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War and Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Richard N. Rosecrance
Richard N. Rosecrance
Affiliation:
University of California
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Extract

John Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power Politics errs in claiming that all national security decisions are rational ones. In contrast, sometimes state ambitions and actions go beyond what “rationality” typically would permit; sometimes states do not assert capabilities which they clearly possess. The explanations for such outcomes reside in realms that Mearsheimer either does not consider or dismisses too readily, such as alignments, democracy, ideology, and economic relationships. He also charts a role for the United States (a state confronting “the stopping power of water” that is too limited given the objectives (a balance of power) which he believes it should seek to create. His theory of war is too restricted and so therefore is his theory of peace. But he has fashioned one of the first new empirical essays in general realist theory in recent years and deserves to be commended. His approach will be the focus of debate and analysis for some time to come.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , October 2002 , pp. 137 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2002

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References

1 See Gruber, Lloyd, Ruling the World (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Snyder, Glenn, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1997Google Scholar); Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Powell, Robert, In the Shadow of Power (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

2 See Hirshleifer, Jack, The Dark Side ofthe Force (Cambridge:Cambridge University, 2001Google Scholar); as well as the work of Kroll, John, The Closure of the International System (Boulder, Colo.:Westview, 1995Google Scholar); and Snidal, Duncan“The Limits of the Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization 39 (Autumn 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

3 Mearsheimer does not quite accord realist status to Gulick, however, because of his attention to group interest. wrote, GulickEurope's Classical Balance of Power (New York:Norton, 1955Google Scholar). Carr's, E. H. most important work is The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 (New York:Harper and Row, 1964Google Scholar).

4 Mearsheimer writes: “I will attempt to show that offensive realism can be used to explain both the foreign policy of individual states and international outcomes” (p. 422).

5 Mearsheimer writes: “The more relative power the potential hegemon controls, the more likely it is that all of the threatened states will forgo buck-passing and form a balancing coalition” (p. 268). It should be noted, however, that Mearsheimer never says that the balance of power is automatic. It is important here to contrast Mearsheimer s position with that of Glenn Snyder, who believes it is in the interest of previous buck-passing nations ultimately to balance. Snyder writes: “At some point, the cost of resistance will be assessed as lower than the cost of allowing the aggression to succeed”; Snyder (fn. 5)

6 This is not because security is itself a goal that creates instability. It is because states entertain other goals as well. If all states aimed merely at security, offensive expansion would not be necessary. See Mearsheimer, 414.

7 See Mearsheimer, particularly 2–4. This argument is inconsistent with the notion that the pursuit of security alone would not cause instability. Mearsheimer writes: “The structure of the system forces states which seek only to be secure nonetheless to act aggressively toward each other” (p. 3).

8 There is a continuing gap between latent power (wealth) and military power. See pp. 75–82.

9 Mearsheimer writes: “Unfortunately a policy of engagement is doomed to fail” (p. 4). See also chap. 10, esp. 360–72.

10 The work of Marc Trachtenberg also underscores the essential importance of historical analysis to demonstrate theoretical conclusions. See particularly Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1991Google Scholar).

11 Mearsheimer writes: “The United States did not attempt to conquer territory in either Europe or Northeast Asia during the twentieth century because of the difficulty of projecting military forces across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans against the great powers located in those regions” (p. 236). The British held back for similar reasons. He notes “the stopping power of water” . . . “makes it virtually impossible for the United Kingdom to conquer and control all of Europe” (p. 237).

12 This difficulty also practically ruled out the achievement of world hegemony. Mearsheimer says: “The principal impediment to world domination is the difficulty of projecting power across the world's oceans onto the territory of a rival great power” (p. 41).

13 In contradistinction to Waltz, Mearsheimer writes: “There is no question that systemic factors constrain aggression, especially balancing by threatened states. But defensive realists exaggerate those restraining forces. Indeed, the historical record provides little support for their claim that offense rarely succeeds” (p. 39).

14 For Waltz, the prospect of encountering a balancing response makes an aggressor hesitate. Too much power can create a problem. He writes: “The goal the system encourages [nations] to seek is security. Increased power may or may not serve that end.... The first concern of states is not to maximize power but to maintain their positions in the system”; Waltz, , Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.:Addison Wesley, 1979), 126Google Scholar.

