Abstract Do states get higher social status from fighting? The prestige of war depends on the type of “status order” that it is interpreted in. Status orders condition and enable the pursuit and recognition of status within social clubs of world politics. Depending on the status order, social clubs may either value or stigmatize belligerence. An analysis comparing the status recognition that Russia received in three social clubs (the great power club, the G-8, and the UN Security Council) after it annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 explores this assumption. The analysis shows that war generated different status effects on Russia's status within each of these clubs. Contrary to popular belief, and amid widespread condemnation, Russia was increasingly recognized as a great power within U.S. public discourse. In contrast, Russia's belligerence diminished its status within the G-8 and had little effect on its status in the UN Security Council. The findings underline the importance of context in estimating status effects of participating in wars and any other behavior that might impact a state's standing in world politics.
{"title":"The Belligerent Bear: Russia, Status Orders, and War","authors":"Pål Røren","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00458","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Do states get higher social status from fighting? The prestige of war depends on the type of “status order” that it is interpreted in. Status orders condition and enable the pursuit and recognition of status within social clubs of world politics. Depending on the status order, social clubs may either value or stigmatize belligerence. An analysis comparing the status recognition that Russia received in three social clubs (the great power club, the G-8, and the UN Security Council) after it annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 explores this assumption. The analysis shows that war generated different status effects on Russia's status within each of these clubs. Contrary to popular belief, and amid widespread condemnation, Russia was increasingly recognized as a great power within U.S. public discourse. In contrast, Russia's belligerence diminished its status within the G-8 and had little effect on its status in the UN Security Council. The findings underline the importance of context in estimating status effects of participating in wars and any other behavior that might impact a state's standing in world politics.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77397059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Security assistance is a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and a ubiquitous feature of international relations. The record, however, is mixed at best. Security assistance is hard because recipient leaders are often motivated to implement policies that keep their militaries weak. The central challenge of security assistance, then, is influence. How does the United States aim to influence recipient leaders to improve their militaries, and what drives its approach? Influence in security assistance can be understood as an escalation ladder with four rungs: teaching, persuasion, conditionality, and direct command. Washington increasingly delegates security assistance to the Department of Defense, and the latter to the U.S. Army. U.S. Army advisers tend to rely exclusively on teaching and persuasion, even when recipient leaders routinely ignore their advice. The U.S. Army's preference for persuasion and aversion to conditionality in security assistance can be traced to its bureaucratic interests and to the ideology that it has developed—the cult of the persuasive—to advance those interests. A case study examines the bureaucratic drivers of the U.S. Army's persistent reliance on persuasion to influence Iraqi leaders to reform and strengthen the Iraqi Army. Qualitative analysis leverages over one hundred original interviews, as well as oral histories and recently declassified U.S. Central Command documents. The findings illustrate how the interests and ideologies of the military services tasked with implementing U.S. foreign policy can instead undermine it.
{"title":"The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails","authors":"Rachel Tecott Metz","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00453","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Security assistance is a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and a ubiquitous feature of international relations. The record, however, is mixed at best. Security assistance is hard because recipient leaders are often motivated to implement policies that keep their militaries weak. The central challenge of security assistance, then, is influence. How does the United States aim to influence recipient leaders to improve their militaries, and what drives its approach? Influence in security assistance can be understood as an escalation ladder with four rungs: teaching, persuasion, conditionality, and direct command. Washington increasingly delegates security assistance to the Department of Defense, and the latter to the U.S. Army. U.S. Army advisers tend to rely exclusively on teaching and persuasion, even when recipient leaders routinely ignore their advice. The U.S. Army's preference for persuasion and aversion to conditionality in security assistance can be traced to its bureaucratic interests and to the ideology that it has developed—the cult of the persuasive—to advance those interests. A case study examines the bureaucratic drivers of the U.S. Army's persistent reliance on persuasion to influence Iraqi leaders to reform and strengthen the Iraqi Army. Qualitative analysis leverages over one hundred original interviews, as well as oral histories and recently declassified U.S. Central Command documents. The findings illustrate how the interests and ideologies of the military services tasked with implementing U.S. foreign policy can instead undermine it.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83056038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract External state support to non-state armed groups is commonly seen as a direct relationship between a state sponsor and a rebel group. But powerful states often use third-party states as conduits of military aid. These intermediary states are secondary, subordinate principals that are part of extended chains of “dual delegation.” Because intermediaries are likely to have their own separate agendas, powerful states often face a double principal-agent problem when providing material support to rebel groups. The difficulties and problems associated with controlling the agent are reflected in the relationship between the principal and the intermediary. States need to identify the alignment of interests at an early stage, or risk strategic failure. There are two ideal types of intermediaries—dealers and brokers. Case studies of the United States’ support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and to UNITA in Angola (channeled through Pakistan and Zaire, respectively) demonstrate that intermediaries affect the provision of external support. States engaging in counterterrorism need to look beyond sponsors of terrorism and explore the role of all states involved in the process of conflict delegation. That states use intermediaries when providing support to non-state armed groups indicates that holding states accountable for violating the nonintervention principle under international law should be reconsidered.
