. Eventually, if the two countries saw a mutual advantage, they could even form an alliance, a pact to help defend each other. The seventeenth-and eighteenth-century practitio-ners of diplomacy understood that these stages could not be rushed or skipped over. The process might stall at any stage or even go back to hostility. Nixon and Kissinger ignored the caution of traditional diplomacy by supposing that a détente was a rapprochement or entente.

Reflections:Kennan On History

George F. Kennan, a friend of my stepfather, Ambassador Felix Cole, kindly gave me some advice before I attended graduate school. He wrote: All I can say is that I warmly support the thought that if political science is what you wish to pursue, you start by doing your M.A., and if possible, the doctorate in political his-tory. I have misgivings about political science generally, as a subject, unless it is founded on serious historical study. Kennan himself became a celebrated historian. History reveals patterns of human behavior, what behavior shapes what events, and the likely consequences of those events. It is knowledge students of international relations cannot do without.

Concepts of Hegemony

Hegemony, from the Greek "to lead," means holding sway over other lands. Powerful countries have hegemony over weak neighbors when they can, to some degree, control their foreign and domestic policies. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was clearly the hegemonic power in East Europe. Some argue that the United States exercises hegemony over Central America. Countries practice hegemony out of fear of becom-ing vulnerable. Moscow calculated that it needed East Europe as a defensive shield. Washington dislikes hostile powers in the Western hemisphere. Both felt they had to extend their control and influence because, if they did not, someone else would intrude into what they deemed vital areas. The contingent necessity argument—"If we don't take it, someone else will"—is almost always a winner but is sometimes foolish. The trouble with he-gemony is that the underdog countries detest it. Most Central Europeans hated Soviet hegemony and were unreliable allies. Some West Europeans resented U.S. hegemony. Hegemony wins few long-term friends.

1.7 Explain why sovereignty has always been partly fictional.

If the new international system is to be more peaceful and cooperative than the old, states will have to give up at least part of their most basic attribute, their sovereignty. Part legal, part power, and part psychological, sovereignty means having the last word in law, able to control your country's internal affairs and to keep other countries from butting in. In a word, it means being boss on your own turf. Sovereignty means countries can pretty much do as they wish. Pakistan works with the United States but plays a double game in sometimes sheltering and some-times fighting Islamic extremists. Washington hates this, but Islamabad decides what is in its national interest, not Washington. China's currency, says Washington, is held too low and should rise. Beijing resists, because a low yuan gives it an export advantage. Beijing decides what is good for the Chinese economy, not Washington. In 1990 Saudi Arabia asked for U.S. troops to defend its territory against Iraq. But these soldiers could not drink a beer until they crossed into Iraq; Saudi law prohibits all alcoholic beverages (an incentive for U.S. troops to advance rapidly). Notice how sovereignty in part offsets power, in these cases, U.S. power.Sovereignty has always been partly fictional. Big, rich, and powerful countries routinely influence and even dominate small, poor, and weak countries. Lebanon, for example, lost its sovereignty as it dissolved in civil war in 1975, its territory partitioned by politico-religious militias and Syrian and Israeli occupiers. Israel's pullout from the south of Lebanon in 2000 scarcely helped, as the territory was occupied by Hezbollah fighters, not by the Lebanese army. In our day sovereignty has been slipping. The world community, speaking supranational Power above the national level, as in the UN. through the UN, told Iran that developing weapons of mass destruction was not just Iran's business but the world's business. The world felt ashamed that it did not inter-fere in the massacre of 800,000 Rwandans in 1994. Can mass murder ever be a purely "internal matter"? In 1999, NATO ignored Yugoslav sovereignty in trying to prevent the killing of Kosovar Albanians. Nations can no longer hide their misdeeds behind the screen of sovereignty. Several nations propose a new doctrine, "responsibility to protect" (R2P), that the international community can intervene in a state that abuses its citizens. Many said Syria's killing of civilians should bring an R2P response. If implemented, R2P would erode sovereignty, which is why many countries dislike it.Supranational entities have appeared. The European Union (EU) is now one giant economic market, and many important decisions are made in its Brussels headquarters, not in its members' capitals. EU members have surrendered some of their sovereignty to a higher body. Many have given up control of their own currency—a basic attribute of sovereignty—in favor of a new common currency, the euro. Now the EU is trying to build common foreign and defense policies. The trouble here is that, if the EU goes all the way to European unification, it will not erase sovereignty but merely produce a bigger and stronger sovereign entity, one even harder to deal with. In place of many smaller states, we will face one big state. Further, the EU tends to economic protection-ism, which could lead to trade wars.

Concepts Walt'z 3 Levels of Analysis

In 1959 Kenneth Waltz's (1924-2013) minor classic Man, the State, and War delineated three "levels of analysis" that are often confused but should be separated for the sake of clarity. The first level, "man," supposes individual humans cause wars, that evil, mentally ill, or power-hungry people, especially national leaders, start wars to enhance their powers or their egos. Some posit humans as biologically aggressive. Studies of Hitler as the cause of World War II are first-level analyses. Such explanations are popular but lack rigor, Waltz points out. How could one man start a giant conflagration? Only if he had control of state power. How did he get such power, and why did the state, say, Germany, follow him? This bumps the level of analysis up to Waltz's "state" level in which we look at whole countries, their societies, and their economies. Here it is bad states that supposedly cause wars. The particular form of "bad" varies from thinker to thinker. Marxists see capitalists as the culprits. Economic slowdowns force capitalist states into overseas expansion and war with other lands. Americans, on the other hand, blamed Communist states for causing wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Always insecure, the Soviet Union was driven to expand and wipe out its capitalist rivals. Woodrow Wilson saw nondemocratic governments as the problem, such as Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, a state that was geared up for World War I. Replace these with democracies, he declared, and peace will prevail. Any explanation offered in these first two levels, Waltz argued, is incomplete. We really have to take it up to his third level of analysis, the international system, which is anarchic, lack-ing an overriding force or power to make countries obey. Simply put, there are wars because there is nothing to stop them. Evil personalities or expansionist states may be the specific cause of a given war, argued Waltz, but this cause becomes operative only in a context of international anarchy. Studies become muddy when they use the insights of one level of analy-sis to explain something at another level. Waltz's three levels correspond to other IR theories: Constructivists tend to be first-level thinkers, liberals second-level, and realists third-level.

CH. 6 : Can the United States Lead the World?

In February 1941, publisher Henry Luce—born in China of missionary parents—wrote a celebrated editorial in Life magazine, "The American Century." He urged the still-isolationist United States to take a leading role in building a secure and democratic world. With Pearl Harbor in December, Americans plunged deeply into that project, one that continued long after World War II. Many now doubt that the United States can still play such a role, for four main reasons: 1. The United States has not yet figured out the world system we operate in. The simple bipolar guidelines we used during World War II and the Cold War no longer work. 2. America is no longer in charge of the world economy. Economic power is shifting to Asia. foreign policy The way a govern-ment deals with the outside world. interventionism U.S. willingness to use military force overseas. 3. Domestic constraints—economic, military, congressional, and public opinion—close off many paths. Money and troops for overseas interventions are stretched thin. Americans tired of being stuck for years in Iraq's and Afghanistan's civil wars. 4. The biggest obstacle is that few allies are now willing to follow American leader-ship. Even traditional friends such as Britain say no to U.S requests for more troops. In world opinion surveys, many voice negative views of U.S. foreign policies. World power relationships constantly change, though, and no one can predict how long the above points will be true. Let us consider the long-term tendency for U.S. for-eign policy to alternate between interventionism and noninterventionism.

Concepts Of Mead's 4 Schools Of U.S. Foreighn policy

In a much-noted 2001 book, historian Walter Russell Mead delineated four schools or basic American approaches to foreign affairs that have variously combined and battled over the history of the Republic: • Hamiltonian, a commerce-oriented approach that seeks to make America secure and powerful by economic means, namely, promoting domestic prosperity and trade relations. Hamiltonians, strong in business and banking, try to avoid war but will support it when pushed. • Wilsonian, an idealist vision of peace through treaties and international law and organizations. Wilsonians, often in the church and legal communities, also promote human rights and democracy and will go to war against brutal dictatorships. • Jeffersonian, a caution that too much foreign involvement can hurt domestic American institutions and throw away lives and money in unnecessary wars. We can't reform the world, criticize Jeffersonians (often academics and intellectuals), and we do best when we just set an example of democracy and prosperity. • Jacksonian, the view of the common man (and Donald Trump), is often ignorant and indifferent but turns to rage when America is attacked. Emotional and nonintellectual, Jacksonians are natural isolationists but once in a war demand all means for total victory and aren't squeamish about civilian deaths. They dislike the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian approaches—too brainy and complicated—and prefer simple protection of Americans' jobs and a strong military. U.S. foreign policy and its leaders are never just one of these schools, writes Mead, but shifting combi-nations of them. At times, they form alliances. The first three—Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, and Jeffersonian—are elite schools; the Jacksonian is a mass view and a permanent and powerful underlying element that foreigners cannot comprehend ("Those Americans are cowboys!") and U.S. politicians cannot ignore. Of Mead's categories, which seem to dominate American foreign policy now? Why?

Concepts of Bureaucratic Politics

In a widely read 1969 article, Harvard political scientist Graham Allison claimed the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis unrolled the way it did because of "bureaucratic politics." The term caught on and gave birth to a new subfield. Later evidence suggested the study omitted important perspectives. Specifically, Allison found that the crucial factor was the timing of evidence presented to the president and his advisors that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba. This depended on when the U2 spy plane flew. The flight was delayed a week because the Air Force and CIA squabbled over who was to pilot it. If it had flown earlier, it would have given the National Security Council time to consider other, less confrontational options. But if it had flown later, it would likely have led to one of the warlike options the military was urging on President Kennedy. So, the timing of information gathering depended on bureaucratic politics, and that is what made all the difference, argued Allison. However, tapes of Kennedy's words during the crisis, edited by Harvard historian Ernest May, show that at no time did JFK consider a military strike of any sort. He had recently read Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August and learned how World War I began as a series of misunderstood moves that escalated to total war. Kennedy was not going to let things spin out of control. Accordingly, the options that Allison thought were on the NSC table—air strikes, amphibious landings, parachute drops—were never on the table. Kennedy, from the beginning, decided he would not use them. Bureaucratic politics had little or nothing to do with his decision.

5.3 Explain the origins of the Cold War.

In early 1945, the Big Three wartime leaders—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—met in the Soviet Crimean resort of Yalta to decide the fate of East and Central Europe. Some Republicans accused Roosevelt of giving East Europe to the Soviets at Yalta, which became synonymous with "treason." It was naive diplomacy but not treason. The Soviet army had already conquered most of East Europe and was determined to keep it. No one knew how far east the Western Allies would get; they could have taken more of Germany and Czechoslovakia. The two sides at Yalta also had different notions of "democracy" for East Europe. The West meant liberal democracy, with parties competing in free and fair elections. The Soviets meant "people's democracy," the ouster of capitalists and conservatives, with power going to the "party of workers" (i.e., the Communists). The misunder-standings over Yalta were part of the causes of the Cold War. The Cold War was the period of political and military tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that followed World War II. Its underlying cause was the Soviet takeover and communization of East Europe from 1945 to 1948. Every time Stalin installed another Communist regime, the West became angrier that he was re-pudiating the Yalta agreement—which called for free and democratic governments in Europe—and more fearful that he would move into West Europe. The Cold War probably crested with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but some point to Nixon's and Kissinger's efforts at détente in the early 1970s. A few argue that it then revived with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Most now peg the Cold War's end to the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989. The Cold War shows the paradox of the insecure empire. By the end of World War II, Stalin had achieved what the tsars had only dreamed about. Russia was the most powerful European nation with a security belt across East Europe. But this alarmed the Western nations, now led by the United States, which rearmed and opposed Soviet power everywhere. Stalin created a large, hostile anti-Soviet coalition. Stalin, who used to warn his subjects of "capitalist encirclement," created it. The more secure the Soviets tried to become, the greater insecurities they faced.

Turning Point: The Spanish Civil War

In the 1930s the weak Spanish Republic split. General Franco's conservative Nationalists rebelled against the leftist Popular Front government in 1936. The bitter civil war ended with Franco's victory in 1939 and was a curtain raiser and proving ground for World War II. Mussolini and Hitler immediately came to Franco's aid. German and Italian bombs leveled Guernica in 1937. Stalin had the Comintern recruit the International Brigades and sold the Republic tanks and artillery. Some 3,000 Americans fought for the Republic in the Lincoln Battalion; 700 perished. The Communists, under Stalin's orders, practiced centrist policies during the Spanish Civil War. They actually crushed Spanish Trotskyites and anarchists who wanted a proletar-ian revolution. Stalin's idea here was to convince the British and French—who stayed neutral while fascists murdered Spanish democracy—that the Soviets could be reliable partners in opposing fascism. Too late, London and Paris realized that Hitler and Mussolini were just sharpening their knives in Spain and that the other democracies would be next.

International Anarchy

No overriding power prevents sovereign states from conflicting.

Concepts Of The Previous-War Theory

One obvious cause of war is the previous war. This explanation looks simple but is actually a shorthand way of stating something more complex: Any given war leaves behind regional imbalances, thirsts for revenge, and elite calculations that often lead to another war. Other factors, to be sure, help determine if a new round of war actually takes place. As Australian economic historian Geoffrey Blainey points out, a really thorough, crushing defeat tends to keep the losing power in its (lowly) place for a long time. Examples are Paraguay following the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870), Bolivia following the Chaco War (1932-1935), and Germany and Japan following World War II. Nothing aggressive—or even much defensive—has been heard from them since. The Arab-Israeli wars are examples of the op-posite, as none of their wars was decisive. In reverse historical order: Israel's 2006 Lebanon incursion was a continuation of its 1982 Lebanon invasion, which grew out of business left unfinished by the 1973 war, which grew out of imbalances left by the 1967 war,which was a bigger version of the 1956 war, which was a continuation of the 1948 war, which was a direct result of the Holocaust during World War II, which was just a second act of World War I, which grew out of the wars of German unification, which were a result of the Napoleonic conquests... One can follow the chain back a very long time. Schematically, it looks like this: WWI S WWII S 1948 S 1956 S 1967 S 1973 S 1982 S 2006 The previous-war theory leads to two conclu-sions: (1) There are few really decisive wars that settle things once and for all. A war may settle it for the losing country for a while—Germany and Japan after World War II—but regional power vacuums left by their defeats brought Communist power into East Europe and East Asia, which led to the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam. (2) Preventing one war may also prevent a string of sub-sequent wars. You will not know, of course, which wars you have prevented.

Classic Thought: Thucydides on Fear

One of the earliest thinkers on the causes of war was a cashiered Athenian general who had time to reflect and write about the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 b.c., which devastated ancient Athens. Thucydides' insight still has not been topped: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta." Athens had become an imperial power, gain-ing colonies and hegemony over many other Greek city-states. Sparta and some other city-states grew worried. Sparta wished no war but observed the growth of Athenian power and how Athens used it ruthlessly; for example, it massacred the defiant Melians who refused to submit to Athenian domi-nation. "We could be next," thought the Spartans, so they organized an alliance against Athens. The Athenians, in turn, feared this alliance as a threat. In a climate of mutual fear against the other side's presumed—or possibly real—drive for hegemony, war became inevitable.

Turning Point: No More Munichs

One of the most overused and misleading analogies of all time has been "Munich," the 1938 meeting in which Britain and France tried to appease Hitler by giving him a piece of Czechoslovakia. "No more Munichs" is still used in Washington against a nuclear deal with Iran. Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the daughter of a Czech diplomat, said in the late 1990s that the formative experience of her life was Munich, and she continued to apply its lessons. The Munich analogy was seriously misapplied to Vietnam in the 1960s. In the first place, the United States did not even participate in the Munich conference and did not give Hitler anything. London and Paris take the blame for the Munich fiasco. Second, communism was a far more complex foe than Hitler, requiring very different strategies. Communist countries were divided among themselves, and after 1953 there was no Stalin to hold them together. China was not a puppet of the Soviet Union, and Vietnam was not a puppet of China. Third, Hitler was in a hurry; Communist leaders, be-lieving history was on their side (it was not), took their time. Fourth, in 1938 Britain and France were militarily weak and dominated by war-weary leaders, very unlike Washington in the 1960s. The replacements for the Munich analogy may be no more accurate: "No more Vietnams" and "No more Iraqs." The two may provide faulty analogies for unlike sit-uations in Colombia, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran.

Ch 3 Why War?

One theory of war has become popular of late: The run-up to World War I is a scary analogy to present tensions across the Pacific. Just as a rising, resentful Germany—buoyed by economic growth and a naval buildup—collided with Britain, so a rising China collides with the United States goes the theory. Is it valid, or do the elements of dysanalogy outweigh the elements of analogy? This theory of war fits into a broader and older category called "power transitions," the study of which goes back to Thucydides' famous statement on the cause of the disastrous Pelopponesian War, in which he served as a (failed) general: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta." More recently, one scholar called such wars "rear-end collisions," in which the rising power accelerates into the tailgate of the stagnant or declining power. Another saw them arriving when "power hierarchies" are upset by rising powers. One research team counted 16 cases of rising versus stagnant powers and found that nine of them ended in war. Usually with an eye to preserving peace, thinkers have been pondering the causes of war for centuries. Many theories of war have been advanced; none is wholly satisfac-tory. It is likely that any given war has a mixture of causes, and no two mixtures will be the same. As always in the social sciences, causality is hard to prove. Did humans always practice war? It depends on how you define war. Archeological evidence indicates that primitive hunter-gatherers endured plenty of violence, but it was usually homicide rather than war. Hunter-gatherers and later nomadic herders owned no territory, but when population pressure mounted, they fought over hunt-ing lands, cattle, pasture, and water. With no law ruling the land, spears were the only way to get back a stolen cow. Their conflicts, however, were usually episodic and loosely organized vendettas among families and clans. (Unable to use legal methods, drug cartels operate on a similar self-help basis.) Many scholars think that organized warfare required the founding of cities and their close offshoot, civilization. (The root of "civilization" is Latin for "city.") These produced states, kings, a warrior class, and a reason for fighting other kingdoms: territory. More territory brought a state more food and more people and thus more power to both resist attack and to expand. States, power, and war were likely born triplets. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argues that human violence has been declining over thousands of years. There are fewer wars and murders. Skeletal re-mains show that primitive humans had a high chance of dying at the hands of other humans. The Bible, Roman Empire, and medieval and renaissance Europe were full of violent death. Bloody as the twentieth century was, Pinker argues, our day is less deadly, although this does not necessarily prove the victory of "our better angels." Several possible explanations have nothing to do with improved human nature. Pinker calculates violent deaths as percentages of populations, but populations are now several times larger, so the same absolute number killed is a lower percentage. Stronger states now enforce laws much more tightly; "wild west" situations are rarer. Better and faster trauma care ensures fewer wounded die in combat, crime, and car accidents. Pinker's point is interesting but of faint consolation to those killed or wounded in recent wars.

Asymmetric

Out of balance, as when one country has more power than another.

Concepts Of the Pacifists Fallacy

Pacifists deem any use of arms immoral. American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) wrestled with this problem during World War II, when some American Christians took the pacifist view that we should keep out of war. Niebuhr concluded that pacifism is a type of heresy because it requires Christians to do nothing in the face of evil; you just stand there and let the murders continue. Pacifism is still around. Some people were morally outraged over U.S. actions in the Gulf, Bosnia, and Kosovo. This is a "politics of conviction," a rigid and simplistic rejection of force no matter what the situation. The opposite is a "politics of responsibility" that asks, "If I do not act, what will happen? Would my military intervention make things better or worse?" If you proclaim your country will never intervene militarily, you notify the world's dictators and extremists that they can murder with impunity. Obama faced this problem in Syria. The opposite of pacifism is bellicosity, an eagerness for war, and it is still around too. Some people suppose that the answer to most foreign policy challenges is the threat or use of force. Munich is their favorite analogy. Such policies get us involved in unwise wars that are not in the national interest. The regime uses patriotism to mask blunders, and the country gets stuck in a long conflict, unwilling to admit the war was a mistake. Once the casualties have started, the "sunk costs" argument claims that previous losses morally require us to stay in the war, otherwise our boys have died in vain. On that basis, you can stay in any war forever. There is no simple answer on the choice of war or peace in a given situation; you can err in either direction. In either case, beware of emotionalism and simplified analogies.

6.2 Contrast elite and mass views on U.S. foreign policy

Political scientist Gabriel Almond (1911-2002) observed in 1950 that "an overtly inter-ventionist and 'responsible' United States hides a covertly isolationist longing." After Vietnam, this longing was no longer covert; leading figures of both parties opposed interventionist policies. Domestic concerns dominated politics. Allies were increasingly seen as uncooperative and unfair trade competitors. A "rally event" such as 9/11 can jolt public opinion into support for dramatic action—such as invading Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003—but it never lasts. Political scientist John Mueller found similar patterns of declining public support for the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars. Starting with two-thirds support, after three years of U.S. casualties with no clear end, public opinion was two-thirds negative on all three wars. Public opinion on overseas activity is volatile and unstable, supporting a cause one year and abandoning it a few years later. In the abstract, Americans often say they support U.S. leadership in the world. In a specific situation, however, as a war lasts years and costs many soldiers and billions of dollars, Americans tire of a leadership role. In 2009, 2013, and 2016 half or more of Americans in a Pew poll agreed that the United States should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own." In 2002, only 30 percent had agreed with that statement. Opinion often seems contradictory. Americans were pleased with the first President Bush's overseas successes, even as they criticized him for spending too much time on foreign policy instead of on domestic U.S. problems. The success of the quick 1991 Gulf War shot his popularity up to record levels, but within a year opinion turned negative over a brief economic recession, and he lost reelection. The U.S. public is often divided and hesitant. Before U.S. peacekeeping forces were sent to Haiti in 1994, opinion was split about whether to intervene or stay out. Americans were not eager to rush into that complex situation and were relieved when the United States took over quickly and easily. There is also an elite versus mass split on foreign affairs. Better-educated, attentive Americans in leadership positions think that world events are important; almost all support a U.S. world role. The mass public, on the other hand, generally pays little attention to overseas problems except when the United States is attacked. With little enthusiasm or understanding, they show "apathetic internationalism," that is, they basically don't care. A 1997 Pew Research Center survey found that 63 percent favored expansion of NATO, but only 10 percent could name even one of the three nations that were about to join (Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary). Elite views—through the media, education, and the pulpit—tend to gradually trickle down and become generally accepted. Criticism of wars, for example, generally starts among elites.

Nixon Doctrine

Proclaimed by President Nixon in 1969, a policy stipulating that the United States will support its allies with economic and military aid but that the allies should provide the bulk of the manpower for their own defense

CH 5: Russia And Geopolitics

Russian President Vladimir Putin developed "hybrid warfare" to recover former Soviet republics: stir up ethnic discontent, infiltrate unmarked Russian forces, and detach portions of the target country, all the while denying it. Previously, Russia separated Transnistria from Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. In 2014, it was Ukraine's turn. In Russian-speaking areas, shadowy committees demanded to sepa-rate from the "fascistic" Ukraine. Fighting broke out, and Russian weapons and soldiers appeared. Crimea, with its important naval base of Sevastopol, was made part of Russia. Why? Georgia and Ukraine were thinking of joining NATO. Putin, to prevent that, carried out an old Russian/Soviet geopolitical imperative: Make sure potentially hos-tile power does not border Russia by keeping adjacent areas under Moscow's thumb. Washington denounced Putin's moves but used economic sanctions rather than military deployments to counter them. Putin did not back down. Indeed, his Russian nationalism boosted his popularity.

Manifest Destiny

Slogan calling for a U.S. continental republic.

Concepts Of Political Generations

Sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) argued that great events put their mark on an entire generation who carry the attitudes formed in their young adulthood all their lives. He called this "political generations." World War I, for example, produced a war-weary "lost generation" in Europe and the United States. The Great Depression produced people who forever craved job security and welfare measures. Vietnam made many Americans cautious about any U.S. military intervention overseas.One theory of war—not a completely valid one—uses the political generations approach. A generation that has experienced the horrors of war is reluctant to send its sons off to another war. This inclines the country to peace. The new generation, though, which has known only peace, picks up a romantic and heroic vision of war and tends toward an assertive foreign policy that may lead to war. We might call this a "forgetting" theory. The generation that forgets what war is like is more inclined to engage in it.

Classic Thought: Washingtons Farewell Address

Some call Washington the first isolationist, for when he left office in 1797 he warned against forming alliances with European powers. Actually, it was a shrewd appreciation of U.S. national interests at the time. Why get locked into Europe's habitual and sometimes pointless bloodshed? We need neither allies nor enemies but should "cultivate peace and harmony with all." The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political con-nection as possible. . . . Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies,the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. . . . Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. . . . Why forgo the advantages of so pecu-liar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? Why indeed? Washington posed tough-minded questions that every generation of American leaders should ask anew.

How do realists, liberals, and constructivists differ on national interest?

⁃ realism offers the thought that national interest is based on power even believing the one of the most important aspects is to not get get conquered ⁃ Liberals think the realism view is greedy and if every country is striving for a balance of power then it will eventually lead to war as the view of balance of powers is illusory. ⁃ Constructivists focus on social constructs involved in international relations including state interests.

Behavioralism

Studying humans by empirical evidence, often quantified.

Marshall Plan

The 1947 call for massive U.S. aid to war-torn Europe.

Truman Doctrine

The 1947 presi-dential call to aid countries under Communist threat

Cuban Missile Crisis

The 1962 show-down over Soviet rockets in Cuba.

Diplomacy : Congress and "Executive Agreements"

The Constitution mentions only treaties in foreign relations, but they require two-thirds of senators to ratify. The polarized Senate cannot achieve this, so now treaties are rarely even submitted. The United States signed the important UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1994 but couldn't ratify it. This is embarrassing when we urge China to follow UNCLOS provisions in the South China Sea. Beijing replies that we should not preach an UNCLOS we haven't ratified. Knowing this roadblock, presidents of both par-ties now rarely even negotiate treaties but bypass the treaty process with "executive agreements," which are unmentioned in the Constitution but awfully useful. Originally intended for little questions—who collects tax on Coke machines on a U.S. airbase in Germany?—executive agreements have expanded into middle-size and even big matters. In 2015, senators of both parties demanded that President Obama place any nuclear deal with Iran be-fore Congress to be voted up or down. An executive agreement was not good enough. This in-between device, called an "executive-legislative agreement," is also unmentioned in the Constitution but could have force of law if passed by both houses and signed by the president. It parallels the joint resolutions used to take the country to war. The Iran nuclear deal revived the specter of the isolationist 1953 Bricker Amendment, which sought to curb presidents' treaty and executive-agreement pow-ers. Truman had taken us into war in Korea and sent troops to Europe without specific congressional autho-rization. Republicans, citing the Constitution, were mad. Eisenhower and Republican internationalists, recognizing that Bricker would hamstring the president's ability to move quickly and decisively, blocked it. Many thought Bricker was the last gasp of isolationism, but the impulse is deep and enduring. s the executive-legislative agreement a good so-lution? In principle, a policy as important as the Iran nuclear deal should come before Congress. But another principle is getting the diplomatic job done, which 535 grandstanding legislators cannot do. Congress is good at blocking, not building. Republicans were behind the 2015 showdown, but no Republican presidents would like such restrictions on their diplomacy.

Turning Point: The North Russian Intervention

The Western allies were horrified at the Bolsheviks taking Russia out of the war, allowing Germany to transfer a million troops from east to west, and considered the Bolsheviks traitors and German agents. Much war materiel, most of it American, had been sent to the North Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk, where, it was feared, it would be captured by the advancing Germans. The British and Americans sent small contingents there in 1918. Some thought the West could help the White Russian forces fighting in the civil war, but the operation was confused and accomplished nothing. By the time the war ended in November, the North Russian ports were frozen shut. The Americans had to stay until mid-1919, and they fought minor skirmishes with the new Red Army. Americans and Soviets shed each other's blood early, albeit not very much. The prob-lem, studied by diplomat and historian George Kennan, was that all the British and Americans could think about was winning the war, whereas all the Bolsheviks could think about was consolidating their revolution. Neither side could accept the other's motives as legitimate. Some say the Cold War started in 1918 in North Russia.

Masses

The bulk of the population with little interest or influence.

4.3 Evaluate U.S. national interests in turning imperialist

The causes of America's brief fling with imperialism are still controversial. Some see it as the continuation of a frontier spirit; once it reached the Pacific, it had to keep going westward. Imperial thinking in Washington—Mahan's sea power theory (see the Classic Thought box) and the beginning of a large, modern fleet—started in the 1880s. In 1894, America faced a sharp economic depression, prompting some to see imperial expansion as a way to gain new markets for American goods. The triggering event of the expansion—freeing Cuba from Spanish misrule—is only part of the story. Cuban patriots had revolted against Spain in the 1870s and were brutally crushed while the United States paid little attention. In the 1890s, when Cubans again revolted, we went to war over it. In a quarter of a century, Cuba had gone from noninterest to national interest. The times had changed. In the 1870s America was still nursing its Civil War wounds and filling in the West. Americans ignored foreign affairs. By the 1890s things were different. The U.S. economy had shifted from agriculture to industry. A large, iron-hulled U.S. Navy was built. Social Darwinism encouraged Americans—including Teddy Roosevelt—to think of themselves as the "fittest" who were destined for world leadership over lesser (that is, colored) peoples. The European empires set an ex-ample for any country that aspired to be a "power." There was a race for colonies; we had to move fast if we wanted to grab what little was left, and the decaying Spanish empire—including the Philippines—was ripe for the taking. Germany also coveted the Philippines. The circulation wars between the new high-speed presses of Hearst and Pulitzer fanned interest in Cuba with lurid stories of Spanish brutality (especially against women). Hearst editorialized proudly: "How do you like my little war?" By the time of President McKinley, imperialists were defining the U.S. national interest as overseas expansion, a kind of new manifest destiny. The sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor (probably from a faulty boiler) brought the cry, "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" McKinley did not wish war, but the coun-try was inflamed, and the paralyzed Madrid government did not know how to get out of the mess without going to war and losing, which it did quickly in 1898. All over America, volunteers signed up for what Teddy Roosevelt called "a splen-did little war." The country had not been to war since the Civil War, and young men ached for adventure. Roosevelt went with his Rough Riders to Cuba but had earlier arranged with Admiral Dewey for the U.S. Pacific Fleet to wait at Hong Kong for a cable and then strike the pathetic Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. With little fighting, the decrepit Spanish empire collapsed into American hands. Spain officially ceded the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. Again, force and cash. In one year, 1898, the United States took Cuba (ostensibly independent but a U.S. protectorate), Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, plus Guam, Hawaii, Wake Island, and American Samoa (in 1899). Suddenly, America was an empire. (The United States had claimed Midway in 1867.) Some Filipinos expected independence and fought the U.S. takeover. The Philippine Insurrection of 1899-1903 resembled the later Vietnam War: stubborn resistance, U.S. calls for more troops, ambushes, harsh reprisals, burning villages, and growing disgust and opposition on U.S. college campuses and in Congress. The insurrection provoked some belated rethinking: What are we doing on the other side of the globe shooting strange people who do not want us there? Is this really our national interest? The "Anti-Imperialists"—including Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie—bitterly denounced U.S. expansion overseas. The United States expanded its interests to include China, where American traders and missionaries had long been active. In 1899-1900 Secretary of State John Hay issued his famous "Open Door" notes that the China trade should be open to all and that China should not be broken up into European or Japanese spheres of influence. This began the U.S. policy of protecting China with words but without troops or warships. The Japanese military concluded we were bluffing and ignored U.S. protests as they invaded China. We had disconnected national interest from power. It took Pearl Harbor to reconnect them. As for Hawaii, where American settlers had already taken over, the feeling was we had better take it or Japan will. By 1900, the seeds of a U.S.-Japan war were planted. The new U.S. Navy and merchant fleet had to be able to get quickly from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When Colombia dickered too long on a canal through its Isthmus of Panama, Washington set up an independent Panama in 1903, held off Colombia with gunboats, and bought canal rights from Panama. Again, force and cash. Several Caribbean and Central American countries were threatened with European intervention over debts, so the United States intervened first, established customs receiverships to repay the loans, and thus kept the Europeans out. President Wilson sent U.S. forces into Veracruz and northern Mexico. The abrupt shift from isolation to world power produced a backlash. The emerging academic discipline of international relations proffered legalistic and moralistic approaches to world problems. (One thinker in this area was politi-cal scientist Woodrow Wilson.) Politicians and scholars urged conflict resolution through binding arbitration. Peace movements sprang up. Americans were not ac-customed to the cynicism that must accompany being a world power. Many still are not. Expansion was easy, but it meant adding vulnerabilities and making enemies. Some question if it was ever in our national interests to expand into East Asia, which led to war with Japan.

Diplomacy- World World 1: The Slavic Connection

The causes of World War I are many, but one was the resentment of the Slavic peoples at being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles in this mulitinational empire stirred in the nineteenth century under the twin impulses of nationalism and pan-Slavism, the feeling that all the Slavic peoples are related and under the benevolent protection of the largest Slavic nation, Russia. Pan-Slavism was especially important in the Balkans as Serbs, Montenegrins, and Bulgars struggled to free themselves from the Muslim Turks; they turned naturally to their "big brother," the Eastern Orthodox Russians. Even today, Serbs almost instinctively seek Russian protection. Russia's imperial ambitions in the Balkans collided with those of Austria as both pressed southward against the weakening Ottoman Empire. In 1908 Austria annexed Bosnia, which neighboring Serbia also claimed. In 1914 Bosnian-Serb nationalists assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Vienna, in revenge, demanded to virtually take over Serbia. Belgrade refused, and Austria attacked. Serbia turned to Russia for help, and the tsar ordered mobilization of the huge Russian army. In the meantime, Germany gave Austria blank-check support to punish the Serbs. The German kaiser, alarmed at Russia's mobilization and eager to dominate Europe, also mobi-lized, and the little war turned into World War I. Without the Slavic connection, the war would have been a minor Balkan conflict between Austria and Serbia.