15 Democratic Finland does not quite count as a case. It was involved in titular war with the United States and Britain simply because it was resisting the Soviet Union during World War II.

16 See Zakaria, , From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1998Google Scholar).

17 Snyder, Jack, Myths of Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1991Google Scholar).

18 See Doyle, Michael, “Kant and Liberal Legacies in Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Summer and Fall 1983Google Scholar), pts. 1, 2; and Arthur Stein's essays in Rosecrance, R. and Stein, A., eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1993Google Scholar).

19 In so doing he also disagrees with the views of his fellow realists, Steve Van Evera and Jack Snyder. His own view of U.S. hesitancy to take over Canada and Mexico is also based on the present-day difficulties of conquest and assimilation of nationalist states. See also Liberman, , “The Spoils of Conquest,” International Security 18 (Fall 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

20 Robert Jervis comments: “If it is true that such a move would produce destabilizing effects, and if it is also true that Mearsheimer's theory describes how states behave, the American leaders should see that the move would be unfortunate and stay engaged”; personal communication, June 2002.

21 This problem also arises in all theories that attempt to explain deterministically the entire course of international politics.

22 See inter alia Andrea Talentino “Intervention in the International System” (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1998).

23 A colleague and I once asked members of our graduate theory class if they could explain the U.S. intervention in Somalia in terms of reigning realist theory. None could.

24 I owe one reader a particular debt for the formulation here.

25 Ian Kershaw contends that Hitler's charismatic ideology led him to stress destruction of domestic enemies (the Jews) as well as foreign foes in a campaign of violence that ultimately undermined not only his own power, but also the functioning of the German state. He writes: “Time after time Hitler set the barbaric tone, whether in hate-filled public speeches giving a green light for discriminatory actions against Jews and other 'enemies of the state,' or in closed addresses to Nazi functionaries or military leaders where he laid down, for example, the brutal guidelines for the occupation of Poland and for 'Operation Barbarossa'”; Kershaw, , “'Working towards the Fuhrer': Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship,” in Kershaw, Ian and Lewin, Moshe, eds., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 In much the same way many businessmen in the 1950s simply added 10 percent to their average cost curve to derive the price, believing that their restraint would foster goodwill over the long term.

27 The United States gave the Polaris system to Great Britain in 1962 and President Eisenhower was apparently prepared to give nuclear weapons to Germany. See Trachtenberg, Marc, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

28 As Paul Kecskemeti shows, countries are sometimes better off surrendering if their societies are threatened; Kecskemeti, , Strategic Surrender (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1961Google Scholar).

29 According to Inoki Masamichi, the Japanese army recognized its China “quagmire” in March 1940; personal communication. Sally Marks writes: “Tokyo was trapped in the dreaded China quagmire with too much invested to withdraw but no end in sight”; Marks, , The Ebbing of European Ascendancy (London:Arnold, 2002Google Scholar), 349. It did not withdraw, however, because the German victory over France in May-June opened the prospect of Japan moving south to encircle China.

30 See Akira Iriye, who notes:” Had the European stalemate continued, Tokyo's leaders might have been compelled to undertake a much more drastic reorientation of their China policy”; Iriye, , The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (London:Longman's, 1987), 95Google Scholar.

31 The U.S. capacity to mobilize military force also greatly exceeded Japan's. U.S. mobilization was so successful that as early as 1943 American planners were already moving toward reconversion to civilian industry.

32 Quoted in Hosoya, Chihiro, “The Tripartite Pact, 1939–1940,” in Morley, James, ed., Japaris Road to the Pacific War: Japan, Germany and the USSR, 1935–1940 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1976), 216Google Scholar.

33 Quoted in Marks (fn. 29), 370. Those who have visited the temple in Kyoto will recognize that its height guarantees that there is no surviving a jump.

34 Mearsheimer suggests that Japan thought that it might hold the United States at bay in a long war. In fact, it did not-Japanese calculations assumed U.S. compromise after Japanese victories in a short war. See p. 223.

35 The notion that states cannot concede great losses when faced with superior force and resolve is simply false. Russia gave up a huge amount of territory at Brest Litovsk in 1918. It conceded in Cuba in 1962. The United States gave way in Vietnam in 1972–75. In the Japanese case, they were not asked to surrender any metropolitan territory and in fact were fighting only for imperial gains, gains that every European power cast aside after World War II.