{"title":"Dealers and Brokers in Civil Wars: Why States Delegate Rebel Support to Conduit Countries","authors":"Niklas Karlén, Vladimir Rauta","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00461","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract External state support to non-state armed groups is commonly seen as a direct relationship between a state sponsor and a rebel group. But powerful states often use third-party states as conduits of military aid. These intermediary states are secondary, subordinate principals that are part of extended chains of “dual delegation.” Because intermediaries are likely to have their own separate agendas, powerful states often face a double principal-agent problem when providing material support to rebel groups. The difficulties and problems associated with controlling the agent are reflected in the relationship between the principal and the intermediary. States need to identify the alignment of interests at an early stage, or risk strategic failure. There are two ideal types of intermediaries—dealers and brokers. Case studies of the United States’ support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and to UNITA in Angola (channeled through Pakistan and Zaire, respectively) demonstrate that intermediaries affect the provision of external support. States engaging in counterterrorism need to look beyond sponsors of terrorism and explore the role of all states involved in the process of conflict delegation. That states use intermediaries when providing support to non-state armed groups indicates that holding states accountable for violating the nonintervention principle under international law should be reconsidered.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89148640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Racism systematically distorts policymakers’ analyses of their allies’ and adversaries’ capabilities, interests, and resolve, potentially leading to costly choices regarding war and peace. When policymakers hold racist beliefs, as they did in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), their beliefs influence how they explain and predict their allies’ and adversaries’ behaviors. Reliance on racist stereotypes leads policymakers to inaccurate assessments. An analysis of the relationship between stereotypes, reputations, and bigotry indicates that reputations easily become stereotypes—which is discomforting to anyone who bases policy decisions on another's reputation or encourages policymakers to do so. International security scholars have largely overlooked the role of racism, assuming rational choices on the part of policymakers. Research demonstrates that this assumption is wrong.
{"title":"Racism, Stereotypes, and War","authors":"Jonathan Mercer","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00469","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Racism systematically distorts policymakers’ analyses of their allies’ and adversaries’ capabilities, interests, and resolve, potentially leading to costly choices regarding war and peace. When policymakers hold racist beliefs, as they did in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), their beliefs influence how they explain and predict their allies’ and adversaries’ behaviors. Reliance on racist stereotypes leads policymakers to inaccurate assessments. An analysis of the relationship between stereotypes, reputations, and bigotry indicates that reputations easily become stereotypes—which is discomforting to anyone who bases policy decisions on another's reputation or encourages policymakers to do so. International security scholars have largely overlooked the role of racism, assuming rational choices on the part of policymakers. Research demonstrates that this assumption is wrong.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135613332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Disasters play a key role in debates about climate change, environmental stress, and security. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) investigates how major climate-related disasters shape the dynamics of ongoing armed conflicts. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented for twenty-one cases across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. After climate-related disasters, 29 percent of these armed conflicts escalated, 33 percent de-escalated, and 38 percent did not change. Furthermore, only countries highly vulnerable to disasters experienced changes in conflict dynamics. Armed conflicts tend to escalate when the disaster induces shifts in relative power, whereby one conflict party (usually the rebels) subsequently scales up its military efforts. But if at least one conflict party is weakened by a disaster and the other lacks the capability to exploit this change, armed conflict intensity declines. Findings provide empirical support for a proposed power differential mechanism connecting climate-related disasters to armed conflict dynamics via short-term shifts in power relations between the conflict parties. Climate change can also act as a threat reducer by temporarily causing lower conflict intensity.