Concepts of Interventionism

The great French foreign minister Talleyrand who served Napoleon (who hated him), when questioned about a policy of noninterventionism, replied: "Ah, yes, noninterventionism. A metaphysical and political term meaning approximately the same as interventionism." The cynical Talleyrand indicated that not interfering in the affairs of another country can have as great an impact as interfering. Intervention means projecting your power into an-other country to make, maintain, or oust foreign govern-ments. As used in this chapter applied to U.S. foreign policy, interventionism is a policy of using U.S. armed power overseas. When the United States sends its troops to other lands, it is pursuing an interventionist for-eign policy. CIA sponsorship of a coup or insurrection is interventionism too, but less public. When, on the other hand, Washington is unwilling to send troops or spooks (CIA operatives), it is pursuing a noninterventionist policy. There can be in-between positions; the willingness to use some forces overseas in certain circumstances might be called a moderate interventionist policy.

Inputs

The ingredients of economic growth: labor, capital, raw materials, energy.

2.4 Explain the difficulties of putting IR constructivism into practice.

The newest and perhaps currently most popular IR theory, especially in academia, is constructivism, which argues that subjective understandings rather than objective reality are what influence policy. People read meanings into so-called facts, which are just mental constructs established by the abandonment of old notions and accep-tance of new ones through contestation and persuasion. At any given moment, you can be deceived. Constructivists are suspicious of eternal truths such as the power emphasis of realists or the peace emphasis of liberals. These are just constructs that become operative only because many think they are important. Once a construct is established, even if artificial and exaggerated, it takes on an aura of truth that, for a time, few dispute. The conventional wisdom of one era, however, may be discredited and discarded in the next. Constructivism discovered that basic views can change. Thinking is highly conditioned by what society believes, argue constructivists. "Law," for example, becomes operative only if widely believed. Imagine a complex legal system of courts, judges, and law books but one that nobody believed or followed. Would it still be a legal system? And laws change under the impact of debate and reasoning. How can you prove that 18, not 21, is the age of maturity? (Brain science and auto accident statistics suggest it should be 26.) Any age you pick will be a legal fiction. Law—especially international law—is arguably the most constructed field; it works only if most people accept it. In much of the developing areas, it is considered foolish to obey the law; no one else does. Constructivism—like realism and liberalism, with which it quarrels—has several elements. REALITY IS WHAT YOU THINK IT IS Facts, especially in the social sciences, are slippery, open to interpretations that change over time. Nation-states with sover-eignty, for example, are relatively recent constructs that took over IR thinking after the Thirty Years War. Before that, kingdoms were the relevant units, before that it was empires, and far enough back it was tribes and clans. In their day, each was celebrated as the highest form of human organization. Sovereignty was a shaky con-struct. Seldom fully observed—it never bothered Frederick the Great or Napoleon—it is now widely evaded and eroded. You can talk yourself into mistaken national interests, constructivists point out. American expansionists, at first few in number, picked up from European imperialists and Mahan the need for an American empire. They arranged a "splendid little war" with Spain in 1898 to grab Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and soon had the enthusiastic backing of most Americans, few of whom could find the Philippines on a map. A handful of "Anti-Imperialists" (including Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie) opposed this, and in a few years even Teddy Roosevelt recognized that it had been a mistake, for now the Philippines would have to be defended from Japan, which, in 1942, it was not. IF EVERYBODY SAYS SO, IT MUST BE TRUE Constructs are highly social. Group con-formity leads to what psychologist Irving Janis called groupthink. Instead of reasoning from facts as individuals, members of leadership teams—say, the U.S. National Security Council—are reassured that everyone agrees on the relevant facts and conclusions. Dissents and doubts are minimized because most people want to be team players, and disagreeing with the group damages careers. One of the few top advisors who warned Kennedy about Vietnam was the clear-thinking George Ball, who told JFK in 1961 that within five years there could be 300,000 American troops in South Vietnam. "George, you're crazier than hell," Kennedy replied. Ball was right but was ignored. POWER ORIENTATIONS CAN BE OVERCOME They are just mental constructs. Realists and their power emphasis dominated Europe a century ago; now Europeans (except Russians) regard so-called realists as throwbacks to a violent age, rather like Americans. As we considered with liberalism, two bloody world wars motivated Europeans to turn from power to trade and treaties. Americans after World War II shifted from legalism to military force. "We'll give those terrorists a taste of American power," proclaimed neocons in 2001. Fifteen years later, U.S. generals were reflect-ing that we might have created more Taliban in Afghanistan than we killed. Muslim militants have constructed the notion that America aims to destroy Islam. The power construct was deceptive and counterproductive when applied to Afghanistan. NATIONALISM CAN BE OVERCOMED People are nationalistic because their regimes feed them nationalist rhetoric, argue constructivists. Most government-approved history books portray a national pageant unflawed by mistakes or tragedies. Pyongyang tells North Koreans that they are a pure-blooded race the Americans aim to defile and rob. It claims that the outside world is starving and aggressive, but North Koreans—who have few information sources—are well fed and looked after. It is not clear how many of the very lean North Koreans believe this. Hot-headed nationalists, such as Nazis and Japanese militarists, can be calmed (or killed) and turned into two of the world's biggest international cooperators. Neither were genetically power-mad nationalists; they learned it under certain circumstances. Then they unlearned it. Yugoslavia is a case of nationalist constructs run amok. After the massacres of World War II, Tito's regime punished local nationalism, and Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Bosnians, and others got along and increasingly intermarried, slowly building up a "Yugoslav" identity. When Tito died in 1980, however, opportunistic state politicians whipped up destructive local nationalism until, by the early 1990s, Yugoslavia fell apart in civil war and ethnic cleansing. There was always some disdain among nation-alities, but Yugoslavs did not have a natural hatred of each other; hatred was hyped by politicians who decreed Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian identities and languages. They all spoke Serbo-Croatian and still do. Yugoslavia could have gone either way. If Tito had been followed by a strong chief and political reform, there might still be one Yugoslavia. It did not have to fracture. (Sure, retort realists, it could have worked just fine, if only Tito had lived another hundred years.) LIBERALS ARE BETTER THAN REALIST Constructivists seriously dislike real-ists for supposing there is an objective reality out there and that power is the way to navigate through it. But there is a certain amount of overlap between liberals and constructivists. Both think they can build a better, more peaceful world. The liberals would first improve institutions in the expectation that psychological change will soon follow. The constructivists would put psychological change first. Constructivists argue that what you make of the world conditions state behavior. Believing the world is anarchical leads realists to pursue hard power, whereas belief in institutions leads liberals to cooperative diplomacy. Both are constructs. FOREIGHN POLICY IS A CONSTRUCIVISTS PLAYGOUND Foreign policy offers a rich field for constructivist comment. Constructivists write many brilliant books and articles demonstrating that we are governed by fools (not hard to do). In foreign policy, they argue, meanings are seldom clear. National interests can change 180 degrees from one era to the next. U.S. isolationists refused to see war coming until Pearl Harbor. Then globalists accepted the Cold War containment theory until they had to pay for it in Vietnam. Those who dissent from the prevailing wisdom are considered radicals and gadflies and are largely ignored. Constructivists often urge policy makers to "change your thinking" and "see things a different way," but few listen. Realists in Washington shrug off constructivist comment as irresponsible and impractical, and few constructiv-ists occupy high office.

Privatization

The selling of state-owned assets to private interests.

Political Generations

Theory that people are formed by great events of their youth.

Imperial Overstretch

Theory that pow-erful nations tend to over-expand and weaken.

Classic Thought: War And Peace

They Make a Desert and Call It Peace" Roman historian Tacitus showed guilt over what Rome had done in conquering and subjugating England. The Romans did eventually bring peace, but it was a cynical kind of peace, the peace of the graveyard. Critics of the Vietnam War recalled Tacitus's bitter remark and suggested it was what we were doing in Vietnam. Soon the perfect statement appeared: "We Had to Destroy the Town in Order to Save It" This quote from an American officer (a sort of unwitting Tacitus), explaining why a town in the Mekong Delta had to be leveled, was widely reported because it summarized what we were doing in Vietnam. After we finished "saving" Vietnam, what would be left? Aquinas on "Just War" St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century deplored war but admitted that a just war could exist provided that: 1. It aimed at defending and reestablishing peace. 2. The cause itself was just. 3. Noncombatants were not harmed. 4. The means used were proportional to the ends. St. Thomas's "proportionality" doctrine is his most important. It means you do not nuke a country over fishing rights. Some thinkers felt the U.S. war in Vietnam passed on points 1 and 2 but failed on points 3 and 4.

Lend Lease

U.S. aid to Allies in World War II.

Geography : The Soviet Successor States

Where there used to be one Soviet Union, there are now 15 independent states, many of them still dominated by Moscow. They can be grouped into three groups of three plus a large Central Asian group of five (the five "stans," meaning "place of") and one Romanian-speaking republic. Slavic Republicans- Russian Federation, Ukraine (no "the"), Belarus (formerly Belorussia) Baltic Republic-Lithuania,* Latvia,* Estonia* Caucasian Republicans- Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan† Central Asian Republicans- Turkmenistan,† Kazakhstan,† Kyrgyzstan,† Uzbekistan,† Tajikistan† Romanian Speaking Republic- Moldova (formerly Moldavia) KEY: *The Baltic states are not in the Commonwealth of Independent States. †Predominantly Muslim countries

Sovereignty

Concept that each state rules its territory without interference.

Balkans

Easternmost Mediterranean peninsula.

GDP

Gross domestic product; sum total of goods and services produced in a country in one year; measure of prosperity.

Crown

Powers of the British government.

Sunk Costs

Previous losses justify continuing the war.

Volatile

Rises and falls quickly.

Kleptocracy

Rule by thieves.

5.1 Explain Russia's geopolitical constraints.

Russia teaches much IR history, vocabulary, and geopolitics. The new United States faced few threats, but Russia, with no natural barriers, has been open to invasion from both east and west. Mongol hordes erased the first Russian state by 1240. Russians are still nervous about the millions of clever, aggressive people of the East. Ivan III, the Duke of Moscovy, in the fifteenth century pushed back the Tatars and built a new Russian state. His grandson Ivan IV (1530-1584), known as "the Terrible," expanded Russia by brutal means. To Russians, his "terribleness" is good; it means strong and strict in crushing both foreign invaders and any who weaken Russia from within. Russians still like rule by a single strong personality. There are several constants in Russian/Soviet geopolitics. Landlocked Russia long struggled for a "warm-water" port that does not ice over in winter. In the early eighteenth century, Peter the Great (1672-1725) pushed back the Turks to gain access to the Black Sea and the Swedes to gain his "window to the west" on the Baltic, where he built St. Petersburg. Peter, the first tsar to tour West Europe, was impressed by its industries and ordered them copied in Russia. He set the pattern of importation of Western technology and forced modernization from the top down. Peter, the great expansionist and modernizer of Russia, is highly honored today.Moscow also longed for Istanbul and the Turkish Straits, both to liberate the origi-nal center of Orthodox Christianity and to secure the Straits for unhindered Russian sea traffic from the Black Sea. For this, Russia fought 12 wars over four centuries with the Ottoman Empire. Either the tsar ruled the Black Sea or the sultan did. Exactly like the tsars, Stalin tried to gain the Straits at the close of World War II and turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake. For Russia, geopolitics is a constant.European powers saw a Russia ripe for invasion. The Teutonic knights pushed eastward along the Baltic until stopped by the Russians under Alexander Nevsky in 1242. From 1707 to 1709, a powerful Swedish army under Charles XII battled through Russia until it gave up, exhausted. In 1812 Napoleon actually occupied Moscow. In World War I, German forces penetrated deep into Russia. In 1941, Hitler assembled the largest army in history and sent it to conquer and enslave Russia. The biggest battles of World War II occurred in the east. The Soviet Union lost 26 million, the United States fewer than half a million. War has had a profound impact on Russia, producing at least two systemic up-heavals. The Mongol conquest led to the founding of the centralized and militarized Russian state under Ivan. World War I led to the collapse of tsarism and the founding of the Bolshevik state under Lenin. Without war, evolution rather than revolution would have been Russia's probable path. Tsarist Russia early in the twentieth century had a growing economy and the beginnings of an elected parliament, the Duma. Many Russian intellectuals hated the tsarist system and turned to socialism and Marxism. A few joined the small, under-ground Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which later became the Bolsheviks and then the Communists. Russia's humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 triggered the abortive 1905 revolution, and World War I collapsed the system. The Russian army was large but run by incompetent generals. German forces ground it to a halt, and by 1916 Russia started coming apart. In early 1917, with the economy and army near collapse, a group of moderates seized power and forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. The 1917 Provisional Government—by July it was under moderate Alexander Kerensky—knew Russia could not stay in the war but felt duty-bound to not betray its Western allies. America entered World War I only in April 1917 and shipped much war materiel to North Russia. At that very time, Germany arranged for Lenin to return to Russia from his Swiss exile. In November 1917, his Bolsheviks seized power, shot the tsar and his family, and began negotiations with Germany to take Russia out of the war. Lenin's Marxist ideology led him to mistaken assumptions. He supposed Europe Belief system that society can be improved by following certain doctrines; usually ends in "ism." Brest-Litovsk The 1918 treaty dictated by Germany to get Russia out of World War I. was ripe for revolution, so the Russian revolution would quickly spread. He thought the Germans would be lenient, but they demanded large areas of western Russia and an independent Ukraine. Lenin balked. Before, he had been a revolutionary trying to overthrow state power. Now, ironically, he had to preserve the Russian state. Ideology collided with reality. With Russia weak and disintegrating, in March 1918, Lenin glumly accepted the German Diktat. Only Germany's defeat in November—fresh American troops tipped the balance on the western front—made the Brest-Litovsk treaty a dead letter and saved Russia from dismemberment. Lenin's revolution did not spread, even though War Commissar Leon Trotsky Comintern Short for "Communist International"; the world's Communist parties under Moscow's control. sent his new Red Army westward into Poland. There the forces of newly reestablished Poland (it had been divided among Germany, Austria, and Russia for over a century) under Pilsudski pushed the Reds back and took more territory for Poland, lands in-habited mostly by Belarussians and Ukrainians that Stalin eventually got back. By the end of 1920, Lenin turned cautious and concentrated on protecting the Soviet Union and consolidating Communist power. Lenin demanded that socialists all over the world aid the new Soviet Union. The so-cialist movement split in the years 1920 and 1921 as Communist parties broke off from it and joined Lenin's disciplined, centralized international organization, the Comintern. All Communist parties had to obey Moscow. Communists believed that helping the Soviet Union aided socialism and so followed the most absurd twists and turns of Soviet foreign policy. For believers, communism became a secular religion with its center in Moscow.

Raj

The British colonial administration of India.

Classic Throught: The Crux of Clausewitz

The Prussian philosopher of war, Carl Maria von Clausewitz (1780-1831), has been widely ignored in our time. Although his massive On War, essentially his notes edited by his widow, is difficult to read and full of seeming contradictions, Clausewitz's lessons are valid today. At the risk of oversimplifying, we think this is the crux of his thinking: 1. Wars tend to escalate. Why? Both sides want to win, so they continually increase their efforts. The war takes on a life of its own, growing bigger and fiercer. Don't suppose you can always keep wars small and under rational control. 2. A war that escalates to "absolute war" would have no purpose, so put limits on how far a war can escalate. 3. Restrain war by making sure it has clear and doable political goals. Thus Clausewitz's famous dictum "War is the continuation of policy by other means." If you don't have such goals, don't go to war. 4. Politics is in command. The general must advise civilian authorities, especially on ques-tions of feasibility, but the setting of political goals is not his job. He should make sure the political goals are feasible and that civilian authorities understand the heavy costs involved. 5. Win the war by breaking the enemy's "center of gravity," without which he cannot resist. That probably means destroying his main forces. 6. Territory is not so important. If, say, you capture the enemy's capital but his main forces are intact, you are still in trouble. (Example: Napoleon takes Moscow, but the Russian army is unbroken.) Terrain matters only if it helps you crush the enemy. Don't take a hill for the sake of taking a hill. 7. Don't think you can do war cheaply or easily. If you hold back in intensity, you merely give the enemy a better chance. 8. Likewise, don't think you can avoid the horror of battle (die Schlacht, cognate to "slaughter"). Don't kid yourself that you might win by clever maneuvers and bluff. 9. Therefore, "First, be very strong." It sounds obvious, but many in the White House, State and Defense Departments, and Congress think a "show" of force or some drone strikes will suffice. 10. A "remarkable trinity" of people, government, and army makes the enterprise work. Weakness in one element may doom the effort. (Example: a U.S. public that no longer supports the war in Iraq.) Don't go to war unless you're solid in all three. To remember Clausewitz's points, think of all the things we did wrong in the Vietnam War. Clausewitz warned against every one of them. Political goals? Feasibility? Costs? Enemy's center of gravity? Escalation? Trinity? Clausewitz's detractors misread him as a bloodthirsty warmonger. He is saying that war has a logic of its own that you ignore at your peril.

Globaliation

The world turning into one big capi-talist market.

Continent

The European mainland.

Appeasement

A concession to satisfy a hostile country; in disrepute since Hitler.

5.7 Compare the theories that foreign policies are generated internally or externally.

Are foreign policies made on the basis of internal politics, needs, and demands or as reactions to threats and opportunities from abroad? In other words, is foreign policy mostly generated internally or externally, what economists call endogenous and exog-enous? The Soviet Union provides material for both theories. One school of analysis saw Soviet foreign policy as the product of domestic pres-sures, such as elite jockeying for political power or the need for top leaders to show their people progress. If they could not deliver higher living standards, they could give Soviets the feeling of belonging to a mighty and growing empire. Some claim Soviet foreign policy was driven by ideology. Marx and Lenin foresaw the collapse of capitalism, and the Kremlin felt it must help this process along. Such approaches see Soviet foreign policy as mostly internally generated. Another school emphasized that the Soviet Union lived in a hostile world and was constantly reacting to events and opportunities. When it felt threatened, it built military strength. If a Kremlin client was attacked, it came to the rescue. If a small country turned Communist, the Soviet Union had to protect it. In this view, the Kremlin's foreign policies were largely externally generated.Internal and external factors are difficult to untangle. Why, for example, did the Soviets invade Afghanistan? Was it an ideological commitment to communism (an in-ternal factor)? Or was it the threat posed by a hostile Afghanistan on the Soviet border (an external factor)? And what caused Gorbachev to reduce tensions with the United States? Was it Reagan's military buildup and firm positions on arms control (external factors)? Or was it the economic weakness and growing discontent inside the Soviet Union (internal factors)? Three theories of the demise of the Soviet Union illustrate the internal-external question. 1. Imperial Overstretch. Yale historian Paul Kennedy argued in his 1987 Rise and Decline of the Great Powers that major powers tend to expand until they over-expand. Imperial expenses and slower economic growth then drain them into decline. The Habsburg, British, and Soviet empires are good examples. Spending perhaps 25 percent of GDP on defense and subsidizing satellite and client states was too much for the Soviet economy, forcing Gorbachev to become flexible on arms control, Afghanistan, East Europe, and domestic economic reforms. This analysis fits into the "externally generated" school. . Defective System. Another approach, focusing on "internally generated," argues that the Soviet economic and political system was inherently defective. Communism does not work very well; over time it runs down. At first the command economy rapidly builds a heavy-industry base, but then central planning hinders a more advanced and complex economy. People now need material incentives. The Communist Party monopolizes politics and ignores mass discontent until it boils over. 3. Bungled Reform. A third approach starts with what happens when Soviet elites admit that the economy is running down. They urge reforms, but halfway reforms just make things worse. The conservative party structure stalls and sabotages reforms. The reformers seek a "middle way" between communism and capital-ism, but there is none. Conflicts among the Soviet nationalities come out with unexpected viciousness. Under these circumstances, almost any reform efforts will appear bungled. In trying to fix the system, they broke it.

subcontinent

Asia south of the Himalayas: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; sometimes called South Asia.

Objective

Can be empirically verified.

failed state

Collapse of sovereignty, essentially no national government

Just War

Doctrine of medieval Catholic philosophers that war under certain conditions can be moral.

Rally Event

Dramatic incident that temporar-ily boosts public support.

Strategy

Ends, ways, means.

5.8 Evaluate Russia's current foreign policies.

Following the Soviet collapse, capitalism in Russia did not work the way it was supposed to. Privatization sold state industries ultra cheap to insiders who became billionaire "oligarchs." The system was called half in jest a kleptocracy. The Russian economy depends on exporting oil, natural gas, and other raw materials. Health stan-dards and medical care, never very good, plummeted. Russians have few children but a high death rate. The average Russian male lives to only 64 (a recent improvement), while women live 12 years longer because of less alcoholism. Russia's population, now down to 142 million, slowly declines. Russia became a weak state, one in which lawlessness and corruption flour-ish. Democracy was tried but failed. Wealth and power are in the hands of a few. Members of parliament, journalists, bankers, businessmen, and ordinary citizens are routinely gunned down by keelers, who are rarely caught, suggesting the police are in on the deal. Many Russians are disgusted by corruption and economic stagnation and especially by the rigging of the 2011 legislative elections and Putin reappointing himself president in 2012. Some emigrate and have bank accounts and homes in West Europe. Russians' national pride is wounded. Their mighty empire, which once stood up to the United States, first lost East Europe and then the historic Russia the tsars built. Now it is fragmented into countries that had no names until Stalin invented them. One Russian cartoon showed Peter the Great spanking Yeltsin for allowing the breakup of the Russian empire, which Putin called "the greatest geopolitical catastro-phe of the twentieth century." Russians turned, as they have historically, to strong-handed leadership. A KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, rose quickly from obscurity to be first appointed prime minister, then acting president, and then in 2000 elected president. After his two terms, in 2008 Putin handpicked a protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, to be a weak presi-dent while Putin made himself a strong prime minister and continued to run things. Then in 2012, Putin, by prearrangement, returned to the presidency and appointed Medvedev as his weak prime minister. Putin, who had been head of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, has files on who steals what and uses them to obtain compliance. Putin's takeover amounted to a quiet KGB coup. Most of his handpicked siloviki are former KGB.Putin crushed the rebellious Chechens and detached portions of Georgia and Ukraine. Critics are assassinated. The energy industry and main news media returned to state control. Putin faces essentially no media criticism or political rivals. Putin broke new-rich oligarchs and put their properties back under state control. He in-creased his own power and popularity and got an obedient majority in the Duma. He reined in Russia's 89 disobedient republics by carving Russia into seven big districts and naming the super-governor of each. What does this mean for Russia's foreign policy? Already under Yeltsin there was a nationalistic hardening, one that Putin expanded. Foreign nongovernmental organizations are tightly controlled in Russia so they cannot push for democracy or report misdeeds. Russian leaders view America as domineering and arrogant. They think we brought down the Soviet Union and then Russia (by bad economic advice). The Kremlin sees NATO's eastward expansion and U.S. military technology as threats. Putin is openly hostile to America and has modernized the Russian army. Putin's goal is that of a KGB officer: Restore Russian power and, gradually, territory. To do this, he plays the cards he has: 1. Use oil and natural-gas exports to regain influence. Where pipelines run, power follows. Russia sometimes cuts gas to Ukraine to jerk it back in line and as a warn-ing to energy-dependent Europe. Low world oil prices, however, constrain Russia more than economic sanctions. 2. Restore Russian pride. Modernizing the Russian army and nationalistic moves and symbols show Russians and the world that they are still major players and must be respected. 3. Keep Russia together. No region departs the Russian Federation. Any that try, like Chechnya, are crushed. Putin recentralized power in the Kremlin. 4. Set up a Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as its trade bloc. Belarus and Kazakhstan have joined, and China shows interest. Russia already sells China oil, raw materials, and weapons and buys Chinese consumer goods. China stitches Eurasia together by rail and pipeline, and Moscow welcomes it. 5. Allow no more ex-Soviet republics to join NATO, as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia did in 2004. Russia partially dismembered Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 when they moved to join NATO or the EU. Russians loved Putin's reclaim-ing of Crimea. 6. Undermine the European Union, which Putin sees as an economic and democratic threat, by supporting anti-EU parties. European economic sanctions tried to get Putin out of Ukraine, but no European powers risked military escalation. 7. Ally with China to guard against U.S. power. Founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Russia and China will not be pushed around by the United States, whose naval power is of little use on the landmass of Eurasia. 8. Send Russian forces to bolster the Assad regime in Syria, showing the world that Russia is still a Mideast player. 9. Maintain formal but chilly relations with the United States. Some say we have returned to a new cold war, but Washington is too busy elsewhere to devote major resources to countering Russia Russia's foreign policy shows continuity with Soviet and even tsarist policies, because geography determines much of national interest. If Russia pursues its interests by economic means and without threats or force, we should not worry. That would be normal IR. But Russia's power to disrupt—through a China alliance, arms sales, export of military technology, and support of regimes such as Syria's—is still dangerous. We were naive in assuming that Russia would quickly become democratic and capitalistic. Eventually it may but not for some years. Russia, since the collapse of the ruble in 1998, has had spurts of economic growth dependent on world oil prices. Russian labor costs are half those of Poland or Mexico and one-twentieth those of Germany. Russia has fabulous natural resources and resourceful people. In time, Russia could become prosperous, democratic, and friendly, but not likely soon.

6.1 Explain the alternation theory of U.S. foreign policy.

For some years after Vietnam, the United States shied away from another war. Washington pursued a "risk-averse" strategy. Even tough-talking President Ronald Reagan intervened only cautiously. When U.S. Marines on a peacekeeping mission in Beirut were blown up in 1983, he pulled them all out. The 1983 U.S. invasion of tiny Grenada carried little risk. By 1991, however, America had largely forgotten the pain of Vietnam, enabling President Bush 41 (so called because he was the 41st president) to boot Iraq out of Kuwait. Americans were proud of the swift victory that seemed to show the United States as the world's natural leader. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989 and end of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 gave America a sense of triumph: We had won the Cold War. By 9/11, Americans were ready for a new round of interventionism and followed Bush 43 into Afghanistan and Iraq. The Afghan and Iraq Wars, the longest in U.S. history, drained some of Americans' self-confidence. Are we still ready to intervene, or has the pendulum swung back to caution? Forty years apart, the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars had similar impacts on U.S. foreign policy. All three wars started with high domestic support, but it soon fell. After a few years, most Americans thought Iraq had been a mistake, and a few years later they felt the same about Afghanistan. After the expenditure of American lives and billions of dollars over many years, both countries were corrupt, chaotic, and undemocratic. Americans turned against further interventions, even in Syria, where a brutal civil war caused millions to flee. From roughly Pearl Harbor in 1941 to Vietnam in the late 1960s, the United States practiced an interventionist foreign policy. At its high point in the 1960s, U.S. commitments and bases nearly covered the globe to encircle the "Sino-Soviet bloc." Everything was our business, and we sent troops to dozens of countries. Mostly we were successful or, at any rate, did not conspicuously fail. U.S. foreign aid and troops staved off Soviet expansion into West Europe. U.S. forces pushed back a Communist attack in Korea. CIA-sponsored coups ousted undesirable governments in Iran and Guatemala. We acted like the world's policeman. Vietnam, however, was one intervention too many. U.S. foreign policy shifted to noninterventionism and was slow and reluctant to return to the sweeping inter-ventionism of pre-Vietnam years. Then, in 1989-1991, Soviet power collapsed; there was no more enemy. Many Americans wondered what we were doing overseas: The Cold War is over and we won, so let's go home. Even members of Congress who had been hawks during the Cold War turned noninterventionist. Strange coali-tions of protesters—unionists, environmentalists, leftists, Christians, anarchists—tried to disrupt international meetings and prevent U.S. trade normalization with China. They claimed America's involvement with the outside world was wrong and harmful. U.S. foreign policy seems to alternate between interventionism and noninter-ventionism at roughly generational intervals. Americans reacted to World War I by slouching into isolationism and swearing to never rescue the ungrateful Europeans again. With German and Japanese aggression, however, isolation was impossible, as Pearl Harbor demonstrated. The generation that fought World War II accepted a glo-balism that was more or less the opposite of interwar isolationism. Now everything overseas mattered. We intervened more and more until we eventually got burned in Vietnam. Coming out of Vietnam, most wished to never get involved in anything like that again. A similar mood appeared as Americans wearied of the Iraq War. In many recent presidential elections, foreign policy was a minor issue.

Multilateralism

Foreign poli-cies with much allied help and consultation

Legitimate

In Kissinger's theory, IR system in which states accept each other's right to exist.

5.2 Evaluate Stalin's foreign policies.

Lenin died in 1924 with no designated heir. One of his last messages urged the Communist Party to reject Stalin as "too rude." By then, however, Stalin controlled the party bureaucracy, using his position as general secretary to handpick supporters for leading party positions. This enabled him to beat and exile Trotsky, Stalin's rival. By 1927, Stalin was in firm control. In 1928 he instituted the first Five-Year Plan of forced industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Brutally, the Soviet Union be-came a major industrial power. Many label Stalin paranoid. He feared that Trotsky, expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, still had supporters inside the Communist Party and Red Army, which he had founded. Chronically insecure, in 1934 Stalin instituted the Great Purge, which killed perhaps a million party comrades—including most of his military commanders—on suspicion of disloyalty. At this same time, Stalin had millions of ordinary Soviets—farmers who resisted collectivization, workers late to work, ethnic minorities—arrested and sent to Siberia, where most died in slave-labor projects. Altogether, an estimated 6 to 9 million Soviets died by firing squad or starvation or in prison camps under Stalin's orders. This is not the working of a normal mind. (Iraq's Saddam Hussein modeled himself on Stalin.) In foreign policy, Stalin, who had no experience with other countries, made dreadful mistakes. In the late 1920s, he ordered the small Chinese Communist Party to affiliate with the larger Nationalists; he argued that China was not ready for a pro-letarian revolution. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek massacred the Communists, who started having success only when, under Mao Zedong, they ignored Stalin. The roots of the Sino-Soviet conflict go back to Stalin's bad advice. In Europe, too, Stalin misunderstood the situation. Here he told Communist par-ties to keep their distance from "bourgeois" parties and not cooperate with them, not even with socialists. When the Depression hit Germany, the Nazi vote grew rapidly. A joint Social Democrat-Communist front could have stopped them, but Stalin re-jected it on the theory that the Nazis would be short-lived. The foolish Communist slogan of the time: "After Hitler come us." Realizing his mistake too late, Stalin then ordered the Comintern to work for "popular fronts" with any and all antifascist parties. Communists now tried to explain that they were really just democrats fighting fascism with the slogan "No enemies on the left." Popular Front governments were briefly in power in France and Spain. Stalin's aim in the late 1930s was to get Britain and France as allies against a threatening Germany. But London and Paris rejected Stalin's overtures. Standing together with Moscow appeasement A concession to satisfy a hostile country; in disre-pute since Hitler. nonaggression pact Treaty to not attack each other. against Hitler, the three could have prevented World War II. Instead, at Munich in 1938, Britain and France tried appeasement with Hitler by handing him Czechoslovakia. In Stalin's paranoid vision, the British and French wanted the German war machine aimed eastward, at the Soviet Union. Stalin turned the tables on them and pulled the most cynical reversal of modern history: the 1939 Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, which left Britain and France to face Germany alone. A week after the pact was signed, Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, the official start of World War II. Stalin occupied the eastern third of Poland—that was a secret part of the agreement—thus getting back the territory Poland had taken in 1921. The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939-1941 was strange and unstable. The blood enemies stopped cursing each other. The Soviet Union shipped much grain and petroleum to Germany. French Communists disparaged their own country's war effort. Stalin thought Britain and France would be about an even match for Germany. The two sides would exhaust themselves and leave the Soviet Union as the strongest power in Europe. But in May and June 1940, the "phony war" ended as German tank columns slashed through the north of France and aged Marshal Pétain signed a humiliating peace with the German occupiers. For a year, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. Stalin foolishly supposed Hitler would leave him alone. The Soviets even made stiff territorial demands when they took over the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as well as a part of Romania called Moldavia. This angered Hitler and at-tracted his attention eastward again, to his old first hate, the Slavic people in general and Communists in particular. In late 1940, he ordered a huge military buildup for the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Stalin received more than a hundred intelligence reports about the attack—some from his own spies—but refused to believe them. Intelligence is worthless if you don't believe it. The British informed Stalin of the impending invasion they got from break-ing German codes, but Stalin smelled a British trick to pull him into the war. When the invasion hit, Stalin had a nervous breakdown but emerged to rally the Soviet people. Moscow's line for years was that the Soviets knew all along what Hitler was up to and used the time to prepare. Why then were they caught so unprepared? Hitler's Operation Barbarossa nearly succeeded. More than half a million Soviet soldiers were captured the first month. Russia is geographically tough to conquer, though. As an invader penetrates eastward, his supply lines become long, and the front expands as Russia becomes broader. Mud and snow slow movement. German soldiers had no winter clothing. In November German troops neared Moscow but stalled. Winter came early, and reinforcements from Siberia held the line. By early 1943, with the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, perceptive Germans knew they could not win. The Red Army pushed the Germans across East Europe back to Berlin. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the Soviets had won not by superior weapons, leadership, or tactics but by letting the foe exhaust itself in the attack and then push-ing it back by means of greater manpower. It was a costly and traditional way to wage war, but it saved Russia.

