Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
In chapter 1, Jeffrey Taliaferro, Steven Lobell, and Norrin Ripsman posed three questions about the politics of resource extraction and domestic mobilization in grand strategy: How do states mobilize the resources necessary to pursue their chosen security policies? How much power do domestic actors have to obstruct the state when it seeks to mobilize resources in different settings? Finally, what determines who is more successful in bargaining games between the state and societal groups? In this chapter, I address those questions as they pertain to variations in the ability of great powers to mobilize the resources required to pursue expansionist grand strategies, specifically bids for regional hegemony. I present a neoclassical realist theory to explain the puzzle of under-expansion and under-aggression: the suboptimal reluctance to use force or to build up military power in pursuit of profit or security or both. Neoclassical realism can explain why only certain great powers could make bids for regional hegemony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In brief, I make the controversial argument that a particular type of ideology – fascism – enabled the leaders of Nazi Germany (and to a lesser extent Italy and Japan) to extract the resources and mobilize the domestic support necessary to undertake a sustained hegemonic bid.
This chapter consists of four sections: the first discusses how and why the puzzle of under-expansion and under-aggression arises.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.