Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T19:29:16.192Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Randall L. Schweller
Randall L. Schweller
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access

Abstract

Realists have long viewed uneven rates of growth among states as a major cause of wars. According to strict logic of realpolitik, a declining dominant power should launch a preventive war against a rising challenger as a prudent long-term security strategy. But historically, power shifts have only sometimes resulted in war. Although preventive war has been the preferred response of declining authoritarian leaders, no democracy has ever initiated such a war. Instead, depending on the regime type of the rising challenger, democratic states have chosen accommodation, defensive alliances, or internal balancing to solve the problem of impending decline. In addition to establishing the correlation between preventive war and authoritarian regimes and explaining why democratic states forgo this option, this essay (1) develops a model based on the domestic structures of the leader and challenger that predicts which strategy will be employed by a declining dominant power and (2) tests the propositions against historical survey data and several in-depth case studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , January 1992 , pp. 235 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Maoz, Zeev and Abdolali, Nasrin, “Regime Types and International Conflict, 1816–1976,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 33 (March 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Babst, Dean V., “A Force for Peace,” Industrial Research 14 (April 1972);Google ScholarRummel, Rudolph J., “The Freedom Factor,” Reason 15 (July 1983)Google Scholar; idem, “Libertarianism and International Violence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 27 (March 1983)Google Scholar; Chan, Steve, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall … Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (December 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David, “The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816–1965,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1 (Summer 1976)Google Scholar; and Weede, Erich, “Democracy and War Involvement,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (December 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Maoz and Abdolali (fn. 1), 31.

3 For an extensive discussion on the inadequacy of many research designs in quantitative international politics, see Most, Benjamin A. and Starr, Harvey, Inquiry, Logic, and International Politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar, chaps. 3–5. For a similar argument, see Levy, Jack S., “The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique,” in Midlarsky, Manus I., ed., Handbook of War Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 282–83Google Scholar. It must be pointed out, however, that Levy intentionally limits his critique of the “quantitative empirical literature” to those studies on the relationship between internal and external conflict, which he calls “basically descriptive correlational analyses.”

4 Levy, Jack S., “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,” World Politics 40 (October 1987), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lebow, Richard Ned, “Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump through Them?” International Security 9 (Summer 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, , Between Peace and war (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 261–63Google Scholar, 265; Vagts, Alfred, Defense and Diplomacy (New York: King's Crown Press, 1956), 263–350Google Scholar; Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evera, Stephen Van, “Causes of War” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1984), 72–76Google Scholar; Snyder, Jack L., “Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914,” in Jervis, Robert, Lebow, Richard Ned, and Stein, Janice Gross, eds., Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 160–61;Google ScholarNiou, Emerson M. S. and Ordeshook, Peter C., “Preventive War and the Balance of Power: A Game-Theoretic Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 31 (September 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The logic of expected-utility theory posits that states go to war simply when they expect to do better than they would by remaining at peace. See Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de, “The War Trap Revisited,” American Political Science Review 79 (March 1985)Google Scholar; idem, , “The Con tribution of Expected Utility Theory to the Study of International Conflict,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988)Google Scholar. Using the logic of expected-utility theory, Scott D. Sagan argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Japanese decision to initiate war against the U.S. was rational. Sagan, See, “The Origins of the Pacific War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The Abbe Galiani, as cited in Vagts (fn. 4), 263.

7 For a discussion of balance of power and preventive war, see Osgood, Robert E. and Tucker, Robert W., Force, Order, and Justice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 97–100Google Scholar; Fénelon, François, “Supplément à l'examen de conscience,” in Fénelon, Écrits et lettres politiques, ed. Urbain, Charles (Paris: Editions Bossard, 1920), 80–83Google Scholar; Gulick, Edward Vose, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York: W. W. Norton, 1955), 33–37Google Scholar.

8 Gilpin, , War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy (fn. 4), 97.

9 Organski, and Kugler, , The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 13–63Google Scholar; Organski, A. F. K., World Politics, 2d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 371Google Scholar. For other examples of theories of power transition, see Modelski, George, “The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (April 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doran, Charles F. and Parsons, Wes, “War and the Cycle of Relative Power,” American Political Science Review 74 (December 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Goldstein, Joshua S., Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, chap. 12. Goldstein argues that periods of sustained growth in world production lead to Great Power wars initiated by challengers who “try to ‘catch up’ with the leading economic and military power” (p. 277).

