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From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Robert Jervis
Robert Jervis
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

International anarchy and the security dilemma make cooperation among sovereign states difficult. Transformations of balance-of-power systems into concerts tend to occur after large antihegemonic wars. Such wars undermine the assumptions supporting a balance-ofpower system and alter the actors' payoffs in ways that encourage cooperation. The logic developed in “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma” holds: largely because of the increased costs that will be incurred if the grand coalition breaks up, states have greater incentives to cooperate with each other, fewer reasons to fear the consequences of others' defections, and fewer reasons to defect themselves. Cooperation is further facilitated by mechanisms that increase each state's ability to see what others are doing, and to gain “timely warning” of the possibility that the others will defect.

Type
Part II: Applications to Security Affairs
Information
World Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , October 1985 , pp. 58 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1985

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References

1 For the concept of the security dilemma, see Herz, John, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2 (January 1950), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar–80; Butterfield, Herbert, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951Google Scholar); Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 83–90Google Scholar. In Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959Google Scholar), Kenneth Waltz noted that using anarchy as the starting point implies that it is peace, not war, that needs to be explained.

2 For general discussions of the problems of cooperation in the absence of supernational sovereignty, see Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978), 167–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984Google Scholar); Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984Google Scholar). For treatments of this problem from the perspective of international law, see Niemeyer, Gerhard, Law, Without Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941Google Scholar); Michael Barkun, Law Without Sanctions (New Haven: Yale University Press); Nardin, Terry, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984Google Scholar); and Kratochwil, Friedrich, “Following Rules,” unpub. (Columbia University, 1984Google Scholar).

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9 Jervis (fn. 2), 167–86. Note that this is not the same as saying that the chances for cooperation increase as the payoffs for cooperation increase and those for defection decrease. It is equally important that payoffs for outcomes in which one side defects and the other cooperates be moderate—that the former not gain too much or the latter suffer too greatly.

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11 Serious threats of war were made on several occasions. See, for example, the incidents and attitudes discussed in Bullen, Roger, Palmerston, Guizot, and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London: Athlone, 1974), 54Google Scholar; Temperley, Harold, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827 (London: Cass, 1966), 81–83Google Scholar, 371 Craig, Gordon, “The System of Alliances and the Balance of Power,” in Bury, J. T. P., ed., New Cambridge Modern History, X, The Zenith of European Power, 1830–70 (New York: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1960), 254Google Scholar–57.

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16 For discussions of how American domestic constraints affected the chances of Soviet-American cooperation after World War II, see Dallek, Robert, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979Google Scholar); Gaddis, John, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, igqi-iyqj (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972Google Scholar); and George, Alexander, “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Holsti, Ole, Siverson, Randolph, and George, Alexander, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 233Google Scholar–62.

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19 Factors beyond our structural model have to be taken into account for a complete explanation of the difference between the British and French positions. On this topic, one of the earliest discussions still remains unsurpassed: Wolfers, Arnold, Britain and France Between Two Wars (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940Google Scholar). For a discussion of the extent to which France was a revisionist state after 1815, see Roger Bullen, “France and Europe, 1815–48: The Problem of Defeat and Recovery,” in Sked (fn. 3), 112–44.

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21 Quoted in Temperley (fn. 11), 135.

22 Thus, in late July 1914, French statesmen were disturbed to learn that Austria and Germany rejected a role for the other European powers in the dispute between Austria and Serbia; this indicated a non-cooperative approach and a desire to inflict a settlement that others would find objectionable. See Keiger, John, France and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1984), 153Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relationship between cooperative processes and cooperative outcomes, see Deutsch, Morton, “Fifty Years of Conflict,” in Festinger, Leon, ed., Retrospection on Social Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985Google Scholar)

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24 This is not to deny Hinsley's argument that the British realized that their Continental partners' habit of demanding too extensive collaboration would make the concert impractical. Only a somewhat looser arrangement, the British felt, would allow the concert to succeed. See Hinsley (fn. 13), 202–12.

25 Quoted in Albrecht-Carrie (fn. 20), 109.

26 Ibid, 69.

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29 For instances of deception, especially on Metternich's part, see Schroeder (fn. 3), 46, 82–83, 207, 212, 219.

30 Van Evera (fn. 8).

31 See Downs and others, “Arms Races and Cooperation,” pp. 118–46 of this collection; Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 67Google Scholar–83, 354–55.

32 Bullen (fn. 11), 81, 93; also see Craig (fn. 11), 257.

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