The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy 9781501737701

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The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy

Written under the auspices of the Center for International Relations, University of California, Los Angeles

A volume in the series

Cornell Studies in Security Affairs edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt A complete list of titles in the series appears at the end of this book.

The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy EDITED BY Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

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Copyright © 1993 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1993 by Cornell University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Domestic bases of grand strategy / edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein. p. cm. — (Cornell studies in security affairs) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-2880-7 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8014-8116-3 (paper : alk. paper) 1. International relations. 2. Security, International. 3. Military policy. 4. Social history. 5. Economic history. I. Rosecrance, Richard N. II. Stein, Arthur A. III. Series. JX1395.D64 1993 327—dc20 93-15396 Printed in the United States of America © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

For Herman Benjamin, Ruth Wilkes Davis, and Mila Stein

Contents

Contributors Acknowledgments

ix xi Part One: Theory

1. Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

3

2. Politics and Grand Strategy Michael W. Doyle

22

3. The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy John Mueller

48

Part Two: Practice

4. The Anglo-German Naval Race and Comparative Constitutional "Fitness" David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

65

3. Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoherence of Grand Strategy: The United States, 1938-1930 Arthur A. Stein

96

6. British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World War II Richard Rosecrance and Zara Steiner

[vii]

124

Contents 7. Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strategy: The Soviet Case Matthew Evangelista

154

8. The New Nationalism: Realist Interpretations and Beyond Jack Snyder

179

9. The State and Japanese Grand Strategy Chalmers Johnson

201

Index

225

[viii]

Contributors

is a Fellow of the Center for International Relations and a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Michael W. Doyle is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Matthew Evangelista is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Chalmers Johnson is Rohr Professor of Pacific International Rela¬ tions at the University of California, San Diego. John Mueller is Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. Ronald Rogowski is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard Rosecrance is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jack Snyder is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Arthur A. Stein is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Zara Steiner is a Fellow of New Hall at Cambridge University. David D'Lugo

[ix]

Acknowledgmen ts

This book began in our conversations about the field of international politics. Each of us was dissatisfied with neorealist arguments and presentations of grand strategy. Our own work (Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State, and Stein, Why Nations Cooperate) clearly reflected departures from core realist assumptions. In the present work, we anchor the analysis of grand strategy in the political economy of domestic politics. This focus was reflected in two panels of papers at the 1989 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association and later in a conference at UCLA in March 1990, which included in addition to the scholars whose work appears in this volume, Joseph Nye, Jr., and David Lake. We thank various graduate students who contributed to the de¬ velopment of our thoughts: Mark Brawley, Rupen Cetinyan, David D'Lugo, Lori Gronich, Virginia Haufler, John Kroll, Jeffrey Legro, Peter Li, Robert Pahre, Paul Papayoanou, T. V. Paul, Lars Skalnes, Etel Solingen, Cherie Steele, and Katya Weber. We are also grateful for research assistance from Elizabeth Bailey, Kerry Chase, Alan Kess¬ ler, Christy Kralovansky, Maria Sampanis, and Kristen Williams. We are indebted to UCLA for support of our research, including grants from its Academic Senate as well as from the former Center for International and Strategic Affairs, and International Studies and Overseas Programs. We also received help from the University's Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation at San Diego. We grate¬ fully acknowledge the support of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Hewlett Foundation, and particularly to thank Kevin Quigley and Clint Smith. At Cornell University Press we benefited from editorial [xi]

Acknowledgmen ts help from Roger Haydon, Joanne Hindman, and Kay Scheuer, and we owe a great deal to Robert Jervis, the series coeditor. Without the help of Barbara Rosecrance and Amy Davis and the indulgence of Alexandra Tali, Joscelyn Ariella, and Jacob Michael Davis Stein, this work could not have been completed expeditiously. R. R. and A. A. S.

[xii]

The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy

[1] Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

"Strategy" traditionally referred to the planning and employment of military resources to win major campaigns against a foe or to achieve victory in war itself.1 Strongly influenced by the lessons of World War I, the British strategist Basil Liddell Hart broadened this conception when he recognized that military victory might be insufficient. If it left the nation weaker and vulnerable to a new conflict, success in war could not fulfill all the requirements of effective "strategy."2 He wrote: "It is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire. This is the truth underlying Clausewitz's definition of war as a 'continuation of policy by other means'—the prolongation of that policy through the war into the subsequent peace must always be borne in mind."3 American nu¬ clear strategists after World War II generalized this insight to include "deterrence" or the prevention of war.4 According to them, the mounting of a permanently mobilized and invulnerable nuclear force in peacetime could deter attack by even the strongest enemy power.5 ^ee particularly Karl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); Edward Mead Earle, ed.. Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943); and B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1972). 2See particularly, B. H. Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare (New York: Penguin, 1942), chap. 1. 3 Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 366. 4 Perhaps the signal works here are Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1946), and Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959). 5 This was not a simple and straightforward process, however. Albert Wohlstetter's

[3]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

"Grand strategy," however, represented a still more inclusive no¬ tion: it went beyond mere generalship in war or deterrence in peace¬ time to include "the policy governing [the use of military force] and combining it with other weapons: economic, political, psychologi¬ cal."* * * 6 In modern terms, grand strategy came to mean the adaptation of domestic and international resources to achieve security for a state.7 Thus, grand strategy considers all the resources at the disposal of the nation (not just military ones), and it attempts to array them effectively to achieve security in both peace and war. After World War II, and particularly among U.S. strategists, this more encompassing definition became obscured as statesmen and policymakers became obsessed with the Soviet threat. Focusing nar¬ rowly on the military balance with the opponent,8 they did not ask whether a Great Power could afford to maintain nuclear deterrence; they required it to do so, implicitly omitting other important variables in the grand strategic equation. A new group of realist thinkers in universities then joined nuclear strategists in this narrower concep¬ tion. In addition to their endorsing deterrence, this second group were students and partisans of the traditional balance of power theory as it applied to relations among nations. Stressing the anarchic world in which states found themselves, realists held that nations must "balance" against their adversaries if they are to survive. In this pro¬ cess, states should act as the "international system" and the pattern of international threat dictates, and it is presumed that states initially balance internally via mobilization, irrespective of any political con¬ straints.9 In this respect, both nuclear strategists and realists tended to neglect patterns of domestic support and economic strength that might affect long term commitment to a deterrent, containment, or balance of power strategy. Three recent critiques have questioned this narrowing of intellectual focus in the field of grand strategy. First, several analysts and his"The Delicate Balance of Terror," Foreign Affairs 37 (January 1959): 211-34; and Thomas Schelling's "The Reciprocal Fear of Surprise Attack," in his The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, i960), make this abundantly clear. 6 Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 31. 7 See particularly Michael Howard, August 1941—September 1943, vol. 4 of James Ramsay Montagu, ed.. Grand Strategy (London: HMSO, 1956-76); Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century ad to the Third (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Paul Kennedy, ed.. Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). K It is perhaps suggestive that one of the most prestigious institutions dealing with nuclear strategy in the postwar period, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, titled its annual publication The Military Balance. q Great Powers especially respond this way. Only if internal mobilization proves insufficient do states balance externally by seeking allies.

[4]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

torians have sought to show that victory in war or the maintenance of a successful far-flung empire in peace depends on a strong eco¬ nomic and industrial base that is not undermined by onerous military preparations. Nations should adopt a strategy that is economically efficient and does not produce "overstretch."10 Others have con¬ tended that success in statecraft or grand strategy depends upon the ability to "extract" resources from one's own population. If the po¬ litical opposition cannot be silenced, or if domestic groups demand a large slice of the resource pie, leaders may be tempted to adopt risky foreign policies to achieve cheap and easy victories in the short run. They may thereby precipitate foreign-policy disasters.11 A third view is that the pattern of domestic politics involved in political and economic "logrolling" may help to account for territorial "overexten¬ sion" and overcommitment in international relations.12 Each of these contributions stresses the necessity of including domestic politics and economics in any broad calculus of grand strategy. The purpose of this volume is to reinstate this broader conception of grand strategy and to indicate how it operates in specific historical and contemporary circumstances. The chapters all demonstrate that grand strategic assessments focusing only on the narrow constituents of realism—material power, changes in its distribution, and external threat—are radically incomplete and do not account for what nations actually do. Rather, domestic groups, social ideas, the character of constitutions, economic constraints (sometimes expressed through international interdependence), historical social tendencies, and do¬ mestic political pressures play an important, indeed, a pivotal, role in the selection of a grand strategy and, therefore, in the prospects for international conflict and cooperation. Under present international circumstances, such domestic forces may actually be increasing in scope and importance. In contrast to realist theory, which places great stress on the "third image" in international politics—the level of the international sys¬ tem13—we want to illuminate the "second image" or the domestic 10 The term “overstretch" comes from Liddell Hart but is used to great effect by Paul Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870-194.5 (London: Fontana, 1984), chap. 8, and also his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987); and (as editor) Grand Strategies in War and Peace. 11 The most important work here is Alan Lamborn's The Price of Power: Risk and Foreign Policy in Britain, France, and Germany (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), particularly chap. 12. 12Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 13 For the original distinction between “first image"—the nature of man, “second image"—the nature of the state and domestic society, and “third image"—the nature of the international system, see Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York:

[5]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

level. The particular nature of the domestic system in Japan, the United States, Britain, Imperial Germany, Eastern Europe, and even Soviet Russia has determined key decisions and national policies to¬ ward the outside world. A central conclusion of the chapters that follow is that the presence or absence of symmetrical domestic conditions among the Great Powers is a major determinant of the viability of grand strategy. Countries that face unequal domestic constraints and pressures may not deter one another internationally. For example, long-run economic maxi¬ mizers may not always deter short-term military maximizers. As an¬ other example, countries with a great deal of domestic support may need to mobilize less of their economic substance than a military regime that maintains only a shaky hold on public affection. As we shall see in a moment, the realist model presumes that the selection of grand strategies is unhampered by domestic constraints. Because realism represents the core approach to the study of international politics today and because arguments about the role of domestic pol¬ itics are presented as deviations from realist theory, we begin with a discussion of the realist canon.

The Realist Canon

In the historical past, and particularly in the last ten years, the dominant approach to the study of international relations and also to grand strategy has been that of structural realism.14 The structural Columbia University Press, 1959). Waltz's images are equated with levels of analysis in a review essay by J. David Singer, "International Conflict: Three Levels of Analysis," World Politics 12 (April i960): 453-61. For further discussion see J. David Singer, "The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations," World Politics 14 (October 1961): 77-92; and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), chap. 1. 14 The realist tradition is virtually as old as recorded history, tracing its origins to Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Given its long pedigree, the practitioners of realism have not always agreed on individual points, but generally see a tendency toward international conflict as the salient characteristic of the field. This tendency, however, may be disciplined through alliances and the balance of power. The signal recent realist work is Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979) and his sections in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Also important are Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials, Investments, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) and Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); and Joseph Grieco, Cooperation among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca: Cor-

[6]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

realist approach contends that nations embedded in an anarchic in¬ ternational system must engage in "self-help"15 to survive. The sys¬ tem constrains individual states, shaping their foreign and security policies, and thus determines the system's stability. It does not, how¬ ever, determine policy for each nation.16 In an anarchical system, states act to ensure their survival in the knowledge that no supranational institution or governing authority will protect them. Countries also cannot rely on other states to assist them even if they share a common ideology or political form. Each state, similarly insecure, has the liberty to think only of its own interests. The key prediction of structural realism is that balances of power will form. Individual states may attempt to improve their position vis-a-vis others, but others will respond by reestablishing a balance of power. Realism thus presents an equilibrium theory, depicting the nell University Press, 1990). For an application to the realm of grand strategy see Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). John Mearsheimer applies realist thinking to matters of current international politics in “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War," International Security 15 (Summer 1990): 5-56. Arthur Stein dis¬ cusses the differences between realism and liberalism in Why Nations Cooperate: Cir¬ cumstance and Choice in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). 15 It is possible to accept that the system of states (or the matrix in which states are embedded) determines state policy without thereby becoming a “realist." Those who analyze conflict and cooperation from the standpoint of game theory such as Michael Taylor, Robert Axelrod, Russell Hardin, and Anatol Rapoport cannot be described as realists because the payoffs that actors confront will often stimulate cooperation as well as conflict. In cooperative games or mixed-motive games, it is possible that cooperation will emerge as a result of iteration. In the case of the Prisoners' Dilemma this depends on the rate of discount for future gains and the indefiniteness of iteration. Moreover, these payoffs will not be determined only by the system. Rational choice analysts such as George Downs, Duncan Snidal, and Chris Achen cannot be described as “realists" because the cooperative or conflictual outcome depends on the particular pattern of cost and benefit for different courses of action, and these costs and benefits take into account a variety of national, international, individual, and perceptual factors. In short (and whether they recognize it or not), although all realists are implicitly rational choice theorists, the inverse is not true. Not all realists accept that anarchy is the governing condition of international rela¬ tions. Such hegemonic stability theorists as Robert Gilpin and Stephen Krasner note that a hegemonic stabilizer in effect substitutes its rule for an otherwise prevailing anarchy. When that stabilizer declines, however, the system returns to its antecedent anarchic state. 16 It appears that the realist theory of international politics does not involve a theory of foreign-policy choice. But this theory necessarily depends on the responses of specific Great Powers to changes in the international distribution of power. Thus, for example, one Great Power in a bipolar world must respond to restore the balance of power when the other has taken steps to increase its own power. In this sense, the theory predicts systemically stabilizing actions in a small number system of Great Powers; it therefore also involves a theory of individual foreign policy for those same Great Powers.

[7]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

forces that operate in order to return the system to balance. Outside the scope of the theory are such issues as how such a system came into being17 and what disrupts any particular distribution of power. Changes in technology, an industrial revolution, migration, and pop¬ ulation growth may all disturb an existing balance of power. The theory does not address these. But it does predict the consequences that flow from any shift in the balance of power. In the realist view of the world, there is no division of labor among nations, and if there were, a country should not rely on it to safeguard its own wealth or security. Since the objective of each political unit is to be independent and sovereign, no state will readily accept a relationship in which it is dependent on others. Where interdepend¬ ence exists, it will tend to provoke conflict between nations, for each will strive to lessen dependence and to reassert its own autonomy. Domestic factors or pressures are also seen to be frictional forces that impede the operation of systemic and realist determinants. A country that allows its domestic political imperatives to chart grand strategy will soon find its international position undermined. If it undertakes to pursue moral causes in international relations, it will waste its national substance. If a nation spends money on domestic welfare and thereby neglects a fundamental challenge to its inter¬ national position, it will not endure for very long. The recommended strategy of the school of structural realism is to maintain the balance of power. Countries that overlook this vital task fall out of the ranks of Great Powers or are eliminated altogether.18 Realists generally accept the view that the international (anarchic) order is static—it has not and probably will not be changed. But this does not mean that the expression of conflict or the amount of armed violence is always the same. Some methods of balancing are more productive than others. A bipolar system is more stable19 than a mul17 This point is discussed by John Gerard Ruggie in “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis," World Politics 35 (January 1983): 261-85. 18 A number of theorists accept that “second image" factors, such as offense-defense balances and the security dilemma, strongly affect systemic outcomes. Robert Jervis and Stephen Van Evera adhere to this view. Perceptual influences are also very im¬ portant. See particularly Jervis, Perception and Misperception. 19 For some realists a hegemonic system, while it lasts, is the most stable of all. See the work of Gilpin and Krasner. Among balance of power theorists there are those who argue that multipolarity is more stable. See Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability," World Politics 15 (April 1964): 390-406. For a different view see Richard Rosecrance, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future," Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (September 1966): 314-27. For a recent collection see Alan Ned Sabrosky, ed.. Polarity and War: The Changing Structure of International Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985). For a formal treatment

[8]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

tipolar one because conflicts are focused directly between the two blocs, and the two parties reinforce their positions by maintaining a taut balance between them. In a multipolar system conflict is more diffuse, and the real structure of opposition may be concealed. As a result, countries "balance" less against threats, and one group of states may make great gains before its aggressive intentions become fully clear to others. The spread of nuclear capacities also deters con¬ flict even when multipolarity is present.20 States will not challenge the vital interests of other nations that possess nuclear weapons. Finally, realists are likely to accept the notion that power is ranged along a single dimension and that it is "fungible": that is, one form of power can be readily transformed into another, military power into economic power, and so on. The existence of multidimensional and nonfungible power would mean that there could be "hybrid states," with great military power but little economic power and vice versa.21 Realists reject such claims, although they recognize that there may be lags in the translation of power from one domain into another.22 For strong states at least, realists contend that power is quite fungible. Such states possess an armory of diverse strengths. If they do not prevail in a given issue area, it is not because of the lack of fungible power but because they do not consider the issue to be vitally important.23 Essentially, the modern realist argument boils down to "power and number"—the amount and disparity in the power possessed by in¬ dividual countries and the number of powerful states. If one state's power increases, this will also augment its rivalry with other strong

that suggests that presumed differences depend on assumptions about risk propensity, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Theories of International Conflict: An Analysis and an Appraisal," in Handbook of Political Conflict: Theory and Research, ed. Ted Robert Gurr (New York: Free Press, 1980), pp. 361-98. 20 See Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better," Adelphi Paper no. 171, IISS, 1981; and Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities," American Political Science Review 84 (September 1990): 731-45. 21 See Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 22 Waltz argues, for example, that Japan will inevitably become a major military power and not just a "trading state" because it will naturally be drawn into transforming its economic power into military power. Waltz, UCLA talk, November 30, 1989. 23 In "Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics," Waltz writes: "On the fungibility of power.. . Keohane and I differ. Obviously, power is not as fungible as money. Not much is. But power is much more fungible than Keohane allows. As ever, the distinction between strong and weak states is important. The stronger the state, the greater the variety of its capabilities. Power may be only slightly fungible for weak states, but it is highly so for strong ones" (in Neorealism, ed. Keohane, P- 333)-

[9]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

states and perhaps with the members of the system as a whole. If a state's power declines, it becomes less competitive and engages in fewer conflicts with others. Restricted cooperation (at least to avoid war) is possible among powers neatly balanced against one another. It is less likely when no balance exists. A marked difference in power always presents a temptation to aggressive action. While this general realist conspectus can in principle be refuted, the dice are loaded in favor of its confirmation. It would appear that only very specific system transformation events could possibly offer disconfirming cases. If nations generally and persistently failed to balance in a balance of power system or to deter and balance in a system of bipolarity, realism would come into question, though even here realists would retort that individual nations could adopt such policies without questioning the mandates of the system as a whole. In short, even such outcomes could be reinterpreted by realists as conforming with the theory. If nations behave in accordance with realist prescriptions, the theory is supported. If they do not, somehow they may be expected to suffer; if not now, then in the future. States that accept the interdependence which is thrust on them by the in¬ ternational economy may be expected to pay the price in their ability to make and execute national decisions, free from foreign influence and control.24 States that wish to remain economic or trading powers25 and that do not wish to assert the military and territorial prerogatives which their economic power would appear to authorize will find their national priorities overridden in some future conflict with other states.26 Nations that respond to ideological or moral incentives by assisting or opposing other nations will waste their national sub¬ stance.2' But these are not fully disconfirming cases. In a properly constituted international system, nations will chart their courses according to systemic determinants represented by power differences and the need to find a balance between states. Yet unit-level factors, such as evolutions in weaponry and the develop¬ ment of nuclear weapons, also can play a decisive role.28 Some unit24 Decisional independence can readily coexist with strategic interdependence. Au¬ tonomy to make decisions does not mean that those decisions are not contingent on the choices of others. See the discussion in Stein, Why Nations Cooperate. 25 See Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State. 26 Kenneth Waltz, Berkeley talk, April 26, 1991. 2 For this point see also the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, particularly In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952). 28 Although Waltz apparently regards nuclear weapons as a "unit-level” innovation, an argument could be made that their effect is dependent on the pattern and depth of nuclear proliferation: in other words, that their advent and effect, like power dif¬ ferences, are systemic in character. [10]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

level factors can strongly influence systemic ones, and there is a con¬ stant interaction between systemic and domestic-level forces.29 It thus turns out that while in principle realism remains "falsifiable," it is difficult in practice to identify an evolution in real international politics that would disconfirm the theory: if states do not balance, they should. If they pay more attention to economic restraints and incentives and neglect the military constraints, they will suffer.30 If they overreact to threats or become too supportive of friendly, dem¬ ocratic allies, they will waste resources. If they individually and col¬ lectively resign their national sovereignties in the creation of a world government, conflict is merely displaced to a new level—it now be¬ comes vertical and civil instead of horizontal and international in character. In addition, a failure to balance power does not disconfirm the theory, for the theory only expects "the recurrent formation of balances of power";31 it does not specify that a balance operates every¬ where and at all times. Enormous changes in a bipolar system that might be involved if one side did not hold up its end in balancing against the other also do not refute the theory. If, as in fact happened in 1989 and after, Russia dismantled all or most of its offensive military threat to Western powers, freed the satellite countries, opened up its economy and society to Western influences and democratic pressures, and sought to associate itself with the European Community and join the Inter¬ national Monetary Fund, this would still not disconfirm the central realist contentions. The Soviet Union or its Russian residuary legatee was merely regrouping in order to get its economy functioning again and needed a breathing space in which to regain its energies.32 As Russian strength mounts, so, according to realists, will its opposition to Western centers of power.

The Argument of the Volume

The authors of this work accept that the theory of "realism" formally remains intact. Yet they are persuaded that the events of recent years 29 Waltz writes: "The structure is not 'independent of the parts, the states as actors,' but constantly interacts with them. Neither the structure nor the units determine ("Reflections," in Neorealism, ed. Keohane, p. 338). 30 Waltz writes for example: "A self-help system is one in which those who do not help themselves, or who do so less effectively than others, will fail to prosper, will lay themselves open to dangers, will suffer." (In ibid., p. 117.) 31 Waltz, "Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power," in ibid., p. 118. 32 Waltz seminar, UCLA, November 30, 1989.

[«]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

are not moving in the direction of typical realist predictions, but rather away from them. Looking at the past, they are impressed by the number of occasions in which other than strictly "realist" determi¬ nants appear to have influenced or even decided national policy. Collectively, they believe that domestic factors have been neglected as determinants of grand strategy and that ideas, institutions, or in¬ terdependence play important roles in shaping national policy.33 The study of grand strategy, which deals with what influences and determines national policy choices for war and peace, is an ideal arena in which to examine "realist" approaches. It is, after all, the realm in which countries should be most expected to follow realist imperatives, to neglect domestic pressures, to overcome economic limitations, to restrain ideological tendencies. States, forged in a crucible of conflict, should likely pursue defense preparations as their most central activ¬ ity.34 To do less than is needed to protect themselves would be fool¬ hardy; to do more would be inefficient. And yet the findings of this volume suggest that this smooth marginalist response to security stimuli does not always and may not even usually occur. Departures from realist expectations are in fact essential to an un¬ derstanding of the dynamics of peace and war. If balances of power were readily restored, we should expect the world to be constantly adjusting to small perturbations in power while remaining generally peaceful. Indeed, we might even expect that far-sighted rational states concerned with their own survival would not overexpand and threaten others, for this would only bring about their own encircle¬ ment and downfall.35 The balance of power equilibrium in interna¬ tional politics would operate like the market equilibrium in economics in which prices constantly change in response to supply and demand. Wars would be as characteristically unexpected in international re¬ lations as involuntary unemployment in economics. Yet, as we know, 33 See particularly the work of Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane, Power and Interde¬ pendence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977); and Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 34 See Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State-Making," in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 3-83; Richard Bean, "War and the Birth of the Nation State," Journal of Economic History 33 (March 1973): 203-21. See also Elman R. Service, "Classical and Modern Theories of the Origins of Government," in Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution, ed. Ronald Cohen and Elman R. Service (Phila¬ delphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978), pp. 21-34; and Frederic C. Lane, "Economic Consequences of Organized Violence," Journal of Economic History 18 (December 1958): 401-17. 33 Instead, John Arquilla shows that in Great Power wars initiators typically lose. See Arquilla, Dubious Battles: Aggression, Defeat, and the International System (Washington, D.C.: Crane Russak, 1992). [12]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

such unemployment occurs, and so do wars. The ruling model in each discipline explains neither.36 The title of this work suggests precisely the direction that we pro¬ pose to follow. We are interested in exploring the factors and events that proceed beyond realism and illuminate The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. This book does not confute traditional theory, but it does seek to stress the developments in past and present national decisions that would be consonant with a different approach. In fact, it appears that nations in ordinary situations have behaved much more coop¬ eratively than the theory of structural realism would have dictated, most of the time without suffering as a result.37 Occasionally, they have behaved more aggressively or have balanced more strongly than they needed to do. Trading nations have fashioned a strategy of international politics that meets anarchy with an acceptance of inter¬ dependence, a response that realists would not predict. It is, after all, an elementary observation that domestic factors help to explain departures from systemic equilibrium.'fc rand strategy is public policy and reflects a nation's mechanisms for arriving at social choicest Moreover, such strategies typically require the commitment, extraction, and mobilization of societal resources. That domestic, in¬ stitutional, political, and economic constraints should matter should hardly be surprising. Realists stress unitary decisions by rational lead¬ ers that maximize, or at least seek to enhance, security. But grand strategies have been formulated in the absence of unitary decision makers, when not national security but the survival of a particular regime was in question and when the groups that made important decisions affecting the national interest were not national leaders but parties (subnational groups). The second image is not only important because of domestic insti¬ tutions or economic orientations but also because of ruling domestic ideas, a point underscored in a famous statement of John Maynard Keynes: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence,

36 A solution proffered in economics that has counterparts in international relations is that “stickiness" retards the return to equilibrium. This does not explain, however, but merely redefines the problem. 37Consider, for example, the policy of Canada. For more than one hundred years Canada has not been supported by England, and yet it has not balanced against the United States. It has prospered from this far-sighted policy. [13]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribblers of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachments of ideas.38

In the development of grand strategy, and especially of military doctrine, ideas have played an important role. In recent years, experts have begun to recognize the role of ideas embedded in military doc¬ trine as an influence on national foreign policy even when they could not necessarily be fully justified on realist grounds.39 Although states' military doctrines frequently reflect real changes in technology and weaponry, they may also diverge from that reality, as they did im¬ mediately before World War I. Then European powers expected the "offense” to dominate the "defense," but the war turned into a de¬ fensive stalemate. In fact, countries often follow intellectual fashion in devising their policies. It is impossible, for example, to understand Kaiser Wilhelm II's ill-founded belief in the necessity of a powerful high seas fleet without considering the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan.40 It would be difficult to comprehend why the United States spent so much of its valued economic resources on competition with lesser powers like the Soviet Union and China had it not been for their Communist 38 J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Mac¬ millan, 1936), p. 383. 3t) A seminal article was Robert Jervis's “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30 (January 1978): 167-214. Additional important works include studies by Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," International Security 9 (Summer 1984): 58-107; John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision-Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine. For an early review see Jack Levy, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis," International Studies Quarterly 28 (June 1984): 219-38. 40 An emphasis on domestic political institutions and ideas can also lead to empha¬ sizing the role of a Great Power's chief executive. The verdict is far from in, but some initial accounts of the Gulf War stress the role that President Bush himself played in dictating a U.S. military response, which was not the consensus outcome of discussions among his senior advisers. See Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991). Others have argued that Churchill played a similarly decisive role in 1940 in preventing an English collapse after the fall of France. See particularly David Reynolds, “Churchill and the British 'Decision' to Fight on in 1940: Right Policy, Wrong Reasons," in Diplomacy and Intelligence during the Second World War, ed. Richard Langhorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 147-67; and Eliot Cohen, “Churchill and Coalition Strategy in World War II," in Kennedy, Grand Strategies,

pp.

43-67.

[14]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

ideological orientations. The ideological dispute determined a rivalry that was far less grounded in power realities. The nature of a domestic society will also affect the ability of a state to persuade others of its point of view. Strong states have sometimes generated little balancing activity against themselves, while weaker but more aggressive powers have attracted considerable animosity. Status quo or declining states, equally, can sometimes exert an influ¬ ence in the system that is disproportionate to their power—if their domestic institutions command general respect or admiration. Then the "soft power" of co-optation may take precedence over the "hard power" of command.41 In other respects, domestic societies also play a central role in in¬ fluencing grand strategic policies. A particular level of economic de¬ velopment does not entail a similar level of political development. One of the difficulties in dealing with contemporary Japan is that Japan emerges out of a Meiji-Bismarckian historical context in which "soft authoritarianism" can work covertly within a formal system of legality and popular sovereignty to ensure the preservation of mer¬ cantilist policies. _ In Germany, domestic factors conditioned not only the choice of grand strategies but also the means of implementing them. Once the German challenge to the British navy had emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century, England's flexible constitutional system fa¬ cilitated spending on the naval race, whereas Germany lacked such a system. British constitutional practice contained taxation and bor¬ rowing powers that Germany did not enjoy. In certain respects, Ger¬ man decision making was not rational at all: the regime embarked on a naval challenge to Britain that, because of constitutional limitations, it could not fully carry out. In democratic political systems, domestic imperatives influence and frequently determine the nation's response to the outside world. In 1937~4° the United States neglected the German challenge on the Continent not because it did not have the economic resources to render an overpowering response, but because of domestic isolation¬ ist sentiment. In 1938-39 Britain finally mustered a response to the German threat even though economic factors would have dictated hesitation. And even in 1939, the Cabinet decision to resist Germany under certain conditions was determined not by a sudden change in international pressures (which had remained at a high level since Munich in 1938), but by changes in domestic and official opinion. 41 See Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), chap. 6.

[15]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

Soon after World War II, the United States came to believe that Soviet communism was an ideological foe that had to be stopped, but having reached that decision the administration of Harry S. Truman waffled in carrying it out. Unlike the situation Franklin D. Roosevelt faced in the late 1930s, however, the postwar problem was not one of isolation or deficient popular support, but an erroneous view of what level of defense expenditure the U.S. economy could stand. In all these cases, domestic constraints or imperatives (not systemic ones) governed the outcome. Although a unitary political system such as that of the former Soviet Union does not contain the same constraints and imperatives found in a democratic one, divisions within the political elite (between hard¬ liners and moderates, for example) can be extremely important. In¬ deed, some Sovietologists argue that the foreign-policy positions of members of the elite can be driven by their domestic-policy prefer¬ ences. Following World War II, from the standpoint of relative power, the Soviets were perhaps more pressed to balance against the United States than the United States was to contain them. But ideological factors also played a role in charting Russian hostility toward capitalist nations. When Soviet economic decline became palpable in the late 1970s, the regime obviously had to act. But in the 1980s it could have chosen preemptive war—a "cornered bear" response—instead of the "conciliation" toward the West that it actually followed.42 The co¬ operative Soviet reaction of 1983 and after was not determined simply by U.S. and Western pressure but by the outcome of domestic dis¬ agreements between hard-liners and moderates. In Eastern Europe the domestic complex of forces has also been historically important. In the first decade of the twentieth century, refractory nations in the Balkans, the "cockpit of Europe," proved that they were capable of igniting a war among Great Powers. This suggests that systemic stability after 1993 requires that the hyperna¬ tionalism of the successor states of Yugoslavia and elsewhere be damped down to prevent a new fire. Yet there is no realist strategy to deal with domestic social forces in other countries. In such a setting, a strategy that combines a relaxation of international tensions, the spread of liberal political and economic ideas, and Western rejection of ultranationalist regimes may be more relevant than one focused on balancing relative military power. Once again, policymakers may find that reshaping a domestic order is a necessary prerequisite to 42 Mearsheimer

argues, correctly, in Conventional Deterrence that a blitzkrieg strategy is an instrument of a power that cannot afford the costs and casualties involved in a "war of attrition." [16]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy Table 1.1.