10 Levy (fn. 4), 86. Although I will refer to shifts in the actual distribution of power, the perception of a damaging power shift, real or imagined, is more precisely the necessary condition to motivate a preventive war. As William C. Wohlforth points out, “If ‘power’ influences international relations, it must do so through the perceptions of those who act on behalf of states. The quantitative measures of power used in the literature to test various power theories are thus estimators of perceived power.” See Wohlforth, , “The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance,” World Politics 39 (April 1987), 353CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Henry Kissinger is perhaps the most notable exception. See Kissinger, Henry A., “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” Daedalus 95 (Spring 1966), 503–29Google Scholar, reprinted in idem, , American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 11–50Google Scholar; and idem, , A World Restored (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964)Google Scholar.

12 Here anarchy means not conflict but rather the absence of a sovereign arbiter to make and enforce agreements.

13 Waltz, Kenneth N., Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 159Google Scholar. For his discussion of the inadequacy of “second image” explanations of war, see pp. 120–23.

14 Levy, Jack S., “Domestic Politics and War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988), 662CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Maoz and Abdolali (fn. 1) found that “democracies rarely clash with one another, and never fight one another in war” (p. 3). For similar statements, see Dolye, Michael W., “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Summer 1983), 213–15Google Scholar; Babst (fn. 1), 55; Rummel (fn. 1, July 1983); idem (fn. 1, March 1983), 28–29; Chan (fn. 1). Small and Singer (fn. 1) also find that democracies do not fight against one another, but they do not attribute this to the inherent peacefulness of democracies or to a “pacific union” among them. Instead, they suggest that the dearth of contiguous democratic states since 1816 explains the long liberal peace (p. 67).

15 Rummel (fn. 1, July 1983), 34; emphasis in original.

16 Weede (fn. 1); Small and Singer (fn. 1); McGowan, P. J. and Shapiro, H. B., The Comparative Study of Foreign Policy (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1973), 94Google Scholar; Zinnes, Dina, “Why War? Evidence on the Outbreak of International Conflict,” in Gurr, T. R., ed., Handbook of Political Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1980), 331–60Google Scholar.

17 Doyle, Michael W., “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2,” Philosphy and Public Affairs 12 (Fall 1983), 324–25Google Scholar; emphasis in original. See also idem, , “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80 (December 1986)Google Scholar. For insightful analysis of Kant's theory of the “Eternal Peace” from a realist perspective, see Waltz, Kenneth N., “Kant, Liberalism, and War,” American Political Science Review 56 (June 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Chan (fn. 1). However, Maoz and Abdolali (fn. 1) find that “as the proportion of democratic-democratic interaction opportunities increased, so did the level of conflict in the system. On the other hand, the correlations between the proportion of autocratic-autocratic interaction opportunities and the same dispute measures were slightly negative, but … statistically insignificant” (p. 26).

19 Singer and Small (fn. 1), 55; Doyle (fn. 14), 212. Specifically, Doyle's definition requires male suffrage of at least 30% and female suffrage to be granted within a generation of its initial demand.

20 Weede (fn. 1) disagrees, stating that “economic freedom is usually not part of definitions of democracy” (p. 655). But the current democratization of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union seems to demonstrate that, in addition to political freedom, a market and private-property economy may be an indispensable ingredient of democracy.

It is important to note, however, that the addition of juridical rights and economic freedom to the definition of democracy has had no effect on the coding (democratic or nondemocratic) of the cases in this study, as all politically free states also contained both of these elements.

21 Rummel defines freedom in the expansive sense as economic freedom plus political freedom (civil liberties plus political rights). See Rummel (fn. 1, March 1983), 30–31. Doyle (fn. 14) refers to the institution of a market and private-property economy in his definition of a “liberal regime” (p. 212). A liberal democracy obviously implies both economic and political freedom.

22 Kant, “Eternal Peace,” quoted in Waltz (fn. 17), 333.

23 As quoted in Friedrich, Carl, The Philosophy of Kant: Imtnanuel Kant's Moral and Political Writings (New York: Modern Library, 1977), 438Google Scholar.

