Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power Subsystem

Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which several new hypotheses can be derived, in addition to the older ones. Testing of the new theory can also proceed with rivalry data not based on dispute density measures, different types of contiguity can be assessed, and the presence of spatial-positional issues can be measured directly, as opposed to relying on a proximity proxy. The empirical outcome strongly supports the two-path, two-issue theory. In the major power subsystem, noncontiguous rivals outnumber contiguous rivals, dyadic wars are scarce, and war joining has been the norm. Spatial issues alone would have a hard time accounting for this pattern. Variable mixes of spatial and positional issues are able to account for it and a number of derived hypotheses reasonably well. This is not the last word on rivalry escalation to war but it appears to be an additional step in the right direction.     

Norms and Military Power: nato's War Against Yugoslavia

Norms are fundamental constitutive elements of modern military power. Because norms influence military behavior and force structure, contemporary Western military power is produced only by interaction of normative and material factors. Two norms—the civilian casualty avoidance norm and Western societies' demand that their military forces take minimal casualties, or the force protection norm—more strongly influenced the origin, conduct, and outcome of nato's 1999 war against Yugoslavia than the material disparities of mismatched adversaries. Many actors, including the Yugoslav government and the Kosovo Liberation Army, notice the linkage of norms to Western military force structures and operational behavior and therefore strategically use norms instrumentally against states that adopt them. Such strategies generate technological and tactical responses, leading in turn to counter-responses—a dynamic interaction of material and normative factors that increasingly influence military operational outcomes.     

伊拉克战争中的民族、宗教因素解读

伊拉克战争前后贯穿着复杂的民族、宗教因素。就美国而言 ,一方面布什把伊拉克战争看成是捍卫以美国为代表的基督教文化和美国式民主的战争 ,另一方面美利坚民族也将伊拉克战争视为“改造世界”的宏伟计划的步骤之一。而伊拉克国内宗教派别与民族间的矛盾也在一定程度上促使伊拉克难以共同对敌 ,在战争中速败。除伊拉克之外的中东国家则由于伊斯兰教传统观念而在伊拉克战争的立场问题上陷入两难境地。对伊拉克战争中民族、宗教因素的分析也给予我们颇多启示。     

日本军事工业及其对战争支援潜力初探

第二次世界大战结束后,受“和平宪法”的制约,日本军事工业走的是一条“寓军于民”的发展道路。然而,这支潜藏于民间的军事工业,为战后日本军事力量的发展起到了巨大的推动作用。其高、精、尖的军工技术水平,使日本的主要武器装备走在了世界的前列。难怪美国报刊称：“海湾战争可以没有日本人参加,但是没有日本的技术,美国的尖端武器难以奏效。”由引可见日本军事工业的水准。当人类迈入２１世纪这个和平与战争共存的时代时,对日本军事工业及其对未来战争的支援潜力应给予关注。     

Recouping after Coup-Proofing: Compromised Military Effectiveness and Strategic Substitution

In order to counter the threat of a coup, states often undertake a number of strategies to “coup-proof” their militaries, such as creating institutional redundancy, severely limiting interbranch communications, and basing promotions on loyalty rather than merit. As a result of such policies, however, the fighting effectiveness of these armed forces is degraded, and the marginal return on military investment is greatly reduced. We argue that leaders who have coup-proofed their militaries undertake several substitution policies in order to offset their military weakness when faced with external threats. These policies include pursuing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and forging alliances. We find support for these theoretical predictions in quantitative tests on data with global coverage between 1970 and 2001.     

Politics and Threat Perception: Explaining Pakistani Military Strategy on the North West Frontier

Abstract

Analysts and policymakers agree that the Pakistani military has engaged in selective repression of and collusion with armed groups. Yet beyond this general observation, fine-grained theory and evidence do not exist to systematically explain patterns of military strategy across groups and over time. This paper provides a theoretical framework for explaining regime perceptions of armed groups and the strategies state security managers pursue toward different types of groups. It then probes this framework using a combination of new medium-N data on military offensives, peace deals, and state–group alliances in Pakistan’s North West and four comparative case studies from North and South Waziristan. We argue that the Pakistani military—the key state institution in this context—has assigned armed groups to different political roles reflecting both their ideological affinity with the military and the operational benefits they can provide to the army. This mixture of instrumental and ideological motivations has created a complex blend of regime threat perceptions and state–group interactions across space and time. A clearer understanding of how the military views Pakistan’s armed political landscape can inform policy debates about the nature of Pakistani counterinsurgency, as well as broader theoretical debates about order and violence.     

