Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power [Course Book ed.] 9781400837854

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Unanswered Threats

PRINCETON STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

Series Editors Thomas Christensen G. John Ikenberry Marc Trachtenberg

RECENT TITLES The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World by Lorenz M. Lu¨thi Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East by Etel Solingen Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000 by Alastair Iain Johnston Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War by Jonathan Kirshner The Politics of Secularism in International Relations by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power by Randall L. Schweller Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Conflict by Stephen G. Brooks Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet–East German Relations, 1953–1961 by Hope M. Harrison Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture by Mlada Bukovansky Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 by Tami Davis Biddle Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations by Daniel Philpott After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars by G. John Ikenberry Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals by Gary Jonathan Bass War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War by H. E. Goemans In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy by Aaron L. Friedberg States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control by Jeffrey Herbst The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations by Christian Reus-Smit

Unanswered Threats POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE BALANCE OF POWER Randall L. Schweller

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2008 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-13646-2 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Schweller, Randall L. Unanswered threats : political constraints on the balance of power / Randall L. Schweller. p. cm. — (Princeton studies in international history and politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12425-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-691-12425-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Balance of power—History. 2. Balance of power—Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. JZ1313.S38 2006 327.1'12—dc22

2005044505

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For my Father, Barbara, and Elias

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Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Preface

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INTRODUCTION Balance of Power and the Puzzle of Underbalancing Behavior

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CHAPTER ONE Prudence in Managing Changes in the Balance of Power

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CHAPTER TWO A Theory of Underbalancing: A Neoclassical Realist Explanation

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CHAPTER THREE Great-Power Case Studies: Interwar France and Britain, and France, 1877–1913

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CHAPTER FOUR Small-Power Case Studies: Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, and the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870

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CHAPTER FIVE Why Are States So Timid? State Coherence and Expansion in the Age of Mass Politics

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Illustrations

Figure 2.1 State Coherence and Likelihood of Elite Consensus to Balance Table 1.1 Revisionist Powers according to Risk Propensity and Extent of Aims Table 1.2 Prudent Policies in Response to Various Types of Revisionist Powers Table 2.1 Predictions on German Expansion Based on Elite Consensus/Dissensus Table 3.1 British Elite Views on Grand Strategy, January 1933–February 1936 Table 3.2 Two Competing British Grand Strategies, March 1936–March 1939 Table 4.1 Demographics of the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864 Table 4.2 The War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870 Table 5.1 Four Possible Worlds Table 5.2 Summary of Four Domestic-Level Variables Table 5.3 The Five Causal Schemes

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32 37 58 73 74 100 101 126 128 129

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Preface

OVER THREE YEARS AGO, I began thinking about writing a book on the domestic politics of balance of power. At the time, I thought it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. How wrong I was. I recently came across the preface to Kenneth N. Waltz’s book on the subject of domestic politics, and I understood entirely his opening remarks: “Seven years ago, I set out to write a book on the domestic politics of foreign policy. . . . Not having studied or taught in the realm of domestic or comparative politics, I underestimated the extent of the task undertaken. . . . If the job was bigger than I had realized, it was also more fascinating.”1 Amen. I have several people to thank. First are Tom Christensen, Julie Clemens, Yoav Gortzak, Catherine Romano, Rachael Russo, and Barbara Schweller for their compassion and warm friendship when I was writing the book. I do not think that I would have even started writing without their loyalty and support. Most especially, I wish to thank Jack Snyder and my father, who read every draft I sent them (and I sent them far, far too many drafts!); their insights were essential to whatever success the book has achieved. They provided me with an invaluable service by reading early (and often very rough) drafts of various chapters, such that their comments, criticisms, and suggestions led me to correct errors earlier than would otherwise have been the case and to think more thoroughly about the questions I was asking and where to search for the answers. I am also grateful to the following people for their comments on drafts of various chapters of the book: Michael Desch, Colin Elman (my methodological guru), Yoav Gortzak, Yoram Haftel, Richard Herrmann, Robert Jervis, Alan Lamborn, Jack Levy, Richard Rosecrance, Brent Strathman, Russell Schweller, Kevin Sweeney, and Alex Wendt. I also wish to thank TongFi Kim for his research assistance and for compiling the bibliography, Albert Wolf for compiling the index, and the seminar participants of the University of Chicago Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security (PIPES), especially Vaidya Gundlupet for his extensive written comments on the paper. Finally, I would like to thank Rick Herrmann and the Mershon Center at The Ohio State University for funding my research assistants, Michael Reese and Albert Wolf, for the summers of 2004 and 2005.

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Unanswered Threats

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INTRODUCTION

Balance of Power and the Puzzle of Underbalancing Behavior

BETWEEN 1638 AND 1640, Charles I concentrated his energies on the construction of a new royal palace at Whitehall. Designed in the Classical style by John Webb, the new Whitehall was to be the fulfillment of the king’s lifelong dream to replace the sprawling and obsolete palace that he had inherited from the Tudors with one that would match the splendor and majesty of the Louvre or the Escorial. Charles I desired nothing else than that his surroundings should reflect the magnificence of his rule: “Here, at last, would be a seat of government appropriate to the system of ‘Personal Rule’ Charles I had established since dispensing with Parliament in 1629. At least until 1639, it was from here that Charles could expect to govern his realms, resplendent amid Webb’s Baroque courtyards and colonnades, during the next decade and beyond.”1 In making such ambitious plans, Charles I displayed supreme confidence that his regime would not only survive but thrive well into the future. Unfortunately for Charles, the controversies and disputes that dogged him throughout his unsuccessful reign erupted in civil war between Crown and Parliament (the Cavaliers and the Roundheads) on August 22, 1642, and “this war without an enemy,” as Sir William Waller called it, resulted in a parliamentary victory for Oliver Cromwell. On January 30, 1649, Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. His last words were: “I am the martyr of the people.”2 If the conventional historical wisdom that “the collapse of Charles I’s regime during the 1630s, appeared ‘inevitable’ ” is correct, then Charles obviously suffered from self-delusion—an unreality all too characteristic of remote and isolated rulers.3 International politics, too, has seen many instances of this type of folly, where threatened countries have failed to recognize a clear and present danger or, more typically, have simply not reacted to it or, more typically still, have responded in paltry and imprudent ways. This behavior, which I shall call underbalancing, runs directly contrary to the core prediction of structural realist theory, namely, that threatened states will balance against dangerous accumulations of power by forming alliances and/or building arms. Indeed, even the most cursory glance at the historical record reveals many important cases of underbalancing. Consider, for instance, that none

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of the great powers except Britain consistently balanced against Napoleonic France, and none emulated its nation-in-arms innovation. Later in the century, Britain watched passively in splendid isolation as the North defeated the South in the American Civil War and as Prussia defeated Austria in 1866, and then France in 1871, establishing German hegemony over Europe. Bismarck then defied balance-of-power logic by cleverly creating an extensive “hub-and-spoke” alliance system that effectively isolated France and avoided a counterbalancing coalition against Germany. The Franco-Russian alliance of 1893 emerged only after Bismarck’s successor, Leo von Caprivi, refused to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia for domestic political reasons and despite the Tsar’s pleadings to do otherwise. Thus, more than twenty years after the creation of the new German state, a balancing coalition had finally been forged by the dubious decision of the new German Chancellor combined with the Kaiser’s soaring ambitions and truculent diplomacy. Moreover, it was not the common threat of Germany that brought Russia and France together but rather their shared desire to change the status quo, as Kenneth Waltz’s own discussion of the Franco-Russian pact makes clear: Russia would have preferred to plan and prepare for the occasion of war against Austria-Hungary. She could hope to defeat her, but not Germany, and AustriaHungary stood in the way of Russia’s gaining control of the Straits linking the Mediterranean and the Black Seas. France, however, could regain AlsaceLorraine only be defeating Germany. Perception of a common threat brought Russia and France together.4

Waltz says “common threat,” but the motivations he cites are for gains, not security. Likewise, during the 1930s, none of the great powers (i.e., Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Japan) balanced with any sense of urgency against Nazi Germany. Instead, they variously bandwagoned, buck-passed, appeased, or adopted ineffective half measures in response to the German threat. A similar reluctance to check unbalanced power characterizes most interstate relations since 1945. With the exception of the U.S.-Soviet bipolar rivalry, a survey of state behavior during the Cold War yields few instances of balancing behavior. As K. J. Holsti asserts: “Alliances, such a common feature of the European diplomatic landscape since the seventeenth century, are notable by their absence in most areas of the Third World. So are balances of power.”5 Continuing this pattern, no peer competitor has yet emerged more than a decade after bipolarity to balance against the United States. Contrary to realist predictions, unipolarity has not provoked global alarm to restore a balance of power.6

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Despite its historical frequency, little has been written on the subject. Indeed, Geoffrey Blainey’s memorable observation that for “every thousand pages published on the causes of wars there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace” could have been made with equal veracity about overreactions to threats as opposed to underreactions to them.7 Library shelves are filled with books on the causes and dangers of exaggerating threats, ranging from studies of domestic politics to bureaucratic politics to political psychology to organization theory. By comparison, there have been few studies at any level of analysis or from any theoretical perspective that directly explain why states have with some, if not equal, regularity underestimated dangers to their survival. There may be some cognitive or normative bias at work here. Consider, for instance, that there is a commonly used word, paranoia, for the unwarranted fear that people are, in some way, “out to get you” or are planning to do one harm. I suspect that just as many people are afflicted with the opposite psychosis: the delusion that everyone loves you when, in fact, they do not even like you. Yet we do not have a familiar word for this phenomenon. Indeed, I am unaware of any word that describes this pathology (hubris and overconfidence come close, but they plainly define something other than what I have described). That noted, international relations theory does have a frequently used phrase for this pathology, the so-called Munich analogy.8 The term is used, however, in a disparaging way by theorists to ridicule those who employ it. The central claim is that the naivete´ associated with Munich and the outbreak of World War II has become an overused and inappropriate analogy, because few leaders are as evil and unappeasable as Adolf Hitler. Thus, the analogy either mistakenly causes leaders to adopt hawkish and overly competitive policies or is deliberately used by leaders to justify such policies and mislead the public. I suspect, however, that a more compelling explanation for the paucity of studies on underreactions to threats is the tendency of theories to reflect contemporary issues as well as the desire of theorists and journals to provide society with policy-relevant theories that may help resolve or manage urgent security problems. Thus, born in the atomic age with its new balance of terror and an ongoing Cold War, the field of security studies has naturally produced theories of and prescriptions for national security that have had little to say about—and are, in fact, heavily biased against warnings of—the dangers of underreacting to or underestimating threats. After all, the nuclear revolution was not about overkill but, as Thomas Schelling pointed out, speed of kill and mutual kill.9 Given the apocalyptic consequences of miscalculation, accidents, or inadvertent nuclear war, small wonder that theorists were more concerned about overreacting to threats than underresponding to them. At a time when all of humankind could

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be wiped out in less than twenty-five minutes, theorists may be excused for stressing the benefits of caution under conditions of uncertainty and erring on the side of inferring from ambiguous actions overly benign assessments of the opponent’s intentions. The overwhelming fear was that a crisis “might unleash forces of an essentially military nature that overwhelm the political process and bring on a war that nobody wants. Many important conclusions about the risk of nuclear war, and thus about the political meaning of nuclear forces, rest on this fundamental idea.”10 Now that the Cold War is over, we can begin to redress these biases in the literature. In that spirit, this book focuses on the question of underbalancing and presents a domestic-politics explanation. There are surprisingly few, if any, studies on the role of domestic politics in balance-ofpower theory. The reason for this theoretical lacunae is that balance of power has been traditionally treated as a law of nature, wherein the whole universe is pictured “as a gigantic mechanism, a machine or a clockwork, created and kept in motion by the divine watchmaker.”11 The origins of balance-of-power theory are important in explaining why structure and natural laws, rather than domestic politics, have dominated its discourse for centuries—a subject to which I now turn. BALANCE OF POWER AS A LAW OF NATURE The idea of a balance of power in international politics arose during the Renaissance as a metaphorical concept borrowed from other fields, such as ethics, the arts, philosophy, law, medicine, economics, and the sciences, where balancing and its relation to equipoise and counterweight had already gained broad popular acceptance. Wherever it was applied, balancing was conceived as a law of nature underlying concepts viewed as generally appealing, desirable, and socially beneficial (e.g., order, peace, justice, fairness, moderation, symmetry, harmony, and beauty).12 As Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed about the states of Europe: “The balance existing between the power of these diverse members of the European society is more the work of nature than of art. It maintains itself without effort, in such a manner that if it sinks on one side, it reestablishes itself very soon on the other.”13 This Renaissance view of balancing behavior as a response driven by a law of nature still infuses most discussions of how the theory operates. Thus, Hans Morgenthau wrote: “The aspiration for power on the part of several nations, each trying either to maintain or overthrow the status quo, leads of necessity to a configuration that is called the balance of power and to policies that aim at preserving it.”14 More recently, Kenneth Waltz has declared: “As nature abhors a vacuum, so international politics abhors

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unbalanced power.”15 Likewise, Christopher Layne averred: “Great powers balance against each other because structural constraints impel them to do so.”16 Realists invoke the same “law of nature” metaphor to explain opportunistic expansion. In this vein, Arnold Wolfers says of structural incentives for gains: “Since nations, like nature, are said to abhor a vacuum, one could predict that the powerful nation would feel compelled to fill the vacuum with its own power.”17 Using similar logic, John Mearsheimer claims that “status quo powers are rarely found in world politics, because the international system creates powerful incentives for states to look for opportunities to gain power at the expense of rivals, and to take advantage of those situations when the benefits outweigh the costs.”18 From the policymaker’s perspective, however, balancing superior power and filling power vacuums hardly appear as laws of nature. Instead, these behaviors, which carry considerable potential political costs and uncertain policy risks, emerge through the medium of the political process; as such, they are the product of competition and consensus building among elites with differing ideas about the political-military world and divergent views on the nation’s goals and challenges and the means that will best serve those purposes.19 As Nicholas Spykman observed many years ago, “Political equilibrium is neither a gift of the gods nor an inherently stable condition. It results from the active intervention of man, from the operation of political forces. States cannot afford to wait passively for the happy time when a miraculously achieved balance of power will bring peace and security. If they wish to survive, they must be willing to go to war to preserve a balance against the growing hegemonic power of the period.”20 In an era of mass politics, the decision to check unbalanced power by means of arms and allies—and to go to war if these deterrent measures fail—is very much a political act made by political actors. War mobilization and fighting are distinctly collective undertakings. As such, political elites carefully weigh the likely domestic costs of balancing behavior against the alternative means available to them (e.g., bilateral or multilateral negotiations, appeasement, buck-passing, bandwagoning, etc.) and the expected external benefits of a restored balance of power. Structural imperatives rarely, if ever, compel leaders to adopt one policy over another; decisionmakers are not sleepwalkers buffeted about by inexorable forces beyond their control. This is not to say, however, that they are oblivious to structural incentives. Rather, states respond (or not) to threats and opportunities in ways determined by both internal and external considerations of policy elites, who must reach consensus within an often decentralized and competitive political process. Before proceeding, I must make a very important point. The discussion so far has focused on the concept of underbalancing behavior. Underbalancing, however, is merely one symptom of the larger puzzle that this