24 I am using the definition of war developed by the Correlates of War (cow) Project, which requires at least 1,000 battle deaths to members of the interstate system. Under this definition the cow project has identified 118 international wars for the 1816–1980 period, of which 67 are interstate wars and 51 are extrasystemic wars. See Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982)Google Scholar. The major empirical studies of warfare differ in their definitions of war, however. For an excellent discussion of how these differences affect the data sets and conclusions of the studies, see Mansfield, Edward D., “The Distribution of Wars over Time,” World Politics 41 (October 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 , Taylor, The Strugglefor Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 289Google Scholar. See also Doyle, Michael W., Empires (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 208–18Google Scholar. Doyle draws a clear distinction between imperial control (metropole over empire) and international control (dominant state over weaker state): the former involves extensive control over the sovereignty—the internal/domestic policy and external/foreign policy—of the subordinate periphery, whereas the latter involves only some external control. In short, international politics, the focus of the present study, is quite different from imperialism in terms of the power relationships characterizing the two systems (chap. 1).

26 Brodie, , Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 237Google Scholar, 239.

27 Duroselle, , “Changes in French Foreign Policy since 1945,” in Hoffman, Stanley et al. , eds., In Search of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 307–8Google Scholar.

28 Mesquita, Bueno de and Lalman, , “Domestic Opposition and Foreign War,” American Political Science Review 84 (September 1990), 752CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 64–68Google Scholar. This facet of my argument—that democratic public opinion and institutions militate against preventive war directed at strong but not weak opponents—is consistent with Downs's theory.

30 Hume, , “Of the Balance of Power,” in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1741–1742) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 346–47Google Scholar. For the “complaisance” of liberal Great Powers, see Doyle (fn. 17, 1983), 323, 337–38. For the internal causes of declining power, see Gilpin (fn. 8), 159–68.

31 Smith, , Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 540Google Scholar.

32 See, e.g., Kennedy, Paul M., “The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865–1939,” in Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1945: Eight Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 15–39Google Scholar.

33 For instance, in response to Churchill's accusation that Baldwin had acted irresponsibly by not proposing a greater rearmament effort in 1935, the prime minister responded: “Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and we must rearm, does anyone think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.” Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, speech in the House of Commons, quoted in Craig, Gordon A. and George, Alexander L., Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time, 2d ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 64Google Scholar.

34 Cohen, Eliot A., Citizens and Soldiers: Dilemmas of Military Service (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 115Google Scholar.

35 Elbridge Gerry, as quoted in Huntington, Samuel P., The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 144Google Scholar.

36 For a discussion of America's military manpower dilemma, see Cohen (fn. 34), 183–89.

37 For the best discussions of French military reforms after Sadowa, see Challener, Richard D., The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866–1939 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965)Google Scholar; Kovacs, Arpad F., “French Military Institutions before the Franco-Prussian War,” American Historical Review 51 (January 1946)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, Gordon, “Public Opinion and Conscription in France, 1866–70,” Journal of Modern History 14 (March 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howard, Michael, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–71 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 29–39Google Scholar.

38 Huntington (fn. 35), 144.

39 Kennan, January 19, 1949, lecture to Foreign Service Institute, Kennan Papers, box 17, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University. Quoted in Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 49Google Scholar.

40 Kennan, , The Cloud of Danger (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 4Google Scholar.

41 For the institutional preference of military organizations for offensive doctrines, see Posen, Barry R., Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 47–50Google Scholar; for the necessity of an offensive doctrine in order to wage a preventive war, see pp. 69–70.

42 Vagts (fn. 4), 264.

43 Although he is inconsistent on this point, even Hans Morgenthau has written that the national interest of a state must be constrained by its own morality. See Morgenthau, , In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 36–37Google Scholar; and idem, , “Letter to the editor,” International Affairs 35 (October 1959), 502Google Scholar. See also Thompson, Kenneth W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of the skepticism of political realists about international morality, see Beitz, Charles R., Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

44 May, Ernest R., Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 159Google Scholar. May clearly distinguishes between the humanitarianism that produced the war and the imperialism that grew out of it.

45 Hofstadter, , The Age of Reform (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 93, 271Google Scholar. See also Merk, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1963)Google Scholar. Merk concludes that the true expression of the national spirit has always been mission, not imperialism, manifest destiny, or continentalism.