Grand strategic outcomes International factors International stimuli

Domestic factors

International constraints

Political constraints Economic constraints

U.K. (1938) no action USSR (1985) no action

Political constraints Economic capabilities

U.S.A. (1940) no action

Political stimuli Economic constraints

U.K. (1939) action U.S.A. (1947) mixed Japan (1940-41) action

Political stimuli Economic capabilities

U.K. (1910) action

Germany (1897) action

international peace. The unit-level influence determines the systemic one. A central conclusion drawn from the chapters that follow, then, is that domestic constraints are sufficient to prevent or retard the policy response apparently dictated by international pressures. International stimuli generate a response when the domestic political and economic factors are conducive to it. Conversely, domestic imperatives can sometimes generate aggressive policies that should be precluded by the restraints of the external environment. One way of portraying some of our results is to compare the influ¬ ence of international and domestic factors in causing change in grand strategic policy. From a realist perspective, maintaining the balance of power should take precedence over domestic factors or restraints. The imperative should also override economic limitations. Yet the surprising outcome is that even a single constraining factor may be sufficient to prevent a change in policy in response to international security pressures. We distinguish here between international stimuli, which lend incentives or require a state to do something, and inter¬ national constraints, which inhibit or prevent a state from doing something. Table 1.1 portrays the cases discussed in the chapters that follow. In it we note that in three of the five cases in which international

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein

pressures or stimuli might have been expected to bring forth a firm national response, that response did not occur. In one of those cases a single domestic constraint was sufficient to bar the way to such a reaction. The three cases, the United Kingdom in 1938,43 the USSR in 1983, and the United States in 1940, appear to demonstrate that powerful international challenges do not always generate a strong rejoinder. In two cases international pressures brought forth a re¬ sponse, but even then at least one domestic factor also favored or sanctioned action to improve the country's international position. In the United Kingdom in 1939 domestic politics demanded action. Ear¬ lier, in 1910, Britain found that both politics and economics were favorable to taking up the German challenge. Conversely, there are two cases in which the international system did not dictate a response and may even have inhibited it, and yet resolute national action still occurred. Imperial Germany had no press¬ ing international reason to challenge Britain and Britain's naval po¬ sition, but it did so anyway and broke the logjam in domestic politics. Even more egregiously, Japan faced powerful economic and inter¬ national constraints and went to war anyway in 1940-41. A more mixed case is that of the United States in 1947-30. In this period, especially prior to the Korean War, the United States joined NATO, made extensive military commitments, and adopted containment as a strategy even when the USSR's own power projection capabilities were lacking. Yet the United States never funded the commitments it made. Ideological factors underlay grand strategy and military plan¬ ning. The Korean War, occurring in a peripheral region of the world from which fiscal pressures had forced U.S. withdrawal, only mar¬ ginally increased the international threat to the United States. But even if the war did not justify the large-scale conventional rearmament in which the United States then engaged, its outbreak made this possible. Domestic conditions do not just matter: indeed, the chapters in this work lead to the conclusion that the absence or presence of sym¬ metrical domestic conditions among the Great Powers is a critical determinant of grand strategic success. The realist model of inter¬ national politics, which argues that states respond to changes in in¬ ternational circumstances, presumes the existence of permissive or stimulative domestic conditions within the Great Powers. That is, realism presumes that the selection of grand strategies is unencum43 See particularly Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-39: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). [18]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy Table 1.2. Symmetrical and asymmetrical domestic conditions Domestic condition of revisionist power Constrained Domestic condition of status quo state

Permissive or stimulative

Constrained

Peace from mutual restraint War/Deterrence failure

Permissive or stimulative

Peace from self-deterrence/ Unnecessary deterrence

Realist world balance of power

bered by domestic constraints. Table 1.2 summarizes the possibilities that exist in the interaction between a potentially revisionist power and the status quo state that it would threaten. One situation rep¬ resents the realist model: both powers are domestically unconstrained in their adoption of grand strategies. In this world, states are free to challenge others, and challenges generate a countervailing response. As a second possibility, a revisionist power is unconstrained while the status quo state finds its alternatives restricted: this leads to de¬ terrence failure and war. While the status quo state should balance, its domestic constraints are likely to generate appeasement, with di¬ sastrous consequences. In short, deterrence failure is rooted in the asymmetry of political economy and strategy. This is the lesson of the 1930s. Appeasement in this context provides little more than time. In a third case, asymmetrical conditions can also lead to a peaceful world if challengers are constrained while status quo powers are not. Revisionist challengers are then self-deterred. Status quo powers do not need the extensive military preparations in which they have in¬ dulged. Alternatively, appeasement can work under such conditions. One interpretation suggests that this may have been the case in the early years of the Cold War. Finally, peace and stability can derive from mutual restraint caused not by deterrence and threats but by the existence of symmetrical domestic constraints. Here, policies of accommodation and concilia¬ tion will be reciprocated. This case characterizes the current world, in which Russia and the United States each face enormous domestic constraints on their ability to pursue expansive and expensive grand strategy. The mutual retrenchment forced by domestic conditions helped to bury the Cold War. The essays in this book also assess the implications of different types of domestic constraints within a Great Power. Table 1.3 suggests the range of outcomes that can arise. Here the realist world corre¬ sponds to the situation in which a Great Power's political and eco¬ nomic conditions are either permissive or stimulative. If we add the [19]

Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein Table 1.3. Symmetry of domestic political and economic conditions Political conditions Constrained Economic conditions

Permissive or stimulative

Constrained

States cannot respond/ dangerous for status quo power unless revisionist similarly constrained

States may respond without economic wherewithal/ dangerous for both powers

Permissive or stimulative

No challenge or response, despite economic capabilities

Both respond/the realist world

realist assumption that this applies to all states, then the realist con¬ clusion also follows: that grand strategy is driven by international factors unfettered by domestic considerations. But as the chapters that follow suggest, there can be asymmetries in political and economic conditions. If both are constrained, revi¬ sionists do not act and status quo actors do not respond. If only status quo states are constrained, revisionists will advance. If economic fac¬ tors permit commitment but political constraints forbid it, on the one hand, status quo states will possess residual capacities against revi¬ sionists who are not so limited. On the other hand, if revisionists face similar restraints, they will not act. The most dangerous situation, of course, occurs when domestic factors either permit or require action but economic capabilities are insufficient to support them. This was true of Britain in 1939. Britain was not a revisionist nation, but it was emboldened by domestic pressure to take a strong stand against Ger¬ many when its economic circumstances were shaky, to say the least. In retrospect, Germany's economy was also too small to encounter the enemies that its leaders attacked both in 1914 and in 1939. In these instances, national behavior is not predicted by the tenets of realist doctrine: nations expanded or launched a preemptory challenge when they should not have been able to do so. In war and peace grand strategy charts a nation's response to the uncertainties of an anarchic world. It takes into account the challenges of the international system as well as the constraints and pressures of domestic society. As we have seen, both realist theory and much of the writing on national security policy analyze grand strategy as if it simply represented an optimal response to international military pres¬ sures, unaffected by domestic constraints. In our correction of the [20]

Beyond Realism: The Study of Grand Strategy

incomplete realist emphasis on the external environment, in this vol¬ ume we develop the implications of domestic and economic factors for a positive theory of the causes and consequences of grand strategy. In sum, the "balance" between countries may be as much deter¬ mined by their domestic orientations as by their international power. Instead of symmetrically adjusting to international threat, nations will sometimes under- or overbalance. Successful grand strategy for a particular nation, then, will depend on its ability to take into account respective domestic conditions at home and within the enemy country as well as on its ability to consider assessments of power. Since wars frequently (but certainly not always) represent the failure of national strategy, the existence of asymmetry in domestic and economic po¬ sitions within opposing countries sometimes helps to explain why war breaks out.

[21]

[2] Politics and Grand Strategy Michael

W.

Doyle

Contemporary discussions of grand strategy in the United States tend to be dominated by issues of global political economy. Despite Karl von Clausewitz's dictum that strategy should be considered an instrument in the pursuit of a "political object"1 and despite Michael Howard's classic discussion of the "forgotten dimensions" of strategy, our objects appear to be overwhelmingly economic, and the signifi¬ cances of differing political values and political institutions remain forgotten.2 The major reason for this neglect of the politics of grand strategy seems to be quite straightforward. Politics is simply being crowded out by the current exciting and controversial literature on the eco¬ nomics of grand strategy.3 In the light of this literature, politics I have benefited from suggestions offered at the first meeting of the conference "The Political Economy of Grand Strategy," UCLA, March 15-17, 1990, and at a seminar of the Faculty-Fellow-Graduate Discussion Group of the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, October 3, 1990, and from additional communications from Art Stein, Matt Evangelista, Arie Kacowicz, John Garofano, and Keisuke Iida. 1 Karl von Clausewitz, On War, vol. 1 (1832; rpt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 1:11. 2 Michael Howard, "The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy," in his The Causes of Wars (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). Howard's four dimensions of strategy are the operational, the logistical, the social, and the technological. Much of the current grand strategy concentrates on the logistical; in this essay I examine the relations between the social and the operational dimensions. See also the valuable discussion in Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973). 3 See works by Paul Kennedy, Robert Gilpin, David Calleo; and critics Samuel Hun¬ tington, Joseph Nye, Aaron Friedberg, and Charles Kupchan. See valuable survey in Samuel Huntington, "The U.S.—Decline or Renewal," Foreign Affairs 67 (Spring 1988): 76-96. [22]

Politics and Grand Strategy

seems derivative of the deeper widely perceived facts of United States economic decline and East Asian ascent.4 The current focus on the economic base makes politics—considered as the explicit contest over who decides and for what purposes—seem somehow superstructural and superficial, a spurious correlate of these deeper forces. In addition to this possible lack of demand or appreciation, a specifically political interpretation of grand strategy suffers in the United States from systematic shortages of supply. The natural pro¬ ducer and consumer of grand strategy—the military—finds itself con¬ strained by laws and professional conventions to stay out of politics. Strategy in this view is planned to promote the "national interest," and the national interest is whatever the politicians say it is.5 But politicians, to take a step further, particularly those in presidential democracies such as ours, do not quite fill in the gap and define the "national interest" in any way that has operational significance. Co¬ alition parties tend to preclude coherent and critical discussions of strategy. (In 1986 the Democratic party dropped a discussion of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua from its midterm report on foreign policy because it was too controversial.) Short horizons have equivalent effects on the party in power; lacking a bipartisan consensus, admin¬ istrations can rarely plan for what they can be sure to be able to implement. Instead, we find familiar searches for the roots of "na¬ tional malaise," "standing tall," "that vision thing," and the "end of history."6 We seem to be groping for something to replace the simplicities of Cold War containment. Having become used to a consensus when political antitotalitarianism, economic antisocialism, and strategic balances of power all pointed in the same anti-Soviet direction, we seem to have become unaccustomed to international political choice. By default, the task falls to intellectuals—including international political scientists and international historians. Here another con¬ sideration operates. A professional reluctance to politicize the dis¬ cipline joins a scientific urge toward parsimonious theory. In addition, both of these operate within a context of a postwar tra¬ dition of realist skepticism directed against the overtly political 4 See New York Times, March 4, 1990, "Week in Review" survey of statistics and attitudes to U.S. economic decline. 5Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 84-85; Richard Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cam¬ bridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), chap. 3. 6 The referents are, of course. Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush, and State De¬ partment official Francis Fukuyama. [23]

Michael W. Doyle

philosophies of prewar idealists and pacifists. Together they have established a powerful paradigm of structuralism or neorealism that systematically depoliticizes, "structures/' the subject of international politics at the same time as it conditions professional and bureau¬ cratic discussion toward a structural grand strategy, the balance of power. For the number and power of states to determine the characteristics of the international system and thereby prejudice us toward the adop¬ tion of a balance of power strategy, we need to accept the following basic assumptions of structural realism.7 As do all international theories, neorealism assumes that the in¬ ternational system is "anarchic" in the sense that it lacks a world government, a monopoly of legitimate violence. It also assumes that its units, the actors in world politics, want to survive. But neorealism in some versions adds three ancillary assumptions: (1) that the units of analysis are "like" units and nations or "states. .. are the key units of action"—states are hierarchical insti¬ tutions that possess a monopoly of legitimate violence; (2) "that they seek power, either as an end or as a means to other ends," that is, there is a hierarchy of ends with security predominating and power being the primary, or essential, independent means to security under a condition of international anarchy; (3) that the units "behave in ways that are, by and large rational," meaning that they process a unitary, egoistic, welfare function and adopt policies designed to maximize outcomes given that welfare function. From these assumptions neorealists infer that the international condition is a "state of war"—a tract of time wherein the possibility of war is assumed by all. From that inference neorealists then conclude that states should balance power against power rather than bandwagon toward the more powerful, simply because states that fail to do so are competed out of existence, and that other statesmen therefore are socialized into the superiority of balancing strategy.8 The robust version of neorealism regards the general assumption— international anarchy—and an instinct for survival as sufficient to generate the "state of war" and a balancing strategy. The latter three assumptions are ancillary and are held to be either unnecessary or 7 Here I slightly revise the definition of Robert Keohane, "Realism, Neorealism, and the Study of World Politics," in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 7. 8Kenneth Waltz, "Political Structures," in Neorealism, ed. Keohane, chap. 5.

[24]

Politics and Grand Strategy

derivative of international anarchy (by competitive selection and so¬ cialization). A contingent, less powerful version of structural realism regards all four assumptions as necessary to generate a state of war and (thus) a balancing strategy.4 Despite the scientific success of structuralism, however, we as social scientists observe a large residual of unexplained international be¬ havior. And structural realism's political success in dominating the debate also leaves itself unexplained and its own implicit politics unexplored. Indeed, the manifest success of structuralism has left us bereft of the political insights focused on competing political values and differing institutions. We may be, to borrow the paleontological metaphor, in danger of evolutionary deadend. The lack of an adequate sense of alternative conceptions of grand strategy can stifle our imag¬ inations and preclude effective policy solutions to dramatically chang¬ ing circumstances.9 10 In an effort to broaden our intellectual and policy repertoire, I will draw on competing political philosophies of international relations, reintroducing differing political values and varying institutions into the formulation of the foundations of grand strategy. What might follow from employing those philosophies as guidelines in how to relax the ancillary assumptions of neorealism? What would strategic reasoning look like if we relaxed those ancillary assumptions—broke up the unitary state, changed the logic of calculation, and diversified our goals beyond national security? How "robust" is neorealism— does repoliticization make a difference? By doing this, we can achieve an indirect understanding of the constraining role that real world differences in units and preferences impose on the ideal structuralist model of the balance of power. 9 For an attempt at a defense of a contingent, structural realism (one requiring all four assumptions), see the author's “Hobbes and the Balance of Power," paper pre¬ sented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 1989, and Political Theories of World Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, forth¬ coming), chap. 4. 10 John Ruggie and Robert Cox offer valuable criticisms along these lines of the historical narrowness and sociological thinness of the structuralist model. See John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neo¬ realist Synthesis," and Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory," both in Keohane, Neorealism. And for exten¬ sive historical criticism of the balance of power model see R. Rosecrance, A. Alexandroff, B. Healy, and A. Stein, Power, Balance of Power, and Status in Nineteenth Century International Relations (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1974), and the articles by Paul Schroeder and Peter Gellman in Review of International Studies 15 (April 1989): 135-54, 155-82. For a defense of an interpretation of balancing that focuses on perceptions, see William Wohlforth, “The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance," World Politics 39 (April 1987): 353-81[25]

Michael W. Doyle

The State as a Work of Art

Let us begin with two simple cases. First, what if we were to relax national-state action but keep security interest-driven goals and ra¬ tional decision making? Second, what if we were to keep state action and rational decision making but relax the primacy of security? In both cases, we retain unitary rational calculation. The focus thus falls on the unitary calculator—the statesman as individual, maximizing personal interests that may or may not correspond with those of the state and that may or may not place security goals first. Machiavelli's philosophy of individualist realism offers us a set of relevant expectations with which to illuminate these situations. Ma¬ chiavelli's realism rests fundamentally—that is, causally and di¬ rectly—on his view of the individual. He draws his examples of successful and unsuccessful personal politics from the princes of con¬ temporary Europe and the imperial republic of classical Rome. He validates these lessons by providing two sorts of evidence. For sup¬ porting or contradicting examples he offers contemporary European experience, the successes and failures of, among others, Ferdinand of Spain, Cesare Borgia, and Louis XII. For integrated, or definitive and digested, exemplary experience he offers the glorious experience of Rome, whose successful use as interpreted by Polybius or Livy validates any procedure.11 Individuals need to maximize their own interests, beginning with security, because the "state of war" is pervasive. It makes itself felt not only between states but also within them. Hereditary princes, like the duke of Ferrara, could rely on custom to secure the love of their subjects. That love posed formidable hurdles to the ambitions of conquerors, who found these principalities not only difficult to conquer but even more difficult to hold against all those who preferred a return of the ancient ruling family.12 Conservative aristocratic re¬ publics like Venice and Sparta tried to limit their insecurity by limiting their ambitions. By choosing isolation and autonomy, Sparta kept its citizens poor and powerless. Spartan kings ruled over citizens whose modest but adequate standard of living stimulated few appetites, either material or political, domestic or foreign.13 But neither hereditary princes nor conservative republics fully es11 Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), chap. 2. 12Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), trans. Harvey Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago: Uni¬ versity of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 6-7. l3Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (1513), trans. Luigi Ricci and E. R. Vincent (New York: Modern Library, 1950), pp. 122, 126. [26]

Politics and Grand Strategy

cape insecurity because they cannot completely escape new princes and expansionist republics. New princes both cause and respond to the threat of violence that surrounds them. Both new principalities and “mixed" principalities (an old prince attempting to hold a new conquest) create enemies of all those displaced in the conquest and yet gain little security from the support of their followers, whom they could not fully reward without further alienating the conquered population.14 So why would a prince enter this violent contest ? Are princes simply seekers after "power for its own sake"? Machiavelli says princes seek war and military conquest despite all the dangers for two reasons: first, in order to demonstrate and obtain the rewards of imperial greatness that fortune bestows on virtu (courageous ambi¬ tion), and second, in order to protect the state from predation.15 Through lionlike military leadership the Prince can turn uncertainty into confidence, despair into courage. For populations having little in common except their subjection to him, the prince can offer a promise of success through strategic brilliance.16 Through foxlike diplomacy the Prince can economize on the use of violence. Neither neutrality nor, unless necessary, (what we now call) collaboration or "bandwagoning," subordinating oneself or aligning with stronger foreign princes, will do.17 Active "balancing" is both more prestigious and more secure, because aligning can make the difference needed for victory or because failing to align with the weaker can leave you victim to the designs of the winner, without the support of the weaker. And better than either is the imperial acquisition of new provinces. Let us examine the circumstances of collaboration and imperialism, two alternatives to the balance of power. Machiavelli gives us many important reflections on the requisites of successful imperialism. He offers many examples of mistaken policies, but he does not pursue just what necessities or failures of virtu would compel collaboration

14 Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 8. 15 “It is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed," so matter of factly notes Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 14. And see Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (Prince¬ ton: Princeton University Press, 1989), chap. 7. 16 Shakespeare captured this virtu well in Henry V: when the frightened English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish gather around Henry at Agincourt on the morning of St. Crispin's Day, young Henry inspires them with the sense of their glory and gives them confidence by the confidence in victory he displays. 17 Machiavelli, The Prince, pp. 89-90; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 126. [27]

Michael W. Doyle

or bandwagoning.18 But in the modern literature on the history of empires, there is a classic example of rational security-oriented cal¬ culation that places the personal interests of the ruler above the na¬ tional interests of the state. Khedive Tewfik, nominal ruler of the Egypt from 1879 to 1892, felt compelled to make just such a choice in 1882 when he collaborated with the British expeditionary force against a nationalist movement that had taken control of the Egyptian state. After many years of increasing debt and financial corruption, widespread disaffection of the agricultural classes, increasing foreign control through a com¬ mittee of foreign bondholders represented by British and French financial advisers—and a consequent upsurge of nationalist senti¬ ment—Colonel Ahmed Arabi of the Egyptian army led a rebellion against khedivial corruption. During the crisis years of 1881-82, the khedive flirted with an alignment toward the nationalists but in the end chose the British as a more reliable foundation for his throne. Tewfik clearly lacked virtu. His father, the previous khedive, de¬ scribed Tewfik thus, "Ni fete, ni coeur, ni courage."19 But the equally significant source of his collaboration and that of scores of other Egyp¬ tian notables (some of whom at first opposed the British) was the lack of a defined alternative. "Egypt" was politically a fief of the Mamluks, now contested by native Egyptians; commercially and financially, an economic colony of European capitalism; legally and formally, still a province of the Ottoman Empire; internationally, a quasi-independent state founded by Muhammad Ali, two generations before Tewfik; and actually, any and all of the above.20 The "Egyptian" nation-state was still up for definition, awaiting political creation. But Tewfik was not the ruler to create it. In order to best preserve himself as Colonel Arabi's rebellion spun out of control in the summer of 1882, he placed himself under the protection of the British landing force and re¬ turned—in their "knapsacks"—a puppet restored to his capital. Rather than "Egypt" balancing against the British threat to its inde-

18 For example, necessity and a lack of good fortune—illness and a failure to anticipate the resentment that Julius II would bear him—caused the downfall of Cesare Borgia, who otherwise was a most virtuous prince (The Prince, chap. 7). For a discussion of the literature on "collaboration” see Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); for "bandwagoning” toward "threats" (not necessarily power) see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); and for a recent discussion of balancing that reconciles balancing with bandwagoning by independent (nonimperialized) states see Steven David, "Explaining Third World Alignment," World Politics 43 (January 1991): 233-56. 19 A. M. Broadley, How We Defended Arabi and His Friends (London, 1884), p. 16. “Alexander Scholch, Egypt for the Egyptians! (London: Ithaca Press, 1981), chap. 1. [28]

Politics and Grand Strategy

pendence, Tewfik collaborated with the British in order to maintain his personal security. Machiavelli saw that the vigorous contest of world politics rested on either (or both) virtuous leaders or well-organized states. On the one hand, the unfortunate Tewfik was thus doubly disadvan¬ taged. Ferdinand of Aragon, on the other hand, was doubly advantaged. Prince of Aragon, husband of Isabella of Castile, hence king of united Spain, conqueror of Naples and Navarre and North Africa, sovereign of the Americas, Ferdinand was the one contemporaneous Christian prince who could measure his virtu head to toe against the great founders of antiquity whom Machiavelli so admired— Moses, Cyrus, and Romulus. And unlike the poor Khedive Tewfik, Ferdinand captured the Machiavellian "stato," having both "dominio," an effectively controlled territory, and "imperio," a right of command.21 Nonetheless, our understanding of Ferdinand also requires us to relax the assumptions of structural realism. He was a rational calcu¬ lator without compare and the founder of the Spanish state, but his ambitions went much beyond a primacy of security. Ferdinand of Spain's conquests, beginning with Granada, made him "the first king among the Christians."22 Ferdinand succeeded both in enlarging his kingdom at the expense of foreign rivals and, more important, in securing himself at home. He kept the barons of Castile (his domestic rivals) occupied in foreign war. He employed the riches of the people and the church to create his own army. He acquired great fame and wealth in an act of "pious cruelty" (whose victims were the hapless Marranos).23 Although born in 1452 as the son of the king, John II of Aragon, Ferdinand learned that to become great one had to think like a new prince, which he proceeded to do. He helped his father destroy his older brother (from a first marriage), the Prince of Viana, who led the nationalist faction in Aragon. With the help of the bribes funded by the great Jewish financiers of Castile and Aragon, he succeeded in winning the hand in marriage of Isabella of Castile.24 After trying a 21 de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, p. 158. 22 Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 21. Although Machiavelli criticized Ferdinand in his letters for "cunning and good luck, rather than superior wisdom" (from Niccolo Ma¬ chiavelli, The Letters of Machiavelli, trans. Allan Gilbert [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961], p. 111), he praised Ferdinand at considerable length in chapter 21 of The Prince. 23 Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 88. 24John Elliott, Imperial Spain (New York: Mentor, 1963), p. 21.

[29]

Michael W. Doyle

coup against his wife, he learned to appreciate her talents and ruled with her, suppressing the ancient independence of the noble mag¬ nates of Castile and Aragon, strengthening the bureaucratic discipline of the state, and then setting about great conquests.25 His success first appeared internationally in the reconquest of Muslim Spain, Granada, in 1492. By "keeping the minds of the barons of Castile occupied," the war against Granada put them under his power.26 This increase in his power allowed him to turn against former allies and to reward new ones, so he expelled the Jews and Moors in order to reward his new allies: the missionary orders, the soldiers, and the great nobles. (But he appears to have known that this was an economically foolish policy—that it would destroy finance and agriculture—because he refused to expel the Moors from his own personal kingdom of Aragon.) He then turned his new domestic authority to more foreign conquest and went after Naples (a traditional arena of Aragonese expansion), began a half-hearted conquest of North Africa, and, at Isabella's urging, financed exploration of the Americas. His success domestically in refounding the state was evidenced by his being able to raise public revenues from less than 900,000 reals in 1474 to 26,000,000 in 1504.27 Ferdinand created an effective diplomatic service, but repeatedly abused its members by requiring them to tell the most apparent lies, which successfully clouded his intentions, as Machiavelli noted.28 He also created a great army under the leadership of Gonsalvo de Cor¬ dova, composed of a modern infantry of forces—halberd, sword, and harquebus. His end honored him little. After a life spent struggling to create a great and independent Spain dominating the entire western Medi¬ terranean, Ferdinand was forced to recognize as his sole heirs his 25 W. H. Prescott in his classic history of Spain described Ferdinand's virtues: "im¬ partial justice in the administration of the laws; his watchful solicitude to shield the weak from the oppression of the strong; his wise economy, which achieved great results without burdening his people with oppressive taxes; his sobriety and moderation; the decorum, and respect for religion, which he maintained among his subjects; the in¬ dustry he promoted by wholesome laws and his own example; his consummate sa¬ gacity, which crowned all his enterprises with brilliant success, and made him the oracle of the princes of his age." W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1837; rpf- Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1904), vol. 4, p. 235. But Prescott also noted his propensity toward "vicious gallantries" that disturbed both Isabella and the stability of the kingdom. Ibid., p. 251. 26 Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 88. 27 Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 90. 2* Machiavelli, The Letters, pp. 115-16. He made them famous for perfidy. [30]

Politics and Grand Strategy

daughter, Juana the Mad, and her hostile husband, the Habsburg archduke Philip.29 For Ferdinand, the balance of power was not an end or a policy, but a tactic of "divide and rule" in an imperial strategy of conquest. His virtu was reflected in a willingness to take risks much beyond those someone attempting to maximize personal or national security would have been willing to assume. The state was an entity as yet uninstitutionalized and unpurposed. It was in Jacob Burckhardt's phrase a "work of art" yet to be fashioned, whether well or ill, by "artists" such as Ferdinand and Tewfik.30 In one case, domestic con¬ straints forced Tewfik to invite the British in. In the other, domestic impulsions led Ferdinand to seek a larger role than Spanish resources could fully sustain.

The Pacific Union

The third example is somewhat more complicated and yet is more familiar. Liberal internationalists who have wanted to claim that "free states" are different from other states relax two of the structuralist realist assumptions at the same time. Liberals retain the assumption of the state as the essential, stable, and institutionalized unit of de¬ cision. But they relax the assumption that states are single rational egoistic calculators in favor of a view that sees states as complex representative institutions—liberal republics. At the same time, they relax the assumption that states are motivated by security defined in terms of power, material interests, and prestige in favor of the as¬ sumption that liberal republics are motivated by the value of individ¬ ual freedom. In Immanuel Kant's philosophy of liberal internationalism these two innovations work together and have significant effects on world politics. In Perpetual Peace,31 Kant shows how liberal republics lead to a dichotomous international politics: peaceful relations—a "pacific union" among similarly liberal states—and a "state of war" between liberals and nonliberals. 24 Machiavelli, The Letters, p. 133. 30 Jacob Burckhardt noted: "The feeling of the Ferrarese toward the ruling house was a strange compound of silent dread, of the truly Italian sense of well-calculated interest, and of the loyalty of the modern subject: personal admiration was transferred into a new sentiment of duty." Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1878), trans. S. G. Middlemore (London: Phaidon Press, 1965), p. 32. 31 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (1793), in Kant's Political Writings, trans. H. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 93-130.