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book addresses, namely: Why can some states mobilize their nation’s material resources effectively and, thereby, realize their latent national power, while others cannot do so? Prudent balancing behavior is only one potential use of mobilized power. Other uses of mobilized national resources include profitable and prudent expansion as well as self-destructive, reckless aggression, namely, expansion that leads to the formation of overwhelmingly powerful countercoalitions. The general question this book addresses is less about whether states can balance prudently against threats (though this is discussed in detail) than it is about the larger issue of which states can and cannot adroitly mobilize their material resources. Simply put, the book is about who mobilizes, not whether the goals of mobilization are prudent ones. It, therefore, concerns not just unanswered threats but also missed opportunities and ill-considered and disastrous aggression (illustrated by the case of Paraguay in chapter 4). This chapter unfolds as follows. First, I situate a domestic politics explanation of underbalancing within the extant literature and, more particularly, within the realist paradigm. Second, I offer a precise definition of balancing and underbalancing and how the two concepts should be viewed within the larger context of balance-of-power theory. Next, I examine the relationship between national power and the domestic politics of mobilization capability. Then I present an epistemological discussion of what is meant by explanation and understanding in this study. Finally, I provide an overview of the book. THE ROLE OF DOMESTIC POLITICS IN REALIST THEORY The theme of this book fits squarely within the new wave of neoclassical realist research, which emerged in the early 1990s and posits that systemic pressures are filtered through intervening domestic variables to produce foreign policy behaviors. Works by Thomas Christensen, Aaron Friedberg, Randall Schweller, Jack Snyder, William Wohlforth, and Fareed Zakaria all show that states assess and adapt to changes in their external environment partly as a result of their peculiar domestic structures and political situations. More specifically, complex domestic political processes act as transmission belts that channel, mediate, and (re)direct policy outputs in response to external forces (primarily, changes in relative power). Hence, states often react differently to similar systemic pressures and opportunities, and their responses may be less motivated by systemic-level factors than domestic ones.21 Curiously, neoclassical realists have yet to examine the subject of underbalancing in response to external threat(s). Instead, they have offered explanations for normal expansion (Zakaria), reckless overexpansion (Sny-

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der), adaptation to relative decline (Friedberg), why leaders inflate external threats to sell costly internal mobilization campaigns (Christensen), how perceptions of the balance of power affect state behavior (Wohlforth), and alignment decisions based on state motivations (Schweller).22 There have been several challenges to the conventional realist wisdom that balancing is more prevalent than bandwagoning, a form of underbalancing behavior. Paul Schroeder’s broad historical survey of international politics shows that states have bandwagoned with or hidden from threats far more often than they have balanced against them. Similarly, I have claimed that bandwagoning behavior is prevalent among revisionist states, whose behavior modern realists have ignored because their alliance choices are driven more by the search for profit than security.23 More recently, Robert Powell treats states as rational unitary actors within a simple strategic setting composed of commitment issues, informational problems, and the technology of coercion and finds that “balancing is relatively rare in the model. Balances of power sometimes form, but there is no general tendency toward this outcome. Nor do states generally balance against threats. . . . States frequently wait, bandwagon, or, much less often, balance.”24 Yet Powell notes that a rational-unitary-actor assumption “does not mean that domestic politics is unimportant.”25 None of these studies has offered a domestic politics explanation for bandwagoning or a theory of the broader phenomenon of underbalancing behavior, which includes buck-passing, distancing, hiding, waiting, appeasement, bandwagoning, muddling through, and ineffective half measures. Another strand of realist literature focuses on buck-passing, a form of underreaction to threats by which states attempt to ride free on the balancing efforts of others. The strategy of buck-passing exhibits several distinctive characteristics. Threatened status quo states: (1) form very loose alliances with vague commitments or avoid alliances altogether, (2) convene few, if any, joint meetings of their General Staffs to coordinate war plans and to establish a coherent Allied grand strategy, (3) spend a disproportionately low percentage of their gross national product on defense in relation to that of the aggressor state(s), and (4) adopt purely defensive strategies with little or no capability to project military power. There are two widely accepted structural-systemic explanations for buck-passing. First, Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder claim that great powers under multipolarity will pass the balancing buck when they perceive a military advantage for the defense over the offense.26 The logic is straightforward: defensive advantage leads to the expectation of a long and costly war of attrition. Under these conditions, defensive states will be tempted to shirk their balancing duties by sitting passively on the sidelines and letting other states absorb the aggressor’s initial attack. In so

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doing, buck-passers can safely watch the enemy’s strength being depleted in a long and bloody war. The theory is an elegant one and its logic is, on its face, quite intuitive and persuasive. Yet, Christensen and Snyder’s buck-passing explanation skirts the issue of how to define and measure the offense-defense balance (ODB). According to their theory, the ODB is simply whatever leaders rightly or wrongly perceive it to be. And because they offer a structuralsystemic theory of alliance patterns, they must adopt a conceptualization of the “subjective” ODB as a systemwide attribute. But why should we expect all leaders to perceive or misperceive the ODB in the same way? Why is not the ODB a regional attribute? or something that can be said to exist only between pairs of states (conflict dyads)? Further, does not it make more sense to measure the ODB separately at the tactical, operational, and/or strategic levels of military operations than to use one aggregate, systemwide measure of the concept?27 In Christensen and Snyder’s two cases (alliance patterns prior to World Wars I and II), leaders got it wrong both times: they perceived offensive advantage in 1914 and defensive advantage before 1939. Aside from revealing the murkiness of measuring the offense-defense balance, this misperception on the part of elites begs the prior and arguably more important question: Why did they get it wrong when they had every incentive to get it right? And why, when the status quo states were perceiving defensive advantage in 1939, were the aggressor states correctly perceiving offensive advantage? This important variation among leaders’ perceptions of the ODB and among states’ strategic behaviors suggests that the likely causes of buck-passing behavior reside not at the structural-systemic level of analysis but rather at the unit level. Second, John Mearsheimer argues that buck-passing occurs primarily in balanced multipolar systems, especially among great powers that are geographically insulated from the aggressor.28 The reason is that in a balanced multipolar system, no aggressor will be strong enough to defeat and dominate all the rest of the great powers combined; which means that some great powers will not be directly threatened by the aggressor. These less-threatened great powers will, according to Mearsheimer, attempt to remain unscathed by passing the balancing buck to other, more directly threatened states. Further, in balanced multipolar systems, there will be at least one potential buck-catcher in the system who can be depended on to defend the balance of power. Hence, the logic of buck-passing behavior is rooted in system structure. For this structural explanation to be correct, the multipolar system prior to World War I must have been unbalanced, whereas the one prior to World War II must have been balanced. This appears to be backward, however. As I have argued elsewhere, the late interwar system was tripolar

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with Nazi Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union as the poles. Britain and France had fallen from the ranks of the polar powers to join Italy and Japan as second-ranking great powers.29 This is precisely the kind of system that Mearsheimer calls an unbalanced multipolar system, for which he predicts little or no buck-passing behavior among the great powers. Yet, buck-passing prevailed over balancing behavior among the status quo great powers. I argue that whether states choose to balance against threats or to buckpass (among other nonbalancing strategies) is not primarily determined by structural-systemic factors but rather, like all decisions that concern national defense, by the domestic political process.30 Before proceeding to the specifics of the argument, however, I must define the term “balancing” and place the term “underbalancing” within the more general scheme of balance of power.

WHAT IS MEANT BY BALANCING AND UNDERBALANCING? Though it is arguably the most frequently used term in the field of international relations, balancing remains an ambiguous concept. In its traditional usage, balancing means the creation or aggregation of military power through internal mobilization or the forging of alliances to prevent or deter the territorial occupation or the political and military domination of the state by a foreign power or coalition. Balancing exists only when the stakes concern some form of political subjugation or, more directly, the seizure of territory, either one’s homeland or vital interests abroad (e.g., sea lanes, allies, colonies, etc.). Thus, balancing requires that states target their military hardware at each other in preparation for a potential war. If two states are merely building arms for the purpose of independent action against third parties, they are not balancing. Indeed, state A may be building up its military power and even targeting another state B and still not be balancing against B, that is, trying to match B’s overall capabilities to prevent B from invading A or its vital interests. Instead, the purpose of A’s actions may be coercive diplomacy: to gain bargaining leverage with B. Finally, the timing of a state’s response to threat determines whether it is balancing or not. Balancing does not mean simply fighting back rather than surrendering after an attack. As I have written elsewhere, balancing involves a situation in which “a state is not directly menaced by a predatory state but decides to balance against it anyway to protect its long-term security interests”; or, as Jack Levy puts it, “it would not be balancing if war is forced on the potential balancer by a direct military attack by the aggressor.”31

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Balancing and underbalancing can be broken down into four distinct categories. The first is simply appropriate balancing, which occurs when the target is a truly dangerous aggressor that cannot or should not be appeased and the state’s military capabilities are indispensable to counterbalance the rising state’s power. The second is overbalancing (or hyperbalancing), which occurs when the target is misperceived as an aggressor but is, instead, a defensively minded state seeking only to enhance its security. Overbalancing unnecessarily triggers a costly and dangerous arms spiral.32 The third category is nonbalancing, which may take the form of inaction, normal diplomacy, buck-passing, bandwagoning, appeasement, engagement, distancing, or hiding. These policies (which may also be underbalancing behaviors when adopted under the circumstances specified below) are prudent and rational when the state is thereby able to avoid the costs of war either by satisfying the legitimate grievances of the revisionist state or allowing others to do so or by letting others defeat the aggressor while safely remaining on the sidelines. In addition, if the state also seeks revision, then it may wisely choose to bandwagon with the potential aggressor in the hope of profiting from its success in overturning the established order.33 In still other situations, one state is so overwhelmingly powerful that a harmony of interests can exist between the hegemon (or unipole) and the rest of the great powers—those that could either one day become peer competitors or join together to balance against the predominant power.34 The other states do not balance against the hegemon because they are too weak (individually and collectively) and, more important, because they perceive their well-being as inextricably tied up with the well-being of the hegemon. Here, potential “balancers” bandwagon with the hegemon not because they seek to overthrow the established order (the motive for revisionist bandwagoning) but because they perceive themselves to be benefiting from the status quo order and, therefore, seek to preserve it.35 The fourth category is underbalancing, which occurs when the state does not balance or does so inefficiently in response to a dangerous and unappeasable aggressor, and the state’s efforts are essential to deter or defeat it. In this case, the underbalancing state brings about a war that could have been avoided or makes the war more costly than it otherwise would have been. This book concerns underbalancing. What I offer, therefore, is a “theory of mistakes,” so to speak, provided that one were to consider the policy choice solely in terms of the international strategic setting. In other words, underbalancing is the opposite mistake of overbalancing. When a state underbalances it either misperceives the intentions of the rising power as more benign than they in fact are or, if it correctly perceives the threat, does not adopt prudent policies to protect itself for reasons of domestic politics.

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THE ARGUMENT: THE DOMESTIC CONSTRAINTS ON BALANCING BEHAVIOR If most states inside and outside of the Eurocentric domain from which balance-of-power theory was derived and largely tested can resist its logic of balancing, then the theory is not akin to a law of nature; at the very least, it is underspecified. The question then becomes: What are the necessary conditions for the proper operation of the balance of power? What factors confound the logic and predictions of the theory? The main reason why states have so infrequently balanced efficiently and in a timely fashion against dangerous threats—and, therefore, why balance-of-power theory as an explanation of state behavior (as opposed to a normative-prescriptive theory) gets it wrong in most instances—is that states rarely conform to realism’s assumption of units as coherent actors. The closer the policymaking process and actual state-society relations approximate a unitary actor, the more accurate realism’s predictions. Conversely, when states are divided at the elite and societal levels, they are less likely to behave in accordance with balance-of-power predictions. The core of the argument turns on the domestic political and policy risks associated with mobilizing behavior. Specifically, leaders of incoherent states are less willing and able to undertake high political and policy risks to mobilize national resources for balancing purposes than are leaders of coherent states.36 Given its focus on elite risk-taking propensity, the logic of my argument does not apply when balancing is perceived as relatively costless for elites and society. More specifically, I argue that four factors at the domestic-political level of analysis thwart balancing behavior, especially internal balancing in the form of costly military mobilization drives. The first is elite consensus (disagreement) about the nature and extent of the threat, the political and policy costs and risks, and the policy remedy that will be most effective and appropriate to deal with a threat. In other words, do elites agree or disagree about the external environment and the type of strategic adjustment (e.g., competitive or cooperative, standing firm or accommodation) that is required to meet the threat and protect the state’s strategic interests? The second variable is elite cohesion (fragmentation). Elite cohesion refers to the degree to which a central government’s political leadership is fragmented by persistent internal divisions. Elite polarization may arise over ideological, cultural, or religious divisions, bureaucratic interests, party factions, regional and sectoral interests, or ethnic group and class loyalties. In terms of balancing behavior, several key concerns emerge when elites are fragmented. Opportunistic elites within the threatened state may be willing to collaborate with the enemy to advance their own personal power or to gain office. When there are multiple threats, frag-

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mented elites typically disagree on their rankings of external threats from most to least dangerous to the state’s survival and vital interests. Further, fragmented elites may, for parochial political, cultural, or ideological reasons, disagree about with whom the state should align. In addition, they may be divided over the issue of whether to devote scarce resources to defend interests in the periphery or the core. The third variable is social cohesion (fragmentation). I derive the hypotheses regarding social cohesion and balancing behavior from the familiar logic of Lewis Coser’s theory about the role of external conflict in promoting in-group cohesion.37 Coser claims that the relationship between out-group conflict and in-group cohesion holds only when there is some minimal consensus that the group is a “going concern”—one whose preservation as an entity is generally seen by group members as worthwhile—and when the outside threat is seen as a danger to the group as a whole, not just a part of it. There must also be a reasonable chance that, if the group unites, the enemy can be defeated. With respect to this book’s concerns, Coser’s logic yields several general expectations with regard to the degree of precrisis social cohesion and balancing behavior. States with high levels of political and social integration will be most likely to balance against external threats. Conversely, fragmented states will underreact to dangerous threats, responding with inefficient balancing, bandwagoning, buck-passing, distancing, incoherent half measures, or ineffective policies defined by the lowest common denominator. Moreover, severely fragmented states in the precrisis period can be expected to further disintegrate and even crack under external pressure, surrendering to the enemy and undergoing a civil war or revolution. Finally, the degree of regime or government vulnerability is an important factor in determining whether a state will be able to balance effectively. Weak regimes or unstable governments, by definition, lack legitimacy and policy capacity. Illegitimacy further depletes already weak domestic capabilities and makes policy capacity rigid and ineffectual. To ensure its survival, a weak regime must use coercion or attempt to co-opt and appease the opposition. These policies rapidly exhaust the nation’s capabilities and scarce resources. They also erode domestic policy capacity by decreasing the citizenry’s loyalty to and compliance with government policies and decisions, by inhibiting the government’s ability to mobilize material and human resources when crises arise, and by reducing the government’s capacity to coordinate and implement effective policies. In addition, vulnerable rulers seldom create and mobilize mass armies because they fear, for good reasons, that weapons put in the hands of a newly energized, nationalist public are just as likely, if not more so, to be fired at them as they are to be used against the external threat. Illegitimate rulers will also be less able than legitimate ones to persuade the public of the

