Published by Cornell University Press

Cornell Studies in Security Affairs

Volumes

Book 2023

A Lost Peace

Great Power Politics and the Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1967–1979

Galen Jackson

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In A Lost Peace, Galen Jackson rewrites an important chapter in the history of the middle Cold War period, changing how we think about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

During the June 1967 Middle East war, Israeli forces seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt; the Golan Heights from Syria; and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This conflict was followed, in October 1973, by a joint Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel, which threatened to drag the United States and the Soviet Union into a confrontation, even though the superpowers had seemingly embraced the idea of détente. This conflict contributed significantly to the ensuing deterioration of US-Soviet relations.

The standard explanation for why détente failed is that the Soviet Union, driven mainly by its Communist ideology, pursued a highly aggressive foreign policy during the 1970s. In the Middle East specifically, the conventional wisdom is that the Soviets played a destabilizing role by egging the Arabs on in their conflict with Israel, in an effort to undermine the US position in the region for Cold War gain.

Jackson challenges standard accounts of this period, demonstrating that the United States sought to exploit the Soviet Union in the Middle East, despite repeated entreaties from USSR leaders that the superpowers cooperate to reach a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement. By leveraging the remarkable evidence now available to scholars, Jackson reveals that the United States and the Soviet Union may have missed an opportunity for Middle East peace during the 1970s.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501769177
ISBN:: 9781501769177
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Foreign Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2023

The Fragile Balance of Terror

Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age

Vipin Narang, Scott D. Sagan, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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In The Fragile Balance of Terror, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables.

The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger.

The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, brings together a diverse collection of rigorous and creative scholars who analyze how the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. Scholars, pundits, and policymakers who think that the spread of nuclear weapons can create stable forms of nuclear deterrence in the future will be forced to think again.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501767036
ISBN:: 9781501767036
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Ahead of Publication 2023

The Burden-Sharing Dilemma

Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics

Brian D. Blankenship

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The Burden-Sharing Dilemma examines the conditions under which the United States is willing and able to pressure its allies to assume more responsibility for their own defense. The United States has a mixed track record of encouraging allied burden-sharing—while it has succeeded or failed in some cases, it has declined to do so at all in others. This variation, Brian D. Blankenship argues, is because the United States tailors its burden-sharing pressure in accordance with two competing priorities: conserving its own resources and preserving influence in its alliances. Although burden-sharing enables great power patrons like the United States to lower alliance costs, it also empowers allies to resist patron influence.

Blankenship identifies three factors that determine the severity of this burden-sharing dilemma and how it is managed: the latent military power of allies, the shared external threat environment, and the level of a patron's resource constraints. Through case studies of US alliances formed during the Cold War, he shows that a patron can mitigate the dilemma by combining assurances of protection with threats of abandonment and by exercising discretion in its burden-sharing pressure.

Blankenship's findings dismantle assumptions that burden-sharing is always desirable but difficult to obtain. Patrons, as the book reveals, can in fact be reluctant to seek burden-sharing, and attempts to pass defense costs to allies can often be successful. At a time when skepticism of alliance benefits remains high and global power shifts threaten longstanding pacts, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma recalls and reconceives the value of burden-sharing and alliances.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781501772481
ISBN:: 9781501772481
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Ahead of Publication 2023

The Commander-in-Chief Test

Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy

Jeffrey A. Friedman

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In The Commander-in-Chief Test, Jeffrey A. Friedman offers a fresh explanation for why Americans are often frustrated by the cost and scope of US foreign policy—and how we can fix that for the future.

Americans frequently criticize US foreign policy for being overly costly and excessively militaristic. With its rising defense budgets and open-ended "forever wars," US foreign policy often appears disconnected from public opinion, reflecting the views of elites and special interests rather than the attitudes of ordinary citizens.

The Commander-in-Chief Test argues that this conventional wisdom underestimates the role public opinion plays in shaping foreign policy. Voters may prefer to elect leaders who share their policy views, but they prioritize selecting presidents who seem to have the right personal attributes to be an effective commander in chief. Leaders then use hawkish foreign policies as tools for showing that they are tough enough to defend America's interests on the international stage. This link between leaders' policy positions and their personal images steers US foreign policy in directions that are more hawkish than what voters actually want.

Combining polling data with survey experiments and original archival research on cases from the Vietnam War through the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Friedman demonstrates that public opinion plays a surprisingly extensive—and often problematic—role in shaping US international behavior. With the commander-in-chief test, a perennial point of debate in national elections, Friedman's insights offer important lessons on how the politics of image-making impacts foreign policy and how the public should choose its president.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781501772948
ISBN:: 9781501772948
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2021

Dying to Learn

Wartime Lessons from the Western Front

Michael A. Hunzeker

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Through careful study of the British, French, and German experiences in the First World War, Dying to Learn provides a model that shows how a resolute focus on analysis, command, and training can help prepare modern militaries for adapting amidst high-intensity warfare in an age of revolutionary technological change.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501758478
ISBN:: 9781501758478
Subject:: History
Subject:: Miscellaneous
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2021

Nuclear Reactions

How Nuclear-Armed States Behave

Mark S. Bell, University of Minnesota / TOME

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Mark Bell argues that nuclear weapons are useful for more than just deterrence. Instead, they are leveraged to pursue a wide range of goals in international politics, and the nations that acquire them significantly change their foreign policies as a result. Bell closely examines how these effects vary and what those variations have meant, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Countries aren't generically "emboldened"—they change their foreign policies in different ways based on what their priorities are. This has huge policy implications: what would Iran do if it were to get nuclear weapons? Would Japanese policy toward the United States change if it were to acquire nuclear weapons? And what does the looming threat of nuclear weapons mean for the future of foreign policy? Far from being a relic of the Cold War, Bell argues, nuclear weapons are just as important in international politics today as they ever were.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501754173
ISBN:: 9781501754173
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2022

Escaping the Deadly Embrace

How Encirclement Causes Major Wars

Andrea Bartoletti

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Encirclement, Andrea Bartoletti argues, is an essential strategic possibility of the international system and a key trigger of major war. Using historical case studies, Escaping the Deadly Embrace examines how great powers try to escape the two-front war problem and seek to preserve their security.

Encirclement is a geographic variable that occurs in the presence of one or two great powers on two different borders of the surrounded great power. The surrounding great powers may not have the capacity to initiate a joint invasion. Yet their threatening presence triggers a double security dilemma for the encircled great power, which has to disperse its army to secure its borders. When the surrounding great powers become capable of launching a two-front attack, the encircled great power initiates war. This situation, disastrous in itself, can also lead to war contagion when other great powers intervene in the new conflict due to the rival-based network of alliances.

Combining archival work and historiographical analysis, Escaping the Deadly Embrace demonstrates the efficacy of this by assessing three major wars: the Italian Wars, the Thirty Years' War, and World War I. These findings, Bartoletti shows, have important implications for future major wars. Challenging the current focus on the US-China rivalry, he argues that the most concerning strategic scenario is the encirclement of China by India and Russia.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501765926
ISBN:: 9781501765926
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2022

The Hegemon's Tool Kit

US Leadership and the Politics of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime

Rebecca Davis Gibbons

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At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system that has, for more than fifty years, controlled the spread of these catastrophic weapons. The Hegemon's Tool Kit details how that regime works and how, disastrously, it might falter.

In the early nuclear age, experts anticipated that all technologically-capable states would build these powerful devices. That did not happen. Widespread development of nuclear arms did not occur, in large part, because a global nuclear nonproliferation regime was created. By the late-1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had drafted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and across decades the regime has expanded, with more agreements and more nations participating. As a result, in 2022, only nine states possess nuclear weapons.

Why do most states in the international system adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation regime? The answer lies, Gibbons asserts, in decades of painstaking efforts undertaken by the US government. As the most powerful state during the nuclear age, the United States had many tools with which to persuade other states to join or otherwise support nonproliferation agreements.

The waning of US global influence, Gibbons shows in The Hegemon's Tool Kit, is a key threat to the nonproliferation regime. So, too, is the deepening global divide over progress on nuclear disarmament. To date, the Chinese government is not taking significant steps to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and as a result, the regime may face a harmful leadership gap.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501764868
ISBN:: 9781501764868
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2022

Reliability and Alliance Interdependence

The United States and Its Allies in Asia, 1949–1969

Iain D. Henry, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

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In Reliability and Alliance Interdependence, Iain D. Henry argues for a more sophisticated approach to alliance politics and ideas of interdependence.

It is often assumed that if the United States failed to defend an ally, then this disloyalty would instantly and irrevocably damage US alliances across the globe. Henry proposes that such damage is by no means inevitable, and that predictions of disaster are dangerously simplistic. If other allies fear the risks of military escalation more than the consequences of the United States abandoning an ally, then they will welcome, encourage, and even praise such an instance of disloyalty. It is also often assumed that alliance interdependence only constrains US policy options, but Henry shows how the US can manipulate interdependence to set an example of what constitutes acceptable allied behavior.

Henry tests this theory of alliance interdependence using case studies drawn from Asia during the first half of the Cold War. Using declassified documents, he explores five case studies involving US alliances with South Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. Reliability and Alliance Interdependence makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of how America's alliances in Asia function as an interdependent system.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501763052
ISBN:: 9781501763052
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2022

Frenemies

When Ideological Enemies Ally

Mark L. Haas

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In Frenemies, Haas develops a groundbreaking argument that explains the origins and durability of alliances among ideological enemies and offers policy-guiding perspectives on a subject at the core of international relations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501761249
ISBN:: 9781501761249
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2021

The Power to Divide

Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition

Timothy W. Crawford

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Crawford drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the US, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China-Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501754739
ISBN:: 9781501754739
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2021

Bullets Not Ballots

Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare

Jacqueline L. Hazelton

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By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501754807
ISBN:: 9781501754807
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2020

Why Containment Works

Power, Proliferation, and Preventive War

Wallace J. Thies

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To what extent did reliance on rival theories of victory—containment versus first strike—contribute to a successful outcome? Might these cases have been resolved more quickly, at lower cost, and more favorably to American interests if US officials had chosen a different mix of the coercive and deterrent tools available to them? Thies suggests that the conventional wisdom about containment was often wrong: a superpower like the United States has such vast resources at its disposal that it could easily thwart Libya, Iraq, and Iran by means other than open war.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501749506
ISBN:: 9781501749506
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2020

The Justice Dilemma

Leaders and Exile in an Era of Accountability

Daniel Krcmaric

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He reconstructs the decision-making processes of embattled leaders—including Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Charles Taylor of Liberia, and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso—to show how contemporary international justice both deters atrocities and prolongs conflicts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501750236
ISBN:: 9781501750236
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2021

Catastrophic Success

Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong

Alexander B. Downes

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Interveners must recognize that, absent a rare set of promising preconditions, regime change often instigates a new period of uncertainty and conflict that impedes their interests from being realized.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501761164
ISBN:: 9781501761164
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2021

All Options on the Table

Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation

Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark

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In a complex nuclear world, this insight helps explain why the use of force as a counter-proliferation strategy has been an extremely rare historical event.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501760365
ISBN:: 9781501760365
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2020

Information Technology and Military Power

Jon R. Lindsay

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Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501749582
ISBN:: 9781501749582
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2020

The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution

Power Politics in the Atomic Age

Keir A. Lieber, Daryl G. Press

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By explaining how the nuclear revolution falls short, Lieber and Press discover answers to the most pressing questions about deterrence in the coming decades: how much capability is required for a reliable nuclear deterrent, how conventional conflicts may become nuclear wars, and how great care is required now to prevent new technology from ushering in an age of nuclear instability.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501749315
ISBN:: 9781501749315
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2020

Reputation for Resolve

How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics

Danielle L. Lupton

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Thus, Reputation for Resolve reframes our understanding of the influence of leaders and their rhetoric on crisis bargaining and the role reputations play in international politics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501747731
ISBN:: 9781501747731
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2019

Tempting Fate

Why Nonnuclear States Confront Nuclear Opponents

Paul C. Avey, Virginia Tech as part of the TOME initiative

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Why would countries without nuclear weapons even think about fighting nuclear-armed opponents? A simple answer is that no one believes nuclear weapons will be used. But that answer fails to consider why nonnuclear state leaders would believe that in the first place. In this superb unpacking of the dynamics of conflict under conditions of nuclear monopoly, Paul C. Avey argues that the costs and benefits of using nuclear weapons create openings that weak nonnuclear actors can exploit.