Michael W. Doyle

First, republican governments, he argues, tame the aggressive in¬ terests of absolutist monarchies and ingrain the habit of respect for individual rights. Wars then appear as direct charges on the people's welfare that he and the other liberals thought them to be. Yet these domestic republican restraints do not end war. If they did, liberal states would not be warlike, which is far from the case. They do introduce republican caution, Kant's "hesitation," in place of mo¬ narchical caprice. Liberal wars are only fought for popular, liberal purposes. The historical liberal legacy is laden with popular wars fought to promote freedom, protect private property, or support lib¬ eral allies against nonliberal enemies.32 Second, in order to see how the pacific union removes the occasion of wars among liberal states and not wars between liberal and non¬ liberal states, we need to shift our attention from constitutional law to international law, Kant's second source. Complementing the con¬ stitutional guarantee of caution, international law adds a second source—a guarantee of respect. The separation of nations is reinforced by the development of separate languages and religions. These further guarantee a world of separate states—an essential condition needed to avoid a "global, soulless despotism." Yet, at the same time, they also morally integrate liberal states "as culture grows and men grad¬ ually move towards greater agreement over their principles, they lead to mutual understanding and peace."33 As republics emerge (the first source) and as culture progresses, an understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens and of all republics comes into play; and this, now that caution characterizes policy, sets up the moral foundations for the liberal peace. Correspondingly, international law highlights the importance of Kantian publicity. Domestically, publicity helps ensure that the officials of republics act according to the principles that they profess to hold just and according to the interests of the electors that they claim to represent. Internationally, free speech and the effective communication of accurate conceptions of the political life of foreign peoples is essential to establish and preserve the un¬ derstanding on which the guarantee of respect depends. Domestically just republics, which rest on consent, then presume foreign republics to be also consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation. The experience of cooperation helps engender further cooperative behavior when the consequences of state policy 32 Kant regards these wars as unjust and warns liberals of their susceptibility to them (ibid., p. 106). At the same time, he argues that each nation "can and ought to" demand that its neighboring nations enter into the pacific union of liberal states (ibid., p. 102). 33Ibid., p. 114. [32]

Politics and Grand Strategy

are unclear but are (potentially) mutually beneficial. At the same time, liberal states assume that nonliberal states, which do not rest on free consent, are not just. Because nonliberal governments are in a state of aggression with their own people, their foreign relations become for liberal governments deeply suspect. In short, fellow liberals benefit from a presumption of amity; nonliberals suffer from a presumption of enmity. Both presumptions may be accurate. Each, however, may also be self-fulfilling. Democratic liberals do not need to assume either that public opinion rules foreign policy or that the entire governmental elite is liberal. It can assume that the elite typically manages public affairs but that potentially nonliberal members of the elite have reason to doubt that antiliberal policies would be electorally sustained and endorsed by the majority of the democratic public. Finally, cosmopolitan law adds material incentives to moral com¬ mitments. The cosmopolitan right to hospitality permits the "spirit of commerce" sooner or later to take hold of every nation, thus cre¬ ating incentives for states to promote peace and to try to avert war. Liberal economic theory holds that these cosmopolitan ties derive from a cooperative international division of labor and free trade ac¬ cording to comparative advantage. Each economy is said to be better off than it would have been under autarky; each thus acquires an incentive to avoid policies that would lead the other to break these economic ties. Since keeping open markets rests on the assumption that the next set of transactions will also be determined by prices rather than coercion, a sense of mutual security is vital to avoid security-motivated searches for economic autarky. Thus avoiding a challenge to another liberal state's security or even enhancing each other's security by means of alliance naturally follows economic interdependence. A further cosmopolitan source of liberal peace is that the interna¬ tional market removes difficult decisions of production and distri¬ bution from the direct sphere of state policy. A foreign state thus does not appear directly responsible for these outcomes; states can stand aside from, and to some degree above, these contentious market rivalries and be ready to step in to resolve crises. The interdependence of commerce and the international contacts of state officials help create crosscutting transnational ties that serve as lobbies for mutual accom¬ modation. According to modern liberal scholars, international finan¬ ciers and transnational and transgovernmental organizations create interests in favor of accommodation. Moreover, their variety has en¬ sured that no single conflict sours an entire relationship by setting

[33]

Michael W. Doyle off a spiral of reciprocated retaliation. Conversely, a sense of suspi¬ cion, such as that characterizing relations between liberal and non¬ liberal governments, can lead to restrictions on the range of contacts between societies. And this can increase the prospect that a single conflict will determine an entire relationship. No single constitutional, international, or cosmopolitan source is alone sufficient. Kantian theory is neither solely institutional nor solely ideological, nor is it solely economic. But together (and only together) the three specific strands of liberal institutions, liberal ideas, and the transnational ties that follow from them plausibly connect the characteristics of liberal polities and economies with sustained liberal peace.34 But in their relations with nonliberal states, liberal states have not escaped from the insecurity caused by anarchy in the world political system considered as a whole.35 Moreover, the very 34 The evidence for the existence and significance of a pacific union is discussed in Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," pt. I, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Summer 1983): 205-35. Clarence Streit seems to have been the first to point out (in contemporary foreign relations) the empirical tendency of democracies to maintain peace among themselves, and he made this the foundation of his proposal for a (non-Kantian) federal union of the fifteen leading democracies of the 1930s; Streit, Union Now, a Proposal for a Federal Union of the Democracies of the North Atlantic (New York: Harper, 1938), pp. 88, 90-92. Dean Babst performed a quantitative study of this phenomenon of "democratic peace"; see Babst, "A Force for Peace," Industrial Research 14 (April 1972): 55-58. And Rudolph Rummel did a similar study of "libertarianism" (in the sense of laissez-faire) focusing on the postwar period; Rummel, "Libertarianism and International Violence," Journal of Conflict Resolution 27 (March 1983): 27-71. I use liberal in a wider (Kantian) sense in my discussion of this issue in "Kant, Liberal Legacies. . .," pt. I. In that essay, I survey the period from 1790 to the present and find no war among liberal states. Babst did make a preliminary test of the significance of the distribution of alliance partners in World War I. He found that the possibility that the actual distribution of alliance partners could have occurred by chance was less than 1 percent (p. 56). But this assumes that there was an equal possibility that any two nations could have gone to war with each other; and this is a strong assumption. Rummel has a further discussion of significance as it applies to his libertarian thesis. 35 For evidence, see Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," pt. II, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Fall 1983): 323-53. Although there are serious studies that show that Marxist regimes have higher military spending per capita than non-Marxist regimes (see Thomas R. Dye and Harmon Ziegler, "Socialism and Mili¬ tarism," PS: Political Science and Politics [December 1989]: 800-813), this should not be interpreted as a sign of the inherent aggressiveness of authoritarian or totalitarian governments or—with even greater enthusiasm—as the inherent and global peace¬ fulness of liberal regimes. Stanislav Andreski, for example, argues that (purely) military dictatorships, due to their domestic fragility, have little incentive to engage in foreign military adventures; Andreski, "On the Peaceful Disposition of Military Dictatorships," in Journal of Strategic Studies: Special Issue on Strategy and the Social Sciences, ed. Amos Perlmutter and John Gooch, 3 (December 1980): 3-10. And according to Walter C. Clemens, Jr., the United States intervened in the Third World more than twice as often in the period 1946-76 as the Soviet Union did in 1946-79; Clemens, National Security and U.S.-Soviet Relations (Muscatine, Iowa: Stanley Foundation, 1982), pp. 117-18. Relatedly, Barry R. Posen and Stephen W. Van Evera found that the United States

[34]

Politics and Grand Strategy

constitutional restraint, international respect for individual rights, and the shared commercial interests that establish grounds for peace among liberal states establish grounds for additional conflict in rela¬ tions between liberal and nonliberal societies. By opening up the assumptions of neorealism, Kantian liberal in¬ ternationalism can let us see how responsible statesmen might reject the neorealist's endorsement of the balance of power both as a general ideal and as a determinant of international politics. On the one hand, balancing denigrates the pacific union and thus should be eschewed by liberals in their relations with each other. On the other hand, liberal suspicion of nonliberals may preclude the balancing that might be the most desirable strategy to pursue in war-prone relations. In either event, domestic liberalism alters the canvas painted by realist theory.

The Great Betrayal

Finally, in the most complex case, we can relax all three assumptions and consider a subnational, nonunitary decision undertaken with the purpose of promoting values other than those of national security. Marxist theory can give us entrance into this form of strategic rea¬ soning. The famous (notorious to some) decision made by the socialist parties of Europe in August 1914 to either support or not support their governments' declaration of war presents us with a classic case. The decisions by many of these socialist parties to support their governments and to fight for their sovereign states has generally been interpreted, as it was first denounced by V. I. Lenin, as the "direct betrayal" of international working-class solidarity.36 In what has bedevoted one-quarter and the Soviet Union devoted one-tenth of their respective de¬ fense budgets to forces designed for Third World interventions (where responding to perceived threats would presumably have a less than purely defensive character); see Posen and Van Evera, "Overarming and Underwhelming,” Foreign Policy 40 (Fall 1980): 105; and Posen and Van Evera, "Defense Policy and the Reagan Administra¬ tion—Departure from Containment,” International Security 8 (Summer 1983): 86-89. 36 Lenin declared: "The conduct of the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party of the Second International [1889-1914] who have voted the war budget and who repeat the bourgeois chauvinistic phrases of the Prussian Junkers and of the bourgeoisie is a direct betrayal of Socialism.” This was the second of the Seven Theses against War, which Lenin announced in Bern to the handful of his Bolshevik fellow exiles on September 6 or 7, 1914 (the theses are quoted in Bertram D. Wolfe, Three Who Made a Revolution [New York: Dell, 1964], pp. 635-36). Note the birth and death dates for the Second International. See Georges Haupt, Socialism and the Great War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), chap. 5, and R. Craig Nation, War on War: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989) for thorough ac¬ counts of Lenin's relations with the Second International just prior to and during World War I.

[35]

Michael W. Doyle

come the conventional account, socialists supposedly chose state and nation over class when they chose war over peace.37 This view, however, is much too simple. It does not fit the record of the actual choices made by the socialist parties. More important, it fails to appreciate the special kind of strategic choice the socialists faced. (1) The decision was not a national decision or state decision; no¬ where were socialist parties in power. (2) None of the parties was an egoistic, rational-unitary actor. They saw themselves to be acting collectively for the international working class, while in fact many were split by competing factions. (3) The values they sought to promote were not national security, wealth, and prestige—nor peace for its own sake—but a more com¬ plicated calculation of what was required to achieve international progress toward world socialism. Marx and Engels's legacy of revolutionary theory included a core of ideas on national development, imperialism, and internationalism that most socialists knew well and that, despite the many other dif¬ ferences and disputes, was sufficiently broad to contain their differ¬ ences. It also characterized the publicly expressed views of the dominant factions of the socialist parties of prewar Europe. Marxist development theory stressed that bourgeois national de¬ mocracy was one of the culminating stages in a struggle for progres¬ sive development. For Marxists, progress had a scientific meaning. It meant advancement in social liberation from feudalism, through autocratic mercantilistic capitalism, to democratic national capitalism spreading across the globe, to, eventually and inevitably, democratic socialism. Marxist international theory held that imperialism could be a progressive (while violent) stage of development for precapitalist societies, even though its effects on industrial societies could be po37 Leszek Kolakowski, for example, sees the socialists as having been overwhelmed by national patriotism and as having revealed that "the international solidarity of the proletariat—its ideological foundation—was an empty phrase." Kolakowski, Main Cur¬ rents of Marxism, Volume 2: The Golden Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 29. And Julius Braunthal says: "In the spirit of Marxism it (the International) had proclaimed itself the irreconcilable opponent of the bourgeois-capitalist state. . . . But on 4 August almost all Socialist parties in the belligerent countries pledged themselves to the defense of the very bourgeois-capitalist states whose destruction had hitherto been their aim." Braunthal, History of the International, Volume 2: 1914-1943 (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 1. Although Kenneth Waltz in his chapter on the socialists and World War I carefully notes that his summary compresses many interesting points of Marx's ambiguous statements on world politics, he supports this synopsis while identifying the valuable distinction between socialist policy toward the war and socialist respon¬ sibility for the war (Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954], pp. 125-26, 129).

[36]

Politics and Grand Strategy

litically reactionary. It also argued that bourgeois class factions were dangerously prone to war, though the more advanced capitalist de¬ mocracies contained tendencies that counteracted militarism and gave a promise of some efficacy to socialists seeking to oppose war. Only socialism promised both the liberation of the proletariat and peace. The proper internationalist policy for socialist leaders required a dualistic judgment. It had to attempt to maximize the prospects of progressive development globally, especially socialist revolution in Europe, at the same time as it maximized the prospects of revolution in each country considered separately. The two imperatives could come into conflict when the promotion of, for example, the national independence of colonial territories weakened the more progressive capitalist states in relation to the more reactionary states. Internationalist policy also had to take into account the precapitalist conditions of much of Africa and Asia and the specific capitalist con¬ ditions of contemporary Europe. After 1870 all the major powers were operating within a capitalist mode of production (Russia recently), but only France, England, and the United States had fully sovereign bourgeois democracies. Germany, though better endowed with a so¬ cialist movement than any of the other capitalist democracies, suffered from the autocratic vestiges of Prussian Junkerism.38 Russia remained the most oppressive and took particularly vigorous steps to suppress its nascent socialist movement following the abortive democratic rev¬ olution of 1905.39 By August 4, 1914, Marxism had become a political movement and a set of socialist doctrines with a bewildering variety of positions. No national movement lacked factions. Each faction claimed to have dis¬ covered the true meaning of Marxist doctrine for its time. Some argued that the growth in the influence of trades unions and socialist parties demonstrated the efficacy of electoral social democracy (for example, Eduard Bernstein in Germany); others that the capitalists had so pro¬ tected themselves with the military and bureaucratic apparatus of a coercive state that only violent revolutionary warfare would achieve 38 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 562. Prewar socialists were well aware of constitutional dif¬ ferences among bourgeois regimes. Although the German socialist party was Europe's largest, the Reich government was not fully responsible to the Reichstag. Civil liber¬ ties were also somewhat tenuous. The 1907 Stuttgart Conference was held in Stutt¬ gart rather than in Berlin in order to avoid provoking the kaiser. Despite this, one of the deputies, a Mr. Quelch from Britain, was summarily expelled from Germany merely for describing the Hague Conference of the Great Powers then meeting as a “thieves' supper." 39J. P. Nettl, The Soviet Achievement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), pp. 29-31.

[37]

Michael W. Doyle

socialism (Lenin in Russia). Some believed that the development of finance capital constituted a new stage of aggressive, monopolistic, imperialistic capitalism (Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin); others that fi¬ nance capital constituted a force for ultraimperialistic international cooperation (Karl Kautsky). These differences in strategy were com¬ pounded by dozens of other differences in tactics (reformist, catastrophist, etc.).40 But the socialist leaders of Europe did share an intellectual heritage of Marxist theory that transcended those factional squabbles. They also shared a membership in the Second International.41 Neither her¬ itage, however, served to suppress controversy. Indeed both, sepa¬ rately, encouraged it. The intellectual heritage of Marx and Engels on war and peace contained many areas of ambiguity, as the critics have noted so pointedly. And the competition to lead the socialist inter¬ national movement encouraged fierce debate.42 40 Particularly useful secondary works drawing connections between Marxist theory and Marx's internationalism are Demetrio Boersner, The Bolsheviks and the National and Colonial Question (1917-1928) (Geneva: E. Droz, 1957); Solomon F. Bloom, The World of Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941); G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Alan Gilbert, “Marx on Internationalism and War," Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (Summer 1978): 346-69. For a fuller discussion and bibliography of Marxist theory of internationalism see my “Beyond Betrayal: Marxism, the Socialists, and World War One," in Political Theories of World Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, forthcoming). 41 Merle Fainsod, International Socialism and the World War (Cambridge: Harvard Uni¬ versity Press, 1935), pp. 8-15; G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, Volume II: Marxism and Anarchism, 1850-1890 (London: Macmillan, 1954); George Lichtheim, Marx¬ ism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), pt. 5, chaps. 5-7; Franz Borkenau, World Communism (1939; rpt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962); and Michael Lowy, “Marxists and the National Question," New Left Review 96 (March-April 1976): 81-100, are particularly good surveys of the variety of rival doctrinal factions that had emerged within Marxism in Western Europe and Russia before 1914. Fainsod divides up the prewar socialists into three factions (Right, Center, Left), reflecting philosophical disputes on the meaning of historical materialism and tactical differences on many issues, including policies in response to the outbreak of a war (see pp. 1517). German Marxism, however, according to Lichtheim (pp. 323-24), remained the most influential doctrine up to the outbreak of the war. More important, in distinction from Fainsod, I suggest that their philosophical differences could be contained by the common core of Marxist thought and that this common core provides a sufficient explanation of the differing policies the socialist parties adopted. Kolakowski (pp. 45) describes the common core of Marxism during its “Golden Age." This common core gave rise to so strong an allegiance that even after the factional splits in the German SPD became acute, late in the war, Rosa Luxemburg refused to lead her Spartacists out of the party even though she had come to think of the official Social Democratic organization as “a stinking corpse" (noted in Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 30 [New York: International Publishers, 1971], p. 345). 42 An extensive account of these competitions and the resulting spheres of ideological influence can be found in Borkenau, World Communism, chap. 40.

[38]

Politics and Grand Strategy

The "Marxist" interpretation of the socialists which follows thus cannot refute those "realists" who note the pressures of nationalism (because those pressures indeed existed) nor can it altogether replace those historians who stress the divergences among parties and the roots of those divergences in the particular political interests of each faction (because those divisions existed). But looking back on the socialists today, we can see that together their doctrinal commitments and party interests can offer a credible alternative account and, in¬ deed, a slightly superior account for the stance each socialist party adopted in the crisis of August 1914. The socialists of Europe, not surprisingly, were divided concerning a proper colonial policy. The Stuttgart Conference of the Second In¬ ternational (1907) condemned imperialism in general, as had earlier conferences, stressing its war-provoking effects.43 But in the imperial countries ruling over precapitalist societies of Asia and Africa, the socialists' views were divided. Bernard Shaw and other Fabians went so far as to endorse support for the Boer War, since the majority of South Africans would experience more progress under British rule, which was civilized, than under Paul Kruger's obscurantist racial oppression.44 In less conflicted cases, the European socialists ringingly and consistently opposed the imperialist policies of bourgeois gov¬ ernments, including their own, in the Fashoda (1898), Moroccan (1905 and 1911), and Balkan crises.45 Equally unsurprisingly, the socialists were united in the condem¬ nation of war and in their determination to do all they could either to prevent its outbreak or to end it on just terms as soon as possible— though specific measures against militarism "naturally differ in dif¬ ferent countries" (the "Stuttgart Resolution").46 But none of these resolutions "repealed" the rights of democratic nations to resist ag¬ gression or the more general duty to resist imperialism and promote the progress of international socialism. Given these strictures concerning imperialism and militarism, where should Marxists in the various socialist parties of Europe have stood on the issues of the international crisis of August 1914? No true Marxist would have judged an imperialist war against Ser43James Joll, The Second International, 1889-1914 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955), pp. 196-98. 44 Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought 18951914 (London: Allen and Unwin, i960). 45 Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy: 1905-1917 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), pp. 69, 201; and William Walling, The Socialists and the Great War (New York: Holt and Company, 1915), pp. 99-113. 46 Quoted in Joll, Second International, p. 197.

[39]

Michael W. Doyle

bia to have been a step toward socialist progress; the cost in lives, the stirring up of militarism, and the fact that Serbia was engaged in its own bourgeois nationalist development were fully sufficient to discredit any potential defense along progressivist lines. Significantly, no defense of imperialism in the Balkans was made by any of the socialist parties within the allied aggressor states or by the socialist party of the rival imperialist state. The Austrian socialists, although deploring the terroristic assassination of the archduke, con¬ demned Austrian imperialism just before their party publications were censored by the Austrian state.47 The German Social Democratic party (SPD) staged demonstrations against Austrian imperialism.48 The Social Democratic paper Vorwarts editorialized (July 25, 1914), "Not a single drop of the blood of a single German soldier must be sacrificed for the benefit of the war-hungry Austrian despots or for imperialist commercial interests," and it exhorted, "Long live inter¬ national solidarity." The Russian Socialist party similarly denounced the tsarist policy of intervention and imperialistic interference in the Balkans in a letter to the Austrian socialists written as early as 1913.49 Marxists should have found the rapid escalation to world war to have been an issue that provoked more divisive stands (interna¬ tionally and in some cases internally) than had the question of im¬ perialism. Marx's opposition to militarism, his recognition of the progressive role played by the national independence of bourgeois democracy, and his commitment to encouraging overall international progress could come into conflict. The competing variables can be arrayed on the following four dimensional policy matrix: (1) The stronger the socialist party and (2) the more advanced the bourgeoisie (e.g., industrial development and democratic state), (3) the clearer it was that the nation was attacked as opposed to attacking; and (4) the more repressive the most immediate opponent of the nation seemed, the stronger would be the case (Marx and Engels would have argued) that the socialist party should support the war as a war of national defense and/or international progress. And, in the converse, the stronger would be the case that the socialist party should reject the war as an instance of pure imperialism or reactionary militarism. Again, these implications seem to have been by and large fulfilled. Table 2.1 illustrates the strength of socialism. Table 2.2 presents the decision matrix socialist parties confronted in July and August 1914. In Serbia, the war's first victim, the two socialists in the parliament 47 Walling, Socialists, pp. 146-47. ^Schorske, German Social Democracy, p. 286. 49 Walling, Socialists, p. 111.

Politics and Grand Strategy Table 2.1. Socialism in 1914 Members Serbia Belgium France Britain Italy Austria Germany Russia

Votes 25,000 600,000

90,700 1,559,082

1^397/337 370,802

145,500 1,085,905

1,041,000 4,250,329 800,000

socMPs 2 39 102 42

77 82 110 M

MPs 166 185 595 670 508 516 397 442

Sources: Julius Braunthal, History of the International, Volume 2: 3914-2943 (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 351; Yearbook of the International Socialist Labour Movement, ed. Julius Braunthal (London: Lincolns Praeger International Yearbook Publishing Co., 1956); The Socialist Yearbook 1913, ed. J. Bruce Glasier (Manchester: National Labour Press, 1913); and Statesman's Yearbook (London: Macmillan, 1915). The number of party members, votes in the general election, socialist members of parliament, and total number of members of parliament are as of the last election before August 1914.

of 166 deputies maintained solidarity with fellow socialists at home and abroad.50 To all of the other deputies, the decision to support the war was a clear case of Serbian national self-defense: Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia. But to the socialist deputies, the representatives of a weak socialist party, the Serbian working class, like the Bulgarians and the Albanians, were the victims of the oppressive Serbian state— a semicolonial regime, dependent on the tsar and on Parisian fi¬ nance—that had actively tolerated terroristic organizations aimed at Austria. The Austrian socialists had denounced the attack on Serbia. The Serbian socialists responded: 'There must be no war between the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Serbian people." The vote for war was 164 in favor; 2 against.51 Belgium was Serbia's Marxist mirror image. In Belgium, also ob¬ viously attacked, the socialists also entered the war united. An elec¬ toral democracy, with 39 socialist deputies in a chamber of representatives of 185, neutral Belgium was invaded by Germany. The socialists stopped their antiwar demonstrations on August 3 and declared that "in defending the neutrality and even the existence of our country against militarist barbarism we shall be conscious of serv¬ ing the cause of democracy and of political liberty in Europe."52 50 The parliamentary statistics for Serbia and the other states noted below are taken from the Statesman's Yearbook 1915. 51 Braunthal, History of the International, p. 34. 52 Walling, Socialists, pp. 181-82; Braunthal, History of the International, p. 25.

[41]

Michael W. Doyle Table 2.2. The Socialist decision matrix (Summary of factors that in Marxist theory should have influenced the socialist decisions of August 1914)

Serbia Belgium France Britain Italy Austria Germany" Russia

Soc

Cap

Def/Agg

Threat

Net

0 1 2 1 1 2 2 1

0 2 2 2 1 1 1 0

—1 2 1 0 0 —1 0/ — 2 0

—1 1 1 1 0 1 1/-1 —2

-2 6 6 4 2 3 4/0 —1

Note: This table is illustrative only; none of the difficult judgments facing the so¬ cialists of 1914 lent themselves to reliable quantification. "Soc" (socialism) indicates the relative strength of the local socialist parties on a scale of 0-2; "Cap” indicates the degree of bourgeois capitalist democratic development on a scale of 0-2; "Def/Agg" indicates the extent to which the country was clearly attacked (2), to mixed (o), to clearly aggressive (- 2); "Threat" indicates whether defeat would be by a less (2) to more (- 2) progressive power. The "Net" increases with the increased set of reasons, from a Marxist point of view, for the socialist parties to support the decisions of their governments to go to war in August 1914. All parties with scores of 3 or above voted for war; at 2, the Italians abstained; all those at or below o opposed the war. “Comparison of Germany's 1914 situation to situations of 1915-1916 and later.

The French socialists also entered the war united. Enjoying a rep¬ resentation of 102 in an elected chamber of 595 deputies, they origi¬ nally staged large demonstrations against French participation in the Balkan crisis and in support of French mediation efforts which they had been assured were underway.53 They did an about-face after Germany invaded France, calling forth socialist patriots to remember their "historic role" in 1793 and 1870 in the new struggle against German "militaristic imperialism" and for democratic "civilization."54 The British socialists entered the war more divided.55 Only 7 mem¬ bers of the 39-member Labour party were Marxist socialists. Still, all of the socialists and members of the Labour party opposed involve53 In addition to the 102 organized socialists, the elections of May 1914 returned 30 independent socialists. 34 Walling, Socialists, pp. 177-79. 53 Douglas J. Newton, British Labour, European Socialism, and the Struggle for Peace, 18891914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 343-51, sympathetically assesses the errors made and the difficulties faced by the British socialists in 1914. He found a lack of rapport between the British trades union leadership and the more doctrinaire of both the British and the continental socialists. Moreover, the secrecy of prewar diplomacy and the speed of the crisis of August 1914 made effective opposition extremely unlikely.

[42]

Politics and Grand Strategy

merit in the Balkans. National defense was not an immediate issue and the rival imperialist powers, whether Austrian or Russian, in their view, deserved no help from British socialists.56 But the invasion of Belgium split the Independent Labour party socialists and changed the Labour party majority positions toward active or passive support for the war. The wanton aggression against Belgium offered them proof that the war had now become a war against antidemocratic, military autocracy, which was what they thought threatened Europe if Prussia were to conquer the Western democracies.57 In Italy the 77 socialists (of the 508 members of the Lower House) maintained neutrality. Emerging from a bruising general strike against the government, the Italian socialists were understandably disaffected from official policy as well as critical of imperialism in the Balkans by their country's ally (Austria). They condemned Austrian and German aggression and rejected any participation in the war on the side of Austria. When the bourgeoisie also turned against Austria and Ger¬ many, the socialists, in conflict with their own government and not yet called on to defend the nation from foreign attack, also rejected participation against Austria. When Austria later invaded Italy, the socialists expressed their hostility to an Austrian victory,58 adopting the policy of "neither support nor sabotage." In Austria, the socialists held 82 out of 516 seats in the lower cham¬ ber; in Germany, 110 out of 397 seats.59 The Austrian party initially opposed the imperialist war in the Balkans. But the specter of defeat at the hands of what they saw as a (more) reactionary Russia loomed and changed their stand. In Hungary, the socialists, though fac¬ ing severe repression by the state, also supported the war against "Russia . . . the land of slavery."60 A great deal rested on the crucial decision of the German Social Democratic party. Despite the many successes of the SPD and the power of labor in Germany, their influence on public policy was limited. The kaiser and the military establishment were quite free from parliamentary control (as is suggested by the kaiser's plans to have the socialists arrested in the event they opposed the war). But as elsewhere, so in Germany, the powerful Social Democratic party ^Fainsod, International Socialism, p. 32. 57 Walling, Socialists, pp. 164-65; Braunthal, History of the International, pp. 27-29. 58 Walling, Socialists, pp. 198-99. 59 The 82 socialists in Austria include German Social Democrats, Polish Social Dem¬ ocrats, and Bohemian Social Democrats. Austria and Hungary, although represented in separate parliaments, maintained unified foreign affairs and defense under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. ^Walling, Socialists, p. 149.

[43]

Michael W. Doyle

succumbed on August 4 to the fear of a Russian victory that would result from a victory by the Entente Powers,61 and they thereby in¬ cluded bourgeois France and England with the threat from reactionary Russia. Writing two months later, Emil Vandevelde (Belgian president of the International) grasped the dilemma German Marxists faced: "Had they voted against the war credits they would have given up their country to invasion by the Cossacks. Yet in voting for the credits they provided the Kaiser with weapons for use against Republican France and against the whole of West European democracy. Between these two evils they chose that which they judged to be the lesser."62 Demonstrating the authenticity of their dilemma, the socialists later changed their view. As information on the aggressive and annexa¬ tionist cast of the German war aims became clearer in 1915 and 1916, the SPD slowly began to split. With each new Reichstag vote, new members, first including Karl Liebknecht and eventually Eduard Bern¬ stein, joined the opposition to a war that now seemed to be directed less at the Russian menace than at the democratic bourgeois societies (with their socialist parties) of Western Europe.63 In Russia, object of the central European panic, the socialists held 14 seats and the Labor party held 10 seats out of 442 in the Duma. The socialists and other working-class organizations had been sub¬ jected to severe police repression before and after the 1905 revolution. Both the Labor party and the Social Democratic party (Menshevik and Bolshevik) denounced the war on August 8 and declared their "sol¬ idarity with the European proletariat." They both walked out of the Duma. Alexander Kerensky of the Labor party, following the outbreak of actual hostilities and feeling the pressure of patriotic demonstra¬ tions in the streets, called on its members to "protect your country to the end against aggression."64 Before the effective disintegration of their faction some of the Mensheviks expressed support for national 61 Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 277. b2 Quoted in Braunthal, History of the International, p. 15. Vandevelde, however, did not see that the same Marxist logic justified Russian Marxists in opposing the war, rather than supporting Russia in order to aid the Western democracies as Vandevelde wished. And, indeed, some part of the support for this position may have stemmed from internationalist, as opposed to purely nationalist, sources, in that a defeat of Russia by Germany could have resulted in the defeat of Russia's western allies—the progressive societies of France and England. At least, this seems to have been G. V. Plekhanov's convoluted reasoning prior to the war. The Menshevik leader Iu Larin countered that Russian Social Democrats must struggle against “that other, and not less dangerous, enemy of the working class which is Russian absolutism" (letters quoted in Braunthal, History of the International, p. 26). h3Gay, Dilemma of Democratic Socialism, pp. 284-88. 64 Walling, Socialists, p. 192.

[44]

Politics and Grand Strategy

defense. But the leading factions of the Social Democrats at home— Social Revolutionaries, Left-Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks—and some of the leaders abroad (Julius Martov and Leon Trotsky) continued to agitate, the domestic leaders were arrested, and the party then urged the soldiers to "struggle for peace."65 This was magnified by a lonely voice from abroad when Lenin urged proletarian soldiers, Russian as well, to rebel against their capitalist-bourgeois oppression. Many of the socialist parties were divided over the true significance of Marxism and Marxist strategy for their country. And they, like many of the leaders of other parties at the beginning and during the course of World War I were undoubtedly guilty of national chauvin¬ ism, opportunism, and other errors. They were too weak to over¬ whelm the forces of right-wing militarism. Yet they might have been strong enough to cast doubt on the resolve of France and Britain to stand up to the plans of the German expansionists, influential enough in Germany to cast doubt on the threat its arms race posed to the other European powers, and fierce enough everywhere in attacks on their own national government's militarism to provide grist for the propaganda of foreign militarists.66 If, however, we think the "betrayal" of August 4, 1914, is a refu¬ tation of the Marxist approach to international strategy, we are too hasty. Marxism did not preclude the defense of the nation. Nor did it require opposing every policy adopted by a bourgeois government. But Marxist internationalism was not identical with nationalism. No¬ where in power, unable to prevent the war, the Marxists followed their governments when their governments adopted policies with which Marxists should not have disagreed. When the two conflicted, the Marxists acted as Marxists. For the Belgian, French, and British socialists in bourgeois demo¬ cracies, the crisis seemed clear. A German-Austrian victory meant the loss of national freedom and domination by more reactionary mili¬ taristic strains of Junkeristic capitalism. But for the German and Aus¬ trian and Hungarian socialists, defeat by Russia also meant a loss of national freedom and domination by even more reactionary tsarist oppression. All voted for war. But Marxist strategy was not thereby identical to neorealist strategy; 65 Braunthal, History of the International, p. 32. But some of the arrested Left-Menshevik and Bolshevik leaders, under examination at their trial, later declared that they did not support Lenin's injunction to work for national defeat. See also Edward H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 2917-1923, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1950), p. 67. 66R. J. Crampton, “August Bebel and the British Foreign Office," History 58 (June 1973): 218-32.