46 For Brodie's discussion of the moral issue of preventive war, see Brodie (fn. 26), 236–37; for his discussion of why preventive war has always been an unrealistic policy for the U.S., see pp. 223–41. Morgenthau also acknowledges that preventive war is “abhorrent to democratic public opinion” and states:

It is especially in the refusal to consider seriously the possibility of preventive war, regardless of its expediency in view of the national interest, that the moral condemnation of war as such has manifested itself in recent times in the Western world. When war comes, it must come as a natural catastrophe or as the evil deed of another nation, not as a foreseen and planned culmination of one's own foreign policy. Only thus might the moral scruples, rising from the violated moral norm that there ought to be no war at all, be stilled, if they can be stilled at all.

See Morgenthau, , Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 203, 232Google Scholar.

47 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 379Google Scholar. See also Potter, R. B., War and Moral Discourse (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1969Google Scholar).

48 Bacon, Francis, “Of Empire,” in Warhaft, Sidney, ed., Francis Bacon: A Selection of His Worlds (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 94–95Google Scholar; emphasis in original.

49 Daniel Webster, quoted in Bowett, Derek W., Self-Defense in International Law (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), 59Google Scholar.

50 The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated: “It must be remembered that preventive action in foreign territory is justified only in case of an ‘instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation’ (Caroline Case).” Quoted in Bowett (fn. 49), 60.

51 The meaning of a preemptive attack is somewhat ambiguous. It sometimes implies that the preemptor is aware of an imminent enemy attack and thus is compelled to strike the first blow. At other times it refers to an “anticipatory counterattack” waged after the adversary's attack has been launched but before its impact has been felt. Under both definitions, the existence of an immediate threat and a very short time frame for decision making characterizes a preemptive attack; a preventive attack, by contrast, is motivated by long-term forecasting.

52 The classic doctrine of bellum justum did, however, include preventive war. See Osgood and Tucker (fn. 7), 292.

53 See Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 62Google Scholar. See also Osgood and Tucker (fn. 7), 296–97. The issue of whether preventive war can ever be included in the doctrine of the just war is far more complicated than the schematic treatment I am able to offer here. For a comprehensive discussion of this matter, see Tucker, Robert W., The Just War: A Study in Contemporary American Doctrine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960), 15Google Scholar, 71, 105–45. For a rebuttal to Tucker's argument, see Ramsey, Paul, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), 61–69Google Scholar.

54 Otto von Bismarck, quoted in Walzer (fn. 53), 63.

55 This is not to say that whenever a nondemocratic state is in the process of being overtaken by a rising challenger it will respond by unleashing a preventive war. In 1866, for example, France did not intervene to prevent either side in the Austro-Prussian War from winning and uniting the loose German confederation under its leadership.

56 Curiously, Engels believed that universal military service would democratize society. He declared in 1891 that “contrary to appearance, compulsory military service surpasses general franchise as a democratic agency.” History has proved otherwise, however. See Neumann, Sigmund and Hagen, Mark von, “Engels and Marx on Revolution, War, and the Army in Society,” in Paret, Peter, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 277–80Google Scholar.

57 Moore, , Political Power and Social Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 77Google Scholar.

58 Doyle (fn. 14), 213. By contrast, John Stuart Mill extends the principle of nonintervention to nondemocratic states undergoing a democratic revolution, arguing that intervention is only justified when a democratic state, or aspiring democratic state, is threatened by a foreign government. See Mill, , “A Few Words on Non-intervention,” in Mill, , Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), esp. 410–13Google Scholar.

59 See Komjathy, Anthony Tihamer, The Crises of France's East Central European Diplomacy, 1933–1938 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and Wolfers, Arnold, Britain and France between Two Wars: Conflicting Strategies of Peace since Versailles (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 95–127Google Scholar.