2.3 Evaluate the utility of IR liberalism.

Liberalism—sometimes known as "idealism"—repudiates the realist approach that, liberals charge, leads to war. Hints of liberal idealism in IR can be found far back in history, probably as soon as humans pondered the horrors of war. Isaiah prophesied an end of war when people would "beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks." During the Middle Ages, Christian thinkers argued that war should be avoided or at least limited (the just war theory). Spurts of peace-seeking tend to come during or in the wake of wars. Some place Emeric Crucé and Grotius among the founders of liberal IR theory. Both lived through and wrote in revulsion at the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a "league for perpetual peace" in the midst of the French revolutionary wars. Woodrow Wilson launched his League of Nations in reaction to World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt his United Nations in reaction to World War II. The liberalism we mean here is the classic liberalism founded by Adam Smith that dominated nineteenth-century Britain. From the Latin liber (free), classic liberalism urges that government keep its hands off the market and has turned into U.S. conservatism. It is almost the opposite of the modern liberalism that tries to rectify social wrongs by redistributing money from rich to poor. In IR, the old liberal thinkers claimed that, just as the free market peacefully regulates itself, so would free transactions among nations. Trade would promote peace. Two nineteenth-century British prime ministers—realist Conservative Disraeli versus Liberal Gladstone—emblemized the debate. European unification based on trade arose after World War II with the aim of preventing war. Liberal IR theories, like realism, consist of several interlocking elements. LIBERALS ARE OPTIMISTS They see win-win solutions. Realists are pessimists and see zero-sum struggles. Countries are not inherently hostile to one another, argue liberals. The natural inclination of most countries is to get along with others. Philosophically, some compare the ferocious world of realists with Hobbes' brutal state of nature. Liberals, on the other hand, are compared with Locke's state of nature as tolerable but unstable; it just needs a little help from international and domestic institutions. Liberals believe states will cooperate if institutions are designed to in-centivize such cooperation. POWER IS NOT THE ONLY THING Liberals agree with many of the criticisms of realism discussed previously—sometimes angrily. By stressing power, argue liberals, realism inclines nations to use force early and often. Balances of power are illusory; when they break down, as in 1914, they cause global bloodbaths. Liberals argue that balances of power do not lead to peace; they lead to war. BAD REGIMES Realists argue that different types of regimes and their ideolo-gies are not the major factors. Geography is more important. They note how tsars, Communists, and Putin all pursued the same goal: safeguard Russia by keeping threats from its borders. Both Democratic and Republican administrations pursued the Cold War because they saw a geopolitical threat. Liberals, on the other hand, argue that regime type and ideology count for a lot; or, more broadly, domestic politics matter. Any good analysis must pay them considerable attention. Fanatic or undemocratic regimes amass power beyond any reasonable need and hype na-tionalism and foreign threats to convince populations to go to war. With democratic regimes, countries get along due to common norms, transparency, and institutions that constrain government action. By the same token, say liberals, problem personalities can derange their entire country and damage the international system. As noted, realists pay little attention to leaders' personalities. The biggest (negative) examples for liberals were Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler, who tried to conquer Europe in World Wars I and II, respectively. The problem, retort realists, was not German leaders but the power and geopolitics of a united Germany, which inclined it to dominate Europe. Liberals affirm that once we rid the world of aggressive monarchs and dictators, peace will be the norm. Furthermore, undemocratic regimes face no constraints on their power, such as elections and a free press, and are able to make decisions without popular support, including domestic and international violence. Accordingly, argue liberals, democracy brings peace, which Kant first argued and may be true. HUMAN RIGHTS Whereas realists would handle human rights quietly, liberals would make them an important and public part of foreign policy. President Jimmy Carter introduced human rights into U.S. foreign policy and the State Department in 1977. A United States that does not stand up for human rights is not true to its core values and shows weakness. Furthermore, a foreign regime that abuses its own people cannot be trusted and should be prodded to reform, argue liberals. U.S. Republicans did not realize that their 2012 call to aid a blind Chinese human rights lawyer was actually a liberal position. FREE TRADE International liberals further argue that free trade among nations binds them to one another and makes war unlikely, because war hurts everyone's economy. Norman Angell's influential 1909 Grand Illusion argued that Europe's inter-twined economies made war absurd and futile. The period before World War I was a heyday of free trade, but it did not stop war in 1914. Many liberals argued that the decline of world trade during the Great Depression propelled the Nazis and Japanese militarists to power and then to war. Liberals blame the high U.S. Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930 for prolonging and deepening the Depression and leading to World War II. They supported Roosevelt's tariff-cutting measures, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the World Trade Organization. Many liberals see globalization as a path to peace. Liberals emphasize how free trade and peace reinforce each other in the European Union, where war is now unthinkable. See, trade and treaties work, claim liberals. INTERNATIONAL LAW Buttressing democratic regimes and free trade is the role of international law (IL). Realists scoff at IL; some claim it does not exist. Liberals see it as a device to smooth frictions between countries and stabilize friendly relations. Accordingly, liberals favor treaties and international conferences to settle disputes. To be sure, most liberals acknowledge that IL is selectively enforced. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS By the same token, liberals wish to participate actively in international organizations (IOs) such as the UN and WTO, which open communication and ways to settle disputes. IOs also enforce common norms if states get behind them. Some assert that the U.S. absence from the League of Nations led to World War II. The more contact and discussion, argue liberals, the more stable the peace. Realists see IOs simply as the arenas where the major powers clash over their interests, all trying to use the organizations for their own purposes. They note that IOs do not solve serious disputes.

Weak State

One unable to govern effectively; corrupt and crime-ridden.

what is the difference between being "realistic" and "realism theory"?

People who think they are realistic like to think they are level headed and pragmatic, where is realists is a philosophical approach to international relations grounded in history and geography consisting of several interlocking key components.

Stratified

Power distributed in layers.

apartheid

South Africa's system of strict racial segregation from 1948 to the early 1990s.

Imperialism

Spreading nation's power over other lands.

decolonization

The granting of independence to colonies.

Concepts of Elites

Political scientists call the top or most influential people in a political system its elites, the people with real political clout. Exactly who is an elite is hard to say, but they are a small fraction of 1 percent of the population. Political elites are not necessarily the richest people. A country may have several elites: top officeholders, business chiefs, generals, and important thinkers. Countries may have specialized elites: a party elite in the Soviet Union or a Muslim theocratic elite in Iran. Much of political life consists of struggles, often out of public sight, among and within elites to control the country's direction. Typically, the masses then follow. Foreign policy is inherently an elite game. Often only a handful of people initiate a new foreign policy. In the United States, it is the National Security Council, which includes diplo-matic, defense, and intelligence chiefs. In the Soviet Union, it was the Politburo, the dozen or so people at the top of the Communist Party structure. In China, it is the Politburo's seven-man Standing Committee. Diplomats use a nation's capital as shorthand for the country's foreign-policy elite. They say "Paris" or "Moscow" instead of France or Russia. This is more accurate than saying "the Russians," as 99.99 percent of Russians have no say in foreign policy. Try to avoid "they" in reference to other countries, as it suggests all citizens have one view. Government policy may be hostile, but people in hostile countries are often friendly.

3.4 Explain misperception theory.

A big problem with power explanations is that the real power situation is hard to know. What matters are leaders' perceptions that decide for war or peace. They often misperceive, seeing hostility and development of superior weaponry in another coun-try, which sees itself as acting defensively and as just trying to catch up in weaponry. John F. Kennedy misperceived the Soviets as enjoying a "missile gap" over the United States; he greatly increased U.S. missile efforts. It turned out that the Soviets were actually behind the United States, and they perceived the new American effort as a threat that they had to match. The misperceptions led to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest we came to World War III. The history of U.S.-China relations is a roller coaster of exaggerated images alternating between a "little brother" China that we had to save, followed by an aggressive Communist China that had to be stopped by war in Korea and Vietnam, and then a friendly China and ally against Soviet power. Now, after China's econ-omy and navy have grown rapidly, relations are more complex and adversarial. What, for example, is China up to in the South China Sea? Some now define China as the new enemy, but they may be misperceiving. Korea in 1950 offers three good examples of misperceptions. (1) North Korea misper-ceived South Korea as ripe for conquest and, with Stalin's approval, invaded. (2) Later that same year, as UN forces under General Douglas MacArthur pushed North Korean forces back to their border with China, Beijing was convinced we would keep going into China, something never considered. (3) Beijing put out clear warnings to keep well back from the Yalu River, but MacArthur misperceived China and could not imagine it would enter the war. He was taken by surprise when China sent a massive army into Korea and pushed back UN forces. Korea was a case of pushes yielding pushbacks.When the Communists built the Berlin Wall in 1961, we misperceived it as a first Soviet step to take all of Berlin. We thundered back that we would not let them take West Berlin, which the Soviets perceived as a first U.S. step to invading East Berlin. Both sides were extremely nervous. Some scholars claim the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis was actually more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A Soviet or American tank gunner at Checkpoint Charlie in August 1961 could have started World War III. In the early 1980s, Soviet chief Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, was convinced a U.S. nuclear strike was coming. He took literally President Reagan's strong rhetoric about the "evil empire." Careful what you say. In misperception or image theory, the psychological and real worlds bounce against each other in the minds of political leaders. They think they are acting defensively, but their picture of the situation may be distorted. For a long time, it is interesting to note, no country has ever called its actions anything but defensive. The Americans in Vietnam saw themselves as defending the free world; the Russians see themselves as defending their kinfolk in Ukraine. In its own eyes, a nation is never aggressive. A country—under the guidance of its leaders, its ideology, and its mass media—may work itself into a state of fear and rationalize aggressive moves as defensive. Under rabidly nationalistic leadership, most Germans and Japanese in World War II saw themselves as defending their coun-tries against hostile powers. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević played the Serbian nationalist card and got most Serbs to believe they were threatened with subjugation or even genocide. Once convinced that they are being attacked, normally peaceful people will commit all manner of atrocities. North Korea, locked in isolation and hysteria, looked at the U.S. conquest of Iraq and feared it would be next. Bush 43 had indeed called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the "axis of evil." Careful what you say to a domestic audience; it goes around the globe within minutes and is heard as something quite different. What most Americans dismissed as a figure of speech to rally domestic opinion Pyongyang perceived as a real threat. In turn, Pyongyang tests nuclear bombs and long-range rockets, thinking that will deter the Americans. Washington then perceives North Korea as threatening to attack South Korea and America. Wars have started over mutually reinforcing perceptions such as these. Mutual misperceptions in several Islamic countries and the United States have reached dangerous heights. Many Americans perceive Muslims as fanatics and terrorists. Most Muslims perceive Americans as arrogant and imperialistic. We saw ourselves as liberating Iraq, whereas Muslims saw us as conquering Iraq, intending to keep it for its oil. There is no quick fix for these misperceptions. U.S. programs to improve "communications" with the Arab world have little impact. Arabs now get much of their news from satellite stations such as Al Jazeera, which can be critical of U.S. policy. Muslims and Americans misunder-stand each other, making U.S. leadership in that part of the world difficult.A subset of misperception theory might be termed "the fear factor." Depending on their geographical and political situation, many countries are dominated by fear, sometimes justified, sometimes exaggerated. They believe other nations are out to harm them, possibly to conquer them. Hence they arm and form alliances in ways that often increase tensions and fear. The United States feared Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was building more when it invaded in 2003. Command pressure reached down into the working levels of U.S. intelligence agencies and required them to produce data confirming the leaders' worst fears. Rumors were accepted as facts. Misperception can go the other way, too. Sometimes states are not sufficiently at-tentive and fearful. They love peace so much they shrug off threats. Interwar British and French leaders were timid. With their staggering losses in World War I in mind, they failed to see the Hitlerian threat until it was almost too late. The United States did no bet-ter; it took Pearl Harbor to jolt America into realizing that it could not stay isolated. Israel in 1973 convinced itself that Egypt could not and would not strike across the Suez Canal.

Chapter 8 Eternal Warfare in the Holy Land

Chapter 8 traces the development of Arab and Israeli nationalism. Part of current Middle Eastern tension still flows from the struggle of these two peoples for the same land. Many Palestinians and Israelis now realize that, after six nasty wars and three Palestinian intifadas, they must live in separate homelands. But after many tries, peace still eludes them, and militants on both sides sabotage the peace process. Some fear their war will never end

Legitimacy

Citizens' feeling that government's rule is rightful.

Concepts of The Islamic Wars

Cultural explanations of war and conflict got a boost with Samuel Huntington's 1993 article "Clash of Civilizations." The late Harvard professor discerned a broad and deep Muslim cultural antipathy toward the West, a view also held by several other analysts of turmoil in the Middle East. Even a Danish cartoon set off Muslim riots in 2006. The mistaken burning of Korans in 2011 set off anti-U.S. rioting. Muslim countries, showing what Huntington called "kin-country rallying," opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In fact, Al Qaeda's largest recruitment boost came from the invasion of Iraq and included fighters from many countries. The cultural approach argues that Islam and Christianity were born enemies, for Islam teaches that it is God's successor to Christianity and will triumph worldwide. In the seventh century, Islam's first conquests and conversions were of the Christian lands of the Byzantine Empire and North Africa. Islam and Europe have been enemies for centuries—the Moorish conquest of Spain (and invasion of France), the Crusades, the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans (and two sieges of Vienna), and European imperialist takeovers of the Middle East.For several complex reasons, Muslim civilization stagnated while an energized Europe, starting around 1500, moved ahead. Russia and Austria slowly pushed back the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans in a se-ries of wars. Be careful of calling Muslim-Christian wars religious or cultural. Much of the motivation was material—fighters seeking lands and booty and em-perors seeking to expand their empires—with religion as the excuse. A partial exception to this might be the First Crusade (1095-1099), which was launched with Christian motives but did many un-Christian acts along the way. This theory sees war as a grudge match between cultures in which the loser of one century seeks revenge the next. This theory is much too simple, because at any given time many Muslim lands are at peace and even aligned with Christian countries, while many Muslim lands fight bitterly with each other. In 1991 some Muslim states supported the U.S.-led war against Iraq. Why? In 1991 we were liberating a Muslim country, Kuwait; in 2003 we weren't. Islamic countries, like all countries, form their policies according to their national interests at that moment. Change the situation and their policies change, even if their "culture" stays the same. If Muslims hate the West, why do so many of them immigrate to Western countries? Some analysts point to specific issues—for example, the U.S. occupation of Iraq and support for Israel and for authoritarian regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia—as the root of Muslim opposition. If Washington changed its policies, they argue, Islamic hatred would subside. (New regimes, however, could be worse.) One big danger: If we act on the "culture war" theory, we make it come true, possibly creating enemies where we had none.

Diplomacy: George F. Kennan On Russia And The West

Diplomat-turned-historian George F. Kennan taught America about Russia. But he also changed his mind about Russia. The deeply conservative Kennan authored the 1947 "containment" doctrine with his famous "X" article, which laid down a tough anti-Communist line that he later regretted as too rigid. In his early writings, Kennan called the Communists "snake-like" in their hostility to the West. Once out of the foreign service, Kennan reflected on the Cold War. In his magisterial Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1962), he began to see the rivalry more evenhandedly and even to assign some of the blame to America for ignorance and inconsistency. One of his longstanding themes is that the United States tends to conduct a "legalistic-moralistic" foreign policy instead of a realistic one. Kennan also deplored the excessive militarization of U.S. policy; he had in mind greater emphasis on diplomatic and economic forms of containment. How long would containment take? In his 1947 "X" article, Kennan suggested that in 10 to 15 years we would see some cracks in the Soviet edifice. He was right. In 1956, Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech started splitting the Communist world. In 1960, China departed from the Soviet camp. In Kennan's vision, patience is more important than weapons.

Eclectric

Drawn from a variety of sources.

Bailout

Emergency loan to prevent corpora-tion or government from collapsing.

Reactionary

Extremely con-servative; seeks returning to old ways.

IfIR liberals speak peace, why do they sometimes go to war?

Humanitarian intervention, the United States should intervene to stop mass killings, like how liberals argued that we must use force in Syria to stop their regime from killing innocent people.

Wilsonian

Idealistic projection of U.S. power to create a peace-ful world.

5.6 Consider the forces behind the Soviet collapse.

Marx theorized that capitalism will produce a depression so big and a working class so angry that it will seize power and usher in a new system, socialism. Capitalism was doomed; socialism—meaning here state ownership of the means of production—was sure to come. Marx was right that the economy underpins just about everything, but it turns out that socialism is the defective system, not capitalism. There are two ways to get economic growth. One is by dumping more inputs into the system: labor, capital, raw materials, and energy. The second way is to become more efficient, using fewer inputs to produce more outputs. Only the second way yields long-term, sustainable economic growth. The Soviets boosted production but not productivity. On the first path, eventually inputs run out. With the second path, gradual gains in productivity, largely technological, can keep up forever and make the economy more efficient. As a gas company ad used to say, "The future belongs to the efficient." Soviet industry turned out lots of poor-quality goods inefficiently because it was technologically backward. In a centrally directed economy, there are few plans, money, people, or incentives to innovate and become more efficient. Some Soviet economists knew this, and under the brief Khrushchev "thaw" in the early 1960s, they suggested market-type reforms. None were implemented, and with Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, would-be reformers laid low.From the 1930s through the 1960s, the Soviet system grew impressively, but by the early 1970s, many of the inputs had reached their limit, and Soviet economic growth slowed—in some years to near zero. At least two Soviet elites grew worried: econo-mists who understood how backward the Soviet system was and some generals who understood that war is increasingly high-tech and that the Soviets were falling behind the Americans. These two elites wanted reform and welcomed Mikhail Gorbachev to power in 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev never intended to end the Soviet system, just reform it. But reforming Communist systems is like trying to vaccinate a balloon. Gorbachev inher-ited a declining Soviet economy that badly needed reforms. Gorbachev did institute glasnost and perestroika, but these just made things worse. Under glasnost, citizens and the press began to complain bitterly. Especially dangerous—and totally unforeseen by Gorbachev—the many nationalities that made up the Soviet Union began to voice their suppressed feelings. Perestroika delivered little; by 1989 food shortages were serious. Constantly battling conservative forces (as had Khrushchev), Gorbachev hesi-tated for years and never adopted a serious economic reform plan.The declining Soviet economy pushed Gorbachev to genuine détente (see box); he desperately needed Western aid and trade. He first met President Reagan in Geneva in 1985. The two hit it off and built mutual trust. In late 1987, in the White House, they signed the important treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) that got rid of a whole class of atomic weapons. The one bright spot on Gorbachev's horizon was his relationship with Reagan. Soviet hegemony over East Europe limited this relationship. Besides, Gorbachev did not like the old Brezhnevites who still ran East Europe. In 1988, Gorbachev told them to develop their own glasnost and perestroika. But the East European regimes lacked legitimacy, and as soon as they began to give an inch, their citizens took a mile. In partly free 1989 Polish elections, the Communist regime was trounced, and after a telephone call from Gorbachev, the Polish Communists stood aside for a Catholic prime minister. In the summer of 1989, Hungary opened its border with Austria, letting thousands of East Germans slip out to West Germany. Czechoslovakia did the same. Protests broke out in East Germany. The regime gave the order to fire on the protesters; instead, liberal Communists took over and opened the Berlin Wall in November, marking the end of the Cold War. Gorbachev never had a sound vision; he thought he could reform communism. By then, a second or third elite generation, much better educated and exposed to new critical ideas, knew the system was defective. The party split between conservatives and liberals, with the liberals gaining political influence. Gorbachev at first sided with them and initi-ated decentralization, but halfway economic reforms undermined the system. The new market sector bumped into the state sector, creating economic breakdowns and inflation. Gorbachev reversed himself on reforms almost annually. By 1990, Russians were fed up with him. Meanwhile, some liberal party members quit and won elections as non-Communists. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin won the presidency of Russia, the giant re-public of the Soviet Union, in the first free election in the thousand years of Russia's history. This gave Yeltsin a legitimacy that Gorbachev lacked, for Gorbachev had never been popularly elected to anything. During the attempted coup of August 1991—carried out by Gorbachev's handpicked cabinet—Yeltsin stood firm, citizens rallied to him, the military split, and the coup plotters lost their nerve. At the end of 1991, Gorbachev was out and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, replaced by 15 independent republics, 12 of them associated in an undefined "Commonwealth of Independent States." The old Russian flag of white, blue, and red stripes replaced the red banner over Kremlin turrets. In less than three-quarters of a century, the Soviet Union was born under Lenin, grew to brutal Stalinist maturity, slowly declined under Brezhnev, and died during Gorbachev's reform attempts.

How did Lenin adapt Marxism into an IR theory?

he was desperate to grasp onto any theory that would lead to a revolution in Russia and would then spread worldwide turning socialism into eventual communism when it became big enough.

Central Europe

That part of Europe between Germany and Russia.

Offensive Realists

Think that nations expand and build security belts around themselves.

Containment

U.S. policy of blocking expan-sion of Soviet power, framed by Kennan in 1947

Dove

Favors peace, a noninterventionist.

Concepts of Do Rising Powers Cause War?

Some realist thinkers argue that rising new major powers often collide with other powers, leading to wars. This is true of the Athenian, Roman, Arab, Habsburg, British, German, and Japanese empires and even the United States. The world did not politely make way for their rise; each had to fight their way up in a series of wars. Some now argue that a rising China collides with other powers, and China has already fought with the United States in Korea and briefly with India, Russia, and Vietnam. China once announced its rise was a "peace-ful rise," one without war, but abandoned that and now claims almost all of the South and East China Seas and parts of India, increasing military tensions.The rising-powers theory is valid when there is a major territorial quarrel involved: Who will get what? The Athenian alliance fought the Spartan alliance over colonies in Italy. Rome fought Carthage over Spain. The Habsburgs waged the Thirty Years War over who would dominate Europe. Britain fought France, first over English holdings in France, then over North America. The expanding United States warred with Mexico and Spain to gain, respectively, the Southwest and the Philippines. Germany and Japan fought to grab, respec-tively, Europe and Asia. The Cold War started over the Soviet taking of East Europe. If there are no territorial disputes, collisions among rising powers are few or none. Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the barely discovered New World in 1494. The Treaty of Tordesillas, mediated by the pope, drew a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde is-lands and gave Portugal lands to the east of that line. Likewise, Spain and Portugal did not fight over who had what in Asia. Spain had the Philippines, and Portugal had Goa, Timor, Macau, and the Japan trade. The infant United States fought Britain first over independence and then over shipping (1812), but Britain welcomed the rise of a powerful United States in the late nineteenth century, seeing it as a partner. Britain did not resist the United States replacing it in trade with Latin America, and the United States was unbothered by British dominance in Asia. Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium used diplomacy to settle the "scramble for Africa" by carving it up around a table in Berlin in 1885. This suggests that the rising-powers problem can be avoided by settling early and calmly who is to get what. With China, for example, an international conference could determine how far China's maritime boundaries extend into the South and East China Seas. Who will possess the Diaoyu (Japanese: Senkaku), Spratly, and Paracel Islands? Undersea oil and natural gas around them could be jointly developed. In 2010, however, Beijing angrily rejected a U.S. call for such a conference. China's rise may not be peaceful.

Tonkin Gulf Resolution

The 1964 congres-sional permission for president to go to war in Vietnam.

Criticisms of Realism

The big problems with realism are the difficulties of accurately perceiving reality and of defining the national interest. Many parade a "tough" appearance of realism without grasping the true complexities of the world out there, which may take years to emerge. So-called realist policies may turn out to be mistaken. Few have the gift of peering into the future, although many guess and use dubious analogies. Realists tend to minimize internal politics and complexities, a serious mistake. Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, Washington ignored the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq (few knew what the terms meant) that would erupt in civil war. Twin errors are either underanticipating a threat or overanticipating it. The democ-racies made few preparations for the Axis menace until it was almost too late. U.S. cold warriors, on the other hand, saw continuing Soviet expansion even as the Soviet econ-omy declined at an accelerating rate. Eventually, it brought down the system. It turns out that capitalism really is better than socialism, something good American capitalists are supposed to know. All we had to do was wait. Anyone suggesting that at the time, however, would have been laughed out of Washington. National interests are often presumed rather than analyzed. Vietnam was over-stated as a national interest. Years later, many of the war's supporters admitted that it was not. Populist demagogues, a nationalistic press, and rigid thinking in govern-ment and academia can present simplified, inaccurate pictures. Hermann Göring explained how easy it was to get Germans to march to war: "All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked." Ignorance is widespread. Washington officials, weak in geography, were surprised that Putin seized Crimea with its important naval base of Sevastopol when Ukraine talked about joining NATO. Further, realist theory pays no attention to the strong irrational element in lead-ers' motives. Hitler attempted to enslave Europe for a nutty race theory. Stalin shot most of his generals and colonels on suspicion of disloyalty in the late 1930s, severely weakening the Red Army before the German attack. Mao ordered two mass upheavals that killed perhaps 40 million Chinese and set back China's economic progress at least ten years. The Islamic State proclaimed it was a new caliphate that would unite all Muslim countries and eventually the world. Some leaders are paranoid, their judg-ments clouded by fear and fantasy. A major criticism of realism argues that it may have worked in earlier ages, such as the Cold War, but does not in a new world of violence by subnational groups who are quite ideological and immune to rational offers. The realists' state-centric approach does little good and much harm when the biggest problems are not state behavior but the depredations of Islamist terrorists who flit from state to state. Invading Iraq or Afghanistan does not stop them but energizes them and brings them new recruits. How does the United States handle the flood of narcotics from south of the border? The Mexican state is too weak to suppress narcotraficantes, who bribe much of the police and army. Invading Mexico would do no good. State-centered realism provides no guidance in dealing with weak or failed states. Balance of power is another problem. How do states know when power balances? Always fearful, they keep amassing power until it frightens neighboring states, which in turn must add more power. The results are arms races or even wars. It would be fine if their powers would just balance, but they tend to overshoot. In building security, states can increase their insecurity, something known as the security dilemma. Balance of power may be useless in an age of asymmetrical warfare. Guerrillas and terrorists do not challenge major powers with jets and tanks; they wear them down with roadside and car bombs and by turning local populations against the occupiers.

Concepts of Sovereignty

The root of the word "sovereignty" is reign, from the French for rule. The prefix is from the Old French for over, so a sovereign is someone who "rules over" a land (a king). Sovereignty is the abstract quality of ruling a country. The term gained currency in the sixteenth century when royalist scholars such as the Frenchman Jean Bodin, rationalizing the growth of the power of kings, concluded that ultimately all power had to center in a monarch. By the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, European states were declaring themselves "sovereign"—the last word in law—over their territories, and monarchs agreed to keep out of the internal affairs (such as religion) of other states. Although the age of royal absolutism passed, the concept of sovereignty remained, and now all states claim sovereignty.

Elites

The top or most influential people.

Interventionism

U.S. willingness to use military force overseas

Diplomacy: The Yalta Agreement

1. Poland would get new borders, losing territory in the east to the Soviet Union and gaining it in the west from Germany. In effect, Poland was moved over 100 miles westward. 2. The countries of East Europe would be democratic and friendly with the Soviet Union. 3. Germany would be divided into three (later four, when France was added) zones for temporary military occupation. Berlin would be likewise divided. 4. Germany would be disarmed and would pay heavy reparations for the damage it had caused, especially to the Soviet Union.

Concepts of A Cyclical Theory of U.S. Foreign Policy

A behavioral political scientist, Frank L. Klingberg, accurately predicted in a 1952 article that the U.S. interventionism then current would end in the late 1960s. A social scientist who can predict anything deserves respect. Klingberg quantified such indicators as naval expenditures, annexations, armed expeditions, diplomatic pressures, and mention of foreign matters in presidential speeches and party platforms to discover alternating moods of "introversion" (mostly staying home) and "extroversion" (expanding U.S. power and influence overseas). Klingberg found that introvert periods lasted an average of 21 years, extrovert 27. If you add 27 to 1940, when the United States entered an extrovert phase, you get 1967, the very time the United States tired of Vietnam and overseas involvement in general. Klingberg, of course, did not know at the time of his writing that Vietnam would become a major U.S. war or political issue. He merely suggested that, based on past performance, we could expect extroversion to end in the late 1960s. The following table summarizes Klingberg's findings. Introversion 1776-1798, 1824-1844, 1871-1891, & 1919-1940 Extroversion 1798-1824, 1884-1871, 1891-1919, & 1940- -We can take it a few steps further. Adding 21 years (average length of introvert phase) to 1967 gives us 1988. Bush 41 invaded Panama in 1989 and kicked Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991. Had we returned to extroversion? Next, adding 27 years to 1991 gets us to 2018, when memories of Iraq and Afghanistan will likely limit intervention. Klingberg's theory is fas-cinating, but do not reify it. God does not play numbers games with U.S. foreign policy. Much depends on what counts as use of force overseas. Syria, for example, might count as very weak intervention.

3.5 Explain the "security dilemma."

All except pacifists agree that a state must have sufficient power. The world is dan-gerous, and going unarmed invites attack. But if you have too much power, you create fear among other states, who themselves arm and ally to offset your power Some call this the security dilemma, in which your quest for security ends up mak-ing you less secure—the story of the Cold War. At a minimum, an arms race ensues, sometimes ending in war. The trick is to get the "right" amount of power, but this is exceedingly hard to calculate. Because many states are chronically insecure, they engage in worst-case scenarios and build more military power than they really need. Better too much than too little, they reason. Such was the case with the chronically insecure Soviet Union, which unintentionally created a ring of enemies around itself, thus heightening its insecurity. Many IR scholars detect the origin of the problem not in power but in the type of international system that prevails at a given time. If it is tense, countries will arm. If it is relaxed, countries will keep few arms. After Napoleon, Europe feared little from other European powers until Germany unified and turned expansionist. Europe gen-erally relaxed and enjoyed three generations of peace and prosperity in the nineteenth century. Now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europe again faces few threats from another European power. (It still has to contend with terrorism that originates in he Middle East and North Africa.) Europe shrinks its armies and chastises the United States for being trigger-happy. The context creates the psychology. The trick then, as Henry Kissinger wrote in his 1954 Harvard doctoral disserta-tion, is to artfully construct a "legitimate" world system—one in which no country threatens another. Metternich did this in Europe after Napoleon was finally packed off to a remote island in the South Atlantic. A "revolutionary" world system—one in which types like Napoleon and Stalin threaten everybody—automatically brings tensions and wars that cannot be wished away by goodwill. In these conditions, states are driven to accumulate power, sometimes too much.

4.5 Evaluate the motives and manner of FDR's approach to World War II.

For a growing number of Americans, the official outbreak of World War II in 1939 (it had been on in China since at least 1937) showed that isolationism was wrong. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had served Wilson as assistant navy secretary, always admired Wilson and slowly restored some Wilsonian idealism, one that extended U.S. national interests overseas. It showed up clearly in the Atlantic Charter (see the Diplomacy box). FDR had learned the lessons of Wilson's failure—too idealistic—and moved only a fraction ahead of Congress and public opinion to bring the United States into the war and into a world leadership role. Roosevelt's strategy was to aid Britain without alarming American isolationists, who thought that Britain in 1940 was defeated and that the war was none of our busi-ness. (Even the U.S. ambassador to Britain, the father of John F. Kennedy, thought so.) FDR circumvented the Neutrality Acts by allowing Britain to come and get U.S. goods under "Cash and Carry." The United States traded 50 old destroyers to Britain for a naval base in Bermuda. With the fall of France in 1940 and Britain out of foreign exchange, Lend Lease simply gave war supplies to Britain and, after the 1941 German attack on Russia, to the Soviet Union. In getting these goods across the Atlantic, U.S. ships, including warships, became targets for German U-boats. The United States, in turn, depth-charged them in an undeclared war with Germany in the North Atlantic several months before Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, got both Churchill and Roosevelt off the hook. Churchill knew that Britain would now be on the winning side, and the U.S. isolationists fell silent. With U.S. leadership and supplies, the Allies won in 1945. This time the United States would play a leading world role. Roosevelt avoided Wilson's mistakes. The United Nations Charter, separate from any peace treaty, was drawn up during the war while a common enemy cemented the alliance. U.S. military aid gave Washington great influence and induced many to accept the UN Charter. Declaring war on the Axis was the prerequisite for UN membership. Congress authorized the United Nations in 1943, this time with Republican consultation and support. In San Francisco in 1945, most of the world's nations signed the Charter. As if to underscore the U.S. role, the UN headquarters was to be in New York.

Unilateralism

Foreign policies without allied help or consultation.

Concepts of Misconception

How do we know in IR that what we perceive is accurate? The world "out there" is extremely complex, often defying our attempts to simplify it into intelligible form for our limited brains. News and intelligence reports are often skewed. Thus we often misperceive what is happening in other countries, seeing them as either better or worse, more aggressive or more peaceful, weaker or stronger than they actually are. Often we learn only later that we have been mistaken. Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich misperceived Hitler as a reasonable man who wished peace. The United States misperceived Iraq in 2003, supposing that it had weapons of mass destruction. Many specialists on the Soviet Union misperceived it as being a strong, stable system; they were surprised at its rapid collapse. Anyone, including experts and top decision makers, can be caught up in misperceptions. Wrote Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century: "That which is perceived is perceived according to the nature of the perceiver." (The original Latin: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.) You see what you are trained to see. St. Thomas' insight is old but still valid, especially in IR.