[45]

Michael W. Doyle

nor did nationalism thereby overwhelm Marxism. The two merely corresponded. When the two differed, the Marxists followed Marxist strategy. In 1913 and 1914, Russian, Austrian, German, and Hun¬ garian socialists each condemned their state's imperialism in the Bal¬ kans. In 1914 Serbian and Russian socialists voted against the war. For these socialists subject to reactionary and aggressive states, a national defeat might mean socialist liberation. And, finally, when the German SPD began to realize in 1913 that a Russian victory was not likely and that their own government had misled them and had not acted defensively in 1914, it began to turn against the war, voting in increasing numbers with each new vote against the war policies and war budget of the German state. Here, socialism explains the socialists better than does neorealism.

Relaxing Neorealism

Relaxing neorealism has a clear cost in reduced parsimony, or in¬ creased complexity, as these four stories illustrate. Rather than one general theory, we realize that we need to acquire competing general theories; rather than a robust, parsimonious structuralism, we realize that structural realism's validity may be extremely contingent on the relevance of all four of its basic assumptions. But a more complicated set of political determinants of grand strategy also adds value that can more than balance the increased scientific cost. First, at a minimum, it provides a context for the neorealist's en¬ dorsement of the balance of power. An appreciation of the existence of roads that are not taken highlights the significance of the assump¬ tions of state action, unitary rational decision, security- and powerdriven preferences with which the realists begin. It identifies for us the nature of the choices we make or preclude when we adopt a balance of power strategy. Second, a more complicated model of international politics helps us to understand the values many actors express and the perceptions they hold concerning how policy is made. We gain a descriptively richer sense of the practice of international politics. Third, and much more significant, the complicated model helps us to account for actual variance in the ways states actually behave. Once we introduce the constraints of more complicated images of political preferences and units on the ideal-rational structuralist model, we can begin to model more closely the world we actually observe. We [46]

Politics and Grand Strategy

need the complexity to account for how the Tewfiks, Ferdinands, Liberals, and Marxists actually play the game of international strategy. Fourth, and most important, if we need a more complex interna¬ tional politics to understand the actual complexity of world politics, we will need a politically sophisticated grand strategy to succeed in world politics. If we assume that a Tewfik wanted to balance, those who understood that he needed to collaborate would lose the op¬ portunities available to them; if we assume a Ferdinand would be satisfied by a balance of power, those who sought to preserve their independence from his imperial grasp would be misled; if we assume that fellow liberals should be contained by a balance of power, re¬ sources better devoted to domestic welfare or international adjust¬ ment could be wasted; and if we assume that Marxist revolutionaries were ordinary nationalists, opportunities for cooperation could be missed or their solidarity could be underestimated. A richer model of the range of grand strategy opens choices for those wanting to enhance liberal peace or promote socialist development. It demon¬ strates the potential of an entrepreneurial strategy of state formation and the dangers of factionalism and collaboration. Acknowledging the diversity of political choice, we should adopt a mandate to translate: we should examine differing conceptions of who the actors are, what values they hold, and by what means they make decisions. We can improve strategy by being aware of the dif¬ ference the differences can make.

[47]

[3l The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy John Mueller

Robert Dahl has observed that"because of their concern with rigor and their dissatisfaction with the 'softness' of historical description, generalization, and explanation, most social scientists have turned away from the historical movement of ideas. As a result, their own theories, however 'rigorous' they may be, leave out an important explanatory variable and often lead to naive reductionism." Since beliefs and ideas are often, as Dahl notes, "a major independent variable," to ignore changes in ideas, ideologies, and attitudes is to leave something important out of consideration.1 This chapter traces the impact of ideas on issues concerning inter¬ national relations theory and international security. First I consider explanations for the late, and occasionally lamented. Cold War. It is my belief that the grand strategies of the major contestants and there¬ fore the essential shape and history of that conflict were chiefly de¬ termined by differences in ideas and ideologies that emanate from domestic politics, not by structural differences in the distribution of capabilities at the international level. Then I argue that because of recent historical experience and be¬ cause of the way major nations have changed their ideas about how they ought to comport themselves in the world, it may be time to reexamine such constructs as "stability," "system transformation," "power," and "anarchy," which have been central to much policy and theoretical discussion in international relations. 1 Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 182-83, 188.

[48]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy The Cold War: Two Explanatory Models

Recent changes in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union make it possible to test two prominent explanatory models for that remarkable episode in world politics. One of these, the classic Cold War model, stresses ideas; it argues that the Cold War, the grand strategies of the major contestants, and the bipolar structure of postwar international politics sprang from a contest of ideas, from an ideological conflict. The other, the structural realist model of Kenneth Waltz, seeks to minimize the impact of ideas as a determining variable; it argues that the contest, the strategies, and the structure emerged from the way military, economic, and political capabilities were distributed at the end of World War II.

The Classic Cold War Model

When a band of Bolsheviks formed the Soviet Union in the wake of the revolution of 1917, they came equipped with the essential belief that international capitalism, or imperialism, was a profoundly evil system that must be eradicated from the face of the globe by violence. The acceptance of this idea profoundly shaped the country's grand strategy and dictated that the country, in the words of Josef Stalin, serve as a "base for the overthrow of imperialism in all countries" or as a "lever for the further disintegration of imperialism." Stalin would often quote Lenin on such matters: "The existence of the Soviet Re¬ public side by side with the imperialist states for a long time is unthinkable. In the end either one or the other will conquer." Mean¬ while, the official party history proclaimed its "confidence in the final victory of the great cause of the party of Lenin and Stalin, the victory of Communism in the whole world."2 Soviet leader Nikita Khrush¬ chev cheerily kept the faith in 1961: "The victory of socialism on a world scale, inevitable by virtue of the laws of history, is no longer far off." And he defined what he called "peaceful coexistence" as "a form of intense economic, political and ideological struggle between the proletariat and the aggressive forces of imperialism in the world arena."3 2Historicus (George Allen Morgan), “Stalin on Revolution," Foreign Affairs 27 (Jan¬ uary 1949): 198, 200, 203-4. 3G. F. Hudson, Richard Lowenthal, and Roderick MacFarquhar, eds.. The Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York: Praeger, 1961), p. 214. In his memoirs, Khrushchev put it this way: “Both history and the future are on the side of the proletariat's ultimate victory. . . . We Communists must hasten this process. . . . There's a battle going on in the world to decide who will prevail over whom. ... To speak of ideological compromise would

[49]

John Mueller

Any country designated "imperialist" by the Soviets would natu¬ rally tend to find such pronouncements a bit threatening, particularly after they had been hurled thousands, perhaps millions, of times, and would build into its grand strategy the notion that it was vital to oppose the Soviets as long as they remained imbued by such a per¬ spective. From this contest, according to a classic interpretation, has stemmed the postwar Cold War between East and West. Advocates of the classic Cold War model would subscribe to John Lewis Gaddis's observation: "Moscow's commitment to the overthrow of capitalism throughout the world had been the chief unsettling element in its relations with the West since the Russian revolution."* * * 4 The Soviet threat was particularly unsettling to the West because it was backed up by an exceptional military capacity. However, while this capacity may have concentrated the imperialist mind, it did not determine the essential shape of the contest. A Soviet Union that was militarily less capable would have been less worrisome, but, like Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran in the 1980s, it would still have been seen to be an opponent. Nor, according to this approach, was it disgust with the Soviet domestic system that impelled the Cold War. As the quintessential "cold warrior," John Foster Dulles, once put it, "The basic change we need to look forward to isn't necessarily a change from Com¬ munism to another form of government. The question is whether you can have Communism in one country or whether it has to be for the world. If the Soviets had national Communism we could do business with their government."5 In fact. Western democracies were able to be to betray our Party's first principles" (Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament [Boston: Little, Brown, 1974], pp. 530-31). Khrushchev also said that "peaceful coexistence among different systems of government is possible, but peaceful coexistence among different ideologies is not" (Edward Crankshaw and Strobe Talbott, eds., Khrushchev Remembers [Boston: Little, Brown, 1970], p. 512). 4 John Lewis Gaddis, "Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?" Foreign Affairs 52 (January 1974): 388. Another analyst puts it this way: "The prime cause of the conflict opening up between the Russians and the Americans (and their allies) was the ideology of the Soviet leaders, and their consequent incapacity, rather than their reluctance, to make permanent arrangements with the leaders of capitalist states. This was stated by Maxim Litvinov in June 1946, in one of those strange, candid remarks of his: the 'root cause' of the trouble was 'the ideological conception prevailing here that conflict between communist and capitalist worlds is inevitable.' When asked what would happen if the West were to concede to Russia all her aims in foreign policy, Litvinov replied: 'It would lead to the West being faced, in a more or less short time, with the next series of demands' " (Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War, 194.5-4.6 [New York: Atheneum, 1987], p. 548). See also John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), chap. 2. sJohn Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 143.

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

come to terms, and even ally, with unthreatening countries whose domestic systems they deemed reprehensible, Spain and Portugal, for example.

The Structural Realist Model

In formulating his influential and widely discussed theory of in¬ ternational politics usually called "realism," "structural realism," or "neorealism," Waltz has chosen to downplay substantially such at¬ tributes as "ideology, form of government, peacefulness, bellicosity or whatever." What chiefly makes the system tick, according to Waltz, is the "distribution of capabilities." States differ in their capabilities and from these differences springs the structure.6 For Waltz, a country's capability includes its "size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence."7 In the postwar period two countries have been far more "capable" than any others by these more or less objective measures, and from this condition, concludes Waltz, stems the essential conflict: "the United States is the obsessing danger for the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union for the United States, since each can damage the other to an extent no other state can match."8 The Cold War between them, therefore, "is firmly rooted in the structure of postwar international politics, and will last as long as that structure endures."9

A

Test of the Models

Both models characterize the postwar world as "bipolar." Waltz sees this as a consequence of the distribution of capabilities, while a classic cold warrior would argue that the bipolarity has been a con¬ sequence of domestically determined ideology, not capabilities: the United States found the Soviet Union to be an "obsessing danger" not simply because the Soviet regime brandished big weapons or because it occupied a lot of space on the earth's surface, but because the Soviets espoused an ideology that was threatening to the Amer¬ ican people. 6Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)/ P- 987Ibid., p. 131. 8Ibid., p. 170. 9 Kenneth Waltz, “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988): 628.

John Mueller

The changes in the Cold War in the 1980s have put these models to their greatest test, but problems with the structural realist approach could have been evident even earlier. For example, consider the fol¬ lowing modest thought experiment. Suppose Stalin's Communist re¬ gime had been deposed in 1945 by a regime dominated by someone with substantially different ideas—perhaps someone with the views of Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Kerensky, or, for that matter, Mikhail Gorbachev. Suppose, in ad¬ dition, that this hypothetical country would have been just as capable as Stalin's—that is, equally big, well endowed, militarily strong, po¬ litically stable, and competent. Although it could have damaged the West just as effectively as Stalin's Soviet Union, it seems inconceivable that this imaginary country would have been seen to pose such an obsessing danger or that postwar international politics would have taken anything resembling the oppositional, bipolar course that it did.10 It is entirely possible, in fact, that the United States and a liberal Moscow regime would have adopted grand strategies that entailed joining with Britain and other important democracies to form a con¬ sortium to deal jointly with world problems, particularly those in¬ volving issues of war and peace. In other words, the devices built into the Charter of the United Nations might well have functioned more or less the way they were intended by their idealistic creators. Capabilities hardly seem to have been the chief causative factor in the other major contest of the Cold War era either—the mutual hos¬ tility and fear that flourished between the United States and China from the late 1940s into the 1970s. During that period China was far less capable of damaging the United States than the nuclear-armed Britain, yet Britain was an ally and China an enemy. Conversely, if Britain had become Communist in, say, 1965, it would have suddenly become an obsessing danger to the United States that would have rivaled or surpassed any posed by China. Ideas and ideology as in¬ terpreted in domestic politics seem chiefly responsible for the dy¬ namic, not capabilities.11 10 Actually, as Carl Kaysen has suggested, since the arms race was in important ways compelled by the ideological conflict, an ideologically harmonious United States and USSR would probably not have emerged so vastly superior to other countries in military terms. In general, it seems that military capabilities are a measure of tensions, not their cause. See also John Mueller, "A New Concert of Europe," Foreign Policy, Winter 198990: 3-16; and Mueller, "Taking Peace Seriously: Two Proposals," in Soviet-American Relations after the Cold War, ed. Robert Jervis and Seweryn Bailer (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 262-75. "The split that occurred between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1950s and the early 1960s seems also to have been determined chiefly by a dispute over ideas and ideology, not by differences in capability or other power political considerations.

[52]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

The real test of the models, however, came in the late 1980s. There was little change in the capability indexes proposed by Waltz: the Soviet Union did not become any smaller, its resource endowment remained the same, it continued to have one of the largest economies in the world, its massive military and nuclear strength remained very much in place, and, while shakier than in the past, it continued (un¬ til late 1989 or 1990 at least) to be politically stable and competent. Although there was some catching up in the economic sphere by Japan and by the states of Western Europe, the United States and the USSR remained far more "capable" by the Waltz criteria than any of the other countries in the world. If, as Waltz insists, one considers the Cold War to be "firmly rooted" in a structure determined by the distribution of capabilities, each side should have continued to "focus its fears on the other, to distrust its motives, and to impute offensive intentions to defensive measures."12 In the late 1980s, however, there was an important change in ideas as the Soviet Union abandoned its threatening expansionary ideology. Its love affair with revolution in the advanced capitalist world, frus¬ trated for decades, ceased to have even theological relevance, and its venerable and once-visceral attachment to revolution and to "wars of national liberation" in the Third World no longer even inspired much in the way of lip service. As Francis Fukuyama has observed, "the role of ideology in defining Soviet foreign policy objectives and in providing political instruments for expansion has been steadily de¬ clining in the postwar period," and Gorbachev "further accelerated that decline."13 By 1988 the Soviets were admitting the "inadequacy of the thesis that peaceful coexistence is a form of class struggle" and had begun to refer to the "world socialist system" or the "socialist community of nations" rather than to the "socialist camp."14 And the Kremlin's chief ideologist explicitly rejected the notion that a world struggle was going on between capitalism and communism.15 Then in a major speech in December 1988 Gorbachev specifically called for

From an economic or military perspective, the split made no objective sense, especially for China, which lost economic aid and trade as well as military protection. For a discussion see John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 133-51, 163-65. 12 Waltz, “Origins of War," p. 628. 13 Francis Fukuyama, “Patterns of Soviet Third World Policy," Problems of Communism 36 (September-October 1987): 12. 14David Binder, "Soviet and Allies Shift on Doctrine," New York Times, May 25, 1988, p. A13. 15 Bill Keller, "New Soviet Ideologist Rejects Idea of World Struggle against West," New York Times, October 3, 1988, p. Ai.

[53]

John Mueller

"de-ideologizing relations among states" and, while referring to the Communist revolution in Russia as "a most precious spiritual heri¬ tage," proclaimed that "today we face a different world, from which we must seek a different road to the future." Most impressively, in February 1989 Gorbachev matched deeds to words by carrying out his promise to remove Soviet troops from Afghanistan.16 With these changes—which took place before the disintegration of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and long before the crumbling of the Soviet Union itself—the structure of world politics changed profoundly: the Cold War and bipolarity evaporated and both sides began to change their grand strategies. The New York Times proclaimed on April 2, 1989, that the Cold War was over, and later in the year even staunchly anti-Communist commentators were agreeing: the Cold War is indeed "coming to an end. . .. The Soviet leaders have for all intents and purposes given up the ideological struggle . .. [and they] have retreated from the basic doctrine on international class struggle—the doctrine that gave rise to the cold war in the first place."17 Far from emphasizing bipolarity and far from continuing to "focus its fears" on the United States, the USSR began to shift its grand strategy and as early as 1987 was proposing that the United States and the Soviet Union join together in an international consortium along the lines envisioned a half-century earlier in the United Na¬ tions Charter.18 It even began to seem possible that the United States and the USSR could again become allies, as they were during World War II. In 1988, in his last presidential press conference (long before the changes in Eastern Europe), Ronald Reagan was specifically asked about this and, stressing the ideological nature of the contest, he responded essentially in the affirmative: "If it 'bNew York Times, December 8, 1988, p. A16; also December 9, 1988, p. A18. For an analysis tracing the decline in fervor in the Soviet Union for its ideological commitment to the international Communist revolutionary movement and for the suggestions that this decline “could eventually result in the end of the cold war" and that "we may be coming to the end of the world as we know it," see John Mueller, "Containment and the Decline of the Soviet Empire: Some Tentative Reflections on the End of the World as We Know It," a paper presented at the National Convention of the International Studies Association, Anaheim, California, March 25-29, 1986. See also Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday, chaps. 5-9; and Mueller, "Enough Rope: The Cold War Was Lost, Not Won," New Republic, July 3, 1989, pp. 14-16. 1 Owen Harries, "Is the Cold War Really Over?" National Review, November 10, 1989, pp. 40-45. 18 Paul Lewis, "New Soviet Interest in U.N. Broadens," New York Times, September 25, 1987, p. A8; Lewis, "Greater U.N. Role Urged by Soviets," New York Times, October 5, 1989, p. A20; Bill Keller, "Russians Urging U.N. Be Given Greater Powers," New York Times, October 3, 1987, p. Ai.

[54]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

can be definitely established that they no longer are following the expansionary policy that was instituted in the Communist revo¬ lution, that their goal must be a one-world Communist state. . . [then] they might want to join the family of nations and join them with the idea of bringing about or establishing peace."19 Six months later (but still before the East European changes), his successor, George Bush, without Reagan's tentativeness, was urging that West¬ ern grand strategy should change, moving "beyond containment" and "integrating the Soviet Union into the community of nations"— an "evil empire" no more.20 Thus the key element in the demise of the Cold War derived from j changes in ideas. Material factors may have helped to bring these changes about—the failure of the Soviet economic and administrative system clearly encouraged Gorbachev and others to reexamine their basic ideology.21 But material change does not consistently impel* changes in ideas, ideology, or grand strategy; faced with the same economic strain, a Soviet leader other than Gorbachev might have been unwilling to abandon basic ideology. It may be useful in this regard to recall the once-popular "fat Communist" theory in which it was plausibly argued that the Soviet Union would mellow its foreign policy when it became materially contented. Partisans of this theory feared that an economically strained USSR might, like Japan in 1941, be tempted to lash out in desperation. Economic determinism does have a comforting certainty about it. Economics is seen to be the key influencing variable whether wealth is followed by contentment or by arrogant expansion, or whether poverty is followed by capitulation or desperate adventurism. Two more thought experiments may make it clear that it was the 19New York Times, December 9, 1988, p. A18. Notably, Reagan tied this development to the end of the Soviet expansionary threat, not to the reform of its domestic system. That is, cooperation, even alliance, was not contingent on the progress of Soviet do¬ mestic reform. As long as the Soviet Union, like China in the 1970s or Yugoslavia after 1949, continued to neglect its expansionary and revolutionary ideology, it could be embraced by the West. Illiberal, nonexpansionist Portugal, after all, was a founding member of NATO. On the possibility of East/West alliance see Mueller, "A New Concert of Europe," and Mueller, "Taking Peace Seriously: Two Proposals." 20New York Times, May 25, 1989, p. A8. Another way to look at this is to consider what would have happened if the Soviet Union's capabilities had declined significantly while its ideological quest to overthrow international capitalism had continued una¬ bated: suppose, in other words, it took on the characteristics of China in the 1950s or 1960s. The West might have become somewhat less concerned that a major war might develop from the contest, but its hostility would have continued unabated: the Cold War would have continued. 21 Mueller, "Containment and the Decline of the Soviet Empire"; Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday; Mueller, "Enough Rope"; Mueller, "Taking Peace Seriously."

[55]

John Mueller

change in ideology, not in economics, that was crucial to the demise of the Cold War and to the consequent change in grand strategies. First, on the one hand, suppose that persistent material failure had caused the Soviet Union to lapse into steady Ottoman-like decline but that its ideological quest to overthrow international capitalism had continued unabated; suppose, in other words, that it took on the characteristics of China in the 1950s or 1960s or of the Soviet Union in the 1920s or 1930s. Something like this could have come about if the hard-liners' August 1991 coup against Gorbachev (and Boris Yelt¬ sin) had been successful. Under that circumstance, the West might have become somewhat less concerned that a major war would de¬ velop from the contest, but its hostility would have continued. That is, the United States would still have considered the USSR to be the "obsessing danger," and the Cold War would have prospered. Sec¬ ond, on the other hand, suppose that the Soviet Union had not lapsed into material stagnation or decline, but that its leaders had undergone an ideological conversion to democratic liberalism or, for that matter, to Burma-style isolation and xenophobia. In that case, the Cold War would have abated.

Reexamining Central Constructs

The Cold War came about because of a domestically determined clash of ideas, and its demise principally resulted from an important change in those ideas, not from a major change in the international distribution of capabilities. In turn, this extraordinary transformation is helping nations to reshape their ideas about international affairs and profoundly to change their grand strategies. Because of this, it may now be the time to consider substantially recasting—or perhaps even retiring—several constructs that have been central to much in¬ ternational relations theorizing, especially that of the realist school: stability, system transformation, power, and anarchy. The demise of the Cold War suggests that Waltz's concept of stability ought to be reexamined. A system is determined to be stable, according to Waltz, not because war is avoided but rather because "no consequential variation takes place in the number of principal parties that constitute the system." Bipolarity is more stable than multipolarity, he argues, because it allows for less uncertainty be¬ tween the major players and because it has been enforced by nuclear fears.22 (The comparison is not entirely convincing; as he notes, 22 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, chap. 8; Waltz, “Origins of War"; Waltz,

[56]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

multipolarity lasted for centuries and therefore was also stable by this definition.) If ideology has been the dominant force determining the bipolar structure of postwar international politics, however, the system has been quite unstable by Waltz's definition. While the distribution of capabilities and therefore the placement of a country in Waltz's in¬ ternational system cannot change very fast, its ideology can alter quickly when new leaders take charge or when old ones change their mind-sets. And this can lead bipolarity to give way to some other structural form. Another construct of the realist school concerns war and system transformation. For Kenneth Organski and Jacek Kugler, system¬ transforming or hegemonic wars are started by countries that seek to "redraft the rules by which relations among nations work."23 For Robert Gilpin, such wars historically have been "the basic mechanism of systemic change in world politics."24 They reorder "the basic com¬ ponents of the system," "reestablish an unambiguous hierarchy of prestige," and determine "who will govern the international system and whose interests will be primarily served by the new international order." They lead "to a redistribution of territory among the states in the system, a new set of rules of the system, a revised international division of labor, etc." As a result, "a relatively more stable inter¬ national order and effective governance of the international system are created based on the new realities of the international distribution of power."25 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has argued that even very small wars, such as the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, can sometimes have such an effect.26 However, the experience of 1989-91 suggests that, in fact, no war is required at all; the system can be transformed by domestic shifts that produce a change of ideas. That is, it rather appears that between 1989 and 1991 the world experienced some"Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84 (Septem¬ ber 1990): 731-45. 23 A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 23. 24 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in International Politics (New York: Cambridge Uni¬ versity Press, 1981), p. 209. 25Ibid., p. 198. For Waltz, the system can be changed by major war, it seems, or, in the bipolar case, it can be changed if one country should somehow succeed in estab¬ lishing hegemony or in managing to "enlarge the circle of great powers by promoting the amalgamation of some of the middle states,” like those in Western Europe (Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 199). See also Gilpin, War and Change, pp. 242-44. 26Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, "Pride of Place: The Origins of German Hegemony,” World Politics 43 (October 1990): 28-52.

[57]

John Mueller

thing like the functional equivalent of a system-transforming or hegemonic war.27 After the Soviets abandoned their threatening expansionary ide¬ ology, the patterns of international relations changed enormously. In consonance with Gilpin's catalog, the basic components of the system have been reordered. There have been important territorial readjust¬ ments (especially in Europe), a splintering of alliances, a substantial reordering of prestige and status rankings, a new set of rules and conventions, a revised division of labor, and new procedures for managing the international system, as well as a negative arms race.28 The change may have been from what Morton Kaplan calls a "loose bipolar system" to (or toward) a "universal international system." In the former, according to Kaplan's rules, the blocs seek to "eliminate the rival bloc," to "increase their capabilities in relation to those of the rival bloc," to fight "rather than to permit the rival bloc to attain a position of preponderant strength," and to "attempt to extend the membership of their bloc." In the latter, major countries "use peaceful means to obtain their objectives," "do not resort to force or the threat of force," and "attempt to increase the resources and pro¬ ductive base of the international system."29 Essentially, it is a change from a zero-sum situation to a positivesum one for the major countries. As an important Soviet official put it in 1987, "Previously we reasoned: the worse for the adversary, the better for us. . . . But today this is no longer true. . . . The better things are going in the European world economy, the higher the stability and the better the prospects for our development."30 It is a profound transformation, and it came about because ideas changed. As it hap¬ pens, no war was required. The concept of power has been at the center of a great deal of theorizing about international affairs and about grand strategies, par¬ ticularly after Hans J. Morgenthau grandly declared in 1948 that "in¬ ternational politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power."31 Morgenthau defines "power" as "man's control over the minds 2' See also John Mueller, “Quiet Cataclysm: Some Afterthoughts about World War III," in The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications, ed. Michael J. Hogan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 262-75. :xOn this last phenomenon see Mueller, “A New Concert of Europe," and “Taking Peace Seriously." 29 Morton A. Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1957), PP- 38, 4720 Jack Snyder, “The Gorbachev Revolution: The Waning of Soviet Expansionism?" International Security 9 (Summer 1987/88): 115. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948), p. 13.

[58]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

and actions of others,"32 while Waltz offers "the old and simple notion that an agent is powerful to the extent that he affects others more than they affect him."33 Words exist in the English language that more closely and less ambiguously approach what these definitions seem to suggest: influence, control, status, prestige, importance. Since these words are more precise, they ought to be preferable: the word "power" is not needed.34 More important, in the international context the word "power" compellingly tends to imply military strength. Morgenthau and Waltz make the connection quite explicit. "The de¬ pendence of national power upon military preparedness is too ob¬ vious to need much elaboration," declares Morgenthau without much elaboration.35 Because of the "weight" of U.S. "capabilities," observes Waltz, "American actions have tremendous impact."36 The notion that a disarmed country could possess great "power" is all but inconceiv¬ able under these patterns of thought.37 As Robert Art and Waltz 32 Ibid. 33 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 192. 34 See also William H. Riker, "Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power," American Politics Science Review 58 (June 1964): 341-49. 35Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 183. 36 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 192. 37 The stress on power and on military considerations can also lead to the conclusion that "war is normal," Waltz, "Origins of War," p. 62. This emerges fairly naturally if one concentrates only on the Great Powers and then proceeds to define a Great Power in considerable part as a country that tends to get into war a lot. That war participation is an important definitional component of "greatness" is clear from the case concerning the United States a century ago. Although the United States was more advanced economically than any Great Power except Britain and had shown in its recent Civil War that it could easily mount an army of over a million, it was not admitted by analysts into the ranks of the great until it got involved in wars in Europe in the twentieth century. Japan could comfortably be considered a Great Power throughout this century, until 1945 when it was defeated, occupied, and disarmed, at which point it was dropped from the ranks (see the table in Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 162). This association of greatness with war is recognized by Waltz. But instead of arguing that countries are considered by analysts to be Great in part because they participate in war, he argues that they necessarily participate in war because they are Great. Great Powers, he urges, "find ways to use force." Further, "their involvement in wars arises from their position in the international system, not from their national characters. When they are at the top, they fight; as they decline they become peaceful," Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 187. The deft association of war with greatness leads to a puzzle when the Greatest of Powers, the United States and the USSR, somehow manage to avoid war with each other. Waltz is led to explain this curious condition by concluding that it is the existence of nuclear weapons that has "banished war from the center of international politics," Waltz, "Origins of War," p. 627. He finds that bipolarity alone is not enough to explain the “long peace"; also needed is "that other great force for peace: nuclear weapons," ibid., p. 624; see also Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 176. The possibility that the two quintessential Great Powers may have concluded from their (nonnuclear) expe¬ rience in World War II that such enterprises are distinctly painful is not considered,

[59]

John Mueller

conclude, "the seriousness of a state's fundamental intentions is con¬ veyed fundamentally by its having a credible military posture. With¬ out it, a state's diplomacy generally lacks effectiveness."38 But when we say that a state has power, if we mean essentially influence or status, then Japan has become just such a state. It hap¬ pens at present to have rather substantial self-defense forces, but it is not respect for these forces that gives Japan weight in world affairs or allows it to "set the scene of action for others," in Waltz's expres¬ sion. If power in the sense of influence, control, status, prestige, or importance can be achieved with very little military capability or pre¬ paredness, the word "power," with its attendant and inevitable mil¬ itary implications, has become misleading or misdirecting at best. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly questionable whether it is wise to place the concept of "power," however defined, at the center of any construct that tries to deal with international affairs. There have always been problems with this notion. If all politics is a "strug¬ gle for power" or if nations are consumed by a "lust for power," the international behavior of the United States for much of its history defies description. In the period before World War I, and indeed for much of the twenty-year period after it, the United States hardly seems to have been the very model of a modern major power-seeker if that means struggling lustfully for influence in the councils of the big people. In that sense, the United States often adopted a strategy that could best be characterized as power-averse. In the present post-Cold War era, we seem to be moving toward a position in which classic notions about power are becoming increas¬ ingly anachronistic. In War and Peace in 1869, Leo Tolstoy observed that "all historians agree that the external activity of states and nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength of states and nations increases or decreases."39 Today, 130 years later, Japan and Germany, the big losers in the last war, enjoy great "po-

since this would suggest they have somehow changed their “national character," a phenomenon specifically excluded by Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 187m The anticipation then, is that the United States and the USSR, following normal Great Power instincts, would have been at war by now if the worst they could have feared was an exercise of the magnitude of World War II. Great Powers, apparently, are long on instinct, short on brains. On this issue see John Mueller, "The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons," International Security 13 (Fall 1988): 55-79. 38 Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, "Technology, Strategy, and the Uses of Force," in The Use of Force: International Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, 2d ed. (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), p. 7. 39 Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York: Norton, 1966), p. 1145.

