Intro to International Relations – Flashcards

Serves as an example of neorealist approaches to bargaining

Mearscheimer criticizes liberal institutionalism for o largely ignoring security issues (where the fear of cheating is much harder to overcome and where thus this theory does not really hold) and concentrating instead solely in economic issues o ignoring the other major obstacle to cooperation: relative-gain concerns. And if states are concerned with relative gains, the neat division between economic and security issues cannot hold. As a matter of fact, there is no evidence, says Mearsheimer, that liberal institutionalists believe that institutions facilitate cooperation when states care deeply about relative gains. o failing to prove, from an empirical perspective, that existing cooperation would not have occurred in the absence of institutions (Really useful summary: http://www.olivialau.org/ir/archive/mea3.pdf )

Wendt argues for a constructivist approach to the concept of self-help. He argues that international institutions (here the institution is self-help) can change state identities and interests. He argues that the concept of self-help as defined by realists (and mainly by Waltz) originates from the interaction of the units in the system, and not from anarchy. This conception conflicts with the structural, deterministic arguments that realists advance in which anarchy is the key explanatory variable that drives interactions. Wendt says that states interact with each other and, based on the results of that interaction, can become characterized by self-help, but this result does not necessarily need to follow. Whatever is observed, self-help or not, is defined by process, not structure. Wendt says that neorealism and neoliberalism cannot account for changes in the system, but norms-based constructivisim can (threats are socially constructed). A major difficulty in this piece is the issue of how states behave in the first period before they have any priors.

Norms: a relativelystablecollectionofpracticeasndrulesdefininagppro- priatebehaviorforspecificgroupsofactorsin specific situation Norms have a sort of life cycle (norm cycle): -Norm emergence -Norm entrepreneurs promote and defend it -Norm reaches a critical mass and tipping point -Norm cascade -Norm becomes institutionalized

Much in a unipolar system is determined by the nature of the singular pole Social structures of norms concerning sovereignty, liberal- ism, self-determination, and border rigidity (among other things) have changed over time and create vastly different political dynamics among these systems. Even states with extraordinary material power must figure out how to use it. In this article I explore three social mechanisms that limit unipolar power and shape its possible uses. The first involves legitimation. To exercise power effectively, unipoles must legitimate it and in the act of legitimating their power, unipoles must diffuse it. They must recog- nize the power of others over them since legitimation lies in the hands of others. Of course, unipoles can always exercise their power without regard to legitimacy. If one simply wants to destroy or kill, the legiti- macy of bombs or bullets is not going to change their physical effects on buildings or bodies. However, simple killing and destruction are rarely the chief goal of political leaders using power. Power is usually the means to some other end in social life, some more nuanced form of social control or influence. Using power as more than a sledgehammer requires legitimation, and legitimation makes the unipole dependent, at least to some extent, on others. The second involves the institutionalization of unipolar power. In the contemporary world powerful Western states, including the U.S., have relied on rational-legal authorities—law, rules, institutions—to do at least some of the legitimation work. Unipoles can create these insti- tutions and tailor them to suit their own preferences. Indeed, the U.S. expended a great deal of energy doing exactly this kind of rational-legal institution building in the era after WWII.6 Constructing institutions involves more than simple credible commitments and self-binding by the unipole, however. Laws, rules, and institutions have a legitimacy of their own in contemporary politics that derives from their particular rational-legal, impersonal character.7 Once in place these laws, rules, and institutions have powers and internal logics that unipoles find dif- ficult to control.8 This, too, contributes to the diffusion of power away from unipole control. These social structures of legitimation and institutionalization do more than simply diffuse power away from the unipole. They can trap and punish as well. Unipoles often feel the constraints of the legiti- mation structures and institutions that they, themselves, have created and one common behavioral manifestation of these constraints is hy- pocrisy. Actors inconvenienced by social rules often resort to hypocrisy proclaiming adherence to rules while busily violating them. Such hy- pocrisy obviously undermines trust and credible commitments but the damage runs deeper: hypocrisy undermines respect and deference both for the unipole and for the values on which it has legitimized its power. Hypocrisy is not an entirely negative phenomenon for unipoles, or any state, however. While unrestrained hypocrisy by unipoles undermines the legitimacy of their power, judicious use of hypocrisy can, like good manners, provide crucial strategies for melding ideals and interests. In- deed, honoring social ideals or principles in the breach can have long- lasting political effects as decades of U.S. hypocrisy about democratiza- tion and human rights suggests.