Coercion and Control: Explaining India's Victory at Kargil

This article argues that most analyses of the Kargil conflict concede the important role played by the United States in understanding how India regained control of the Kargil heights, but fail to explain how India's intra-war compellent threat forced Washington to bring irresistible pressure to bear on Islamabad. The Indian decision to threaten asymmetrical escalation was the result of domestic pressures and military difficulties facing the Vajpayee-led caretaker government. The article shows that Washington pursued an “impartially” interventionist strategy until it came under Indian pressure to forsake its “balanced” approach towards ending the conflict. The article also shows how the “asymmetry of motivation” between New Delhi and Washington was an important factor in terminating hostilities in India's favor.     

The Future of War and American Military Strategy

The outcome of ongoing debates over the future of American military strategy will play a critical role in shaping the foreign and military policies of the United States over the next decade. Traditionalists worry about the shift towards emphasizing counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and irregular warfare, believing that the use of force is often ineffective in COIN situations and the American military should concentrate on planning for conventional war. In contrast, COIN advocates argue that the United States must focus its efforts on preparing for the wars it is most likely to fight, irregular wars. However, both schools of thought rely on assumptions about the future security environment that may reveal another path forward. First, although it seems intuitive to view irregular warfare as the dominant future concern, it is exceedingly difficult to predict accurately the future security environment, as the last 20 years have clearly shown. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the character of emergent threats will depend on how the United States focuses its resources. Paradoxically, no matter what it emphasizes, the military threats the United States is or will be most capable of defeating are the ones it is least likely to face, since potential adversaries will be deterred and seek other ways of confrontation. However, with some smart and careful investments, including the recognition that not all parts of the military have to be optimized for the same task, the United States military can both lock in its conventional dominance and continue to improve its ability to succeed in the irregular wars most likely to dominate the landscape in the short to medium term.     

从国际法视角看冷战后联合国维和行动

联合国维和行动是介于宪章第六章规定的和平方法和第七章规定的强制方法之间的一种维护国际和平与安全的国际干预手段。冷战后,联合国维和行动有了重大变化,对国家主权、不干涉内政、禁止使用武力等国际法基本原则造成了极大的冲击。为了摆脱困境,联合国维和行动必须准确定位,坚持维和三原则,尽快制定专门的联合国维和行动法典,正确对待人道主义干涉,完善国际干预机制,由此才能更好地维护国际和平与安全。     

Convergence and Divergence in Post-Cold War British,French, and German Military Reforms: Between International Structure and Executive Autonomy

Post-Cold War military reforms in Britain, France, and Germany have been characterized by patterns of convergence in the objectives, instruments, and institutional forums of defense policy but by divergence in temporality. These patterns of convergence and divergence cannot be fully explained by cultural approaches. Neither can they be explained solely by a focus on the role of international structure, as neo-realism posits, although the post-Cold War distribution of capabilities is driving Britain, France, and Germany toward policy convergence. Instead, the analysis builds upon the insights of neoclassical realism. Culture emerges not so much as a cause of action as instrumental and a resource for policy leaders in the domestic political and temporal management of reform.     

Military Culture and Restraint toward Civilians in War: Examining the Ugandan Civil Wars

What explains armed-group conduct toward civilians in war? The National Resistance Army (NRA) of Uganda demonstrated notable restraint toward civilians during its wars in northern Uganda in the 1980s, restraint that is puzzling given the overdetermined predictions for mass atrocity under rationalist, identity, and regime-type theories. Instead, the NRA case demonstrates that military culture—the organizational norms underlying combatant socialization—is a primary determinant of armed-group behavior, influencing combatant conduct in ways not conceptualized under existing theories of victimization. This review of the NRA case, based on field interviews with Ugandan military officers and examinations of Ugandan documentary archives, reveals three key points regarding the role of military culture in effecting restraint. First, the NRA case shows that organizational factors like military culture can determine military behavior toward civilians. Second, it reveals that theories of military culture, incorporating both formal and informal mechanisms of combatant socialization, can provide a more complete theoretical account than existing theories of armed-group conduct. Finally, the NRA provides potential hypotheses for mechanisms through which culture influences military behavior. I analyze the effect of culture on the NRA's conduct as a plausibility probe, generating inductive insights drawn from detailed field research to shed light on the organizational drivers of armed-group restraint. The NRA case thus points the way to a reconceptualization of military culture and the role of organizational factors that influence conflict behavior.     

Balancing friends and foes: Explaining advocacy styles at global diplomatic conferences

The growing attempts by non-state interests to influence global policy processes has attracted much scholarly interest in recent years. One important question thereby is what characterizes and explains the interactions of non-state advocates with policymakers. In order to clarify this matter, we analyse the advocacy strategies of non-state actors, more precisely whether and why they address opponents instead of more like-minded policymakers. For this purpose, we analyse evidence collected through 228 interviews with advocates who attended the WTO Ministerial Conferences (Geneva 2012) and the United Nations Climate Conferences (Durban 2011; Doha 2012). Our results show that transnational advocates predominantly target like-minded policymakers and that their activities are much less focused on their opponents. Variation in advocacy towards opponents or like-minded policymakers is explained by the alignment of non-state actors with policymakers, the salience of topics on the political agenda, group characteristics, and whether or not advocates hail from democratic countries.     