[60]

The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy

litical strength." As Paul Schroeder has put it, "Not only may con¬ ditions change; collective mentalities may also."40 This does not mean that conflict will vanish, but only that war and military force will not be used by important developed countries to resolve their conflicts. For example, the United States and Japan once had a dispute over who should run the territory of Okinawa—exactly the sort of argument that has often led to war in the past. The issue was resolved without war or the threat of it; a deal was cut. Similar discussions are going on now about the four northern islands the Japanese feel were unjustly taken from them by the Soviets in 1945. To get the islands back, Japan is using its economic might, not military threats, to pull what might have once been called a power play. And most spectacularly, in 1989 and 1990 the major countries of the world resolved their most pressing international disagreements—including the division of Germany—with scarcely a shot being fired. In fact, to push this point to perhaps an extreme, if we are entering an era in which economic motivations became paramount to grand strategies and in which military force is not accepted as a method for pursuing wealth, not only would "power" with all its military im¬ plications become obsolete, but so would "power" in the sense of influence or status. In principle, pure economic actors do not care about influence or prestige. They care about getting rich. (Admittedly, as Japan has found, influence, status, and prestige tend to accompany the accumulation of wealth, but this is just an ancillary effect.) Sup¬ pose the president of a company could choose between two stories to tell the stockholders. One message would be "We enjoy great status, prestige, and influence in the industry. When we talk every¬ body listens. Our profits are nil." The other would be "No one in the industry pays the slightest attention to us or ever asks our advice. We are, in fact, the butt of jokes in the trade. We are making money hand over fist." There is no doubt about which story would most thoroughly warm the stockholders' hearts.41 Another concept due for reconsideration is anarchy. If major nations now come to accept the idea that economic development is a primary grand strategic goal and if they substantially abandon the idea that war is a sensible method for solving problems among themselves, the 40 Paul W. Schroeder, “The Neo-Realist Theory of International Politics: An Histo¬ rian's View," presented at AAAS/University of Rochester Conference, Rochester, New York, October 19-20,1990. See also Evan Luard, War in International Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). 41 On these issues see also Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State (New York: Basic Books, 1986). [61]

John Mueller

notion that the countries of the world live in a state of "international anarchy" will become highly misleading and might encourage un¬ desirable policy developments. Technically, of course, the word is accurate: there exists no inter¬ national government that effectively polices the behavior of the na¬ tions of the world. It is, as Waltz puts it, a condition of "self-help." The problem with the word "anarchy" lies in its inescapable con¬ notations: it implies chaos, lawlessness, disorder, confusion, and ran¬ dom violence. It would be equally accurate to characterize the international situation as "unregulated," a word with connotations that are far different and perhaps far more helpful.42 Waltz argues that "interdependent states whose relations remain unregulated must experience conflict and will occasionally fall into violence."43 And realist John Mearsheimer argues that in a condition of anarchy "there is little room for trust among states" and that "se¬ curity will often be scarce."44 Insofar as this perspective is a useful way to look at international politics, it holds only where the idea is generally accepted that violence is a suitable and useful method for doing business. If that idea no longer prevails, regulation is not re¬ quired and anarchy could become a desirable state. This suggests, too, that domestic changes that lead to changes in political ideas may be far more important influences on international behavior than changes in the international distribution of military capabilities. 42 On this issue see also Helen Milner, “The Assumption of Anarchy in International Relations Theory: A Critique," Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 67-85; but com¬ pare with Richard Rosecrance, "A New Concert of Powers," Foreign Affairs 71 (Spring 1992): 64-82. 43 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 138. Or: "With many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire—conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur," Waltz, Man, the State, and War, p. 159. 44 John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War," International Security 15 (Summer 1990): 12, 45; see also Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, pp. 3-6.

[62]

[4] The Anglo-German Naval Race and Comparative Constitutional

Fitness"

"

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

Most discussions of grand strategy focus on the linkage between economic and military strength. We examine here a case that dem¬ onstrates the equal or superior importance of what we shall call (ech¬ oing biological usage) constitutional fitness: the degree to which a state's political and social constitution supports an optimal projection of mil¬ itary power. While neorealism would have us investigate the "third image," or the international system, for an explanation of grand stra¬ tegic policy, we find it here in the "second image" nature of the domestic state. In brief, we shall explore the following paradox: Im¬ perial Germany, whose economy grew far more impressively between 1871 and 1914 than that of Great Britain, whose output of steel by 1914 nearly equalled that of the rest of Europe combined, and whose military organization and planning were widely recognized as the world's best, nonetheless proved unable to compete effectively with the United Kingdom in two crucial respects—the formulation of sound strategy and (more surprising) the extraction of social resources for military purposes. Germany, in short, planned badly and taxed too little. By the one route it unleashed the Great War; by the other it had armed too poorly to win it.1 Both failures arose not from any weakness of economic or military organization, but from antiquated political and social structures. Britain, having modernized more suc¬ cessfully, proved strategically superior despite its economic anemia. The specific realm in which we shall pursue this argument is the

1 It must be emphasized that Wilhelmine Germany was not simply domestically "con¬ strained” in the exercise of military power. Indeed, in crucial ways that we shall explore, its institutions favored unwise overarmament and foolhardy foreign policy.

[65]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski much-studied Anglo-German naval rivalry in the brief period between 1.897 (passage of the First Naval Law in Germany) and 1914. Of the many questions that have occupied previous students of the period, we shall confine ourselves to two: (1) very summarily, what were the likely reasons for the drastic change in German strategy, and for the British response, that ignited the naval race; and (2) what were the fiscal constraints that, on the German side, ultimately curtailed naval spending and decided the outcome of the competition? In the years between 1892 and 1907, Imperial Germany undertook one of modern Europe's most dramatic shifts in grand strategy, away from land and toward sea power. Despite some dabbling in imperialism toward the end of his term, Otto von Bismarck had pointed the Second Reich firmly in the direction of land power. The German navy's total effective complement of armored ships, having grown modestly between 1874 and 1883, remained almost constant through 1892 at the exceedingly low level of less than 90,000 tons' displacement—less than Italy's or Russia's, about one-third the level of France, and about one-sixth that of the United Kingdom (Figure 4.1) . From 1893 German naval strength grew slowly; by 1897, when Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's First Naval Law was enacted, total displacement had reached about 180,000 tons, putting Germany in a league with Italy, Russia, and the United States; but still at a capacity at less than half that of France, and less than one-fifth that of Britain (Figure 4.2). After 1897 German naval tonnage steadily accelerated: doubling by 1903, tripling by 1909, quintupling (to 900,000 tons' displacement) by the end of 1913. Germany surpassed Italy in 1900, Russia in 1904, France in 1909, and the United States (also growing rapidly) in 1912, to emerge in 1914 with the world's second strongest navy—albeit still one with only about three-sevenths the tonnage of Britain (Figure

. )

4 2 .2

If one examines only the construction of new battleships, Ger¬ many's record is even more impressive (Figure 4.3).3 Having budgeted for but 6 ships annually at the beginning of 1897, by the end of 1914 the Reich was contracting for no fewer than 43 ships per year; an annual growth rate of close to 12 percent. Less comforting to advocates of German naval equality was the knowledge that, nevertheless, Ger¬ many was laying down new keels at a rate only slightly over half that 2 Jurgen Rohwer, "Kriegsschiffbau und Flottengesetze um die Jahrhundertwende/' in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland i8yi—1914, ed. Herbert Schottelius and Wilhelm Deist (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972), pp. 216 and 219. 3Ibid., p. 224.

[66]

Figure 4.1. Tonnage of armored ships-Great Power fleets, 1861-1898 (Armored ships and armored cruisers over 2,000 t., not more than 25 years since launching)

Source: From Jurgen Rohwer, "Kriegsschiffbau und Flottengesetze um die Jahrhundertwende, in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, ed. Herbert Schottelius and Wilhelm Deist (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972). Used by permission of the publisher.

[67]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski Figure 4.2. Tonnage of Great Power fleets, January 1, 1889-August i, 1914 (Battleships and armored ships less than 25 years old, armored cruisers and protected cruisers less than 20 years old)

Source: From Jurgen Rohwer, "Kriegsschiffbau und Flottengesetze urn die Jahrhundertwendi in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, ed. Fferbert Schottelius and Wilhe Deist (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972). Used by permission of the publisher.

[68]

Figure 4.3. Battleship construction of the Great Powers, 1889-1914 (budgeted) Number of

Source: From Jurgen Rohwer, "Kriegsschiffbau und Flottengesetze um die Jahrhundertwende," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland i8yi-igi4, ed. Herbert Schottelius and Wilhelm Deist (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972). Used by permission of the publisher.

[69]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

of Britain (85 ships annually): far from catching up, Germany was doomed at this rate to remain at about half of British naval strength into the indefinite future, roughly as British policy (the "two-power standard") intended. To be sure, in the crucial area of Dreadnoughts, the new and far superior class of battleships introduced by Britain in 1905, Germany exploited its Gerschenkronian "advantage of backwardness" to com¬ pete more effectively. Launching its first Dreadnought in 1909, when the United Kingdom already possessed 3, Germany achieved half of Britain's strength by 1911 (7 battleships against the UK's 13) and almost two-thirds of Britain's level (19, against 30) by 1914 (Figure

4 4)-4 -

Nonetheless, in one highly significant sense, Germany had lost the race for naval supremacy, indeed, it had already capitulated—over two years before the outbreak of war in August 1914. While the United Kingdom continued to budget generously for naval construction—in 1913 Britain's naval outlays totalled £31 million, versus Germany's £24 million—the combination of the multiplying governmental deficit and the growing danger of a major land conflict had compelled even that unrivaled naval enthusiast, the Kaiser, to concede a significant reduction in maritime outlays in December 1911.5 The ratio of naval to army expenditure, which had risen steadily from less than 20 per¬ cent before 1907 to 33 percent by 1911, now fell to 49 percent in 1912 and to 33 percent in 1913.6 Even so, the fiscally dictated failure to expand the army even further, in the threatening international cir¬ cumstances, seemed foolhardy to many Germany leaders.7 This fiscal failure is at first hard to comprehend. Taxes of the central government in Germany amounted to about 3.3 percent of net na¬ tional product (NNP) in 1911, up from some 2.73 percent in 1898. In the United Kingdom, by 1911 central government taxation claimed almost 7.3 percent of gross national product (GNP), up from about 6.3 percent in 1898.8 Admittedly, Britain was a unitary state, Germany 4 Ibid., p. 228. 5 Figures are from Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Ashfield Press, 1987), pp. 356-57. See also Hans Harzfeld, Die Deutsche Rustungspolitik vor dem Weltkriege (Bonn: Kurt Schroeder, 1923), p. 12. 6 Peter-Christian Witt, "Reichsfinanzen und Rustungspolitik 1898-1914," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, ed. Schottelius and Deist, p. 17m. 7 Harzfeld, Deutsche Rustungspolitik, p. 13. Immanuel Geiss has put it even more sharply: "The sums invested for building and modernizing [the navy] were so high that the expansion of the army, which should have formed the basis for a purely defensive policy, practically stagnated up to 1912. Then it was too late to increase it sufficiently to wage a victorious offensive war." Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 18711914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 79. 8 Both countries' figures are calculated from B[rian] R. Mitchell, European Historical

Figure 4.4. Great Power Dreadnoughts Number of

Source: From Jurgen Rohwer, "Kriegsschiffbau und Flottengesetze um die Jahrhundertwende," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, ed. Herbert Schottelius and Wilhelm Deist (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972). Used by permission of the publisher.

[79

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski Table 4.1. Total gross expenditure (in million £ sterling)

Great Britain Germany

1901

1905

1910

1913

193-3 116.2

149-5 110.4

156.9 142.7

184.0 185.0

a federal one; hence central government did more in the former. The best estimates of total government outlays, however, suggest that in 1898 the British state imposed a total burden some 40 percent heavier, and in 1911 one 30 percent heavier, than did its German counterpart.9 As seen in table 4.1, Britain continued to outspend Germany for most of the decade preceding the war, with German spending only catching British spending by 1913.10 Even so, the Reich chronically ran large deficits, but the UK, except for the years of the Boer Wars, ran considerable surpluses.11 In 1903 Germany's government deficit had amounted to 21 percent of total outlays and about 0.9 percent of NNP; in 1909 it had risen to 28 percent of total outlays and 1.3 percent of NNP.12 In some way yet to be explored, Germany was less able to meet the burdens of the military race that it had unleashed.

The Economic Bases: Britain versus Germany

Germany's fiscal problem had nothing to do with any underlying economic weakness. Quite to the contrary, the German economy was so rapidly outpacing Britain's as to unleash an orgy of self-doubt and recrimination among British industrialists and politicians.13 Between 1890 and 1913 British GNP grew by 36 percent, about 2 percent anStatistics, lyyo-i^yo, abridged ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), Tables G3 and Ji. Only data on NNP are available for this period in Germany; GNP would of course be larger, reducing the German percentage yet further. 4 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 326-27, estimates that central government was responsible for 55 percent of total British state spending, but only one-third of total German state spending. 10 Figures are for central government spending only. British figures are from B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 589-90. German figures are from The Statesman's Year-Book (London: Macmillan, various years). The 1901 and 1905 figures were converted at a rate of 20 marks = £1. "Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 357. "Calculated from ibid., p. 358, and Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, Table Ji, converting pounds sterling to marks at the ratio of 1:20. 13 David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial De¬ velopment in Western Europe from lyyo to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 327-28.

[72]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

nually; over the same interval, German NNP grew by 90 percent, about 2.8 percent annually.14 In Britain net domestic capital formation (NDCF), the principal ingredient of future economic growth, slowly declined from about 12 percent of NNP in i860 to about 6-8 percent between 1890 and 1914; in Germany NDCF rose steadily from 8 per¬ cent of NNP in the 1850s to 16 percent of NNP throughout the period 1890-1914.15 As early as 1906-10, Germany surpassed the United King¬ dom in the share of world manufacturing capacity (15.9 to 14.7 per¬ cent).16 In 1890 Germany had produced 2.1 million metric tons of raw steel to Britain's 3.6. It had overtaken Britain by 1893, and by 1913 it had produced 17.6 million tons to Britain's 7.8.17 Also in 1913 Ger¬ many produced 1.7 million metric tons of sulfuric acid to the United Kingdom's 1.1; and 8.0 gigawatt-hours of electricity to the United King¬ dom's 2.5.18 Although the United Kingdom remained the richer coun¬ try, with a GNP in 1913 of £2.72 billion (about £60 per capita) to Germany's NNP of M52.4 billion (equivalent to £2.62 billion, or £40 per capita), Germany was already stronger, and was growing far more rapidly, in the most modern and militarily significant sectors (steel, chemicals, and electricity). Despite Germany's reputation for protectionism and Britain's rep¬ utation for commerce, by 1913 Germany accounted for 13 percent and Britain for 14 percent of world exports; Germany for 13 percent and Britain for 17 percent of world trade.19 In Germany in 1913 exports amounted to 19.3 percent of NNP (up from 14.1 percent in 1890); in Britain, to 23.4 percent of GNP (up from 21.2 percent in 1890).20 Moreover, this similarity of export-orientation concealed a significant and growing German advantage in such advanced sectors of the world market as chemicals, electrical equipment, optics, machines, and ma¬ chine tools.21 By 1907 Germany accounted for half of world exports of electrical equipment and for 90 percent of world production of industrial dyes.22 14Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, Table Ji. 15 Landes, Unbound Prometheus, p. 329. 16 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 292. 17 Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, Table D8. 18 A country's output of sulfuric acid indicates the overall level of development of its chemical industry; but Landes (Unbound Prometheus, p. 109) describes sulfuric acid as "a substance of such versatility. . . that its use has come to serve as a rough index of industrial development.” Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, Tables D18 and D22. 19 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 292. 20Calculated from Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, Tables Ei and Ji. 21 Landes, Unbound Prometheus, p. 328; Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 293. “David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, i8yo to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 63.

[73]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

The counterpart of Germany's advances in manufactured exports was its growing dependence, despite ever-higher tariffs, on agricul¬ tural and raw-materials imports. By 1910-13, 15 percent of grain, generally, 40 percent of wheat, 38 percent of eggs, and 7 percent of meat was imported.23 As the blockade was to demonstrate painfully in World War I, Germany was no longer self-sufficient, particularly in foodstuffs.

The Political and Social Constitution of Imperial Germany

The Bismarckian Empire was in every respect a compromise: be¬ tween the new central government and the preexisting states; be¬ tween Prussia and the lesser states; between Junker and industrialists; between Protestants and Catholics; between democracy and autoc¬ racy.24 Direct taxes (including, from an early point, income tax) re¬ mained the province of the individual states; the Reich imposed only tariffs, postal fees, and specific excise taxes (e.g., on salt, tobacco, brandy, and beer).23 While the Constitution of 1871 foresaw, in vague terms, the levying of direct "Reich taxes" (Art. 70), in the meantime any shortfall in Imperial revenues was to be covered "through con¬ tributions of the individual federal states according to the size of their population" (the so-called matricular contributions). The Reich, how¬ ever, could not compel states to raise their taxes; hence in practice this last provision amounted to a right to beg. Tariffs could only be raised, however, or direct taxes imposed, by favorable votes of the empire's two legislative houses, the Reichstag and the Bundesrat (Art. 5). The former was Europe's third national parliament (after the French National Assembly and the Swiss Na¬ tional Council, both broadened in 1848) elected by universal male suffrage, originally from districts of equal population, but increasingly (since no redistricting occurred after 1871) from ones biased in favor of rural areas. By the early 1890s, the Reichstag had come to be dom¬ inated by six major parties, each representing a distinct socioeconomic 23Ibid., p. 66; Alexander Gerschenkron, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berke¬ ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943), p. 121; Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 294-95. 24 A standard work on the period is Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1973); Michael Stunner, ed., Bis¬ marck und die preu(3isch-deutsche Politik (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1970) provides a useful selection of primary documents. 25 Constitution of April 16, 1871, Articles 35, 38, and 49 as reproduced in Rudolf Schuster, ed., Deutsche Verfassungen, 10th ed. (Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1978).

[74]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

group: Conservatives (large landowners); Free Conservatives (those in heavy industry); National Liberals (those in other large-scale in¬ dustries and substantial farmers); Left Liberals (those in free-trading industry, smallholding farmers, and most small business owners); the Center (Catholics of all economic strata); and Socialists (workers). The Bundesrat, in significant senses the executive of the empire as well as its second legislative house (it declared war, dissolved the Reichstag, passed administrative decrees, and considered all govern¬ ment bills first), was an assembly of "ambassadors" of the 25 states who, on instructions from their separate governments, cast bloc votes: 17 for Prussia, 6 for Bavaria, 4 each for Saxony and Wurttemberg, and so on; for a total of 58. Fourteen negative votes sufficed to defeat any proposed constitutional amendment (Art. 78); hence Prussia en¬ joyed an absolute veto in this regard, as well as (in more explicit language) over all proposed changes in the military or the system of taxation (Art. 5).26 The states, however, enjoyed complete autonomy in their franchise: while the southern and southwestern ones largely followed the general European pattern of steady liberalization, Prussia and many of the smaller northern states drastically overweighted the votes of the wealthy, in particular those of large landowners.27 These electoral inequalities could be altered only by amendment of the state or federal constitution; but amendments at the state level (e.g., in Prussia) required the assent of the existing, unequally elected, rep¬ resentative bodies, while amendments to the federal constitution could always be vetoed by conservative Prussia. The chancellor, as nominal chief executive of the Reich, was ap26 The language of Article 5 was convoluted but ultimately clear: "In the case of bills concerning the military establishment, the navy, or the revenues specified in Article 35 [tariffs, salt and tobacco tax, etc.], whenever a difference of opinion arises in the Bundesrat the vote of the Presidency [i.e., of Prussia] is decisive, if it is cast in favor of a continuation of the existing arrangements." 27 In Prussia voters were rank-ordered according to wealth, as measured by assessed valuation of property. Starting with the wealthiest, individual tax contributions were summed until one-third of the total "take" from each constituency had been accounted for; and this wealthiest group of voters (which in some districts might consist of a single large landowner) were classified as "voters of the first division. " The counting then continued until another one-third of total tax revenue from the district had been accounted for; these property owners were "voters of the second division." All re¬ maining voters (who, in some districts, might well be 90 percent of the total electorate) were placed in a "third division." Each "division" then voted separately, each choosing an equal number of members of an "electoral college" for the district; and it was this electoral college that actually chose the district's representative in the Prussian House of Representatives. Hence, in terms of actual voting power, the wealthiest 10 percent of the electorate sometimes held two-thirds of the votes. Moreover, an almost wholly hereditary House of Lords held equal power with the House of Representatives (Prus¬ sian Constitution of January 31, 1850, Arts. 65 [as amended October 12, 1834] and 71). Schuster, ed., Deutsche Verfassungen, chap. 2.

[75]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

pointed by the kaiser and required no formal parliamentary vote of confidence. In practice, however, he could govern successfully only with majorities in both Reichstag and Bundesrat; and experience proved that the chancellor could control the latter body only if he served simultaneously as Prussian prime minister—a post whose ten¬ ure presupposed majorities in both houses of the extremely conser¬ vative Prussian parliament.28 In the complex game of constructing governing coalitions in these circumstances, the only fixed rule of practice was that the Socialists could never participate. It followed that at least two of the three remaining large blocs—Conservatives, Catholics, and Liberals—were ordinarily required; and the dominance of the Conservatives in Prus¬ sia made them almost indispensable nationally.29 Only under the "new course" of Bismarck's first successor Leo von Caprivi was an anti-Conservative coalition of Center, Left Liberals, and National Lib¬ erals briefly, and in the end unsuccessfully, attempted. Conservative power dictated one ineluctable result: high (preferably prohibitive) tariffs on imported grain, the one issue by which the Junker lived or died. Free Conservatives, many National Liberals, and even the agrarian wing of the Center could accept this result, provided that high industrial tariffs—offspring of Bismarck's infamous "mar¬ riage of iron and rye"—were the quid pro quo. Increasingly after 1890, export-oriented industry resisted; yet it never found a way to dismantle Conservative hegemony.30 The fluidity of the coalitions, the ambiguity of key constitutional provisions, and the ingrained monarchism of the dominant Conser¬ vatives combined to allow an ambitious kaiser—and Wilhelm II (188828 The chancellor, as Kennedy notes, was far from being the only official who reported directly to the monarch. Not only individual ministers and military chiefs of staff but also much lower-ranking individuals (heads of naval departments, fleet commanders, even naval attaches) and a wide-ranging clique of personal intimates could commu¬ nicate directly with the kaiser, "sell an idea" to him, or even influence the appointment and dismissal of chancellors. Kennedy rightly describes the overall result as "chaos of the German governmental system." Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, P- 40429 The pattern was set early. In his first phase of nation-building, Bismarck had been supported by National Liberals and Conservatives, held together by the antiCatholicism of the Kulturkampf. The shift to high tariffs in 1879 involved dropping the Liberals, making peace with the Catholics, and outlawing the Socialists: henceforth a "Blue-Black" coalition of Conservatives and Center held sway. After Caprivi's fall, Hohenlohe, Miquel, and Biilow strove consistently for a "Sammlung," or "gathering," that would bring together all nonsocialist forces. See Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks: Parteien und Verbande in der Spdtphase des Wilhelminischen Deutschlands; Sammlungspolitik 1897-1918 (Cologne and Berlin: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1970). 30See ibid., especially chaps. 4 and 5.

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

1918) was certainly that—a degree of personal power and personal irresponsibility that few contemporary constitutional monarchs en¬ joyed. As Paul Kennedy has accurately summarized the situation, "Wilhelm's powers were closer to, and probably greater than, those of George III than Edward VII."31

The Pursuit of Naval Power Why Germany chose to build so powerful a navy so rapidly remains one of modern European historiography's most controversial ques¬ tions.32 Without attempting to recapitulate, let alone to arbitrate, that dispute, we note the following relatively undisputed conclusions: (1) The German naval project was closely and consciously linked to the economic transformations previously described. In a crucial speech to the Royal Military Academy on February 8, 1895, Wilhelm II argued that a nation's navy should be commensurate with its mar¬ itime commerce; Germany's was not. The combined French and Rus¬ sian navies were (in Ivo Nikolai Lambi's paraphrase of Wilhelm) "capable of blockading the German coast, destroying German trade, . . . and, above all, cutting off essential food-imports."33 In the "Weltreich" address to the Reichstag (January 18, 1896), which unleashed the naval campaign, Wilhelm pointed to the need to protect the "thou¬ sands of millions in value that Germany has riding on the sea."34 In a private conversation on March 2,1897 (recorded contemporaneously by Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe), the Kaiser observed that "we must have an armored fleet to protect our trade and to supply ourselves . . . our fleet must be strong enough to prevent the French fleet from cutting 31 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 404. 32 The controversy began with Eckart Kefir's Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 18941901: Versuch eines Querschnitts dutch die innenpolitischen, sozialen und ideologischen Voraussetzungen des deutschen Imperialisms (Berlin: Verlag Emil Ebering, 1930). Friedrich Forstmeier, "Der Tirpitzsche Flottenbau im Urteil der Historiker," in Schottelius and Deist, Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, is a helpful sum¬ mary; Calleo, German Problem, chap. 4, provides an incisive commentary on Kehr; more polemical is Geoff Eley, From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986), chap. 5, and Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nation¬ alism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), chap. 1. We have also benefited greatly from reading in manuscript chap. 3 of Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 33 Ivo Nokolai Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862-1914 (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 34. 34 Ekkehard Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau: Hanseatische Kaufmannschaft und deutsche Seeriistung 1879-1902 (Diisseldorf: Bertselsmann Universitatsverlag, 1972), p. 81.

[77]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogozvski

off the necessary foodstuffs."33 Germany's mercantile elites heartily agreed. Indeed, even before Wilhelm and Tirpitz began their agita¬ tion, the formerly pacific and anglophile leadership of Hamburg, as Ekkehard Bohm shows in his superb study, had begun to push for naval expansion.36 Repeatedly, U.S. efforts toward extreme protec¬ tionism (the McKinley Tariff of 1890, the Dingley Tariff of 1897) and toward the creation of a Pan-American free trade zone (with high tariffs against outsiders) raised alarm in this especially Americanoriented port;37 and it made a deep impression when, as in Chile in 1891, British-led naval intervention sufficed to thwart U.S. efforts to win tariff preference through "gunboat diplomacy." Leading Ham¬ burg merchants and newspapers openly contemplated how a strong German navy might serve as a counterweight, either against the Latin American states or directly against the United States.38 The alarm turned to panic when Britain granted its Dominions (beginning with Canada) tariff autonomy in July of 1897, denouncing in the process a treaty of 1865 with the old Zollverein that had guaranteed Germany most-favored-nation status in all British possessions, and even more when Joseph Chamberlain proposed, to no little support from British industry, his scheme for Imperial Preference in 1902: first the richest British possessions and now Britain itself might be closed to German trade.39 While Hamburg's leaders carefully avoided anglophobia and saber-rattling, the Kaiser did not hesitate to relay to Hohenlohe on August 1, 1897, the following in connection with the Canadian events: "Had we had a strong fleet that commanded respect, the treaty would not have been denounced. As an answer, a rapid, significant expan¬ sion of our [naval] construction must be contemplated."40 As Eckart Kehr noted, the elites of the export-oriented German industry, in the persons of such figures as Emil Rathenau and Georg von Siemens, joined the elites of commerce in enthusiastically sup¬ porting both free trade and the naval project.41 In essence, Germany, heir to Prussia's title of "Sparta of the North," was moving toward an "Athenian" policy of export-oriented manu33Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, p. 34, emphasis added. 36 Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau. Bohm's study is an essential corrective to Eckart Kehr's (Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901, pp. 228-44) somewhat dismissive view of mercantile support for the fleet, particularly in Hamburg. See in particular ibid., p. 239. 37 Thirteen percent of Hamburg's exports and 20 percent of its imports were due to the United States alone. Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, p. 148. wIbid., pp. 56-64 and 148-53. wIbid., pp. 166-72. 411 Ibid., p. 33. 41 Kehr, Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901, p. 306.