Tempting Fate uses four case studies to show the key strategies available to nonnuclear states: Iraqi decision-making under Saddam Hussein in confrontations with the United States; Egyptian leaders' thinking about the Israeli nuclear arsenal during wars in 1969–70 and 1973; Chinese confrontations with the United States in 1950, 1954, and 1958; and a dispute that never escalated to war, the Soviet-United States tensions between 1946 and 1948 that culminated in the Berlin Blockade. Those strategies include limiting the scope of the conflict, holding chemical and biological weapons in reserve, seeking outside support, and leveraging international non-use norms. Counterintuitively, conventionally weak nonnuclear states are better positioned to pursue these strategies than strong ones, so that wars are unlikely when the nonnuclear state is powerful relative to its nuclear opponent. Avey demonstrates clearly that nuclear weapons cast a definite but limited shadow, and while the world continues to face various nuclear challenges, understanding conflict in nuclear monopoly will remain a pressing concern for analysts and policymakers.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501740398
ISBN:: 9781501740398
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2019

Gender, War, and World Order

A Study of Public Opinion

Richard C. Eichenberg

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Eichenberg concludes that the centrality of military force, violence, and war is the single most important variable affecting gender difference; that the magnitude of gender difference on security issues correlates with the economic development and level of gender equality in a society; and that the country with the most consistent gender polarization across the widest range of issues is the United States.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738159
ISBN:: 9781501738159
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2019

The Costs of Conversation

Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime

Oriana Skylar Mastro

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As a result, Mastro's findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501732218
ISBN:: 9781501732218
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2019

Super Bomb

Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb

Ken Young, Warner R. Schilling

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What Super Bomb reveals is that in many ways the H-bomb struggle was a proxy battle over the morality and effectiveness of strategic bombardment and the role and doctrine of the US Strategic Air Command.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501745171
ISBN:: 9781501745171
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2018

When Right Makes Might

Rising Powers and World Order

Stacie E. Goddard, Knowledge Unlatched

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Legitimacy is not marginal to international relations; it is essential to the practice of power politics, and rhetoric is central to that practice.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501730313
ISBN:: 9781501730313
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Covert Regime Change

America's Secret Cold War

Lindsey A. O'Rourke

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This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O’Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501730689
ISBN:: 9781501730689
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2018

Atomic Assurance

The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation

Alexander Lanoszka, Knowledge Unlatched

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Crossing diplomatic history, international relations, foreign policy, grand strategy, and nuclear strategy, Lanoszka's book reworks our understanding of the power and importance of alliances in stopping nuclear proliferation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501729195
ISBN:: 9781501729195
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Unrivaled

Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower

Michael Beckley

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By documenting long-term trends in the global balance of power and explaining their implications for world politics, the book provides guidance for policymakers, businesspeople, and scholars alike.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724794
ISBN:: 9781501724794
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Rising Titans, Falling Giants

How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson

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Whereas many analysts argue that these two nations are on a collision course, Shifrinson declares instead that rising states often avoid antagonizing those in decline, and highlights episodes that suggest the US-China relationship may prove to be far less conflict-prone than we might expect.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501725067
ISBN:: 9781501725067
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Stopping the Bomb

The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy

Nicholas L. Miller

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Miller's findings in Stopping the Bomb have important implications for the continued study of nuclear proliferation, US nonproliferation policy, and beyond.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501717819
ISBN:: 9781501717819
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Twilight of the Titans

Great Power Decline and Retrenchment

Paul K. MacDonald, Joseph M. Parent

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Using numerous case studies, MacDonald and Parent show how declining states tend to behave, the policy options they have, how rising states respond to those in decline, and what conditions reward particular strategic choices.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501717109
ISBN:: 9781501717109
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2018

Remembering the Present

Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia

J. L. Cassaniti

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Remembering the Present shows how mindfulness needs to be understood within the cultural and historical influences from which it has emerged.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501714177
ISBN:: 9781501714177
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Anthropology
Subject:: Social Anthropology
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2017

Secession and Security

Explaining State Strategy against Separatists

Ahsan I. Butt, Knowledge Unlatched

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Butt's deep historical approach to his subject will appeal to policymakers and observers interested in the last five decades of geopolitics in South Asia, the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ethno-national conflict, separatism, and nationalism more generally.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501713958
ISBN:: 9781501713958
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2017

Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China

Power and Politics in East Asia

Robert S. Ross, Øystein Tunsjø

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Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China demonstrates how structural and domestic variables influence how East Asian states adjust their strategy in light of the rise of China, including how China manages its own emerging role as a regional great power.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501712777
ISBN:: 9781501712777
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2017

Rebel Power

Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win

Peter Krause

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Many of the world's states are the result of robust national movements that achieved independence. Many other national movements have failed in their attempts to achieve statehood, including the Basques, the Kurds, and the Palestinians. In Rebel Power, Peter Krause offers a powerful new theory to explain this variation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501712678
ISBN:: 9781501712678
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2017

Insider Threats

Matthew Bunn, Scott D. Sagan

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High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. Insider Threats offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize "worst practices" from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.Insider threats pose dangers to anyone who handles information that is secret or proprietary, material that is highly valuable or hazardous, people who must be protected, or facilities that might be sabotaged. This is the first book to offer in-depth case studies across a range of industries and contexts, allowing entities such as nuclear facilities and casinos to learn from each other. It also offers an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities.Contributors
Matthew Bunn, Harvard University
Andreas Hoelstad Dæhli, Oslo
Kathryn M. Glynn, IBM Global Business Services
Thomas Hegghammer, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Oslo
Austin Long, Columbia University
Scott D. Sagan, Stanford University
Ronald Schouten, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Jessica Stern, Harvard University
Amy B. Zegart, Stanford University

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501705946
ISBN:: 9781501705946
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

Rethinking the World

Great Power Strategies and International Order

Jeffrey W. Legro

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Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about—and rethink—international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist independence, and Gorbachev's "new thinking" molded international conflict and cooperation in their eras. How do we explain such momentous changes in foreign policy—and in other cases their equally surprising absence?The nature of strategic ideas, Jeffrey W. Legro argues, played a critical and overlooked role in these transformations. Big changes in foreign policies are rare because it is difficult for individuals to overcome the inertia of entrenched national mentalities. Doing so depends on a particular nexus of policy expectations, national experience, and ready replacement ideas. In a sweeping comparative history, Legro explores the sources of strategy in the United States and Germany before and after the world wars, in Tokugawa Japan, and in the Soviet Union. He charts the likely future of American primacy and a rising China in the coming century. Rethinking the World tells us when and why we can expect changes in the way states think about the world, why some ideas win out over others, and why some leaders succeed while others fail in redirecting grand strategy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501707322
ISBN:: 9781501707322
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

Unclear Physics

Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons

Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer

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Many authoritarian leaders want nuclear weapons, but few manage to acquire them. Autocrats seeking nuclear weapons fail in different ways and to varying degrees—Iraq almost managed it; Libya did not come close. In Unclear Physics, Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer compares the two failed nuclear weapons programs, showing that state capacity played a crucial role in the trajectory and outcomes of both projects. Braut-Hegghammer draws on a rich set of new primary sources, collected during years of research in archives, fieldwork across the Middle East, and interviews with scientists and decision makers from both states. She gained access to documents and individuals that no other researcher has been able to consult. Her book tells the story of the Iraqi and Libyan programs from their origins in the late 1950s and 1960s until their dismantling.This book reveals contemporary perspectives from scientists and regime officials on the opportunities and challenges facing each project. Many of the findings challenge the conventional wisdom about clandestine weapons programs in closed authoritarian states and their prospects of success or failure. Braut-Hegghammer suggests that scholars and analysts ought to pay closer attention to how state capacity affects nuclear weapons programs in other authoritarian regimes, both in terms of questioning the actual control these leaders have over their nuclear weapons programs and the capability of their scientists to solve complex technical challenges.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501705908
ISBN:: 9781501705908
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

Peacemaking from Above, Peace from Below

Ending Conflict between Regional Rivals

Norrin M. Ripsman

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In Peacemaking from Above, Peace from Below, Norrin M. Ripsman explains how regional rivals make peace and how outside actors can encourage regional peacemaking. Through a qualitative empirical analysis of all the regional rivalries that terminated in peace treaties in the twentieth century—including detailed case studies of the Franco-German, Egyptian-Israeli, and Israeli-Jordanian peace settlements—Ripsman concludes that efforts to encourage peacemaking that focus on changing the attitudes of the rival societies or democratizing the rival polities to enable societal input into security policy are unlikely to achieve peace.Prior to a peace treaty, he finds, peacemaking is driven by states, often against intense societal opposition, for geostrategic reasons or to preserve domestic power. After a formal treaty has been concluded, the stability of peace depends on societal buy-in through mechanisms such as bilateral economic interdependence, democratization of former rivals, cooperative regional institutions, and transfers of population or territory. Society is largely irrelevant to the first stage but is critical to the second. He draws from this analysis a lesson for contemporary policy. Western governments and international organizations have invested heavily in efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian and Indo-Pakistani peace by promoting democratic values, economic exchanges, and cultural contacts between the opponents. Such attempts to foster peace are likely to waste resources until such time as formal peace treaties are concluded between longtime adversaries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501704079
ISBN:: 9781501704079
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

In the Hegemon's Shadow

Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers

Evan Braden Montgomery

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The relationship between established powers and emerging powers is one of the most important topics in world politics. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated how the leading state in the international system responds to rising powers in peripheral regions—actors that are not yet and might never become great powers but that are still increasing their strength, extending their influence, and trying to reorder their corner of the world. In the Hegemon's Shadow fills this gap. Evan Braden Montgomery draws on different strands of realist theory to develop a novel framework that explains why leading states have accommodated some rising regional powers but opposed others.Montgomery examines the interaction between two factors: the type of local order that a leading state prefers and the type of local power shift that appears to be taking place. The first captures a leading state's main interest in a peripheral region and serves as the baseline for its evaluation of any changes in the status quo. Would the leading state like to see a balance of power rather than a preponderance of power, does it favor primacy over parity instead, or is it impartial between these alternatives? The second indicates how a local power shift is likely to unfold. In particular, which regional order is an emerging power trying to create and does a leading state expect it to succeed? Montgomery tests his arguments by analyzing Great Britain’s efforts to manage the rise of Egypt, the Confederacy, and Japan during the nineteenth century and the United States’ efforts to manage the emergence of India and Iraq during the twentieth century.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501704017
ISBN:: 9781501704017
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

The Soul of Armies

Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the US and UK

Austin Long

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For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and, along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.Long argues that the formative experiences of these three organizations as they professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation for success or failure.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501703911
ISBN:: 9781501703911
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2016

Dangerous Sanctuaries

Refugee Camps, Civil War, and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid

Sarah Kenyon Lischer

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Since the early 1990s, refugee crises in the Balkans, Central Africa, the Middle East, and West Africa have led to the international spread of civil war. In Central Africa alone, more than three million people have died in wars fueled, at least in part, by internationally supported refugee populations. The recurring pattern of violent refugee crises prompts the following questions: Under what conditions do refugee crises lead to the spread of civil war across borders? How can refugee relief organizations respond when militants use humanitarian assistance as a tool of war? What government actions can prevent or reduce conflict?To understand the role of refugees in the spread of conflict, Sarah Kenyon Lischer systematically compares violent and nonviolent crises involving Afghan, Bosnian, and Rwandan refugees. Lischer argues against the conventional socioeconomic explanations for refugee-related violence—abysmal living conditions, proximity to the homeland, and the presence of large numbers of bored young men. Lischer instead focuses on the often-ignored political context of the refugee crisis. She suggests that three factors are crucial: the level of the refugees' political cohesion before exile, the ability and willingness of the host state to prevent military activity, and the contribution, by aid agencies and outside parties, of resources that exacerbate conflict.Lischer's political explanation leads to policy prescriptions that are sure to be controversial: using private security forces in refugee camps or closing certain camps altogether. With no end in sight to the brutal wars that create refugee crises, Dangerous Sanctuaries is vital reading for anyone concerned with how refugee flows affect the dynamics of conflicts around the world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501700408
ISBN:: 9781501700408
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Weapons of Mass Migration

Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy

Kelly M. Greenhill

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At first glance, the U.S. decision to escalate the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, China's position on North Korea's nuclear program in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the EU resolution to lift what remained of the arms embargo against Libya in the mid-2000s would appear to share little in common. Yet each of these seemingly unconnected and far-reaching foreign policy decisions resulted at least in part from the exercise of a unique kind of coercion, one predicated on the intentional creation, manipulation, and exploitation of real or threatened mass population movements.

In Weapons of Mass Migration, Kelly M. Greenhill offers the first systematic examination of this widely deployed but largely unrecognized instrument of state influence. She shows both how often this unorthodox brand of coercion has been attempted (more than fifty times in the last half century) and how successful it has been (well over half the time). She also tackles the questions of who employs this policy tool, to what ends, and how and why it ever works. Coercers aim to affect target states' behavior by exploiting the existence of competing political interests and groups, Greenhill argues, and by manipulating the costs or risks imposed on target state populations.