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existence of national security threats and of the need to make sacrifices to resist them. These four independent variables combine in various ways, depending on their sequence and intensities, to produce several (five, to be precise) distinct causal schemes that explain and predict underbalancing. When they are in the “wrong” direction (e.g., elite and social fragmentation, high degree of regime vulnerability, elite disagreement), they present formidable domestic hurdles to balancing behavior, and as such they frustrate the state’s ability to extract resources for balancing purposes. In short, they increase the risks and costs of internal balancing behavior. DOMESTIC POLITICS AND STATE MOBILIZATION CAPACITY Although national power has many bases that vary over time and space, one may conveniently divide them into two dimensions: material and administration. The first includes familiar elements such as population size, territory, number of armed forces, as well as the type, level of development, and scale of the nation’s economy. The second and mostly overlooked dimension of national power is the “administrative capacity and the political structure of the state—its ability to command the population and to tap their resources; the quality of its institutions of government; the nature and the attitudes of the political classes which influence its decisions and the e´lite which takes them.” The interaction of these two dimensions of power “converts material power from crude to finished form—from demographic and economic resources to military forces of given quality and quantity. The first determines the potential power of a state, the second how much of it can be tapped, and how effectively.”38 Balance-of-power theory assumes that all states have similar extractive capacity, such that aggregate national resources may be equated with actual state power and global influence.39 This assumption of “constant mobilization capability” allows balance-of-power and other systemic theories to ignore the politics of extraction, treating responses to threats as if there were no significant variations across time and space in elites’ ability to mobilize domestic resources in pursuit of foreign-policy aims.40 Like all assumptions, it is not a factual statement but a simplification of reality that is useful for theory construction. Thus, efforts to create an elegant systemic theory of international politics set aside differences in unit attributes such as state extractive capacity. This gain in the power and elegance of third-image theory, however, comes at the expense of its explanatory and predictive accuracy, that is, its empirical fit. In Klaus Knorr’s words: “If analysis is content with comparing merely the capacity of nations to produce energy, steel, motor vehicles,

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etc., it proceeds on the implicit assumption that the utilization of those resources will show no . . . differences among countries. This assumption is grossly unrealistic.”41 And just as countries with the same manpower and economic resources may not be equally powerful, states confronted by similar threats and opportunities may not respond in the same way or with the same degree of effectiveness “because of such factors as the internal cohesiveness of the society in question, its ability to mobilize resources for state action . . . and its diplomatic capacities.”42 Structural theory fails to capture the trade-off between internal and external stability that states typically make in their extractive-capacity decisions; this trade-off exists not only for weak states but great powers as well. Consider, for instance, the great powers’ response to the French challenge of the “nation in arms” in 1794. Like his fellow leaders in other threatened countries, King Frederick William II of Prussia rejected the proposed counterresponse to summon the leve´e en masse. It would be “infinitely dangerous” to the internal social and political order of Prussia, the king warned, “to assemble such a mass of men.”43 Napoleon’s rout of Prussia at Jena in 1806 revealed that the Prussian king, in weighing the external threat of France against the potential internal risks to the ancien re´gime posed by a massive mobilization campaign, had struck a balance that underestimated the external danger in relation to the internal one. He was not alone. All the regimes of the old order deliberately limited their capabilities to wage war for fear of disrupting a fragile internal order; as the massive disequilibriating force unleashed by revolutionary and Napoleonic France so dramatically showed, the “balance of power in Europe depended, in turn, upon these strong internal checks on the military weight each power could throw into the scales of international power.”44 Along these lines, Edward Azar and Chung-in Moon offer a useful distinction between “security hardware”—the physical (e.g., economic, military, and manpower) capabilities of a country—and “security software,” which they break down into three primary components: regime legitimacy, national integration, and policy capacity. Essentially, security software assesses the external and internal environments and then attempts to manage and convert hardware assets to meet various threats. The “software side of security management, which involves the political context and policy capacity through which national values are defined, threats and vulnerabilities are perceived and assessed, resources are allocated, and policies are screened, selected and implemented,” is a vital determinant in “the conversion mechanism linking security environment and hardware to the final policy outcomes and the overall security performance” of the state.45 Simply put, a state’s hardware assets are only as good as the performance of its security software.

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Realists, for their part, have typically paid lip service to software-related concepts such as political stability and competence, national will, cohesion, and character, and the quality of government. Yet, they rarely, if ever, include these software items in their operationalizations of state power.46 Instead, standard balance-of-power theory makes predictions solely on hardware elements of national power measured strictly in terms of military capabilities.47 Of course, one might argue that whatever the shortcomings of structural balance-of-power theory, when states act according to the theory’s predictions, we have a powerful and sufficient explanation for their behavior. Hence, we need not search any further.48 This is the law of Occam’s Razor—the preference for the most parsimonious explanation of the behavior at hand. There are two problems with this line of argument. First, external pressures are rarely intense enough “to transform the actors into something like automatons lacking all freedom of choice.”49 Second, structural theory claims to predict only the outcomes and consequences of state actions and coactions, not the specific actions, intentions, or foreignpolicy goals of individual states at any given time. As Waltz points out, “structures shape and shove; they encourage states to do some things and to refrain from doing others. Because states coexist in a self-help system, they are free to do any fool thing they care to, but they are likely to be rewarded for behavior that is responsive to structural pressures and punished for behavior that is not.”50 Here again, although I agree with the thrust of Waltz’s statement, we should not assume that all state actions that do not conform to the theory’s predictions (viz., actions that appear unresponsive to structural pressures) are therefore “foolish.” Instead, such seemingly irrational state actions when viewed solely through the lens of systemic pressures may appear quite rational when viewed through the lens of domestic politics.

EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING Ordinary usage makes little distinction between the words “explanation” and “understanding.” Every explanation, whether causal in a positivist or some other nomothetic sense, furthers our understanding. But understanding implies “intentionality” in a way that explanation does not. “One understands the aims and purposes of an agent, the meaning of a sign or symbol, and the significance of an institution or a religious rite.”51 Explanations in the social sciences almost invariably involve understanding, since the meaning of human behavior is rarely explicable without reference to intentions and purposes.

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As in most works in international relations, the dependent variable in this study is a type of state behavior, underbalancing, which appears as a common historical occurrence. This is to say that underbalancing is a generalizable behavior, as opposed to a unique or individual occurrence, that shares certain distinguishing features, such that it forms a class of historical cases. The dependent variable is, therefore, a historical phenomenon that is deemed to be important, common throughout space and time, and so requires explanation. As with all historical inquiries, this study’s use of the term “cause” has several meanings and purposes. In one sense, cause implies an explanation for the question Why did this happen? The typical response would be a set of antecedent conditions that were jointly sufficient, though not necessary, to explain the event.52 Unlike structural-systemic theories, which explain international-political outcomes and not specific foreign policy decisions, the theory offered in this book centers on the behavior and choices of policymaking elites. It is a theory about foreign policy and, therefore, necessarily concerns human agency. Thus, the why question in this study must explain what causes a person to act. Borrowing from R. G. Collingwood’s logic of causality in history, cause “means affording him a motive for doing it”; what “made,” “compelled,” “induced,” or “persuaded” the actors to make the choices they did.53 The force of the cause is said to be a rational one because the actor (1) believed that the decision (strategy) was the best means to achieve his/her preferred outcome or (2) perceived, even if incorrectly, that the action (the effect) was rationally required given the conditions under which s/he was operating. In another sense, causal explanation responds to the less demanding question How could this thing have happened? Here one is concerned with permissive causes, not profound or proximate ones. The answer to this question is an antecedent condition or set of conditions that permitted or allowed the event to happen, such that one should not be surprised by its occurrence. Thus, when Waltz speaks of anarchy as a permissive condition for war, he is using the term “cause” in precisely this sense; he is explaining how possibly they happen rather than why any given war breaks out.54 In the present study, I claim that elite and social fragmentation, elite dissensus, and regime/government vulnerability are all antecedent conditions that are conducive to underbalancing behavior: they allow it to happen. Each individual causal factor, when extremely intense, may by itself cause underbalancing to occur in a given case. But the variables are, in one sense, additive; that is, the more that each variable is present (absent), the higher the probability of underbalancing (balancing) behavior. Thus, we should not be surprised when we see the above set of antecedent conditions and states fail to balance an unappeasable and dangerous aggresssor or they do so ineffectively.

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To say that the variables are additive is not to imply, however, that sequencing is unimportant. Indeed, the variables combine in various ways to form unique causal schemes, and the particular causal mechanisms at work in the cases must be specified as precisely as possible. Why is this important? Because simply to point out that a state underbalanced because there was an elite consensus against balancing behavior or elite dissensus regarding any grand strategy begs the question: Why did all or most elites choose nonbalancing policies in response to a dangerous aggressor? This question forces consideration of the three other “less proximate” independent variables in the causal chain. Thus, the answer may be that social fragmentation made balancing too risky; or that elites had competing parochial interests; or that government instability prevented a consistent and costly grand strategy, or various combinations of any or all these types of problems that can theoretically thwart the formation of an elite consensus to balance against an aggressor. To put this another way, permissive causes by themselves do not provide full explanations of anything; for that, they must be joined with proximate ones. Oxygen and dry fuel, for instance, are permissive conditions for there to be a fire. But there must also be a spark, the proximate cause. By this analogy, disagreement among elites or a consensus not to balance is the proximate cause for underbalancing;55 the other variables, social and elite fragmentation and regime/government vulnerability may be seen as permissive conditions.56 More precisely, the proximate cause (elite consensus/dissensus) combines in various ways (to be discussed) with the other three variables to form several unique causal schemes for or pathways to underbalancing—each comprising a complete set of jointly sufficient conditions that fully explains instances of underbalancing behavior. None of the four variables, however, are necessary antecedent conditions for the occurrence of underbalancing behavior, since states can, in theory, underbalance for reasons that have nothing to do with domestic politics, for example, cognitive factors at the decisionmaking level of analysis (to be discussed). An elite consensus to balance, however, is a necessary condition for balancing behavior. Strongly related to this notion of causation as “allowing something to happen” is the causal and value-laden judgment that, in the case of underbalancing behavior, elites were in some sense to blame for the wars that ensued. As mentioned, a theory of underbalancing is a theory of mistakes; notwithstanding the fact that it commonly occurs throughout history, underbalancing is a wrongheaded behavior that defies balance-of-power logic. A claim of this sort is quite obviously a value judgment on my part about what is prudent and reckless behavior under certain conditions: something “ought” to have been done by elites that was not done. Readers should not be overly alarmed by this subjectivity, however, since the term

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“causa” originally meant “guilt,” “blame,” or “accusation.”57 Indeed, the notion that causation amounts to assigning blame for a tragic and avoidable event is a common practice among historians, especially diplomatic and military historians.58 Moreover, unless one accepts a rigidly deterministic view of historical events, the notion of free will and human responsibility must apply to any actual state of affairs and to human actions.59 That noted, “mistakes” may be recognized in three ways: (1) ex post facto, by the results, (2) ex ante, by observing biases in the decisionmaking process, and (3) by the actors’ failure to learn expeditiously to correct policies that have failed. This method of identifying mistakes works best when all three methods are used in conjunction.60 Finally, the notion of causation in this theory is probabilistic rather than deterministic. Causes (or reasons) that are said to “compel,” “induce,” or “persuade” must in some way limit the freedom of action of the agent(s). In other words, they must pressure the actor to do something that s/he otherwise would not want to do; if they do not constrain the actor, they cannot be seen as “causal” in any sense of the term. But actors always retain some measure of free will, such that they can and often do make different decisions under the same set of conditions. For this reason, human actions cannot be said to be necessitated by general laws of nature. One can reasonably argue, for instance, that Britain under Winston Churchill would have balanced earlier and more effectively than it did under Neville Chamberlain or any other possible British leader at the time. What we can say is that human actions are more predictable and understandable when they have sufficient conditions in antecedent events and the actors accept these historical conditions as their causes.