Between Liberal Autocracy and Democracy: Democratic Legitimacy in Hong Kong

The partial democracy in Hong Kong is an experiment with limited suffrage in a liberal, self-governing society. This article examines the impact of system dissatisfaction and fundamental cultural values on democratic legitimacy, using logistic regression analyses of data drawn from an electoral survey in 2000. It is found that widespread public dissatisfaction with the economic downturn has not been generalized to the abstract, structural level of regime legitimacy. Equally widespread discontent with the political situation matters; but it has strengthened public support for democracy, rather than weakened it. Finally, democratic legitimacy is grounded in liberal, post-material and individualist-competitive values. In recognition of the plausible durability of these fundamental cultural norms and in view of the relative lack of support for non-democratic alternatives and strong support for partial electoral reform, we conclude that Hong Kong is very likely to remain on track toward a fuller democracy by incremental steps.     

有限战争理论与以色列在黎巴嫩的军事行动

有限战争在战略目标、战略手段、打击对象和打击范围的选择方面受主观克制和客观限制的双重影响。有限战争是安全战略的重要选项,其能否上升为决策者的首选,主要取决于以下5个因素,即外来威胁的强度、国内支持度、盟友支持度、国际舆论支持度和敌我力量对比悬殊程度。这些因素同样是2006年7月起以色列对黎巴嫩真主党游击队发动有限战争的内在逻辑。     

Explaining Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy: 9/11, the Rise of Offensive Liberalism,and the War in Iraq

This paper proposes a model for explaining shifts and variations in U.S. grand strategy. The model is based on a distinction between four ideal-type grand strategies or ideational approaches to security according to the objectives and means of security policy: defensive and offensive realism, and defensive and offensive liberalism. While the four approaches are continually present in the U.S. policy community, it is the combination of two systemic conditions—namely the distribution of capabilities and the balance of threat—that selects among the competing approaches and determines which grand strategy is likely to emerge as dominant in a given period. Great power parity is conducive to realist approaches. In contrast, a situation of hegemony encourages the emergence of ideological grand strategies, which focus on ideology promotion, according to the ideology of the hegemon. In the case of a liberal hegemon, such as the United States, liberal approaches are likely to emerge as dominant. In addition, a relative absence of external threat encourages defensive approaches, while a situation of high external threat gives rise to offensive strategies. Thus, various combinations of these systemic factors give rise to the emergence of various grand strategies. This model is tested in two cases of the two most recent shifts in U.S. grand strategy following 1991. In accordance with the expectations of the model, a change in the distribution of capabilities with the end of the Cold War made possible a change from realist to liberal strategies. In the benign environment of the 1990s the dominant strategy was defensive liberalism, while the change in the balance of threat after 9/11 gave rise to the grand strategy of offensive liberalism.     

Britain and the Collapse of Egypt's Constitutional Order, 1950-52

Britain's longstanding practice of intervening in the struggle between King Farouk, the Wafd and the constitution was one of the main causes of the demise of parliamentary politics in Egypt. Indeed, the sharp deterioration in the political situation in the winter of 1951-52, which paved the way for the Free Officers' coup on 23 July 1952, was the result of a breakdown in the Anglo-Egyptian defence negotiations. The Wafd government used the 'British question' as a distraction from its own internal shortcomings. Britain responded by pursuing a policy of toppling the Wafd and replacing it with a more amenable administration. To this end, British officials manipulated the United States into co-sponsoring the Middle East Command proposals of October 1951, aware that American backing would be required during imminent disturbances in Egypt. The subsequent Ismailia incident of January 1952 hastened the collapse of Egypt's constitutional order and also transformed British perceptions of the usefulness of the Suez base.     

俄罗斯新世纪初的军事战略

本文从俄罗斯重振大国地位的战略出发,对新世纪俄罗斯的军事战略做了较系统分析研究.本文认为,普京执政后,对俄军事战略做了较大调整,新世纪初俄军事战略已基本确立.如何处理与美国和北约的军事关系,维护军事大国地位,为重振大国地位提供坚强有力的实力后盾和军力支持,是俄新世纪军事战略的核心问题.重振大国地位的军力需要与各种严峻挑战所形成的军力差距,将是制约俄今后军力发展的基本矛盾.如何解决这一矛盾,将决定俄军事实力在新世纪的发展.