This "coercion by punishment" strategy can be effected in two ways: the first relies on straightforward threats to overwhelm a target's capacity to accommodate a refugee or migrant influx; the second, on a kind of norms-enhanced political blackmail that exploits the existence of legal and normative commitments to those fleeing violence, persecution, or privation. The theory is further illustrated and tested in a variety of case studies from Europe, East Asia, and North America. To help potential targets better respond to—and protect themselves against—this kind of unconventional predation, Weapons of Mass Migration also offers practicable policy recommendations for scholars, government officials, and anyone concerned about the true victims of this kind of coercion—the displaced themselves.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458668
ISBN:: 9780801458668
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

Deceit on the Road to War

Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy

John M. Schuessler

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In Deceit on the Road to War, John M. Schuessler examines how U.S. presidents have deceived the American public about fundamental decisions of war and peace. Deception has been deliberate, he suggests, as presidents have sought to shift blame for war onto others in some cases and oversell its benefits in others. Such deceit is a natural outgrowth of the democratic process, in Schuessler's view, because elected leaders have powerful incentives to maximize domestic support for war and retain considerable ability to manipulate domestic audiences. They can exploit information and propaganda advantages to frame issues in misleading ways, cherry-pick supporting evidence, suppress damaging revelations, and otherwise skew the public debate to their benefit. These tactics are particularly effective before the outbreak of war, when the information gap between leaders and the public is greatest.When resorting to deception, leaders take a calculated risk that the outcome of war will be favorable, expecting the public to adopt a forgiving attitude after victory is secured. The three cases featured in the book—Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, and George W. Bush and the Iraq War—test these claims. Schuessler concludes that democracies are not as constrained in their ability to go to war as we might believe and that deception cannot be ruled out in all cases as contrary to the national interest.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501701627
ISBN:: 9781501701627
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

American Pendulum

Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy

Christopher Hemmer

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As new presidential administrations come into power, they each bring their own approach to foreign policy. No grand strategy, however, is going to be completely novel. New administrations never start with a blank slate, so it is always possible to see similarities between an administration and its predecessors. Conversely, since each administration faces novel problems and operates in a unique context, no foreign policy strategy is going to be an exact replica of its predecessors. In American Pendulum, Christopher Hemmer examines America's grand strategic choices between 1914 and 2014 using four recurring debates in American foreign policy as lenses. First, how should the United States balance the trade-offs between working alone versus working with other states and international organizations? Second, what is the proper place of American values in foreign policy? Third, where does the strategic perimeter of the United States lie? And fourth, is time on the side of the United States or of its enemies?Offering new readings of debates within the Wilson, Truman, Nixon, Bush, and Obama administrations, Hemmer asserts that heated debates, disagreements, and even confusions over U.S. grand strategy are not only normal but also beneficial. He challenges the claim that uncertainties or inconsistences about the nation's role in the world or approach to security issues betray strategic confusion or the absence of a grand strategy. American foreign policy, he states, is most in danger not when debates are at their most pointed but when the weight of opinion crushes dissent. As the United States looks ahead to an increasingly multipolar world with increasing complicated security issues, Hemmer concludes, developing an effective grand strategy requires ongoing contestation and compromises between competing visions and policies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501701191
ISBN:: 9781501701191
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors

U.S. Civil-Military Relations and Multilateral Intervention

Stefano Recchia

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Why did American leaders work hard to secure multilateral approval from the United Nations or NATO for military interventions in Haiti, the Balkans, and Libya, while making only limited efforts to gain such approval for the 2003 Iraq War? In Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors, Stefano Recchia addresses this important question by drawing on declassified documents and about one hundred interviews with civilian and military leaders.The most assertive, hawkish, and influential civilian leaders, he argues, tend to downplay the costs of intervention, and when confronted with hesitant international partners they often want to bypass multilateral bodies. America's top-level generals, by contrast, are usually "reluctant warriors" who worry that intervention will result in open-ended stabilization missions; consequently, the military craves international burden sharing and values the potential exit ramp for U.S. forces that a handoff to the UN or NATO can provide.Recchia demonstrates that when the military speaks up and clearly expresses its concerns, even strongly pro-intervention civilian leaders can be expected to work hard to secure UN or NATO approval—if only to reassure the military about the likelihood of sustained burden sharing. Conversely, when the military stays silent, as it did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, bellicose civilian leaders are empowered; the United States is then more likely to bypass multilateral bodies, and it may end up carrying a heavy stabilization burden largely by itself. Recchia's argument that the military has the ability to contribute not only to a more prudent but also to a more multilateralist U.S. intervention policy may be counterintuitive, but the evidence is compelling.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501701559
ISBN:: 9781501701559
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

The Dictator's Army

Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes

Caitlin Talmadge

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In The Dictator's Army, Caitlin Talmadge presents a compelling new argument to help us understand why authoritarian militaries sometimes fight very well—and sometimes very poorly. Talmadge's framework for understanding battlefield effectiveness focuses on four key sets of military organizational practices: promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management. Different regimes face different domestic and international threat environments, leading their militaries to adopt different policies in these key areas of organizational behavior.Authoritarian regimes facing significant coup threats are likely to adopt practices that squander the state's military power, while regimes lacking such threats and possessing ambitious foreign policy goals are likely to adopt the effective practices often associated with democracies. Talmadge shows the importance of threat conditions and military organizational practices for battlefield performance in two paired comparisons of states at war: North and South Vietnam (1963–1975) and Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). Drawing on extensive documentary sources, her analysis demonstrates that threats and practices can vary not only between authoritarian regimes but also within them, either over time or across different military units. The result is a persuasive explanation of otherwise puzzling behavior by authoritarian militaries. The Dictator's Army offers a vital practical tool for those seeking to assess the likely course, costs, and outcomes of future conflicts involving nondemocratic adversaries, allies, or coalition partners.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501701764
ISBN:: 9781501701764
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

The Ethics of Destruction

Norms and Force in International Relations

Ward Thomas

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Many assume that in international politics, and especially in war, "anything goes." Sherman famously declared war "is all hell." The implication behind the maxim is that in war there is no order, only chaos; no mercy, only cruelty; no restraint, only suffering.Ward Thomas finds that this "anything goes" view is demonstrably wrong. It neither reflects how most people talk about the use of force in international relations nor describes the way national leaders actually use military force. Events such as those in Europe during World War II, in the Persian Gulf War, and in Kosovo cannot be understood, he argues, until we realize that state behavior, even during wartime, is shaped by common understandings about what is ethically acceptable and unacceptable.Thomas makes extensive use of two cases—the assassination of foreign leaders and the aerial bombardment of civilians—to trace the relative influence of norms and interests. His insistence on interconnections between ethical principle and material power leads to a revised understanding of the role of normative factors in foreign policy and the ways in which power and interest shape the international system.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471698
ISBN:: 9780801471698
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

Waging War, Planning Peace

U.S. Noncombat Operations and Major Wars

Aaron Rapport

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As the U.S. experience in Iraq following the 2003 invasion made abundantly clear, failure to properly plan for risks associated with postconflict stabilization and reconstruction can have a devastating impact on the overall success of a military mission. In Waging War, Planning Peace, Aaron Rapport investigates how U.S. presidents and their senior advisers have managed vital noncombat activities while the nation is in the midst of fighting or preparing to fight major wars. He argues that research from psychology—specifically, construal level theory—can help explain how individuals reason about the costs of postconflict noncombat operations that they perceive as lying in the distant future.In addition to preparations for "Phase IV" in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rapport looks at the occupation of Germany after World War II, the planned occupation of North Korea in 1950, and noncombat operations in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Applying his insights to these cases, he finds that civilian and military planners tend to think about near-term tasks in concrete terms, seriously assessing the feasibility of the means they plan to employ to secure valued ends. For tasks they perceive as further removed in time, they tend to focus more on the desirability of the overarching goals they are pursuing rather than the potential costs, risks, and challenges associated with the means necessary to achieve these goals. Construal level theory, Rapport contends, provides a coherent explanation of how a strategic disconnect can occur. It can also show postwar planners how to avoid such perilous missteps.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801455643
ISBN:: 9780801455643
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

China's Ascent

Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics

Robert S. Ross, Zhu Feng

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Assessments of China's importance on the world stage usually focus on a single dimension of China's increasing power, rather than on the multiple sources of China's rise, including its economic might and the continuing modernization of its military. This book offers multiple analytical perspectives—constructivist, liberal, neorealist—on the significance of the many dimensions of China's regional and global influence.Distinguished authors consider the likelihood of conflict and peaceful accommodation as China grows ever stronger. They look at the changing position of China "from the inside": How do Chinese policymakers evaluate the contemporary international order and what are the regional and global implications of that worldview? The authors also address the implications of China's increasing power for Chinese policymaking and for the foreign policies of Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Contributors: Robert Art, Brandeis University; Avery Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania; G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University; Byung-Kook Kim, Korea University; Jonathan Kirshner, Cornell University; Jeffrey W. Legro, University of Virginia; Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University; Qin Yaqing, China Foreign Affairs University; Robert S. Ross, Boston College; Akio Takahara, University of Tokyo; Tang Shiping, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Wei Ling, China Foreign Affairs University; Zhu Feng, Peking University

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801456992
ISBN:: 9780801456992
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2015

Barriers to Bioweapons

The Challenges of Expertise and Organization for Weapons Development

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley

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In both the popular imagination and among lawmakers and national security experts, there exists the belief that with sufficient motivation and material resources, states or terrorist groups can produce bioweapons easily, cheaply, and successfully. In Barriers to Bioweapons, Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley challenges this perception by showing that bioweapons development is a difficult, protracted, and expensive endeavor, rarely achieving the expected results whatever the magnitude of investment. Her findings are based on extensive interviews she conducted with former U.S. and Soviet-era bioweapons scientists and on careful analysis of archival data and other historical documents related to various state and terrorist bioweapons programs.Bioweapons development relies on living organisms that are sensitive to their environment and handling conditions, and therefore behave unpredictably. These features place a greater premium on specialized knowledge. Ben Ouagrham-Gormley posits that lack of access to such intellectual capital constitutes the greatest barrier to the making of bioweapons. She integrates theories drawn from economics, the sociology of science, organization, and management with her empirical research. The resulting theoretical framework rests on the idea that the pace and success of a bioweapons development program can be measured by its ability to ensure the creation and transfer of scientific and technical knowledge. The specific organizational, managerial, social, political, and economic conditions necessary for success are difficult to achieve, particularly in covert programs where the need to prevent detection imposes managerial and organizational conditions that conflict with knowledge production.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471933
ISBN:: 9780801471933
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Restraint

A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy

Barry R. Posen

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The United States, Barry R. Posen argues, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America's consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801470875
ISBN:: 9780801470875
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2012

Warlords

Strong-arm Brokers in Weak States

Kimberly Marten

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Warlords are individuals who control small territories within weak states, using a combination of force and patronage. In this book, Kimberly Marten shows why and how warlords undermine state sovereignty. Unlike the feudal lords of a previous era, warlords today are not state-builders. Instead they collude with cost-conscious, corrupt, or frightened state officials to flout and undermine state capacity. They thrive on illegality, relying on private militias for support, and often provoke violent resentment from those who are cut out of their networks. Some act as middlemen for competing states, helping to hollow out their own states from within. Countries ranging from the United States to Russia have repeatedly chosen to ally with warlords, but Marten argues that to do so is a dangerous proposition.

Drawing on interviews, documents, local press reports, and in-depth historical analysis, Marten examines warlordism in the Pakistani tribal areas during the twentieth century, in post-Soviet Georgia and the Russian republic of Chechnya, and among Sunni militias in the U.S.-supported Anbar Awakening and Sons of Iraq programs. In each case state leaders (some domestic and others foreign) created, tolerated, actively supported, undermined, or overthrew warlords and their militias. Marten draws lessons from these experiences to generate new arguments about the relationship between states, sovereignty, "local power brokers," and stability and security in the modern world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801464119
ISBN:: 9780801464119
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Fixing the Facts

National Security and the Politics of Intelligence

Joshua Rovner

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What is the role of intelligence agencies in strategy and policy? How do policymakers use (or misuse) intelligence estimates? When do intelligence-policy relations work best? How do intelligence-policy failures influence threat assessment, military strategy, and foreign policy? These questions are at the heart of recent national security controversies, including the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. In both cases the relationship between intelligence and policy broke down—with disastrous consequences.