OVERVIEW The book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 explores the conditions under which power shifts are dangerous and what types of policies can be employed to manage changes in the balance of power. The theory presented is both explanatory and normative-prescriptive. The argument centers on the extent of the revisionist aims (limited or unlimited) and the risk propensity of the rising challenger. These variables mainly determine what types of policies should be adopted in response. The chapter also presents a discussion of threat perception—a key intervening variable between power shifts and state responses—and cognitive biases in information processing that often distort the perception of threat. The value of this chapter and its relationship to the main “domestic politics” argument is that it provides a baseline expectation of “prudent” behavior in response to threats, such that ex ante judgments can be made about historical cases. Without this

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baseline, the labeling of a particular instance of state behavior as “underbalancing” and, therefore, mistaken would appear more subjective and capricious than it need be, even in hindsight. Chapter 2 presents the domestic theory of underbalancing behavior. Building on the insights of the domestic hurdles to national extractive capacity, I construct a neoclassical realist theory that predicts how states operating under various domestic situations will respond to threats. Five causal schemes composed of various combinations and sequences of the four independent variables—social cohesion, elite cohesion, elite consensus, and regime/government vulnerability—are outlined as explanations of underbalancing behavior. Following an analysis of each variable and its implications for balancing behavior, I offer a lengthy theoretical discussion on the historical taproot of elite fragmentation. In-depth analysis of this particular causal variable is necessary to explain why elite fragmentation can lead to both overexpansion, as Jack Snyder contends, and underbalancing, as I argue, and the conditions under which one or the other behavior is likely to arise. Chapter 3 presents three case studies of great powers, Britain and France during the 1930s, and France from 1877 to 1913. The two interwar cases may be seen as “crucial” ones for the theory in a sense that they have come to define the theoretical concept and outcome of underbalancing behavior.61 They are great-power exemplars of the concept, so to speak, and so the theory must provide a satisfactory and compelling explanation for these cases. The French 1877–1913 case was chosen because there is both variation on the independent and dependent variables. The case is divided into two parts, 1877–99 and 1900–1913. At this juncture, all four independent variables almost simultaneously switched values in such a way that the theory would predict an abrupt change from underbalancing to appropriate balancing behavior, and this is precisely what happened. The focus on great powers and the unmistakable nature of the threats mean that these cases are “easy” ones for structural realism and relatively “hard” ones for a domestic “balance-of-power” theory that turns on the differences between coherent and incoherent states. Chapter 4 explores a case of three small powers, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, and the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–70. This longitudinal case study has rich implications for the validity of the theory’s explanatory power. Nineteenth-century Paraguay was the prototypical mobilizing state, and it initiated a war against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Though the war had truly catastrophic consequences for Paraguay, it held its own on the battlefield far longer than anyone would have expected given its size. In terms of case-selection criteria, the independent and dependent variables take on extreme values for all three states, and so the case presents a nice test of the theory. Argentina and Brazil were badly

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divided nations, and, as the theory predicts, they underbalanced against Paraguay. In contrast, Paraguay was, in a sense, a hypermobilizing state; it built the nation on the premise that it was surrounded by enemies and had to build arms, transform its military institutions, equip them with the best military technology from Europe, and, most important, instill its population with a strong sense of patriotism and national identity. Thus, Paraguay was far ahead of the other states in South America in terms of its process of nation-building. Indeed, it was the only true “nation” with a fervent nationalist spirit in Latin America; and this nationalism and social and elite cohesion was the key goal of its leaders’ policies from Paraguayan independence up until the war. If I am correct that fragmented states can be expected to underbalance, then an ideal mobilizing state (those with high levels of internal unity), when surrounded by such “underbalancers,” can be expected to try to exploit the situation by attacking its internally divided neighbors and, thereby, filling the power vacuum in its immediate external environment. And, indeed, this is precisely what Paraguay did: it saw that Brazil and Argentina were highly fragmented and sought to take advantage of this window of opportunity to expand at their expense. As the theory predicts, Paraguay not only balanced against its materially stronger neighbors but hypermobilized and then overexpanded against them. In all these respects, nineteenth-century Paraguay provides an exemplar of the causal statement no X → no Y; whereas Argentina and Brazil are exemplars of the causal statement X → Y. By exploring the behavior of Paraguay and its severely fragmented neighbors, the study avoids the error of selecting on the dependent variable, that is, the problem of no variation in the dependent variable among the cases. Finally, chapter 5 extends the theory to cover cases of underexpansion and underaggression: the suboptimal reluctance to use force or build up military power in pursuit of profit or security or both. Simply put, why are states so timid? This question may strike some readers as heretical. Yet it follows from the way much of the existing literature explains state behavior. In the world as portrayed by some major theories of international politics, and not just offensive realism but many versions of rationalchoice bargaining theory, there should be many more attempts than have actually occurred in history to achieve security and relative gains by building military power through conquest and expansion, and then using that added strength to attack with force to make even greater gains. If these theories are correct, in short, there should be more Paraguays. My domestic-politics theory explains why this has not been the case for most regions throughout much of international history. In the course of making the argument, I maintain that the ideal “mobilizing” state is, in practice, best captured by a fascist state. Fascism provided the rationale

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and “mobilizing passions” required for bold state action, while it eradicated the kind of internal dissent that I argue inhibits balancing and expansionist behaviors. In contrast, realist theory, which surprisingly shares many of the geostrategic assumptions and views of the state that motivated the rise of fascism, cannot generate the political heat necessary to launch costly mobilization campaigns for offensive purposes; its structural balance-of-power logic is too arcane to be of much use to elites as a mobilizing ideology in an age of mass politics. Most realists, even those who claim that states should seek to maximize their relative power for reasons of security and profit (e.g., E. H. Carr and John Mearsheimer), openly acknowledge realism’s political deficiencies. Still, realists have not moved to fill this large normative-prescriptive hole in the theoretical perspective. The question, therefore, remains: How do and how should modern elites sell to their publics the offensive schemes that many realists approve for structural-systemic reasons? It is not surprising that realists have not addressed the issue. A theoretical exercise that sought to make practicable the realist proposition that states should expand when they can inevitably raises terribly complicated and wrenching moral issues that, when worked out, would most likely generate hideous prescriptions that no contemporary realist would entertain much less endorse. It is my view that fascists, many of whom were influenced by the realist musings of Carl Schmitt and others, did in fact undertake this task; some did so deliberately, others unwittingly. Rooted in social Darwinism and geopolitics, fascism may be described as “ideologized” power politics for mass consumption. To be sure, fascism’s diabolical solution to the problem wound up throwing the realist baby out with the bathwater. Whereas fascism offered the necessary political content and internal unity for expansionist behavior, it failed miserably as a guidepost for prudent or moral state action. Rather than seizing sensible opportunities for expansion, fascist leaders, who did not believe in the balance of power, pursued excessive and greedy expansion that resulted in total disasters for themselves and the rest of the world.

CHAPTER ONE

Prudence in Managing Changes in the Balance of Power

THE HISTORY OF WORLD POLITICS is commonly told as a story of the rise and decline of different countries, regions, and civilizations. At times, the tempo of these shifts in fortune resembles a carousel spinning at dizzying speed. This motion was evident among the Greek city-states during the time of Herodotus, who observed that “cities at present powerful, were weak in olden time.”1 It also describes the period between the congress of Westphalia in 1648 and the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, when Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden fell from the top tier of power (Poland was wiped off the map!), and France, Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia emerged as great powers. No such wheel of fortune existed during the nineteenth century, which saw Britain, Prussia/Germany, France, Russia, and Austria hold on to their exclusive great-power status. By century’s end, however, America, Japan, and Italy were all knocking at the great-power door. Since 1945, no new power has been able to vault into the great-power category, though one fell from its ranks. Whether structural transformation is dramatic or barely perceptible, turbulent or smooth, the important point is that the pecking order of states constantly changes. As Paul Kennedy puts it, the “relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another.”2 Recognizing that this is so, this chapter addresses two questions: How has the international system adjusted to the rise of new powers? More specifically, how successful have the established great powers been in managing and peacefully assimilating rising, dissatisfied challengers into the existing international order. And how ought great powers manage rising states and accompanying dramatic changes in the balance of power? When is balancing a prudent behavior, such that one can say that when states did not balance, they were imprudent not to have done so? Great power transitions are never easy, but it is better when they happen slowly, surely, and, in any event, not in an atmosphere of general crisis. A cursory glance at the historical record reveals that the nature and success

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of the established powers’ responses to rising powers has varied not only from one historical epoch to another but on a case-by-case basis within the same era. As is true for most explanations of history, this variance is a function of both situational factors (e.g., the structural characteristics of the international system) and dispositional ones (unit-level factors). The latter causes must be considered from the perspective of both the rising challenger and the established powers, who must determine whether to respond and with what kind of policies. Regarding the former, the key questions are: How dissatisfied, if at all, is the rising power with the existing order and its place and prestige within that order? What are the extent and nature of its revisionist demands, if it has any? Can the rising power acquire the requisite strength either through internal or external means to make a serious bid to overthrow the system by force of arms? How, if at all, will the desired changes affect the interests of the other great powers? Regarding the former, the key questions are: How are the demands and intentions of the rising state perceived by elites within the established powers? Do elites agree about the nature of the external environment and the threat(s) it poses? Are there domestic political constraints that limit the state’s ability to adopt a pragmatic balancing policy or any of its alternatives? Do domestic politics even permit the state to adopt a long-term coherent and consistent grand strategy in response to changes in the balance of power? These latter questions about the internal politics of the responding countries will be taken up in the next chapter. This chapter assesses what “ought” to be done, assuming that states are not internally constrained by domestic political or other considerations. With this as a baseline, we can then establish and identify when states behave imprudently either by mistakenly underbalancing, putting their survival at risk and making wars more likely or more costly than they otherwise would be, or by inappropriately balancing, causing costly and dangerous arms spirals that increase the probability of war.

WHEN ARE RISING POWERS DANGEROUS? STRUCTURAL AND UNIT-LEVEL FACTORS The question of how to manage rising powers presupposes that such a situation is potentially dangerous and therefore requires a strategy or plan of action on the part of the affected established powers. This raises several questions: Why are rising powers dangerous? What are the causal links between national growth—which typically accounts for the rising power’s gain in relative strength—and international conflict and possibly war?

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What factors at the structural-systemic and domestic levels of analysis make rising powers more or less threatening? According to classical realism, a nation’s interests are shaped in the first place by its power measured in terms of material resources and political influence. As Martin Wight observes: “It is the nature of powers to expand. The energies of their members radiate culturally, economically and politically, and unless there are strong obstacles these tendencies will be summed up in territorial growth.”3 In this view, states expand when they can; that is, when they perceive relative increases in their own state power and when changes in the relative costs and benefits of expansion make it profitable for them to do so.4 Thus Gilpin asserts that “ a state will attempt to change the international system only if it has some relative advantage over other states, that is, if the balance of power in the system is to its advantage.”5 Acknowledging that political and military power must have an economic base, realists view economic prosperity as a preliminary to (or permissive cause of) expansion and war; a full war chest and the ability to replenish it are essential prerequisites to support the costs of military buildups, arms races, and massive and prolonged armed violence. Accordingly, realists predict that as states grow wealthier and more powerful, they not only seek great worldwide influence (control over territory, the behavior of other states, and the world economy) commensurate with their new capabilities.6 They are also more capable of expanding their interests and, if necessary, waging large-scale, hegemonic wars to revise drastically or overthrow entirely the status quo order. Simply put, the stronger and wealthier a state becomes, the more influence it wants and the more willing and able it will be to fight to advance its interests. The expansion of powers is a product not only of internal pressure but also of threats and opportunities in the external environment. The weakness of surrounding states, for instance, engenders both types of external compulsion. The powerful nation that finds itself bordering on a power vacuum feels compelled for both offensive and defensive reasons to fill the void with its own power.7 The danger of not expanding into a power vacuum is that other powerful states will not be equally restrained from doing so. Bandwagoning dynamics also dictate a policy of expansion. Because “a buffer state that lacks internal strength and stability will gravitate, irrespective of its own wishes, away from a declining power towards an expanding power,”8 it is doubly dangerous for a great power to appear weak and irresolute—in this case, by resisting the temptation to expand when the opportunity presents itself. Finally, because weakness implies political instability, the great power has to fill the power vacuum in order to prevent the threat of regional instability from spilling across its own borders.

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Under these circumstances, the great power is expanding for the essentially defensive purpose of inoculating itself against the contagion (e.g., civil and ethnic conflict, revolutionary ideas, etc.).9

STRUCTURAL FACTORS: COLLIDING INTERESTS AND SECURITY DILEMMAS In their study of the long-term causes of World War I, Nazli Choucri and Robert North developed the theory of lateral pressure to explain the dynamics of national growth and international competition and war.10 The basic argument is that growth in a nation’s population density and advanced technology generates demands for larger amounts and a wider range of resources, which often cannot be met by the state’s domestic resource endowments. This domestic deficiency, in turn, generates lateral pressure, which refers to the tendency among rising powers to expand their external activities and interests, whether for raw materials, markets, living space, religious converts, military and naval bases, or simply exploration and adventure.11 When several states adopt expansionist policies, their external interests and commitments are increasingly likely to collide with each other. These clashes of interests increase the likelihood of war. This theory is based on a positive feedback process, whereby rapid internal growth requires external expansion to sustain itself. Thus virtually every modern, industrialized country, they claim, has manifested strong, extensive lateral pressure in some form. Whether motivated by exploration, commerce, investment, or conquest, lateral pressure establishes extraterritorial national interests among the great powers; and depending on type, extent, and intensity, lateral pressure generally leads to majorpower conflict when the foreign activities and interests of two or more major powers collide. In their own words, Choucri and North’s analysis of great-power policies during the years 1870 and 1914 revealed that “expansionist activities are most likely to be associated with relatively highcapability countries, and to be closely linked with growth in population and advances in technology. Also, growth tends to be associated with intense competition among countries for resources and markets, military power, political influence, and prestige.”12 A related problem is raised by the security dilemma: “many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others.”13 The rise of new great powers, particularly when they have or seek to acquire empires and/or less formal far-flung interests and commitments, will likely engender security dilemmas or intensify existing ones. As Jervis puts it: “Any state that has interests throughout the world cannot avoid

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possessing the power to menace others.”14 Thus, when the United States emerged as a world power after the Spanish-American war, it found that its new Pacific possessions could not be protected without threatening the security of Japan’s home islands and insular colonies. Despairing over the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines and the security dilemma it created with Japan, Theodore Roosevelt prophetically observed in 1907: “The Philippines form our heel of Achilles. They are all that makes the present situation with Japan dangerous. . . . To keep the islands without treating them generously and at the same time without adequately fortifying them and without building up a navy second only to that of Great Britain, would be disastrous in the extreme. Yet there is the danger of just this being done.”15 For its part, Japan’s quest for East Asian hegemony also could not be achieved without seriously compromising the security of the United States. Thus in vain President Wilson objected to the Council of Four’s decision on May 7, 1919, to mandate to Japan the German islands in the Pacific north of the equator. A. Whitney Griswold paraphrases Wilson’s concerns: “The Japanese mandate, [Wilson] confided to one of his closest advisers, lay athwart the path from Hawaii to the Philippines. The mandated islands were nearer Hawaii than was the California coast. They could easily be fortified; in fact he could conceive of no use for them except as naval bases. . . . The entire mandate . . . would, in the hands of a naval rival, menace the security of the Philippines.”16 Colliding interests leading to war, however, do not always involve security. For example, following Elizabethan England’s surprising defeat of Spain’s “Invincible Armada,” the Stuart Navy found itself confronting the rise of a new, more formidable maritime and commercial rival, the Dutch Republic, which had been thriving (ironically, with Elizabeth’s aid) despite more than thirty years of continuous struggle to resist Spanish subjugation. The ensuing Anglo-Dutch rivalry and series of wars that ended in 1688 were fueled entirely by motives of prestige, power, and profit: This basic cause of a long-lasting rivalry over trade and primacy at sea set the style of the Anglo-Dutch wars: more than any others fought by the British in the past four centuries, they were trade wars. Invasion was not really planned or attempted by either side (except in 1673), and if a threat to territorial security had been the main criterion for assessing potential foes, then both countries would have regarded France as a more likely danger. It was, instead, a quarrel about who should rule the waves and reap the commercial benefits of that privilege.17

The Anglo-Dutch rivalry was a classic case of two rising powers with expanding and overlapping nonsecurity interests headed for an inevitable showdown. Because their national identities as trading powers depended, they believed, on maritime supremacy, because their coasts and respective

