StudySpace: Essentials of International Relations 4e.

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I. Introduction: This chapter introduces prominent approaches to mitigating the effects of the security dilemma as well as how insecurity can be managed short of war.

• War is the oldest, most prevalent, and most salient issues in international relations
• Attention to war and security is warranted: Security comes first in international relations; all other competing values such as human rights, the environment, and economic development presuppose security.
• Although 3.5 billion have died in the 14,500 armed struggles throughout history, the number and intensity of war has dropped by one-half since 1991.
• International relations theorists are concerned not only with the causes of war but also with how security can be assured short of war. States have sought security in the absence of war by amassing more and better armaments, building a strong industrial base, and mobilizing a military.
• Ironically, one state’s becoming more secure diminishes another state’s security, resulting in a security dilemma. The security dilemma results in a permanent condition of tension and power-conflicts among states.

II. Causes of War

• The Individual: Both the characteristics of individual leaders and the general attributes of people have been blamed for war

• Realist interpretation: Characteristics of the masses lead to the outbreak of war. Aggressive behavior is adopted by virtually all species to ensure survival. War is the product of biologically innate human characteristics or a flawed human nature.
• Liberal interpretation: Misperceptions by leaders, such as seeing aggressiveness where it may not be intended, attributing the actions of one person to a group, can lead to the outbreak of war.

• State and Society: War occurs because of the internal structures of states

• Liberal explanations: Some types of economic systems are more war prone than others, such as aristocratic states. Republican regimes are least likely to wage war. Democracies are pacific because democratic norms and culture inhibit the leadership from taking actions leading to war.
• Radical explanations: Conflict and war are attributed to the internal dynamics of capitalist economic systems. The competition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat over economic dominance and political leadership. This struggle leads to war.

• The International System

• Realist interpretations: The international system is equivalent to a state of war; it is anarchic and is governed only by a weak and overarching rule of law. States themselves are the final authorities and the ultimate arbiters of disputes; herein resides sovereignty.
• A state’s security is ensured only by its accumulating military and economic power.
• Realist variants: Power Transition Theory: Represented by the work of Kenneth Organski, power transition theory is not just the inequality of capabilities among states that leads to war, it is changes in state capabilities that lead to war. War occurs when a dissatisfied challenger state thus begins to attain the same level of capabilities as the hegemon.
• Radical interpretations: Dominant capitalist states within the international system need to expand economically, leading to wars with developing regions over control of natural resources and labor markets.

• The Case of Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait

• At the individual level, perhaps Saddam Hussein calculated that his actions would not elicit a military response from the international community. Hussein’s individual characteristics, including his basic insecurity and ruthless techniques, help to explain Iraq’s actions.
• At the state level, Iraq was just acting in its own national interest. Iraq felt that the land (oil fields) annexed had been illegally seized during the British occupation around World War I. The 1980-88 war with Iran had also reduced Iraq’s oil revenues.
• At the international system level, U.S.-led multinational coalition (with approval from the UN Security Council) launched a war against Iraq, and forty-two days later a cease-fire was accepted.
• The Case of Yugoslavia
  • At the individual level, Slobodan Milosevic was able to stoke a Serb ultranationalism that threatened other groups in the Yugoslav federation.
  • At the state level, the Serbs felt themselves in an inferior economic position to their Croat and Slovenian neighbors. Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo also felt they were victims of centuries of economic discrimination and were the challengers for the control of the Bosnian state and territory of Kosovo.
  • At the international system level, the European Union, the UN, and NATO eventually inserted their multilateral presence.

III. Categorizing Wars

• General War: armed conflict involving massive loss of life and widespread destruction, usually with many participants including major powers.
• Reasons for general wars: to conquer and occupy enemy territory, to take over the government, and to win conflicts over ideas and religious beliefs.

• Since the end of World War II, general wars have become less frequent, the number of countries participating in such wars has fallen, and the length of time such wars last has shortened.
• Limited War: the objective is not surrender and occupation of enemy territory, but to attain limited goals. The Korean War, Gulf War, and conflicts in Sudan and Sierra Leone are examples.
• Limited wars and particularly civil wars that are limited in nature have increased precipitously. Two-thirds of all conflicts since World War II are civil wars.
• Characteristics of limited wars:
  1. They last a long time, with periods of fighting punctuated by periods of relative calm.
  2. Human costs are high: both combatants and civilians are killed and maimed
  3. Food supplies are interrupted
  4. Diseases spread as health systems suffer
  5. Money is diverted from constructive economic development to purchasing armaments

IV. How Wars are Fought

• Conventional Means: Using weapons technologies available at the time utilized to defeat the enemy on the territorial battlefield.

• Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons

Debate over nuclear proliferation: Some scholars argue that slow proliferation by states with the capabilities will deter potential enemies from such action, while others argue that proliferation is more apt to lead to a failure in deterrence or an accidental war.

• Asymmetric Warfare: warfare conducted between parties of unequal strength. The weaker party seeks to neutralize its opponent’s strengths by exploiting that opponent’s weaknesses.

Guerilla warfare: the weaker party may often use a civilian population to provide supplies like food and shelter and to gather intelligence where they have no such capability. Fighters rely on hit-and-run tactics until enemy is worn down. Examples include the Algerians against the French in the 1950s, and by the Taliban against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

• Terrorism: Involves four major elements:
  1. premeditation
  2. motivation or a cause, whether religious, economic, or political
  3. targets, usually non-combatants
  4. secretiveness, where perpetrators belong to clandestine groups or are secretly sponsored by states

• Terrorism has a long history, occurring during the Greek and Roman times, in the Middle Ages, the French Revolution, and in Nazi Germany, by Basque separatists (ETA) and most recently by Al Qaeda in the Middle East.
• Since the 1990s, terrorist acts have become more lethal, the infrastructure to support terrorism has become more sophisticated, and groups practicing terrorism are more wide-ranging.

• Responding to terrorism has become increasingly difficult perpetrators have networks of supporters in the resident populations.
• The international community has taken action against terrorism by creating a framework of rules and blocking the flow of financial resources to global networks.

V. The Just War Tradition

• Just war tradition: draws on ancient Greek philosophy and developed by St. Augustine, Hugo Grotius, and Michael Waltzer. Just war theory asserts that there are several criteria that can make the decision to go to war a just one:

• Must be a just cause (self-defense or massive violation of human rights)
• Leaders need to have the correct intentions
• Desire to end abuses and establish a just peace
• Have exhausted all other possibilities for ending the abuse

Just war tradition also addresses conduct in war. Combatants and non-combatants must be differentiated, and the violence used needs to be proportionate to the ends to be achieved.

• The Debate over Humanitarian Intervention
  • Just war tradition directly contradicts the hallmark of the Westphalian tradition, the respect for state sovereignty.
  • Since the end of World War II, the notion has emerged that all human beings are in need of protection and that states have an obligation to intervene, a belief known as the responsibility to protect.
  • If one’s own state does not provide protection, then it is the obligation of others to protect and intervene as necessary.

VI. Approaches to Managing Insecurity

• Liberal Approaches: Collective Security and Arms Control/Disarmament
  • The Collective Security Ideal: although wars can occur, they should be prevented. Wars will not occur if all parties exercise restraint.
  • Collective security does not always work because the aggressor cannot always be easily identified, and a state may be unwilling to take action against an ally or foe.
  • Arms Control and Disarmament: fewer weapons means greater security. By regulating arms proliferation and reducing amount of arms and type of weapons employed, the costs of the security dilemma are reduced.
  • Complete disarmament schemes are unlikely because cheaters would be rewarded, but incremental disarmament remains a possibility.

• Realist Approaches: Balance of Power and Deterrence
  • Balance of Power: an equilibrium between any two parties. States must make rational and calculated evaluations of the costs and benefits of particular policies that determine the state’s role in a balance of power.
  • A major limitation of the balance-of-power approach is its inability to manage security during periods of fundamental change because it supports the status quo.
  • Deterrence: Balance of Power Revisited: war can be prevented by the threat of the use of force. States must build up their arsenals in order to present a credible threat.
  • Key assumptions:
    1. rationality of decision-makers
    2. nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable level of destruction and that decision-makers will not resort to armed aggression against a nuclear state
    3. alternatives to war are available irrespective of the situation.
  • These assumptions are troublesome because not all decision- makers are rational. The security environment makes deterrence more problematic because of terrorism conducted by nonstate actors and willingness of some groups to use suicide terrorism. The U.S. is also approaching nuclear primacy and thus deterrence may not serve to restrain U.S. actions.

VII. A Changing View of International Security

• Outsourced security: contracting private companies by the government, such as Blackwater, Eric, Alpha, and Southern Cross perform diverse tasks: servicing military airplanes and ships, providing food for armies, training troops, and guarding prisoners of war.
• Although data is difficult to obtain, a number of questions arise: Do they save the military money? Where are there loyalties? Can be held accountable for actions taken in war?
• Changing nature over who should be protected: should only states be protected, or should individuals be protected as well? What should the individual be protected against?