Classic Thought: Mahan's Sea power Theory

In 1890, as the United States was expanding its fleet, U.S. Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a book that told imperialists exactly what they wanted to hear. The Influence of Sea Power upon History argued that nations must expand or decline and that sea power is the key to expansion. To ensure its overseas commerce, a nation needs a strong navy, which, in turn, needs colonies as "coaling stations" to service its ships. Mahan's model was the British fleet and empire. Among Mahan's followers was Theodore Roosevelt, who became assistant navy secretary under President McKinley in 1897.

Republic

Main Soviet/ Russian civil division, like a U.S. state.

Diplomacy: The Atlantic Charter

Meeting at sea off Newfoundland on August 14, 1941 (before America was officially in the war), President Roosevelt, who knew we would soon be in the war, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed an idealistic statement of their war aims. They sought no territorial aggrandizement but wanted disarmament, self-determination for all nationalities, and freedom of trade and of the seas. The Atlantic Charter, the spiritual child of Wilson's Fourteen Points, formed the basis of the United Nations, NATO, and close U.S.-British cooperation.

Classic Thought : Spykman on Intervention

Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943), educated in the Dutch institute for colonial administration, brought with him to Yale a geopolitical perspective on world affairs. Spykman (pronounced "SPEAKman") posed the classic question of U.S. foreign and defense policy in 1942: "Shall we protect our interests by defense on this side of the water or by active participation in the lands across the oceans?" In other words, to intervene or not to intervene? The answer for Spykman, one of the founders of U.S. realism, writing only days after Pearl Harbor, was clear: Intervene before it is too late. Every generation of Americans faces Spykman's question.

Who Was When: Soviet Leaders and Their Accomplishments

Party Chief / Ruled / Main Accomplishemt : Vladimir Lenin(1917-1924)- Led Revolution; took Russia out of World War I; beat Whites in Civil War Josef Stalin(1927-1953)-Forced industrialization; made pact with Hitler; beat Germany in World War II; took East Europe; made China ally. Nikita Khrushchev(1955-1964)-Crushed Hungarian uprising; gained influence in Egypt; made Cuba an ally; boosted missile strength; alienated Mao's China. Leonid Brezhnev(1964-1982)-Gained Soviet clients in Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen, and Syria; achieved brief détente and then military parity with the United States; invaded Afghanistan. Yuri Andropov(1982-1984)- N/A Konstantin Chernenko(1984-1985)- N/A Mikhail Gorbachev(1985-1991)- Pulled out of Afghanistan; INF treaty with Reagan; attempted to reform system but only collapsed it.

Glasnost

Policy of media openness under Gorbachev.

Atlantic Charter

The 1941 Roosevelt-Churchill agree-ment on peace aims and basis of UN.

Constuctivism

The newest and most popular IR theory, argues that subjective understandings rather than objective reality are what influence policy. ⁃ constructivists argue that mental constructs formed by social interaction conditions what society believes and if a society believes something to the fullest it must be true. ⁃ Example: how can you know if the age of maturity is 18 or 21? It is mostly based on mental constructs and what most of society believes.

Defensive Realists

Think that countries go to war to defend a nation that is under threat.

Structural Realists

Think that global distribution of power governs international relations.

Reflections Ideals or Self-Interest?

Young people often wonder what they should base their foreign policy views on, idealism or self-interest. Many learn from school and church a moralistic tradition that leads to idealism, aiming for the good of the world. Some are then exposed in college to the notion that foreign policy should be based on the "national interest"—looking out for the good of one's country. Which approach is right? Either can turn sour. Idealistically, the United States wel-comed the ouster of an Egyptian dictator in 2011 and the democratic election of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many Egyptians protested the new regime's Islamic fundamentalism, however, and the Egyptian military seized power in 2013. Washington again supported and aided another military dictatorship; it was better than chaos or extremism. U.S. policy returned to where it started in Egypt. The democratic intentions of a policy are no substitute for a hard-edged analysis of Egyptian complexities. But a national-interest approach can be so narrow that it misses dangers that are brewing. Thinking only of self-interest, we might ignore a regime of Muslim fanatics that is distant and none of our concern. That is the way we treated Afghanistan from 1989 to 2001. But Afghanistan sheltered terrorists who bombed U.S. ships and embassies and crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. We should have paid more attention to Afghanistan earlier. Idealism and self-interest are not always at odds. Sometimes the smartest thing to do is to help others, who in turn become trading partners and customers. U.S. Marshall Plan aid for Europe after World War II paid off many times over in prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. High trade volume between states makes war between them highly unlikely. (Does that cover us with China?) Beware of analyses that are either too idealistic or too self-interested. Are the policies feasible? What are their long-term consequences likely to be? Beware also of policies that are idealistic but difficult to implement. A policy needs a certain amount of idealism, but to be accepted it must also be presented as promising a payoff. We must construct policies that merge idealism and self-interest.

Self-Interest

Basing foreign policy on national interest.

logical consistency

-assumptions not mutually contradictory -conclusions follow from premises

4.4 Appraise the motives and effects of U.S. interwar isolationism.

After war broke out in Europe in 1914, Germany tried to keep America out while Britain tried to get America in. German submarine warfare threatened U.S. shipping. President Woodrow Wilson, with the legalistic-moralistic bent of the time, won reelec-tion in 1916 with the slogan "He kept us out of war." By early 1917, however, German submarine warfare pushed Wilson into the Great War "to make the world safe for democracy." He also appreciated that the German conquest of Europe would threaten our national interest. U.S. troops arrived when the war was two-thirds over and tipped the balance against Germany. The war ended in late 1918. But the victors, particularly Britain and France, did not share Wilson's idealistic vision of a new League of Nations to keep the peace. They wanted revenge on Germany for their terrible losses and squeezed it for impossible reparations. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Versailles treaty, and America, fed up with Wilson's idealism and the unreliable Europeans, slouched into isolationism. Americans soon saw World War I as a failure and felt they had fought and bled for nothing and must never do it again. The United States in the interwar years had overseas interests but did not back them up; instead, it turned to law and rhetoric. Neither worked. The United States sponsored the 1921 Washington Naval Conference, which limited the number of battleships of the major sea powers. (Japan soon opted out.) The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact (named after the U.S. secretary of state and French foreign minister) outlawed war. Most states signed but did so in utter cynicism. This policy of words without deeds could not conceal the fact that the United States did not have the power to do much overseas. Between the two World Wars the army and navy shrank. The Philippines were lightly garrisoned and forgotten. The Great Depression focused Americans' attention on domestic economic recovery; the foreigners were simply trade competitors. In the Senate, the Nye Committee blamed U.S. involvement in the war on "merchants of death," U.S. bankers and munitions makers who brought us into the conflict. From these hearings grew the Neutrality Acts of 1935-1937, designed to keep us from ever being drawn into a similar war. Anyone who suggested we take a stand against aggression was howled down. Interwar isolationism failed to recognize that the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—threatened to create a closed, hostile world in which the United States was militarily besieged and economically isolated. U.S. national interests were eatened, but isolationism blinded many Americans to this fact until Pearl Harbor. Then, almost too late, came sudden understanding. As Hegel observed, the owl of Minerva (symbolizing wisdom) flies at twilight.

colonialism

The gaining and exploitation of overseas territories, chiefly by Europeans.

4.8 Survey the current challenges to U.S. national interests.

Clearly, U.S. national interests change over time, sometimes, as in Vietnam, by 180 degrees. America must now adjust its national interests to two problems, one cur-rent, the other emerging: Islamist terrorism in the short term and the rise of China in the longer term. These two challenges require two different definitions of national interest. Neither of them is another Cold War, and we should avoid bipolar thinking. For the second half of the twentieth century, there was one central adversary, the Soviet Union. Islamist terrorism is decentralized and diffuse. Upset in one country, it pops up in another. Accordingly, invading every nation with Muslim extremists would not crush the movement but would stretch U.S. power too thin and create even more enemies. The rise of a powerful China is a more subtle problem than the Soviet Union, which was a military but not an economic challenge. China does not ring itself with satellites or attempt to subvert governments like the Soviet Union did. Beijing sells no ideology the way Moscow used to sell communism. Instead, it makes economic growth its guiding principle and will let nothing disrupt it. In this way, China gets respect around the world. But Chinese are highly nationalistic and see themselves as Asia's top power. China grows its military, especially its navy, and warns the U.S. Navy to keep away. The big question for U.S. foreign policy: Would a China-dominated Asia be a threat? Or could we live with it? We need first a clear picture of the global system, which we do not have. Is it multipolar, clash of civilizations, globalized, or resource war? How important are the "zones of chaos" in crucial areas? Are they where terrorism breeds? Is the system unstable? Next, we must figure out our national interests within whatever system exists. How much do we intervene overseas? Do we have the resources for major, long-term deployments? Should we attempt to control Middle East oil fields? Or should we just buy oil from whoever produces it? Do we simply stop terrorists from hurting us at home or track them down worldwide? Are the South and East China Seas any of our business? Few firm answers can be given, but feasibility, always emphasized by Morgenthau, is an important guidepost.

Micro-

Close-ups of individual and small-group behavior.

Joint Chiefs of Staff

Committee of top generals and admirals.

2.5 Critique Marxism and its variations as IR theories.

Communist and other radical regimes embraced Marxist theories, which were dis-carded after the Soviet collapse (if not before). In practice, even Communist countries were motivated by nationalism rather than class conflict. Still, there is something useful in Marxist IR theory, which can be seen as a warped branch of realism. Marxism offers itself as the ultimate in realism, claiming that all motivations in IR, however disguised, are for the economic gain of the ruling classes. One may doubt it. Karl Marx (1818-1883) had little to say about relations among states; he believed the big contradictions are within states, namely, between their two major social classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The upper ranks of the bourgeoisie—the "ruling circles of capitalism"—basically own and run the country, determining economic policy, foreign policy, laws, and governance, all in service to themselves. Democratic trimmings may fool the masses into thinking they have some input, argue Marxists, but they have little or none. The chief contradiction, the one that will bring down capitalism, is between a capitalist economy that produces more and more and the impoverished workers who cannot afford to buy the growing output. This leads to overproduction, which leads to recurring depressions. Eventually, there will be a depression so big and a working class so angry that they will overthrow capitalism and install socialism. Marx thought he scientifically proved this in his voluminous writings, but it seems more a mental construct. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), a Russian Marxist, turned Marxism into an IR theory a century ago. Marx expected a proletarian revolution in his lifetime, but it never came. Liberal English economist J. A. Hobson provided an explanation in his 1902 Imperialism, which argued that capitalism, plagued by underconsumption at home, finds new markets overseas, thus giving itself a new lease on life. Lenin, in Swiss exile, worked this up into his 1916 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism to explain World War I. The capitalist-imperialist powers, scouring the globe for markets and resources, collided into each other in a scramble for colonies. The war, said Lenin, was about global dominance in which some countries are rich imperialists and others poor victims. Marx, who saw world capitalists as conniving together, not fighting, would likely have denounced Lenin's major redo of his theory. Marx held that revolution would come first to the most industrialized lands, for they had the largest proletariat and sharpest contradictions, but Lenin also changed this. Capitalist development is always uneven, leaving some countries far behind the ones who industrialized first, especially Britain. Countries that were just industrializing, such as Russia and Spain, were "capitalism's weakest link," argued Lenin. Russia's small but growing proletariat, guided by the Bolshevik Party, would be enough to carry out a revolution that would then spread worldwide. Basically, Lenin was just grasping for any theory that would justify revolution in Russia. Mao completed this train of thought by arguing that preindustrial China, with a tiny proletariat, could base its revolution on poor peasants. Marx would not have been pleased. Presently, Marxist theories of IR contain these elements. THIS IS A MATERIAL WORLD Causes and motives in IR reside in economics and power, not in ideas or mental constructs. People have ideas, to be sure, but they are reflections of their material conditions, argue Marxists. Capitalists celebrate the free market because it serves their interests. Muslim tribesmen rebel not because they have been talked into extremist Islam but because they are poor, marginalized, and exploited by corrupt rulers. Philosophically, Marxists are the opposite of constructivists, who suppose it's all in your mind. RICH CAPATALIST COUNTRIES STILL RUN MUCH OF THE GLOBE Marxists used to argue that capitalists run the entire globe, but plainly that is no longer tenable. Most oil-producing countries have long since nationalized their black gold and just use the oil corporations as tax collectors and marketing agents. Aramco, for example, was founded in 1933 by Standard Oil but by 1980 was wholly owned by Saudi Arabia. The biggest world buyer of oil is China's state-owned companies. China's capitalists exist by permission of the Chinese Communist Party. Still, Marxists point out that world financial markets are very much run by and for capitalists, whose greed and deception can still plunge the world into recession. CAPATALIST COUNTRIES TRY TO REMAKE THE WORLD IN THEIR IMAGE Marxists make the chief culprit the United States, which promotes free-market capitalism as the ticket to global prosperity. After the Soviet collapse, a "Washington consensus" preached "stabilize, privatize, and liberalize." Critics called this "market fundamentalism," an Ayn Rand worship of capitalism, and it effectively ended with the financial meltdown of 2008-2009, which made totally free markets seem reckless. Now some speak of a "Chinese consensus," that controlled economies under state supervision are the path to stable prosperity. At any rate, the fear that capitalists will set up a purely capitalist world has receded, and very few countries want or are able to copy China. The world economy is likely to remain quite mixed. THE WORLD ECONOMY IS UNSTABLE Capitalism is still a kind of roller coaster, with giddy growth punctuated by sickening downturns. Eventually, a new Great Depression could end it. While few Marxists now predict a global economic collapse—they have predicted it too long to be believable—some foresee a series of recessions that will force governments into regulating and limiting markets. Capitalism was sup-posed to have collapsed long ago; the fact that it has not should be a source of great embarrassment for Marxists. GOVERNMENTS SERVE CAPATALISTS Most countries' policies serve the major centers of wealth, argue Marxists. Notice how quickly Congress bailed out giant cor-porations in 2008 and 2009. Washington's promotion of globalization chiefly serves big businesses. Foreign aid programs sound "liberal" but mostly flow through large U.S. firms. The Marshall Plan that rescued Europe after World War II also opened it to American corporations. Most U.S. foreign aid is "tied," that is, it can be used to pur-chase only U.S. products. We don't give poor countries dollars; we give them surplus American grain, which aids the U.S. agribusiness. Marxists argue that the interests of the rich and powerful dominate, often through multinational corporations and inter-national financial institutions.

Vietminh

Communist Vietnamese anti-French liberation movement in the 1940s and 1950s, led by Ho Chi Minh.

Satellite

Communist coun-try set up by and dependent on Soviet Union.

Arms Race

Competition be-tween rival coun-tries to build more weapons.

War Powers Act

Congressional attempt to limit president's use of troops in hostilities

Geography: Geopolitics

Geography has a profound impact on international politics, where almost everything has a territorial component. Geography is not necessarily destiny, but it poses recurring questions in the history of most countries. The relative isolation of the United States forces us to ask where our defense starts, on the near or far side of the oceans? Geopolitics began in the nineteenth century, partly to justify imperialist expansion. It lends itself to dubious, sweeping simplifications, against which one must be on guard. Englishman Halford Mackinder in 1919 famously declared: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world." The formulation suited both Nazi and Soviet geopolitics. American Nicholas Spykman countered with a "Rimland" theory: He who controls the rim of Eurasia dominates it, a view that suited Kennan's "containment" and the U.S. Navy. Which view is accurate? Perhaps neither. To think geopolitically, look at a map or globe and ask questions such as the following: • Should I expand my territory or just protect what I have? • What is the value of another area in terms of natural resources, industry, trade, protection from invasion, or a base for extending influence? • How difficult would it be to take and hold this area? • If I don't take this area, who else might? • If this area were in hostile hands, could it be a threat? • What natural barriers, such as seas or mountains, help or hinder my situation? • Could I strengthen my hand by diplomacy and commerce, or will it take troops? • If I do move into this area, what new problems and enemies will I incur? • Will the people there welcome me or hate me? Expansionist leaders ignore these questions until they get themselves into untenable situations, overextended and stuck in unwinnable wars. The Nazis and Japanese militarists embraced an aggressive Lebensraum geopolitics that destroyed their regimes. Powerful countries tend to define their geopolitical interests broadly, leading to expansionism and war. When England strove to prevent the domination of the Netherlands or Eastern Mediterranean by hostile powers, it was playing geopolitics. When the United States issued the Monroe Doctrine or took the Philippines, it was playing geopolitics. Moscow and Beijing, argues John Mearsheimer, make sure nearby lands and seas can-not be used against them. Their geopolitical insecurities explain their behavior, respectively, in Ukraine and the South China Sea. The most successful example of this, he notes, is the United States, which bumped out all potential threats by force and/or cash (see previous chapter).

Lebensraum

German for "living space"; theory that countries must expand to gain room for their population.

Mobilization

Getting an army ready for immediate war.

tribalism

Identifying with tribe rather than with country.

Reflections: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam

In what ways are the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam similar? As the Iraq and Afghan wars stretched into the two longest in U.S. history, critics compared them to Vietnam, claiming we were again "bogged down." As usual, such comparisons show some similarities and some differences. Beware of simplified analogies. First, the terrains were vastly different. Iraq was nearly perfect for our kind of conventional war in 2003. Recalling Vietnam, American officers joked: "We do deserts; we don't do jungles." The rugged mountains of Afghanistan favor insurgents. The Vietnam War used mostly draftees but no reservists; Iraq used no draftees but many reservists (at one point, 40 percent of U.S. forces there). Afghanistan uses some reservists. Iraq has lots of oil, Vietnam none. Afghanistan's chief prod-uct is opium.The strongest difference is the nature of the enemy. All three wars were fought at least partly by guerrillas, but the Communists in Vietnam were united and under Hanoi's central control. Iraqi and Afghan insurgents, drawn from Sunnis, are fragmented with no one in overall control. The Vietcong could sell their nationalist ideology to other Vietnamese. Sunni Arab fighters in Iraq cannot sell Sunni supremacy to Shia or Kurds. This is the ultimate weakness of the Sunni cause in Iraq: They can start a civil war but not win it. The Afghan Taliban face a similar problem: They are mostly Pashtun (the largest Afghan group but still less than half), and other Afghan ethnic groups do not wish to live under a regime of Pashtun religious fanatics. There are some similarities. Anti-U.S. nationalism is the chief motivator for insurgents in all three countries:"Americans, get out of our country!" Both Iraq, invented by the British in the 1920s, and South Vietnam, invented by the Americans in the 1950s, were artificial countries whose regimes had little legitimacy. Afghanistan was never a unified country. The chief weaknesses in all three were political, not military, namely, corrupt and inept governments that enjoy little citizen support. All three wars were sold to Congress in panic mode over the Tonkin Gulf incident and 9/11 and passed as joint resolutions, not as declarations of war. Democratic Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Obama were under Republican pressure to show how tough they were. Republicans equated war with being strong on defense, security, or terrorism, and the Democratic incumbents feared not sending troops would cost them reelec-tion. With no end in sight in all three cases, however, Congress started abandoning the president, even mem-bers of his own party. In all three wars the United States had few allies and faced much international criticism.The greatest similarity was in U.S. public opin-ion, which declined in all three wars over time and in response to U.S. casualties. Support for all started at about two-thirds but fell to one-third within three years. Americans dislike long, inconclusive wars. Argu-ments widely accepted early in the wars—"stopping communism" and "war on terror"—persuaded fewer. Administrations of both parties reexamined U.S. national interests and developed timetables for withdrawal. Suc-cess was defined downward. Halfway stable-looking Iraq and Afghanistan would be good enough, and de-mocracy was barely mentioned. As Vermont Republican Senator George Akin prescribed for Vietnam: "Declare victory and get out."

Vietcong

Informal name of Communist-led South Vietnamese National Liberation Front in the 1960s.

System

Interaction of many components so that changing one changes the others.

3.1 Evaluate theories of war based on biology and psychology.

Micro theories are rooted in biology and psychology. In the biological view, humans are essentially animals. As Hobbes put it, "Man is to man a wolf." Actually, that is unfair to wolves, which are usually pretty nice to other wolves. Few animals are uniformly aggressive, but they may become so when attacked. Carnivorous mammals such as lions have to be trained by their mothers to hunt and kill. Man's closest relatives, the primates, are mostly peaceable and sociable. Some attempt to explain war as the result of genetic human aggressiveness. Millions of years of evolution have made humans fighters—to obtain food and defend their families and territory. From the beginning, extended families and clans formed hunting bands of males, which created male bonding and carried over into fighting other bands of humans. Novelist and radical critic Norman Mailer proposed that Americans' love of hunting underlay the Vietnam War, but few accepted the simplistic connection. The bonding spirit of a football huddle and an infantry squad are quite similar. Thus one cure for war, some suggest, is getting young males to bash themselves silly on the sports field to slake their thirst for violence. There is no evidence that sports can replace war. Aggressive behavior in lacrosse does not necessarily transfer into killing others. Recent research suggests that young soldiers, far from being natural killing ma-chines, have to be carefully trained and encouraged to kill. The natural instinct in battle is to run away, which is why armies invented sergeants. After deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, some American soldiers get drugs and counseling to stave off mental break-downs and suicide, and sometimes that doesn't work. Warfare does not come naturally. Most anthropologists reject biological determinism, arguing that primitive peoples exhibit a wide variety of behavior—some are aggressive and some are not—that can be explained by culture and circumstances. Some cultures, from their religion and early history, tend to be warlike. Circumstances, such as a drought, may push peaceful pasto-ralists into the territory of another tribe and lead to fighting. The Plains Indians of North America, with no defensive barriers, had to be ready to fight for their hunting grounds. The cliff dwellers of the Southwest just pulled up their ladders. Today's few remaining hunter-gatherers—such as the San people of Southern Africa, whose DNA is closest to that of original humans—are quite amiable. When they encounter other bands in their perpetual search for food, they share information about game and water and arrange marriages (to guard against inbreeding) and go on their way. Fighting is rare. Psychological approaches are related to biological ones; both assume the causes are deep within individuals. Psychological studies explore the personalities of both leaders and followers, what made them that way, and why they are willing to turn to violence and war. Studies of the 2003 Iraq War are incomplete if they do not include the state of mind of Saddam Hussein (seriously removed from reality) and of America after 9/11, which was a psychological shock that had to be avenged. Westerners still puzzle over what makes Islamist fanatics like ISIS hate us more than they love life. Clearly, there are vast psychological and cultural gaps in our understanding. If the problem is really rooted deep in human psyches, understanding it will not necessar-ily lead to curing it. An old liberal slogan proposes "no world peace without mental health," but how are you going to get Napoleon, Hitler, and bin Laden to come in for their meds and therapy? Biological and psychological theories offer some insights but fall far short of explaining wars. If humans are naturally aggressive, then all nations should be con-stantly at war. But most nations most of the time are at peace. How is it that countries can fight a long series of wars—the 12 Russo-Turkish wars from 1568 to 1918 around the Black Sea or the six Arab-Israeli wars over 60 years—under different leaders who surely must have been psychologically distinct? Biological and psychological approaches may offer insights into some of the underlying causes of war but not the immediate causes. For this we turn to state-level and macro theories.

Reification

Mistaking a theory for reality

pan-Africanism

Movement to unite all of Africa.

From Colonialism to Decolonization

More than 500 years ago, West Europe began modernizing and founded the strong state. The voyages of discovery and the beginnings of colonialism were part of this process. Imperialism was bound to happen as monarchs competed with each other for new lands and wealth, but little Portugal led the way. Like Spaniards, Portuguese fought off centuries of Moorish rule in a vengeful spirit. They hated the fact that Arab middlemen dominated Europe's trade with Asia and vowed to go around them. Even then, educated people knew (from the ancient Greeks) that the world was round and that Asia could be reached by going around Africa. They just did not know how far south Africa extended (farther than they thought). Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator, who had earlier battled the Moors, was motivated by both religious hatred and economic gain. He encouraged Portuguese explorers to work their way down Africa's Atlantic coast until, finally, in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, so named for the riches it would bring. Quickly, little Portuguese caravels crossed the Indian Ocean and set up trading posts in India (1498), China (1514), Japan (1543), and elsewhere. In 1492, Spain and Columbus played catch-up in trying to reach Asia by sailing west. American schoolchildren learn that Columbus' voyage was the really impor-tant one, but the Portuguese opening of both Africa and Asia was at least equal in terms of changing the world. On Africa's west coast, the Portuguese set up trading posts for slaves for the sugarcane and cotton plantations in the New World. Thus be-gan European colonialism in Africa. Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique were Portuguese colonies until 1975. Europe's first colonial power was also its last. France and England soon followed, turning Africa into a series of colonies. In the late nineteenth century, Germany, Italy, and Belgium completed the process. In 1885 the leading powers met in Berlin for the "great carve-up" of Central Africa that settled competing border claims. Thus many of Africa's borders were demarcated around a table in Berlin. Only Ethiopia was not colonized (although it was occupied by Italy from 1936 to 1941). Decolonization took more than two centuries as the European powers were forced back to Europe. The first loss was Britain's 13 colonies in North America. Next, in the 1820s, came Spain's and Portugal's ouster from Latin America. Germany and Turkey lost their empires in World War I, but most of those territories were taken over by the victorious British and French under mandates of the League of Nations. Real decolonization did not come until after World War II, first as a trickle and then as a flood: India and Pakistan in 1947, Israel (formerly Palestine) in 1948, Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) in 1949, Ghana (Gold Coast) in 1957, then, in 1960, 17 countries, mostly British and French colonies in Africa. By the mid-1960s, all the old colonial empires had been liquidated except for Portugal's holdings. In 1975, Lisbon too gave way. After Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, South Africa stood alone as the last bastion of white rule in Africa.

3.3 Contrast balance-of-power with hierarchy-of-power theories.

Moving the camera back until it takes in the entire globe leads us to macro theories, which are rooted in history and political science and are usually related to the realist approach to IR. They focus on the power of states without looking too much into state structures, economies, and cultures the way state-level analysis does. Instead, they tend to treat states as billiard balls colliding on a pool table. The internal structure of the balls seldom dominates, as states move according to the external forces that bump them. Every push, some argue, yields a pushback. The first thing that states do is defend themselves. A state can be democratic, dictatorial, Islamist, or vegetarian, but if attacked most will fight back. A pos-sible exception might be Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, which allowed itself to be taken by Hitler without a shot fired. But Britain and France had abandoned a brother democracy at Munich in 1938, leaving Czechoslovakia alone and defenseless. Thailand, surrounded by Japanese forces with no other power to help it, "volun-tarily" allied itself with Japan in late 1941. Another rather basic tendency of states is to expand when and where they can. If they have little power, of course, they do not attempt to expand but hunker down and try to avoid being taken over. States with considerable power, however, tend to use it, as in the Germans' medieval push to the east, the Americans' "manifest destiny," the growth of the British and Japanese empires, and the Soviet takeover of East Europe. Only countervailing power may stop the drive to expand. One country, fearing the growth of a neighbor, will strengthen its defenses or form alliances to offset a threat-ening power. The 1949 formation of NATO to block the expansion of Soviet power is an example. Likewise, the more recent tendency of many countries to oppose U.S. policies is a natural reaction against a superpower that tells others what to do. Notice that such foreign-policy moves have little to do with leaders' psychologies or cultural differences, and macro approaches do not much bother with them. Why should states wish to expand? Why do they not simply build sufficient power to fend off invaders but stay home? That would be the ideal, extolled by realist thinkers such as Hans Morgenthau. Unfortunately, states are plagued by insecurity. They sur-vey the world around them and perceive threats or opportunities. They might behold a weak neighbor who could soon be taken over by a stronger state, bringing a hostile power to their own borders. So they adopt the (flawed) reasoning "If we don't take it, someone else will." The United States expanded from sea to shining sea on that basis and then took the Philippines and Hawaii. States may practice outright conquest or merely gain hegemony. Either way, expansion often leads to collision with other powers that are also expanding. In Manchuria in 1904, an expanding Russia bumped into an expanding Japan, which started the Russo-Japanese War. Later, U.S. power collided with Japanese power in Asia and the Pacific. University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer called such behavior "offensive realism" and saw it as standard. Much international behavior can be explained by the aphorism Si vis pacem para bellum ("If you want peace, prepare for war"), which underlay U.S. policy during the Cold War. Better an arms race than military weakness, which would tempt an aggressive adversary and thus lead to war, was the thinking in Washington. Another aphorism is "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Within five years of the end of World War II, recent enemies Germany and Japan were U.S. allies, because all faced expansionist Communist power. Typically, when the threat ends, the alliance fades. Political leaders, claim macro (and realist) theorists, have an almost automatic feel for national interest and power and move to enhance them. Most countries seek sufficient (sometimes excessive) power, but does this lead to war or peace? There are two macro theories about this. The balance-of-power theory, the oldest and most commonly held theory, says that peace results when several states, improving their national power and forming alliances, balance one another. Would-be expansionists are blocked. Balance-of-power theorists see the two great periods of relative peace—between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the wars that grew out of the French Revolution (1792-1814) and again from 1815 to the start of World War I in 1914—have been times when European alliances balanced each other. When the balances broke down, there was war. Fighting in Bosnia calmed in 1995 only after power there roughly balanced. When the Serbs were winning, they had no incentive to settle; when they were on the defensive, they had a strong incentive to stop the fighting. Many thinkers consider the Cold War a big and durable balance-of-power system that explains why there was relative peace—at least no World War III—for more than four decades. Other analysts reject the balance-of-power theory in favor of a hierarchy-of-power theory. First, because calculations of power are so problematic, it is impossible to know when power balances. Second, the periods of peace, some writers note, occurred when power was asymmetric, when states were ranked hierarchically in terms of power. Then every nation knew where it stood on sort of a ladder of relative power. It is in times of transition, when the power hierarchy is blurred, that countries are tempted to go to war. After a big war with a decisive outcome, there is peace because then rela-tive power is clearly known. If this theory is correct, then trying to achieve an accurate balance of power is a mistake that will lead to war because obstreperous states will think they have a good chance to win.

3.6 Evaluate current uses of analogies in world politics.

Much discussion of U.S.-China relations is dominated by an analogy: Before World War I, a rising Germany had to collide with a dominant Britain. Now some thinkers reason that a rising China has to collide with a dominant America. Scholars show how economic, naval, power, prestige, and other factors were quite similar between the two cases, but is this a valid analogy? Does it predict war? Human intelligence is finite; it cannot start every thought from scratch. Instead, analogy A previous situ-ation that (you think) explains a present one. we rely on analogy, even though analogies can be terribly mistaken. Analogies per-vade our thinking, structure our organizations, and are drummed into us in school. Indeed, in studying IR you are in effect assembling a tool kit of analogies to apply to present situations. Unfortunately, no two cases are identical; the elements of dysanal-ogy often outweigh those of analogy. The history of IR is replete with analogies, often false ones. The Germans in 1914 marched happily off to war, thinking it would duplicate their quick victory of 1870-1871 in the Franco-Prussian War. Indeed, almost everyone in 1914 thought conflict would be short, because they made an analogy with the most recent conflict, the quick Russo-Japanese War of ten years earlier. Only a few saw that machine guns and barbed wire would force armies to dig trenches and fighting would stall for years. Generals, it is often said, fight the last war. Dean Rusk in 1951 used an analogy of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo to explain to Congress why we had to fight Communist China in Korea: "The Peiping [Beijing] regime may be a colonial Russian government—a Slavic Manchukuo on a larger scale." We now see that China was never a Soviet puppet state. Recently new analogies include: (1) 9/11 was like Pearl Harbor; and (2) we have entered into a conflict with radical Islam that is like the Cold War: long, ideological, and requiring numerous U.S. military interventions. Is either a good analogy? One hears analogies between South Vietnam and Afghanistan. There are, to be sure, points in common: Both were weak states and would have been failed states without U.S. troops and money. Both were run by unpopular U.S.-appointed presidents (Diem and Karzai) who rigged elections and gave top jobs to rela-tives and friends. Corruption was high and government legitimacy low in both lands (the two problems are related). Their military forces were unreliable; many deserted. The local population did not snitch on the Viet Cong or Taliban, which dominated many provinces. Both had base areas in adjoining countries and easily infiltrated supplies and fighters. Congress approved both wars in panic mode by joint resolution rather than the constitutional way, a declaration of war. U.S. firepower—especially air power—killed many civilians and alienated much of the population. The U.S. public turned negative on both wars. But there are important differences. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were under the central control of Hanoi and fought for a unified Vietnam. The Afghan fighters are unruly and decentralized—each band obeys different leaders—and most fight for Pashtun rule. Vietnamese had the same ethnicity and language; Afghanistan has many ethno-linguistic groups who do not get along. Hanoi had the help of two nuclear powers, the Soviet Union and China. The Taliban are supported by no major powers and finance themselves through the opium trade. Shia Iran does not aid the Sunni Taliban. The Taliban's base area in northwest Pakistan is insecure; Pakistan could take it back. The real stakes in Afghanistan are over who will win in Pakistan and get its nuclear weapons. So, is Afghanistan "like" Vietnam? Or is Afghanistan more complex and dangerous? Both may be quagmires but in different ways. Be skeptical when someone tells you a current situation is "like" an earlier one. Ask: "Do the elements of analogy outweigh the elements of dysanalogy?"

Bluff

Not supporting a declared national interest with suf-ficient power.