36 There is no evidence that Stalin considered attacking Nazi Germany. He feared only a German attack on him.

37 Omar Bartov writes: “As long as Germany pursued political and military goals which could be achieved by resorting to a series of brief, albeit highly brutal Blitzkrieg campaigns, it remained victorious. Once it moved beyond these relatively limited goals (by continuing the war with Britain and attacking the Soviet Union), Germany found itself increasingly embroiled in a total, world war which it had no hope of winning, due to the much greater industrial and manpower capacities of its opponents”; Bartov, “From Blitzkrieg to Total War: Controversial Links between Image and Reality,” in Kershaw and Lewin (fn. 25), 159.

38 Zara Steiner, personal communication, June 2002.

39 Parker, , The Second World War: A Short History (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2001), 84Google Scholar.

40 This latent power, moreover, could quickly be translated into actual military strength. The U.S. army, navy, and air strength quickly reached proportions capable of dealing with both the Germans and the Japanese.

41 Mearsheimer writes: “The United States did not attempt to conquer and assimilate Canada and Mexico after 1812 because it would have been an enormously difficult and costly task” (p. 488). After 1850 it could have done so, but “because of the power of nationalism, subduing the people in those countries and turning them into Americans would have been a difficult if not impossible task”(p. 488).

42 See Mearsheimer's admissions on p. 488.

43 See Nye, Joseph, The Paradox ofAmerican Power (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2002), 5–6Google Scholar; and Rosecrance, Richard, The Rise of the Virtual State (New York:Basic Books, 1999), 81–82Google Scholar.

44 See Kaysen, Carl, “Is War Obsolete,” International Security 15 (Spring 1990Google Scholar).

45 Honed during the Civil War and in conflicts with Mexico, the United States Army was briefly larger than its continental counterparts.

46 Mearsheimer grapples with the Japanese example but does not convince the reader that Japan is not a major exception to his case. He admits that the reasons for Japanese success across the Pacific and the Sea ofJapan had to do entirely with the weakness of the opposing powers, not with the “stopping power of water” (pp. 264–65).

47 Mearsheimer's “water argument” collapses with his admission that Japan could go over water because its East Asian opponents were weak, whereas the U.S. and Britain could not go over water because their European enemies were strong. Thus, it is the strength of opponents not geography that determines these outcomes.

48 This was the essential thesis in the work of Karl Deutsch; see Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1957Google Scholar).

49 This situation underscores again the key point made by Stephen Walt, that power is not equivalent to threat. See Walt, , The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1987Google Scholar).

50 See Rosecrance, Richard, ed., The New Great Power Coalition (Boulder, Colo.:Rowman and Lit tlefield, 2001Google Scholar); and Nye, Joseph Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Cannot Go It Alone (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar).

51 Argued in terms of homogeneity and heterogeneity of political form, this is the basic thesis of Aron, Raymond, Paix et guerre entre les nations (Paris:Calmann-Levy, 1962Google Scholar).

52 However, Raymond Aron classifies them as heterogeneous in political-ideological terms; Aron (fn. 51).

53 See the data in Russett, Bruce and Oneal, John, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York:W. W. Norton, 2001), 123Google Scholar, figure 1. Russett and Oneal conclude that (1) democracy, (2) economic interdependence, and (3) membership in international organizations reduce nations' propensity to violence. Foreign direct investment is left out of their calculations, however.

54 Yet while Germany warred with Britain and France with Britain, America did not fight the United Kingdom when it passed the latter, nor did Japan attack the Soviet Union after 1980 when its GDP surpassed Moscow's.

55 The two major historical cases of bipolarity-Athens versus Sparta and Rome versus Carthage-most assuredly did not promote balance or prevent disastrous war. See also Copeland, DaleThe Origins of Major War (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 2000), 210Google Scholar–12.

56 Mearsheimer says: “War [in Europe] was going on 18.3 percent of the time in balanced multipolarity, as compared with 2.2 percent in bipolarity and 79.5 percent in unbalanced multipolarity” (p. 358). These figures chart all wars involving a major power in Europe.