60 See Baumont, Maurice, “The Rhineland Crisis: 7 March 1936,” in Waites, Neville, ed., Troubled Neighbors: Franco-British Relations in the Twentieth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 158–69Google Scholar; Watt, D. C., “The Reoccupation of the Rhineland,” History Today 6 (April 1956Google Scholar); Emmerson, James T., The Rhineland Crisis: 7 March 1936 (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1977)Google Scholar; Parker, R. A. C., “The First Capitulation: France and the Rhineland Crisis of 1936,” World Politics 8 (April 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knapp, W. F., “The Rhineland Crisis of March 1936,” in Joll, James, ed., The Decline of the Third Republic, St. Anthony's Papers, no. 5 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959), 67–85Google Scholar; Weinberg, Gerhard, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 243Google Scholar; Taylor, Telford, Munich: The Price of Peace (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979Google Scholar). For an impressive dissenting view, see Schuker, Stephen A., “France and the Remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936,” French Historical Studies 14 (Spring 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Schuker argues that the Rhineland crisis was not a turning point, since by that time Germany was already far stronger than France and Britain combined. Instead, he maintains that the last opportunities to curb German resurgence had occurred in the first half of the decade. Conversely, Williamson Murray concludes that Allied forces could have beaten Germany as late as 1938; see Murray, , The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

61 See, e.g., Churchill's comments in Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 194Google Scholar.

62 Marshal Foch, as quoted in Schuker (fn. 60), 302. For the strategic significance of the Rhineland, see King, fere Clemens, Foch versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment, 1918–1919 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

63 For the classic statement on the clanger of interwar appeasement, see Carr, Edward Hallet, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964)Google Scholar. See also Mommsen, Wolfgang J. and Kettenacker, Lothar, eds., The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar.

64 Lemery, quoted in Maurice Vaisse, “Against Appeasement: French Advocates of Firmness, 1933–38,” in Mommsen and Kettenacker (fn. 63), 231.

65 Watt, Donald Cameron, Too Serious a Business: European Armed Forces and the Approach to the Second World War (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 37Google Scholar.

66 Schuker(fn. 60), 318.

67 For a detailed account of French disarmament and the drift toward arms equality in 1933, see Young, Robert J., In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 2.

68 Thomson, David, Democracy in France: The Third and Fourth Republics, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 198Google Scholar.

69 French declaration, March 10, 1936, as quoted in Parker (fn. 60), 358.

70 Bond, Brian, ed., Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, 1935–1940 (London: Archon Books, 1973), 108Google Scholar.

71 Cummings (head of the League Information Section) to Avenol, March 9, 1936, quoted in Schuker (fn. 60), 336.

72 Eden, , Facing the Dictators (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 397Google Scholar. Eden also wrote:

Academically speaking, there is little dispute that Hitler should have been called to order, if need be forcibly, at his first breach of an accepted international engagement. But nobody was prepared to do it, in this country literally nobody. Even the most warlike proclaimed that the League Council must be called, which would not have endorsed the use of force, (p. 412)

73 Parker (fn. 60), 364.

74 Thomson (fn. 68), 171.

75 In addition, the Third Republic's history of political scandals, most notably the Stavisky affair of 1934, had entirely discredited the parliamentary system. One French officer exclaimed, “Literally I have never met a single one of my poilus who has not expressed his disgust for the parliamentary regime”; comments of a French officer, June 1940, quoted in Adamthwaite, Anthony, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 12Google Scholar.

76 Laval had resigned in response to the public's denouncement of the Hoare-Laval proposals, which sought to appease Italy through territorial concessions at the expense of Ethiopia.

77 Thomson (fn. 68), 200.

78 Harry Truman, quoted in Gaddis, John Lewis, “The Origins of Self-Deterrence: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1945–1958,” in Gaddis, , The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 106–7Google Scholar.

79 NSC-68, April 14, 1950, reprinted in Etzold, Thomas H. and Gaddis, John Lewis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 431–32Google Scholar.

80 Lebow (fn. 4, 1984), 172. Addressing the American public, Truman said, “We do not believe in aggression or preventive war. Such a war is the weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Quoted in Buhite, Russell D. and Hamel, William Christopher, “War for Peace: The Question of an American Preventive War against the Soviet Union, 1945–1955,” Diplomatic History 14 (Summer 1990), 382Google Scholar. Truman's disdain for preventive war was evidenced by his dismissal in 1950 of Major General Orvil Anderson as commandant of the Air War College following Anderson's public remarks in favor of preventive war. See Brodie (fn. 26), 229.