In Fixing the Facts, Joshua Rovner explores the complex interaction between intelligence and policy and shines a spotlight on the problem of politicization. Major episodes in the history of American foreign policy have been closely tied to the manipulation of intelligence estimates. Rovner describes how the Johnson administration dealt with the intelligence community during the Vietnam War; how President Nixon and President Ford politicized estimates on the Soviet Union; and how pressure from the George W. Bush administration contributed to flawed intelligence on Iraq. He also compares the U.S. case with the British experience between 1998 and 2003, and demonstrates that high-profile government inquiries in both countries were fundamentally wrong about what happened before the war.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801463136
ISBN:: 9780801463136
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Bombing to Win

Air Power and Coercion in War

Robert A. Pape

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From Iraq to Bosnia to North Korea, the first question in American foreign policy debates is increasingly: Can air power alone do the job? Robert A. Pape provides a systematic answer. Analyzing the results of over thirty air campaigns, including a detailed reconstruction of the Gulf War, he argues that the key to success is attacking the enemy's military strategy, not its economy, people, or leaders. Coercive air power can succeed, but not as cheaply as air enthusiasts would like to believe.Pape examines the air raids on Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq as well as those of Israel versus Egypt, providing details of bombing and governmental decision making. His detailed narratives of the strategic effectiveness of bombing range from the classical cases of World War II to an extraordinary reconstruction of airpower use in the Gulf War, based on recently declassified documents. In this now-classic work of the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps military strategists and policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471513
ISBN:: 9780801471513
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2014

Diplomacy's Value

Creating Security in 1920s Europe and the Contemporary Middle East

Brian C. Rathbun, Knowledge Unlatched

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What is the value of diplomacy? How does it affect the course of foreign affairs independent of the distribution of power and foreign policy interests? Theories of international relations too often implicitly reduce the dynamics and outcomes of diplomacy to structural factors rather than the subtle qualities of negotiation. If diplomacy is an independent effect on the conduct of world politics, it has to add value, and we have to be able to show what that value is. In Diplomacy's Value, Brian C. Rathbun sets forth a comprehensive theory of diplomacy, based on his understanding that political leaders have distinct diplomatic styles—coercive bargaining, reasoned dialogue, and pragmatic statecraft.Drawing on work in the psychology of negotiation, Rathbun explains how diplomatic styles are a function of the psychological attributes of leaders and the party coalitions they represent. The combination of these styles creates a certain spirit of negotiation that facilitates or obstructs agreement. Rathbun applies the argument to relations among France, Germany, and Great Britain during the 1920s as well as Palestinian-Israeli negotiations since the 1990s. His analysis, based on an intensive analysis of primary documents, shows how different diplomatic styles can successfully resolve apparently intractable dilemmas and equally, how they can thwart agreements that were seemingly within reach.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801455063
ISBN:: 9780801455063
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

American Biodefense

How Dangerous Ideas about Biological Weapons Shape National Security

Frank L. Smith

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Biological weapons have threatened U.S. national security since at least World War II. Historically, however, the U.S. military has neglected research, development, acquisition, and doctrine for biodefense. Following September 11 and the anthrax letters of 2001, the United States started spending billions of dollars per year on medical countermeasures and biological detection systems. But most of this funding now comes from the Department of Health and Human Services rather than the Department of Defense. Why has the U.S. military neglected biodefense and allowed civilian organizations to take the lead in defending the country against biological attacks? In American Biodefense, Frank L. Smith III addresses this puzzling and largely untold story about science, technology, and national security.Smith argues that organizational frames and stereotypes have caused both military neglect and the rise of civilian biodefense. In the armed services, influential ideas about kinetic warfare have undermined defense against biological warfare. The influence of these ideas on science and technology challenges the conventional wisdom that national security policy is driven by threats or bureaucratic interests. Given the ideas at work inside the U.S. military, Smith explains how the lessons learned from biodefense can help solve other important problems that range from radiation weapons to cyber attacks.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801455162
ISBN:: 9780801455162
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

The Sources of Military Doctrine

France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars

Barry R. Posen

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Barry R. Posen explores how military doctrine takes shape and the role it plays in grand strategy—that collection of military, economic, and political means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve security.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468582
ISBN:: 9780801468582
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Dictators at War and Peace

Jessica L. P. Weeks

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Why do some autocratic leaders pursue aggressive or expansionist foreign policies, while others are much more cautious in their use of military force? The first book to focus systematically on the foreign policy of different types of authoritarian regimes, Dictators at War and Peace breaks new ground in our understanding of the international behavior of dictators. Jessica L. P. Weeks explains why certain kinds of regimes are less likely to resort to war than others, why some are more likely to win the wars they start, and why some authoritarian leaders face domestic punishment for foreign policy failures whereas others can weather all but the most serious military defeat. Using novel cross-national data, Weeks looks at various nondemocratic regimes, including those of Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin; the Argentine junta at the time of the Falklands War, the military government in Japan before and during World War II, and the North Vietnamese communist regime. She finds that the differences in the conflict behavior of distinct kinds of autocracies are as great as those between democracies and dictatorships. Indeed, some types of autocracies are no more belligerent or reckless than democracies, casting doubt on the common view that democracies are more selective about war than autocracies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801455247
ISBN:: 9780801455247
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Storm of Steel

The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939

Mary R. Habeck

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In this fascinating account of the battle tanks that saw combat in the European Theater of World War II, Mary R. Habeck traces the strategies developed between the wars for the use of armored vehicles in battle. Only in Germany and the Soviet Union were truly original armor doctrines (generally known as "blitzkreig" and "deep battle") fully implemented. Storm of Steel relates how the German and Soviet armies formulated and chose to put into practice doctrines that were innovative for the time, yet in many respects identical to one another.As part of her extensive archival research in Russia, Germany, and Britain, Habeck had access to a large number of formerly secret and top-secret documents from several post-Soviet archives. This research informs her comparative approach as she looks at the roles of technology, shared influences, and assumptions about war in the formation of doctrine. She also explores relations between the Germans and the Soviets to determine whether collaboration influenced the convergence of their armor doctrines.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471391
ISBN:: 9780801471391
Subject:: History
Subject:: Miscellaneous
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Networks of Rebellion

Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse

Paul Staniland

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The organizational cohesion of insurgent groups is central to explaining patterns of violence, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, and civil war outcomes. Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups.Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988–2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801471032
ISBN:: 9780801471032
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2014

Inadvertent Escalation

Conventional War and Nuclear Risks

Barry R. Posen

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In this sobering book, Barry R. Posen demonstrates how the interplay between conventional military operations and nuclear forces could, in conflicts among states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, inadvertently produce pressures for nuclear escalation. Knowledge of these hidden pressures, he believes, may help some future decision maker avoid catastrophe.Building a formidable argument that moves with cumulative force, he details the way in which escalation could occur not by mindless accident, or by deliberate preference for nuclear escalation, but rather as a natural accompaniment of land, naval, or air warfare at the conventional level. Posen bases his analysis on an empirical study of the east-west military competition in Europe during the 1980s, using a conceptual framework drawn from international relations theory, organization theory, and strategic theory.The lessons of his book, however, go well beyond the east-west competition. Since his observations are relevant to all military competitions between states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, his book speaks to some of the problems that attend the proliferation of nuclear weapons in longstanding regional conflicts. Optimism that small and medium nuclear powers can easily achieve "stable" nuclear balances is, he believes, unwarranted.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468384
ISBN:: 9780801468384
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2012

Nuclear Statecraft

History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age

Francis J. Gavin

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We are at a critical juncture in world politics. Nuclear strategy and policy have risen to the top of the global policy agenda, and issues ranging from a nuclear Iran to the global zero movement are generating sharp debate. The historical origins of our contemporary nuclear world are deeply consequential for contemporary policy, but it is crucial that decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than myth and misapprehension. In Nuclear Statecraft, Francis J. Gavin challenges key elements of the widely accepted narrative about the history of the atomic age and the consequences of the nuclear revolution.On the basis of recently declassified documents, Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. In case after case, he finds that we know far less than we think we do about our nuclear history. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.Gavin's rigorous historical work not only tells us what happened in the past but also offers a powerful tool to explain how nuclear weapons influence international relations. Nuclear Statecraft provides a solid foundation for future policymaking.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801465765
ISBN:: 9780801465765
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2012

Zion's Dilemmas

How Israel Makes National Security Policy

Charles D. Freilich

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In Zion's Dilemmas, a former deputy national security adviser to the State of Israel details the history and, in many cases, the chronic inadequacies in the making of Israeli national security policy. Chuck Freilich identifies profound, ongoing problems that he ascribes to a series of factors: a hostile and highly volatile regional environment, Israel's proportional representation electoral system, and structural peculiarities of the Israeli government and bureaucracy.Freilich uses his insider understanding and substantial archival and interview research to describe how Israel has made strategic decisions and to present a first of its kind model of national security decision-making in Israel. He analyzes the major events of the last thirty years, from Camp David I to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, through Camp David II, the Gaza Disengagement Plan of 2005, and the second Lebanon war of 2006.In these and other cases he identifies opportunities forgone, failures that resulted from a flawed decision-making process, and the entanglement of Israeli leaders in an inconsistent, highly politicized, and sometimes improvisational planning process. The cabinet is dysfunctional and Israel does not have an effective statutory forum for its decision-making—most of which is thus conducted in informal settings. In many cases policy objectives and options are poorly formulated. For all these problems, however, the Israeli decision-making process does have some strengths, among them the ability to make rapid and flexible responses, generally pragmatic decision-making, effective planning within the defense establishment, and the skills and motivation of those involved. Freilich concludes with cogent and timely recommendations for reform.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801465741
ISBN:: 9780801465741
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Leaders at War

How Presidents Shape Military Interventions

Elizabeth N. Saunders

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One of the most contentious issues in contemporary foreign policy—especially in the United States—is the use of military force to intervene in the domestic affairs of other states. Some military interventions explicitly try to transform the domestic institutions of the states they target; others do not, instead attempting only to reverse foreign policies or resolve disputes without trying to reshape the internal landscape of the target state. In Leaders at War, Elizabeth N. Saunders provides a framework for understanding when and why great powers seek to transform foreign institutions and societies through military interventions. She highlights a crucial but often-overlooked factor in international relations: the role of individual leaders.

Saunders argues that leaders' threat perceptions—specifically, whether they believe that threats ultimately originate from the internal characteristics of other states—influence both the decision to intervene and the choice of intervention strategy. These perceptions affect the degree to which leaders use intervention to remake the domestic institutions of target states. Using archival and historical sources, Saunders concentrates on U.S. military interventions during the Cold War, focusing on the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. After demonstrating the importance of leaders in this period, she also explores the theory's applicability to other historical and contemporary settings including the post–Cold War period and the war in Iraq.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460999
ISBN:: 9780801460999
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Cooperation under Fire

Anglo-German Restraint during World War II

Jeffrey W. Legro

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Why do nations cooperate even as they try to destroy each other? Jeffrey Legro explores this question in the context of World War II, the "total" war that in fact wasn't. During the war, combatant states attempted to sustain agreements limiting the use of three forms of combat considered barbarous—submarine attacks against civilian ships, strategic bombing of civilian targets, and chemical warfare. Looking at how these restraints worked or failed to work between such fierce enemies as Hitler's Third Reich and Churchill's Britain, Legro offers a new understanding of the dynamics of World War II and the sources of international cooperation.While traditional explanations of cooperation focus on the relations between actors, Cooperation under Fire examines what warring nations seek and why they seek it—the "preference formation" that undergirds international interaction. Scholars and statesmen debate whether it is the balance of power or the influence of international norms that most directly shapes foreign policy goals. Critically assessing both explanations, Legro argues that it was, rather, the organizational cultures of military bureaucracies—their beliefs and customs in waging war—that decided national priorities for limiting the use of force in World War II.Drawing on documents from Germany, Britain, the United States, and the former Soviet Union, Legro provides a compelling account of how military cultures molded state preferences and affected the success of cooperation. In its clear and cogent analysis, this book has significant implications for the theory and practice of international relations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801469916
ISBN:: 9780801469916
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Contemporary History until 1945
Subject:: World War II
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Armed State Building

Confronting State Failure, 1898–2012

Paul D. Miller

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Since 1898, the United States and the United Nations have deployed military force more than three dozen times in attempts to rebuild failed states. Currently there are more state-building campaigns in progress than at any time in the past century—including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sudan, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, and Lebanon—and the number of candidate nations for such campaigns in the future is substantial. Even with a broad definition of success, earlier campaigns failed more than half the time. In this book, Paul D. Miller brings his decade in the U.S. military, intelligence community, and policy worlds to bear on the question of what causes armed, international state-building campaigns by liberal powers to succeed or fail.The United States successfully rebuilt the West German and Japanese states after World War II but failed to build a functioning state in South Vietnam. After the Cold War the United Nations oversaw relatively successful campaigns to restore order, hold elections, and organize post-conflict reconstruction in Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, but those successes were overshadowed by catastrophes in Angola, Liberia, and Somalia. The recent effort in Iraq and the ongoing one in Afghanistan—where Miller had firsthand military, intelligence, and policymaking experience—are yielding mixed results, despite the high levels of resources dedicated and the long duration of the missions there. Miller outlines different types of state failure, analyzes various levels of intervention that liberal states have tried in the state-building process, and distinguishes among the various failures and successes those efforts have provoked.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801469541
ISBN:: 9780801469541
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

The Origins of Alliances

Stephen M. Walt

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How are alliances made? In this book, Stephen M. Walt makes a significant contribution to this topic, surveying theories of the origins of international alliances and identifying the most important causes of security cooperation between states. In...