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naval forces were separated only by the Narrow Seas, and because their commercial and colonial interests brought them into collision in almost every part of the world, the English and Dutch were locked into a “rivalry which was unavoidable, inexorable, a rivalry which could eventually have only one of two issues, either voluntary submission of one of the rivals to the other, or a trial of strength by ordeal of battle.”18 The town, so to speak, was not big enough for the both of them. The significance of the arguments summarized above is that they imply that a rising power need not be an aggressor to cause instability in the system. Because there is no Leviathan in world politics to enforce agreements between states or to keep the peace among them, international conflict is inevitable and war is always possible. In this regard, the prior discussion of lateral pressure and security dilemmas stresses that, even among states seeking only to survive and prosper, conflict arises because of the constant condition of scarcity in terms of raw materials, markets, social goods such as prestige and leadership (which are by their very nature “positional” and, therefore, prone to competition), as well as security. National growth, by generating new resource demands in excess of the state’s domestic endowments, exacerbates competition for scarce resources, regardless of the rising state’s intentions. Equally significant, under conditions of global economic expansion, states must run faster just to stay in place; fearing losses in relative power and prestige, great powers will be tempted to expand merely to keep up with the Jones’s (a good example is the scramble for Africa in the 1880s).19 For all these reasons, interstate interactions in the periphery, as well as the core, will intensify, making it more likely that the interests and goals of the great powers will clash. UNIT-LEVEL FACTORS: INTENTIONS AND RISK PROPENSITY OF RISING POWERS In addition to structural factors such as national growth and changes in the balance of power, the interests (intentions or goals) of states play an important role in determining when rising powers are dangerous and what types of responses are appropriate to deal with them. Power tells us how much influence a state can be expected to have over others and its environment; interests tell us how and for what purposes that influence will be used. Wilsonian liberals (idealists) divide the world into good (democratic) and bad (nondemocratic) states. Traditional realists, in contrast, view international struggle not in Manichean terms (as a morality play between forces of light and dark, good and evil), but rather as a natural competition between the established and, therefore, satisfied powers and the rising and, therefore, typically dissatisfied ones. Members of these two

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opposing camps usually line up according to who won and lost the last major-power war. Dissatisfied states have also been ones that were on the winning side but believed that the peace settlement did not grant them their full amount of rightful spoils from victory. In the eyes of traditional realists, the concept of power politics applied equally to both “haves” and “have-nots,” sated and hungry states. It is the centrality of this belief that most clearly separates traditional realism from Wilsonian idealism. As E. H. Carr argued: “It is profoundly misleading to represent the struggle between satisfied and dissatisfied Powers as a struggle between morality on one side and power on the other. It is a clash in which, whatever the moral issue, power politics are equally predominant on both sides.”20 Similarly, Raymond Aron maintained: “Idealistic diplomacy slips too often into fanaticism; it divides states into good and evil, into peace-loving and bellicose. It envisions a permanent peace by the punishment of the latter and the triumph of the former. The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics, exaggerates its crimes. . . . States, engaged in incessant competition[,] . . . are not divided, once and for all, into good and evil. It is rare that all the wrongs are committed by one side, that one camp is faultless.”21 At issue in the enduring conflict between have and have-not states is the legitimacy of the existing international order—its division of territory, its institutional arrangements and governing structures, its norms and values. Here, legitimacy does not necessarily mean justice per se but rather an international consensus, especially among the great powers, about the nature of workable arrangements and the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. Such a consensus about what is legitimate in international relations does not eliminate conflict but, instead, limits its scope and the acceptable means to resolve the problems that will inevitably arise among nations in a competitive, self-help system. In a legitimate order, even the most dissatisfied states desire only changes within the system, not a change of system; and adjustments of the status quo are acceptable as long as they are made within the framework of existing institutional arrangements and not at their expense. It is worth noting that not all rising powers are dissatisfied with the status quo order or their prestige and position within that order. Further, rising powers do not necessarily threaten others. As Stephen Walt has pointed out, threat does not inhere in power alone.22 Thus, nineteenthcentury Britain controlled three-quarters of the world and yet remained in “splendid isolation.” Similarly, America’s rise to power did not provoke a counterbalancing coalition. Geographic proximity plays an important role here: strong insular (or maritime) powers are inherently less threatening than continental ones; and contiguous land expansion into untapped hinterlands is far less threatening than similar expansion within the core.

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Thus, Russia and America, sometimes called flank states, grew to continental size without greatly disturbing the old world powers. In general, maritime hegemonic powers are threatening because of what they do; continental land powers are threatening because of what they are.23 Rising, dissatisfied powers may be distinguished along two dimensions: the extent and nature of their revisionist aims and their risk propensity to accomplish those aims. The Nature and Extent of Revisionist Aims Dissatisfied states may be divided into two categories: limited-aims revisionists and unlimited-aims revisionists or revolutionary powers. In Kissinger’s view, “the distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened—such a feeling is inherent in the nature of international relations based on sovereign states—but that nothing can reassure it.” The goal of revolutionary states is not “the adjustment of differences within a given system which will be at issue, but the system itself.”24 It is a quest for global domination and ideological supremacy. While all revolutionary states are dissatisfied, not all dissatisfied states are revolutionary. The key question is whether the rising power views the protection and promotion of its essential values as dependent on fundamental changes in the existing international order; or whether it is merely dissatisfied with its prestige and portions of the status quo. If the former, then it is a revolutionary state that cannot be satisfied without destroying essential elements of the international order. If the latter, then it is a dissatisfied state but its demands can be met while at the same time preserving and, in some cases, actually strengthening the established order. These limited-aims revisionists are typically regional powers that seek either compensatory territorial adjustments to reflect their increased power, recognition as an equal among the great powers, and/or changes in the rules and decision-making procedures within, but not the basic principles of, existing regimes. The key to the success of a strategy designed to cope with a rising dissatisfied power is accurately distinguishing between these two types of revisionist states. Engagement, for instance, is an appropriate strategy with regard to limited-aims revisionist states. Satisfaction of their grievances through reasonable concessions in the face of legitimate demands not only can be accomplished without sacrificing the existing order but, by converting these disgruntled states into defenders of the new general settlement, it strengthens the legitimacy and stability of the system and, thereby, helps to preserve the peace. Attempts to appease revolutionary states, by contrast, are not only misguided but dangerous: they weaken the appeaser’s relative power position and simply whet the voracious appe-

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tite of the unlimited-aims adversary; it “errs in transferring a policy of compromise from a political environment favorable to the preservation of the status quo, where it belongs, to an environment exposed to imperialistic attack, where it does not belong.”25 In Edmund Burke’s eyes, for instance, the war against Revolutionary France was not a clash of interests but of ideologies, and so he saw no chance of reconciliation. Unlike the prior war against the American colonies, which Burke condemned, the present war was “not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or interest may veer about: not with a State which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which, by its essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war.”26 In 1940, Hore-Belisha took the Burkean view that Naziism and British values could not coexist: “We did not enter the fight merely to reconstitute Czechoslovakia. Nor do we fight merely to reconstitute the Polish State. Our aims are not defined by geographical frontiers. We are concerned with frontiers of the human spirit. This is no war about a map.” The crux of the problem is that without the benefit of hindsight, it is often a very tricky business to infer intentions from behavior. State actions are rarely unambiguous at the time. Consider, for instance, the seemingly clear-cut case of Hitlerite Germany. To Chamberlain and the appeasers, Hitler’s actions, prior to the German seizure of Prague in 1939, were consistent with a “normal” German statesman. Like his predecessors, Hitler merely desired to free Germany from the “shackles of Versailles” for reasons of security, not aggrandizement. They therefore endorsed Hitler’s role of the injured party rather than contesting it. Of this view, Lord Lothian wrote to Anthony Eden in 1936: “I believe that if we assist Germany to escape from encirclement to a position of balance in Europe, there is a good chance of the twenty-five years peace of which Hitler spoke.”27 Similarly, Neville Henderson asserted in the spring of 1939: “The Corridor and Danzig were a real German national grievance, and some equitable settlement had to be found if there was ever to be genuine peace.”28 To Churchill and those who advocated a hard-line policy toward Germany, Hitler’s actions prior to 1939 were unambiguously consistent with a revolutionary state with unlimited revisionist aims. Antiappeasers pointed out that, unlike traditional German nationalists, Hitler would not be satisfied with the frontiers of 1914 or even the enormous gains made by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the view of antiappeasers, Hitler’s many grievances were a mere cover for his program of greedy expansion. Thus, Lord Robert Cecil argued: “I do not think that the present grievances of the Germans are genuine so far as Hitler and his entourage are concerned.

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They are merely being used in order to justify his armaments policy, and if we were successful in taking away one or more of his grievances, he would only produce others, and at the same time use our concessions as a proof of how well his policy was succeeding.”29 In retrospect we know that Churchill’s assessment of Hitler’s intentions was more accurate than Chamberlain’s. This does not prove, however, that Chamberlain’s image of Hitler was the product of misperception, irrationality, or plain naivete´. Given the evidence available to them at the time, both British leaders could reasonably conclude as they did: Hitler’s actions were consistent with both a limited-aims revisionist (Hitler had only pan-German goals) and a revolutionary state (Hitler sought world dominion). That one of these two interpretations proved correct does not mean that the other was the result of cognitive biases or any other type of information-processing problem. Thus, even in this seemingly clear-cut case, the process of inferring motivation from behavior is problematic and riddled with ambiguity. Recognizing that uncertainty about a rising power’s intentions is a normal state of affairs, when there is a good or even fair chance that it might be a revolutionary state, then it is necessary to hedge one’s bets.30 The appeasers’ mistake was not their failure to apprehend with certainty Hitler’s true intentions. Rather, it was their hubris in believing that they, in fact, knew Hitler’s intentions and, therefore, did not need to take the necessary military precautions in the event that they proved wrong. For these failures, they have been vilified and rightly condemned by history as dangerously idealistic and imprudent. More important, had the British balanced more aggressively, a policy of appeasement might have had a chance of working—assuming that Hitler was appeasable. Simply and more generally put, without the threat of a costly war lurking in the background, the policy of appeasement rarely succeeds. Risk Propensity Risk propensity refers to the probability of success that a particular decisionmaker requires before embarking on a course of action. For example, in deciding whether to increase the nation’s power through war or warthreatening conflict, leaders of revisionist states must make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, that is, the extent to which the probability of success of a course of action is unknown. The sources of uncertainty of particular concern to a revisionist leader contemplating war could include: (1) its own military strength relative to that of the target of the attack; (2) the balance of resolve, that is, how much the target values what is at stake compared with the value it attaches to what is at stake; (3) the question of whether other states will get involved and, if so, who will align

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TABLE 1.1. Revisionist Powers according to Risk Propensity and Extent of Aims Risk-Averse

Risk-Acceptant

Limited-Aims Revisionist

Fascist Italy Japan, 1894–1930 Brezhnev’s USSR France, 1871–1914

Wilhelmine Germany Bismarckian Germany Japan, 1931–45 Khrushchev’s USSR Paraguay, 1864–70 2nd Empire France

Revolutionary State

Stalinist Russia Maoist China

Philip II’s Spain Louis XIV’s France Napoleonic France Nazi Germany

with whom; and (4) the relative capabilities of its own potential alliance partners and the likelihood that they will honor their alliance commitments when crunch time comes. Let us assume that a revisionist leader attaches a probability of p to its chances of winning a war it wants to initiate. Because the probability of any event occurring can range from zero to one, if the revisionist state wins, it believes that it will increase its power (or utility) by some increment x; if it loses, it believes it will be less powerful than it was prior to the war by an increment of y. The subjective expected utility of the war option, then, is the leader’s estimation of the utilities of the possible outcomes times their probabilities or: (p)x + (1 - p)y. In terms of risk propensity, it is useful to distinguish between two types of actors: risk-acceptant and risk-averse. Risk-acceptant actors are gamblers under conditions of uncertainty, whereas risk-averse actors are cautious under uncertainty. A risk-averse actor, for example, would be opportunistic in its attempts to improve its power position, such that, if an opportunity for expansion presents itself, it will take advantage of it. In contrast, risk-acceptant actors, “because they attach some added utility to the act of taking a gamble, are less constrained in making war decisions than are risk-averse actors.”31 Table 1.1 (above) categorizes various rising, dissatisfied states according to the two dimensions articulated above: Nature of Revisionist Aims (limited and unlimited) and Risk Propensity (risk-averse or risk-acceptant). Risk-averse, limited-aims revisionists are opportunistic expanders that generally seek regional dominance. By contrast, risk-acceptant, limitedaims revisionists, aside from being more reckless in their strategies for gains, tend to have more ambitious aims than do their risk-averse counterparts; and, related to this, they often advance prestige demands as well

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as territorial ones. Moreover, risk-acceptant limited-aims revisionists are typically more dissatisfied with the status quo order than are their riskaverse counterparts; and they tend to place less value on their current possessions than do the latter. Risk-acceptant revolutionary powers are the most virulent expanders. These are the states that have periodically emerged to mount a serious challenge to the very existence of the modern states system. In contrast, risk-averse revolutionary powers—while they, too, desire a new order—are unwilling to risk systemwide war to overthrow the established order. Instead, they seek revolutionary change as a long-term, almost utopian, goal. Consequently, they are opportunistic and incremental in their attempts to revise the status quo. POLICY RESPONSES TO RISING, DISSATISFIED POWERS Foreign policy debates over how to respond to potential threats generally revolve around differing perceptions of the adversary’s intentions. Along these lines, Robert Jervis distinguishes between deterrence and spiral models—two generic types of belief systems that posit contradictory views of the other state’s intentions, how conflict arises, and how peace can best be had and preserved.32 The crux of the deterrence model is that great danger arises when “an aggressor believes that the status quo powers are weak in capability and resolve.”33 Evidence of weakness and irresolve by the defenders of the status quo emboldens aggressors to advance their revisionist aims, which will cease only when the expansionist state or coalition is confronted by firm resistance. The deterrence model of conflict applies, therefore, when the defender of the status quo faces a formidable, expansionist adversary— such as a revolutionary power. Under these circumstances, deterrence theory prescribes competitive policies: active balancing and, if feasible, preventive war. Conflict is seen as a product of evil and greed. The spiral model, in contrast, views conflict as a result of enduring structural factors: international anarchy and the security dilemma. Because states exist in an anarchic, self-help realm, wars are always possible and superior military power is the final arbiter of international disputes. Moreover, operating under anarchy and an ever-present security dilemma, states often misperceive the arming of others for reasons of security as hostile and provocative acts and evidence of aggressive intent. If both sides operate under this misperception, a dangerous and unnecessary arms spiral will ensue. In the absence of deliberate efforts to reverse this action-reaction process, conflict will eventually spiral out of control. The important point, one that distinguishes this model from the deterrence view, is that conflict in the spiral model is merely apparent, not real; there is no underlying conflict of