81 NSC-162/2, October 30, 1953, quoted in Rosenberg, David Alan, “U.S. Nuclear War Planning, 1945–1960,” in Ball, Desmond and Richelson, Jeffrey, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 44Google Scholar.

82 The Soviet test in 1953 was not of a superbomb, as Soviet historians have claimed, but rather was of a type of thermonuclear weapon. It was not until November 1955 that the Soviets successfully tested a superbomb with a yield of 1.6 megatons. See Holloway, David, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 24Google Scholar.

83 Rosenberg (fn. 81), 44.

84 Memorandum, Dwight Eisenhower to John Foster Dulles, September 8, 1953, DDE Diary, August-September 1953, folder 2, box 3, ACWF-EPP, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; cited in Rosenberg (fn. 81), 44; and Lebow (fn. 4, 1984), 173.

85 Snyder, Glenn, “The New Look of 1953,” in Schilling, Warner R. et al. , Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 409Google Scholar.

86 NSC 5440/1, December 28, 1954, cited in Lebow (fn. 4, 1984), 173. See also Ridgway, Matthew B., Memo for the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs: Subject: Review of Basic National Security Policy, November 22, 1954, Historical Record Folder, box 30, Ridgway Papers; cited in David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), 34Google Scholar.

87 Rosenberg (fn. 86), 34.

88 Acheson, , Lisbon meeting of the North Atlantic Council; New York Times, February 21, 1952, quoted in Vagts (fn. 4), 335Google Scholar.

89 Eisenhower, March 29, 1957, quoted in Gaddis (fn. 39), 153. Dulles remarked similarly in his famous speech on massive retaliation that the attempt to meet aggression “by being ready to fight everywhere … could not be continued for long without grave budgetary, economic, and social consequences.” John Foster Dulles, U.S. secretary of state, address before the Council on Foreign Relations, January 12,1954, quoted in Osgood, Robert E., Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 209Google Scholar.

90 Gaddis (fn. 39), 152.

91 For a discussion of this irony and the incoherence of American defense policy, see Schilling, Warner, “The H-Bomb Decision: How to Decide without Actually Choosing,” Political Science Quarterly 76 (March 1961), 25–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Brecher, Michael, Decisions in Israel's Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 225–317Google Scholar.

93 For a brief discussion, see Peleg, Ilan, Begins Foreign Policy, 1977–1983 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 185–90Google Scholar.

94 For the preventive aspects of the Lebanon War, see Harkabi, Yehoshafat, The Bar Kokhba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Politics (Chappaqua, N.Y.: Rossel Books, 1983), 183Google Scholarff.; Peleg (fn. 93), chap. 5.

95 Handel, Michael I., Israel's Political-Military Doctrine (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1973), 64Google Scholar.

96 Ibid.; Roberts, Samuel J., Survival or Hegemony?: The Foundations of Israeli Foreign Policy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), 112Google ScholarPubMedff.

97 Brecher, Michael, The Foreign Policy System of Israel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 65Google Scholar.

98 In the years 1966–75 Israel's military expenditure averaged 49.8% of the national budget. See Leitenberg, Milton and Ball, Nicole, “The Military Expenditures of Less Developed Nations as a Proportion of Their State Budgets,” in Eide, Asbjorn and Thee, Marek, eds., Problems of Contemporary Militarism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 289Google Scholar.

99 Handel (fn. 95), 9.

100 It is worth noting that the Israelites under David's leadership waged two preventive wars, first against the Philistines and then against Damascus. For a good discussion on the similarities between the ancient Jewish states and contemporary Israel and on how the history of the ancient Israelites affects Israeli foreign policy decision making, see Roberts (fn. 96), chap. 1.

101 For an excellent discussion of the effects of the international system on domestic structure, see Gourevitch, Peter, “The Second Image Reversed,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978)Google Scholar.

102 For discussions that forecast the return of multipolarity in Europe, see Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snyder, Jack, “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Christensen, Thomas J. and Snyder, Jack, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44 (Spring 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 For similar arguments, see Evera, Stephen Van, “Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Winter 1990–91)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the exchange between Russett, Bruce M. and Mearsheimer, John J. in “Back to the Future, Part III: Realism and the Realities of European Security,” International Security 15 (Winter 1990–91).CrossRefGoogle Scholar