6.6 Evaluate the bureaucratic politics theory of foreign policy.

One of the fads in political science, popular in the 1970s, was to analyze decisions in terms of the bureaucracies who carry them out and influence them. We imagine deci-sion makers rationally discussing a problem and coming up with a logical solution. But if their information is skewed or incomplete, if the bureaucrats are telling their bosses what they want to hear, the decision will not be rational. And the civil servants may not execute policy the way the decision maker envisions. The bureaucratic tail may wag the executive dog. Bureaucracies have lives and interests of their own, but do they really make policy? Vietnam has been analyzed in terms of bureaucratic politics. When presidents issued orders to stop the Communists in Vietnam, they didn't want any back talk about how difficult it was or that it was a lost cause. They wanted a "can-do" response from enthusiastic military and civilian officers. Accordingly, reports came back from the field that U.S. aid, advisors, and programs were working. The bureaucrats told presidents what they wanted to hear. Overly optimistic reporting, in this view, deepened U.S. commitments in Vietnam. This view was widely accepted until the 1971 publication of the "Pentagon Papers," a secret Defense Department history of decision making on Vietnam. The papers showed that, in general, the reports from top, well-informed officials were accurate, pes-simistic, and coldly sober; no one promised a short or easy war. Some of the toughest and most realistic warnings came from the CIA. There is no evidence from the Vietnam experience that bureaucrats deceived presidents. The public relations material cranked out for the press, to be sure, was foolishly optimistic. Once the president made his decisions (invariably in secrecy), the various bu-reaucracies did their utmost for the war effort. They are disciplined services and obey orders. There were, of course, the usual bureaucratic foul-ups and rivalries, but all worked in pursuit of goals laid down by the White House. By the same token, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie was not a free agent when she told Saddam Hussein in July 1990 that the United States would not get involved in Iraq's quarrel with Kuwait. She was following a U.S. policy to stay friendly with Baghdad. Neither she nor the State Department bureaucracy was fully to blame for this blind and foolish policy. Bureaucratic politics does take place, but it does so after the stage has been set and directions given by the White House. Some blamed "the bureaucrats" for letting 9/11 happen. Several agencies totally failed to follow up on warnings or to cross-communicate, but they were created and given their missions by Congress. The problem was that no one—not the president, Congress, or the agencies themselves—could understand that we were in a new era with new threats. Agencies designed for the Cold War were clumsy in dealing with decentralized terror-ism. Once set up, agencies tend to rumble on unchanged: "But we've always done it that way here." Agencies do not re-create or reform themselves; that is up to the president and Congress. By most accounts, President Bush 43 alone was in charge of U.S. policy on Iraq. When he demanded evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the agencies deliv-ered what the boss wanted, even if it was inaccurate. Bureaucrats mostly obey.

Détente

Relaxation of ten-sions between hostile countries.

Absolutism

Renaissance pattern of kings assuming all power.

Entitlements

Required federal expenditures, such as Social Security and Medicare, to large classes of U.S. citizens.

Neo-

Revival or updating of a previous ideol-ogy or approach.

Power Transistion

Rising power overtakes previous dominant power.

Concepts of National Interests

Seemingly simple—what's good for the state as a whole in international affairs—national interest can be very tricky to apply. Intelligent people take opposing positions over what the national interest is at a given moment. The problem arises because the term is partly objective and partly subjective. Geography plays a big role. Close to home, national interest is objective and easy to define: Stay sovereign, that is, don't get invaded, conquered, partitioned, or subverted. This is considered a "vital" (sometimes also known as a "core" or "primary") national interest. Sensing a threat, governments take security measures, such as increasing military preparedness and making defensive alliances. Security for the homeland is the irreducible minimum national interest. Historically, U.S. national interest was to get rid of outside powers on the North American continent; they were geopolitical threats. Farther from home, national interests get subjective and sometimes "secondary," less than vital. Should we worry about the other side of the world? If we trade a lot with it, say, for oil, maybe we should. If a distant aggressor threatens to upset regional peace, maybe it is an interest, but we cannot be sure. Some areas are not national interests, but it is difficult to tell. National interest calculations are often based on estimates, analogies, and gut instinct, all of them fallible.Who decides what the national interest is? Governing elites—the top or most influen-tial people—do, but their judgment is often skewed by ideology; mistaken assumptions; the temper of the times; and individual, class, and regime interests. All leaders claim to pursue the nation's interest, but often they conflate their own interest—staying in power—with the national interest. Few admit to ever having made a mistake. The worse things get, the more leaders whip up their people with patriotism under the banner of "national interest." Is North Korea's nuclear program really in its national interest, or does Pyongyang harbor the dangerously warped misperception that the bomb gives it security? What seems to be the national interest one year may be a mistake the next year. Only hindsight tells you what your national interest had been in previous years, but then it's too late. In 1965, Washington defined South Vietnam as a vital U.S. national inter-est. Ten years later, no one did. After 9/11, the Bush 43 administration defined "regime change" in Iraq as a vital U.S. national interest, and most Americans believed it. After the invasion, when no weapons of mass destruction were found but chaos broke out, Americans wondered if the war had really been in their national interest. Slippery stuff, this national interest. One important test: Do you have the power to back up what you have declared to be your national interest? If not, refrain from declaring it a national interest. Power and national interest are closely connected. Americans sometimes state grandiose national interests with insufficient power or intention of backing them up, a dangerous policy of bluff. America's national interest changes from one era to another. Our national interest during the Cold War was reasonably clear: Stop the spread of communism. What is it now? Recent proclama-tions of the U.S. national interest include snuffing out terrorism worldwide, securing oil, promoting democracy worldwide, and settling disputes in the China Seas. Be careful of declaring too many national interests; you may lack sufficient power to follow through. Do not confuse national interest with "it would be nice."

McCarthyism

Senator Joseph McCarthy's early-1950s accusations of treason in high places.

BRIC

Short for "Brazil, Russia, India, and China"—important emerging economies.

KGB

Soviet intelligence and security police.

Five-Year Plans

Stalin's forced industrialization in the 1930s.

Socialism

State ownership of economy to end class differences.

Escalation

Tendency of wars to get bigger and fiercer.

Worst-Casing

Tendency to see the enemy as stronger than it is.

Versailles Treaty

The 1919 treaty that ended World War I

5.5 Evaluate the idea that the Cold War crested with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cold War peaked in October 1962 when a U.S. spy plane photographed the Soviets building missile sites in Cuba. Nuclear war was a near thing. It originated in 1957 when the Soviet Union stunned the world with the first earth-orbiting satel-lite, Sputnik ("fellow traveler"). America panicked, for this seemed to prove that the Soviets were ahead in missiles. Senator Kennedy used a "missile gap" to help him win the presidency and then embarked on a major defense buildup that stressed more and better rockets. Actually, the United States had always been ahead, but it took Washington a while to realize this. The Kremlin viewed the U.S. buildup with alarm. Soviet rockets were few, short-range, and inaccurate, and Soviet generals knew it. Khrushchev devised a quick and cheap fix: Put missiles in Cuba. Besides, Castro had asked for protection. Word of the missiles leaked from Cuba, and a U2 camera plane on October 14 confirmed that Soviet missile bases were nearly finished. The president's top advisors huddled nonstop. Kennedy chose a naval blockade because it stopped short of shooting at Russians and gave them an out. Decades later, it was learned that the Soviets already had three dozen nuclear warheads in Cuba; if we had invaded, they would have used them, starting a nuclear World War III.As Soviet ships with oblong crates on their decks steamed toward Cuba, the world held its breath. The ships stopped and turned back, and the Kremlin offered a deal: no Soviet missiles in Cuba if Washington promised not to invade Cuba and to remove its missiles from Turkey. It was a fair and balanced solution, but it hurt the im-pulsive Khrushchev in Kremlin politics, and two years later the Politburo voted him out for foreign and domestic "harebrained schemes." President Nixon in the early 1970s took steps to relax tensions with the Soviet détente Relaxation of ten-sions between hostile countries. Union. The American people and Congress were sick of the Vietnam War; they wanted to end the draft and reduce military spending. Domestic pressures set the scene for Nixon's détente. He visited Moscow, signed a treaty limiting missiles (SALT I), and encouraged trade with the Soviet Union. It looked like the Cold War would soon be over, but then things went wrong. Starting in 1973, the Watergate scandal paralyzed the Nixon presidency and led to his resignation in 1974. Powerful congressional voices attacked détente. The Soviets seemed to break the rules of détente. They increased missiles and troops in East Europe and picked up new clients in the Third World. They persecuted Soviet Jews. Many Americans, especially in the right wing of the Republican Party, believed the United States was being deceived. Détente takes two and failed because Moscow was not ready for it. In late 1979 the Kremlin ordered the Soviet military into Afghanistan for largely republic Main Soviet/ Russian civil division, like a U.S. state. geopolitical reasons. The Afghan Communist regime that had taken over in a coup in 1978 was threatened with overthrow. If the mujahedin (Muslim holy warriors) won, they would spread their organization into the restive Soviet Muslim republics. Soviet control of Afghanistan would also put them near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which passes much of the world's oil. The costs for Moscow were high. They kept some 120,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan; perhaps 20,000 of them died. Like the United States in Vietnam, there was no end in sight for the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Soviet public was told little about the war, only that it was their "internationalist duty" to defend the motherland against Afghan bandits backed by the United States. Returning servicemen told of a dirty war and serious morale and drug problems; dozens defected. The Afghan war also cost Moscow friends and influence, especially in the Muslim world. Moscow's détente with the United States crashed. President Jimmy Carter de-clared he "learned more about the Soviets in one week" than in all previous years. He began a U.S. arms buildup, canceled grain sales to the Soviet Union, and pulled the American team out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The harsher international climate increased burdens on the Soviet Union and contributed to the system's collapse a few years later. The year the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, 1989, is also the year the Kremlin left East Europe. With the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Cold War was effectively over. The cause: Soviet weakness.

Concepts Of The Cold war

The period of military and political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II was called the Cold War because there was no direct fighting between the two powers. Its dates are usually given as 1947-1989 (the opening of the Berlin Wall), but some use 1946 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991. The two sides armed, sent troops into other countries, fought proxy wars indirectly (as in Korea), and tried to keep their present allies and gain new ones from the enemy's camp. The Cold War brought bipolarity, the world divided into two hostile camps.

National Security Council

The president's foreign-policy coordinating body.

Why Do We Need Theories?

The real world is too complicated. Without some way of simplifying it, we would not be able to function in our day to day life. Even as simple task of describing an event requires us to pick which facts to include and which facts to omit. We are guided by theories internally every time we must make a decision because theories connect causes with consequences. One of the purposes of education is to teach you (the students) how to "think" and by this I mean "give you a method to evaluate the world around you in some meaningful way."

Foreign Policy

The way a government deals with the outside world.

Balance of power

Theory that states form alliances to offset threats.

Mongols

Thirteenth-century conquer-ors of Eurasia.

Empirical Validity

This is where we ask, "Is the theory useful? Does it predict events correctly?"If a logically consistent theory fails to predict reliably events that interest us,then it is not useful; it is trivial, and therefore it is a "bad" theory. This is a difficult criterion to apply. Sometimes a theory is manifestly trivial in that it simply always makes the wrong predictions. More often, however, this is not the case. Sometimes the theory seems to work, but other times it fails. How are we to evaluate its usefulness?

Mispercieve

To see things wrongly.

Nonaggression Pact

Treaty to not attack each other.

Non-Interventionism

Unwillingness to use military force overseas.

4.7 Explain political generations in relation to Vietnam.

Vietnam was the kind of watershed event that forms political generations (see the Concepts box). Those raised in the Cold War argued that Vietnam made sense at the time: Continue containment; wherever communism is spreading, stop it. Eisenhower used the metaphor of "falling dominoes" to indicate what would happen if even one more country in Southeast Asia fell to the Communists. Any U.S. president who let communism expand was considered weak. The Cold War made the U.S. national interest, first defined in 1947, into a rigid and unexamined doctrine.After the Cold War, a younger generation could wonder what we had been doing in Vietnam. The fall of South Vietnam to the Communist North in 1975 signified little. The weak "dominoes" of Laos and Cambodia also fell, but nothing else. Far from a ris-ing tide, communism collapsed a decade and a half later in Europe, and Communist China and Vietnam turned from socialism to market economics. We would have "won" in Vietnam if we had stayed out militarily and then signed up unified Vietnam to produce athletic shoes and clothing for the U.S. market, which it now does. But neither we nor the Vietnamese Communists knew that at the time. In 1995, Robert McNamara, defense secretary for Kennedy and Johnson, went public with what had long been on his mind: "We were wrong, terribly wrong." Containment was deeply held as the national interest since 1947 and could not Vietminh Communist Vietnamese anti-French liberation movement in the 1940s and 1950s, led by Ho Chi Minh. be modified or turned off. Established policies tend to rumble on; politicians and bureaucrats are used to them and do not think outside the box. Kennedy did not ques-tion containment; instead, he brought it to its logical conclusion with his decision to build up U.S. forces in South Vietnam, a republic we set up in 1954 to block further Communist expansion after the Vietminh had defeated the French colonialists. He defined Vietnam as an important U.S. national interest, and few disagreed.We knew little about Vietnam, especially how feisty and nationalistic Vietnamese could be, willing to fight and die for their country. Originally a South China tribe that kept pushing south, the Viets over the centuries expelled earlier peoples from the land as they fought off Chinese efforts to colonize them. The French turned "Indochina" into a colony in the nineteenth century despite continued underground Vietnamese opposition. The Japanese took over in 1940 without firing a shot, and Vietnamese Communists and American special forces worked together to fight Japan. After the war, the charismatic leader of the Communist Vietminh, Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed independence, but France rejected it. Fighting broke out in 1946 and lasted until the French defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954. Eisenhower considered coming to the aid of France but was cautious. Ike had just gotten us out of an unpopular war in Korea in 1953 and did not wish another one. Peace talks at Geneva ousted the French and temporarily divided Vietnam at its narrow neck in 1954. South Vietnam was never intended to be a separate country, but Eisenhower and Dulles set up and funded South Vietnam to block further Communist gains. We saw Vietnamese communism as a branch of aggressive and expansionist Chinese communism. A quick reading of Vietnamese history would have shown that for centuries its chief aim was to fight off Chinese domination. In 1979, the two fought a brief border war. Now Vietnam seeks U.S. protection from Chinese naval power in the South China Sea. Yesterday's enemies may become today's allies. Eisenhower sent only advisors, never more than 685. But as Kennedy took office, Communist insurgency grew in South Vietnam, and he increased the U.S. military to 16,000 by 1963, enough to commit us. One question lingers: Had JFK lived, would he have avoided war in Vietnam? He gave mixed signals in public but in private told close associates that he would pull out after his (presumed) reelection. That did Lyndon Johnson no good, because he inherited all of Kennedy's policies and advisors. LBJ stalled during 1964. He had Congress pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that vowed toughness in Vietnam but stated nothing specific. In 1964 Johnson campaigned on a peace platform and won a landslide election over the hawkish Barry Goldwater. But by the spring of 1965, with the Communist Vietcong winning, LBJ, using the pow-ers granted him by the joint congressional resolution, began sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to Vietnam; by 1968 there were 540,000. LBJ prayed it would be a quick and cheap victory, but at that same time, North Vietnam infiltrated men and arms down the Ho Chi Min trail through Laos. Ground battles were fierce, and U.S. airpower pounded North Vietnam. The war turned long and ugly, much of it seen on U.S. television. With no end in sight and U.S. casualties mounting—60,000 dead by the war's end—American public opinion turned against the war. LBJ, seeing he was politically finished, declined to run again. Ironically, he had gone to war in 1965 to make sure Republicans could not accuse him of weakness in the 1968 election. Richard Nixon did not wish to appear to lose in Vietnam, but he knew we could not stay there. His solution was to gradually withdraw U.S. forces and turn over re-sponsibility to the Army of Vietnam (ARVIN), "Vietnamization." He also minimized the importance of Vietnam as a national interest and resumed U.S. relations with China, which he visited in early 1972. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security ad-visor, privately told friends that a two-to three-year "decent interval" between U.S. pullout and Communist victory was about all we could expect. That way Vietnam would not look like a U.S. defeat, although many count it as one. Kissinger secretly negotiated with Hanoi diplomats (in a Paris suburb) to end fighting and get back American prisoners (among them, John McCain). The 1973 agreement, however, did not establish peace and left some 150,000 North Vietnamese forces inside South Vietnam. The United States withdrew virtually all combat forces, but South Vietnam had ample weapons and manpower. ARVIN, however, had low morale. U.S. trainers used to say: "You can't transplant backbone." In 1975, a North Vietnamese probe panicked ARVIN, and the Communists quickly took over all of South Vietnam. As the GIs used to joke, an ARVIN rifle had never been fired and only dropped once. Vietnam brought much U.S. self-examination. Trying to block the spread of com-munism was not in itself wrong. Politically, economically, and morally, Communist countries were tragedies, and most have failed. The strongest anti-Communists were citizens of Communist countries. You didn't know how bad it was until you lived under it. But how could we communicate that to people who had not yet tasted Communist rule? How could foreigners reach them when Vietnamese Communists had captured the nationalist movement?was nationalism that gave communism its strength. The Vietminh beat the French because they harnessed Vietnamese nationalism to their side; the French were foreign colonizers. Then the Americans stepped into the French role; we looked like new colonialists. The Vietcong did not know or care about Marx or Lenin; they fought to get foreigners out of their country. Under such circumstances, how do you save people who do not want to be saved? Making matters worse was the ineptitude of the Saigon regime; it was incapable of rallying its people. And the more the United States "helped" Saigon—with money, experts, and weapons—the weaker it became. In place of political and moral support from the South Vietnamese, we relied on firepower, which was counterproductive. People who have seen their homes, farms, and children destroyed by artillery, napalm, or Zippo lighters hate the foreigners who have done these things. The more we fought, the worse it got. We were destroying the country in order to save it. Eventually, our moral goal was subverted by immoral means. Morality and feasibility are closely linked in international affairs. If a goal, how-ever worthy, is infeasible, trying to attain it by brute strength leads to immorality. We must ask not only what our goals are but whether they can be achieved without doing more harm than good. As we used to emphasize to the Communists, the end does not justify the means. By the 1970s, the Cold War began to subside. U.S.-Soviet relations became more flexible; several arms-control agreements were reached. The Sino-Soviet split removed the most threatening quality of the Communist movement—its unity—which U.S. policy had long tried to undermine. President Richard Nixon took advantage of the split with his visit to Beijing. Whatever else one might say of him, Nixon was the first to realize that bipolarity and containment no longer fit the world scene. (Nixon was the rare U.S. president who read books on IR.) Nixon understood that there were now more than two blocs, and the right U.S. strategy was to balance among them.

Selecting a theory

•comparative theory evaluation •do not discard without an alternative •explains more •fewer auxiliary assumptions

anarchic

Lacking government or order.

empirical validity

-falsifiability -experiments -statistical analysis -case studies

Case Studies and Statistical Tests

Let's discuss two common ways of judging the empirical validity of a theory.We shall then talk a little bit about how one can select between two competing theories on the basis of their empirical performance (assuming, of course, that they are all logically consistent). In international relations we seldom get the opportunity to run experiments like scientists do in the physical sciences. After all, regardless of how much I whine about it, the US government just would not start a small war in order to test my theory of war. There are some experiments, of course, in which people use undergraduate students or retired government bureaucrats, but these are of limited usefulness. We are forced to rely on the historical record to evaluate the empirical validity of our theories. We can either use detailed historical case studies or statistical analysis of big data sets with many observations. Both methods are useful and both have their shortcomings. In the case study empirical test, we analyze a bunch of cases selected for variation on the explanatory variables (if we select on the dependent variable, we have no variation in what we're trying to explain, so our conclusions prove nothing). The researcher would then carefully trace the causal mechanism specified by the theory and demonstrate evidence that the variables are linked by this mechanism. Case studies are often interesting to read, but they are too easy to manipulate (excluding dis-confirming evidence, for example) and so too easy to abuse. Still, they are invaluable in establishing the plausibility of the theoretical relationship between the variables. Statistical tests, on the other hand, are much less subtle and less precise in the sense that they only produce correlations between variables. With a statistical test, we can see how much the change in one of the explanatory variables is correlated with changes in the dependent variable. Correlations do not establish causality, and so even if the statistical tests demonstrate that variable A is positively related to variable B, as the theory predicts, we are still not quite sure that the theory is valid. The reason, of course, is that the correlation can be spurious (that is, there might be some third variable causing these two to move in such direction), or the causal mechanism could be completely misspecified by the theory. This is where case studies might help. Statistical analysis, however,is invaluable is we want to see how much we can generalize our predictions. For example, we can use a couple of cases to gain insight and construct a theory,which we could then subject to statistical tests with many more cases.To recap, case studies are good for tracing the causal mechanism of the theory, and statistical tests are good for testing how general the predictions area cross many different cases. I should mention that constructing theories is a very iterative process, which combines elements of induction and deduction. For example, to construct a good deductive theory, that is a theory where we begin from assumptions and logically derive propositions about behavior, we often have to use our knowledge of the real world to make modeling choices along the way. In this way we proceed inductively to construct a deductive theory. The problem should be evident: If we then turn around and use the same historical record to test our deductive theory, it is likely that our theory will find confirmation. But since we used the record to construct the theory in the first place, this confirmation is absolutely meaningless! We need independent verification of the theory. This is why case studies are suspect when testing theories. . . All too often researchers use the same case studies to construct the theory they then purport to test. Of course, since the theory is made to fit these studies, the confirming results are not surprising. Ditto for statistical analysis.

Casualty

Killed or wounded. (Do not confuse with causality.)

developing areas/ Global South/ Third World

Large parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Hegemony

Leading or dominating other countries

Hegemony

Leading or dominating other countries.

6.7 Compare isolationism and unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy.

Related to isolationism is unilateralism—doing things ourselves and not in concert with other countries. Washington warned against involvement in Europe, and until World War II we entered into no formal alliances, not even in World War I. We did not join the League of Nations. Sponsoring the UN and North Atlantic Treaty after World War II were major breakthroughs, for at last we were formally entangled in the world. Not all Americans like this. Some say it infringes on U.S. sovereignty. Should the UN or NATO tell us when and where to go to war? Should they be able to stop us from go-ing to war when we deem it necessary? Should American soldiers serve under foreign generals? Should Congress pass laws and ratify treaties to please foreigners or to serve our own interests? President Bush 43 was widely accused of slipping into unilateralism, with help from the neoconservatives, who argued that if we must do something in the world, we try to We welcomed the UN Security Council's vote of support for our invasion of Afghanistan, but when it did not follow suit with Iraq, we invaded anyway. We see the UN as timid, divided, and wrong, unable to take clear stands against evil. We often must do it our-selves. Unilateralism resonates with American tradition and gets much public support. For example, when 178 nations signed a 2001 global climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, which sought to curb greenhouse gases, Bush called it "fatally flawed" and ignored it. Overall, the United States signs very few treaties, and the Senate ratifies even fewer. Unfortunately, U.S. unilateralism turns much of the rest of the world against us, making us look like an international bully. We figure that only we have the trained, mobile, and high-tech armed forces that can move rapidly to curb evil regimes in places like the Middle East. Allies just get in the way. In purely military terms, this may be true, but it ignores the political problems that flow from unilateral actions. Unilateralism tends to push other countries together who criticize America and refuse to follow its lead. Many Americans respond, "So what? Who needs them?" We do. We need them as markets and as investors. Without huge foreign investments and savings pouring into the U.S. economy, the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown would have been much worse. We used to see ourselves as the economic kingpins of the world, but with the rapid growth of China, India, and several other lands, we no longer are. We cannot police the entire globe by ourselves; we are already stretched thin. We need the political support and peacekeeping forces of many countries even if they do not contribute to a shooting war. We need the cooperation of their police and intel-ligence services in combating terrorism and drugs. President Obama attempted to rebuild multilateralism, with imperfect success. So, can the United States lead the world? From our discussions in this chapter, it might seem infeasible. There are many constraints: budget deficits, isolationist attitudes, an unsteady Congress, a too-small military, an incoherent structure, and an unclear strategy. But these can be reversed. The right strategy, one that understands current world realities and repairs U.S. economic weakness, can restore our role. We have gone through difficult periods before and have come out of them stronger than ever.

4.6 Evaluate U.S. national interests during the Cold WAR

Roosevelt slowly and cleverly repudiated interwar isolationism and revived the Wilsonian concept of a U.S. national interest that promoted peace and extended U.S. trade and influence overseas. The American people were ready for it, but Stalin refused to cooperate. Roosevelt thought he could charm Stalin into cooperation,but FDR died shortly before the war ended, and Stalin was impervious to charm. The United States, to carry out the national interests FDR had defined during the war, now had to have a massive and permanent military establishment, some of it stationed overseas. The Cold War began when the Soviets soon began breaking the agreements made at the 1945 Yalta conference. They did not hold free, democratic elections in East Europe but installed Communist regimes subservient to Moscow and kept many troops in East Europe. The United States had quickly demobilized after the war and left few troops in West Europe. As Churchill put it in 1946, the Soviets rang down an "Iron Curtain" to cut off East Europe. Local Communist parties plotted subversion in France and Italy, and Communist guerrillas almost won in Greece. President Truman and his secretaries of state, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, soon grew alarmed that Moscow was turning East Europe into brutal Soviet satellites and partitioning the peaceful, liberal world we had envisioned. Stalin, with forced population transfers and labor camps, started looking like Hitler, a dictator who had to be stopped. In the spring of 1947, Washington set forth interlocking policies of military, economic, and ideological opposition to the growth of Soviet power. The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and Kennan's "X" article—all of which came out within weeks of each other—defined U.S. national interest for decades.At first containment was relatively cheap to carry out. We had the world's great-est industrial plant and the atomic bomb. U.S. airpower overcame the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade. We formed NATO in 1949. Things got more complex when the Soviets ex-ploded their first atomic bomb in 1949; we no longer had a nuclear monopoly. China fell to the Communists that same year, and in 1950 the Korean conflict began. Truman sent troops to Asia and Europe without congressional or public approval. The presi-dent's powers expanded in ways some deem unconstitutional. Containment looked like an endless, unwinnable war with no clear goals. Americans like short, victorious wars with clear goals. Frustration mounted within a U.S. public that was unused to global responsibilities and complexities: Why can't we fight and win? Is this Cold War going to last forever? Why don't we just drop our atom bomb on those Commies? Containment had its costs, and they played into the Republican electoral victories of the 1950s and into McCarthyism. The Democrats set up containment and then stood accused of not doing enough to carry it out. The United States became locked into a Cold War mentality. President Eisenhower did not repudiate containment but carried it out differently. His secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, preached the "rollback" of communism but in practice was cautious. Eisenhower ended the Korean War with a threat to go nuclear and then let Dulles announce a policy of "massive retaliation" for future Soviet-bloc aggression. Ike's secretary of defense, Charles Wilson, called reliance on nuclear weapons "more bang for the buck" that allowed us to keep draft calls down. The American public at first liked projecting strength on the cheap. Critics, however, soon decried a policy that, according to Dulles himself, took us "three times to the brink of war"—and it would be a nuclear war. The Democrats portrayed Eisenhower's policies as passive and rigid. Now it was the Democrats' turn to use the Cold War to win elections: Just accuse the incumbent of not doing enough. Sputnik in 1957 let Kennedy campaign on an alleged "missile gap" and claim that the Soviets were ahead (it turned out to be untrue). Eisenhower had let the country fall asleep as the Soviet menace grew, Kennedy charged. (Decades later, Reagan used this line.) JFK won narrowly in 1960 with plans to increase defense spending, the armed forces, and missiles, and counterinsurgencies with the Green Berets. Ike thought Kennedy was impetuous and mistaken. Ike was proud of having kept the United States secure at low cost with no more Koreas during his two terms. Kennedy's enthusiasm quickly met harsh realities. The failure of the CIA-sponsored invasion of Castro's Cuba by anti-Communist exiles, planned under Eisenhower, humiliated JFK in April 1961 and made him more determined to stop communism elsewhere. Kennedy's military buildup alarmed the Soviets; they saw it as a threat. By 1962, the United States was ahead seven to one in strategic missiles. Khrushchev, to redress the imbalance, ordered some of his older, medium-range missiles placed in Cuba, closer to U.S. targets. This led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Khrushchev backed down, but it could have started World War III.

divide and rule

Roman and British ruling method of setting subjects against each other.

Comintern

Short for "Communist International"; the world's Communist parties under Moscow's control.

What are the main features of realism?

realism argues that states are the most relevant factors and focus on big pictures, not individuals, groups, or transnational movements. Realism focuses more on key factors of power like military, political, and psychological. Realism pursues national interest as a gauge to guide leaders how to use their power effectively, and emphasize human rights only when it benefits national interest.

Why theories?

-everyone uses them -better to be explicit

Deficit

A federal budget that spends more than it takes in.

Paradigm

A widely accepted research model or way of studying things.

Pragmatism

If it works, use it.

Proletariat

In Marxism, large class of industrial workers.

Diplomacy : America's Biggest Problem Areas

American foreign policy must prioritize where it will intervene. Lacking the forces and money to intervene everywhere, where should we concentrate our finite resources, a choice that could soon involve us in war? Three problem areas loom large: 1. The Middle East, including the Persian Gulf, is permanently unstable and ready to explode. But can we prevent that or merely get caught up in additional endless wars? The media give ISIS depredations ample publicity, but U.S. opinion is split—some for fighting ISIS but others for avoiding another Mideast war. ISIS has been pushed back, and most Muslims hate it, but it steps up terrorist acts in other areas. Many argue that fighting Islamist extremism should be the work of Muslim regimes and not a U.S. responsibility. Russian intervention in Syria's civil war was annoying, but many did not wish to match it. 2. China, including the South and East China Seas, is often named the big problem of the twenty-first century. After withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, the Obama administration announced a "pivot" to East Asia, but little came of it as we were still bogged down in the Persian Gulf. China, with a growing navy and shore-to-ship missiles, aims to keep the U.S. Navy hundreds of miles distant. Shall we challenge China's "area-denial" strategy or live with it? Some propose a U.S. "offshore balancing" in alliance with smaller Asia/Pacific nations—one of them, ironically, Vietnam, our enemy not long ago—that fear Chinese hegemony. 3. Russia practices piecemeal aggression in trying to restore the Russian/Soviet empire. Putin detached portions of Georgia and Ukraine when they talked about joining NATO or the EU. How strenuously should we oppose Putin? Hefty economic sanc-tions did not budge him, although, long-term, Russia is a declining kleptocracy. Some U.S. legis-lators urge arming Ukraine, but that would simply inflame Putin, who could then take all of Ukraine. Are we willing to put U.S. boots on the ground? Where? NATO members Poland and the Baltic states welcome a U.S. military presence, but West Europe would rather not get involved. One way to look at the choice is to decide which problems are most urgent and which involve acceptable risks. And we must always ask how many deployments our fighting forces can take. Would you be willing to restore the draft to fight in these areas? Even if the next draft includes you?

Force

Application of military power.

5.4 Explain Soviet decline.

During the Cold War, many American analysts and politicians feared a powerful, expansionist Soviet Union. Worst-casing led to overestimates of Soviet power. We now see that, by about 1970, the Soviet economy began to decline at an accelerating rate. Its army devoured one quarter of its GDP. Its clients cost it massive subsidies. Its technology fell further behind every decade. Chronic shortages produced massive discontent. Hatred fumed among Soviet nationalities. U.S. politicians, academics, and journalists failed to anticipate the collapse of Soviet power. Committed to Cold War images, few noticed that Soviet instability started after the death of Stalin in 1953. The problem is a permanent one in human psychology: how to perceive clearly. By 1960, for example, the "Sino-Soviet bloc" had in reality been replaced by the "Sino-Soviet split," but it took several years to start calling it that. After Stalin died, his lackeys competed for power. By 1955, party chief Nikita Khrushchev followed Stalin's path by naming his supporters to key positions to beat his rivals. To shake loose Stalin's influence and firm up his own power, at the 1956 party congress Khrushchev delivered a stinging, hours-long denunciation of the "crimes of Stalin" that included blunders in the war and murdering party comrades. He thought he was speaking to a closed party session, but the speech soon leaked and hurt the Communist movement. Worldwide, Communists who had worshipped Stalin suddenly learned that he was terrible, and many quit. In Hungary, radical reformist Communists took over until Soviet tanks intervened. The same nearly happened in Poland. In China, Mao Zedong had not been consulted about Khrushchev's speech and opposed it. Mao still used Stalin as a symbol and disliked the impulsive and reck-less Khrushchev for damaging the world Communist movement. Mao repudiated Khrushchev's leadership and took China on ultra-radical paths in both foreign and domestic policy. Mao called for world revolution just as Khrushchev was warning against nuclear war. In 1960, the Soviet Union pulled all its foreign aid and experts out of China. The two called each other "revisionist," a Communist swear word. China revived old border claims going back to tsarist days, and in 1969 the two sides skir-mished on their Manchurian border. This split drove China toward the United States. As the Americans withdrew from Vietnam in the early 1970s, Beijing saw the Soviet Union as its biggest threat. Feelers went out, leading to President Nixon's 1972 visit to China, a plus for both sides. The Soviets had to keep a quarter of their army on the long Sino-Soviet border. By 1972, China did not have to fear the two superpowers ganging up on it, but the Soviets had to worry about a U.S.-China combination. The loss of China shattered the Soviet bloc and contributed to the decline of communism. Nixon must be given credit for perceiving and using the Sino-Soviet split in his balance-of-power diplomacy. During the Cold War, East Europe was under Soviet hegemony. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even initially Gorbachev swore they would never give up the broad belt from the Baltic through the Balkans that served as Russia's defensive shield, even though these satellites caused difficulties for Moscow from the begin-ning. Stalin's takeover of East Europe initiated the Cold War. Stalin initially robbed the East European lands, but his successors had to calm them by sweetheart deals on Soviet raw materials, especially oil. Maintaining the East Europeans—who had higher living standards than Russians—was an expensive subsidy from the Kremlin. Most East Europeans disliked communism and accorded their regimes little legitimacy. These governments were always weak and dependent on Moscow. Yugoslavia slipped out of the Soviet camp in 1948 when Stalin tried to make Tito his puppet. Albania departed in 1961 to pursue an ultra-radical Mao-type policy. Every country of Central Europe rebelled at least once against communism—Czechoslovakia in 1953 and 1968, East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Poland in 1956, 1970, and 1980-1981—and was put down with troops and tanks. Note that the rebellions did not start until 1953, because Stalin's death fostered the hope that things might soon get better. (Note also that there were no rebellions in the Balkans, which have long religious and historical ties to Russia.) Moscow could never regard Central Europe, Russia's supposed defensive shield, as permanently pacified. By 1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev concluded that the costs of retaining this empire were too high. He cut East Europe free, effectively ending the Cold War.