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interest, only a vicious cycle of distrust and exaggerated fears of the other side’s aggressive intentions. Thus, in contrast to the deterrence model, the spiral model prescribes cooperative policies to reassure the other side of one’s benign intentions. Specifically, a spiral model view would dictate various cooperative strategies that provide the opponent an opportunity to demonstrate that it is not an aggressor but merely a security seeker. One specific spiral model strategy is called Graduated and Reciprocal Initiatives in Tension-Reduction (GRIT), which uses unilateral, costly concessions to gain the other side’s trust.34 GRIT calls for an initial costly concession made against an explicit backdrop of reconciliation (usually a major speech), in which the target of the concession is told that it is being engaged in a cooperative process to reduce tensions through a series of reciprocal and costly concessions. The goal of this strategy is to bring about a de´tente in relations, which, it is hoped, will ultimately engender an entente of sorts and thereby end the rivalry altogether. For the deterrence and spiral models, the question is not: Is the rising power a limited- or unlimited-aims revisionist power? Instead, these models ask the prior question: Is the opponent a revisionist or status quo power? In practice, there is no simple answer to this question. That noted, Alastair Iain Johnston has provided a set of useful measures by which one can assess whether a particular actor is inside or outside a status quo “international community.” These indicators can be listed as a series of questions involving the institutions, norms, and rules that govern any given international order and the rising power’s desire to redistribute power in the system by military means. The questions are as follows: Is the actor’s participation in international institutions that regulate the activities of members of the community high or low? Does the actor break the rules and norms once it becomes a member of these institutions? If given a chance, will it try to change these rules and norms in ways that defeat the original purposes of the institution and community? Does the actor have clear preferences for a radical redistribution of material power in the international system? If the actor’s behavior is aimed at realizing such a redistribution of power, will it use military power as a critical tool to achieve this end?35 Of course, these are difficult questions to answer, and states can change their intentions in the future. Thus, what is of critical importance is not just the true intentions of the rising power but, instead, how much relative power the potential challenger currently possesses and how fast is it rising relative to the established power(s). Leaders can afford to assume that the rising power is benign when it is still relatively weak and its trajectory of overtaking the most powerful state in the system is not a steep one. When the rising power is relatively strong and its growth trajectory is steep, however, leaders must err on the side of caution by making use of worst-case logic in their assumptions of the rising power’s true intentions. For even

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if they are wrong, leaders must be aware that the rising state’s interests may expand with its growth in power, and its intentions can thereby undergo a change from status quo oriented to revisionist. And, indeed, this has often been the case in the history of rising powers. A key related issue is how subordinate states perceive the intentions of the hegemon itself, and how this factor relates to whether or not balancing behavior occurs in the system. Johnston’s indicators of revisionist or status quo intentions essentially measure the rising power’s satisfaction with the established order—its rules, norms, principles, institutions, territorial arrangements, and governing structures. In other words, is the hegemon’s order seen as legitimate or illegitimate by other potential peer competitors in the global system? In this respect, there are two types of hegemonic rule: benign and malign (or predatory) hegemony. States bandwagon with benign hegemony. In contrast, they balance against what they perceive as malign or predatory hegemony, that is, provided that they have enough strength to balance against the hegemon or can accumulate sufficient countervailing power through antihegemonic alliances. When subordinate states do not possess sufficient combined power to counterbalance the hegemon, as in the current unipolar system, we will not see evidence of traditional balancing behavior. Instead, we will see what some have mislabeled “soft balancing” behavior. That is, subordinate states will begin to criticize and undermine the legitimacy of the hegemon’s rule; they will also impose various costs on its rule. These behaviors, which precede actual balancing behavior, are evidence that a “delegitimation” phase has begun. In other words, a delegitimation phase consists of two elements: the discourse of resistance (deviant rhetoric, alternative ideologies, new ideas about justice, alternative utopian futures) and the practice of resistance (cost-imposing strategies that fall short of full-fledged balancing behavior, such as blackmail, economic and political sanctions, diplomatic friction, etc.). Both components of delegitimation are mutually sustaining and necessary for the next phase of actual balancing behavior. They set out a future course that can be followed when power sufficient for effective action is attained, and they create the mobilizing passions required to augment the power of reactionary forces vis-a`-vis the powers that be.

THE ENGAGEMENT MODEL Returning to the deterrence and spiral models, the problem with this simple dichotomous scheme is that it excludes situations in which there are real conflicts of interests between two or more states but their interests are not irreconcilable; that is, their relationship is neither purely harmoni-

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ous nor, when adversarial, purely zero-sum. To cover this historically common situation, I propose a third model: the engagement model. Here, the established power is confronted by a limited-aims revisionist power and the appropriate strategy is, quite obviously, engagement. The strategy of engagement refers to the use of noncoercive means to ameliorate the non–status quo elements of a rising power’s behavior. The goal is to ensure that this growing power is used in ways that are consistent with peaceful change and global order. A common form of engagement is the policy of appeasement (a subset of engagement), which attempts to settle international quarrels “by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an armed conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly very dangerous.”36 Typically, this process requires adjustments in territory and spheres of influence and/or the reallocation of global responsibilities and other sources of prestige commensurate with the growth in national power of the rising state. Engagement is more than appeasement, however. It encompasses any attempt to socialize the dissatisfied power into acceptance of the established order. The basic idea behind engagement is that close contacts between nations increase communication, understanding, and interdependence, which, in turn, promote peace and harmony. The process of social interaction between countries fosters learning, which, over time, changes the identity, interests, and behavior of the dissatisfied rising state. Relying primarily on promises of rewards rather than the threat of punishment to influence the target’s behavior, engagement seeks to embed or bind the rising power within a network of multilateral alliances and institutional arrangements. There are several objectives in adopting a multilateral binding strategy. First, by incorporating the rising power in existing institutional frameworks, giving it a place at the table, so to speak, the established powers aim to satisfy the prestige demands of the rising power. Second, through its membership in global institutions, the rising state is afforded a greater opportunity to voice its concerns and build, in conjunction with the other members, a revised (but not entirely new) international order that better reflects its enhanced power and interests. The established powers hope that this cooperative approach to international change based on consensus will foster a renewed sense of legitimacy in the international order among all the great powers. Finally, the established powers use multilateral arrangements for the purpose of entangling the rising power in a web of policies that makes exercise of its power more costly. This assumes that the gains derived by the rising power from membership in the existing institutions are substantial, and that “belonging confers additional benefits from which outsiders can be excluded.”37 The policy succeeds if the

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TABLE 1.2. Prudent Policies in Response to Various Types of Revisionist Powers Risk-Averse

Risk-Acceptant

Limited-Aims Revisionist

1. Engagement 2. Mixed Strategy of Carrots and Sticks 3. Appeasement

1. Containment 2. Balancing 3. Engagement 4. Mixed Strategy

Revolutionary State

1. Containment 2. Balancing

1. Preventive War 2. Aggressive Balancing through Arms and Allies

positive sanctions convert the revolutionary state into a status quo power with a stake in the stability of the system. If engagement fails, then a more appropriate strategy is neither purelycooperative nor purely competitive but rather a mixture of carrots and sticks. Specifically, the established power attempts to satisfy the rising power’s legitimate grievances and to modify its future behavior through economic and political rewards as well as the threat of force. Compliance is still rewarded, but noncompliance must be detected and punished. The table above (1.2) lists the policies that are most prudent for the established powers to adopt in response to various types of rising, dissatisfied challengers. Because I am concerned about the policies that directly threaten established great powers, I have omitted bandwagoning for profit, distancing, and buck-passing as appropriate responses—though these may indeed be wise policy responses for weak states, unthreatened remote states, or revisionist powers. THREAT PERCEPTION AND BALANCING BEHAVIOR Aside from domestic politics, which is the central concern of this book, threat perception is a crucial intervening variable between changes in relative power and reaction in the form of balancing behavior. “For when threat is not perceived, even in the face of apparently objective evidence, there can hardly be a mobilization of defensive resources.”38 Conversely, threat may be perceived where none exists, either because the opponent’s capabilities or one’s own vulnerabilities are exaggerated or because the opponent does not possess hostile intent. Scholarly discussion of threats has generally taken two forms. One conception of threat, typically employed by game theorists and defense strategists, is based on conventional

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usage of the term as a relationship between two parties, in which one attempts to influence the behavior of the other through the contingent application of punishment. Here, threat is a strategy; and as such it is a deliberate undertaking. For others, particularly social psychologists, threat is simply an actor’s perceptions of anticipated harm, which often exist in the absence of a clear threat relationship between a target and an initiator. The common failure of decisonmakers to recognize that others can feel threatened by them in the absence of any deliberate undertaking on their part to pose a harm explains why the security dilemma and associated spiral dynamics can lead to conflict and war though no state seeks anything more than security. Given the anarchic nature of international politics, states “face enough hostility and uncertainty to incur regular anticipation of harm.”39 For the purposes of this study, threat perception will be defined as an anticipation on the part of a decisionmaker of impending harm of a military kind to the state. Perceived threats may be actual, that is, inferred from relatively clear signals of intent; potential, that is, inferred from factors or situations in the external environment or the capability of the opponent that may materialize into a danger; or imagined, that is, the threat is real to the perceiver but not supported by an objective reading of the available evidence. In an influential early work on the subject, David Singer argued that threat “perception is a function of both estimated capability and estimated intent. To state the relationship in quasi-mathematical form: Threat Perception = Estimated Capability × Estimated Intent.”40 While the concept of capability is obvious enough (viz., material assets that can be mobilized for harmful purposes), the meaning of intentions is not as straightforward. The term “intentions” commonly refers to the plans and goals of an actor. Used in this way, intentions becomes interchangeable with the concept of an actor’s interests, for example, in preserving the status quo or overturning it, in mere self-preservation or world domination. The problem with this definition is that what an actor wants in an ideal world free of costs and risks (let us call this the actor’s utopian interests or goals) is entirely different from what we would predict that same actor to do given real-world constraints on its actions (its intentions). Along these lines, Robert Jervis provides a more useful definition of intentions as the actions an actor will or would take under given conditions, for that is essentially what others are trying to predict.41 This means that the intentions of an actor cannot be separated from its resolve and willingness to run risks. In other words, what the observer believes an actor will do is partly a function of the constraints it is likely to face and an assessment of the costs and risks the actor is willing to bear to achieve its goals.42

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The Singer formulation of threat perception, although simple and direct, ignores these crucial subjective aspects of threat perception. In doing so, it blurs the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive aspects of the concept—that is, how threats should be appraised and how we actually appraise them. As Raymond Cohen puts it: “There is a crucial gap between a cold, scientific conclusion that a given opponent possesses a particular capability and may well possess a certain intent—the intelligence evaluation of the existence of a possible threat—and the essentially subjective conviction—the ‘gut feeling’—that one is in danger.” He concludes that “the Singer account fails to consider the psychological dimension.”43 Dean Pruitt, a social psychologist, observed that threat perception turns on an inference, as opposed to the “perception of something tangible,” which pieces together evidence of capability and harmful intentions into a coherent account of the situation. Like Singer, Pruitt maintains that threats are inferred from evidence of both capability and intent. Evidence of threatening intent is drawn from a variety of evidence, including capability, actions, statements, and the conditions faced by the other country. The psychology of inference—the intuitive “piecing together” of evidence—is not, however, a purely objective process. Rather, inferences are based in part on evidence and in part on predispositions that often distort the interpretation of evidence. Typically, predispositions cause perceivers to emphasize supporting evidence and to discount discrepant information. Taken together these cognitive biases produce the phenomenon called “possibilistic thinking,” in which future events are seen as probable that should be seen only as possible. Noting that the predispositions to perceive threat may arise from various sources, including distrust, past experience, contingency planning, and anxiety, Pruitt posits two general hypotheses: “(a) The stronger a predisposition, the more influence it will have on what is inferred. (b) The weaker or more ambiguous the evidence, the greater the influence of predispositions.”44 In a later work on the cognitive aspects of threat perception, Klaus Knorr maintains that although threats usually arise from tangible things that in principle can be observed, such as the capabilities and behavior of states, these observable realities rarely have unmistakable meaning. They are, instead, estimates of the past and the present based on inferences from usually fragmentary, opaque, and contradictory bits of information. Moreover, threat perception concerns the future, which is always uncertain and, if it follows the patterns of past history, will give rise to truly surprising events.45 Yet, the main obstacle to realistic threat perception, according to Knorr, is not the quality, reliability, or availability of information but rather the cognitive distortions that arise from motivated biases. Wishful thinking and preconceptions cause the perceiver to ignore, belittle, or misconstrue

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discrepant evidence and to accept only the shreds of intelligence that confirm what s/he expects to see and wants to achieve: The greatest dangers to realistic threat perception do not inhere in the intellectual difficulties resulting from poor evidence and future uncertainty. The perceiver can gain an awareness of these problems and can make allowances for them. The greater danger lies in rigid preconceptions and attitudes of which the perceiver is unaware, or not aware enough. Such predispositions make him desire to see certain things happen, and to make what he wants to do seem justified. And the push and pull of underlying emotions that are attached to the values at stake in international affairs, and that are attached also to foreign actors in such forms as hatred and contempt, can lead the perceiver astray. These intervening preconceptions and attitudes produce selectivity in the receipt and use of information; they therefore contribute to a distorted image of reality and false expectations.46

These types of cognitive distortions are facilitated by the often fragmentary, contradictory, and ambiguous nature of the evidence, which allows decisionmakers to rigidly sustain an interpretation of the facts that fits their predetermined expectations and beliefs. Knorr goes on to posit three conditions under which estimates of threat perception are most likely to be realistic: (1) threat perception is situationally easy when the opponent’s behavior is confidently known and leaves no doubt about acute danger. In this situation, the problem is not underestimation of the threat but the tendency to overestimate it; (2) threat perception is experientially easy for societies, especially weak ones, that have been repeatedly attacked throughout history; and (3) threat perception is strategically easy in the presence of a militarily powerful and rising state, even when that state exhibits no present indication of hostile intent. “Threat perception is then facilitated, because it is easier to estimate the capabilities of states than their intentions.”47 Cases of leaders that either did not perceive or respond to threats under these “easy” conditions are, therefore, especially interesting as likely examples of severe motivated biases among policymakers or, alternatively, of second-image constraints on balancing behavior. In an inductive and historically informed study of threat perception, Raymond Cohen finds one important common link among all six of his case studies: “the appraisal that an observed infringement of accepted norms of international conduct governing relations between the involved parties was the thin end of a wedge of a concerted program of aggression and domination.”48 In other words, the intent to do serious harm is most often inferred when the state being appraised flagrantly violates mutually agreed upon and understood “rules of the game.” Whether they are explicit or tacit, specific to a particular relationship or generally applicable, rules of the game prescribe the boundaries of permissible behavior be-