• Doyle • Liberalism o NOT neo-liberalism • That's Cohen o Cultural idea • Kant and friends o Liberalism as a domestic politics model shows how we could have a more peaceful international system by adopting domestic liberal (classical liberal) values o Kantian and cultural liberalism

• Waltz thinks that a bipolar international system is more stable than a multipolar international system • True • Waltz says that in a bipolar system there's less room for miscalculation as all major powers are focusing on one main adversary • Only major threat is overreaction • In a bipolar system, everyone is only really concerned with their adversary • The instability of the multipolar system is partially dependent on the fact that the security of a state is dependent on the security of its allies

• According to Gilpin, starting a hegemonic war is one strategy by which a dominant state can halt its own decline in power relative to a rising state • True • Stronger power sees this time as a good time to start a war in order to prevent the change in power dynamics • Gilpin is worried about systematic wars • Gilpin explains why a hegemon would like to wage a preventive war

Stag hunt

• Brute force can be used as a means to an end for war in order to get what you want. • War is a tool to obtain your objective

• The threat of brute force can be used as a way to achieve policy objectives

• Commitment issues • Anarchy kinda works with this, anarchy makes it so that there's always the question of someone backing out of their commitment • Preventive vs. preemptive war o Preemptive: striking first against an imminent threat • First strike advantage o Preventive: long down the road, someone could become a threat • Private information • Indivisible issues • The way to prevent war is to make the bargaining range of acceptable options bigger

• Sagan argues against the cult of the offensive and says that that alone can't explain the war • Brings up a counterfactual o Schlieffen plan • Says cult of the offensive ignores balance of power and the role of state objectives in determining military doctrine

• Criticism of Waltz and chain-ganging and buck-passing • Chainganging-tying yourself to a reckless/useful allying who then you have to defend in order to maintain the balance of power • Buck-passing: passing off handling a dangerous enemy to someone else to deal with

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development. XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. XII. The turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

tates decide to launch a preventive war based on how quickly they think the power shift is happening, how large they think the power shift is, and what the intentions of the rising state is after it gains power o Greater the anticipated cost of power=greater cost of delay so more incentive to shift now o Dramatic and rapid shifts of power intensify fears o Current and past hostilities impact opinions about how states will act in the future o Perceived offensive vs. defensive balance • Connected to Gilpin about how the standing great power will act when the other power is rising o If a state has a temporary advantage they're more likely to attack o Democracies might have more difficulty selling something that might not be an immediate and obvious threat o GB=thought it wasn't worthwhile to attack until they had more power o France=had already been eclipsed militarily by Germany so it would no longer be a preventive war

o Japan thought that going to war could somehow force the US to concede something o Japan was sort of like a cancer patient with 10% chance of survival if they attacked but a 0% chance of survival if they did nothing o Bureaucratic Politics Model: rivalry between Japanese Army and Navy leading to the push to attack Pearl Harbor

Example of America's emerging policy of containment

o Nuclear weapons and mutual deterrence o Dissimilar countries=few points of economic and ideological agreement=two different poles and stability in the system o Stability coming from USSR changing its ideology from the idea of global communism o Pessimism coming from earlier world wars o The Cold War really developed into a game with six rules • Respect the spheres of influence • Avoid direct military confrontation • Use nuclear weapons only as an ultimate resort • Prefer predictable anomaly over unpredictable rationality • Do not seek to undermine the other side's leadership

States that liberalism and democratic institutions represent the end of the struggle to find a perfect form a government, in a way. Some states are at the end of history but others are still in history

o The Rise of Afghanistan's Insurgency o The precondition for the onset of insurgency in Afghanistan was structural: the collapse of governance after the overthrow of the Taliban regime • A weak state without the ability to provide order makes a system similar to international anarchy • The government couldn't provide any basic services to its people and couldn't properly police all of the regions and thus control and prevent insurgency • Corruption led to the new government not being seen as legitimate to the Afghan people • After the overthrow of the Taliban, the US and other international forces had a hard time creating a national Afghan identity, which allowed the Taliban to try and offer that to the people. • The ideological support also allowed the Taliban to appeal to other governments (like Pakistan) for support

o The Market for Civil War • Argues that economic factors are central to civil war • Division of natural resources • Natural resources makes secession easier and development of insurgencies easier • Having lots of natural resources in a region (especially a more isolated one) can lead to insurgency o Can't secede if you're in the middle • Can exploit resources to fund insurgencies • Dependency on natural resources leads to instability of a country's economy o Conflict trap: after a conflict and during recovery there is a greater likelihood of another conflict

o Debunking Myths About Civil War o Argues that power disparities between ethnic groups and economic disparities between ethnic groups are important for the understanding of the incidence of civil war • The big issue is marginalization • He largely looks at the executive • Poorer regions might feel resentment towards richer regions and the government due to neglect and richer regions might feel resentment for having to support less effective parts of the state

o Terrorism has four main characteristics o The use of violence or the threat of violence o By a non-state group o In pursuit of a political goal or objective o With the aim of generating fear in a wider audience beyond those targeted with violence o Targets noncombatants o Political endgame in sight o Have to have inferior power compared to the government • Hoffman says that violence without a political goal isn't terrorism o Groups • Terrorist groups are different from guerilla groups • Guerilla groups o Armed units that want to have influence over territory o Military organizations o Try to expand territory o Directly engage with military units • Terrorist groups o Don't claim land o Don't act as military groups

• The rationale for terrorism is costly signaling o Terrorists are weak actors so they need terrorism in order to get their point across o Attrition: there will continue to be pain and suffering until you change the policy o Intimidation: putting pressure on the government by scaring civilians and convincing them that the terrorists can punish them and the government can't prevent it o Provocation: trying to induce a harsh government response o Spoiling: making other actors feel that the moderates vaguely related to the terrorist group seem weak o Outbidding: the use of violence to convince the population that the terrorist group is more committed than other groups and is willing to do anything for their cause