{"title":"Rise or Recede? How Climate Disasters Affect Armed Conflict Intensity","authors":"T. Ide","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00459","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Disasters play a key role in debates about climate change, environmental stress, and security. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) investigates how major climate-related disasters shape the dynamics of ongoing armed conflicts. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented for twenty-one cases across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. After climate-related disasters, 29 percent of these armed conflicts escalated, 33 percent de-escalated, and 38 percent did not change. Furthermore, only countries highly vulnerable to disasters experienced changes in conflict dynamics. Armed conflicts tend to escalate when the disaster induces shifts in relative power, whereby one conflict party (usually the rebels) subsequently scales up its military efforts. But if at least one conflict party is weakened by a disaster and the other lacks the capability to exploit this change, armed conflict intensity declines. Findings provide empirical support for a proposed power differential mechanism connecting climate-related disasters to armed conflict dynamics via short-term shifts in power relations between the conflict parties. Climate change can also act as a threat reducer by temporarily causing lower conflict intensity.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76422664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Conventional wisdom sees nuclear brinkmanship and Thomas Schelling's pathbreaking “threat that leaves something to chance” as a solution to the problem of agency in coercion. If leaders cannot credibly threaten to start a nuclear war, perhaps they can at least introduce uncertainty by signaling that the decision is out of their hands. It is not so easy to remove humans from crisis decision-making, however. Often in cases of nuclear brinkmanship, a human being retains a choice about whether to escalate. When two sides engage in rational decision-making, the chance of strategic nuclear exchange should be zero. Scholars have explained how risks associated with accidents, false warnings, and pre-delegation creep into nuclear crises. An investigation of how chance can still produce leverage while leaders retain a choice over whether and when to escalate adds to this scholarship. There remains an element of choice in chance. For a complete understanding of nuclear brinkmanship, psychology and emotion must be added to the analysis to explain how leaders make decisions under pressure. Human emotions can introduce chance into bargaining in ways that contradict the expectations of the rational cost-benefit assumptions that undergird deterrence theory. Three mechanisms of nuclear brinkmanship—accidents, self-control, and control of others—illustrate how a loss of control over the use of nuclear weapons is not a necessary element of the threat that leaves something to chance. Choice does not have to be eliminated for a risk of catastrophic destruction to remain.
{"title":"The Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship","authors":"Reid B. C. Pauly, Rose McDermott","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00451","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Conventional wisdom sees nuclear brinkmanship and Thomas Schelling's pathbreaking “threat that leaves something to chance” as a solution to the problem of agency in coercion. If leaders cannot credibly threaten to start a nuclear war, perhaps they can at least introduce uncertainty by signaling that the decision is out of their hands. It is not so easy to remove humans from crisis decision-making, however. Often in cases of nuclear brinkmanship, a human being retains a choice about whether to escalate. When two sides engage in rational decision-making, the chance of strategic nuclear exchange should be zero. Scholars have explained how risks associated with accidents, false warnings, and pre-delegation creep into nuclear crises. An investigation of how chance can still produce leverage while leaders retain a choice over whether and when to escalate adds to this scholarship. There remains an element of choice in chance. For a complete understanding of nuclear brinkmanship, psychology and emotion must be added to the analysis to explain how leaders make decisions under pressure. Human emotions can introduce chance into bargaining in ways that contradict the expectations of the rational cost-benefit assumptions that undergird deterrence theory. Three mechanisms of nuclear brinkmanship—accidents, self-control, and control of others—illustrate how a loss of control over the use of nuclear weapons is not a necessary element of the threat that leaves something to chance. Choice does not have to be eliminated for a risk of catastrophic destruction to remain.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91244126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that conflict is highly likely during a power transition between declining and rising powers. The spread of global supply chains has provided new economic weapons for great powers waging these conflicts, but the businesses that constitute global supply chains can make it harder or easier for them to do so. A structural theory of business-state relations shows how power transitions affect a state's ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominant power and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to use economic statecraft to decouple their economies. The resulting threat to businesses’ profits changes business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state's use of economic statecraft, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate with their state's use of economic statecraft. The Anglo-German power transition from 1890 to 1914 and the U.S.-China power transition since 1990 illustrate the theory. The findings shift scholarly debates on the use of economic statecraft in modern great power competition and have policy implications for weaponizing supply chains against rising powers like China.