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tween states, and they are inherently anticipatory: they “entail certain expectations about the future conduct in given circumstances of other actors in the international system.”49 An infringement of the rules of the game triggers the perception of threat by clearly signaling to the victim that the infractor is prepared to risk conflict and engage in forbidden acts. And because an infringement of the rules of conduct removes the only means for tacit restraint between the parties, such that there is no other viable line of demarcation to fall back on,50 “the infringement takes on the aspect not just of a limited attempt to achieve immediate gain, but of an event of far-reaching significance, an ominous warning of impending danger to the entire structure of international order of which the observer, the victim, is a part.”51 The inference of intention to threaten, therefore, is based on the opponent’s action. It should be pointed out that this approach to the problem of inferring intentions of threat is entirely consistent with Thomas Schelling’s model of tacit bargaining in limited war scenarios. According to Schelling, boundaries have meaning because they are perceptually distinct to observers; and because they are highly salient, boundaries serve as focal points around which actors’ expectations converge. In this way, boundaries facilitate tacit coordination among actors. Thus, when an actor deliberately steps over a boundary on a conceptual dimension, it commits an act that flagrantly violates accepted rules of the game and, in doing so, signals its intentions to do harm.52 COGNITIVE CONSTRAINTS ON THREAT ASSESSMENT AND STRATEGIC ADJUSTMENT Aside from the inherent uncertainties and complexities of the international environment that may prevent decisionmakers from recognizing change, there are various ways by which cognitive constraints can impair threat assessment and prudent strategic adjustment to environmental incentives. First, decision making in a crisis situation often induces high levels of stress and associated psychological dysfunctions, such as defensive avoidance, selective search of information, and premature cognitive closure. These so-called motivated biases cause elites to distort or selectively interpret incoming information according to what they want to see, not on what they should see.53 Second, people are predisposed to see what they expect to be present, and they interpret information in a way that is consistent with their preexisting beliefs. This process of drawing inferences based on predispositions and expectations (or evoked sets) often means that discrepant information is (a) consciously ignored or simply goes unnoticed, (b) distorted so that it confirms or, at least, does not contradict one’s preexisting beliefs, or (c)

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discounted or written off entirely as invalid. And yet “this way of perceiving is rational. Intelligent decision-making in any sphere is impossible unless significant amounts of information are assimilated to pre-existing beliefs.”54 Hence, the normal and rational way to process information may result in significant cognitive distortions, especially when the information is ambiguous and can be understood only through subjective inferential logic. Third, and related to the first two, a predisposition to perceive threat may be caused by personal or group anxiety. As Dean Pruitt points out: “There is an obvious relationship between expectant dread and threat perception. When people are anxious, they cast about for some concrete object to fear; they become predisposed to perceive threat. . . . In times of national dislocation, when anxieties rise, an entire population may begin to overinterpret minimal evidence of threat from another nation.”55 Consider, for example, the case of Germany’s obsessive fear of a surprise British naval attack in the pre–World War I period—dubbed the “Copenhagen complex” by Jonathan Steinberg: To Germans in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the word “Kopenhagen” meant more than the name of the Danish capital. It represented a past event and a present fear, the fear that some day, perhaps on a peaceful afternoon as in the autumn of 1807, a British fleet would suddenly appear off Wilhelmshaven or Kiel and without warning attack the beautiful new ships of the Imperial Navy. Unsuspecting as they rode quietly in their moorings and unable to defend themselves, the great German capital ships would be pounded into smoking ruins and the world position and pretensions of the German Empire would at one blow be crushed beyond repair. The seizure of the Danish fleet and the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 had for a fleeting moment uncovered the true features of British power, its utter ruthlessness behind a humanitarian mask. Who could say when that mask might fall again? The development of the Imperial Navy and Germany’s world position were dangling on a thread which at any moment might be cut by a swift, ruthless stroke. The englische Gefahr represented an ever-present menace to German aspirations.56

The irrationality of Germany’s anxiety over a British preventive naval attack cannot be overstated. “What makes the Copenhagen complex so puzzling and intriguing is that it began to influence German policy before the Germans had a fleet worth ‘Copenhagening.’ Why should Britain risk international opprobrium and the dangers of major war to destroy six or seven old tubs?” Steinberg conjectures that “ ‘Kopenhagen’ really stood for a fear of what the British might do if they found out what the Germans wanted to do.” This element of projection was combined with a societal aspect: “Germany in the Wilhelmine era was an unstable society, and this instability found its expression not only in the exaggerated bombast of public life, but in the exaggerated anxieties of private reflection. The Copenhagen complex was only one of its manifestations, though an influen-

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tial one. It was a certain warning that Germany’s leaders feared the consequences of their hopes.” The Copenhagen complex dramatically reveals the impact of national anxiety—an entire population’s general feeling of apprehension without a specific object—on threat perception. More generally, it demonstrates the degree to which threats and the anticipation of harm are constructed by the perceiver. Indeed, “policy-makers operate against a vision of the world at least in part of their own making. The nightmare is always real to the dreamer.”57 In summary, decisionmakers, because they operate in a dangerously uncertain world and are charged with the vital task of protecting the state against threats to its major values, especially to its territorial and political integrity, must anticipate how others will behave and respond accordingly. Threat perception is an estimate of what an actor will do under anticipated conditions and constraints based on tangible evidence that is, nonetheless, inherently ambiguous; it is an inference that pieces together fragmentary and contradictory evidence to form a coherent picture regarding the probability that an actor will undertake harmful actions. Threat perception, therefore, involves not only an assessment of the actor’s capabilities and intentions but also an evaluation of its resolve and risk-taking propensities. This further compounds the difficulty of making realistic appraisals of threat, for actors can gain more favorable bargaining outcomes by taking actions that misrepresent their preferences and willingness to take risks. Hence, in Morrow’s words, “bluffing and misrepresentation are the stuff of international politics.”58 Because it is a psychological enterprise that relies as much on inference as it does on perceptions of tangible evidence, the process of inferring threatening intent is prone to cognitive distortions arising from motivated biases, wishful thinking, and, most commonly, predispositions. The sources of predispositions to perceive threat include distrust, working assumptions, precedent, experience, contingency planning, strategic beliefs, anxiety, and emotional factors rooted in psychopathologies of hatred, guilt, or ethnic, religious, and ideological hostilities. Finally, the most common trigger of threat perception is the appraisal that accepted norms of international conduct governing relations between the parties have been broken or otherwise infringed upon. Simply put, one party has deliberately stepped over a boundary of acceptable behavior

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I have advanced several arguments about when changes in the balance of power are dangerous and how to manage them. First, the pace and context within which power shifts occur affect how declining and rising powers react to each other and to changes in the distribution

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of power. Sudden and dramatic power shifts, especially within small-N systems (such as bipolar or tripolar systems), tend to produce instability and war in both regional and global systems. Conversely, gradual and incremental changes in the ladder of power, especially in the context of large-N (multipolar) systems, can often be managed successfully, that is, peacefully and without destroying the basic framework of the established international order. Second, the nature of the rising power—whether it is risk-acceptant or risk-averse, a revolutionary or limited-aims revisionist—should determine which policies the established powers adopt and whether or not such policies will work. The existence of a risk-acceptant revolutionary power rules out any chance of managing the situation peacefully (that is, unless an internal revolt can be arranged to overthrow the revolutionary regime). In these situations, preservation of the status quo order and, indeed, the states system itself requires the defenders of the status quo either to wage a preventive war or, failing that, to band together in a defensive alliance system against the revolutionary state. If the rising power does not have revolutionary goals, then engagement becomes an option, though it may be an unnecessary one (e.g., if the rising power views the status quo order as essentially legitimate and can expand its territory and influence without disrupting the vital interests of the other great powers). Third, accurate recognition of the rising power’s true nature on the part of the established states is a crucial step in the process of system management. Unfortunately, because the international environment is one of constant uncertainty and behavior is often ambiguous as an indicator of others’ intentions, this basic task, which often appears so simple with hindsight, is often botched with disastrous consequences in real time. The problems of identification of the true nature of the rising power are compounded by cognitive biases, which cause decisionmakers to process information in ways that reinforce rather than challenge their prior beliefs. Great danger arises when, for instance, a rising revolutionary power, especially a risk-acceptant one, is misidentified as a limited-aims revisionist state. Policies of accommodation and engagement, which are appropriate responses to the latter, will simply further the revolutionary power’s ability to make relative gains. Though less dangerous, the opposite mistake in recognition (namely, viewing a limited-aims revisionist as a revolutionary state) will lead to unnecessary conflict and possibly war as a result of spiralmodel dynamics. Further, this type of recognition error can become a self-fulfilling prophesy: by treating the limited-aims power as if it were a revolutionary one, the defenders of the status quo may, if the state in question has enough potential long-run capabilities, unwittingly induce such a conversion.

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There is no magic formula for managing changes in the balance of power and thereby maintaining international peace and stability. The characteristics of the external environment in which power shifts emerge are beyond anyone’s control. Even if the status quo defenders are fortunate enough to operate within an international structure conducive to successful management, they must still search for the right policies to keep the peace, maintain the integrity of the system, and ultimately convert the revisionist state into a status quo one. Moreover, the success of any effort to manage a power transition is largely a function of factors that are internal to both the rising state and the declining powers. The problem is that the domestic sources of foreign policy, like international structural factors, tend to be beyond the control of outside powers and even of elites within the state itself. The crucial role of domestic politics and the constraints they place on balance-of-power politics is the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

A Theory of Underbalancing A Neoclassical Realist Explanation

VARIATION IN THE WAY STATES respond to similar changes in their external environment turns on the preferences of relevant political and social actors and the unique structural characteristics of society and government that constitute constraints and opportunities for these actors. This interplay between actor preferences and the environmental structures in which they operate leads to one or another political outcome. Moreover, an explanation for why some states and not others underreact to structuralsystemic incentives must consider the strategies of both those actors who are interested in preserving the state and those who, placing other values higher, are unwilling to defend the state and may even seek to overthrow or otherwise destroy it. Because the probability that a state will balance is a function of the preferences of political elites and social groups, underreactions to dangerous shifts in relative power may arise for one of two reasons: actors’ preferences, which may be more influenced by domestic than international concerns, do not create incentives to adopt a balancing policy (even when these same power shifts would cause most other actors to adopt a prudent balancing strategy) or the potential domestic political risks and costs of balancing are too high.1 The first reason concerns the “willingness” of actors to balance; the second, the “ability” of actors to balance given the political and material hurdles that must be overcome to do so. This kind of analytic framework—one whose architecture is built on elite calculations of costs and risks—emphasizes the point that statecraft is not simply a function of the particular geostrategic risks and opportunities presented by a given systemic environment, that is, of objective material factors at the structural-systemic level of analysis. It is also a consequence of (1) elites’ preferences and perceptions of the external environment, (2) which elites’ preferences and perceptions “matter” in the policymaking process, (3) the domestic political risks associated with certain foreignpolicy choices, and (4) the variable risk-taking propensities of national elites. Once these “unit-level” factors have been established, they can then be treated as inputs (state strategies and preferences) at the structuralsystemic level in order to explain how unit- and structural-level causes interact to produce systemic outcomes.2

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To be sure, there are many factors that might increase the domestic political risks of balancing behavior and raise obstacles to resource extraction. Nevertheless, I posit four unit-level variables that are comprehensive enough to explain variation across space and time in state responses to threats: elite consensus, elite cohesion, government or regime vulnerability, and social cohesion. Elite consensus and cohesion primarily affect the state’s willingness to balance, while government/regime vulnerability and social cohesion affect the state’s ability to extract resources for this task. The combination of these four variables determines the degree of state coherence.

ELITE CONSENSUS Elite consensus/disagreement is the most proximate cause of a state’s response or nonresponse to external threats. To say this is to acknowledge that states do not make policy; governments through their leaders do. Thus, elite consensus is the dependent variable: when there is a consensus among policymaking elites to balance, the state will do so. The only questions are (1) against whom will it balance? and (2) will mobilization hurdles created by social fragmentation and regime vulnerability limit the state’s ability to meet the threat? In contrast, when a consensus to balance is absent, the state will pursue some other policy—one that may or may not be coherent, one that may arise through careful deliberation and political bargaining or simply by default. At its core, elite consensus concerns the degree of shared perception about some facts in the world as being problems (versus not) of a particular nature (versus some other nature) requiring certain remedies (versus others).3 It is a concept that takes into account the intuitively understood but too often ignored idea that the process of problem construction (or representation) is a subjective one that is only partly determined by objective facts.4 Specifically, elite consensus is a measure of the similarity of elites’ preferences over outcomes and their beliefs about the preferences and anticipated actions of others. It is also a function of the strategic setting, which includes the perceived actions available to the actors and the information structure of the environment, that is, what the actors can know for certain and what they must infer from others’ behavior.5 Obviously, the more ambiguous the information available to the actors about their environment, the less one would expect there to be elite consensus about policy preferences and strategies. Under such circumstances, pronounced policy splits will likely emerge within the regime (and society) that place intense political constraints on decisive and costly government actions. Conversely, the less ambiguous the strategic environment, the more likely that elite consensus will emerge around bold policy initiatives.

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The key questions with respect to elite consensus and balancing behavior are: (1) do policy elites agree that there is an external threat? (2) do they agree about the nature and extent of the threat? (3) do elites agree about which policy remedy will be most effective and appropriate to deal with a threat and protect the state’s strategic interests?6 and (4) do they agree on the domestic political risks and costs associated with the range of policy options to balance a threat? Variation in elite consensus on these central issues is a function of the “mix of international and domestic incentives attached to different options, actors’ risk-taking preferences, their time horizons, and how they discount costs and benefits.”7 Balancing behavior requires the existence of a strong consensus among elites that an external threat exists and must be checked by either arms or allies or both. As the proximate causal variable in the model, elite consensus is the most necessary of necessary causes of balancing behavior. Thus, when there is no elite consensus, the prediction is either underbalancing or some other nonbalancing policy option. Developing such a consensus is difficult, however, because balancing, unlike expansion, is not a behavior motivated by the search for gains and profit. It is instead a strategy that entails significant costs in human and material resources that could be directed toward domestic programs and investment rather than national defense. In addition, when alliances are formed, the state must sacrifice some measure of its autonomy in foreign and military policy to its allies. In the absence of a clear majority of elites in favor of a balancing strategy, therefore, an alternative policy, and not necessarily a coherent one, will prevail. This is because a weak grand strategy can be supported for many different reasons (e.g., pacifism, isolationism, pro-enemy sympathies, collective security, a belief in conciliation, etc.). Consequently, appeasement and other forms of underbalancing will tend to triumph in the absence of a determined and broad political consensus to balance simply because these policies represent the path of least domestic resistance and can appeal to a broad range of interests along the political spectrum. Thus, underreacting to threats, unlike an effective balancing strategy, does not require overwhelming, united, and coherent support from elites and masses; it is a default strategy. As the foregoing suggests, democracies will be particularly slow to balance against threats. This is because (1) nonbalancing behavior is (or should be) the status quo policy prior to the emergence of a dangerous threat and (2) there are typically many “veto players” in a democratic policymaking process, that is, “individual or collective actors whose agreement is necessary for a change in the status quo.”8 As George Tsebelis explains, “Significant departures from the status quo are impossible when the winset is small—that is, when veto players are many—when they have significant ideological distances among them, and when they are internally

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cohesive.”9 It follows, therefore, that, for democracies to move away from the nonbalancing status quo to a costly balancing strategy, it often takes a dramatic event to expand the winset for policy change. Thus, as Condoleezza Rice recently testified before the September 11 Commission: Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and continued German harassment of American shipping, the United States did not enter the First World War until two years later. Despite Nazi Germany’s repeated violations of the Versailles Treaty and its string of provocations throughout the mid-1930s, the Western democracies did not take action until 1939. The U.S. government did not act against the growing threat from Imperial Japan until the threat became all too evident at Pearl Harbor. And, tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11, this country simply was not on a war footing.10

In summary, balancing behavior requires elite consensus that the state confronts a serious threat that must be checked by internal or external means; it is a necessary condition for balancing behavior.11 All other scenarios regarding elite consensus will result in either underbalancing or the adoption of other nonbalancing strategies. States are not expected to balance against threats when there is: (1) significant elite disagreement in terms of threat perception; (2) elite consensus that a threat exists but disagreement over the appropriate remedy (e.g., whether to appease or stand firm); or (3) elite consensus to adopt other policy options such as appeasement, bandwagoning, buck-passing, or bilateral or multilateral binding strategies.