Yalta

Early 1945 agreement by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt on who got what in Germany and East Europe.

6.3 Evaluate the degree of continuity in U.S. foreign policy

Once a basic policy has been established, it tends to endure. Presidential candidates of one party often denounce the foreign policies of incumbents of the other party. Once in office, however, the new president generally follows these policies and sometimes takes them further. Candidate Bush 43 criticized Clinton's policy of keeping U.S. troops in Kosovo. After six months in office, Bush called them "essential." He also criticized Clinton's "nation-building," but after he became president, he did much more of it than Clinton. Candidate Obama criticized Bush's Iraq policy but kept some U.S. forces in Iraq for years. There is more continuity than change from one adminis-tration to the next. The continuity principle means that policies commonly associated with one presi-dent were often initiated by his predecessor. The Eisenhower doctrine of massive nuclear retaliation was implicit in Truman's actions; Eisenhower just made it explicit. Nixon's withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam actually began under Johnson. Reagan's massive defense buildup began under Carter. Clinton's defense cutbacks began under Bush 41. Obama's use of drones and special ops began under Bush 43. Many trends begin earlier than is commonly thought. To be sure, there are sometimes shifts from one administration to another. Kennedy found Eisenhower's defense budget and strategy passive and weak. He won election in 1960 in part by denouncing Ike's caution and then redid the Defense Department with major new funding. Kennedy shifted U.S. attention from Europe to the developing areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Vietnam was an example of JFK's interventionism. Why was there considerable continuity? Most obviously, the Cold War posed the same basic challenge to all presidents from Truman through Reagan; the Soviet threat could not be ignored. Next, campaign rhetoric is one thing, reality quite another. It is easy for a challenger to denounce an incumbent for not doing enough, getting in-volved in endless war, or failing to develop new technology. Once in the White House, though, the new president discovers that things are not so simple. Candidate Obama criticized Bush 43 for the Iraq War, but President Obama took three years to withdraw U.S. forces—and then sent some back to stop ISIS. What a candidate wants to do may win votes, but reality often refuses to cooperate after the election. New presidents are trapped by their predecessors' policies and by events that they did not anticipate. Once a conflict is under way, Washington influentials both inside and outside of government offer a new president "symbolically vital" and "sunk costs" arguments: "We've put our prestige on the line and have poured in so much blood and treasure that quitting now would show weakness and waste our investment." Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would be a kind of defeat. Washington is biased toward using troops overseas, whereas the country beyond the beltway would rather not. Few Washington groups—prominently, national church organizations—urge peaceful paths. Soon a president who deplored intervention is caught up in it. Without debate, in 2015 Obama supported Saudi bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen. "What!" exclaimed one oldster. "Now we've got to fight the Whozies?" A constraining factor is the U.S. federal budget deficit, which topped $1 trillion for several years (now much lower). Much of it was related to the several-trillion-dollar costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the 2008 financial meltdown. The United States spends over 4 percent of its GDP on defense, a dollar amount equal to that of the total of the next ten biggest spenders. Entitlements dominate the budget, and politicians fear voter anger at cutting Social Security or Medicare or raising taxes. After the massive bailouts of 2008 and 2009, Congress balked at major new outlays. Deficits—which automatically turn into national debt at the end of the fiscal year—are made up by borrowing from abroad. Asked Harvard economist Larry Summers: "How long can the world's biggest borrower remain the world's biggest power?" U.S. global leadership hinges on America's economy. Presidents face numerous constraints; they are not free to do everything they originally thought they could. Resuming military conscription, for example, would require a major crisis and act of Congress. Americans have never liked the draft; young men during Vietnam especially disliked it. Nixon defused student anger in 1973 by ending the draft and going to the all-volunteer army (AVA), the case ever since. The AVA is highly trained and effective but relatively small. From a high of 3.5 million active-duty military personnel in 1968 (the Vietnam peak), total U.S. troops in all services fell to 1.4 million in recent decades. The Army's top general, Eric Shinseki, warned of pursuing a "twelve-division strategy with a ten-division army." The long Iraq and Afghanistan wars required soldiers' multiple deployments and overstretched the U.S. military. Much of the Army and Marine Corps' active-duty combat forces are overseas; few are available for new missions. Service abroad is hard on marriages and mental health; post-traumatic stress disorder among returned sol-diers is high. Spirited U.S. forces quickly crushed the Iraqi and Afghan regimes but then had to keep order in hostile environments. Many felt it was time for Baghdad and Kabul to take over domestic security. Some critics speak of the "military mind" and assume that generals are eager for war. This is far from the case; sometimes Pentagon chiefs are doves. It is their people, after all, who get killed. Top U.S. generals often caution and restrain presidents about deploying overseas. They know they are overstretched and how rapidly public and congressional opinion can reverse when casualties mount. Ignoring the warnings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about Iraq, President Bush 43 and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earned the anger and resignations of several top officers.

6.4 Evaluate the effectiveness of the War Powers Act.

The precise role of Congress in foreign affairs has never been defined. Rather, it has changed over the years, mostly declining relative to presidential power. A nagging ambiguity came with the Constitution, which states that Congress declares war but also that the president is commander in chief. Which power overrides? Must the presi-dent wait until Congress passes a declaration of war before using troops overseas? The problem had come up before, but with Vietnam it surfaced with a vengeance. The Vietnam War was never formally declared. Instead, President Johnson used a joint resolution of Congress that empowered him to stop Communist aggression. The senators and congresspersons did not fully understand that passing (nearly unanimously) the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution gave the president a blank check. Even after it was repealed, Nixon argued that the president's power as commander in chief allowed him to conduct the war and even expand it into Cambodia. Rage grew in Congress because they were essentially helpless spectators to a president's war-making whims. To try to remedy this imbalance, in 1973 Congress passed (over President Nixon's veto) the War Powers Act, giving the president only 90 days to use troops overseas without congressional approval. No president, Republican or Democrat, has accepted the War Powers Act. They claim it usurps their prerogative as commander in chief, and they have easily circum-vented it. The president simply doesn't report to Congress that he has sent troops into "hostilities or situations where hostilities are imminent." In 1982, when President Reagan sent U.S. Marines into Beirut, he carefully noted that they were "peacekeeping" forces and thus not involved in hostilities. Congress allowed him 18 months to use the Marines for peacekeeping, even though the situation was dangerous. Congress ignored its own War Powers Act. Then a suicide truck bomber killed 241 sleeping U.S. service-men in their barracks at Beirut airport, and the president ordered all troops withdrawn. At no time, however, did he admit they were in hostilities. Several times in recent decades U.S. forces have clearly been in hostilities, but the White House never reported it as such, so the War Powers clock never started ticking. And there is nothing in the act that forces a president to report hostilities. The White House's reply will always be "Hostilities? What hostilities?" The War Powers Act was defective, unenforceable, and probably unconstitutional (under the 1983 Chadha deci-sion outlawing legislative vetoes).fend Saudi Arabia. He did not ask Congress for authority to do this and said the troops' mission was "wholly defensive." In January 1991, as the troop buildup peaked, Bush got from Congress a joint resolution authorizing the use of force to fulfill UN resolutions, which the United States had sponsored. Five days later, war began. Bush concealed his aims, but it is now clear that he aimed to expel Iraq by force. Congress went along after the plans were made and the troops deployed. After 9/11, President Bush 43 claimed broad powers and, in a highly emotional atmosphere, got congressional support (but not a declaration of war) to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq. He also, supported by the 2001 Patriot Act, asserted presidential powers during an emergency to detain suspects worldwide and wiretap phones. Critics feared the president's claim to nearly unlimited powers warped the Constitution, and the Supreme Court agreed in some cases. Congress, however, far from checking the president, generally followed him and voted for the war funds he requested.The Founding Fathers did not have this in mind. They gave the power to declare war only to Congress. Gradually, though, this power became irrelevant. A president can take diplomatic and military steps that lead the country into hostilities. Then, after shots have been fired, he demands congressional support. Congress automatically delivers it, because "our boys" are under fire, and anyone who suggests cutting funds for the war is a traitor. In much of foreign policy, Congress is bypassed: secret funds for Nicaraguan contras; secret arms sales to Iran; secret understandings with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Such end runs build a storehouse of congressional resentment that comes out from time to time in the form of hostile committee hearings, accusations of executive wrongdoing, budget cuts, and the blocking of administration policies and appoint-ments. Congress has a built-in inefficiency—designed that way by the Constitution's authors—that can delay and block U.S. foreign policy. Congress, although it generally follows the president's lead in foreign policy, can play a meddlesome or mischievous role. Sometimes it is out for revenge for having been deceived by a president. At times it delights in tripping up presidential policy, especially when the president is of another party. To get congressional support, presidents often use either a crisis or massive pressure. alarmism Exaggerating dangers to promote a policy. Then Congress rallies around a president and speaks of "bipartisan foreign policy." Such was the case after 9/11. Presidents often sound alarm bells and call a situation a desper-ate emergency. Alarmism can be dangerous and go too far without critical thinking. Kennan complained that his "containment" policy was exaggerated and misapplied. A president may also enlist powerful interest groups. In 2000 Congress voted to normalize trade with China despite public, especially labor, opposition. Pressure in favor of it from big business was unusually heavy.

National Security Council (NSC)

The president's foreign policy coordinating body

Realism Theory

a pessimistic philosophy that advocates manipulating the forces of an anarchic world to keep things from blowing up. Realism focuses on power(military, economic, and political)

How do realist thinkers handle ideology?

they minimize the basis for policy and believe it is mostly a trick to con the gullible. Still believe in the balance of power where as liberals do not.

praetorian

(from Rome's Praetorian Guard) Tendency for military coups and rule.

Bureaucracies

Career civil servants organized into various departments and bureaus

Hawk

Military Aggression

Can Presidents take the country to war?

-Only Congress has the constitutional authority to Declare War -The President is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (as well as Chief Diplomat) and has authority to defend the United States

What is a theory?

-simplification of reality -relationship between variables -explanatory and dependent variables -causal mechanism -assumptions -causes and consequences a) necessary and sufficient conditions b) probabilistic causality and tendencies

Relativism

Abandoning absolute moral standards.

Power

Ability of one actor to get another to do its bidding.

Feasibility

Able to prevail without excessive force or cost.

Isolationism

U.S. avoidance of overseas involvement.

direct rule

Colonial ad-ministration by European officials that ignored local power structures; practiced by France, Belgium, the Netherlands.

indirect rule

Colonial administration through local powers and leaders; practiced by Britain.

Subjective

Cannot be empirically verified; depends on feelings.

secularism

Keeping religion separate from governance.

What is the main argument of constructivism?

argues that subjective understandings rather than objective reality are what influence policy. When mental constructs turn into facts because of the acceptance of the masses. Thinking is highly conditioned by what society believes.

Why do we need theories in international relations?

we need theories because theories propose a system of ways to ask questions, what type of questions and when to ask. Gathering facts without a theory and trying to understand them into reality is useless in international relations and then you have a bunch of useless facts laid out on the table with no system of what to do with them thus causing confusion.

Differentiate international relations and domestic politics.

International relations (IR) got more complex with the arrival of the twenty-first century. Power—the ability of one country to get another to do (or sometimes not do) something—shifted away from the cash-strapped United States to a rich and often angry China. Washington, polarized and preoccupied with domestic politics, had trouble passing a budget and was listened to less in world forums. China, with some $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, was listened to more. As China got richer, it got stronger and demanded recognition of its ownership of the China Seas, where it built artificial islands. Much of the world regarded this as absurd and threatening. China constructed a "string of pearls," safe ports across the Indian Ocean, its vital supply route to energy and other resources in the Middle East and Africa. Should the United States oppose the expansion of Chinese power? Were U.S. national interests sufficiently involved to risk naval conflict in Asia? Or are the China Seas China's business alone? Power often shifts; this is one reason IR is so interesting. IR occurs among sovereign entities (see below); domestic politics occurs within a sovereign entity. International laws and institutions are too weak to rely on the way we rely on domestic laws and institutions. In domestic politics, when we have a quarrel with someone, we "don't take the law into our own hands; we take him to court." In IR, it's sometimes the reverse. There is no court, and self-help may be the only option available. Some thinkers say that IR unfolds amid international anarchy, but IR is not completely disorderly. Some order grows out of relative power among nations. For example, during the nineteenth century the mighty British Empire, based mostly on sea power, arranged much of the globe to its liking, and small, weak lands largely obeyed. Such power relationships create international systems, the way power is distributed around the globe. An international system is a sort of "power map" for a certain time period. If you can correctly figure out the current system—who's got what kind of power—you know where you stand and how and when to use your power. For example, if many countries have roughly equal power, it is likely a balance-of-power system (explored presently). If one country has overwhelming power, enough to supervise the globe (unlikely), it might be a unipolar system. The turbulent twentieth century witnessed four IR systems. 1. Pre-World War I. Dominance of the great European empires in the nineteenth century until 1914. In systems theory, this period exemplifies a balance-of-power system, but by 1910 it had decayed. 2. World War I through World War II. The empires destroy themselves from 1914 to 1945. With several major players refusing to respond to threats, the interwar period might be termed an "anti-balance-of-power" system. It is inherently unstable and temporary. 3. Cold War. The collapse of the traditional European powers leaves the United States and USSR facing each other in a bipolar system. But the superpowers block and exhaust themselves from 1945 through the 1980s, and the bipolar system falls apart. 4. Post-Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union ends bipolarity, but ideas on the new system are disputed, ranging from multipolar (several power centers) to zones of chaos and from globalization to counterweight. We will consider several possibilities. Do not reify these periods and systems. They are just attempts to get a handle on reality; they are seldom reality itself. Reification is a constant temptation in the social sciences. Students often memorize neat tables to prepare for exams, but take such tables as approximate, not literal. Notice that in the above list one period overlaps with the next. The European empires did not turn off with a click in 1945; they phased out over three decades. To try to understand a confusing world, social scientists must simplify a very complex reality into theories, models, time periods, and conceptual frameworks, all of them mental constructs. The systems approach is one such framework. Actually, IR thinkers use "systems" in two distinct but overlapping ways. First, there is the real system out there in the world, but it is complex, changeable, and hard to define. Second, there is the simplified system we construct in our heads that tries to describe the real system. Ideally, what's in our heads should match what's out there. Then we can conduct rational and successful foreign policies. But if the picture in our head does not match reality, we can make terrible, expensive mistakes. For example, decision makers trained for the Cold War kept operating as if the system were still bipolar, with its emphasis on controlling distant lands, and got us bogged down in chaotic places wracked by tribal and religious hatreds. Some critics charged that Soviet-specialist Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security advisor and later secretary of state, tried to treat Iraq and Afghanistan as Cold War battles. If we try to stop massacres and promote democracy around the globe, we may collide with some nasty realities in "zones of chaos." Getting the current system right means you can go with the flow of events (and sometimes manipulate them) instead of working against them.

7.1 Evaluate the charge that the developing areas' problems largely stem from colonialism.

The world is still suffering from what the imperial powers wrought. Some countries, especially in Africa, should not exist. Under normal circumstances, many African states would have merged into larger units or have broken up into more natural tribal entities. But the Organization of African Unity (renamed the African Union in 2002) decided to keep the colonial borders because there was no good way to redraw them, and if states combined, many officials would lose their jobs. Thanks to the imperialists, adjacent countries have different official languages (English, French, Portuguese). What the colonialists set up, Africans have accepted, although some still dream of pan-Africanism, a movement to unite all of Africa. The borders the Europeans drew are a problem today, and not just in Africa. One sure sign of an artificial border is a straight line, of which Africa has many. The British typically set up borders for their colonies that took parts of neighboring lands. Then, when the British departed, the neighboring country often demanded back the original, pre-colonial border. In a treaty with Tibet in 1914, Britain set up the McMahon Line along the Himalayan ridge as India's border. China—both Nationalist and Communist—claimed the treaty was bogus (because Tibet was not sovereign) and rejected it. In 1962 China briefly invaded India over what it called Chinese territory. Although China gave it back, Beijing still claims much of India's northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. Britain gave India borders it could not defend. Likewise, Britain took a strip of Venezuela for Guyana. Ethiopia and Eritrea are in a nearly permanent border war over what the Italians had demarcated as a boundary.'' In 1923 Britain made the entire Sea of Galilee part of Palestine. Syria never accepted indirect rule Colonial administration through local powers and leaders; practiced by Britain. direct rule Colonial administration by European officials that ignored local power structures; practiced by France, Belgium, the Netherlands. this border, and the dispute over it triggered the 1967 Six Day War. Iraq's borders are a permanent and current headache. Rival claims going back centuries over the exact border between Iraq and Iran contributed to their terrible war in the 1980s. Iraq always claimed that Kuwait should have been part of Iraq and conquered it in 1990, leading to the 1991 Gulf War. The Kurds of the north of Iraq argue they should have never been incorporated into Iraq and now act as if they are independent. We are embroiled in the Middle East today in part due to the borders Britain drew up after World War I. The imperialists also left behind ethnic problems that linger for decades. In some cases, they deliberately exaggerated ethnic or tribal differences to better control the natives. Belgium in Rwanda hyped differences between Hutus and Tutsis with geno-cidal results (see the Geography box on the Congo). Britain invented an artificial Nigeria from coastal Christians and interior Muslims, who still dislike each other. The maniacal Boko Haram, which declared its affiliation with ISIS, kidnaps and murders in northeast Nigeria. Kenya, once thought to be stable and integrated, has retribalized itself into Kikuyus, Luos, Kambas, Kisiis, and others. (Barack Obama's father was Luo, and Kenyans joke bitterly that Obama is the first Luo president—but not of Kenya, where Kikuyu domination prevents that.) In most situations, colonial powers used divide-and-rule to incorporate select ethnic groups into the system and reward select individuals, thus creating inequalities and rivalries among native groups that later boiled over in the power vacuum left by decolonization. The worst thing about the imperialists is the poor job they did preparing their colonies for independence. Too few natives were educated to take over governing responsibilities after independence. The British, practicing indirect rule, did a bit better and left most of their colonies with an educated elite with some experience governing. Gandhi and Kenyatta, for example, went to English universities. The Belgian Congo, on the other hand, practicing direct rule, had a handful of African high school graduates when it became independent in 1960. Thus it is not surprising that Africa has few democracies and several failed states, countries that only pretend to have governments. They cannot feed their people or keep order. A prime example is Somalia, where lawlessness rules. One can only speculate if Africa would be in better shape today if the imperialists had never set up their colonies. Most African countries started, on paper at least, as democracies but soon fell into either demagogic autocracy or military dictatorship, some with horrifying human rights abuses. Democracy seldom takes root in poor countries. The solution is economic growth, now under way in some countries at varying rates. The world does not know what to do with Africa. Some say the situation in much of the continent is so hopeless that we should just keep out. Africa does have success stories, although some countries show economic decline, civil war, mass murder, and an explosion of HIV/AIDS. (South Africa, with 18.5 percent of the adult population infected, has one of the world's highest incidences of AIDS.) Overall in Sub-Saharan Africa, GDP per capita has declined. (Of that GDP, 45 percent is concentrated in South Africa, the region's only industrialized economy.) Well-intentioned help often goes wrong. Much foreign aid is skimmed off by crooked officials. The United States attempted to bring food and order to anarchic Somalia but abandoned it when 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in street fighting in 1993. Taking the wrong lesson from that, in 1994 we sent no soldiers to prevent tribal massacres in Rwanda. Instead, we set up refugee camps in neighboring Congo, which made the massacres spill over into the Congo and get worse (see Geography box—Congo: Still the Heart of Darkness). In Sierra Leone, the United Nations tried to restore peace, but its peacekeepers were disarmed and held by rebels, who stole diamonds and chopped off arms. A few U.S. troops could have stopped the death and chaos of a collapsing Liberian regime, but we did not send them. The major powers see much danger and little payoff in African operations, so they rarely intervene directly. Small French forces in 2013 beat back Islamists in Mali and the Central African Republic, but they were hard to defeat. Many liked what the French did—including most Africans—but few other countries sent troops to help. Humans originated in Africa, but nature has not been kind to the continent. Much of the soil is poor. In some times and places there is too much rain, in others too little. Insects and disease thrive; people do not. Africa has been thinly populated by resilient subsistence farmers scattered in small villages. Family and survival were all that mattered, not organization or economic growth. Africa rarely developed the European type of "strong state" or nationalism (exceptions: Ethiopia and the Zulus). Almost defenseless, traditional Africa was first deranged by the Arab slave trade on the east coast and the Portuguese on the west coast before European colonialists, often with African troops, easily took over. Many of Africa's problems trace back to Europeans, first to colonialism and then to the Cold War. In the nineteenth century, the Europeans erased much traditional culture by carving up Africa into unnatural colonies to exploit. The Europeans gave their colonies artificial borders, indifferent administration, and no legitimacy before casting them free to become pawns in the Cold War. A few Western-trained elites—imitation Europeans—took over, most of them dedicated to self-enrichment. Africa has been misruled for centuries. The Cold War did, however, force the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France to pay some attention to Africa. With the Cold War over and much outside support withdrawn, chaos has grown. Now, only France cares much about Africa, where it has commercial interests. One U.S. government specialist on Africa, aware that his expertise was no longer in demand, sadly joked: "Africa is a dagger—aimed at the heart of Antarctica."

Multipolar

The world divided into many power centers.

Bipolar

The world divided into two power centers, as in the Cold War.

unipolar

The world dominated by one power center.

Perestroika

Gorbachev's wish to restructure the Soviet economy.

Intro to IR - Scientific Method Summary

•we need theories to make sense of reality •theories are statements about expected relationships between variables •they simplify reality by making various assumptions •assumptions are neither true nor false, but may be more or less useful •theories connect variables through causal mechanisms •theories establish necessary or sufficient conditions for changes in the dependent variable •theories must be logically consistent (no contradictory assumptions, statements follow from assumptions logically) •theories must be falsifiable and empirically valid•we only abandon a theory when we have a better one that is logically consistent and explains more

Geopolitics

The impact of geography on international politics.

Appeasement

A concession to satisfy a hostile country; in disre-pute since Hitle

Constraint

A limit on decision making.

Ideology

Belief system that society can be improved by following certain doctrines; usually ends in "ism."

Macro

Big, panoramic view of state interactions.

3.2 Contrast state-level theories of war with micro theories.

Here we move the camera back from the close-up of micro-level analyses of individu-als and small groups to the wider view of whole countries. This "state-level analysis" looks at nations' political structures, economies, and cultures. Marxists argued that capitalism pushes countries to war because the very rich and their helpers invariably control the government and dictate policy. When the capitalists run out of markets in one country, they expand to others, giving rise to empires and wars as the several capitalist powers bump into each other around the globe. This, wrote Lenin, caused World War I, an extremely dubious proposition. In 1885, for example, the European powers met in Berlin to amiably carve up Africa. Liberals such as Norman Angell argued before World War I that the economies of most countries had become so prosperous and interdependent that they would be extremely foolish to go to war with each other. In this view, it is precisely the free market of capitalism that leads to peace. This made good sense during most of the nineteenth century, when world trade grew and peace prevailed. World War I then busted both to pieces. Globalization carries an updated version of the view that trade and capitalism bring peace. For Woodrow Wilson, it was undemocratic regimes that cause war, specifically reactionary Extremely con-servative; seeks returning to old ways. the reactionary monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. Once they were destroyed and replaced with democracies, there would be peace. This is an early version of the "democratic peace" theory: Democracies do not go to war with other democracies. It seems to be true, but getting democracy to grow where it has never grown before is hard, as we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. Germany's democracy of the 1920s collapsed into Hitler's hands in the 1930s. Russia after the Soviet collapse attempted democracy, but it slid back into the authoritarianism of Putin. State-level analysis can also include the country's culture. Are some State-level analysis can also include the country's culture. Are some cultures in-herently hostile? (See the Concepts box.) Did Germans and Japanese have a national superiority complex that encouraged them to conquer their respective continents? Are Americans domineering and self-righteous "cowboys" who think they can remake the globe in their image? One problem with "culture" as an explanation is that it can change in response to events. Germans and Japanese are now pacifistic, often unwill-ing to support the United States or send troops into any kind of combat. Before World War II, people said Jews could not fight and made poor soldiers. Now some complain that Israelis fight too much, always turning to military solutions and opposing a nuclear deal with Iran. Change the context and you change the culture.

Productivity

How efficiently goods are produced—that is, using fewer inputs.

Liberalism

In IR, presumption that countries can interact peacefully.

Joint Congressional Resolution

Passed by both houses, it has force of law; can allow president to go to war.

Cold War

Period of armed tension between Soviet Union and West, roughly 1947 to 1989.

Supranational

Power above the national level, as in the UN.

Casualty

Proving that one thing causes another.

Emperical

Supported by observable evidence.

The Bush Doctrine

Regimes that harbor terrorists are subject to U.S. retaliation

6.5 Compare the National Security Council to other executive branches.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s, a democratic republic such as the United States will always have trouble conducting a coherent foreign policy. Democracies have to pay attention to public opinion; tyrannies don't. The need to win elections produces crowd-pleasing but oversimplified slogans and unrealistic policies. U.S. administrations appoint top officials from business, the law, and academia for a few years. Many are energetic amateurs, in office only briefly. Only Lawrence Eagleburger had been a career Foreign Service Officer before he became secretary of state for a month and a half at the end of the Bush 41 administration. The structure of the U.S. foreign affairs community is also a problem. Big and sprawling, it seems controlled by no one. More than a dozen federal departments and agencies do foreign affairs. Attempting to coordinate these branches fell to the National Security Council (NSC), but that brought new problems. Secretaries of state, nominally the nation's overseers of foreign affairs, battle over turf with secretaries of defense and national security advisors, usually losing. The Iran-Contra foul-up of the 1980s illustrated what could go wrong. Oliver North, a Marine lieutenant colonel on the NSC staff, worked with nongovernmental fundraisers and "consultants" to carry out a harebrained scheme to sell U.S. weapons to Iran and use the profits to support the Nicaraguan contras in defiance of the will of Congress and U.S. laws. Who was responsible? It was hard to say. And that is one of the problems of U.S. foreign policy: Exactly who gives the orders for what? If left divided, the various departments and agencies work at cross-purposes without coordination or communication. If centralized under the NSC or the Defense Department, other agencies feel overridden and misused by partisan amateurs whose chief qualification is their friendship with or access to the president. Recent presidents have conducted foreign policy with a handful of close associates, bypassing the conventional structures.Can the structure be fixed? Some have suggested requiring the national security advisor to be confirmed by and answerable to Congress, just as the secretaries of state and defense are. This would help control secret schemes, but it would give Congress more scrutiny of the White House than most presidents would wish. Presidents insist that their national security advisors are responsible only to them; this gives them flexi-bility and secrecy. Another proposal is to designate the secretary of state as the top and responsible person in foreign affairs. But secretaries cannot be assured of cooperation from the other branches; the Pentagon, CIA, NSC, and Homeland Security can ignore or fail to inform them. After 9/11, a new structural problem became clear. The CIA, FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and state and local police barely communicated with each other. By law and by corporate culture, the CIA gathers information but does not share it with other agencies. It prepares reports only for the president and a few other top of-ficials. The CIA had no interest or way to share with other agencies signs that Al Qaeda was preparing a major strike. The CIA has massive foreign-area expertise but no law-enforcement powers. The FBI, on the other hand, has great law-enforcement powers but little foreign-area expertise. It would be nice if the CIA and FBI talked to each other and even better if they communicated with local police and immigration officials, the front line against terror. There is still no computer system that links all relevant agencies. The new Department of Homeland Security, established in haste in 2002, was supposed to integrate and coordinate efforts, but the FBI and CIA are not under its supervision, which means yet another complicated layer has been added to an already convoluted system. The United States is not well structured to conduct a concerted, rational foreign policy. And, for deep-seated reasons, it is not likely to become so. Americans and their Congress fear a secretive, centralized system, as they did in criticizing the nuclear deal with Iran. A superagency in charge of U.S. foreign policy goes against the American grain. The uncoordinated, sprawling nature of the U.S. foreign policy community is likely to continue, and presidents who think they are in charge of policy may find that the structure is in charge of them.

Neoconservative

Favors force to impose democracy overseas.

Revolutionary

In Kissinger's theory, IR system in which a major state seeks to overthrow others.

Siloviki

Russian for "strong men."

Counterweight?

Some see Russia and China, sometimes joined by Iran, forming a counterweight against the United States. The old Sino-Soviet block fractured in the 1960s, but geopolitics pushes toward a new Sino-Russian bloc. Beijing remembers its "century of humiliation" (1839-1949) at the hands of European and Japanese imperialists, and Moscow hates the disappearance of its defensive shield in East Europe in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself in 1991. China, based on its amazing economic rise, flexes newfound power and buys friends and influence. It locks up resource deals (especially oil) around the world. China's New Silk Road stitches Eurasia together with railroads and pipelines and builds a navy and "string of pearls" of friendly ports across the Indian Ocean. Beijing showed interest in joining Putin's Eurasia Economic Union. A counterweight system could bring a Cold War II. As trade, currency, and cyber-space disputes between them increase and China and Russia stake out territorial claims hat frighten their neighbors, hostility grows. In 1996 the two signed a military treaty that in 2001 turned into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Moscow and Beijing see the United States as trying to dominate the globe, pushing them to democratize, and blocking their key national interests. The SCO says in effect: "We won't be pushed around." In a counterweight system, Russia and China oppose us through their UN vetoes and supplies of arms and loans. They occasionally hold joint military exercises, some on China's coast, to show they mean business and warn Washington to stay clear. Europe, with economic woes and little interest in other continents, is largely a bystander, though it pays attention to Russian incursions in Ukraine and Syria. The counterweight model might work for a while but fall apart. Historically, Russia took Chinese lands in "unequal treaties." Russia's resource-rich Siberia is depopulating, and China eyes it. Moscow dislikes being a junior partner to Beijing. And when Europe needs U.S. help, they turn to NATO.

Brest-Litovsk

The 1918 treaty dictated by Germany to get Russia out of World War I.

Spanish Civil War

The 1936-1939 conflict in which Nazis and Communists aided opposite sides.

Globalism

U.S. interests extending everywhere.

Paranoid

Unreasonably suspicious of others.

National Interest

What is good for a country as a whole in international relations; often disputed.

Geography Looking for a Name

What to call the 85 percent of humankind that lives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term "Third World" in 1952 because it was neither the rich, industrialized First World nor the communist Second World. The term was used for some decades, but many disliked it, claiming it is impossibly broad, slightly pejorative, and now obsolete. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there is no more Second World; there is just "the West and the rest." American academics generally prefer "developing areas." The U.S. State Department uses "less-developed countries" (LDCs). Business likes "newly industrializing countries" (NICs) or "emerging markets." In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined "BRICs," for fast-growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China. "Global South" also works because it is mostly closer to the equator than the more industrialized and largely stable Global North. The developing areas, Global South, or Third World—call it what you will—is complicated and contains many exceptions. It is mostly poor, but some oil-producing and newly industrializing lands are not. Still, most Global Southerners get by on less than $1,000 a year GDP per capita, less than a thirtieth of the industrialized lands of West Europe and North America. As some poor countries industrialize, however, the gap narrows. Unfortunately, not all industrialize. Some see Global Southerners as nonwhite, but much of Latin America and the Muslim world is inhabited by white people. And some Asian peoples have climbed into affluence (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea). No peoples are doomed to poverty. In fact, most of the world's economic growth since 2008 has taken place in the developing countries. Practically all of the Third World was at one time colonized. Some still resent an arrogant and cruel colonial power; some remember an armed liberation struggle. Where that was the case, during the Cold War countries were often anti-Western and pro-Soviet, and many suffered proxy wars. Most of the developing areas, though, liked to call themselves "nonaligned," that is, neutral between the First World and Second World. Many countries of the Global South are weak states in which crime penetrates into politics. Often, you cannot tell where politics leaves off and crime begins. Weak states are corrupt, unable or unwilling to enforce their laws, control their territories, and deliver basic services. Many are vulnerable to overthrow by revolutions and military coups. Colombia's guerrillas and drug lords are an example of rebel groups that can exist on the periphery, often untouched by the weak state apparatus and supported by poor populations who feel no allegiance to a government that can't fulfill even its most basic duties. Few are democracies. One notable exception is India, which is now also scoring rapid economic growth. Neighboring Pakistan, however, is more typical: Military dictatorship alternates with tumultuous democracy, the one leading to the other, and economic growth is slow. The Third World is both economically and politically underdeveloped; the two reinforce each other. Whatever you call it cannot do justice to its variety and complexity. Some countries are progressing out of poverty and toward democracy while others are stuck in decline and dictatorship. A few, such as Somalia and Libya, qualify as failed states. The Global South contains several "zones of chaos." Failed and weak states threaten the developed world, creating refugees, pirates, and terrorists.