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801469992
ISBN:: 9780801469992
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Revolution and War

Stephen M. Walt

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Revolution within a state almost invariably leads to intense security competition between states, and often to war. In Revolution and War, Stephen M. Walt explains why this is so.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801470011
ISBN:: 9780801470011
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Myths of Empire

Domestic Politics and International Ambition

Jack Snyder

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Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional explanations offered by historians and political scientists.He tests three competing theories—realism, misperception, and domestic coalition politics—against five detailed case studies: early twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II, and the United States during the Cold War. The resulting insights run counter to much that has been written about these apparently familiar instances of empire building.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468605
ISBN:: 9780801468605
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

The Ideology of the Offensive

Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914

Jack Snyder

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Jack Snyder's analysis of the attitudes of military planners in the years prior to the Great War offers new insight into the tragic miscalculations of that era and into their possible parallels in present-day war planning. By 1914, the European military powers had adopted offensive military strategies even though there was considerable evidence to support the notion that much greater advantage lay with defensive strategies. The author argues that organizational biases inherent in military strategists' attitudes make war more likely by encouraging offensive postures even when the motive is self-defense.Drawing on new historical evidence of the specific circumstances surrounding French, German, and Russian strategic policy, Snyder demonstrates that it is not only rational analysis that determines strategic doctrine, but also the attitudes of military planners. Snyder argues that the use of rational calculation often falls victim to the pursuit of organizational interests such as autonomy, prestige, growth, and wealth. Furthermore, efforts to justify the preferred policy bring biases into strategists' decisions—biases reflecting the influences of parochial interests and preconceptions, and those resulting from attempts to simplify unduly their analytical tasks.The frightening lesson here is that doctrines can be destabilizing even when weapons are not, because doctrine may be more responsive to the organizational needs of the military than to the implications of the prevailing weapons technology. By examining the historical failure of offensive doctrine, Jack Snyder makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the causes of war.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468629
ISBN:: 9780801468629
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Japan Prepares for Total War

The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941

Michael A. Barnhart

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The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources.Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468469
ISBN:: 9780801468469
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book Open Access 2013

Logics of War

Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts

Alex Weisiger, Knowledge Unlatched

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Most wars between countries end quickly and at relatively low cost. The few in which high-intensity fighting continues for years bring about a disproportionate amount of death and suffering. What separates these few unusually long and intense wars from the many conflicts that are far less destructive? In Logics of War, Alex Weisiger tests three explanations for a nation's decision to go to war and continue fighting regardless of the costs. He combines sharp statistical analysis of interstate wars over the past two centuries with nine narrative case studies. He examines both well-known conflicts like World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as unfamiliar ones such as the 1864–1870 Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance), which proportionally caused more deaths than any other war in modern history. When leaders go to war expecting easy victory, events usually correct their misperceptions quickly and with fairly low casualties, thereby setting the stage for a negotiated agreement. A second explanation involves motives born of domestic politics; as war becomes more intense, however, leaders are increasingly constrained in their ability to continue the fighting. Particularly destructive wars instead arise from mistrust of an opponent's intentions. Countries that launch preventive wars to forestall expected decline tend to have particularly ambitious war aims that they hold to even when fighting goes poorly. Moreover, in some cases, their opponents interpret the preventive attack as evidence of a dispositional commitment to aggression, resulting in the rejection of any form of negotiation and a demand for unconditional surrender. Weisiger’s treatment of a topic of central concern to scholars of major wars will also be read with great interest by military historians, political psychologists, and sociologists.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468179
ISBN:: 9780801468179
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Military History
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers

Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945

David E. Johnson

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The U.S. Army entered World War II unprepared. In addition, lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine.Johnson examines the U.S. Army's innovations for both armor and aviation between the world wars, arguing that the tank became a captive of the conservative infantry and cavalry branches, while the airplane's development was channeled by air power insurgents bent on creating an independent air force. He maintains that as a consequence, the tank's potential was hindered by the traditional arms, while air power advocates focused mainly on proving the decisiveness of strategic bombing, neglecting the mission of tactical support for ground troops. Minimal interaction between ground and air officers resulted in insufficient cooperation between armored forces and air forces.Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers makes a major contribution to a new understanding of both the creation of the modern U.S. Army and the Army's performance in World War II. The book also provides important insights for future military innovation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801467110
ISBN:: 9780801467110
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

The Origins of Major War

Dale C. Copeland

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One of the most important questions of human existence is what drives nations to war—especially massive, system-threatening war. Much military history focuses on the who, when, and where of war. In this riveting book, Dale C. Copeland brings attention to bear on why governments make decisions that lead to, sustain, and intensify conflicts.Copeland presents detailed historical narratives of several twentieth-century cases, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. He highlights instigating factors that transcend individual personalities, styles of government, geography, and historical context to reveal remarkable consistency across several major wars usually considered dissimilar. The result is a series of challenges to established interpretive positions and provocative new readings of the causes of conflict.Classical realists and neorealists claim that dominant powers initiate war. Hegemonic stability realists believe that wars are most often started by rising states. Copeland offers an approach stronger in explanatory power and predictive capacity than these three brands of realism: he examines not only the power resources but the shifting power differentials of states. He specifies more precisely the conditions under which state decline leads to conflict, drawing empirical support from the critical cases of the twentieth century as well as major wars spanning from ancient Greece to the Napoleonic Wars.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801467059
ISBN:: 9780801467059
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Military History
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

A Grand Strategy for America

Robert J. Art

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The United States today is the most powerful nation in the world, perhaps even stronger than Rome was during its heyday. It is likely to remain the world's preeminent power for at least several decades to come. What behavior is appropriate for such a powerful state? To answer this question, Robert J. Art concentrates on "grand strategy"—the deployment of military power in both peace and war to support foreign policy goals.He first defines America's contemporary national interests and the specific threats they face, then identifies seven grand strategies that the United States might contemplate, examining each in relation to America's interests. The seven are:• dominion—forcibly trying to remake the world in America's own image;• global collective security—attempting to keep the peace everywhere;• regional collective security—confining peacekeeping efforts to Europe;• cooperative security—seeking to reduce the occurrence of war by limiting other states' offensive capabilities;• isolationism—withdrawing from all military involvement beyond U.S. borders;• containment—holding the line against aggressor states; and• selective engagement—choosing to prevent or to become involved only in those conflicts that pose a threat to the country's long-term interests.Art makes a strong case for selective engagement as the most desirable strategy for contemporary America. It is the one that seeks to forestall dangers, not simply react to them; that is politically viable, at home and abroad; and that protects all U.S. interests, both essential and desirable. Art concludes that "selective engagement is not a strategy for all times, but it is the best grand strategy for these times."

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468445
ISBN:: 9780801468445
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Final Solutions

Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century

Benjamin A. Valentino

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Benjamin A. Valentino finds that ethnic hatreds or discrimination, undemocratic systems of government, and dysfunctions in society play a much smaller role in mass killing and genocide than is commonly assumed. He shows that the impetus for mass...

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801467172
ISBN:: 9780801467172
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

Causes of War

Power and the Roots of Conflict

Stephen Van Evera

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What causes war? How can military conflicts best be prevented? In this book, Stephen Van Evera frames five conditions that increase the risk of interstate war: false optimism about the likely outcome of a war, a first-strike advantage, fluctuation in the relative power of states, circumstances that allow nations to parlay one conquest into another, and circumstances that make conquest easy.

According to Van Evera, all but one of these conditions—false optimism—rarely occur today, but policymakers often erroneously believe in their existence. He argues that these misperceptions are responsible for many modern wars, and explores both World Wars, the Korean War, and the 1967 Mideast War as test cases. Finally, he assesses the possibility of nuclear war by applying all five hypotheses to its potential onset. Van Evera's book demonstrates that ideas from the Realist paradigm can offer strong explanations for international conflict and valuable prescriptions for its control.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801467196
ISBN:: 9780801467196
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2013

The Purpose of Intervention

Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force

Martha Finnemore

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Violence or the potential for violence is a fact of human existence. Many societies, including our own, reward martial success or skill at arms. The ways in which members of a particular society use force reveal a great deal about the nature of authority within the group and about its members' priorities.

In The Purpose of Intervention, Martha Finnemore uses one type of force, military intervention, as a window onto the shifting character of international society. She examines the changes, over the past 400 years, about why countries intervene militarily, as well as in the ways they have intervened. It is not the fact of intervention that has altered, she says, but rather the reasons for and meaning behind intervention—the conventional understanding of the purposes for which states can and should use force.

Finnemore looks at three types of intervention: collecting debts, addressing humanitarian crises, and acting against states perceived as threats to international peace. In all three, she finds that what is now considered "obvious" was vigorously contested or even rejected by people in earlier periods for well-articulated and logical reasons. A broad historical perspective allows her to explicate long-term trends: the steady erosion of force's normative value in international politics, the growing influence of equality norms in many aspects of global political life, and the increasing importance of law in intervention practices.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801467073
ISBN:: 9780801467073
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Remnants of War

John Mueller

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"War... is merely an idea, an institution, like dueling or slavery, that has been grafted onto human existence. It is not a trick of fate, a thunderbolt from hell, a natural calamity, or a desperate plot contrivance dreamed up by some sadistic puppeteer on high. And it seems to me that the institution is in pronounced decline, abandoned as attitudes toward it have changed, roughly following the pattern by which the ancient and formidable institution of slavery became discredited and then mostly obsolete."—from the Introduction

War is one of the great themes of human history and now, John Mueller believes, it is clearly declining. Developed nations have generally abandoned it as a way for conducting their relations with other countries, and most current warfare (though not all) is opportunistic predation waged by packs—often remarkably small ones—of criminals and bullies. Thus, argues Mueller, war has been substantially reduced to its remnants—or dregs—and thugs are the residual combatants.

Mueller is sensitive to the policy implications of this view. When developed states commit disciplined troops to peacekeeping, the result is usually a rapid cessation of murderous disorder. The Remnants of War thus reinvigorates our sense of the moral responsibility bound up in peacekeeping. In Mueller's view, capable domestic policing and military forces can also be effective in reestablishing civic order, and the building of competent governments is key to eliminating most of what remains of warfare.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459863
ISBN:: 9780801459863
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2012

Atomic Assistance

How "Atoms for Peace" Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity

Matthew Fuhrmann

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Nuclear technology is dual use in nature, meaning that it can be used to produce nuclear energy or to build nuclear weapons. Despite security concerns about proliferation, the United States and other nuclear nations have regularly shared with other countries nuclear technology, materials, and knowledge for peaceful purposes. In Atomic Assistance, Matthew Fuhrmann argues that governments use peaceful nuclear assistance as a tool of economic statecraft. Nuclear suppliers hope that they can reap the benefits of foreign aid—improving relationships with their allies, limiting the influence of their adversaries, enhancing their energy security by gaining favorable access to oil supplies—without undermining their security. By providing peaceful nuclear assistance, however, countries inadvertently help spread nuclear weapons.

Fuhrmann draws on several cases of "Atoms for Peace," including U.S. civilian nuclear assistance to Iran from 1957 to 1979; Soviet aid to Libya from 1975 to 1986; French, Italian, and Brazilian nuclear exports to Iraq from 1975 to 1981; and U.S. nuclear cooperation with India from 2001 to 2008. He also explores decision making in countries such as Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, and Syria to determine why states began (or did not begin) nuclear weapons programs and why some programs succeeded while others failed. Fuhrmann concludes that, on average, countries receiving higher levels of peaceful nuclear assistance are more likely to pursue and acquire the bomb—especially if they experience an international crisis after receiving aid.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801465758
ISBN:: 9780801465758
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Warring Friends

Alliance Restraint in International Politics

Jeremy Pressman

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Allied nations often stop each other from going to war. Some countries even form alliances with the specific intent of restraining another power and thereby preventing war. Furthermore, restraint often becomes an issue in existing alliances as one ally wants to start a war, launch a military intervention, or pursue some other risky military policy while the other ally balks. In Warring Friends, Jeremy Pressman draws on and critiques realist, normative, and institutionalist understandings of how alliance decisions are made.

Alliance restraint often has a role to play both in the genesis of alliances and in their continuation. As this book demonstrates, an external power can apply the brakes to an incipient conflict, and even unheeded advice can aid in clarifying national goals. The power differentials between allies in these partnerships are influenced by leadership unity, deception, policy substitutes, and national security priorities. Recent controversy over the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments—especially in regard to military and security concerns—is a reminder that the alliance has never been easy or straightforward.

Pressman highlights multiple episodes during which the United States attempted to restrain Israel's military policies: Israeli nuclear proliferation during the Kennedy Administration; the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; preventing an Israeli preemptive attack in 1973; a small Israeli operation in Lebanon in 1977; the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982; and Israeli action during the Gulf War of 1991. As Pressman shows, U.S. initiatives were successful only in 1973, 1977, and 1991, and tensions have flared up again recently as a result of Israeli arms sales to China.

Pressman also illuminates aspects of the Anglo-American special relationship as revealed in several cases: British nonintervention in Iran in 1951; U.S. nonintervention in Indochina in 1954; U.S. commitments to Taiwan that Britain opposed, 1954-1955; and British intervention and then withdrawal during the Suez War of 1956. These historical examples go far to explain the context within which the Blair administration failed to prevent the U.S. government from pursuing war in Iraq at a time of unprecedented American power.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801464942
ISBN:: 9780801464942
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Targeting Civilians in War

Alexander B. Downes

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Accidental harm to civilians in warfare often becomes an occasion for public outrage, from citizens of both the victimized and the victimizing nation. In this vitally important book on a topic of acute concern for anyone interested in military strategy, international security, or human rights, Alexander B. Downes reminds readers that democratic and authoritarian governments alike will sometimes deliberately kill large numbers of civilians as a matter of military strategy. What leads governments to make such a choice?