57 If rising powers ultimately decline, however, why not wait for their weakening and inevitable demise? Gilpin provides a rationaleforallowing domestic and economic processes to work themselves out without the need for external balancing; Gilpin, , War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1982Google Scholar). Paul Kennedy offers a similar view; Kennedy, , The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York:Random House, 1987Google Scholar).

58 Walt (fn. 49) is an exception to this dictum.

59 See, for example, Lake, David, Entangling Alliances: American Foreign Policy in Its Century (Prince ton:Princeton University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

60 Russett and Oneal (fn. 53), 43.

61 See Boulding, Kenneth, Conflict and Defense (New York:Harper and Brothers, 1962Google Scholar).

62 See particularly Kaysen (fn. 44).

63 Trachtenberg, “Realism as a Theory of Peace” (Manuscript, UCLA, 2001), 27. Robert Jervis writes: 'The growth of a nation's power, if it becomes great enough to menace other strong states, will be at least partially self-defeating; the attempt to dominate the international system will call up a counterbalancing coalition that will restrain the state”; Jervis, , “A Political Science Perspective on the Balance of Power and the Concert,” American Historical Review 97 (June 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

64 See particularly Schroeder, Paul, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994Google Scholar). Schroeder regards the period 1815–53 as the real “long peace” in international politics. He writes: “It ended the whole war once and for all, stopping all the fighting in every theatre of conflict. It ended the competition in arms, led to a general and substantial armaments reduction, and averted any serious revival of the arms race for forty years. It addressed and settled at least in principle, all the issues before it leaving no major dispute unresolved”; Schroeder, “Reply to Tracht-enberg,” Orbis (Spring 1996), 307–13.

65 O n this point, see also Organski, A. F. K., World Politics (New York:Alfred Knopf, 1960Google Scholar).

66 The failure to recognize this point helps to account for the difference between those who favor a “balance” and those who support an “overbalance” of power as a means of achieving peace. The “balance theorists” focus on individual states, while those who support an overbalance consider coalitions as well as states. See Hinsley, F. H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1964Google Scholar); and Organski (fn. 65).

67 This may well be because of Paul Schroeder's distinction between alliances that are vehicles of balancing and/or expansion and those that are tools of management. See Schroeder, , “Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,” in Knorr, Klaus, ed., HistoricalDimensions ofNational Security Problems (Lawrence:University Press of Kansas, 1975Google Scholar). Schroeder writes: “Frequently, the desire to exercise . .. control over an ally's policy was the main reason that one power, or both entered into the alliance” (p. 230).

68 See Paul Kennedy's calculations of the power of Triple Alliance and Triple Entente; Kennedy, , “The First World War: In the International Power System,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

69 See Bruun, Geoffrey, Europe and the French Imperium, 1799–1814 (New York:Harper, 1938Google Scholar). Bruun refers to the French tie with Austria, for example, as an “imitation alliance” (p. 187).

70 On the balance in 1914, see Kennedy (fn. 68).

71 Mearsheimer's periodization, however, should admit a further modification. It is important to stress that the stability of bipolarity after 1945 represented the effective deterrence of a superior coalition over an inferior one. The Western nations including Japan amassed far greater economic, political, and eventually military power than that possessed by the Soviet Union and its allies. That the United States did not use that power-to expand territorially-is also a reflection of the status quo orientation of much of American policy during the cold war. See also Wagner, Harrison, “What Was Bipolarity?” International Organization 47 (Winter 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

72 See also Rosecrance, Richard N., Action andReaction in World Politics: International Systems in Per spective (Boston:Little-Brown, 1963Google Scholar), chaps. 1–6.

73 Sometimes these alliance combinations will contain within them structural and unbalanced relations among participants of the sort: A is negative toward B, B is positive toward C, and C is positive toward A. The Russia-China-U.S. triangle was like this in the 1970s and so was the Russian-Austrian-German triangle in the 1880s. The lack of structural balance in the system keeps conflicting parties together. See McDonald, H. Brooke and Rosecrance, Richard, “Alliance and Structural Balance in the International System,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 29 (March 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

74 Jervis writes: “DD-the actor's third choice-is required by narrow self interest and rationality only if the game is played just once; if the game is to be repeated for years, this is not the case” (p. 720). “Starting from assumptions similar to those of the balance of power, this model indicates that a different, more cooperative way of dealing with anarchy and the security dilemma can emerge under certain circumstances. Cooperation is most likely when the gains from exploiting the other (DC) and the costs of being exploited (CD) are both relatively low, when mutual competition (DD) is much worse than mutual cooperation (cc), when exploitation is not much better than mutual cooperation, and when being exploited is not much worse than mutual competition” (p. 721).