Causes and Consequences: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

What do I mean by "predictions"? These are the statements of the theory. For example, a theory of war might predict that if the balance of military capabilities moves toward parity, the probability that war will occur will decline. In other words, a prediction is a statement about the consequences following from changes in the explanatory variables. Sometimes, a particular condition must occur in order for the dependent variable to acquire a particular value. For example, if the theory says that war occurs only when there is an approximate equality of military capabilities, then we should not observe war between countries with big differences in their military power. The equality military power is a necessary condition for war to occur in this theory. Put another way, every time we observe war, we also must necessarily observe equality in military power. If we observe war and disparity in power, the theory is falsified because its prediction is not empirically true.It is not possible to observe war unless there is equality in power, that is, it is not possible to observe war if there is disparity in power. Necessity is a pretty strong claim. The theory might instead only state that equality in military power is a sufficient condition for war to occur. That is, if we observe such equality, then we also observe war. However, we can also observe war without this equality because this condition is no longer necessary, merely sufficient. Note too, that when military parity is a sufficient condition for war, war is a necessary condition for military parity. It is worth spending some time getting these claims straight. If A is a necessary condition for B, then every time we observe B, we also must observe A. Thus,Bis a sufficient condition for A. It is not possible to observe B without A. However, it is possible to observe A without B.If A is a sufficient condition for B, then every time we observe A, we also must observe B. Thus,Bis a necessary condition for A. It is possible to observe B without A,but it is not possible to observe A without B. The strongest claim a theory can make is that A is both necessary and sufficient for B. That is, whenever A occurs,B must occur, and whenever B occurs,A must occur as well. A theory then makes a set of claims about the expected relationship be-tween variables. It identifies necessary and/or sufficient conditions for particular changes in the dependent variable. In other words, it states how changes in the explanatory variables translate into changes in the dependent variable. A causal mechanism is the way the explanatory variables influence the dependent variable. Again, we require our causal mechanism to make sense. The causal mechanism also determines whether the relationship is one of necessity,or sufficiency, or both. Most of our theories do not make sharp statements, however. Because the real world is so complex, our theories of social behavior will always be incomplete and partial. Therefore, they will not take into account all factors that jointly determine particular outcomes. Our theories will only predict tendencies that 4 is, they will only tell us whether particular configurations of factors are more or less likely to produce certain outcomes. For example, a theory may tell us that preponderance of power will generally lead to a peaceful resolution of a crisis,but that does not mean that all crises between a weak and a strong state will end short of war. Indeed, as the two wars with Iraq show, this is manifestly untrue. However, this does not necessarily make the theory incorrect. Indeed, it maybe the case that these are instances where the tendency predicted by the theory(weak states concede because they know they will lose) may be overwhelmed by other tendencies (e.g. Saddam Hussein hoping to inflict large casualties on the Americans causing them to stop short of victory) in producing the outcome. We have to be very careful when evaluating theories because dis confirming evidence may sometimes cause us to "throw the baby out with the bath water." In addition, sometimes our theories may have uncertainty built into them.That is, a variation in an explanatory variable only sometimes causes variation in the dependent variable, and we can specify the probability of it doing so. This is sometimes called probabilistic causality and is pretty complicated to define, and even more difficult to test. For example, suppose our theory says that actors will sometimes bluff during a crisis: they will pretend to be stronger than they really are and will press for more concessions even though they would be unwilling to resort to force in the end. This means that all else equal, actors will sometime demand a lot, and sometimes will accept far less (when they choose not to bluff).The problem is that now we have a variation in the dependent variable (their demands) without variation in any of the explanatory variables (like military capabilities). This type of uncertainty is induced by the actors themselves, and may make it difficult to determine if a theory's predictions hold or not.

Level Of Analysis

Where you suppose causality resides: in indi-viduals, states, or the international system.

Marxism

Militant, revolu-tionary form of socialism.

Concept of Power

Power is widely misunderstood. It is not big countries beating up little countries. Power is one country's ability to get another country to do what it wants: A gets B to do what A wants. There are many kinds of power: rational persuasion, economic, cultural, technological, and military. Rational persuasion is the nicest but rarely works by itself. Military power is the least nice and is typically used only as a last resort. Then it becomes force, a subset of power. When Russia and the United States quarreled over who was to govern Syria, they aided their respective clients and applied some military force. Countries use whatever kind of power they have. U.S. military power is massive, but energy resources have become one of the most important sources of power in our day. Russia kept Europe respectful by control of oil and natural-gas exports. When Ukraine gave Russia trouble, Moscow cut the flow of gas to Ukraine and detached chunks of it. U.S. dependency on imported petroleum was the Achilles heel of American power, one that we have recently corrected by "fracking" oil out of shale deposits. With abundant oil and natural gas, the United States has shed a major weakness. Sometimes, as the United States discovered in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, power is unusable. The crux of power, remember, is getting the other country to do something contrary to its will. It doesn't always work. The United States was unable to stop North Vietnam from forcibly reunifying with South Vietnam. Can American power really stop coca cultivation in the Andes, an area where local governments either cannot or will not go? U.S. military power in 2003 beat Iraq's army in three weeks but could not calm or control Iraq. The problem, ignored by Washington for too long, is that Iraq is a political mess, barely a country. It is fragmented among Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds, some of whom are delighted to murder the others over long-standing tensions and who was to get oil revenues. After several years of trying to bring order out of the chaos, Americans tired of the war. If all your types of power—political, economic, and finally military—do not work in a particular situation, you turn out to be not as powerful as you thought. Power cannot be closely calculated or predicted. The Soviet Union looked powerful but suddenly collapsed in 1991 due to a faulty economy and tensions among its many nation-alities. You often learn who's more powerful only after a war. Typically, before the war, both sides figured they were pretty powerful; indeed, if one side felt weaker, it would try to avoid war. The war serves as a terrible corrector of mistaken perceptions. Washington often relies on a bigger and better army, which does not always prevail. Remember, military is only one kind of power. No one—not the British, the Soviets, nor the Americans, which were all very powerful—tamed Afghanistan despite clear military superiority. One's power may be unsuitable to the problem at hand. Artillery and tanks may not work against religiously motivated guerrillas, who offer few good targets, as their main inter-est isn't in controlling a piece of land. Attempting to persuade another country may provoke resentment: "Who are you to tell us what to do?" Washington often receives such replies from Beijing and Tehran. Accordingly, power of whatever sort is best exercised cautiously. The question for our day is what kind of power should we emphasize—military, economic, or political?

1.3 Demonstrate how an IR system may be inherently unstable.

World War I, which killed some 15 million, was the initial act of Europe's self-destruction. Versailles Treaty The 1919 treaty that ended World War I. Four empires—the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Turkish—collapsed. From the wreckage grew the twin evils of communism and fascism. The "winners"—Britain and France—were so drained and bitter they were unable to enforce the provisions of the Versailles Treaty on defeated Germany. The international economy was seriously wounded and collapsed a decade later. World War I led directly to World War II. The dissatisfied losers of the first war—Germany and Austria—joined with two dissatisfied winners—Italy and Japan (Japan participated in a minor way by seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific during World War I)—while another loser, Russia, tried to stay on the sidelines. Another link connecting the two wars was the failure of any balance-of-power system to function, this time by design. Balance-of-power thinking stood discred-ited after World War I. Many blamed the cynical manipulations of power balancers for the war. This is an unfair charge, as the system had already broken down before the war. Maybe balance of power is a defective system, but the start of World War I by itself does not prove that point. At any rate, the winning democracies—Britain, France, and the United States—in an effort to avoid another major war, chose not to play balance of power, but from their decision flowed the catastrophe of World War II. What do we call this strange and short-lived interwar system? It was not bal-ance of power because the democracies refused to play. The dictators, sensing the vacuum, moved in to take what they could. We might, for want of a better term, call it an "anti-balance-of-power system." Britain and France, weary from the previous war and putting too much faith in the League of Nations and human reason, finally met force with force only when it was too late; Germany nearly beat them both.Stalin's Soviet Union also refused to play. Here it was a case of ideological hatred against the capitalist powers and the conviction they were doomed anyway. The United States also refused to play balance of power. Isolationism plus verbal protests to Japan over the rape of China were designed to keep us out of the conflagration. We supposed that we did not need a large military; we had two oceans. In 1941, both the Soviet Union and the United States learned they could not hide from hostile power. Europe destroyed itself again in World War II. Into the power vacuum moved Stalin's Red Army, intent on making East Europe a security shield for the Soviet Union. The Japanese empire disappeared, leaving another vacuum in Asia. The Communists, first in China and North Korea, then in North Vietnam, took over. The great European empires, weak at home and facing anticolonial nationalism, granted independence to virtually all their imperial holdings. Britain, the great balancer of the nineteenth century, ceded its place to the United States. The age of the classic empires was over, replaced by the dominance of two superpowers.

State

Country or nation, has sovereignty.

Rational

Able to think clearly and test ideas against reality.

Criticisms of Marxist IR Theories

Ideas play a potent role in IR and are not just reflections of material reality, a basic Marxist contention. Islamist terrorists, some of them educated and comfortable, share a vision—whipped up by Islamist preachers—that the West is attacking Islam and they must sacrifice themselves to save it. The fact that women and children are killed in military operations especially enrages them. Poverty does not explain the 2010 would-be Times Square car bomber, a Pakistani-American who had a job, home, and MBA. Historians find little or no evidence that a struggle for colonies was at the root of World War I, in which colonies were a sideshow. The war was about German mastery of Europe. Britain and Germany, to be sure, were aware of Iraq's oil potential at the start of the war. Overall, colonies cost governments more to administer and defend than they ever earned, although some individual firms profited from their colonial operations. Portugal, the poorest country of West Europe, was the first and last colonial power. Its colonies kept it poor. Europeans got richer after they gave up their colonies. The modern economy is not merely a capitalist plaything. No capitalist system is totally free and unfettered. Capitalists have unions, environmental regulations, pension funds, and government on their backs. They hate restrictions on their ability to make money, but they have to live with them. Some corporate suits go to jail for financial misdeeds. In 2010, legislation tightened controls on banking giants, especially those that got federal bailouts. Marxists respond, "Well, sure, they had to clean up their act to keep the system from collapsing altogether. But it still serves capitalist ends." Capitalist control of foreign policy is an article of Marxist faith but requires closer looks. Strategic rather than economic motives usually dominate. True, in 1953 the CIA helped overthrow an Iranian regime that had seized a giant oil company, but it was a British oil company (the same one that brought us the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010). The chief U.S. motive was to prevent the spread of communism, which Washington conflated with Iranian nationalism. The shah eventually nationalized the oil company anyway. Big oil, which is understandably pro-Arab, wields influence in Washington, but not as much as AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which keeps Congress tilted well to the side of Israel. U.S. energy giants are eager to export liquefied natural gas, but local Maine communities veto it. It looks like capital-ists are not as powerful as they are cracked up to be.A residue of Marxist theory can be helpful. By teaching us to look for whose cui bono Latin for "to whose benefit?" or "who gains?" interests are served—in Latin cui bono—we may find unexpected patterns. And often they do not correspond to Marxist constructs. Marxists and other radicals, for example, denounce globalization as serving capitalist interests. The less-developed lands, according to Marxists, are deliberately kept down and poor so capitalist firms can siphon off their wealth (dependency theory). But globalization has mostly benefited developing lands—with China in the lead—whose economies now grow much faster than developed-world economies. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq ben-efited only one country, Iran, which has close ties to the Baghdad regime. Although it may not deliver a complete explanation, one must, like police detectives, always ask who benefits.

Groupthink

Janis's theory that group cohesion stifles doubt and dissent.

2.2 Review the main points of IR realism.

Probably the oldest IR theory, realism, is still widely accepted with some variations by many academics and practitioners. It is basically a conservative and pessimistic philosophy that advocates manipulating the forces of an anarchic world to keep things from blowing up. Reforming defective regimes or crusading for human rights, as liberals often do (see below), is infeasible and often makes things worse; if it doesn't help state survival, policy makers should not bother with it. Realism is divided into several viewpoints. "Defensive realists" argue that countries go to war largely to defend the nation when it is under threat. "Offensive realists" argue that major powers tend to expand to build security belts around themselves. "Structural realists" (which the authors have been called) argue that the global distribution of power governs much of IR. Hardly anyone admits to being "unrealistic"; most like to be known as realistic because they think it means level-headed and pragmatic. But "being realistic" is not the same as realism, which is a philosophical approach to IR grounded in history and geography consisting of several interlocking components. STATES ARE THE UNITS THAT MATTER Realism posits states as the relevant actors, not individuals, groups, or transnational movements. Realists rarely focus on specific leaders or their motivations, which are presumed to be largely the same: safeguarding their countries. There is much variation, of course, in how they do this. Realists do not look to Stalin's warped personality to explain his takeover of East Europe; they look to the repeated invasions of Russia from East Europe. History and geography of states are the operative factors, not individual leaders.State-centrism was enshrined in the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty national interest What is good for a country as a whole in interna-tional relations; often disputed. crusade In realist thought, an ideological war unrelated to the true national interest. Years War in 1648. This elevated the concept of sovereignty, which included making rulers responsible for their states. For realists, this means that states are generally "unitary ac-tors," each under the control of a sovereign. Thus Afghanistan was to blame for letting Al Qaeda operate on its soil. When Pakistan denied helping the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008, India scoffed, calling the incident a Pakistani act of war. Pakistani intel-ligence has long and deep ties to Islamic terrorists. If terrorists ever hit the United States with a nuclear device, Washington will blame the country that supplied the bomb. POWER COUNTS MOST Realism also focuses on power, a much broader concept than just military force. Power consists of the economic, political, psychological, and military tools by which A gets B to do what A wants. In the last century this came to be known as realism. Its roots, however, go much further back. Ancient kings and empires understood power; most of them pursued it with single-minded determination and emphasized its military aspect. If they didn't, they figured some other kingdom would beat them. The Old Testament and Rome's wars show shrewd appraisals of power: Conquer them or they'll conquer you. Thucydides' famous cause of the Peloponnesian War reflects real-ism: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta." The U.S. founders and early presidents were shrewd realists who understood that the new, weak republic had to navigate among much stronger powers. Power motives, however, are often deliberately disguised with high-sounding phrases such as "defense of liberty," "just war," or "crusade to liberate the Holy Land." With Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century, if not before, thinkers were stating the obvious: that monarchs sought power, that, in fact, they had to. They needed sufficient power to accomplish anything, to do good or evil, or to just survive. Goodness unarmed is of no use and probably short-lived. NATIONAL INTERESTS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY Realists minimize ideology as a basis for policy; it is mostly a trick to con the gullible. Instead, realism is based on national interest. Feasibility links national interest with power. National interest, if pursued rationally, tells leaders how to use their power effectively. Hans Morgenthau (see the Classic Thought box), the guru of national interest, urged nations to pursue their "interest defined in terms of power." If you are preserving or enhancing your power, you are rational. If you are scattering or wasting your power in "crusades," you are harming your national interest and are therefore irrational. Many realists called the Vietnam and Iraq wars ideological crusades. Not everything is a national interest. Good leaders constantly scan the horizon looking for their country's national interests and avoiding areas that are not. The "vital national interest" is not getting conquered. To prevent that, one must have arms and allies and be willing to go to war. "Secondary interests," more distant and less urgent, may not be worth a war; some may be negotiated, others waited out. Telling the two apart requires rare intellectual ability, which Morgenthau had but many others do not. Was the 1931 Japanese conquest of Manchuria a local spat or the opening round of major aggression? The answer came in 1937 when Japan began to conquer all of China. Is Islamic fundamentalism a vital U.S. interest or a secondary one? Should we invade distant lands to eradicate it? Is U.S. occupation of a Muslim country feasible? BALANCE OF POWER STILL OPERATES Many realists (but not all) argue that balance of power is a natural outgrowth of the focus on power and national interest.Countries, always wary of other states encroaching upon them, will almost auto-matically attempt to offset hostile power by boosting their own strength through arms (internal balancing) and alliances (external balancing). The balance of power rarely aims at peace; it aims at enabling states to survive and not get absorbed by other states. The Habsburg grab to take over Europe pushed Catholic France to support the Protestants. The Axis menace forged the U.S.-British-Soviet alliance of World War II. Soviet designs forged NATO. Ideology had nothing to do with these alliances; they were formed to offset threatening power. Starting in the late 1950s, Mao's ultrarevolutionary upheavals alienated the Soviet Union until war was possible; in early 1969 Russia and China skirmished on their far east-ern border. Nixon had built his career as a militant anticommunist, but in the 1960s when he was out of office he read IR books that included the concept of balance of power. Nixon said in late 1971 that he sought a balance of power among the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan. At this same time, a worried Mao got rational and wel-comed Nixon to Beijing in early 1972. China needed U.S. power to offset the Soviet threat, and the United States needed China to offset Soviet power. Mao and Nixon abandoned their ideologies in favor of using balance of power to safeguard their respective states. AMORALITY REIGHNS Realism is tinged with amorality—some say deep dyed. Realists emphasize human rights only when they support national interests. Realist Henry Kissinger argued that you accomplish more on human rights by "quiet diplo-macy" than by turning them into political footballs. When a blind lawyer created a diplomatic incident in Beijing in 2012, some Americans said we must do everything to rescue him. Realists cautioned that we needed China's cooperation on Iran, North Korea, and currency parities and should place such issues first. If you go public, the other side just digs in its heels. "Doing the right thing" may be wildly infeasible, note realists. Britain in late 1939 considered helping Finland repel a Soviet invasion—until the reality hit that Britain would then be at war with both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. In mid-1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, Britain allied with the Soviet Union, although Churchill knew full well what a murderer Stalin was. Britain had little choice; for a year, it had stood alone against Nazi might. Power considerations trump morality. "Covert action is not to be confused with missionary work," cautioned Kissinger. (Actually, missionaries were often the opening wedge for Portuguese, French, English, and Americans to extend their countries' influence.) For realists, feasibility is closely connected to morality.

1.4 Evaluate why the Cold War lasted so long without blowing up.

The Cold War started shortly after World War II as Stalin's Soviet Union, intent on turning East Europe into a belt of Communist-ruled satellites, proved its unfitness as a partner for Roosevelt's grand design for postwar cooperation. Many feared that Stalin was also preparing to move beyond East Europe. In the spring of 1947 the United States openly stated its opposition to Soviet expansion and took steps to counter it. The Cold War was on. The world lined up in one of two camps—or at least it looked that way—as there was no third major power to challenge either the Soviets or the Americans. Academic thinkers described this situation as bipolar. Bipolarity was a dangerous but in some ways comforting system. West and East blocs watched each other like hawks, constantly looking for opportunities to exploit in the other bloc and guarding against possible attack. It was a tense world, with fingers too close to nuclear triggers.The bipolar system was seen as a "zero-sum game" in which whatever one player won, the other lost. If the Communist bloc stole a piece of the Free World, it won, and the West lost. To prevent such reverses, war was always possible (Korea and Vietnam), even nuclear war (over Cuba in 1962). Because both superpowers possessed nuclear weapons, though, they always kept their conflicts at arm's length, fighting by proxy and not directly. Both understood that a direct conflict could quickly turn nuclear, ending both the system and their dominance. They hated each other, but they were not reckless. Better, each thought, to be prince of its half of the world than run the risk of mutual wipeout. At no time did Americans tangle directly with Soviets. Still, everyone was jumpy, worried about possible gains and losses. Some on both sides still hearken back to those days when life was simpler be-cause you knew exactly who your friends and enemies were. The weaker allies of the superpowers mostly kept quiet and obeyed their leading power. China, until the 1960s, saw the Soviet Union as a strong ally. NATO and the Warsaw Pact looked firm. Most members of each alliance had superpower military bases on their soil and accepted them as a form of protection. Bipolarity brought some comfort; you knew where you stood. For many today, world politics is too confusing.If you look closely at the Cold War, however, you notice that it was never strictly bipolar. Some thinkers label it a "loose bipolar" system to account for the fact that be-tween the two big "continents" were many "islands"—neutral, or nonaligned, countries that deliberately avoided joining either camp. Both superpowers wooed these neutrals. Was the bipolar world stable? It did not blow up in nuclear war and lasted nearly half a century, but it could not endure, for at least five reasons: 1. The bipolar system locked the superpowers into frantic arms races that grew in-creasingly expensive, especially for the weakening Soviet economy. More and more bought them less and less security, for the armies and weapons could not protect the superpowers or extend their power; their attempts to expand power collided with nationalism. 2. Third World nationalism arose, and both superpowers made the mistake of fighting it. Playing their zero-sum game, the two superpowers tried to get or keep periph-eral areas in their "camps." They pushed their efforts into the Third World until they got burned—the Americans in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan. 3. At least one of the two camps split. One of the polar "continents" cracked apart, and a large piece drifted away: the Sino-Soviet dispute. Dominance bred resentment. The other "continent" developed some hairline fractures, as NATO grew shakier. 4. The economic growth of the Pacific Rim countries made both superpowers look foolish. While the military giants frittered away resources on expensive weapons and dubious interventions, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Asian rimlands boomed. 5. The expensive arms race on top of an inherently defective economy and botched reforms led to the Soviet collapse in 1991. America, by outlasting its antagonist, in effect "won" the Cold War. The world that emerged from the bipolar system, however, is not completely to America's liking.

1.5 Argue which IR system best fits the current world situation.

The two momentous events of 1991—the quick Gulf War and amazing collapse of the Soviet Union—started discussion to name and describe the new system then being born, a task not yet finished. Some of these possible systems are plausible while others are false starts, but all have a question mark after them. Do not reify them.

Reflections : Sovereignty and You

"You can't do that to me; I'm an American!" say many young Americans who run into trouble with the local law while traveling overseas. But they can do that to you. They can do whatever they want to you; that is their right as a sovereign state. They can cane your behind until it bleeds for spray-painting cars (which Singapore did to one American youth). They can ignore a plea from the U.S. president for leniency. It's their law, and they can enforce it any way they like. What can the U.S. embassy or consulate do for you? Suggest an English-speaking lawyer. That's all. Remember, sovereignty means they are bosses on their own turf, so when you're overseas, you have to obey their laws. Your U.S. or other foreign passport gives you no special protection.

Hans Morgenthau On National Interest

A brilliant refugee scholar from Nazi Germany taught America about national interest. In so doing, Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980) founded the Realist (he capitalized it) school of international relations in the United States. Many Americans, immersed in legalism and moralism, disliked the concept of national interest, which sounded like the old and evil "power politics." To Morgenthau, national interest was the only rational key to international politics. Once you understood a country's national interest, you could understand its foreign policy moves. You could "look over the statesman's shoulder when he writes his dispatches . . . read and anticipate his very thoughts." Morgenthau thought national interest was largely objective and rational because he defined it in terms of power. Intelligent leaders could figure out what they must and should do to safeguard their nation's power, and outside observers could understand why they were doing it. Said Morgenthau: "International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power." Use your power carefully, warned Morgenthau; do not spread it too thin or fritter it away. Policies that en-hance a nation's power are rational; those that diminish it are foolish. When facing Hitler and Tojo, America needed power, not legalism or moralism, Morgenthau argued. American thinkers had long stressed moral goals in foreign policy (prime example: Woodrow Wilson), and postwar critics denounced Morgenthau's seeming amoralism. A nation's first and vital national interest is to secure its territory; this cannot be negotiated away. Other items may be "secondary interests" about which one may, depending on circumstances, negotiate and compromise. Vietnam was not a vital U.S. interest; the conservative Morgenthau thought the war there was an irrational crusade that flung away America's power for no good purpose. In this way, the "amoral" Morgenthau was more moral than those who sold Vietnam as a good war. The trouble with Morgenthau's approach is that it made no provision for irrational or mistaken perceptions of national interest, which often dominate. Leaders may foolishly draw the national interest too wide and spread their power too thin, thus weakening their nation. It would be wonderful if all countries' national interests were rational; then they would be limited and predict-able. Morgenthau's concept of a limited and rational national interest was actually a normative argument that countries should adopt such policies, for then problems could be compromised by peaceful diplomacy. At bot-tom, the great realist was a great moralist.

Stratified?

A stratified model combines the unipolar and multipolar models and may fit reality better. It sees roughly three layers. At the top are the rich, high-tech countries. The sec-ond layer is that of rapidly industrializing lands such as China, India, and Brazil. The third layer is a "zone of chaos" dominated by crime, warlords, and chronic instability. It is startling to realize that the world's biggest single economic activity is now crime, much of it connected to the flow of drugs from the poor countries to the rich countries.The top-layer countries can zap conventional targets with their advanced weap-ons, but they cannot control the chaos of the bottom-layer countries, whose terrorists, guerrillas, and drug cartels offer no good targets. Somalia, Mexico, and Afghanistan are examples of chaos that the top-layer countries would like to avoid but cannot. Many of the world's natural resources—particularly oil—are in these chaos zones, so the first layer is inevitably drawn into their difficulties. And the first layer's appetite for illicit drugs means the bottom layer gets its tentacles into the top layer.

Concepts Of System

A system is something composed of many components that interact and influence each other. If you can analyze the logic of a system, you can roughly predict its evolution or at least understand what could go wrong. Statesmen who grasp the current international system can react cleverly to threats and opportunities. Those who do not can damage their own country. The crux of systems is in the term "interact." If something is truly a system, you cannot change just one part of it because most of the other components also change. Systems thinking originated in biology. The human body is a system of heart, lungs, blood, and so on. Take away one component, and the body dies. Alter one, and the others try to adjust to compensate. Systems can be stable and self-correcting or they can break down, either from internal or external causes. After World War II, systems thinking spread to many disciplines, including international relations. Thinkers—some focusing just on Europe, others on the entire globe—found that various systems have come and gone over the centuries, each operating with its own logic and producing variously stable and unstable results. Obviously, an unstable system does not last. The strong point about systems thinking is that it trains us to see the world as a whole rather than just as a series of unrelated happenings and problems. It also encourages us to see how a clever statesman may create and manipulate events to get desired results. If he presses here, what will come out there? Will it be bad or good? To some extent, international systems are artificial creations of varying degrees of handiwork. A system that obtains the assent of the major powers and goes with the forces of history may last a long time. A system that harms one or more major players and goes against the forces of history will surely soon be overturned. Systems do not fall from heaven but are crafted by in-telligent minds such as Metternich and Bismarck. This brings an element of human intelligence and creativity into international politics. Does the world form a political system? It is surely composed of many parts, and they interact. The trouble is few thinkers totally agree on what the systems were, their time periods, and the logic of their operation. Looking at the four systems of the twentieth century, some would say there are only three, because the first and second should really be merged (the second was merely the decayed tail end of the first). Others would say, no, there are five, adding the period of the Axis dic-tatorships as a separate system.International systems thinking is inexact, not yet a science. We have still not settled on what the pres-ent system is. In this chapter, we consider several at-tempts to describe the current system and note that none is completely satisfactory. With each proposed system, ask two questions: (1) Does it exist, and (2) will it persist? That is, does the proposed system match reality, and, if so, is it likely to remain stable and last for some time?

What is a Theory?

A theory is a set of statements about expected relationships between variables.That is, a theory tells us that a change in variable A is likely to produce a change in variable B in some particular way. The theory effectively "connects" the two variables. Variable A is called an independent or, a better term, an explanatory,variable because it explains the variation of B, which is called the dependent variable. For example, consider a theory of war. The dependent variable is the out-break of war. Some possible explanatory variables would be pre-war arms races,regime types of opponents, balance of military capabilities, economic resources,presence of allies, and so on. The outbreak of the Second World War, or any other particular war, is not a variable, but a realization of the variable "war."That is, it is a single observation, it is a constant. The Anglo-German naval race prior to the First World War is likewise not a variable; it is the value of the variable "arms race" for the event WWI. A theory links the variables through some causal mechanism that leads from the explanatory variables to the dependent one. For example, we might say that an increase in the military preponderance of one state over another decreases the probability that war between them will break out. For this to be a theoretical statement, we must specify the mechanism through which the change in the independent variable results in a change in the dependent one. One possibility would be to say that if one state is much stronger than the other, then the weaker state knows that it will lose a war, and therefore when the stronger one makes a demand, it concedes. Crises will therefore end short of war in concessions by the weaker state. This, then, specifies the causal mechanism that links military preponderance to likelihood of war.

Classic Liberalism

Adam Smith's theory that an economy corrects itself without gov-ernment supervi-sion; became U.S. conservatism.

Why Do We Need Theories? 3

As political scientists, we want to explain various interesting events. In particular, we want to explain the strategic interaction among various actors in the international environment. Some people seem to feel that you do not need a theory to explain adequately given events; all you need are the facts. This is absolutely false and here's why. Suppose we want to explain the outbreak of the Second World War. The people who see no need for theories would presumably bring all the facts to the table to do so. But how do we get to select these facts? Some are trivially related,such as Germany attacking Poland in September of 1939. But which other facts should we pick? Selecting the facts requires a judgment about their relevance. Do we include the appeasement at Munich a year earlier as a fact? If so, why? Presumably because it demonstrated to Hitler that Britain and France would not make a stand in the defense of a small central European country. Do we include the German rearmament in defiance of the Versailles Treaty that ended the First World War? If we do, it is presumably because we think that without arming the Germans would have been unable to challenge the status quo established by that treaty. Do we include the horrible inflation that brought down the democratic Weimar Republic and catapulted the Nazis to power? If we do, it's presumably because we think that public support for Hitler's foreign policies was important in his decision to attack. Do we include the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland? If we do, we presumably do so because we think it might have emboldened the Germans to launch Barbarossa against what they might have considered inferior Soviet military forces. And so on and so forth. The point is that even a seemingly simple thing as selecting the facts requires one to make a judgment about their relevance, and making this judgment re-quires one to have a theory that connects causes to consequences. It is worth emphasizing again that every time you (or policy makers) choose a course of action, you are guided by some implicit theory (or faith) that connects causes with consequences. It is therefore worth making sure that our theories make sense. If we are guided by a false theory (and we shall see what this means precisely in a little bit), then our decisions, our conclusions, and our explanations, will be wrong.In world politics, this may mean disastrously wrong.

Criticisms of Constructivism

At its extreme, constructivism denies the existence of an empirically verifiable real-ity. Constructivism can be super subjective and grow into what the philosophers call solipsism: Nothing outside of one's mind exists. Such people guiding policy could produce catastrophes. They might propose that "if we just had another way of looking at North Korea" we could reach a peaceful understanding with Pyongyang. The constructivist problem lies in Pyongyang, namely its absurd constructs, in which it sees itself as under perpetual attack. Mainstream constructivists do recognize that there is a world "out there" but argue that it lacks meaning until one is constructed for it. We often fail to fathom the real world until it is too late. Our constructs do eventually catch up with reality but delayed and in spurts. Thus Bush's neoconservatives sold their demonization of Iraq to most Americans. Then the 2003 invasion of Iraq revealed that it had no weapons of mass destruction or ties with Al Qaeda, and our picture of Iraq changed. The constructivists' strongest point is their emphasis that you can talk yourself into just about anything, including false notions. Lovers and decision makers beware. Constructivists can slide into relativism, unable to label anything right or wrong because "it all depends on the situation" and "who's to judge?" Some even object to calling Hitler, Stalin, or Mao "mad" or "monsters." Constrained by a belief that there is no absolute truth, constructivists can end up as amoral as realists. Realists can be wrong, but constructivists just plain cannot tell. If moral choices are muddy, policy making will be terribly difficult. Decision makers will be dipped in doubt, fearing that whatever policy they pick could be a mistaken construct. And the opposite policy could be just as mistaken. Paralysis follows.Constructivists claim that they keep distant from constructs; they're too smart. They see their task as ripping away (or deconstructing) the mental constructs of others, especially of realists. Constructivists, however, with their doubts that reality can be accurately understood, have trouble establishing what reality is. Constructivists can end up believing false constructs as much as anybody. Constructivism returns us to a very old philosophical problem, perhaps the oldest: Where does reality reside? Out there in the "real world" or in the mind of those who perceive what's out there? Plainly, as Kant saw, you need both perspec-tives. Of course there is a real world, but you have to understand it correctly, and this is difficult. Realists and neocons can be too sure of themselves. They need a constructivist tap on the shoulder from time to time, asking, "Are you sure you've got this right?"

Falsifiability

Before we can assess the empirical validity of a theory, we must make sure that the theory can, at least in principle, be falsified. That is, unless there are conditions under which they theory might fail, our theory really is an article of faith because it can never be proven wrong. This requires some more thought, so let me repeat. A theory that is not falsifiable, is not theory but faith. For example, belief in God cannot be falsified because we cannot imagine any circumstances that would demonstrate that God does not exist. As such, belief in God is not a theory, but a matter of faith. Scientific theories can all be falsified. "But wait a second," you might say,"how can a true theory be falsified?" A true theory (one that makes good predictions) will by definition predict correctly all the time, and so the observed events will not falsify it. This is what we want. But the theory should be in principle falsifiable. That is, we should be able to imagine an alternative set of events that would make the theory false. For example, the Earth rotates around the sun. Every time we make an observation, this is going to be true. However,it is a falsifiable claim. If, for instance, you get out in space and observe that the sun rotates around the earth (as Ptolemaic astronomy had it for a millennium),then the hypothesis would be disproved. Scientific theories can all be falsified. "But wait a second," you might say,"how can a true theory be falsified?" A true theory (one that makes good predictions) will by definition predict correctly all the time, and so the observed events will not falsify it. This is what we want. But the theory should be in principle falsifiable. That is, we should be able to imagine an alternative set of events that would make the theory false. For example, the Earth rotates around the sun. Every time we make an observation, this is going to be true. However,it is a falsifiable claim. If, for instance, you get out in space and observe that the sun rotates around the earth (as Ptolemaic astronomy had it for a millennium),then the hypothesis would be disproved. We shall deal exclusively with falsifiable theories in this course. If a theory cannot be disproved even in principle, we can never be sure that the theory is actually correct. If it cannot be proven wrong, it may be entirely wrong and we can never know it. We do not want to base our decisions on things that might be absolutely wrong. Perhaps surprisingly, some well-regarded theories in international relations are not falsifiable, and so not useful. Realism, for example, cannot be falsified because no matter what we observe, we can conclude that one of its assumptions is met, and the behavior is therefore consistent with the theory. For example,suppose you observe a state that does not attempt to maximize its power. Then you would conclude that it must have been a status quo state. This is the assumptions of realism. On the contrary, suppose you observe a state that does attempt to do it. Then you would conclude that it must have been a revisionist state. This is also consistent with the assumptions. In other words,there are no circumstances you can imagine (states either maximize power or they do not) that would falsify realism.