[78]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

facture, import of foodstuffs, and a powerful navy to safeguard vital trade routes.42 Predictably, it was Germany's "Spartan" elite, the land¬ owning warrior Junker, who instinctively opposed the change, in¬ cluding particularly its naval component.43 Tariffs, especially agri¬ cultural tariffs, would assure autarky, eliminating the need for a fleet; and the Junker-dominated army would retain its proper dominance in state and society.44 By contrast, as Geiss has emphasized, "The battle fleet was an instrument of the German middle class par excel¬ lence. It was both a symbol and vehicle of collective and individual power and prestige, for the Empire and for members of the German middle class as naval officers. Thus, the fleet was not just a whim of an eccentric Kaiser but represented the massive economic interests and social aspirations of the most prosperous and dynamic elements of German society."45 (2) The ultimately dangerous extent of the naval building program resulted from Imperial Germany's peculiar social and political con¬ stitution. Wilhelmine Germany was characterized increasingly by a deadly if muted conflict for supremacy between agrarian and indus¬ trial-commercial elites. The common Socialist threat imposed on both sides restraint, compromise, and an avoidance of domestic issues. Precisely because the navy safely symbolized and guaranteed middleclass advance, its supporters pushed it harder than wise strategy would have dictated. Kehr saw with brilliant clarity the extent to which the navy, together with continued high tariffs, had represented a compromise between industry and agriculture.46 But it was more. As Bohm has shown, as early as 1896 the Hamburg mercantile elite began to see naval expen¬ ditures as a way of committing the empire to a policy of industry and trade.47 Once the Reich had sunk so much money into a fleet, 42 Needless to say, the naval aspect of this policy did not go uncontested, even among export-oriented groups. Such Liberal figures as Eugen Richter and Robert Drill ridiculed the idea that Germany could be successfully blockaded, ibid., p. 2550; and the Socialist leadership—anglophile by political inclination and often out of gratitude for earlier English asylum—insisted that Britain, in its own self-interest, would keep markets open (Kennedy, Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 328-29). 43 Kehr, Schlachtflottenbau and Parteipolitik 1894-1901, pp. 172-77 and 259-60; Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, p. 77; and see also Calleo, German Problem, pp. 74-84. Eley has valuably reemphasized, against facile overstatement by some post-Kehr students, the extent to which landed and mercantile elites disagreed about the naval project: see particularly From Unification to Nazism, chap. 5, especially pp. 115ft. 44 Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, p. 78. 45 Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914, p. 79. 46 Kehr, Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901. 47 Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, p. 77; see also Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks, p. 78m

[79]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogozvski

this group believed, it would not dare to pursue a policy of autarky that would make that fleet useless.48 Tirpitz shared and encouraged this view. As he noted to Max von Thielmann, with typical clumsiness of expression, on August 8, 1897: "If it is really part of the intent of our responsible ministries to inaugurate a trade policy calculated to diminish substantially our trade and our export industry, the present Navy Bill, and indeed any Navy Bill, would signify a contradiction with that. Any [naval] success would seem impossible to me, for the fleet is precisely a function of our maritime interests."49 These calculations led mercantile and industrial elites to support Tirpitz in the construction of battleships when originally they had desired only lightly armed cruisers that could defend trade in unstable regions.50 Even more, as conceded by the Hamburg leader Albert Ballin—chairman of the Hamburg-America shipping line, intimate friend of the Kaiser, and early and influential supporter of the fleet— long after his own change of heart in 1908, for too long they had blinded even committed anglophiles like himself to the AngloGerman tensions that the fleet aroused and to the strategic hope¬ lessness of Germany's naval challenge.51 If the navy's proponents demanded too much, its opponents yielded too easily. In the delicate negotiations that repeatedly held the Sammlung together, a yet bigger fleet was one of the easiest concessions for agrarians to make.52 Provided only that they achieved their high grain tariffs, they were willing (if never eager) to vote for higher naval appropriations. They did not even object if the navy devoured funds that might otherwise have gone to the Junkerdominated army, for—as leading War Ministry officials openly ob¬ served—rapid expansion of that branch might occasion an unwel¬ come, indeed, a politically dangerous, intrusion of nonaristocrats into the army officer corps.53 ^Groups outside Hamburg shared this view. Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, pp. 192, 194, 199-200, mentions specifically the Chambers of Commerce of Stuttgart, Thorn, and Wiesbaden; see also Emil Rathenau, Friedrich Naumann, Lujo Brentano, Gustav Schmoller, and Gerhard von Schulze-Gaevernitz. 44 Cited in Bohm, Uberseehandel und Flottenbau, p. 196. wKehr, Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901, pp. 230-42; and Bohm, Ubersee¬ handel und Flottenbau, pp. 200-201. S1 Lamar Cecil, Albert Ballin: Business and Politics in Imperial Germany, 1888-1918 (Prince¬ ton,: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 152-58; and 159-62. 5;:Kehr, Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901, especially pp. 172-77 and 201-7; see also Calleo, German Problem, especially pp. 82-83. Eley, From Unification to Nazism, chap. 5, disagrees, but depicts Junker opposition as so rabid that one is left unable to comprehend how the naval bills actually could have been enacted, let alone enacted by governments whose core support was Conservative. 53 Peter-Christian Witt, "Reichsfinanzen und Riistungspolitik 1898-1914," in Marine

[80]

The Naval Race and Constitutional

Fitness"

"

Finally, it mattered in the strange constitutional structure of the Second Reich that the kaiser retained so large a share of unrestricted power and, of course, that this particular kaiser passionately backed a strong navy.S4 In 1894 Wilhelm II reported proudly to an intimate that he was "not reading, but devouring. Captain Mahan's book [The Influence of Sea Power upon History, i66o-iy8y\, and I am trying to learn it by heart."53 It was Wilhelm's personal decision, against the op¬ position of Chancellor Hohenlohe, to appoint Tirpitz as head of the Reichsmarineamt in 1897 and to back his expansive plans for naval construction.56 Agreement on a large German navy then could be reached by elites who were otherwise partly opposed to one another in German domestic politics.

Germany's Fiscal Failure Having undertaken to build a great fleet, the Reich had now to find the means to pay for it. It never did so. Between 1898 and 1903 alone, governmental indebtedness rose by 672 million marks, owing mostly to naval outlays. Overall between 1897 and 1914, the outstanding debt of the Reich rose from 2.1 to 5.2 billion marks; of the increase of 3.1 billion an even 1.0 billion could be attributed to naval expen¬ diture.57 So bad did the government's reputation for unsound finance become that its bonds required a large "risk premium" over those of the British or French state; and so heavily did it burden domestic credit markets that average interest rates in Berlin were typically one to two points higher than in other European markets.58 In essence, the indirect taxes granted constitutionally to the Reich did not suffice to meet the growing military outlays.59 Efforts to raise these highly regressive imposts were rejected by Socialists, Left Lib¬ erals, National Liberals, and usually by the Center—a clear majority of the Reichstag. All of these groups favored direct taxes: at a mini-

und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914., ed. Schottelius and Deist, PP- 153-5454 See generally Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, chap 3. 33 Ibid., p. 34. ^ Ibid., p. 138. 57 Witt, "Reichsfinanzen," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 18711914, ed. Schottelius and Deist, p. 15m. 58 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 303; Landes, Unbound Prometheus, P- 33454 The following account relies heavily on the detailed analysis of Witt, "Reichsfinanzen," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 1871-1914, ed. Schot¬ telius and Deist.

[81]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

mum an inheritance or property tax, at a maximum (embraced fully only by the Socialists) a Reich income tax. Every such proposal, how¬ ever, was anathema to the powerful Conservatives, who saw in even the mildest measure the entering wedge of socialism and expropri¬ ation;60 and they were prepared to use their control of the Prussian government to bring down any chancellor (the one example of such courage is Prince Bernhard von Billow in 1909) who dared to propose a significant direct tax.61 Moreover, the Liberals and Catholics would never enact such measures if they required the votes of the hated Socialists to do so. Only two possibilities remained: a demand for increased "matricular contributions" from the individual states; and what might be translated as "revenue enhancements" (Abgaben), preferably well con¬ cealed from any principled debates. The states, however, simply drew the line—admittedly, unconstitutionally—at a total contribution of M24 million.62 The Reich had no way of compelling them to offer more. The "revenue enhancements"—typically "sin" and stamp taxes—failed to close the gap. The result was spiraling deficits and, ultimately, an irresistible demand on treasury secretaries to rein in public (chiefly military) spending.63 Despite great initial resistance from the service chiefs. Secretary Adolf Wermuth, backed fully by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, succeeded in early 1912 in reducing projected five-year military expenditure from over Mi billion to M612 million.64 With this decision, however, disappeared all hope that Germany could win the naval race. Kaiser Wilhelm's certainty that Britain, not Germany, would break under the strain of increased naval outlays was proved illusory.65 At the outbreak of war in 1914, Britain had on active duty 24 Dread¬ noughts to Germany's 16 and a total of 60 capital ships to Germany's 38. The Entente Powers as a whole had 91 capital ships (26 of them Dreadnoughts); the Central Powers, 39 capital ships (17 of them Dreadnoughts).66 All serious naval strategists, including the eminent 60Ibid., p. 158. hl Ibid., p. 164; see also Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 358; and Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks, pp. 176-80. h2 Witt, "Reichsfinanzen," in Marine und Marinepolitik im kaiserlichen Deutschland 18711914, ed. Schottelius and Deist, p. 152. h3Even after 1900, military outlays normally constituted about 90 percent of total central government expenditure. Ibid., p. 146m MIbid., pp. 170-71. Cecil, Albert Ballin, p. 160. ^Lambi, Navy and German Power Politics, p. 426. Capital ships include all major naval war ships such as battleships, battle cruisers, etc. Today aircraft carriers and often large submarines are also considered capital ships.

[82]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

Admiral Alfred Mahan, had held that Germany would require a con¬ siderable superiority of forces to prevail. The German fleet, against the opposition of Tirpitz, assumed a purely defensive stance and remained "in port,.. . useless."67

The British Parallel: The Conservatives' Near-Defeat

There is little mystery about Britain's motives. As an island, Britain depended primarily on sea power for its national security. To the British, naval power was the very means of their own survival, but it mattered only marginally for the security of most other states. British officials tended to see naval construction, particularly by continental powers, as directed at least potentially against them. Winston Chur¬ chill put this attitude succinctly in a speech at Glasgow in 1912: "The German Navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury."68 Given this view of their own and their chief rivals' security needs, it is hardly surprising that the British felt obliged to participate in the naval arms race with Germany. What is surprising is how close Britain came to defeat. The Royal Navy began to expand in 1889 primarily in response to increased naval construction in France and to the growing possibility that Britain would have to face the combined French and Russian fleets. Although the expansion involved considerable sums, during most of the 1890s it placed no great strain on British government finances.69 Economic growth naturally increased tax revenue and al¬ lowed the government to pay for most of the fleet expansion without raising taxes. Yet as early as 1895 the new Conservative government was warned by Edward Hamilton, the permanent secretary at the Treasury, that the prospects for reducing, or even slowing, govern¬ ment spending appeared slim and that government spending might soon exceed revenue. The only solution that Hamilton offered to this 67 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), p. 259. ^Holger H. Herwig, "Luxury" Fleet: The Imperial German Navy 1888-1918 (Atlan¬ tic Highlands, N.J.: Ashfield Press, 1987), p. 77. 69 The Naval Defence Act of 1889 appropriated £22.5 million for construction, a four¬ fold increase over the previous naval bill of 1884. In 1894 there followed the Spencer Program at £21.3 million. Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era 1880-1905 (New York: Knopf, 1940), p. 204. Over the same interval, active naval personnel voted by Parliament rose from 65,400 to 93,750 and expenditure on salaries went from £8.37 to £11.89 million, an increase of 42 percent. Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 21.

[83]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

looming crisis was some new, but unspecified, indirect tax. As eco¬ nomic growth began to slow and tax revenue to fall at the end of the 1890s, government concern increased. As early as January 1899 the government was facing a possible deficit of £4 million. Chancellor of the Exchequer Michael Hicks Beach responded with a call for more taxes. Not surprisingly. Lord Salisbury, as prime minister, resisted: a temporary resort to borrowing would be preferable.70 Before either solution could be adopted, the Conservatives were facing yet greater financial problems brought on by the start of the Boer War. Mostly because of war, expenditure jumped from £117.6 million in 1898/99 to £295.2 million in 1901/02. Revenues rose only from £117.8 to £161.3 million in 1902/03.71 The government responded to the considerable shortfall by increasing income tax and duties on tea and tobacco, by temporarily suspending the Sinking Fund, and by borrowing. 2 Loans, politically the easiest answer, were used to such an extent that the national debt rose nearly a quarter.73 The £34 million raised by special war taxes between 1899 and 1902 were almost entirely offset by a £30 million increase in ordinary expenditure (i.e., excluding nonrecurring war costs),74 leading Hicks Beach to warn that the government's financial problems would not stop with the war's end. Once again Hamilton called for more taxes, and this time Hicks Beach responded. The budget for 1901-02 announced a second in¬ crease in income tax and new sugar and coal duties.75 However, the new revenues failed by far to meet the growing demand for funds. Hicks Beach called for a reduction in spending, and particularly in naval spending, as the only possible solution to Britain's financial crisis. In October 1901 he told the Cabinet that uncontrolled growth in naval outlays would lead "straight to financial ruin."76 Lord Selborne, the First Sea Lord, believed that the threat from France and Russia remained too great to contemplate any reduction in naval spending. Far from agreeing with the chancellor, he proclaimed that Britain must not only match but exceed Franco-Russian naval 70 Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 104-5. 'Bruce K. Murry, The People's Budget 1909/10: Lloyd George and Liberal Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 21-22. 72 Friedberg, Weary Titan, pp. 106-7. 72Sumida, In Defence, pp. 22-23. 74 Keith M. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 11. 75 Friedberg, Weary Titan, p. 109. 7bSumida, In Defence, p. 23.

[84]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

strength. Concretely, Selborne proposed the additional construction of three battleships and four armored cruisers in each fiscal year from 1903-04 to 1906-07, requiring an initial increase in the naval estimate of between £2.3 and £3 million.77 The Cabinet approved Selborne's scheme without any indication of where the money would come from. Spending for new construction in 1903-04 actually came to £4 million.78 By 1903 the naval expansion was imposing a fiscal strain that wor¬ ried even the fleet's strongest supporters. Selborne warned the Ad¬ miralty that they were "very near their possible maximum" and that some form of savings was essential. As early as 1902, however, Ger¬ many rapidly began to displace France and Russia as the primary challenger to Britain's navy. The new competitor, as we have already seen, was backed by continental Europe's strongest economy. In ad¬ dition, technological changes in ship design and armament, as well as the need to supply larger crews for the new ships, were raising the unit costs of major warships dramatically.79 Post-Boer War Conservative governments, increasingly concerned about how to pay for the many ships the Admiralty demanded, re¬ solved to reduce the nation's strategic requirements. In 1902 an alli¬ ance with Japan permitted significant reductions of Britain's naval presence in the Far East and effectively ended its long-standing policy of "splendid isolation." The entente with France in 1904, an agree¬ ment with Russia (preceded by evident rapprochement) in 1907, and a settlement of outstanding differences with the United States per¬ mitted the Admiralty largely to remove the French, Russian, Japanese, and U.S. navies from its calculations. Unfortunately, German naval building by itself compelled British outlays to expand at an alarming rate.80 At the same time, however, new Chancellor of the Exchequer 77 Ibid. 78Ibid., p. 24. 79 From 1889-90 to 1896-97 the United Kingdom spent £16.8 million on the construc¬ tion of 25 battleships; between 1897-98 and 1904-5 it spent £29.6 million for 27 battle¬ ships—a near-doubling of expenditure for an increase of only two ships. First-class cruisers ordered in 1904-5 were three times as expensive as those constructed under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, while the number built increased from 19 (between 1889-90 and 1896-97) to 35 (between 1897-98 and 1904-5). Overall, naval spending increased from £137.3 million during the first period to £245 million in the second period, an increase of more than 78 percent (Ibid., pp. 20, 22). 8(1 Renewed efforts to extract financial support from the Dominions came to little, chiefly because the government was unwilling to involve them in the formulation of naval strategy (Friedberg, Weary Titan, pp. 116-17). Eventually Britain received about £2 million a year from this source—significant, but far from adequate to reduce the financial pressure on the British government.

[85]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

Charles Ritchie argued for a reduction in taxation. The levels imposed during the Boer War, he claimed, were dangerously high; and the next economic downturn could precipitate a major antigovernment reaction. Ritchie was both a fiscal conservative and a strong supporter of free trade. In 1903, taking advantage of Joseph Chamberlain's tem¬ porary absence in South Africa, Ritchie won Cabinet approval of re¬ ductions in the income tax and abolition of recently imposed duties on imported grain. Chamberlain, the champion of tariff reform among the Conservatives, was outraged and, upon his return, divided the Cabinet.81 The issue was only resolved when both men resigned in September 1903, Ritchie being replaced at the Exchequer by Joseph Chamberlain's son Austen. Austen Chamberlain found that Ritchie's tax cuts could not be sus¬ tained. In December 1903 he told the Cabinet that the budget for 1904-3 would unavoidably require increased taxation. To keep the increase within bounds, he again called for cuts in the army and navy estimates, arguing that Britain's security rested as much on its fiscal as on its military resources. Chamberlain was supported by Hamilton at the Treasury, who in February 1904 once again urged the government to raise taxes. Which taxes could be raised? Hamilton pointed out that Ritchie had reduced direct taxes much more than indirect ones. Although he recommended that the recently created sugar duty be increased, Ham¬ ilton believed that the government could avoid charges of unfairness only if it raised the income tax as well. Not surprisingly, the Con¬ servative government, which knew that any increase in direct taxes would fall chiefly on the wealthy, ignored Hamilton's advice. In April 1904 Chamberlain announced a new budget, which called for consid¬ erable increases in indirect taxes. Chamberlain's budget met great opposition. Liberals were partic¬ ularly incensed that indirect levies should be increased only a year after Ritchie had reduced direct taxes. The storm led some in the Treasury, including Hamilton, to entertain second thoughts about the need for new taxes. Chamberlain pushed ahead but concluded that the country would tolerate no more taxes. The Conservatives had reached the limit of their political ability to expand the government's fiscal base. The government had already rejected repeated calls by Hamilton to expand direct taxation, particularly the income tax. Now that the option of indirect taxation was also closing there was no alternative to reduced government spending. 81 Tariff reform, in the language of the day, meant increased tariffs, with some un¬ specified preference given to Britain's colonies and Dominions. 82Friedberg, Weary Titan, p. 123.

[86]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

Already in March 1904 Selborne had agreed that the navy would request no money beyond what it was already receiving; and H.O. Arnold-Foster, secretary for war, promised reduced demands from the army. This was not enough for Chamberlain, who now argued that only a freeze on civil spending and cuts in the defense budget could solve the government's fiscal problems. Chamberlain had fi¬ nally resolved that Britain's financial resources were simply "inade¬ quate" to do all the government desired in providing for imperial defense.83 Nor was he alone in holding this view. As Aaron Friedberg points out, "By 1904 the exhaustion of alternatives led to widespread agreement within the Government that spending on armaments would have to be reduced in real terms, regardless of the defensive needs of the empire."84 Selborne eventually won an increase of £1 million for the navy for 1904-5 but was forced to swallow large, albeit unspecified, decreases in the naval estimates for 1905-6.83 All this was done irrespective of the German threat and indicated that the Conservatives were on the verge of admitting defeat in the naval arms race. Any remaining doubt about the Conservative government's in¬ ability to raise indirect taxes was resolved by the 1906 general election. That the election largely became a referendum on the government's tax policy was due to Joseph Chamberlain. After leaving the Cabinet in 1903, Chamberlain took his campaign for tariff reform to the Con¬ servative party at large. By 1905 he had won enough support to force a reluctant Arthur James Balfour to make limited tariff reform a central part of the party's election platform. Seizing the opportunity offered them by the Conservatives, the Liberals turned the campaign into a contest between free trade and protection. Labeling the Conservative proposals a "stomach tax," the Liberals won their greatest electoral victory, coming away with a clear majority in the Commons. The election was viewed as a convincing rejection of tariff reform, thus ending any chance of financing further naval expansion through in¬ direct taxation.86

The Liberals and Britain's Victory in the Naval Race

The Liberal triumph ultimately won for Britain the naval arms race with Germany; yet nothing at the time would have suggested this 83Ibid., p. 126. 84Ibid., p. 107. 85Sumida, In Defence, p. 25. 86 A useful account is A. K. Russell, Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1973).

[87]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

conclusion. The Conservatives supported the empire and defense, while the Liberals had prominently advocated reduced military out¬ lays. That the new government actually achieved reductions initially was due to action by the outgoing Conservative Cabinet. In 1904 Admiral John Fisher succeeded Selborne as First Lord of the Admi¬ ralty. Fisher was a perennial advocate of naval reforms who promised that he could deliver great fiscal savings. Through a variety of radical measures, including the closing of naval stations, the decommission¬ ing of unneeded ships, and a major reorganization of Royal Navy personnel, Fisher was able to do substantially as he had promised. The naval estimates declined from £36.9 million in 1904-5 to £31.4 million in 1907-8, most of the savings occurring after the change of government. At least in the short run, the Liberals' ability to reduce defense spending was fortified by Fisher's other major innovation, the intro¬ duction of HMS Dreadnought, the first modern battleship, of all Fish¬ er's reforms, certainly the most controversial. Opponents charged that by introducing a ship that through its technological superiority made all existing vessels obsolete, Fisher had forfeited Britain's great nu¬ merical advantage in older warships. It would now have to start a new race in Dreadnought construction on an equal footing, giving its rivals an opportunity to overtake or surpass it. Fisher responded that there was no avoiding the Dreadnought: other nations were on the verge of introducing similar designs, and Britain would do better to build first.88 Whatever the ultimate result, there is no doubt that in the short run the Dreadnought was a boon to Britain. The need to emulate the British innovation caused major disruption in all other states' naval building programs, allowing Britain to slow down its own construction for a number of years. Germany in particular halted most ship construction while its naval designers scrambled to follow Britain's lead. The pause thus afforded Britain lasted only a few years. By the end of 1907 German shipyards were prepared to produce Dreadnoughts on a large scale. The 1908 amendment to the Naval Law of 1900 provided that Dreadnought-type capital ships were to be replaced every twenty years rather than, as previously, every twenty-five years. The rate of capital ship construction increased from 3 to 4 ships 87 Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919, vol. 1, The Road to War, 1904-1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 25. Two other factors helped the Liberals to reduce defense spending: con¬ tinued rapprochement with France and Russia (also initiated under the Conservative government); and Russia's naval weakness following its war with Japan (Sumida, In Defence, pp. 186-87). 88The Dreadnought plans were publicly available in Europe.

[88]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

per year, and the 20 "large cruisers" called for in the 1900 law were specified as battle cruisers of the Dreadnought type.89 Most Britons remained calm. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was pressed by Liberal newspapers and by Cabinet colleagues to maintain the election pledge and continue to reduce military spending. The threat from Germany, most Liberals held, warranted no increase in British construction, and certainly no sacrifice of the money they wished to spend on social legislation. Even the Admiralty, confident that Germany would need many years to catch up, recommended no increase in British naval building. What turned this complacency overnight into the great naval scare of 1909 was the Admiralty's reestimation of the rate of German naval construction. First calculations had indicated that by 1912 the ratio of British to German Dreadnoughts would be 18:13—less than needed to maintain a strict two-power standard, but still tolerable. Through¬ out 1908, however, new information suggested that Germany could produce turret gun mountings with growing speed, and these were considered to be the determining factor in Dreadnought construction. It appeared also that Krupp, the major German shipbuilder, had been secretly stockpiling nickel, which was used primarily in the construc¬ tion of guns, armor, and gun mountings. The Admiralty concluded that by 1912 the Germans would have a minimum of 17 Dread¬ noughts, and possibly as many as 21.90 Based on this new information, the Sea Lords recommended (in January 1909) a goal for 1909 of 8 rather than 4 Dreadnoughts. A passionate dispute erupted within the Liberal Cabinet. Reginald McKenna, as First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted the 8 ships but requested only 6—the minimum number that both he and Fisher believed necessary and the most he felt he could extract from the Cabinet. Radical ministers, unconvinced that additional ships were needed and fearing that their cost would delay planned social legis¬ lation, fought them intensely. David Lloyd George and Winston Chur¬ chill (respectively. Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary) refused to consider more than the 4 ships originally agreed to. Asquith eventually saved the situation without losing any Cabinet members through a rather devious compromise: 4 ships would be built im¬ mediately and 4 more later if the need for them was demonstrated. The additional 4 ships were approved by the Cabinet in July, as Asquith had expected from the beginning.91 89Marder, From the Dreadnought, p. 136. 90Ibid., p. 152. 91 Roy Jenkins, Asquith: Portrait of a Man and an Era (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966), p. 197. Churchill later wrote, “In the end a curious and characteristic solution was

[89]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

The cost presented the Liberals with a serious fiscal problem. For the first time since they had taken office, the naval estimates were increasing. At the same time, they faced substantial new financial burdens from their social legislation. The Liberals had underestimated the cost of old-age pensions by £2 million in the first year alone. By the end of 1908 it was already clear that Lloyd George would have to raise taxes—surely a factor in his strong opposition to the additional Admiralty requests.92 Many, including some Liberals, believed that tariffs would have to be increased; but Lloyd George remained committed to free trade.93 Instead, he decided on a major increase in direct taxes—thus following Lord Haldane, who had earlier suggested to Asquith that the Liberal party could benefit from a scheme to pay for social reform and defense spending by taxing the rich.94 The trick, as Lloyd George recognized, was to raise direct taxes without alienating a large majority of the electorate. Asquith and Lloyd George resolved on a system of progressive taxation that would chiefly burden the wealthiest. In his "People's Budget" of 1909-10, Lloyd George sought to provide for the govern¬ ment's long-term fiscal needs, and particularly for the Liberals' social legislation, while at the same time securing the party's free-trade policy.93 The heart of the budget consisted of large increases in the income tax, death duties, and stamp duties on all sales and stock transactions, as well as increased duties on liquor, tobacco, auto¬ mobiles, and real estate capital gains.96 All except the increased liquor and tobacco duties were aimed directly at the wealthy. Lloyd George introduced his budget in the Commons on April 29, 1909, to tremen¬ dous protest from the Conservative opposition. The solid Liberal ma¬ jority in the Commons guaranteed that the fight against the budget would center on the House of Lords, where the Conservatives dom¬ inated. In November the Lords rejected the budget, turning the issue into a constitutional conflict. After the Liberals won a new election in January 1910 and threatened to pack the Lords with their own supporters, the Conservatives backed down. The budget was finally enacted in April 1910. reached. The Admiralty had demanded six ships: the economists [i.e., advocates of economy] offered four: and we finally compromised on eight.” Marder, From the Dread¬ nought, p. 151. 42 Murry, People's Budget, p. 92. 93 Ibid. 94Jenkins, Asquith, p. 188; Murry, People's Budget, p. 93. 93 Murry, People's Budget, p. 119. ^Sumida, In Defence, p. 188.

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness" Figure 4.5. Net expenditure on defense and social welfare, 1908-13

£50 million H Net navy exp.

£40 million

I

1 Net army exp.

Vh

£30 million

Net s/w exp.

Exp. £20 million

£'10 million

£0 million 0809

0910

1 011

1 1 12

1 213

1314

Fiscal Year Source: From Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Used by permission of the publisher and Routledge.

The budget's achievements as social legislation may be doubted, but as a source of new revenue it was an unqualified success. Gov¬ ernment collections increased so rapidly that despite continued sharp rises in expenditure no new taxes were introduced until 1914.97 As can be seen in Figure 4.5, spending on social welfare and the navy continued to increase dramatically throughout the period between 1908-9 and 1913-14, while spending on the army remained roughly constant.98 Even so, Lloyd George was able to achieve a surplus every year between 1910 and 1914, with the taxes from the 1909-10 Budget consistently bringing in more revenue than anticipated.99 Just how important the 1909-10 budget was to Britain's ability to sustain the naval arms race comes out clearly in any comparison of the Liberal government's naval spending with that of its Conservative predecessor. The Conservatives reached a peak figure of £36.9 million, with great difficulty, in the 1904-5 budget.100 By 1914-15, the period of the last prewar budget, the Liberals' naval estimate reached £51.6 million, a figure far greater than anything imagined by the Conser97Murry, People's Budget, p. 292. 98 Sumida, In Defence, p. 194. "Murry, People's Budget, p. 292. 100Marder, From the Dreadnought, p. 23.

[94

David D'Lugo and Rottald Rogowski

vatives. The difference between the two parties becomes even more impressive when we consider that the Conservatives believed their maximum budget of 1904-5 was politically unsustainable, while there is no indication that the Liberals regarded the amount they reached in 1914-15 as even approaching the maximum they could attain. Admittedly, by 1914 there were faint signs of opposition to further increases. Lloyd George's 1914-15 budget included numerous tax in¬ creases to pay for the ever-growing naval estimates and for future social legislation. Again the bulk of the tax was directed at the wealthy and again the Conservatives strongly opposed it. This time, however, the Conservatives were joined by a faction of Liberal backbenchers, most of them wealthy landowners. Lloyd George was forced to modify or abandon aspects of his budget, but the bulk of it survived, pro¬ viding for an increase in revenue of more then £11 million above the previous year's figure.101 There is every reason to believe that higher levels of external threat would have called forth even higher revenues. In the end, only the British taxpayer could fund the Royal Navy. Hence, each party's success at raising taxes determined its ability to sustain the naval arms race. Here political support mattered. The Liberals did not succeed because they saw the Germans as more threatening; they had called for defense cuts in their 1906 platform and had seriously attempted to reduce spending. Rather, Liberals were able to increase government revenues without antagonizing any of their major sources of electoral support. Conservatives failed be¬ cause they could not adequately raise taxes without suffering a dev¬ astating blow at the polls. At the heart of their inability to maintain the naval arms race was the inconsistent base of Conservative party support. The Conserva¬ tives in Britain, as in Germany, were traditionally the party of wealth as well as of military power, and this was amply reflected in their repeated refusals to increase direct taxation except under the pressure of the Boer War. Yet the growing electoral strength of the working classes made it increasingly difficult for the Conservatives to expand indirect taxes.102 The need for working-class electoral support was evident in Austen Chamberlain's retreat from the proposed tax in¬ creases of the 1904-5 budget. Having retreated, however, the Con¬ servatives were left denuded of fiscal means to sustain the naval arms

101 Sumida, In Defence, p. 194. 102 The working classes constituted between 75 and 80 percent of the electorate after the Third Reform Act of 1884. Russell, Liberal Landslide, p. 21.

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

race. The electoral disaster of 1906 simply reaffirmed the bankruptcy of Conservative revenue policy. But electoral support was not enough. The landslide Liberal victory would have meant nothing had Britain not possessed a constitution that allowed the new Left-Center coalition to follow through on its electoral victory by enacting the 1909-10 budget. As in Germany, in Britain the Conservatives tried to prevent any increase in direct taxes, even when needed to maintain military spending; but, in contrast to Germany, with no constitutional provisions to sustain them the British Conservatives were swept aside. The defeat of the House of Lords in the constitutional crisis of 1909-10 was simultaneously the triumph of twentieth-century Britain's war-making capacity.

Comparative Constitutional Fitness

Germany, despite its rapid advance, could only have competed with wealthier Britain if it had been able to devote to armaments a larger share of its national product. The very entrenchment in power of Germany's Conservatives insured, under conditions of rapid mod¬ ernization, that the Reich in fact would mobilize less. In Britain, as in Germany, Conservatives vehemently opposed direct taxes. In Brit¬ ain, as in Germany, working-class voters were sufficiently numerous, powerful, and aroused to halt any expansion that relied solely on indirect taxes. In Germany, but not in Britain, Conservatives could constitutionally match the working-class veto, leading to near-total fiscal deadlock, spiraling deficits, and, eventually, military cutbacks. Paradoxically, Britain's more democratic constitution was the secret both of its military restraint and, when challenged, of its military 103 success. In a proximate sense, then, political institutions mattered pro¬ foundly. To go further and ask why British Conservatives lacked a veto, or German Conservatives possessed one, is to risk embarking on an eclectic and ultimately fruitless journey through comparative history: British parliamentarism and Prussian absolutism, the suc¬ cessful English Revolution of 1640 and the failed German one of 1848, 103 The irony deepens when one considers how self-consciously the Reich was based on military necessity. No fewer than twelve of the seventy-eight articles of the 1871 Constitution were devoted to the “Reich War Establishment" (Reichskriegswesen), and the one area in which absolute unity was achieved was in the immediate introduction of Prussian military regulations in the armies of the other states (Art. 61) and the merger of these contingents into “a unified army, which in both war and peace stands under the command of the Kaiser" (Art. 63).