{"title":"“Wars without Gun Smoke”: Global Supply Chains, Power Transitions, and Economic Statecraft","authors":"Ling S. Chen, Miles M. Evers","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00473","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that conflict is highly likely during a power transition between declining and rising powers. The spread of global supply chains has provided new economic weapons for great powers waging these conflicts, but the businesses that constitute global supply chains can make it harder or easier for them to do so. A structural theory of business-state relations shows how power transitions affect a state's ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominant power and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to use economic statecraft to decouple their economies. The resulting threat to businesses’ profits changes business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state's use of economic statecraft, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate with their state's use of economic statecraft. The Anglo-German power transition from 1890 to 1914 and the U.S.-China power transition since 1990 illustrate the theory. The findings shift scholarly debates on the use of economic statecraft in modern great power competition and have policy implications for weaponizing supply chains against rising powers like China.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135613429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Why do great powers engage in territorial expansion? Much of the existing literature views expansion as a largely intentional activity directed by the leaders of powerful states. Yet nearly 25 percent of important historical instances of great power expansion are initiated by actors on the periphery of the state or empire without authorization from their superiors at the center. Periphery-driven “inadvertent expansion” is most likely to occur when leaders in the capital have limited control over their agents on the periphery. Through their actions, peripheral agents effectively constrain leaders from withdrawing from these newly captured territories because of sunk costs, domestic political pressure, and national honor. When leaders in the capital expect geopolitical consequences from regional or other great powers, such as economic sanctions, militarized crises, or war, they are far less likely to authorize the territorial claims. A mixed-methods research strategy combines new quantitative data on great power territorial expansion with three qualitative case studies of successful (and failed) inadvertent expansion by Russia, Japan, and France. Inadvertent expansion has not completely gone away, particularly among smaller states, where government authority can be weak, control over states’ apparatuses can be loose, and civil-military relations can be challenging.
{"title":"Push and Pull on the Periphery: Inadvertent Expansion in World Politics","authors":"N. Anderson","doi":"10.1162/isec_a_00454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00454","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Why do great powers engage in territorial expansion? Much of the existing literature views expansion as a largely intentional activity directed by the leaders of powerful states. Yet nearly 25 percent of important historical instances of great power expansion are initiated by actors on the periphery of the state or empire without authorization from their superiors at the center. Periphery-driven “inadvertent expansion” is most likely to occur when leaders in the capital have limited control over their agents on the periphery. Through their actions, peripheral agents effectively constrain leaders from withdrawing from these newly captured territories because of sunk costs, domestic political pressure, and national honor. When leaders in the capital expect geopolitical consequences from regional or other great powers, such as economic sanctions, militarized crises, or war, they are far less likely to authorize the territorial claims. A mixed-methods research strategy combines new quantitative data on great power territorial expansion with three qualitative case studies of successful (and failed) inadvertent expansion by Russia, Japan, and France. Inadvertent expansion has not completely gone away, particularly among smaller states, where government authority can be weak, control over states’ apparatuses can be loose, and civil-military relations can be challenging.","PeriodicalId":48667,"journal":{"name":"International Security","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83717455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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