Interwar

Between World Wars I and II, 1919-1939.

E.H Carr And Realism

British diplomat and scholar E. H. Carr (1892-1982) called the interwar period The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939, the title of his scathing and influential critique of the failure of the democracies to recognize world power realities. In so doing, Carr laid the groundwork for the realist school that was picked up and amplified after World War II by Hans Morgenthau in the United States. Carr divided thinkers on international relations into two schools: utopian and realist. The utopians are optimists, children of the enlightenment and liberalism, and hold that reason and morality can structure na-tions' international behavior toward peace. Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations are prime examples. Realists, on the other hand, are pessimistic that moral-ity can constrain states and stress power and national interest. This does not necessarily mean perpetual war, for if statesmen are clever and willing to build and ap-ply power, both economic and military, they can make aggressors back down. Implicit in this strategy is a balance-of-power theory. Between the two great wars, Carr saw utopian fools unwilling to stand up to dictatorial beasts. The trouble with realism is that you cannot tell what is re-alistic until many years later, when you see how things turn out. Should you be constantly tough and ready to fight? That could lead to too many wars, some of them unnecessary. The application of a simplified version of realism after World War II helped create and perpetuate the bipolar Cold War system that led to a number of good-sized (but not nuclear) wars.

Chap 2

Confusion surrounds the term "theory." Some students take it to mean an abstraction of little practical value. Some expect a theory to be a clear, definite formula, such as Einstein's famous "E = mc2"—something it rarely is in the social sciences. Actually, a theory is a device to order data, ask questions, and make sense out of a complex world. The basis of political science is empirical theory. Theory underlies all rational discourse; you cannot say much without it. Indeed, anything beyond a simple state-ment of fact is to some degree a theory. When you gather many facts and categorize and then generalize about them, you are beginning to theorize.

Metternichian

Conservative restoration of balance of power after Napoleon.

Globalized?

Even before the Cold War ended, globalization began to emerge. In such a system, most countries become economic players in the world market, a capitalist competi-tion where goods, money, and ideas flow easily to wherever there are customers. The motto of a globalized system: Make money, not war. The few countries that do not play, such as Cuba and North Korea, live in isolation and poverty. After some years, even Cuba was ready to play. Globalization can help promote worldwide economic growth.But there are many problems that limit and could end a globalized system. The worldwide 2008-2009 recession worked against globalization as countries turned protectionist. Most countries—including the United States—talk free trade but do not practice it. They see their industries closing under waves of imports and respond by locking out foreign goods. Furthermore, is globalization a cause or a consequence of peace? Are the two intertwined? If so, what happens to one when the other is disrupted? Prosperity does not necessarily bring peace, as newly affluent countries demand respect, re-sources, and sometimes territory. As China got richer, it defined its borders more grandly, reaching far out into the South and East China Seas for fishing and oil and natural-gas rights. Globalization does not seem to work everywhere. East Asia has zoomed ahead, but some countries have grown little, suggesting that sound policies and flexible cul-tures are key factors. China turned itself into the "factory of the world" with which few countries can compete. How many low-cost producers can the world take? Some resent the American and capitalist culture of a globalized system: "McWorld." Globalization may have peaked and begun to decline.

Theory

Explanation of why things happen.

On Assumptions

For the theory to make sense, we want this causal mechanism to be logical. How do we construct this causal mechanism. That is, how do we build a theory? Now,as I mentioned before, theories are simplifications of reality. They tell us which things one should consider when trying to explain (understand) an event (or a lass of events), and which things one can omit. No theory can even hope to be faithful representation of the real world. Assumptions are the building blocks of theory. They are the means through which theories simplify reality. For example, a very influential theory in international relations is called neorealism, and one of its most important assumptions is that we can treat states as unitary actors, that is we can treat states as if they are rational individuals instead of complicated collections of many individuals. Now, neorealists are not dumb. They know very well that states are not unitary actors. They assume that they can safely abstract away from this complexity. That is, they think that ignoring domestic politics will not distort their conclusions about how states behave internationally. (I should point out that another crucial assumption here is that states are the relevant actors to study.)In other words, the neorealists make a bet that they can produce meaningful explanations of international events while ignoring the composition of states. Note that assumptions are neither true nor false in the normal sense of the words. Actually, in the normal sense, they are almost always "false" because they simplify reality, and as such they do not represent it completely (whatever that means). Instead, assumptions are to be judged on their usefulness. That is, we very pragmatically want to know if a given assumption helps us explain some behavior that we are interested in. It is best to treat assumptions as "as if" statements. In the example above,it is not that neorealists are saying that states are unitary actors, but rather that we can treat states as if they were unitary actors and be able to adequately explain their behavior. When we disagree with an assumption, we do not do soon the grounds that it is "unrealistic" (although this is something one commonly hears), but because we think that it introduces distortions in the arguments and makes the theory inadequate. There is plenty of evidence, for example, that one cannot treat states as unitary rational actors. There are some theoretical complications, but, more importantly, there are some empirical ones as well. For example, a well-established empirical regularity is that democratic states do not fight each other. Neorealist theory cannot explain this because it cannot refer to the regime type of states.Through its lens, all states are "fundamentally the same." The point here is that we can challenge an assumption only if we think that it does not contribute to our understanding of the phenomena we want to ex-plain. We cannot challenge it because we don't like it, or because it's empirically untrue. Of course, if I assume that the earth is flat and then deduce conditions for world peace, one may well doubt the validity of that theory. Still, we do not throw out an assumption just because it's false. Only when you show me that this assumption produces wrong predictions would I agree that it needs to be replaced.

Construct

Idea so widely accepted that it seems to be a fact.

Bismark: Sytem Changer

If someone had told Prussian Chancellor Bismarck that the unified Germany he created in 1871 would lead to two world wars and Europe's destruction, he would have been aghast. Bismarck was a conservative, yet his handiwork brought radical, systemic change. Remember, in systems you cannot change just one thing because everything else changes too. Bismarck supervised a giant change in the political geography of Europe—German unification—but this rippled outward, producing a new global political system. Before Bismarck, Germany had been a patchwork of small kingdoms and principalities that rarely threatened anybody. After unification, Germany had the location, industry, and population to dominate Europe. Bismarck thought unified Germany could live in balance and at peace with the other European powers. He was neither a militarist nor an expansionist. Instead, after unification, Bismarck concentrated on making sure an alliance of hostile powers did not form around his Second Reich. Trying to play the old balance-of-power game, Bismarck made several treaties with other European powers proclaiming friendship and mutual aid. But the Bismarckian system was not as stable as the earlier Metternichian system (see above). Bismarck's unified Germany had changed the European—and to some extent global—political geography. German nationalism was now unleashed. A new Kaiser and his generals were nationalistic and imperialistic. They thought Bismarck was too cautious and fired him in 1890. Then they started empire building, arms races, and an alliance with Austria. France and Russia, alarmed at this, formed what Kennan called the "fateful alliance." Thus, on the eve of World War I, Europe was arrayed into two hostile blocs, something Bismarck desperately tried to avoid. Without knowing or wanting it, Bismarck helped destroy old Europe.

Crusade

In realist thought, an ideological war unrelated to the true national interest.

International Relations

Interactions among countries

Domestic Politics

Interactions within countries.

2.6 Evaluate the possibility of a Christian theory of IR.

Is it possible to operate with no theory of IR, to be purely pragmatic? Some claim it is, but that is unlikely. The brilliant Dean Acheson entered the State Department in 1941 from a top Washington law firm and served as Truman's secretary of state from 1949.to 1953. He had essentially no exposure to IR theory, which suited him just fine. As far as he was concerned, foreign policy meant just answering the diplomatic cables. But Acheson, perhaps without knowing it, subscribed to theories. He began as a Roosevelt liberal, looking forward to a postwar world of trade, nice relations, international law, and the UN. He tried to get along with the Soviet Union. By the end of 1946, however, he had lost all patience with Stalin and turned into a fierce Cold War realist, a process most of Washington was going through at that time. Doubt those who claim they have no theory. There are more theories than the four discussed here. Christian theories of IR share much with liberalism, although Reinhold Niebuhr introduced a dose of realism. Feminist theories, some of them related to constructivism, note the prevalence of the macho values of a patriarchal society and claim they can be overcome. Older theories can be modified and revived, sometimes earning a "neo-" prefix, as in neorealism and neoliberalism. So which theories of international relations should we use? From the previous brief review, it is apparent that none is wholly satisfactory. All can be criticized for failing to match reality—especially embarrassing in the case of realism. But all con-tribute to our methodological tool kit by teaching us to approach ideas skeptically. One must learn to doubt advocates who are so caught up in one theory they cannot reconsider data in light of alternative perspectives. A theory that is widely embraced but unexamined leads to massive mistakes.Different theories may suit different levels of analysis. Realism likely lends itself to views of the globe as a whole, the ebb and flow of power among nations, and the type of system that prevails at any given time. Realism may be less useful at the level of an individual country's foreign policy because national interests are easily warped and distorted. Here constructivist analysis may be more useful, one that continually reexamines the reigning conventional wisdom and asks if it still matches reality. Those who exclude liberal perspectives will have difficulty explaining European unification and the growth of international organizations. Even Marxism, by asking who benefits, can be useful. Notice how one theory can serve as a corrective to others. Especially useful are constructivist comments that make realists or liberals pause before they plunge deeper into a policy: "Are you sure you've got this right?" This may force policy makers to think more deeply or even "out of the box." Initially, the criticism may bounce off, as most officeholders are very sure of themselves. But if things start to go wrong, the political opposition may seize on the constructivist criticism and use it to hammer current administration policy: "You were warned years ago that this was a mistake, but you refused to listen." It is the fear of losing the next election that keeps administrations attentive. In this way, last year's "far out" or "fringe" criticism can become next year's accepted analysis. Accordingly, we urge you to be eclectic and tentative in your use of theories. Try one but do not wed yourself to it. If it does not explain events as they unfold, try another. When faced with a choice between theory and reality, always let reality be your guide. Be aware that the wrong theory can cloud your picture of the real world. As one of the chief planners of the Vietnam War reflected decades later: "We were wrong, terribly wrong." Take all theories with a grain of salt and remember Oliver Cromwell's mid-seventeenth-century exhortation: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."

Criticisms of Liberalism

Just before World War II, E. H. Carr called IR liberals "utopian" for supposing that reason, negotiation, and mutual advantage could stop aggressors. The epitome of this was Chamberlain, who thought he had a deal with Hitler in 1938: "peace in our time." Chamberlain was a sensible and rational businessman; he could not understand that Hitler was not. Liberals also have trouble with rationality, assuming that the deals they offer are so overwhelming—trade, IL, peace—that every country must eventually sign up. But some obstreperous regimes such as North Korea prefer isolation and defiance because opening to the world would end their dictatorships. Free trade does not come easily; it must struggle against protectionism. Liberals assume that free trade benefits all; it's "win-win." But poor countries often fear that free trade unduly benefits the rich and powerful, who will economically swallow lands just starting to climb the economic ladder. Nineteenth-century imperialism—including the Opium Wars in China—was justified as the great mechanism of free trade. Even rich countries resist totally free trade; they fear it means the export of their factory jobs to low-wage lands, a current U.S. view. The recent global recession boosted protectionist sentiment. The EU illustrates how free trade promotes peace, admit realists, but European unification began only after Europeans had had enough of shedding each other's blood. Finally, under U.S. protection, they accepted a series of treaties, but they were pushed into them by World Wars I and II and by American security guarantees. And notice that the Balkans required yet another bloodbath to sober up and ask for EU membership. Realism explains European unification at least as well as liberalism, claim realists. So you don't like power, realists taunt liberals, but you are swept into the same power game as everyone else. Liberals Roosevelt and Truman created vast U.S. armed forces. They had to. Liberal President Carter, shocked by the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, boosted the U.S. defense spending that President Reagan further expanded.

Cui Bono

Latin for "to whose benefit?" or "who gains?"

How to Evaluate Theories?

Let's go back to our theories of war. Recall that one of the explanatory variables was military power. Consider now the following three statements. 1.Here's a statement: "when there is a big discrepancy in military power be-tween two states, both agree that the chances that the stronger one will win a war are great, and hence the weaker state would tend to submit to the demands of its stronger opponent (or not challenge the stronger opponent) without fighting." This comes from an old theory of international relations called the power transition theory. 2. How about the following: "when there is a relative parity in military power between two states, neither feels threatened by the other, and war is not likely to break out because both states are secure." This comes from an even older theory called the balance of power theory. 3.Or perhaps this one: "the distribution of military power only matters in relation to the distribution of benefits: if the use of force is expected to yield more than living with the status quo, then war becomes more likely." This comes from a recent argument from the rational choice school and the bargaining theories of war. 4.Or this statement: "the relative military capabilities are irrelevant to whether war will break out once a crisis is initiated because when states choose whether to challenge each other, they take these capabilities into account,and once a challenge is initiated, these capabilities are no longer relevant to determine how the challenge will be resolved." This is a more recent argument from the rational choice school. In other words, we have four statements that relate military capabilities to the outbreak of war, and they all contradict each other. One claims that preponderance of power leads to peace and parity to war; the other claims the exact opposite; the third claims that by themselves military capabilities cannot determine the probability of war; and the fourth claims military capabilities are irrelevant. How do we evaluate them? We shall use two basic criteria:logical consistency and empirical validity.First, we shall require that the theory that produces the statement is internally correct in the sense that its assumptions do not contradict each other. Then we shall subject the theory to empirical tests to see how well it holds up compared to real world events.

Theory Selection

Let's say we've done our case studies and we've run our statistical tests. Still,we are left with more than one theory that does a seemingly adequate job at explaining events. That is, theory A does well in many cases, and theory B does as well. Which one do we use? This is especially relevant if the two theories are mutually contradictory and/or exclusive, and so we cannot use both at the same time. We use the scientific method to evaluate theories. First, we never discard a theory even if there is some dis-confirming evidence against it unless we have a better theory. This is very simple: something is better than nothing. This is a principle you should probably apply elsewhere as well. Do not reject something unless you have something better to hold onto. Second, competing arguments must be evaluated for their logical consistency.A logically inconsistent theory can never replace a logically consistent one even if it does predict reality better. This is because its predictions are really nonsensical, as we saw above, and so do not explain anything. Third, we require that the rival theory explain more than the existing one.That is, we don't want the rival theory to explain just events that our existing theory does not. We also want it to explain things our existing theory explained as well. Generally, we want the new theory to explain everything we could ex-plain so far plus novel phenomena that we cannot explain with our existing theory. Fourth, we want to avoid adding an excessive number of the so-called "auxiliary assumptions" just to save a theory. These auxiliary assumptions are just patches to make the theory "explain" facts it cannot account for. For example, Marxism claims that the working classes in different countries would refuse to fight in an interstate war which was contrary to their class interests. When the First World War showed that the working classes were not only willing but quite enthusiastic about fighting their foreign "comrades," Marxists saved the theory by postulating an auxiliary assumption; namely, they claimed that the working classes were brainwashed by the ruling capitalists, and so had a "false class consciousness" that prevented them from recognizing their true interests and acting accordingly. Clearly, the new "development" was just a patch for the theory which could not explain how nationalism overcame class interests. Note that it also makes the theory non-falsifiable: if workers rise against the capitalists, then the theory is vindicated; if they do not, then they must have had false consciousness, and the theory is vindicated again.

2.1 Explain why theories are necessary in IR.

Many people suppose that they need no theory, that if they assemble enough facts, reality will be apparent. That notion itself is a theory, one of pure empiricism, which the philosopher Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century demonstrated was insuf-ficient. Kant saw that just gathering facts will leave you with a jumble of unrelated information. You will not know what to do with your facts; they will be meaningless. With no theory, you will not know which questions to ask and which to ask first. This is why scientists spend much time and thought developing paradigms, programs of how to study things. Every chapter of this book (and most other college texts) contains theory, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. One basic IR theory, for example, is that power explains most events. That's a theory (that not everyone fully agrees with). Many thinkers argue that the world has gone through a series of systems that, depending on the array of power globally, explain how the world operates. That too is a theory and one that not all thinkers would place in a first chapter. A survey of U.S. foreign relations shows how national interest governs much (but not all) of foreign policy, another theory. Russian history illuminates the theory that geopolitics also governs strategic choices. There are several theories on the cause of wars.In this chapter we explore four of the basic or "grand" theories that underlie much IR thinking. Each in effect proclaims, "Here is the best way to look at world pol-itics," but it seldom proves its case entirely. This is theory in the sense of underlying assumptions or philosophies that are hard to verify with empirical evidence. Theories that can be verified become less controversial because research can either confirm or refute them. But our four theories here are contested because they are hard to prove or disprove and are often emotional and deep-seated: "Well, that's what I think!" Some strong partisans reject and denounce other theories, but serious thinkers admit that other perspectives have some validity. Theories can be quite practical, as using an inappropriate theory can lead to terrible mistakes. Stalin in the 1930s foolishly followed a Marxist theory that Nazism was the last gasp of dying capitalism, so Hitler would not be a threat. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich in 1938 with the optimism of a liberal and sup-posing Hitler also wished peace. Then Hitler ate Europe. Neoconservatives in the Bush 43 administration embraced a neoliberal theory that the U.S. conquest of Iraq in 2003 would produce stable democracy that would spread through the Middle East. Examine your basic theoretical assumptions; they are likely the most serious flaws in any policy.

Construcivism

Mental constructs, formed by social interaction and convention, gov-ern thinking.

1.6 Evaluate the rise and durability of states.

One may hope that the emerging international system will be an improvement, but its basic components are still sovereign states, and they tend to trip up plans for a peace-ful, cooperative world. The concept of the modern state, the nation-state, or the collo-quial term "country" goes back about five centuries, when important changes rippled through West Europe. Thanks to gunpowder and cannons, monarchs got control over the nobles and centralized power, a movement called absolutism. Economies greatly expanded with new inventions (such as printing) and the opening of trade to Asia and the Americas. The Roman Catholic Church lost temporal power as monarchs declared themselves supreme and secularized their kingdoms. To support their frequent wars,ings improved civil administration and tax collection. By the end of the horrible Thirty Years War in 1648, powerful modern states dominated West Europe. Because they were so powerful—able to raise and fund large armies and navies—the modern strong states spread worldwide, for they easily conquered traditional lands. After they liberated themselves from colonial rule, the lands of Latin America, Asia, and Africa also adopted the strong state form, although some were actually quite weak. The American and French Revolutions in the late 1700s added a new twist to the strong state: mass enthusiasm and participation. Before, the affairs of state had been confined to a handful of kings and aristocrats; "subjects" (rather than citizens) kept silent and obeyed. With the spread of democratic ideas, citizens felt involved and patriotic. Nationalism, originating in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, also spread worldwide, assuming dominant, even lunatic, proportions in the twentieth century.

Multipolar?

Perhaps the most accepted model sees the world as multipolar—a system of several centers of power, some of them trading blocs and all of them engaged in tough economic competition. No one nation or bloc dominates. It would somewhat resemble the old bal-ance-of-power system, but the blocs and major nations do not form new alliances. Instead, they focus on their economies, and economic growth becomes their main task, both to fight unemployment and to gain power and respect.This model does not perfectly fit reality. The blocs—the European Union, the Pacific Rim, and others—cannot look after their own security; they need U.S. help. The West Europeans at first supposed they could calm the former Yugoslavia by themselves but in a few years were begging for U.S. leadership. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are powerful trade competitors with the United States, but all want free security from America. Without U.S. leadership in the world, little gets done. If trade disputes became too great, a multipolar system would break down into something else, perhaps a "resource wars" system.

Liberal Internationalism

Some liberals are willing to go to war to oust dictators and install democracy. On the face of it, this sounds like a contradiction to the liberals' search for peace. Liberal internationalists Wilson and Roosevelt argued that they very much served the cause of peace, but sometimes you have to use force to first get rid of the bad guys; then you can set up democracies and peace. This doctrine can lead to a lot of wars. Neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who were actually Wilsonian liberals, put this theory into practice with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to trigger democracy throughout the region (it didn't). Liberals now debate "humanitarian interven-tion"—whether the United States should intervene to end mass killings. Some liberals argued that we must use force in Syria to prevent the regime from killing its own citizens, much as we contributed air power to achieve the same goal in Libya. Woodrow Wilson supported the 1898 war with Spain and annexation of the Philippines. He sent U.S. forces into Mexico and Central America and, after much hesitation, entered World War I in 1917. Wilson claimed that they all served the cause of civilization. Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that American democracy could not survive in a world dominated by the Axis. Liberals go to war as much as realists. In some cases, realists are more cautious about war—because they ask what the national interest is—than are liberals.

Resource Wars?

Some thinkers warn we are moving into an "age of scarcity" marked by a scramble for natural resources. Rapidly industrializing China needs ever more resources. To secure them, China makes exclusive deals with producing states (and never asks about their human rights record). Instead of a free market, this is a tied market that blocks the free flow of natural resources to all customers, a bit like old-fashioned colonialism that some label "neocolonialism." The questions of who owns the China Seas and who controls transportation corridors from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia loom larger. The 1991 and 2003 wars with Iraq might qualify as resource wars. Related to resource wars is "resource blackmail." China does almost all of the world's refining of rare-earth elements, crucial to many high-tech products. In a crunch, China could set its own price or simply refuse to export. When energy sup-plies are tight, countries like Russia with oil and natural gas ignore outside pres-sures with credible threats to cut exports. They thrive as the price of oil rises (but suffer when it falls). Saudi Arabia, resentful of U.S. complaints, sometimes finds it impossible to increase oil production. Russia, unhappy with Ukraine turning westward, temporarily shut down its gas pipeline to Ukraine and to West Europe. Everyone noticed. Iran's oil income allowed it to resist massive U.S.-sponsored sanc-tions. In the resource age, the weak have become powerful.

Unipolar?

Some thought the great events of 1991—the Gulf War and Soviet disappearance—unipolar The world domi-nated by one power center. produced a unipolar system, but it was illusory. In this picture, the United States would lead in constructing what President Bush senior called a "new world order" with the Gulf War as a model: The United States leads the United Nations and the middle-sized powers to stop an aggressor. Only the United States, in this theory, now has the ability to project military power overseas, the political clout, and the vision to lead.Since the Soviet collapse, neoconservatives adopted the unipolar view of the world and tried to implement it in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Those and other difficulties shot down the unipolar model. True, America is now the only military superpower, but economic and political factors limit its leadership. The American people and Congress are less willing to send troops and billions in aid to far corners of the globe. Few other lands follow America into such enterprises. Some resent us. Notice how little we get our way in the world. Even much smaller powers like North Korea and Iran do not bend to our will.

Concepts of The State

States are generally defined as groups of humans having a territory and government. This government, in turn, has the last word on law within its borders (sovereignty, which we consider presently). Only the state has a legitimate monopoly on coercion; that is, it can legally force citizens to do something. The mafia, of course, can force you to repay a debt, but it has no legal right to punish you. The Internal Revenue Service, on the other hand, can legally send you to prison for nonpayment of taxes. Some use the term "nation-state," which adds the concept of nationality to state. Members of a nation-state have a sense of identity as a distinct people, often with their own language. Nation-states are fairly modern creations, probably not more than half a millennium old, and are not established everywhere. International relations does not use "state" in the U.S. sense, such as the "great state of Kansas." In IR, in fact, the 50 American states are not states at all, because they lack sovereignty. They do not have the last word on law within their borders; the federal government in Washington does. Most analyses of international relations take the nation-state as their starting point. State power over-rides individual preferences. States can draft citizens and march them to war. Many states have a psycho-logical hold on their citizens and inculcate and then command a sense of patriotism, not always for good ends. With this comes "we-they" thinking about foreign lands. "We" are peaceful folk simply trying to protect ourselves; "they" are plotting to harm us. U.S. and Iranian attitudes about each continue this way, each feeling it is the aggrieved party. Could the leading role of the state be eroding? States are not necessarily the first or last word in human organization. Throughout history, extended families, tribes, kingdoms, and empires have given way to more advanced forms of organization.

Clash of Civilizations?

The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in 1993 advanced a con-troversial theory that the post-Cold War world was dividing into eight "civiliza-tions," each based mostly on religion: Western (with European and North American branches), Slavic/Orthodox, Islamic, Hindu, Sinic (Chinese-based), Japanese, Latin American, and African. Most of these civilizations get along with others, but some se-riously dislike and reject others. The biggest threat: Islamic civilization, which clashes violently with Western, Slavic/Orthodox, and Hindu civilizations.Indeed, some of these civilizations are forming trade blocs. What motivates their relations is not trade, however, but deep-seated cultural dislikes and "kin-country rallying." For example, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who both detested Saddam's dic-tatorship in Iraq, opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion. Pakistanis feel the same way about the U.S. struggle in Afghanistan. Many Muslims hate to see a brother Muslim country invaded. In Huntington's world, religion predicts international alignments. Most IR thinkers believe Huntington's theory contains some truth but is exaggerated. Most East Asian lands, for example, oppose Chinese claims and power. Which, if any, of these models matches and explains international relations today? Could a combination provide a better fit? Can you come up with an accurate picture? Or will we just have to wait some years until the situation becomes clearer?

1.2 Explain and give examples of the balance-of-power system.

The nineteenth century exemplifies a balance-of-power system, which occurs during certain periods when the power of the several major nations is similar, and they arrange this power, by means of alliances, to roughly balance. If country A feels threatened by country B, it forms an alliance with country C, trying to deter B from aggression. Later, all of them might form an alliance to protect themselves from the growing power of country D. It did not always work, but it helped to hold down the number and feroc-ity of wars by raising the cost of going on the offensive in the face of allied adversaries. For a balance-of-power system to function, theorists say, it took at least five major play-ers who shared a common culture and viewpoint and a commitment not to wreck the system. After all, war is costly, and if a favorable system can be maintained without it, rational leaders would prefer to take this path. Balance of power is like a poker game in which you'd rather keep the game going than win all the money, so you refrain from bankrupting the other players.Historians see two great ages of balance of power, from 1648 to 1789 and again from 1814 to 1914. The Thirty Years War, mostly fought in Germany, pitted Catholics against Protestants and was the bloodiest in history until World War II. By the time it was settled with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Europe's monarchs had had enough war and constructed a balance-of-power system that endured until the French Revolution (1789). The Westphalian system also established the concept of sovereignty (see discussion later in this chapter). Napoleon overturned the old system with unrestrained ambition and a mass army that conquered most of Europe. When Napoleon played poker, he tried to bankrupt all the other players (he also cheated). Gone was the restraint that had char-acterized the old system. Once Napoleon was beaten in 1814, Europe's top statesmen met under the guidance of Austrian Prince Metternich to restore a balance-of-power system, which was called the Metternichian system. It worked moderately well for some decades, but only as long as monarchs restrained their ambitions and shared the values of legitimacy and stability. This slowly eroded under the effects of nationalism in the nineteenth century—especially with German unification in 1871—until it had disappeared by World War I. There has not been a balance-of-power system since then. Some say there cannot be one again. Some scholars reject the balance-of-power theory, pointing out that there were nasty wars when power was supposed to be balanced—for example, the Seven Years War (what Americans call the French and Indian War) of the 1750s or the Crimean War of the 1850s. Balance-of-power theorists counter by saying these were relatively small wars that did not wreck the overall system. Some writers hold that hierarchy of power—the opposite of balance of power—acts to preserve peace. When nations know their position on a ladder of power, they are more likely to behave. The aftermath of a great, decisive war leaves a victor on top and a loser on the bottom, and this brings a few decades of peace. Critics say balance-of-power proponents have mistaken this hierarchy for a balance that never existed. All such hierarchies are temporary and eventually overturned as weaker states gain power and dominant states lose it.Either way, the nineteenth-century system decayed when two rising newcom-ers used a series of wars to grab their own empires. Germany and Japan upset the system with demands for, as Berlin put it, "a place in the sun." The Franco-Prussian War unified Germany in 1871, and Japan's 1868 Meiji Restoration produced powerful, dissatisfied nations willing to fight to overturn the existing system. Tremors started around the turn of the century as Germany armed the Boers against the British in South Africa, engaged Britain in a race to build battleships, and confronted France by boldly intervening in Morocco. At this same time in the Pacific, Japan attacked and beat China and Russia and seized Korea. The balance-of-power system of the nineteenth century was no longer operative by the early twentieth century. Balance-of-power theorists say the system requires at least five players who are able to make and remake alliances. Flexibility and lack of passion are the keys here. Instead, by 1914 Europe was divided into two hos-tile, rigid alliances. When one alliance member went to war—first Austria against Serbia—it dragged in its respective backers because states were unwilling to shift alliances to counterbalance and deter the aggressor. By the time the war broke out, the balance-of-power system had broken down, although many statesmen did not realize it.

Logical Consistency

We really want our theories to meet two logical criteria: (i) we want its different assumptions not to contradict each other; and (ii) we want the claims to follow logically from the premises. An assumption is neither true nor false. A set of assumptions, however, can be false in an important logical sense. If assumptions contradict each other,then the theory is said not to be logically consistent. For example, a very influential theory in international relations is Morgen-thau's realism. In one place its author assumes that all states always try to acquire the maximum amount of power, and in another place he assumes that there are status quo powers that are satisfied with what they have and do not seek more power. Taken separately, each assumption can be made (and has been made) and there is no logical problem. Taken together, however, they result in a contradiction because it cannot be the case that all states maximize power and some do not. So one of the assumptions has to go for the theory to remain logically consistent. You will be surprised how often this mistake is made. It is not that people intentionally construct false theories. It's just that sometimes it is very hard to figure out what exactly they assume in different parts of their argument.The strategic choice approach we take in this class, with its emphasis on formal mathematical specification of the assumptions is excellent in this regard: It never buries assumptions out of sight. Although it is possible to assume contradictory things in game theory, you will either get no results from the models you construct or (because the assumptions are plain to see), either you or someone else will soon notice the problem. Why do we insist that assumptions do not contradict each other? Let's say we observe some state does not acquire power when it can. It behaves like a status quo power, as the theory would assume, and its behavior is consistent with the theory's prediction. However, it contradicts the assumption that all states maximize power, which is necessary for the theory to work in the first place. So in the end, the theory says nothing about this observation. I should note that it is impossible to save this theory by jettisoning the assumption of all states being power maximizers. In this case, the theory, although logically consistent, predicts behavior that is clearly at odds with reality.The modified theory fails the other test, that of empirical validity. Now, a theory is also not logically consistent if the conclusions do not follow from the assumptions in a logically coherent way. This is a really hard problem to notice, correct, and sometimes even avoid. Sometimes people make additional assumptions along the way to construct a plausible causal mechanism,and it may not be clear at all where their logic fails. All three statements about the relationship between military power and war seem plausible, and in fact many smart people have written about them for years. stent if the conclusions do not follow from the assumptions in a logically coherent way. This is a really hard problem to notice, correct, and sometimes even avoid. Sometimes people make additional assumptions along the way to construct a plausible causal mechanism,and it may not be clear at all where their logic fails. All three statements about the relationship between military power and war seem plausible, and in fact many smart people have written about them for years. Logical consistency is a necessary condition for a good theory. But it is not sufficient. We also require the theory to actually tell us something non-trivial.

Differences between LIBERAL & REALIST IR THEORIES

liberals want peace as the only option, they see win-win solutions and argue that countries are not inherently hostile towards one another and there is no need to stress power because it can prematurely lead to nations using force. Realists see no importance of small factors like regimes and ideologies, realists do not focus on leaders personalities and focus more on the big picture. Liberals argue that once you take out bloodthirsty leaders like hitler that the world will be at peace where as realists don't focus on small aspects like leaders. Liberals emphasize that free trade among countries will promote peace.

Bismarckian

Contrived, unstable balance of power from 1870 to 1914

Realism

IR theory that emphasizes power and national interest.

Contradiction

In Marxism, a deep, incurable problem that rips the society apart (current term: dysfunction).

Why Do We Need Theories 2

In everyday language, the word "theory" has a peculiar connotation. How often have you heard someone disagree with another by saying, "Well, that's just a theory." This presumably is taken to imply that the assertion in question has no empirical validity because it does not correspond to anything observable in the real world. As such, it is dismissed as irrelevant. Today we shall learn the scientific meaning of the word "theory" and we shall see that it is a necessary ingredient of any explanation of any event. We shall learn what constitutes a proper theory, we shall also learn how to evaluate com-peting theories by using the scientific method. We shall learn to distinguish between scientific theory and faith. You may be surprised how often assertions that some call "theories" are really articles of faith.

Bourgeoisie

Middle class; pejorative in Marxist usage.

Strong State

Modern nation-state able to enforce sovereignty.

Superpower

Nation with far more power than others; able to wage all levels of warfare.

Westphalian

System set up by 1648 Peace of Westphalia that made sovereignty the norm.

Hierarchy of Power

Theory that peace is preserved when states know where they stand on a ladder of relative power