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The Costs of Major Wars: The Phoenix Factor*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

A.F.K. Organski  and
Jacek Kugler
A.F.K. Organski
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Jacek Kugler
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Abstract

A major unexplored area in the field of international politics is the consequences of major war for members of the international system in terms of power lost or gained. This paper explores these shifts of power among neutrals, winners, and losers as a result of these wars, using a sample of 32 cases and time series analysis. The findings register unexpected but systematic patterns after major conflicts; while winners and neutrals are affected marginally by the conflict, losers' powers are at first eroded. Over the long run (15–20 years), though, the effects of the loss dissipate; losers accelerate their recovery and soon resume antebellum status. It is this phenomenon that the authors call the phoenix factor.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 1347 - 1366
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

*

This paper is a portion of a much larger work on the beginnings, outcomes, consequences, and prevention of wars. We wish to acknowledge our gratitude to the Earhart Foundation for its financial support in connection with this project.

References

1 Organski, A.F. K., World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1968), p. 104 Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl, The Analysis of International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 70 Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. 26 Google Scholar.

2 This distinction between national capabilities and national power is widely used in international politics. Throughout this paper we are concerned solely with national capabilities and power resources; however, to relieve the tedium of repeating over and over again “national capabilities” we shall use three terms–national capabilities, power resources, and national power–in terchangeably.

3 Holsti, Ole, “The Belief System and National Images: A Case Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 6 (1962), pp. 245–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. also Holsti, K. J., International Politics: A Framework for Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), Ch. 7Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Aron, Raymond, Peace and War, Trans. Howard, Robert and Fox, Annette (New York: Doubleday, 1966)Google Scholar; cf. also, Coplin, William, Introduction to International Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1970)Google Scholar; Organski, Ch. 6–8; Singer, J. David, Bremer, Stuart, and Stuckey, John, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty and Major Power War, 1820–1965,” in Peace, War and Numbers, ed. Russett, Bruce (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1972), pp. 21–27 Google Scholar; Choucri, Nazli and Meadows, Dennis, “International Implications of Technological Development and Population Growth: A Simulated Model of International Conflict” (Center for International Studies, MIT, mimeographed, 1971), pp. 23–24 Google Scholar. This presentation considers technology an independent variable.

5 Attempts to measure “political development” are reviewed in Adelman, Irma and Morris, Cynthia, Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Alternate explicit attempts to estimate a single measure of national capabilities are: Fucks, Wilhelm, Formeln Zur Macht (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1965)Google Scholar; German, Clifford, “A Tentative Evaluation of World Power,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 4 (03 1960), pp. 138–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Organski, pp. 207–14; Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, pp. 19–49; Knorr, Klaus, Military Power and Potential (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1970)Google Scholar; Cline, Ray, World Power Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 We compared the performance of GNP over time with the measure developed by Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, the only other multidimensional measure available for the same period. Both measures are highly correlated and the similarity increases as the reliability of data improves. (R2 of .95 was obtained for the sample of major powers for 1870–1970.) See Kugler, Jacek, “The Consequences of War” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1973), pp. 82–96 Google Scholar.

8 See Rosen, Steven, “War, Power, and the Willingness to Suffer,” in Peace, War and Numbers, p. 171 Google Scholar; and Hitch, Charles and McKean, Roland, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967) Pt. 1Google Scholar; Alcock, Norman and Newcombe, Alan, “Perceptions of National Power,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 14 (1970), pp. 335–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For opposite views see Heiss, Klaus P., Knorr, Klaus, and Morgenstern, Oskar, Long Term Projections of Political and Military Power (Princeton: Mathematica Inc., 1973)Google Scholar.

9 See Notestein, Frank, Taeuber, Irene, Kirk, Dudley, Coale, Ansley, and Riser, Louise, The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union; Population Projection 1940–1970 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1944), Ch. 3Google Scholar; also Frumkin, Gregory, Population Changes in Europe Since 1939 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1951)Google Scholar.

10 Scholars have justifiably cautioned that given the deficiencies in data and models in the social sciences, projections should not exceed 20 years; see Heiss, p. 107; Simon Kuznets demonstrates that growth rates of developed countries remained constant or increased in the last century; see his Economic Growth of Nations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1971), Ch. 1Google Scholar.

11 Kugler,pp. 116–17.

12 Frumkin, p. 17.

13 Maddison, Angus, Economic Growth in the West (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1964), pp. 194–203 Google Scholar; see also Kugler, pp. 31–36.

14 Thomas Sanders, Lutz Erbring, Department of Political Science, and J. Landwehr, Statistical Research Laboratory, University of Michigan, generously contributed to the solution of this difficult methodological problem. They are not responsible, of course, for any weaknesses of the final product.

15 See Kugler, Ch. 4 and App. III.

16 This procedure was used by economists in the study of economic depressions. See Burns, Arthur, ed., The Business Cycle in a Changing World, 2nd ed. (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1969), pp. 3–53 Google Scholar.