Downes examines several historical cases: British counterinsurgency tactics during the Boer War, the starvation blockade used by the Allies against Germany in World War I, Axis and Allied bombing campaigns in World War II, and ethnic cleansing in the Palestine War. He concludes that governments decide to target civilian populations for two main reasons—desperation to reduce their own military casualties or avert defeat, or a desire to seize and annex enemy territory. When a state's military fortunes take a turn for the worse, he finds, civilians are more likely to be declared legitimate targets to coerce the enemy state to give up. When territorial conquest and annexation are the aims of warfare, the population of the disputed land is viewed as a threat and the aggressor state may target those civilians to remove them. Democracies historically have proven especially likely to target civilians in desperate circumstances.

In Targeting Civilians in War, Downes explores several major recent conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Civilian casualties occurred in each campaign, but they were not the aim of military action. In these cases, Downes maintains, the achievement of quick and decisive victories against overmatched foes allowed democracies to win without abandoning their normative beliefs by intentionally targeting civilians. Whether such "restraint" can be guaranteed in future conflicts against more powerful adversaries is, however, uncertain. During times of war, democratic societies suffer tension between norms of humane conduct and pressures to win at the lowest possible costs. The painful lesson of Targeting Civilians in War is that when these two concerns clash, the latter usually prevails.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458538
ISBN:: 9780801458538
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Europe United

Power Politics and the Making of the European Community

Sebastian Rosato

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The construction of the European Community (EC) has widely been understood as the product of either economic self-interest or dissatisfaction with the nation-state system. In Europe United, Sebastian Rosato challenges these conventional explanations, arguing that the Community came into being because of balance of power concerns. France and the Federal Republic of Germany—the two key protagonists in the story—established the EC at the height of the cold war as a means to balance against the Soviet Union and one another.

More generally, Rosato argues that international institutions, whether military or economic, largely reflect the balance of power. In his view, states establish institutions in order to maintain or increase their share of world power, and the shape of those institutions reflects the wishes of their most powerful members. Rosato applies this balance of power theory of cooperation to several other cooperative ventures since 1789, including various alliances and trade pacts, the unifications of Italy and Germany, and the founding of the United States. Rosato concludes by arguing that the demise of the Soviet Union has deprived the EC of its fundamental purpose. As a result, further moves toward political and military integration are improbable, and the economic community is likely to unravel to the point where it becomes a shadow of its former self.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460982
ISBN:: 9780801460982
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Shadow of the Past

Reputation and Military Alliances before the First World War

Gregory D. Miller

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In The Shadow of the Past, Gregory D. Miller examines the role that reputation plays in international politics, emphasizing the importance of reliability—confidence that, based on past political actions, a country will make good on its promises—in the formation of military alliances. Challenging recent scholarship that focuses on the importance of credibility—a state's reputation for following through on its threats—Miller finds that reliable states have much greater freedom in forming alliances than those that invest resources in building military force but then use it inconsistently.

To explore the formation and maintenance of alliances based on reputation, Miller draws on insights from both political science and business theory to track the evolution of great power relations before the First World War. He starts with the British decision to abandon "splendid isolation" in 1900 and examines three crises—the First Moroccan Crisis (1905–6), the Bosnia-Herzegovina Crisis (1908–9), and the Agadir Crisis (1911)—leading up to the war. He determines that states with a reputation for being a reliable ally have an easier time finding other reliable allies, and have greater autonomy within their alliances, than do states with a reputation for unreliability. Further, a history of reliability carries long-term benefits, as states tend not to lose allies even when their reputation declines.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801464133
ISBN:: 9780801464133
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Exporting the Bomb

Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons

Matthew Kroenig

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In a vitally important book for anyone interested in nuclear proliferation, defense strategy, or international security, Matthew Kroenig points out that nearly every country with a nuclear weapons arsenal received substantial help at some point from a more advanced nuclear state. Why do some countries help others to develop nuclear weapons? Many analysts assume that nuclear transfers are driven by economic considerations. States in dire economic need, they suggest, export sensitive nuclear materials and technology—and ignore the security risk—in a desperate search for hard currency.

Kroenig challenges this conventional wisdom. He finds that state decisions to provide sensitive nuclear assistance are the result of a coherent, strategic logic. The spread of nuclear weapons threatens powerful states more than it threatens weak states, and these differential effects of nuclear proliferation encourage countries to provide sensitive nuclear assistance under certain strategic conditions. Countries are more likely to export sensitive nuclear materials and technology when it would have the effect of constraining an enemy and less likely to do so when it would threaten themselves.

In Exporting the Bomb, Kroenig examines the most important historical cases, including France's nuclear assistance to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s; the Soviet Union's sensitive transfers to China from 1958 to 1960; China's nuclear aid to Pakistan in the 1980s; and Pakistan's recent technology transfers, with the help of "rogue" scientist A. Q. Khan, from 1987 to 2002. Understanding why states provide sensitive nuclear assistance not only adds to our knowledge of international politics but also aids in international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458910
ISBN:: 9780801458910
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Mediation Dilemma

Kyle Beardsley

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Mediation has become a common technique for terminating violent conflicts both within and between states; while mediation has a strong record in reducing hostilities, it is not without its own problems. In The Mediation Dilemma, Kyle Beardsley highlights its long-term limitations. The result of this oft-superficial approach to peacemaking, immediate and reassuring as it may be, is often a fragile peace. With the intervention of a third-party mediator, warring parties may formally agree to concessions that are insupportable in the long term and soon enough find themselves at odds again.

Beardsley examines his argument empirically using two data sets and traces it through several historical cases: Henry Kissinger's and Jimmy Carter's initiatives in the Middle East, 1973–1979; Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 mediation in the Russo-Japanese War; and Carter’s attempt to mediate in the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. He also draws upon the lessons of the 1993 Arusha Accords, the 1993 Oslo Accords, Haiti in 1994, the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement in Sri Lanka, and the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding in Aceh. Beardsley concludes that a reliance on mediation risks a greater chance of conflict relapse in the future, whereas the rejection of mediation risks ongoing bloodshed as war continues.

The trade-off between mediation’s short-term and long-term effects is stark when the third-party mediator adopts heavy-handed forms of leverage, and, Beardsley finds, multiple mediators and intergovernmental organizations also do relatively poorly in securing long-term peace. He finds that mediation has the greatest opportunity to foster both short-term and long-term peace when a single third party mediates among belligerents that can afford to wait for a self-enforcing arrangement to be reached.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801462610
ISBN:: 9780801462610
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Sorry States

Apologies in International Politics

Jennifer Lind

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Governments increasingly offer or demand apologies for past human rights abuses, and it is widely believed that such expressions of contrition are necessary to promote reconciliation between former adversaries. The post-World War II experiences of Japan and Germany suggest that international apologies have powerful healing effects when they are offered, and poisonous effects when withheld. West Germany made extensive efforts to atone for wartime crimes-formal apologies, monuments to victims of the Nazis, and candid history textbooks; Bonn successfully reconciled with its wartime enemies. By contrast, Tokyo has made few and unsatisfying apologies and approves school textbooks that whitewash wartime atrocities. Japanese leaders worship at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war criminals among Japan's war dead. Relations between Japan and its neighbors remain tense.

Examining the cases of South Korean relations with Japan and of French relations with Germany, Jennifer Lind demonstrates that denials of past atrocities fuel distrust and inhibit international reconciliation. In Sorry States, she argues that a country's acknowledgment of past misdeeds is essential for promoting trust and reconciliation after war. However, Lind challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that many countries have been able to reconcile without much in the way of apologies or reparations. Contrition can be highly controversial and is likely to cause a domestic backlash that alarms—rather than assuages—outside observers. Apologies and other such polarizing gestures are thus unlikely to soothe relations after conflict, Lind finds, and remembrance that is less accusatory-conducted bilaterally or in multilateral settings-holds the most promise for international reconciliation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801462283
ISBN:: 9780801462283
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Foreign Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Logic of Positive Engagement

Miroslav Nincic

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Recent American foreign policy has depended heavily on the use of negative inducements to alter the behavior of other states. From public browbeating through economic sanctions to military invasion, the last several presidents have chosen to use coercion to advance U.S. interests when dealing with adversaries. In this respect, as Miroslav Nincic notes, the United States differs from many of its closest allies: Canada has long maintained diplomatic relations with Cuba, and several of the European democracies have continued diplomatic engagement with governments that the United States considers pariah regimes. In The Logic of Positive Engagement, Nincic outlines the efficacy of and the benefits that can flow from positive rather than negative engagement.

Nincic observes that threats and punishments may be gratifying in a symbolic sense, but that they haven't affected the longevity or the most objectionable policies of the regimes against which they are directed. Might positive inducements produce better results? Nincic examines two major models of positive inducements: the exchange model, in which incentives are offered in trade for altered behavior, and the catalytic model, in which incentives accumulate to provoke a thorough revision of the target's policies and priorities. He examines the record with regard to long-term U.S. relations with Cuba, Libya, and Syria, and then discusses the possibility that positive inducements might bring policy success to current relations with Iran and North Korea.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801463013
ISBN:: 9780801463013
Subject:: History
Subject:: Theories, Methods, and Auxiliary Sciences
Subject:: Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subject:: Diplomatic
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Military Lens

Doctrinal Difference and Deterrence Failure in Sino-American Relations

Christopher P. Twomey

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In The Military Lens, Christopher P. Twomey shows how differing military doctrines have led to misperceptions between the United States and China over foreign policy—and the potential dangers these might pose in future relations. Because of their different strategic situations, histories, and military cultures, nations may have radically disparate definitions of effective military doctrine, strategy, and capabilities. Twomey argues that when such doctrines—or "theories of victory"—differ across states, misperceptions about a rival's capabilities and intentions and false optimism about one's own are more likely to occur. In turn, these can impede international diplomacy and statecraft by making it more difficult to communicate and agree on assessments of the balance of power.

When states engage in strategic coercion—either to deter or to compel action—such problems can lead to escalation and war. Twomey assesses a wide array of sources in both the United States and China on military doctrine, strategic culture, misperception, and deterrence theory to build case studies of attempts at strategic coercion during Sino-American conflicts in Korea and the Taiwan Strait in the early years of the Cold War, as well as an examination of similar issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. After demonstrating how these factors have contributed to past conflicts, Twomey amply documents the persistence of hazardous miscommunication in contemporary Sino-American relations. His unique analytic perspective on military capability suggests that policymakers need to carefully consider the military doctrine of the nations they are trying to influence.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460036
ISBN:: 9780801460036
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

Just Politics

Human Rights and the Foreign Policy of Great Powers

C. William Walldorf

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Many foreign policy analysts assume that elite policymakers in liberal democracies consistently ignore humanitarian norms when these norms interfere with commercial and strategic interests. Today's endorsement by Western governments of repressive regimes in countries from Kazakhstan to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the name of fighting terror only reinforces this opinion. In Just Politics, C. William Walldorf Jr. challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that human rights concerns have often led democratic great powers to sever vital strategic partnerships even when it has not been in their interest to do so.Walldorf sets out his case in detailed studies of British alliance relationships with the Ottoman Empire and Portugal in the nineteenth century and of U.S. partnerships with numerous countries—ranging from South Africa, Turkey, Greece and El Salvador to Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina—during the Cold War. He finds that illiberal behavior by partner states, varying degrees of pressure by nonstate actors, and legislative activism account for the decisions by democracies to terminate strategic partnerships for human rights reasons.To demonstrate the central influence of humanitarian considerations and domestic politics in the most vital of strategic moments of great-power foreign policy, Walldorf argues that Western governments can and must integrate human rights into their foreign policies. Failure to take humanitarian concerns into account, he contends, will only damage their long-term strategic objectives.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459924
ISBN:: 9780801459924
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2011

The Power Problem

How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free

Christopher A. Preble

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Numerous polls show that Americans want to reduce our military presence abroad, allowing our allies and other nations to assume greater responsibility both for their own defense and for enforcing security in their respective regions. In The Power Problem, Christopher A. Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of this nation's military power; throughout, he makes the case that the majority of Americans are right, and the foreign policy experts who disdain the public's perspective are wrong.

Preble is a keen and skeptical observer of recent U.S. foreign policy experiences, which have been marked by the promiscuous use of armed intervention. He documents how the possession of vast military strength runs contrary to the original intent of the Founders, and has, as they feared, shifted the balance of power away from individual citizens and toward the central government, and from the legislative and judicial branches of government to the executive. In Preble's estimate, if policymakers in Washington have at their disposal immense military might, they will constantly be tempted to overreach, and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest."

Preble holds that the core national interest—preserving American security—is easily defined and largely immutable. Possessing vast military power in order to further other objectives is, he asserts, illicit and to be resisted. Preble views military power as purely instrumental: if it advances U.S. security, then it is fulfilling its essential role. If it does not—if it undermines our security, imposes unnecessary costs, and forces all Americans to incur additional risks—then our military power is a problem, one that only we can solve. As it stands today, Washington's eagerness to maintain and use an enormous and expensive military is corrosive to contemporary American democracy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459153
ISBN:: 9780801459153
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Occupational Hazards

Success and Failure in Military Occupation

David M. Edelstein

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Few would contest that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a clear example of just how fraught a military occupation can become. In Occupational Hazards, David M. Edelstein elucidates the occasional successes of military occupations and their more frequent failures. Edelstein has identified twenty-six cases since 1815 in which an outside power seized control of a territory where the occupying party had no long-term claim on sovereignty.