[93]

David D'Lugo and Ronald Rogowski

Britain's island security and Germany's continental vulnerability, and England's more open and "bourgeois" aristocracy, can all be adduced. Before we range so widely, we should consider how little the two countries actually differed and, perhaps, should restrict our gaze cor¬ respondingly to the immediate contrasts. The British House of Lords, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, looked weak only in defeat. To few contemporaries did it seem self-evident beforehand that Asquith and his colleagues would ultimately triumph. British Conservatives, in other words, came closer to pos¬ sessing a veto—indeed, asserted that they did possess one—than we now like to think. What ultimately defeated them was the unity and strength of the governing Liberals, the impossibility of the King form¬ ing an alternative ministry, and a weakness of administrative power and even of military force that made it unthinkable for the Conser¬ vatives to resist the popular will as expressed in the 1906 election. Conversely, we easily forget the significant democratic aspects of the Bismarckian Reich.104 Had a unified opposition, possessing a clear majority among the German people and in the Reichstag, insisted on forming a government and backed the demand with a threat to refuse supply and, further, if such a government had thrown its full weight behind reform of the Prussian and imperial franchise, then the Kaiser and his Conservative allies would have found themselves hardpressed to resist and, had they tried, uncertain of the loyalties of the conscript army. What made the German Conservatives strong and what preserved the Reich's peculiar structures of governance was chiefly their opponents' disunity. Catholics despised Liberals and Socialists as anticlericals who had shown their true colors by sup¬ porting Bismarck's Kulturkampf; Socialists dismissed Catholics and Liberals as class enemies; Liberals saw Catholics and Socialists alike as agents of foreign powers (the Vatican, the revolutionary Interna¬ tional). Most profoundly of all. Catholics and Liberals joined Con¬ servatives in regarding Socialists with the terror and loathing that post-1948 European leaders reserved for Communists: the "Reds," everyone agreed, were so profoundly revolutionary as to be perma¬ nently koalitionsunfahig. This disunity, itself a product of Germany's rapid development, was reinforced by a Conservative control of the bureaucracy and the officer corps that gave German reformers less incentive than British 104 For one thing, its national franchise was significantly broader. While every adult German male could vote, even after the reforms of 1884 property qualifications excluded about one-third of British men. R. C. K. Ensor, England: 1870-1914. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), p. 88.

[94]

The Naval Race and Constitutional "Fitness"

ones to compromise and coalesce. With their seemingly permanent command of power and patronage, the resourceful Conservatives could usually entice coalition partners; at a minimum, they could divide and sabotage oppositional efforts. The policy of German ex¬ pansion kept their opponents off balance. The divisions of Wilhelmine society, then, served as both justifi¬ cation and recourse of the Conservative hegemony. Those divisions, embedded in a complex constitutional structure, in turn, resulted chiefly from Germany's belated and rapid modernization: neither an¬ cient prejudice nor recent injustice had yet had time to yield to any¬ thing like a "melting pot" of mutual interest or understanding. In this deeper sense, Germany's late arrival to commercial and industrial modernity determined its political and military failure.105 105 And as Joseph Schumpeter points out, Germany's atavistic social elements helped chart the course toward war. See Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: A. M. Kelly, 1951).

[95]

[5] Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoherence of Grand Strategy: The United States, 1938-1950 Arthur A. Stein

Great Powers in the international system exercise power and influ¬ ence beyond their own borders. Necessarily, they make commitments to others whose survival they find vital and procure the military capability not just to defend themselves, but also to meet any inter¬ national commitments they have made. For the United States, the transition from potential to full-fledged Great Power was delayed by domestic political constraints on military spending and on extending overseas commitments. Knowledge of these constraints, not typically discussed in international relations theory, is an essential prerequisite to understanding an otherwise inexplicable incoherence in U.S. grand strategy in the late 1930s and 1940s. In general, successful deterrence requires both commitment and capability. Capability, essential to credible threats of retaliation, must be matched by believable commitments and clear signals of desires and intentions. A strategy of deterrence cannot succeed if an adver¬ sary does not know how it is expected to behave and does not believe threats of retaliation. This is especially true if a state hopes to extend An earlier version was presented at the Conference on the Political Economy of Grand Strategy, UCLA, March 15-17, 1990. I offer my thanks also to conference par¬ ticipants, an anonymous referee, Amy Davis, and Robert Jervis for comments. My thanks also to Elizabeth Bailey, Alan Kessler, and Cherie Steele for research assistance; and to the Economics and Security Project of the Center for International Relations (funded by the Pew Memorial Trust) and to the Academic Senate of the University of California, Los Angeles.

[96]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

deterrence, to prevent attacks against others as well as against it¬ self.1 U.S. grand strategy in the twentieth century has been geared to maintaining the balance of power abroad and providing extended deterrence to others. In service of these objectives, the United States entered two world wars. Since 1945, it has maintained bases and stationed troops overseas and made extensive security commitments to other nations. Yet procuring the capability and making the commitments to extend deterrence overseas have stirred domestic opposition in a nation un¬ accustomed to sustaining sizable peacetime armies or joining alli¬ ances. This wariness found institutional support in the U.S. system of divided government, which separately locates responsibility for both capability and commitment. The executive branch procures, de¬ ploys, and integrates capability into operational plans, but Congress funds it. Presidents can, and have, made national commitments with¬ out congressional approval, but Congress retains the constitutional power to approve treaties and constrain commitments. Moreover, although the president extends U.S. commitments, it is the military that must create plans and request forces to fulfill them. There is nothing in the process that ensures a coherent grand strategy—one in which commitments and capabilities are matched. In this chapter I contrast U.S. grand strategy before World War II with that before the Korean War and argue that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were politically incapable of se¬ curing the requisites for extended deterrence until international crises tipped the political scales at home. Roosevelt and many members of his administration clearly understood the security challenge posed by Germany (and Japan) and expanded the nation's military to deal with the threat. Yet domestic political opposition prevented the adminis¬ tration both from making the military commitments that might have prevented war and, once hostilities broke out in Europe, from be¬ coming a cobelligerent until the United States was attacked. In con¬ trast, the Truman administration could extend peacetime security commitments to a host of countries, but found itself unable to procure the requisite military capability to fulfill those obligations until after the invasion of South Korea. In both cases, domestic politics underlay an incoherence in U.S. grand strategy that was resolved only by war. 1 For a review of empirical assessments of the requisites of successful deterrence see Jack Levy, “Quantitative Studies of Deterrence Success and Failure," in Perspectives on Deterrence, ed. Paul Stern, Robert Axelrod, Robert Jervis, and Roy Radner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 98-133.

[97]

Arthur A. Stein

The Contrasting Realist View

For realists, the core assumption of international politics is that states are first and foremost concerned with their own survival. Existing in an anarchic international environment, states adopt foreign and defense policies (and even domestic policies, for that matter) in order to ensure their security amid hostile and threatening outsiders. They necessarily focus on national power and especially on their own power relative to others'. They react to adverse changes in the balance of power by in¬ creasing their levels of mobilization or by finding allies. Such selfinterested and autonomous responses result in the emergence of an in¬ ternational balance of power.2 That balances of power recur and that their recurrence assures stability and peace are the core propositions of this dominant school in the study of international relations.3 Such a view of international relations presumes that states pursue security policies without any domestic complications, that they main¬ tain the balance of power via alignment or internal mobilization with¬ out domestic constraints on their responses to changes in the international environment. Any disequilibrium in the balance of power generates pressures that return the international system to equilibrium irrespective of institutional structures or politics within any nation. Yet balances sometimes fail to recur or do not do so readily. That is, states do not always respond to adverse changes in the balance of power. There are two ways in which Great Powers may respond inappropriately to international shifts in the balance of power: they may fail to alter either their international commitments or their ca¬ pability. And it is the very failure of states immediately to respond to the aggressive expansion of others that has led some international relations theorists to argue, seemingly contradictorily, that states must sometimes fight wars to restore the balance of power. These theorists do not, however, address the failure of the equilibrating process that leads to war. They do not analyze why states would not respond immediately and commensurately to adverse changes in the distri¬ bution of power, why self-interested nation-states do not always de¬ ploy sufficient capability to deter attack. Minimally, the failure of equilibrium to reemerge is also a failure of the imperatives of the system to determine fully the nature of state actions. 2 This is the field's equivalent to the invisible hand in economics—to the proposition that individual self-interest assures the maximal collective welfare. 3Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley,

1979)-

[98]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

The problem of war and the failure readily to reestablish an equi¬ librium balance of power for realist theory is akin to the problem of involuntary unemployment for economics. In a competitive market, prices are supposed to adjust constantly and so equilibrate supply and demand. Similarly, wages (the price of labor) should adjust to equilibrate supply and demand in the labor market, ensuring that there not be any involuntary unemployment. But since sustained involuntary unemployment does exist, the equilibrating mechanism must work imperfectly, at best. In international relations, prolonged departures from an equilibrium balance of power must also be ex¬ plained by some form of stickiness in the equilibrating process.4

The Problems of Over- and Underextension

Domestic political constraints and imperatives can affect both of the critical dimensions that underlie the grand strategy of a Great Power: the extension and retraction of international commitments and changes in the deployment of military capability sufficient to fulfill international commitments and assure the success of extended de¬ terrence. Since political constraints can operate differentially across these dimensions, they can generate incoherence in a state's grand strategy if commitments and capabilities are not fully synchronized. A Great Power is overextended when it extends commitments that it cannot support because of insufficient capability.5 This can occur when political elites are politically unconstrained from extending com¬ mitments or are even impelled to make them, while being econom-

4 In this chapter I argue that this stickiness is a function of domestic constraints on central decision makers. An alternative explanation for sustained departures and the failure of balancing stresses the problems posed by uncertainty and misperception. For an application of recent work in microeconomics to international relations, one that demonstrates the role of uncertainty in the failure to obtain the balancing predicted by realists, see Paul Papayoanou, "Economic Interdependence and the Balance of Power: The Strategy of Commitment and Great Power Politics" (Ph.D. diss.. University of California, Los Angeles, 1992), chap. 2. 5 Overextension can occur even when commitments and capabilities are in sync, as when states expand, but it may generate so many enemies in the process that they create their own self-encirclement. This is the classic case discussed in international relations theory in which expansion becomes self-defeating because of the counter¬ vailing balancing responses it generates. The second prototypical case of overextension is when states make commitments that they cannot fulfill. This can occur for geopolitical and technical reasons, because countries are in no position militarily to fulfill their obligations. Thus, for example, there was no physical way in which Britain could fulfill its guarantee to Poland in 1939 without obtaining the agreement of the Soviet Union. Similarly, the United States could not have made good its commitment to liberate Kuwait from Iraq in 1990-91 without the consent and support of Saudi Arabia.

[99]

Arthur A. Stein Table 5.1. Domestic constraints on commitments and capabilities Commitments Constrained Unconstrained

Constrained

Unresponsiveness to international events (1)

Overextension (2)

Capabilities

Unconstrained

Underextension (3)

Realism Extended deterrence (4)

ically or politically constrained from procuring the requisite capabil¬ ities to make good on those commitments. The possible asymmetry of commitments and capabilities leads to the four possible situations delineated in Table 5.1. The realist world of extended deterrence and smooth responses to international changes in the balance of power presumes that both commitments and capabilities are politically unconstrained (Cell 4). Overextension results where constraints exist on capability but not on commitments (Cell 2). Such situations can be dangerous for both revisionist and status quo states, which define interests they cannot credibly defend. In contrast, underextension occurs where commitments are con¬ strained and do not reflect capabilities and interests (Cell 3). Revi¬ sionist states so constrained do not challenge, and status quo states cannot extend deterrence. Most dangerous for status quo states (un¬ less revisionist states are similarly constrained) is when both com¬ mitments and capabilities are domestically constrained (Cell 1). Great Powers, especially on first achieving such status, on the one hand can be underextended, making insufficient commitments in re¬ lation to their power and interests. Critics of U.S. foreign policy have made such arguments about the interwar period. Mature Great Powers, on the other hand, are more likely to be¬ come overextended. The possibility that commitments and capabilities can become politically disjoined raises the prospects of good faith com¬ mitments that states could conceivably fulfill but that they are incapa¬ ble of fulfilling because of domestic political constraints. Assessments of U.S. grand strategy in the 1980s as overextended are of this charac¬ ter. The United States had commitments that exceeded its military and fiscal capabilities, and thus, many concluded, it should have re¬ trenched. No sustained analysis held that the United States could not fulfill its obligations. Rather, domestic political constraints suggested [100]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

that the capabilities would simply not be provided to fulfill the entire array of the nation's international commitments. Those who saw overextension took the constraints as fixed and suggested that commit¬ ments be appropriately trimmed. Their critics argued that the nation could afford its commitments and needed only to change its spending priorities and get its fiscal house in order. They argued, in effect, that the nation was not overcommitted but undermobilized.6 The argument developed below is that the United States was un¬ derextended prior to World War II and overextended in the early years of the Cold War. In the former era, domestic political constraints prevented commitments from matching capabilities and interests, whereas in the latter period, domestic political constraints prevented the procurement of the military capability to assure the fulfillment of military commitments. In both eras, domestic political constraints left U.S. policymakers unable to align commitments and capabilities.

U.S. Underextension: Neutrality and Preparedness in a World at War In the 1930s, U.S. policymakers responded to German and Japanese challenges to the existing international order with policies intended to constrain those nations' ambitions while still avoiding war.7 Al¬ though President Roosevelt secured a massive expansion of U.S. mil¬ itary capabilities, he was prevented by congressional legislation and public sentiment from making the kinds of commitments that might 6 The debate was triggered in 1988 with the publication of Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987). For critical assessments see, among others, Aaron L. Friedberg, "The Political Economy of Grand Strategy," World Politics 41 (April 1989): 381-406; and Charles A. Kupchan, "Empire, Military Power, and Economic Decline," International Security 13 (Spring 1989): 36-53. Others' assessments, typically critical of Kennedy, include Henry R. Nau, The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Joseph S. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990); and Richard N. Rosecrance, America's Economic Resurgence: A Bold New Strategy (New York: Harper and Row, 1990). 7This discussion draws especially on the following: Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford Uni¬ versity Press, 1979); William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937-1940 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952); William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953); C. A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain, and Appeasement, 1936-1939 (New York: St. Mar¬ tin's Press, 1981); David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance i93y~4i: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939 (New York: Pantheon, 1989). [lOl]

Arthur A. Stein

deter aggression. Roosevelt's immediate response was rhetorical and economic, imposing sanctions against Germany and Japan.8 Even as war approached. Congress enacted a series of neutrality laws that required the United States to institute a mandatory and nondiscriminatory arms embargo should war break out between other nations. Prevented from doing anything more, Roosevelt cautiously signaled the possibility of U.S. involvement in hopes of both deterring Hitler and maintaining British and French steadfastness. During the Czech crisis in 1938, even as FDR assured British Ambassador Sir Ronald Lindsay that the United States would give Britain limited support in the event of war, he also told Lindsay that disclosing the substance of their discussion could result in his impeachment.9 But as Lindsay explained to his superiors, the president's personal willingness to provide Britain everything but troops and loans was essentially im¬ material. What Britain actually received would depend on U.S. public opinion and domestic politics.10 Roosevelt also tried to create German doubts about the U.S. ded¬ ication to neutrality and even hinted at the possibility of U.S. inter¬ vention. In the middle of 1938, the navy held its annual fleet exercise in the Atlantic rather than in its usual Pacific venue. In September the United States established an Atlantic naval squadron, sending two of its warships to British ports. Yet Roosevelt had also to make gestures aimed at reassuring Americans that the nation would not go to war. The decision to send warships to Britain, for example, was followed by a denial that the United States was promoting a "stop Hitler movement."11 Throughout this period, Roosevelt conveyed mixed signals because he had multiple audiences. He wanted to use the possibility of U.S. involvement in a European war to deter further German aggression, he hoped to assure the British and French of U.S. support, and he 81 find the characterizations “noncommitment" and "anti-intervention" better than "isolationism," which is the standard historiographic label. As some have pointed out, the use of labels such as "isolationism" and "internationalism" itself adopts Roosevelt's framing of the debate during the 1930s and represents a political judgment (see David Green, Shaping Political Consciousness: The Language of Politics in America from McKinley to Reagan [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987]). 9Dallek, FDR and American Foreign Policy, pp. 164-65. 10 Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 34-35. Reynolds argues that British hopes for support in war were mixed with worries about U.S. reliability and fear of the liability of the United States as an ally. See also John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989). 11 MacDonald, U.S., Britain, and Appeasement, pp. 95, 97. Economic sanctions were invariably the easiest way politically to signal U.S. displeasure. For a brief compilation, see Frederick W. Marks III, Wind Over Sand: The Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), p. 131. [102]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence needed simultaneously to convince Americans and Congress that he would not lead them into the fray. FDR was as concerned about an insufficient capability to deter Hitler as he was worried about his inability to commit the United States. In 1938, after the Czech crisis, he complained that "I must have some¬ thing to back up my words. Had we had this summer 3000 planes and the capacity immediately to produce 10,000 per year, even though I might have had to ask Congress for authority to sell or lend them to the countries in Europe, Hitler would not have dared to take the stan he did."12 Despite the neutrality acts, he thought he could still have deterred Hitler had he possessed the requisite capability. Beginning in 1938, and accelerating late in that year, the United States began to increase its military spending. In the late fall, FDR undertook a major effort to rebuild U.S. defenses.13 The president saw the specter of war in Europe and wanted the United States to construct an adequate navy and air force before hostilities began. Roosevelt was able to secure increased capability by selling it as a purely defensive program, but he remained constrained from making any commitments to use it. Although those who supported neutrality legislation split on the question of increased defense spending and rearmament, they uniformly opposed U.S. involvement in foreign wars and wanted the nation to avoid entangling commitments. Some supported increased defense expenditures to augment the nation's security, but others opposed new appropriations for fear of increasing the chances of the nation's involvement in war. And although military spending requests were always approved, they invariably elicited congressional questions about the intentions and commitments of the United States. The president wanted to extend military commitments as well as to rearm, however, so his revision of the neutrality acts and rearma¬ ment were the twin focuses of his January 1939 state of the union address. He argued that repeal of the neutrality laws was central to any U.S. attempt to reassure the Allies and to deter Adolf Hitler from further aggression. Ironically, even as the international situation worsened, FDR grew politically weaker at home and less able to obtain changes in the nation's neutrality laws. In the latter half of his presumably lame12 Henry Morgenthau quoting FDR. John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of Urgency, 1938-194.1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), p. 49. 13 MacDonald, U.S., Britain, and Appeasement, argues that the United States shifted from a policy of appeasing Germany to one of containing it in October 1938, before Britain did, and was irritated by continued British appeasement early in 1939.

Arthur A. Stem

duck second term, he faced enormous domestic problems and con¬ stant political challenges. In the wake of the renewed economic de¬ cline of 1937-38 and following the crisis created by his plan to pack the Supreme Court, Roosevelt confronted an intransigent congres¬ sional opposition that had been strengthened by the 1938 election. Neutrality reform failed in Congress. Roosevelt's concern with the German challenge was also reflected in the evolution of U.S. war plans, which, as late as the mid-i930S, had still focused on the prospects of a war in the Pacific. As German aggression became increasingly evident, though, U.S. planners began to develop blueprints for a two-ocean war. By the spring of 1939 they had suggested giving priority to the Atlantic.14 The nature of the U.S. strategic problem changed with the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939. FDR could no longer hope to pre¬ vent war in Europe; only the character of eventual U.S. involvement remained uncertain. Domestic sentiment, although clearly sympa¬ thetic to the Allies, showed that people still favored keeping the coun¬ try out of war. Thus, when Roosevelt again decided to ask Congress to revise the nation's neutrality laws, he couched his request in terms of keeping the nation out of war. Although Congress repealed the em¬ bargo on weapons shipments to belligerents, it imposed cash and carry provisions, which denied credit to foreign buyers and required them to transport their weapons purchases in their own ships. Although Con¬ gress agreed to eschew strict neutrality, it would make no commitment to support the Allies by financing their purchases of U.S. military sup¬ plies. And by insisting that such goods be carried on foreign ships, it sought to keep the United States out of the war by insuring that there would be no pretext for firing on U.S. ships. The nation exchanged neutral noncommitment for nonbelligerency. The German attacks of spring and summer 1940 did increase the pace of U.S. rearmament. Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April and Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France in May. In August German bombers attacked Britain. Following the attack on France, Roosevelt made a special defense request of $1.2 billion. Within two weeks, he asked for an additional $1.3 billion. By midyear. Congress had provided $3 billion. Although the United States expanded its military arsenal in re¬ sponse, it refused to enter into military commitments. Throughout 14 James R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy: Anglo-American Naval Collaboration, 19371941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 37. But concrete steps to reflect changing assumptions had to be taken in secret. The resumption of naval staff conversations with Great Britain in early 1939, for example, took place in secret so as not to endanger the revision of neutrality legislation. [104]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

1940 the president was beseeched by the French and British not only for military equipment but also for a military pledge. With his nation under assault, the French premier told the U.S. ambassador that he would ask the U.S. president either to declare war against Germany or to announce "that the United States in defense of its vital interests could not permit the defeat of France and England." Since Roosevelt was hemmed in, he responded that he would provide all material possible but would make no military commitments. In one instance, he asked the British and French to keep secret his communications regarding what support the United States could provide, and he con¬ stantly stressed that his statements and messages had included "no implications of military commitments," which were the prerogative of Congress.15 Although Congress balked, FDR became bolder in circumventing the U.S. neutrality laws. Throughout 1940 and 1941, he sought po¬ litically acceptable ways to aid the Allies. In order to arrange a muchneeded transfer of destroyers to a cash-poor Britain, he handled the matter as an executive agreement.16 And since U.S. law prevented loans to belligerents, the presidential decree substituted basing rights for cash. The election of 1940 illuminated the degree to which the United States remained unprepared to go to war. Unlike many past elections in which foreign policy played no role at all, the U.S. relationship to the war in Europe played a pivotal role this time. The campaign forced Roosevelt to promise no greater involvement with the Allies.17 Although the election pitted against each other two internationalists whose parties had adopted noninterventionist platforms, foreign pol¬ icy came to dominate the campaign. Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate, began to emphasize isolationist themes. Fearing electoral defeat, he began to argue that Roosevelt's reelection would bring the United States into the war. The strategy seemed to work, for his standing in the polls surged, at one point coming within 4 percentage points of FDR. The Willkie strategy forced a shift in FDR's rhetorical position. The 15Dallek, FDR and American Foreign Policy, pp. 222, 230. 16Ironically, U.S. rearmament and concerns about self-defense and the needs of the U.S. military came into conflict with the objective of aiding the Allies. Isolationists who supported rearmament argued (and received support from some military quarters) that the United States could not militarily afford to sell desperately needed equipment and supplies to other nations whose continued survival was not assured in any case. As a result, the administration constantly had to reassure Congress that equipment sold to the Allies was outdated or surplus. 17 See the discussion of the platforms in Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, pp. 391-94.

[105]

Arthur A. Stein

president had simultaneously emphasized his commitment to build up the nation's defenses, his determination to keep the nation out of the war, his loathing of the aggressors, his sympathy for those at¬ tacked, and his rejection of appeasement. But pressed by party leaders to respond to Willkie, Roosevelt declared that "through all the years since 1935, there has been no entanglement and there will be no entanglement." On the possibility of war, he promised, "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."18 In 1941 the president continued publicly to limit U.S. commitments while looking for ways to aid the Allies and engaging secretly in joint military planning with Britain. In January he proposed the Lend-Lease Act, an arrangement by which the United States would lend Britain equipment that would be returned or compensated in kind when the war was over. This could be done without altering U.S. laws that prevented the extension of credit and required cash payments. As Congress debated and enacted the Lend-Lease Act, and while the administration repeatedly denied that it had made any plans to send U.S. troops abroad, the government secretly entered discussions with Britain and Canada to develop military strategy for waging the war. The Allies agreed on joint war plans to fight Germany first, even though the United States could not make an outright commitment to enter the war. By August 1941 FDR had met with Churchill to hammer out joint war objectives. Churchill very much wanted a U.S. commitment to enter the war. FDR refused the request and pointed to Congress as the stumbling block. Reporting to his Cabinet, Churchill noted that President Roosevelt "was skating on pretty thin ice in his relations with Congress," and that "if he were to put the issue of peace and war to Congress, they would debate it for three months." Rather, Churchill noted the president's view of the course he would take: "The President... said he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces. . . . Everything was to be done to force an 'incident.'... The President. . . made it clear that he would look for an 'incident' which would justify him in open¬ ing hostilities."19 18 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, pp. 399-400. FDR was neither the first nor the last president to play the peacemonger during an election and then lead the nation into war. Willkie understood what it all meant. "That hypocritical son of a bitch!" he fumed, "This is going to beat me." Quoted in Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 376. Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 214-15. The president had [106]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

The president opted for a policy of aid short of war and did not alter it even as the situation in Europe worsened. He never believed he could get a declaration of war and involve the United States. In October 1941, although many Americans had come to favor complete repeal of the neutrality laws, FDR submitted legislation that only sought a small change, approval for arming U.S. merchant ships. The revision passed, but by very narrow margins, winning in the House by a margin of eighteen votes. Even the event that precipitated U.S. entry into the European war did not do so immediately. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor trig¬ gered a White House debate about whether to declare war on both Germany and Japan or just against Japan. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt overruled some of his advisers and asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan alone. A U.S. declaration of war against Germany would await a German declara¬ tion of war against the United States. Germany obliged, and solved Roosevelt's problem.20 Hitler was not deterred by U.S. actions, and perhaps he could not have been. He certainly did not have a sophisticated understanding of the United States. But he was aware of U.S. domestic politics and the constraints imposed by public opinion and the neutrality acts. He thus dismissed U.S. statements and actions as "Bluffpolitik."21 Moreover, Hitler implicitly recognized the nature of the constraints operating on FDR and was guided by that understanding. Throughout 1940 and 1941, as the United States sent increasing amounts of equip¬ ment to Britain and as the U.S. Navy expanded its defensive opera-

even earlier told many of his staff that he believed that the United States would eventually join the war but that he wanted his hand forced. For a compilation of the evidence for Roosevelt's desire to be forced into war, see p. 347, n. 38. 20 Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, pp. 220-21. Much has been written on the German decision. See Saul Friedlaender, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939-1941 (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 306-9; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939-1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 137-31; Holger H. Herwig, "Prelude to Weltblitzkrieg: German's Naval Policy Towards the United States, 1939-1941," Journal of Modern History 43 (December 1971): 649-68; Ger¬ hard L. Weinberg, "Hitler's Image of the United States," American Historical Review 69 (July 1964): 1006-21; Milan Hauner, "Did Hitler Want a World Dominion?" Journal of Contemporary History 13 (January 1978): 15-32; Gerhard L. Weinberg, "Germany's Dec¬ laration of War on the United States: A New Look," in World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II, ed. Weinberg (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1981), pp. 75-95; and Herwig, "Miscalculated Risks: The German Declaration of War against the United States, 1917 and 1941," Naval War College Review 39 (Autumn 1986): 88-100. 21 MacDonald, U.S., Britain, and Appeasement, p. 181. See also James V. Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of the Second World War (London: The Bodley Head, 1968), p. 31. [107]

Arthur A. Stein Table 5.2. Expenditures on U.S. national defense, 1934-1941 (in millions)

Fiscal year" 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941

Total expenditures

National defense expenditures'1

7 A 05

480

7/376 8,880 8,001

534 764 844

7/409 8,707 8,998 12,711

934 1,140 1,580 6,301

National defense as a percentage of total 6.8 7-2 8.6 10.5 12.6 13.1 17.6 49.6

Annual percentage growth in national defense expenditures —

11.2 43-3 10.4 10.6 22.1 38.6 298.8

Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Budget, Budget of the United States Government, annual volumes, 1935/36-1942/43. Figures come from the general budget summary and sup¬ porting schedule 2. The figures for 1938 are estimates drawn from the 1938/39 annual. "Fiscal year ending June 30. The figures for 1939, for example, represent expenditures between July 1, 1938, and June 30, 1939. 'The figures for national defense spending exclude nonmilitary components of Navy and War Department expenditures. The War Department, for example, did work on rivers and harbors, as well as on flood control, none of which are included under national defense expenditures. Thus, for the years 1935-40, actual expenditures for the army and navy exceed those provided above. The figures for national defense include relevant expenditures by departments other than War and Navy and include defense aid expenditures such as Lend-Lease. In 1941 the proportion spent on national defense exceeded that expended by the War and Navy Departments.

tions in the North Atlantic, the German navy sought the freedom to treat the United States as the hostile belligerent they believed it to be. Yet Hitler steadfastly ordered German ships to avoid a confron¬ tation with the United States.22 He also responded mildly to increasing U.S. involvement. Germany did not protest congressional passage of Lend-Lease at all, and it never went so far as to break off diplomatic relations. Although Congress constrained U.S. involvement in the European war, it supported Roosevelt's efforts to build the nation's military. From a low point in 1934,23 military spending grew annually and quite dramatically, by double-digit percentages for the remainder of the decade and beyond. Even in fiscal 1938, when overall government spending declined, the national defense budget grew by more “Compton, Swastika and the Eagle, chap. 10; Trefousse, Germany and American Neu¬ trality; Herwig, Politics of Frustration: The United States in German Naval Planning, 1889194.1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976). 21 Based on army, navy, and air force expenditures as a percentage of the federal total for the years 1789 to 1970. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (1976), data series Y457, Y458, Y459, Y460. [108]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

Table 5.3. Presidential requests and congressional dispositions, War Department, 1934-1941 Column A

Fiscal year" 1934

1935 1936 1937

1938 1939 1940 1941

President's budget estimate 281 289 320 391 429 619 869 11,208

Column B

Column C

Appropriations'7

Appropriations and allotments from emergency funds

281 284 402 439

514

617 861

648 880

13,469'

Percentage of change, col. A to col. C

0.2 -1.8 12.0 2.8 2.4 -0.3 -0.9 20.2

34.6 i-3 15.0

378d

293 369 420

359

Percentage of change," col. A to col. B

13,469

7-4

19.9 4.8 1.2 20.2

Source: Congressional Record, June 23, 1942, pp. 5493-5494.

"Fiscal years ending June 30. Figures are rounded to millions of dollars. '’Includes annual War Department bill, contract authorizations, and supplemental appropriations. "Percentage changes are calculated on full figures, prior to rounding. Figures are solely those of the War Department and do not include the Navy Department. dThe president impounded $62.6 million of this amount, leaving $315 million appropriated. "The 1941 appropriation figures are much higher than 1941 expenditures because of various supplemental and different accounting definitions.

than 10 percent. Overall, spending on national defense went from less than 7 percent of government spending in 1934 to more than 13 percent in fiscal 1939, more than 17 percent in 1940, and to almost 30 percent in fiscal 1941 (see Table 5.2). In fact. Congress did more than acquiesce to the president's desires; often, it went beyond them. In 1934, when so little spending went to military purposes, Capitol Hill was prepared to spend more than the president, who impounded over 16 percent of that year's appro¬ priations for the War Department. From fiscal 1936 on. Congress not only acceded to presidential requests but often increased them (see Table 5.3). These extensive increases in defense spending provided the United States the wherewithal to undertake a major buildup of power that quickly led to its outstripping the efforts of its prospective enemies. It was able, for example, to respond so emphatically to Japan's grow¬ ing naval strength that by June 1939 it had already put a halt to the relative slide in U.S. tonnage and had begun to increase its naval superiority over Japan once again (see Table 3.4). The growth of U.S. air power was even more stunning. In 1933 the

Arthur A. Stein Table 5.4. Total tonnage of major combatant naval vessels Year0

United States

British Empire

1935

1,084,910 1,080,715 1,083,330 1,100,890 1,240,040 1,310,260

1,188,284 1,224,329 1,216,398 1,295,303

1936 1937 1938

1939 1940

L38L373 1,308,019

Japan

Japan/U.S.