75 See Axelrod, , The Evolution of Cooperation (New York:Basic Books, 1985Google Scholar); idem, The Complexity of Cooperation (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1997Google Scholar). Axelrod acknowledges that “relying on individuals to punish defections may not be enough to maintain a norm” (Complexity, 55).

76 See Hirshleifer, Jack and Martinez Coll, Juan, “What Strategies Can Support the Evolutionary Emergence of Cooperation?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 32 (1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

77 See Rosecrance, Richard, The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century (New York:Basic Books, 1999Google Scholar), appendix.

78 See Rosecrance, Richard, ed., The New Great Power Coalition (Boulder, Colo.:Rowman and Lit-tlefield, 2001Google Scholar), chaps. 1,19.

79 See Nye, Joseph, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Cannot Go It Alone (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar).

80 See also Mearsheimer, , “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

81 See Nye (fn. 79 ), flyleaf.

82 Robert Jervis observes: “If it is true that such a move would produce destabilizing effects, and if it is also true that Mearsheimer's theory describes how states behave, the American leaders should see that the move would be unfortunate and stay engaged”; personal communication, June 2002.

83 As Mearsheimer recognizes elsewhere (fn. 80).

84 See Schelling, , Arms and Influence (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1966Google Scholar); and Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1959CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

85 See also Acheson, Dean G., Present at the Creation (New York:W. W. Norton, 1987Google Scholar). Saving France, U.S. troops in Western Europe in the 1930s would also have prevented a German attack on Russia. Hitler would not have risked a two-front war.

86 His argument that late-joining participants fare better than early antagonists in war is irrelevant if the war can be avoided altogether.

87 See Lemann, Nicholas, “The Next World Order,” New Yorker, April 1, 2002Google Scholar.

88 The early version of this view was sketched in greater detail in by Khalilzad, Zalmay, From Containment to Global Leadership (Santa Monica, Calif:RAND Corporation, 1997Google Scholar).

89 The figure of thirty thousand soldiers has sometimes been cited.

90 A high administration official close to Vice President Cheney declared recently: “The issue is not inspections. This issue is the Iraqis' promise not to have weapons of mass destruction, their promise to recognize the boundaries of Kuwait, their promise not to threaten other countries, and other promises that they made in '91 and a number of UN resolutions”; Lemann (fn. 87), 48. These promises have not been kept and in the view of the official, “There is no basis in Iraq's past behavior to have confidence in good-faith efforts on their part to change their behavior” (ibid.).

91 Though Paul Kennedy had preached the dangers of “overstretch,” his recent views are quite different; see Kennedy, , The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York:Random House, 1997Google Scholar); and idem, Financial Times, February 1, 2002.

92 Riker, William, The Theory of Political Coalition;, (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1962Google Scholar).

93 See Larson, Deborah and Shevchenko, Alexei, “Mikhail Gorbachev and the Role of Emulation and Status Incentives,” in Rosecrance, Richard, ed., The New Great Power Coalition (Boulder, Colo.; Rowman and Littlefield, 2001Google Scholar); and Ikenberry, G. John, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2001Google Scholar). Ikenberry writes: “Why was Gorbachev willing to undertake this risky unilateral move to end the Cold War through accommodation, steep arms reductions, and a hands-off” policy in Eastern Europe? There are many reasons, of course, but the overall institutional character of the Western order-the United States and its European allies-presented a relatively benign face to the Soviet Union during a time of troubles. The Western democracies together formed a grouping of countries that made it very difficult for them individually or collectively to exploit or dominate the Soviet Union as it contemplated the transformation of its posture toward the outside world” (p. 219).

94 How the United States would expect to accomplish this task is unclear. New tariffs on Chinese goods would be a violation of American undertakings under the World Trade Organization. A suspension of U.S. direct investment in China would be possible but strongly resisted by American manufacturers. In any event, these measures will clearly fail when Chinese growth is determined by domestic Chinese demand, and largely beyond foreign ability to influence.