In a book that has implications for present-day policy, he draws evidence from such historical cases as well as from four current occupations—Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq—where the outcome is not yet known. Occupation is difficult, in Edelstein's view, because ambitious goals require considerable time and resources, yet both the occupied population and the occupying power want occupation to end quickly and inexpensively; in drawn-out occupations, impatience grows and resources dwindle.

This combination sabotages the occupying power's ability to accomplish two tasks: convince an occupied population to suppress its nationalist desires and sustain its own commitment to the occupation. Structural conditions and strategic choices play crucial roles in the success or failure of an occupation. In describing those factors, Edelstein prescribes a course of action for the future.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458569
ISBN:: 9780801458569
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Why Intelligence Fails

Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War

Robert Jervis

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Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the 2002 claim that Iraq had active WMD programs.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458859
ISBN:: 9780801458859
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Fighting for Rights

Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship

Ronald R. Krebs

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Leaders around the globe have long turned to the armed forces as a "school for the nation." Debates over who serves continue to arouse passion today because the military's participation policies are seen as shaping politics beyond the military, specifically the politics of identity and citizenship. Yet how and when do these policies transform patterns of citizenship? Military service, Ronald R. Krebs argues, can play a critical role in bolstering minorities' efforts to grasp full and unfettered rights. Minority groups have at times effectively contrasted their people's battlefield sacrifices to the reality of inequity, compelling state leaders to concede to their claims. At the same time, military service can shape when, for what, and how minorities have engaged in political activism in the quest for meaningful citizenship.

Employing a range of rich primary materials, Krebs shows how the military's participation policies shaped Arab citizens' struggles for first-class citizenship in Israel from independence to the mid-1980s and African Americans' quest for civil rights, from World War I to the Korean War. Fighting for Rights helps us make sense of contemporary debates over gays in the military and over the virtues and dangers of liberal and communitarian visions for society. It suggests that rhetoric is more than just a weapon of the weak, that it is essential to political exchange, and that politics rests on a dual foundation of rationality and culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459832
ISBN:: 9780801459832
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Corporate Warriors

The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

P. W. Singer

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Some have claimed that "War is too important to be left to the generals," but P. W. Singer asks "What about the business executives?" Breaking out of the guns-for-hire mold of traditional mercenaries, corporations now sell skills and services that...

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459894
ISBN:: 9780801459894
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Living Weapons

Biological Warfare and International Security

Gregory D. Koblentz

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"Biological weapons are widely feared, yet rarely used. Biological weapons were the first weapon prohibited by an international treaty, yet the proliferation of these weapons increased after they were banned in 1972. Biological weapons are frequently called 'the poor man's atomic bomb,' yet they cannot provide the same deterrent capability as nuclear weapons. One of my goals in this book is to explain the underlying principles of these apparent paradoxes."—from Living Weapons

Biological weapons are the least well understood of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons, biological weapons are composed of, or derived from, living organisms. In Living Weapons, Gregory D. Koblentz provides a comprehensive analysis of the unique challenges that biological weapons pose for international security. At a time when the United States enjoys overwhelming conventional military superiority, biological weapons have emerged as an attractive means for less powerful states and terrorist groups to wage asymmetric warfare.

Koblentz also warns that advances in the life sciences have the potential to heighten the lethality and variety of biological weapons. The considerable overlap between the equipment, materials and knowledge required to develop biological weapons, conduct civilian biomedical research, and develop biological defenses creates a multiuse dilemma that limits the effectiveness of verification, hinders civilian oversight, and complicates threat assessments.

Living Weapons draws on the American, Soviet, Russian, South African, and Iraqi biological weapons programs to enhance our understanding of the special challenges posed by these weapons for arms control, deterrence, civilian-military relations, and intelligence. Koblentz also examines the aspirations of terrorist groups to develop these weapons and the obstacles they have faced. Biological weapons, Koblentz argues, will continue to threaten international security until defenses against such weapons are improved, governments can reliably detect biological weapon activities, the proliferation of materials and expertise is limited, and international norms against the possession and use of biological weapons are strengthened.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801458903
ISBN:: 9780801458903
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Securing Japan

Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia

Richard J. Samuels

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For the past sixty years, the U.S. government has assumed that Japan's security policies would reinforce American interests in Asia. The political and military profile of Asia is changing rapidly, however. Korea's nuclear program, China's rise, and the relative decline of U.S. power have commanded strategic review in Tokyo just as these matters have in Washington. What is the next step for Japan's security policy? Will confluence with U.S. interests—and the alliance—survive intact? Will the policy be transformed? Or will Japan become more autonomous?

Richard J. Samuels demonstrates that over the last decade, a revisionist group of Japanese policymakers has consolidated power. The Koizumi government of the early 2000s took bold steps to position Japan's military to play a global security role. It left its successor, the Abe government, to further define and legitimate Japan's new grand strategy, a project well under way-and vigorously contested both at home and in the region. Securing Japan begins by tracing the history of Japan's grand strategy—from the Meiji rulers, who recognized the intimate connection between economic success and military advance, to the Konoye consensus that led to Japan's defeat in World War II and the postwar compact with the United States.

Samuels shows how the ideological connections across these wars and agreements help explain today's debate. He then explores Japan's recent strategic choices, arguing that Japan will ultimately strike a balance between national strength and national autonomy, a position that will allow it to exist securely without being either too dependent on the United States or too vulnerable to threats from China. Samuels's insights into Japanese history, society, and politics have been honed over a distinguished career and enriched by interviews with policymakers and original archival research. Securing Japan is a definitive assessment of Japanese security policy and its implications for the future of East Asia.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801459221
ISBN:: 9780801459221
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

The Ultimate Enemy

British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

Wesley K. Wark

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How realistically did the British government assess the threat from Nazi Germany during the 1930s? How accurate was British intelligence's understanding of Hitler's aims and Germany's military and industrial capabilities? In The Ultimate Enemy, Wesley K. Wark catalogues the many misperceptions about Nazi Germany that were often fostered by British intelligence.This book, the product of exhaustive archival research, first looks at the goals of British intelligence in the 1930s. He explains the various views of German power held by the principal Whitehall authorities—including the various military intelligence directorates and the semi-clandestine Industrial Intelligence Centre—and he describes the efforts of senior officials to fit their perceptions of German power into the framework of British military and diplomatic policy. Identifying the four phases through which the British intelligence effort evolved, he assesses its shortcomings and successes, and he calls into question the underlying premises of British intelligence doctrine.Wark shows that faulty intelligence assessments were crucial in shaping the British policy of appeasement up to the outbreak of World War II. His book offers a new perspective on British policy in the interwar period and also contributes a fascinating case study in the workings of intelligence services during a period of worldwide crisis.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717079
ISBN:: 9781501717079
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Political Science, other
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2010

Reputation and International Politics

Jonathan Mercer

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By approaching an important foreign policy issue from a new angle, Jonathan Mercer comes to a startling, controversial discovery: a nation's reputation is not worth fighting for.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724473
ISBN:: 9781501724473
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2008

War and the Engineers

The Primacy of Politics over Technology

Keir A. Lieber

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Do some technologies provoke war? Do others promote peace? Offense-defense theory contends that technological change is an important cause of conflict: leaders will be tempted to launch wars when they believe innovation favors attackers over defenders. Offense-defense theory is perhaps best known from the passionate and intricate debates about first-strike capability and deterrence stability during the cold war, but it has deeper historical roots, remains a staple in international relations theorizing, and drives modern arms control policymaking.

In War and the Engineers, the first book systematically to test the logical and empirical validity of offense-defense theory, Keir A. Lieber examines the relationships among politics, technology, and the causes of war. Lieber's cases explore the military and political implications of the spread of railroads, the emergence of rifled small arms and artillery, the introduction of battle tanks, and the nuclear revolution. Lieber incorporates the new historiography of World War I, which draws on archival materials that only recently became available, to challenge many common beliefs about the conflict. The author's central conclusion is that technology is neither a cause of international conflict nor a panacea; instead, power politics remains paramount.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724466
ISBN:: 9781501724466
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2007

The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989

Mark L. Haas

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How do leaders perceive threat levels in world politics, and what effects do those perceptions have on policy choices? Mark L. Haas focuses on how ideology shapes perception. He does not delineate the content of particular ideologies, but rather the degree of difference among them. Degree of ideological difference is, he believes, the crucial factor as leaders decide which nations threaten and which bolster their state's security and their own domestic power. These threat perceptions will in turn impel leaders to make particular foreign-policy choices. Haas examines great-power relations in five periods: the 1790s in Europe, the Concert of Europe (1815–1848), the 1930s in Europe, Sino-Soviet relations from 1949 to 1960, and the end of the Cold War. In each case he finds a clear relationship between the degree of ideological differences that divided state leaders and those leaders' perceptions of threat level (and so of appropriate foreign-policy choices). These relationships held in most cases, regardless of the nature of the ideologies in question, the offense-defense balance, and changes in the international distribution of power.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501732461
ISBN:: 9781501732461
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2004

Balancing Risks

Great Power Intervention in the Periphery

Jeffrey W. Taliaferro

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Great powers often initiate risky military and diplomatic inventions in far-off, peripheral regions that pose no direct threat to them, risking direct confrontation with rivals in strategically inconsequential places. Why do powerful countries behave in a way that leads to entrapment in prolonged, expensive, and self-defeating conflicts? Jeffrey W. Taliaferro suggests that such interventions are driven by the refusal of senior officials to accept losses in their state's relative power, international status, or prestige. Instead of cutting their losses, leaders often continue to invest blood and money in failed excursions into the periphery. Their policies may seem to be driven by rational concerns about power and security, but Taliaferro deems them to be at odds with the master explanation of political realism. Taliaferro constructs a "balance-of-risk" theory of foreign policy that draws on defensive realism (in international relations) and prospect theory (in psychology). He illustrates the power of this new theory in several case narratives: Germany's initiation and escalation of the 1905 and 1911 Moroccan crises, the United States' involvement in the Korean War in 1950–52, and Japan's entanglement in the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937–40 and its decisions for war with the U.S. in 1940–41.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501720253
ISBN:: 9781501720253
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2004

Divided Union

The Politics of War in the Early American Republic

Scott A. Silverstone

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Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the United States was embroiled in competitive inter-state politics. Although it did not directly involve itself in European affairs, the United States did engage regularly in dangerous struggles with other states and with colonial powers with territory on the American periphery. Aside from the War of 1812, the Oregon Crisis, and the Mexican War, other "near misses" included here—disputes of 1807 and 1809 with Britain, with Spain over East Florida in 1811–13, with Mexico in 1853, and disputes with Spain over Cuba in 1853–55 and with Mexico in 1858–1860—have been ignored in the democratic peace literature. Scott A. Silverstone finds these cases particularly useful for testing alternative explanations of constraints on armed conflict, because the United States backed down each time, allowing each crisis to pass short of its full potential for violence.Silverstone builds on a nascent theory of institutional constraints on the use of force presented in the Federalist Papers to explain American attitudes toward participation in conflicts. He argues that the federal character of American democracy that emerged from the founding and the large size of the new American republic provide the keys to understanding its decision-making processes. Divided Union shows how the institutional features of federal union and the diverse social, economic, and security interests within this geographically extended republic created political conditions that impeded the use of force by the United States before the Civil War.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501726651
ISBN:: 9781501726651
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2001

Modern Hatreds

The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War

Stuart J. Kaufman

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What is it about ethnicity that breaks countries apart and drives people to acts of savage violence against their lifelong neighbors? Stuart Kaufman finds the roots of ethnic violence in myths and symbols, the stories ethnic groups tell about who they are.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501702006
ISBN:: 9781501702006
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2001

No Exit

America and the German Problem, 1943–1954

James McAllister

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James McAllister outlines a new account of early Cold War history, one that focuses on the emergence of a bipolar structure of power, the continuing importance of the German question, and American efforts to create a united Western Europe. Challenging the conventional wisdom among both international relations theorists and Cold War historians, McAllister argues that America's central objective from the Second World War to the mid-1950s was to create a European order that could be peaceful and stable without requiring the permanent presence of American ground forces on the continent.The permanent presence of American forces in Europe is often seen as a lesson that policymakers drew from the disastrous experiences of two world wars, but McAllister's archival research reveals that both FDR and Eisenhower, as well as influential strategists such as George Kennan, did not draw this lesson. In the short term, American power was necessary to balance the Soviet Union and reassure Western Europe about the revival of German power, but America's long-term objective was to create the conditions under which Western Europe could take care of both of these problems on their own.In the author's view, the key element of this strategy was the creation of the European Defense Community. If Western Germany could be successfully integrated and rearmed within the context of the EDC, Western Europe would have taken the most important step to becoming a superpower on par with the United States and the Soviet Union. Understanding why this strategy was pursued and why it failed, McAllister asserts, has important implications for both international relations theory and contemporary questions of American foreign policy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501732256
ISBN:: 9781501732256
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 2000

The Transformation of American Air Power

Benjamin S. Lambeth

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Since the unprecedentedly effective performance of the allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, the role of American air power in future wars has become a topic of often heated public debate. In this balanced appraisal of air power's newly realized strengths in joint warfare, Benjamin Lambeth, a defense analyst and civilian pilot who has flown in most of the equipment described in this book, explores the extent to which the United States can now rely on air-delivered precision weapons in lieu of ground forces to achieve strategic objectives and minimize American casualties.Beginning with the U.S. experience in Southeast Asia and detailing how failures there set the stage for a sweeping refurbishment of the nation's air warfare capability, Lambeth reviews the recent history of American air power, including its role in the Gulf War and in later conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia. He examines improvements in areas ranging from hardware development to aircrew skills and organizational adaptability.Lambeth acknowledges that the question of whether air power should operate independently or continue to support land operations is likely to remain contentious. He concludes, however, that air power, its strategic effectiveness proven, can now set the conditions for victory even from the outset of combat if applied to its fullest potential.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501735950
ISBN:: 9781501735950
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1999

Report to JFK

The Skybolt Crisis in Perspective

Richard E. Neustadt

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In March 1963, President Kennedy asked Richard E. Neustadt to investigate a troubling episode in U.S.-British relations. His confidential report—intended for a single reader, JFK himself, and classified for thirty years—is reproduced in its entirety...