748,997

.69

772,797

•72

745,594 918,499 985,394

.69 .83

1,016,574

.78

•79

Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1935-1940. Unfortunately, subse¬ quent reports did not continue to provide these comparisons. “Data as of June 30 of each year. Note: The vessel categories included are those for which there were negotiated limits in the Washington and London naval treaties. They include capital ships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. Source:

United States produced less than half as many military aircraft as Japan and less than one-sixth as many as Germany (see Table 5.5). But before becoming a belligerent at the end of 1941, the United States was already outproducing both nations in military aircraft, while still retaining an extensive commercial aircraft production capacity that it could readily convert to wartime purposes. By 1941, without even embarking on a wartime mobilization, the United States had acquired a military production capacity that ex¬ ceeded that of Germany and Japan combined. In terms of mobilized military capacity. World War II was effectively over before Pearl Harbor. Congressional isolationists did not retard the nation's own military preparedness campaign, but they were able both to prevent U.S. commitment before the outbreak of war in Europe and, later, to con¬ strain the nature of U.S. involvement. For until it declared war, the United States could play the role of virtual cobelligerent, with co¬ ordinated strategy and war aims, but it could not become militarily involved. During the prewar years. President Roosevelt's dilemma grew out of the peculiar constraints under which U.S. policy operated. Re¬ armament and preparedness could obtain political backing at home, but U.S. commitments of support and assistance could not. After war broke out in Europe, the constraints loosened, the pace of rearmament quickened, and assistance short of war became possible. With every nation that fell to the dictatorships, the United States could and did do more, until it essentially pursued an undeclared war against Ger¬ many. But more direct involvement, and even a public acknowledg-

[no]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence Table 5.5. Aircraft production. United States, Germany, and Japan, 1935-1942 U.S. military

U.S. total (civilian and military)

Year

Japan

Germany

1935

952 1,181 1,511 3,201

3/183

459

1,710

5,112 5,606

1,141

3/Oio 3,773

5/235

1,800

4/467

8,295 10,247 11,766

2/195 19/433

15/409

47,836

1936

1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942

4,768 5,088 8,861

949

6,019

3,623 5,856 12,804 26,277 47,836

Germany: Richard J. Overy, The Air War, 1939-1945 (New York: Europa Publications, 1980), pp. 21, 150. For some years, Overy has slightly modified the figures provided by the Strategic Bombing Survey. Care should be taken in using Overy's tables. The two tables in the book that provide cross-national data on aircraft production use different U.S. data. One table, for the years 1932-39, uses U.S. figures for pro¬ duction of military aircraft. The second table, for the years 1939-45, uses the U.S. figures for total aircraft production, both civilian and military. Not surprisingly, there¬ fore, the two tables give quite different figures for U.S. aircraft production in 1939. These two tables in Overy's book are reproduced by Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 324, 354. U.S.: Rudolf Modley and Thomas J. Cawley, eds. Aviation Facts and Figures: 1953 (Washington, D.C.: Lincoln Press, for the Aircraft Industries Association of America, Sources:

1953), P- 24Japan: The Japanese Aircraft Industry (United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Aircraft Division, May 1947), p. 155. Also see p. 1. The data seem to be for total aircraft pro¬ duction, although that is not altogether clear. The impression is that 1941 and 1942 data are solely for military aircraft production. The data include the production of gliders. Still another source suggests that the 1939-42 figures for both Germany and Japan are for military aircraft, see Irving Brinton Holley, Jr., Buying Aircraft: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces, United States Army in World War II, Special Studies (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, 1964), p. 555. Note: The figures for 1935-38 for Germany and Japan may include some production for civilian use. The sources are simply unclear on this point.

merit of the extent of actual cooperation, still proved politically impossible. Indeed, preparedness measures adopted even following the out¬ break of war in Europe were considered politically marketable only on the grounds that they would keep the nation out of war. In fall 1940, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which authorized conscription. But the law stipulated that draftees could not serve outside the Western Hemisphere except in U.S. territories. In the middle of 1941 the administration asked Congress to extend the period of service from twelve to eighteen months. The House agreed by just one vote. Despite its desire to lift the ban on service outside the [111]

Arthur A. Stein

Western Hemisphere, however, the administration never even put that change to a vote. Opposition to the removal of this prohibition was too great. In short, preparedness could proceed only if con¬ strained, and only if conjoined with assurances that the United States was not being taken into the war. The result was that U.S. isolationism in the 1930s represented involvement without commitment. The nation often took clear po¬ sitions, undertook diplomatic initiatives, and used economic in¬ struments to punish and reward. As a description of this policy, "isolationism" is a misnomer. The heart of what is typically called "isolationism" was a consistent unwillingness to extend security com¬ mitments to defend vital interests overseas and deter threats to those interests. The United States procured the capability to meet the in¬ ternational challenges of the late 1930s, but was never able to make the commitments to deter nor to become openly involved once de¬ terrence failed.24 Shifts in the international balance of power were met with increased military mobilization at home but without the extension of military commitments. U.S. underextension, the incoherence of U.S. grand strategy, is explained by the domestic political constraints under which it was formulated. President Roosevelt opposed the dictatorships and wanted to commit U.S. power to defend former allies in order to deter Germany. But U.S. commitment was rendered impossible by political constraints imposed by Congress. The United States developed the military capability to project power overseas, but could not make cred¬ ible commitments. Even after war broke out, the nature and terms of U.S. assistance were shaped by congressional constraints rather than by executive judgment and military assessment. Only after it had been directly attacked and after war had been declared upon it could the na¬ tion align its commitments with its capability and interests.

Postwar Overextension: Demobilization and Cold War Commitments U.S. grand strategy following World War II was quite different than it had been during the 1930s. The nation was politically prepared to play a global role that involved extensive international commitments; 24 Not only is isolationism then a misnomer, but the scholarly debate is miscast. Those who argue that Roosevelt was constrained by domestic politics are correct, but only as regards U.S. commitments. In contrast, those who argue that Roosevelt ac¬ complished a great deal and could have done more are correct, but only as regards U.S. capability. Presidential leadership was eminently evident in U.S. preparedness and rearmament, but it most patently failed and was constrained by domestic politics on the dimension of commitment.

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

ironically, however, it debated them less extensively than it did the procurement of new capabilities. Even as it accepted the role of Great Power, the country remained unwilling to pay for a military estab¬ lishment capable of fulfilling its growing obligations. In the initial years of the Cold War, political constraints prevented the nation from procuring military capabilities congruent with its increasing global commitments, and led to a grand strategy of overextension for the United States.25 During World War II, it became clear that the United States would have extensive military commitments in the postwar world, ones that would entail substantial capabilities.26 Minimally, the war's end would leave the United States with occupation duty in the defeated nations and, therefore, with forces based around the world.27 Heightened military commitments and the need for a substantial military capability were caused by growing tensions with the Soviet Union. The policy of containment, although often described as a po¬ litical and economic policy, was, in fact, a consensus policy that re¬ flected the views of those in the Department of State, the White House, and the military. Even before the circulation of George Kennan's famous 1946 telegram on the nature of Soviet expansionism, military strategists had begun planning for a possible war with the USSR.28 By the middle of 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Kennan, describing a Soviet Union bent on "eventual world domination." As a result, they advocated the development of an immediately usable military force—one that did not require mobilization time—as a "de25 This discussion draws especially on the following: James F. Schnabel, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, vol. 1: 1945-1947 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1979); Kenneth W. Condit, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, vol. 2, 1947-1949 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1979); Walter S. Poole, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, vol. 4, 1950-1952 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1979); Steven L. Rearden, The Formative Years, 1947-1950, vol. 1, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office, 1984); and Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). See also John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 26 On the military side, see Michael S. Sherry, Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941-45 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), and es¬ pecially Melvyn P. Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48,“ American Historical Review 89 (April 1984): 346-81. 27 This would require obtaining overflight rights as well as basing rights around the world. 28 The evolution of U.S. war plans during this period is detailed in Steven T. Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950 (New York: Garland, 1988)

Arthur A. Stein

terrent" to Soviet aggression.29 The State Department agreed that the country had to rebuild militarily so that it could display firmness and resolve in dealing with Soviet expansion. The need for overseas commitments and military forces was re¬ inforced by new technical challenges that also shaped U.S. grand strategy. No longer could the nation rely on its relative geographic isolation and its allies to give it time to mobilize for war. Rather, the nature of new weapons—missiles and atomic bombs—mandated overseas bases and a forward military posture. Because missiles would not soon have extensive range, the nation would need bases from which to launch them. At the same time, the United States had to keep any potential enemy's weapons as far as possible from U.S. shores. These dual requirements, the Joint Chiefs declared in the fall of 1945, required "forces and installations disposed in an outer pe¬ rimeter of bases." Foreign policy could no longer be based on "long term potential"; mobilization might take too long for the nation "to avert disaster in another war."30 Ironically, the need to maintain a sizeable military establishment developed even before the end of the rapid demobilization that fol¬ lowed World War II. But as the nation's policymakers envisioned an expansive role for the United States in the postwar era and as they came to see an implacable rival bent on world domination, they bowed to public pressure to bring the boys home. The U.S. armed forces, which slightly exceeded 12 million at the end of June 1945, dropped to just under 3 million a year later. Congress allowed the Selective Service Act to expire at the end of March 1947, and by June 30, fewer than 1.6 million served. Not surprisingly, defense budgets shrank concomitantly, from $42 billion for fiscal year 1946 to $14 billion for fiscal 1947. At the same time, the purchasing power of those fewer dollars declined, and the administration tried to combat the substantial postwar inflation by reducing spending even more. Military expenditures dropped from a full 37.4 percent of GNP at their height, in fiscal 1944, to just 4.4 percent of GNP in fiscal 1948, an even lower proportion than the 5.4 percent spent on rearmament in fiscal 1941.31 29 Schnabel, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945-1947, pp. 103-8, 163-64. This as¬ sessment of Soviet objectives came in response to a request from the White House. Clark Clifford and George Elsey expanded on the Joint Chiefs' report and concluded that “the United States should maintain military forces powerful enough to restrain the Soviet Union and to confine Soviet influence to its present area." The CliffordElsey report is in Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), pp. 417-82. 30 Schnabel, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945-1947, pp. 138, 148, 90-92. 31 Rearden, Formative Years, 1947-1950, p. 310.

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

Overall, domestic political pressures had brought a speedier de¬ mobilization than the armed services thought wise. Yet, Secretary of State James Byrnes complained, many of those who wanted rapid demobilization also pressed for a tough line on the Soviet Union. Drawing the contrast with Theodore Roosevelt's injunction, he com¬ plained that his critics wanted him "to speak loudly and carry a twig."32 Ironically, as U.S. capability shrank, world events and U.S. re¬ sponses to them generated new security commitments. In March 1947, following Britain's announcement that it was withdrawing troops from Greece, President Truman asked Congress for aid to both Greece and Turkey. Late that year, Truman approved an official statement of U.S. policy declaring that "the security of the Eastern Mediterra¬ nean and of the Middle East is vital to the security of the United States."33 But throughout 1947 and into early 1948 the military held that it could not defend these newly defined U.S. interests. Already over¬ extended, the nation could not make new commitments without in¬ creased appropriations. If additional forces proved necessary, partial mobilization or compulsory military service would be required.34 In 1948 the Joint Chiefs responded similarly to discussions about the possibility of a U.S. association with the European nations (United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) that had joined in a treaty of mutual defense known as the Brussels Pact. Since the nation did not have the capabilities essential for existing national objectives, the chiefs argued, new military commitments should be eschewed until the armed forces were strengthened. But congressional actions reduced the nation's military establish¬ ment. It reduced the president's fiscal 1948 defense budget by almost 10 percent. With the end of the draft, the military's personnel strength even fell below authorized levels. The administration responded to congressional requirements and submitted a fiscal 1949 budget further cutting defense spending. The administration also called for a 13 percent reduction from the previous year's military manpower ceiling. Yet relations with the Soviets were worsening and the inadequacy of U.S. forces was becoming ever more apparent. In March 1948 a war scare led Truman to ask Congress for a supplemental defense¬ spending request of just over $3 billion. Less than the $8.8 billion the military wanted, the figure was selected to ensure that the fiscal 1950

32 Schnabel, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945-1947, pp. 220. 33Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1947-1949, p. 26. ^Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1947-1949, pp. 18, 26, 43-44, 48.

Arthur A. Stein

and 1951 budgets remained in balance.35 Even in the midst of crisis, political constraints prevented fulfilling the nation's military com¬ mitments. Growing worries about the Soviet threat generated a series of stra¬ tegic reassessments; all reaffirmed earlier conclusions. An early 1948 National Security Council paper on U.S. interests and Soviet policy (NSCy), for example, described the "ultimate objective" of the Soviet Union as "domination of the world." In response, it held, the United States should strengthen its armed forces and support friendly nations militarily should they face aggression. A slightly later document (NSC20/3) presented a similar view. "Within the foreseeable future," it judged, "the greatest single danger" to the nation lay in "the will and ability of the leaders of the USSR to pursue policies which threaten the security of the United States." Although it did not see war as imminent, this analysis stressed the Soviets' ability to grab control of Western Europe and the Middle East. Given that reality, U.S. objec¬ tives should have been to develop adequate military forces to deter Soviet aggression and to fulfill military commitments.36 The Joint Chiefs responded to these general statements, and to a group of more specific position papers, by reiterating its view that the nation, already vastly overcommitted, would simply not be able to fulfill its military obligations "either promptly or effectively." Hence, it emphasized the need to match commitments with capabilities. Indeed, in this context, the military continually underlined the im¬ portance of avoiding still further commitments. The Joint Chiefs ac¬ cepted the logic of collective defense, but reacted uneasily to planning for the soon-to-be-established North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and held that "its scope should not be such as to result in undue disparity between our commitments and our present and pro¬ spective strength." Despite the military's wariness, however, the na¬ tion did, for the first time in its history, enter a nonhemispheric peacetime alliance. In joining the new organization at its inception in 1949, the United States pledged to maintain its capacity to resist mil¬ itary attack and to use armed force to aid any ally that came under assault.37 35 The internal administration debate about the size and composition of the supple¬ mental is detailed in Rearden, Formative Years, 1947-1950, chap. 11. %Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1947-1949, pp. 216, 222, 224-25. 3 Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1947-1949, pp. 377, 381. Joining NATO led to a shift in U.S. war plans. Prior plans had presumed that Europe could not be defended, but that Allied forces could retake the Continent as they had in World War II. After the creation of NATO, however, U.S. war planners sought to establish the [116]

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

Even as the nation's leaders accepted both the basic view of the Soviets as expansionist and that assessment's bleak ramifications for U.S. security, and even as the nation increased its overseas defense commitments in response, the short-lived rearmament of 1948 gave way to renewed economy efforts. President Truman instructed Sec¬ retary of Defense James Forrestal to develop a defense program cost¬ ing less than $14.5 billion for fiscal 1950. But the Joint Chiefs could not agree on how to allocate such a budget, which it considered too low to ensure the nation's security. "Military considerations alone" would require $29 billion, "minimum necessary readiness" would necessitate $23.6 billion, maintaining fiscal 1949 force levels would take $18.6 billion, and the smallest sum on which the Joint Chiefs of Staff could agree, after great pressure, came to $16.9 billion.38 The entire Defense Department budget process went for naught, however, and the administration submitted the president's original figure. Indeed, the political pressures to reduce defense spending were evident in Congress and reflected in White House actions. The pres¬ ident named the more budget-minded Louis Johnson to replace De¬ fense Secretary Forrestal and instructed the services to prepare a fiscal 1951 budget of $13 billion.39 Congress reduced the president's fiscal 1950 request, one that the Joint Chiefs had already found inadequate, given the nation's commitments and war plans. The president went them one better and announced that he would not even spend all that Congress had authorized. Shortly after submitting the 1951 budget. Defense Secretary Johnson told the military that its plans for 1952 should be based on the same amount, $13 billion. Congressional pressures to cut spending were accepted and then internalized by the White House, and they were translated into demands that the military submit budgets with politically selected ceilings. As a result, military strength in June 1950 matched the low point it had reached in 1947, when the demobilization from World War II ended. While defense expenditures shrank, however, world events had put new pressures on this limited budget. In fall 1949 both the Soviet Union's successful detonation of an atomic device, which ended the U.S. monopoly on atomic weapons, and the Communist victory in

requisites for a forward defense in Europe. But given budgetary constraints, such a defense would not be possible without West German rearmament, which the Joint Chiefs began to advocate. Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950, chap. 6. 3MRearden, Formative Years, i94y-i950, pp. 343-51. 39 Johnson was extremely ambitious and hoped to use fiscal stringency to catapult him into the presidency. See David Callahan, Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), p. 102.

Arthur A. Stein

the Chinese Civil War served both to highlight the apparent extent of the threats against which the United States would have to protect itself and its allies and also to illuminate the need for a larger defense budget. Against this backdrop, U.S. policymakers again reevaluated U.S. policy and strategy. The result, a National Security Council doc¬ ument known as NSC68, has come to be considered a hallmark of the Cold War. Yet much of it merely reproduced earlier evaluations of Soviet objectives and potential U.S. responses. Indeed, NSC68 included portions of the earlier NSC20/4, which it was intended to revise, and—aside from its exceptionally fervent tone—it differed from earlier analyses only by finding the Soviet threat to be "more immediate than had previously been estimated."40 In addition to its assessment of Soviet policy, NSC68 also discussed U.S. capabilities and offered a prescription. Here, too, there were similarities and differences from earlier analyses. On the one hand, NSC68 reiterated the concern with the "sharp disparity between our actual military strength and our military commitments." The key shift here from earlier NSC documents came with NSC68's call for a "con¬ certed buildup" that would be so costly as to "involve significant domestic financial and economic adjustments"—including reductions in nondefense expenditures and an increase in taxes. Unambiguously articulating its position on the relative importance of military consid¬ erations, it judged that "budgetary considerations will need to be subordinated to the stark fact that our very independence as a nation may be at stake."41 Truman deferred action on NSC68 pending further analysis of its budgetary and economic implications. Requesting assessments from the Bureau of the Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers, among others, the president would not, he said, "buy a pig in a poke."42 NSC68 did not emerge uncriticized, and the president let its recommendations sit unheeded until after the outbreak of the Korean War. Then, in September 1950, he approved the document. 40 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 287. 41 Foreign Relations of the U.S., 1950, pp. 261, 290, 285. The text of NSC68 appears on pp. 234-92. When NSC68 was circulated for comment, the Joint Chiefs used the op¬ portunity to return to their 1948 requests. Rearden, Formative Years, 1947-1950, pp. 53435. The document, quite purposely, did not provide any concrete figures. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 374, states that this “was not an oversight." Estimates ranged from the $17-18 billion range to the $35-30 billion range. These figures come from Schilling, Hammond, and Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets, p. 321. Paul Nitze, “The Development of NSC 68," International Security 4 (Spring 1980): 170-76, puts it at $35-40 billion (p.

173)42 Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1950-1952, p. 15.

Domestic Constraints and Extended Deterrence

Indeed, the Korean War led to the dramatic growth in U.S. defense spending envisioned in NSC68, and so to the alignment of U.S. ca¬ pabilities with commitments. Within half a year. President Truman submitted three supplemental requests for defense spending and one for military assistance. Defense spending increased from $14,258 bil¬ lion in fiscal 1950 to $53,208 billion in fiscal 1951 to $65,992 billion in fiscal 1952.43 Alone, NSC68, would not have brought the growth of U.S. defense spending any more than had its predecessors. Postwar crises had led to small increments, but never enough even to sustain spending lev¬ els, much less bring them to the point required by U.S. commitments. But war swept away the political constraints to dramatic defense¬ spending increases.44 Domestic considerations played a key role in shaping the immediate postwar military capabilities of the United States, and, as a result, had great bearing on strategy as well. U.S. military requirements were not primarily driven by international threats or considerations. Rather, do¬ mestic imperatives were preeminent: the desire to bring soldiers home and resume a peacetime existence and the need to reduce the burden of military expenditures and balance the federal budget. In effect, the na¬ tion had taken a calculated risk. It made and sustained a series of stra¬ tegic commitments without providing the means to keep them. And the ramifications of that failure were far-reaching. Indeed, the gap between the nation's defense obligations and the resources actually provided to the military constantly frustrated U.S. postwar strategic planners. The Joint Chiefs of Staff faced what one analyst calls a "continuing predicament"—the need to develop strat¬ egies that would allow the military "to meet expanding commitments with static and insufficient forces."45 And, as strategists groped for ways to deal with the budgetary constraints imposed on them, they abandoned and revised war plans. As a result of insufficient funding, the military wanted the nation 43 Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950, p. 139. Military frugality was not the only sacrifice to the Korean War. In September 1931 the president asked for and received the resignation of Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, the man most associated with the economy campaign. Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1950-1952, pp. 60-62. 44 For discussions of the effects of the Korean War, see Rearden, Formative Years, 194J-1950, p. 536; Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950, p. 139; and Robert Jervis, "The Impact of the Korean War upon the Cold War," Journal of Conflict Resolution 24 (De¬ cember 1980): 563-92. One scholar supports this conclusion by comparing the force requirements tentatively proposed for the fiscal 1952 budget immediately before the outbreak of the Korean War with the substantially larger force projections approved at the end of the year after the outbreak of war. See Poole, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1950-1952, p. 71. 4ee also domestic constraints; economic constraints Portugal, 51, 55 Posen, Barry, 6, 14, 34, 123, 128-29, 154, 164, 179-80, 188 [228]

Index postrealism, 156-57, 167, 170, 176-77. See also realism Prague, 134, 137, 140, 148, 150 Prestowitz, Clyde, 201 primordial, 182, 184-88, 198-99 princes, 26-27, 30 protectionism, 73, 78, 220 Prussia, 35, 37, 43, 57, 74-76, 78, 82, 93-94, 220 Rathenau, Emil, 78, 80 rational choice, 7, 222 Reagan, Ronald, 23, 34, 54-55, 102, 155, 158, 165-66, 169, 175-76, 201-2 realism, 3-14, 16-21, 23-26, 29, 31, 46, 49, 51-52, 56, 61-62, 98-100, 124-25, 127-29, 135, 150, 152-53, 156-57, 15960, 162-70, 176-77, 179-81, 188, 200-4, 206, 223. See also neorealism; post¬ realism; structural realism rearmament, 18, 103-5, 110, 112, 114, 116-17, 121-22, 127, 133-37, 139, 141-43, 164, 167, 171, 206 reciprocity, 170-74, 176-78, 202 Reichstag, 37, 44, 74-77, 81, 94 republics, 26-27, 31-32, 188. See also liberal states restraint, 19, 35, 79, 93, 155, 157, 160, 168, 170-73, 176 retrenchment, 19, 154-55, 157-61, 164-66, 171-72, 177 Reynolds, David, 14, 101-2, 106-7, 13° Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 145 Ritchie, Charles, 86 Romania, 127, 129-30, 133, 140, 143-44, 147, 194-95 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 16, 97, 101-8, 110, 112, 122, 136, 138, 143, 146 Rosecrance, Richard, 8-10, 25, 61-62, 101, 132, 162, 181, 215 Royal Navy, 83, 88, 92, 133, 137, 141 Ruggie, John Gerard, 25 Russia, 11, 19, 37-38, 66, 84-85, 88, 179, 205, 216; socialists in, 41-45 Schumpeter, Joseph, 95, 217 second image, 5, 8, 13, 65, 206 Second International, 35, 38-39 security competition, 190, 198 security dilemma, 8, 14, 180 Security Treaty (U.S.-Japan), 210-14 Selborne, First Ford of the Admiralty, 84, 85, 87-88 Selective Service Act, 111, 114 self-encirclement 99. See also encirclement; overexpansion [229]

self-help, 11. See also realism Serbia, 40-42, 46, 179, 187, 194 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 161 Silver, Robert, 134 Simon, Sir John, 142, 149 Slovaks, 191-92 Snyder, Jack, 5, 14, 58, 77, 123-24, 126, 156, 159, 170, 173, 181, 183, 197-99, 203-6 Social Democratic Party (SPD) (Germany), 35, 38, 40, 43-44, 46 socialists, 23, 34-42, 44-47, 49, 53, 76, 79, 82, 210, 218, 220 Southeast Asia, 202 South Korea, 97, 120, 122-23, 2o8, 217, 219 Spain, 26, 29-30, 51 Sparta, 26, 78 Stalin, Josef, 49, 52, 128, 130, 138, 145-46, 150, 152, 196, 208 Stein, Arthur A., 3, 6, 10, 25, 125, 164 stickiness, 13, 99 Streit, Clarence, 34 structural realism, 6-8, 13, 24-25, 29, 46, 51, 201, 223. See also realism Sudetenland, 132, 140 survival, 7, 12-13, 24, 83, 96, 98, 105, 155, 180, 198, 215 Switzerland, 127, 139, 202 system transformation, 10, 48, 56-57 tariff reform, 86-87 tariffs, 74, 76, 78-80, 86, 90, 220 taxation, 15, 70, 75, 86-87, 9°, 92, 136, 164, 193 taxes, 30, 70, 74, 81-84, 86-87, 90-93, 118, 136 Tewfik, 28-29, 31, 47 third image, 5, 65 threat, 4-5, 11, 15, 18, 21, 27-28, 42, 4445/ 50, 55/ 57-58, 61, 79, 84, 87, 89, 92, 94, 97, 116, 118, 121, 125, 129, 139, 142-43, 157, 162-65, 167-72, 175, 177, 188-89, 193~94/ 200 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 66, 78, 80-81, 83 Tolstoy, Leo, 60 trading state, 9-10, 13, 61, 181, 209, 214-15, 222 Treasury, 82-83, 86, 131, 135-37, M2, 151

Trofimenko, Genrikh, 175 Truman, Harry S., 16, 50, 97, 115, 117-19, 122 Turkey, 115., 122 Ukraine, 127, 152, 188, 190, 195 uncertainty, 27, 56, 99, 166

Index underbalancing, 21. See also balancing underextension, 99, 101, 112 unitary actor, 36, 156 United Nations, 52, 54, 195, 207, 212 United States, 4, 6, 13-16, 18-19, 22-23, 34, 37, 49, 51-54, 56-59, 60-61, 78, 85, 96-97, 99-100, 123, 193; and early Cold War, 112-22; and Japan, 201-4, 206, 208-16, 219, 222, 223; and the Soviet Union, 154-58, 161-66, 168-78; pre-World War II, 101-12, 125, 130, 132, 135-36, 138, 141-43, 146, 149, 151 USSR, 4, 6, 11, 14, 16-19, 23-24, 37, 179-81, 183-90, 192-97, 206, 223; and the Cold War, 49-59, 99, 113-18, 12021; grand strategy of, 154-77; Pre_ World War II, 125, 127-28, 130-32, 134, 138, 144-53 Van Evera, Stephen, 8, 14, 34, 180, 183-84, 189, 193, 195, 198 van Wolferen, Karel, 210-11 Vietnam syndrome, 163 Vietnam War, 201, 212 virtu, 27-29, 31 Walt, Stephen M., 6, 28, 162 Waltz, Kenneth, 5, 6, 9-11, 24, 27, 36,

49/ 51/ 53/ 56-57/ 59-6o, 62, 98, 157-62, 167, 206 war, 3, 12, 16, 19, 21, 39, 43, 101, 165, 168, 188-90; of attrition, 16, 134-35, 138, 142-43, 151; hegemonic, 57-58; long-term, 134, 136, 151; preventive, 125, 163-67, 171, 176. See also Boer War; Gulf War; Korean War; Vietnam War; World War I; World War II Watt, Donald Cameron, 101, 129, 138, 145/ *48 Western Europe, 12, 38, 44, 72, 116, 122, 127, 186, 209-10 West Germany, 117, 196. See also Germany Wilhelm II, 14, 37, 43-44, 66, 70, 74, 76-82, 93-94 Willkie, Wendell, 105-6 World War I, 3, 14, 35, 39, 41-42, 60, 74, 205 World War II, 4, 14, 49, 54, 59, 97, 107, 110-11, 114, 116-17, 121, 128, 187, 195, 211, 214, 216 Yeltsin, Boris, 56, 155, 190, 194-95 Yoshihito, 205-6 Yugoslavia, 16, 55, 57, 133, 143, 180, 194 zero-sum, 58, 187

[230]

Cornell Studies in Security Affairs edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt

Strategic Nuclear Targeting, edited by Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, by Michael A. Barnhart The German Nuclear Dilemma, by Jeffrey Boutwell Flying Blind: The Politics of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Program, by Michael L. Brown Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service, by Eliot A. Cohen Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria, 1945-1955, by Audrey Kurth Cronin Military Organizations, Complex Machines: Modernization in the U.S. Armed Services, by Chris C. Demchak Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debate, edited by Lynn Eden and Steven E. Miller Public Opinion and National Security in Western Europe, by Richard C. Eichenberg Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies, by Matthew Evangelista Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States, by Peter Douglas Feaver Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Foreign Policy, 1919-1926, by John Robert Ferris A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacekeeping at the Korean Armistice Talks, by Rosemary Foot The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 19501953, by Rosemary Foot The Best Defense: Policy Alternatives for U.S. Nuclear Security from the 1950s to the 1990s, by David Goldfischer House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail, by Colin S. Gray The Soviet Union and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons in Europe, 1969-1987, by Jonathan Haslam The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934-1938, by Jiri Hochman The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? edited by David Holloway and Jane M. O. Sharp The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, by Robert Jervis

The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, by Robert Jervis The Vulnerability of Empire, by Charles A. Kupchan Nuclear Crisis Management: A Dangerous Illusion, by Richard Ned Lebow The Search for Security in Space, edited by Kenneth N. Luongo and W. Thomas Wander The Nuclear Future, by Michael Mandelbaum Conventional Deterrence, by John J. Mearsheimer Liddell Hart and the Weight of History, by John J. Mearsheimer The Sacred Cause: Civil-Military Conflict over Soviet National Security, 1917-1992, by Thomas M. Nichols Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks, by Barry R. Posen The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars, by Barry R. Posen Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defense, 1934^-1937, by Gaines Post, Jr. The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, by Stephen Peter Rosen Israel and Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953 to 1970, by Jonathan Shimshoni Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945, by Leon V. Sigal The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914, by Jack Snyder Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, by Jack Snyder The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945-1984, by Paul B. Stares Making the Alliance Work: The United States and Western Europe, by Gregory F. Treverton The Origins of Alliances, by Stephen M. Walt The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, by Wesley K. Wark The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, by James J. Wirtz The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War, by William Curti Wohlforth Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949-1958, by Shu Guang Zhang