17 We accept Quincy Wright's theoretical definition of war as “the legal condition which equally permits two or more hostile groups to carry on conflict by armed force,” in A Study of War, abr. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 7 Google Scholar; and we further accept the operational definition of Lewis Richardson that any conflict resulting in the death of approximately 300 people can be considered a war. Since our concern is with international war we utilized the list of wars between 1815 and 1965 provided by Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin in their Wages of War, 1816–1965: A Statistical Handbook (New York: Wiley, 1972), pp. 17–19, 30–32, and 58–70 Google Scholar.

18 The bulk of the capability data for our study comes from Angus Maddison, “Trends in Output and Welfare,” unpublished manuscript, 1972. The gratitude of the authors goes to Dr. Maddison, who generously allowed us access to a data set, as yet unpublished, which made this study possible. For a complete data set see Kugler, App. II.

19 See Deutsch, p. 70; Heiz, John, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 104 Google Scholar.

20 Singer and Small, pp. 58–90 and Russett, Bruce, Singer, J. D., and Small, Melvin, “National Political Units in the Twentieth Century: Standard List,” American Political Science Review, 62 (09 1968), 932–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ibid.

22 Wherever more than 50 percent of the working-age males were in non-agricultural pursuits, the country was considered developed.

23 Kindlebeiger, Charles, “International Political Theory from the Outside,” in Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, ed. Fox, William (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. Our operational indicator of a loss in war is based on the observation that winners in the past have extracted from losers some territory, while never giving up any of their own. We assume, but have no evidence, that losers would have exacted territory from their adversaries had they won the war and cannot rerun the conflicts to see what would have happened had the outcome been reversed.

24 Our results are not simply the effects of the aggregations. The number of nations in each of our major analytic categories is very small; however, the number of points used in our base period in order to make our calculations is quite adequate. Conscious that aggregations inevitably distort results, we inspected the behavior of each of the countries to see if their individual performance deviated widely from the performance of the analytic groups, and we found that this was not the case. Moreover, similar behaviors of the analytic groups is found in partition after partition making clear that aggregation does not cause the results obtained.

25 Keynes, John, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, 1920)Google Scholar. For discussion of the short-term effects of wars on belligerents, see United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945)Google Scholar; cf. also, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japan's War Economy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946)Google Scholar.

26 Two works argue at length that there are enormous permanent losses as a result of war. See Angeli, Norman, The Great Illusion (New York: Putnam, 1933)Google Scholar, and Nef, John, War and Human Progress (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950)Google Scholar.

27 For the effects of war on belligerent populations, see United Nations, The World Population Situation in 1970, Population Studies No. 49 (New York: United Nations, 1971)Google Scholar.

28 Kuznets, p. 43.

29 Chailes Tilly, personal communication to the senior author.

30 One would expect the growth rates of aid recipients to show effects of the foreign help a year after aid had been received. We tested our assumptions of time response by lagging aid and recovery rates for 2 and 3 years and our results remained unchanged. We calculated the recovery rates of each recipient by subtracting the growth rate in the year aid was received from the growth rates posted in the following year. For example, if a nation posted –15 years of growth in 1948 and –13 years of growth in the following year the recovery rate was adjudged 2 years. It should be emphasized that negative numbers do not necessarily indicate a lack of growth but rather a lack of recovery.

Recovery rates were calculated as follows:

Recovery Rate = Relative Growthi+i – Relative Growthi

Where i = Recovery Years

Data on aid was obtained from the Agency for International Development, Office of Statistics and Reports, U.S. Economic Assistance Programs Administered by the Agency for International Development and Predecessor Agencies, April 3, 1942-June 30, 1971 (Washington, D.C.: AID, 1972), pp. 46, 68–76 Google Scholar; population figures from Arthur Banks, Cross-Polity Time-Series Data (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), Segment 1, pp. 3–54 Google Scholar; our sample included only West Germany, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom as we were only interested in major power behavior. No data on Soviet aid was available.

31 Kugler, pp. 196–202.

32 The literature on aid is immense; an excellent review is available in Little, I. M. D. and Clifford, J. M., International Aid (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968)Google Scholar. The “big push” proposition was derived from Rosenstein-Rodan, Paul, “International Aid for Underdeveloped Countries,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 43 (05 1961), 107–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his classic arguments on the “big push” proposition in “Problems of Industrialization of Eastern and South Eastern Europe,” The Economic Journal, 53 (06 1943), 204–07Google Scholar, elaborated in “Notes on the Theory of the ‘Big Push’” in Economic Development for Latin America, ed. Willis, Howard (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1961), pp. 57–66 Google Scholar.

33 For a classic discussion of the uses of foreign aid see Milton Friedman, “Foreign Economic Aid: Means and Objectives,” and Wolf, Charles Jr., “Economic Aid Reconsidered,” in The United States and the Developing Economies, ed. Ranis, Gustav, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1973), pp. 250–78Google Scholar.

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