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724428
ISBN:: 9781501724428
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1999

Mortal Friends, Best Enemies

German-Russian Cooperation after the Cold War

Celeste A. Wallander

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Several hundred thousand members of the Red Army were stationed in East Germany when that state was reunited with its western counterpart. The peaceful transfer of these soldiers to their homeland produced a welcome outcome to a potentially explosive situation. Through an investigation of the strategies of German and Russian decision-makers, Celeste A. Wallander explores what conditions facilitate or hinder international cooperation in security matters.Wallander spent the months and years after the fall of the Berlin Wall interviewing officials and politicians from Germany and Russia. She reveals how these individuals assessed and responded to potential flashpoints: the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Germany, the implementation of arms control treaties, the management of ethnic and regional conflicts. She also examines the two states' views on the enlargement of NATO.The first detailed account from both countries' perspectives of the extraordinary contraction of Russian power and the implications of German unification, Mortal Friends, Best Enemies clearly depicts the important role European and global institutions played making the military disengagement possible. Wallander draws on these findings to develop a new institutional theory of security relations. In it she defines the techniques that international institutions can use to help states solve obstacles to security.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717376
ISBN:: 9781501717376
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1998

A Question of Loyalty

Military Manpower Policy in Multiethnic States

Alon Peled

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He advocates new policies for change, recommending that the leaders of ethnically torn countries such as the republics of the former Soviet Union and states in central Africa allow professional officers to introduce soldiers from mistrusted ethnic groups through a process of phased integration.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501737466
ISBN:: 9781501737466
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1996

Societies and Military Power

India and Its Armies

Stephen Peter Rosen

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He concludes that the comparative study of strategic behavior and military organization has lacked a sound foundation, which the social-structural explanation offered in this book begins to provide.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501744792
ISBN:: 9781501744792
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1996

Crucible of Beliefs

Learning, Alliances, and World Wars

Dan Reiter

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How do foreign policy-makers learn from history? When do states enter alliances? Beginning with these two questions, Dan Reiter uses recent work in social psychology and organization theory to build a formative-events model of learning in international politics. History does inform the decisions of policy-makers, he suggests, but it is history of a specific sort, based on firsthand experience in major events such as wars.

Reiter addresses a striking empirical puzzle: Why, in this century, have some small powers chosen to enter alliances when faced with international instability whereas others have stayed neutral? Specifically, why did Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway join NATO, while Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland did not? Employing quantitative and case study methods, Reiter finds that peacetime decisions about alliance and neutrality stem from states' experiences during world wars.

Tested against balance-of-threat theory, the leading realist explanation of alliance behavior, Reiter's formative-events model of learning emerges as a far better predictor of states' decisions. Crucible of Beliefs' findings show that, contrary to balance-of-threat theory, state leaders ignore the level of international threat and focus instead on avoiding past mistakes and repeating past successes. A serious blow to realism, these findings demonstrate that to understand the dynamics of world politics, it is essential to know how leaders learn from history.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501744761
ISBN:: 9781501744761
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1996

The Vulnerability of Empire

Charles A. Kupchan

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The Vulnerability of Empire will be crucial reading for political scientists, international relations specialists, modern historians, and policy makers.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738708
ISBN:: 9781501738708
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1995

The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy

Terry Terriff

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In 1974 Richard Nixon's defense secretary, James Schlesinger, announced that the United States would change its nuclear targeting policy from "assured destruction" to "limited nuclear options." In this account of the Schlesinger Doctrine based on newly declassified documents and extensive interviews with key actors, Terry Terriff challenges the Nixon administration's official explanation of why and how this policy innovation occurred.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501717598
ISBN:: 9781501717598
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1994

Winning the Next War

Innovation and the Modern Military

Stephen Peter Rosen

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How and when do military innovations take place? Do they proceed differently during times of peace and times of war? In Winning the Next War, Stephen Peter Rosen argues that armies and navies are not forever doomed to "fight the last war." Rather, they are able to respond to shifts in the international strategic situation. He also discusses the changing relationship between the civilian innovator and the military bureaucrat.

In peacetime, Rosen finds, innovation has been the product of analysis and the politics of military promotion, in a process that has slowly but successfully built military capabilities critical to American military success. In wartime, by contrast, innovation has been constrained by the fog of war and the urgency of combat needs. Rosen draws his principal evidence from U.S. military policy between 1905 and 1960, though he also discusses the British army's experience with the battle tank during World War I.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501732317
ISBN:: 9781501732317
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1994

Political Institutions and Military Change

Lessons from Peripheral Wars

Deborah D. Avant

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Army responded to change in Vietnam.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733277
ISBN:: 9781501733277
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1994

The Tet Offensive

Intelligence Failure in War

James J. Wirtz

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Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501713361
ISBN:: 9781501713361
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

Dilemmas of Appeasement

British Deterrence and Defense, 1934–1937

Gaines Post

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reexamines how British leaders planned foreign policy and imperial defense as they faced the increasing likelihood of war with the dictatorial regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501735202
ISBN:: 9781501735202
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy

Richard Rosecrance, Arthur A. Stein

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Grand strategy, the authors maintain, is determined as much by domestic politics as by international pressures.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501737701
ISBN:: 9781501737701
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

The Best Defense

Policy Alternatives for U.S. Nuclear Security from the 1950s to the 1990s

David Goldfischer

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defense history will welcome this book.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501736681
ISBN:: 9781501736681
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

The Sacred Cause

Civil-Military Conflict over Soviet National Security, 1917–1992

Thomas M. Nichols

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He concludes that the new leaders of the post-Soviet republics have inherited a group of military organizations that continue to resist the abandonment both of their ideological foundations and of their cohesion as a multinational military-a situation he believes may prove to be one of the greatest threats to the emerging post-Soviet democracies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501737312
ISBN:: 9781501737312
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

Deterrence and Strategic Culture

Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–1958

Shu Guang Zhang

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documents and previously inaccessible Chinese Communist Party records to demonstrate that the Chinese and the Americans had vastly different assessments of each other's intentions, interests, threats, strengths, and policies during this period.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738135
ISBN:: 9781501738135
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1993

The Elusive Balance

Power and Perceptions during the Cold War

William Curti Wohlforth

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He offers new interpretations of the onset, course, and end of the Cold War, and the motivations behind Soviet behavior.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738081
ISBN:: 9781501738081
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1992

Flying Blind

The Politics of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Program

Michael E. Brown

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Flying Blind offers an astute analysis of the role of organizational forces in initiating and shaping weapons programs. Michael E. Brown concerns himself with how weapons programs begin and why they turn out as they do. In the process he redresses a large imbalance in our understanding of how nations arm themselves.

In an unmatched account constructed from massive archival work and material declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, the author provides a detailed description of all fifteen postwar U.S. strategic bomber programs, from the B-35 to the B-2. Challenging the conventional wisdom about arms races and the weapons acquisition process, Brown marshals compelling evidence that Air Force reactions to strategic developments, not technological opportunism or industry initiative, brought about many major innovations in those programs. He also discusses competing explanations of the cost, schedule, and performance problems that plague U.S. acquisition efforts. He maintains that powerful strategic and bureaucratic forces lead American military organizations to set their performance requirements far beyond the state of the art and to push their programs as fast as possible. This, he argues, is a recipe for disaster. Developing a comprehensive explanation of the cost and performance problems that plague modern weapons programs, he presents policy recommendations designed to address these issues.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733567
ISBN:: 9781501733567
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1991

Military Organizations, Complex Machines

Modernization in the U.S. Armed Services

Chris C. Demchak

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Chris Demchak explores the reasons why military machines surprise their users and how they can change both the complexity and effectiveness of tactical organizations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501723681
ISBN:: 9781501723681
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1990

Citizens and Soldiers

The Dilemmas of Military Service

Eliot A. Cohen

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Why has the United States, unlike every other 20th-century world power, failed to settle on a durable system of military service? In this lucid book, Eliot Cohen studies the enduring problems of America's methods of raising an army.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733772
ISBN:: 9781501733772
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1990

A Substitute for Victory

The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks

Rosemary Foot

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She takes into account the role of the Western allies & the Indian, South Korean, North Korean, & Chinese governments as she examines the complex international setting in which the armistice took place.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724138
ISBN:: 9781501724138
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1989

Innovation and the Arms Race

How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies

Matthew Evangelista

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Innovation and the Arms Race offers a new account of the causes and mechanisms of the "technological arms racebetween the Soviet Union and the United States—the competitive development of major weapons innovations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501734304
ISBN:: 9781501734304
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1988

Nuclear Crisis Management

A Dangerous Illusion

Richard Ned Lebow

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A nuclear crisis, he argues, would generate even more acute stress because of the unprecedented destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the extreme time pressure that leaders are likely to face.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738722
ISBN:: 9781501738722
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1988

Strategic Nuclear Targeting

Desmond Ball, Jeffrey Richelson

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This collection of essays by thirteen academic and professional strategists seeks to close this gap by addressing the basic issues of nuclear targeting policy: the targets to be attacked, the timing of those attacks, and the intended impact of the targeting strategy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733314
ISBN:: 9781501733314
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1986

Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria, 1945–1955

Audrey Kurth Cronin

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By virtue of its geographical and historical position, postwar Austria was condemned to a prominent role in the plans of both the East and the West. In this account of an unusual episode in the Cold War, Audrey Kurth Cronin examines the negotiations over Austria and the Soviet Union's sudden and surprising decision to withdraw its troops and accept the country as a neutral Western state, after having rejected any settlement for eight years. Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified British and American documents and on interviews with key Austrian participants, Cronin analyzes the events leading up to the 1955 Austrian State Treaty and, in the process, strengthens our understanding of current East-West relations. Her account of the creation of a neutral state in the heart of a divided Europe will be important reading for all who are concerned with security affairs, international relations, and the history of the Cold War.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733888
ISBN:: 9781501733888
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1985

Conventional Deterrence

John J. Mearsheimer

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Conventional Deterrence is a book about the origins of war. Why do nations faced with the prospect of large-scale conventional war opt for or against an offensive strategy? John J. Mearsheimer examines a number of crises that led to major conventional wars to explain why deterrence failed.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501713262
ISBN:: 9781501713262
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1985

The Wrong War

American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950–1953

Rosemary Foot

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Explaining why the Eisenhower administration nearly unleashed nuclear weapons on China in the spring of 1953, Foot demonstrates that the Korean war would very likely have grown into a conflict of major proportions if the Chinese and North Koreans had not conceded the final issue of the truce talks—the question of the voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501734601
ISBN:: 9781501734601
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press

Book 1985

The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy

Robert Jervis

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Nuclear weapons have revolutionized the concept of military force, yet American military strategists continue to rely on theories derived from the prenuclear era to map out today's nuclear policy. In this path-breaking book, Robert Jervis asserts that their efforts have produced a policy full of inconsistency and contradiction. He calls for a new approach to strategy that will reflect the changes brought about by nuclear weapons.

Jervis explores in depth the effects of nuclear weapons on world politics and the impossible problems they pose for traditional strategies. He provides a detailed critique of current American nuclear policy, focusing on counterforce, a notion that made sense in a world of conventional weapons, but is inappropriate in the wake of the nuclear revolution. He insists upon the almost inevitable escalation that would accompany any nuclear exchange and maintains that the existence of weapons of mass destruction—weapons that render any nuclear conflict between the superpowers suicidal—has made the concept of counterforce absurd.

Jervis then turns to the broader issues of deterrence; in a cogent attack on the effectiveness of traditional military advantage in the nuclear era, he asserts that the U.S. can indeed deter strikes for which it may lack adequate defense. He outlines some first steps toward a more practical nuclear policy. Although no such policy can be fully rational, Jervis claims that we must begin to understand.the way in which force can influence an adversary's resolve, and to realize that the risk of escalation poses the greatest danger to us all.

A landmark contribution to the ongoing debate over the threat of nuclear weapons, this book will be invaluable to anyone concerned about the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738654
ISBN:: 9781501738654
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Political Science
Subject:: Military Policy
Publisher:: Cornell University Press