GOVERNMENT/REGIME VULNERABILITY In its most basic sense, the concept of government or regime vulnerability “asks what is the likelihood that the current leadership will be removed from political office.”12 Specifically, do the governing elites face a serious challenge from the military, opposing political parties, or other powerful political groups in society? Are such groups threatening to prematurely remove the current leaders from office? Have they done so in the recent past? In a related but more general sense, the concept seeks to capture the relationship between rulers and ruled at a given moment in time. Hence, the following questions related to elite-mass linkages are also relevant: (1) is the government’s authority based primarily on coercion or is it self-legitimating in the eyes of the public? (2) is the government meeting the expec-

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tations of the people? (3) does it enjoy broad support from the masses? and (4) can it minimize domestic interference in its policy decisions? These questions go to the heart of a government’s effectiveness and political authority and the trade-off between external security and internal stability. Leaders, especially vulnerable ones, cannot simply choose security policies based on their likelihood of neutralizing the external threat or satisfying national ambitions for greater power and influence. They must also consider the domestic costs attached to the policy options. Vulnerable leaders will typically be more constrained than popular ones, and they will be less effective in mobilizing resources from society. As James Morrow observes: “Leaders and domestic groups often disagree about the appropriate response to a threat. Leaders choose policies for their ability to counter a threat and to provide domestic support. Without the latter, security policies will fail to do the former.”13 In other words, the strength of elite-mass linkages plays a major role in determining the range and viability of policy choices available to decisionmakers. Weak governments have less policy capacity than do legitimate ones; that is, they are less able to detect and assess threats; to control, mobilize, and allocate national resources; to articulate and choose policies; and to implement those policies. On this point, Azar and Moon write: Weak legitimacy exhausts domestic capabilities and turns the overall policy capacity rigid and ineffectual. As a regime attempts to ensure its survival through the use of force or by co-optation and appeasement of the opposition, it begins rapidly to deplete the nation’s capabilities and scarce resources. . . . Among the serious side-effects of the erosion of domestic policy capacity are: a sharp decrease in the people’s loyalty and conformity to, and compliance with, government policies and decisions; a decrease in the government’s ability to mobilize material and human resources in the event of a national security crisis; diminution in the accountability or the virtual termination of the steering function of the government; and a serious reduction in the co-ordination and implementation of policies.14

Moreover, vulnerable rulers will be especially wary of fomenting hypernationalism and mobilizing a mass army because they fear, for good reasons, that weapons put in the hands of a newly energized, nationalist public are just as likely, if not more so, to be fired at them as they are to be used against the external threat.15 Illegitimate rulers will also be less able than legitimate ones to persuade the mass public of the existence of national security threats and of the need to make sacrifices to resist them. All of these factors lead one to expect that vulnerable regimes will be more likely to search for allies than to build arms to counter external threats, because the former is a quick and relatively low-cost method to counterbalance a dangerous threat.

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SOCIAL COHESION Social cohesion and its opposite, social fragmentation, describe the relative strength of ties that bind individuals and groups to the core of a given society. Social cohesion does not mean political unanimity or the absence of deep political disagreements within society. All societies exhibit normal conflicts arising from various sources and cleavages, including but not limited to divergent class interests, economic inequalities, competing political goals, ethnic animosities, and so-called normative conflicts (e.g., differences over the definition of national identity, the relationship between religion and the state, culture wars, etc.).16 The key to social cohesion is that all members of society accept the same rules of the game; that is, they support the society’s institutions as legitimate and appropriate mechanisms to settle disputes among them no matter how profound their disagreements or grievances (i.e., loyal opposition). Dangerous political divisions exist when groups within society do not confer legitimacy on the institutions that structure it and, even more so, when a significant segment of the population intends to overthrow the state (i.e., disloyal opposition). In its widest sense, the concept of social cohesion encompasses more than mere institutional legitimacy; it is about a psychological feeling of solidarity within a society. When all members of society “feel interconnected and integrated into the vast series of networks that make up society, good social cohesion is likely. As soon as one group feels excluded from the society in which that group is nonetheless formally present, social division is likely.”17 A common theme in international relations is that the emergence of a serious external threat causes an increase in social cohesion.18 This is the logic that drives theories of diversionary wars, also known as “scapegoat wars,” and the notion that wartime leaders enjoy a “rally around the flag effect.”19 These theories assume that in the presence of an outside threat, divided or dissatisfied citizens will put aside their conflicts with each other or their frustration with the ruling regime and unite to repel the invader or, when invasion is not the issue, defeat the external threat to their core values or other national interests. Thus, Ernst Haas and Allen Whiting assert: “In times of extreme domestic tension among elites, a policy of uniting a badly divided nation against some real or alleged outside threat frequently seems useful to a ruling group.”20 All other things being equal, the emergence of an outside threat should increase social cohesion. How much of an increase in national unity depends, inter alia, on the perceived strategic objectives of the aggressor and the likelihood that the pooled efforts of the nation will lead to victory.

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The more widespread the belief among the target’s population that the invader will establish a brutally repressive occupation, for instance, the more likely there will be high levels of civilian resistance and social cohesion in response to the threat. Furthermore, the higher the probability of success in war, the more likely the target’s population will cohere and voluntarily mobilize to put down the threat. Nevertheless, history records many instances of external threats causing the opposite effect, namely, increased in-group conflict and disintegration. What might account for this variation? The theories of Georg Simmel and Lewis Coser on the effects of external conflict on in-group cohesion provide answers to this question. According to Simmel, the primary function of social conflict is to establish and maintain the identity and boundary lines of societies and groups. He further suggests that external conflict strengthens internal group cohesion and increases its centralization: “The group in a state of peace can permit antagonistic members within it to live with one another in an undecided situation because each of them can go his own way and can avoid collisions. A state of conflict, however, pulls the members so tightly together and subjects them to such uniform impulse that they either must get completely along with, or completely repel, one another. This is the reason why war with the outside is sometimes the last chance for a state ridden with inner antagonisms to overcome these antagonisms, or else to break up definitely.”21 Likewise, Coser asserts: “Internal cohesion is likely to be increased in the group which engages in outside conflict.”22 The presence or creation of a hostile out-group, by supplying a target of aggression, enhances ingroup integration and/or cohesion by reinforcing common values, interests (the most basic of which is each member’s interest in self-preservation and the survival of the group on which that depends), and anything else that serves to bind the group together. In this way, intergroup conflict imposes a degree of harmony upon otherwise conflicting elements within the group. Because members need only perceive or be made to perceive an external threat to pull themselves together, Simmel suggests that the search for enemies, even their fabrication when none exist, is a rational strategy to maintain or enhance group cohesion. This logic leads Simmel to observe: “A group’s complete victory over its enemies is thus not always fortunate. . . . Victory lowers the energy which guarantees the unity of the group; and the dissolving forces, which are always at work, gain hold.”23 This insight nicely supports the age-old proposition in international politics that once the common enemy is defeated, the alliance breaks apart. Unlike Simmel, however, Coser emphasizes that the group-binding functions of conflict are conditioned by the precrisis degree of group cohesion and the uniformity of threat perception across groups within society:

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“The relation between outer conflict and inner cohesion does not hold true where internal cohesion before the outbreak of conflict is so low that the group members have ceased to regard preservation of the group as worthwhile, or actually see the outside threat to concern ‘them’ rather than ‘us.’ In such cases disintegration of the group, rather than an increase in cohesion, will be the result of outside conflict.”24 Coser also argues that external threats will produce increased group cohesion only when they are seen as a menace to the entire group. Thus, according to Coser, the degree of precrisis group cohesion and the general perception among group members regarding the scope of the threat are key intervening variables that determine whether a threatened group will unite or disintegrate.25 There are many intuitive reasons why this should be so. Wars to repel determined invaders, even when successful, typically require large sacrifices in blood and treasure from the population. If one defends only what one holds dear and is willing to suffer high costs and take great risks only for things that one values, then groups that perceive themselves to be excluded from society prior to the crisis will not sense that they have much to lose by siding with the aggressor. Indeed, disenfranchised groups (e.g., disloyal and semiloyal opposition) may even perceive that they have much to gain from collaboration with the enemy. A couple of propositions arise from this line of thought. First, the deeper the divisions within society prior to the threat, the more likely a part of the community will either actively collaborate with the enemy or remain passive rather than resist the aggressor. Second, the deeper the social divisions within the state, the greater the resistance to military mobilization against the threat. Problems of loyalty and social cohesion typically arise within “oversized” states—those that define themselves on an ethnic rather than a civic basis (i.e., they choose the option of nation building over state building), but whose territorial boundaries do not correspond closely to an ethnically defined nation. Oversized states are, by definition, ethnically stratified societies, wherein certain minority groups are highly discriminated against by the state and consequently view themselves as captive populations. Because the national identity does not apply to all of the citizens of the multinational state, it does not furnish a sufficient foundation for state loyalty. Instead, social fragmentation and in-group rigidity weaken the political authority of the state, often to the point where it will be unable or unwilling to balance against external threats. In extreme cases, ethnonationalist groups may advocate that the state relinquish its sovereign independence in favor of bandwagoning with a larger coethnic neighbor.26 When subjugated minority groups oppose the state in principle and assume the role of disloyal opposition, the state and the general public confront a Trojan horse

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dilemma: will ethnic soldiers with kin in an enemy country turn their guns against their fellow soldiers and citizens or fight for their country?27 The precrisis degree of social cohesion within the threatened state may also explain its choice of arms or allies to deal with the threat—that is, whether the target will be more likely to respond with an internal or external balancing strategy. Internal balancing entails greater and more immediate sacrifices from the general population than the alternative of external balancing, by which the state gives up a measure of foreign policy autonomy to shift a part or all of the burden of balancing the external threat on to another state. Thus, it follows that the more social divisions within a state, the more likely it will be forced to rely on external means (alliances) as opposed to internal means (the mobilization of arms and troops) to balance against the threat. Conversely, the greater the degree of social cohesion in the precrisis period, the more likely the state will be able to resist an attack on its own, or, at the very least, the more likely internal balancing will be a viable option for the state. In summary, Coser claims that the relationship between outer conflict and inner cohesion holds only when: (1) there is some minimal consensus that the group is a “going concern,” whose preservation as an entity is worthwhile; (2) the outside threat is seen as a danger to the group as a whole, not just a part of it; and (3) there is a reasonable chance that if the group unites, the enemy can be defeated. Thus, Coser’s logic yields two general predictions: (1) states with high levels of political and social cohesion will be most likely to balance against external threats and to experience an increase in the public’s support and compliance with the regime; and, conversely, (2) fragmented states will underreact to dangerous threats (i.e., responding with inefficient balancing, bandwagoning, buck-passing, distancing, incoherent half measures, or ineffective policies defined by the lowest common denominator) because the threat will not be perceived as a universal one by the masses and leaders will view the political risks of an arms buildup and internal mobilization campaign as intolerably high. Moreover, severely fragmented states in the precrisis period can be expected to further disintegrate and even crack under external pressure (i.e., surrender to the enemy or undergo a regime change, civil war, or revolution).

ELITE COHESION Elite cohesion concerns the degree to which a central government’s political leadership is fragmented by persistent internal divisions. Elite polarization may arise over ideological, cultural, or religious divisions; bureaucratic interests; party factions; regional and sectoral interests; or ethnic

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group and class loyalties.28 The concept of elite cohesion is a continuous variable. At one extreme, political elites are divided into two armed camps, with hypernationalists on one side and disloyal collaborators with the enemy on the other. It is a situation devoid of politics, for there is no room for bargaining among the political factions to reach compromise settlements. At the other extreme, all political elites and groups belong to a dominant party, “and they uniformly profess its ideology, religious belief, or ethnonationalist creed—an ‘ideocratic’ configuration that is primarily coerced.”29 In practice, the structure of political elites within most states falls somewhere between these two ideal types. There are five relevant questions regarding elite cohesion and balancing behavior. First, is there a struggle among elites for domestic political power? Second, if so, are there opportunistic elites within the threatened state who are willing to collaborate with the enemy to advance their own personal power or to gain office? Third, if there are multiple threats, do elites agree on their rankings of external threats from most to least dangerous to the state’s survival and vital interests? Fourth, are there deep disagreements among elites regarding the question with whom should the state align? Fifth, are elites divided over the issue of whether to devote scarce resources to defend interests in the periphery or the core? When elites are fragmented, it is highly unlikely that the state will be able to construct a coherent and effective balancing strategy. Some elites will want to balance against one threat, whereas others will want to balance against another; some will want to invest resources to defend interests in the core, yet others will want to protect interests in the periphery. Moreover, the political costs and policy risks of balancing increase when elites are fragmented. On the one hand, any firm decision will be publicly criticized by opposition elites as too costly and misguided. On the other hand, bargaining efforts to appease opposition groups and thereby gain policy consensus will typically result in incoherent half measures, in which some parts of the state’s balancing strategy contradict other parts of it, such that the risk of policy failure increases dramatically. Hence, effective balancing behavior is most likely when elites agree on the target of balancing (i.e., which state presents the greatest threat) and where best to devote scarce military resources.30 The argument presented here—that elite fragmentation contributes to underbalancing—appears to contradict Jack Snyder’s claim that elite fragmentation leads to overexpansionist grand strategies. In his view, governments that represent a narrow set of societal interests have incentives to cater to the military (by spending more on defense) and provoke rally effects (by overinflating international threats). When elites are disunited, therefore, the result is not paralysis but rather expansionist logrolls.31

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Two points are essential here. First, overexpansion and overbalancing are different types of behaviors, and so it is perfectly logical that elite fragmentation and disagreement can cause both overexpansion and underbalancing. Expansion is motivated by greed and profit; it is a power-maximizing, predatory policy to revise the existing order. Balancing behavior, in contrast, is motivated by the desire to keep what one has; it is a securitymaximizing policy to avoid losses and maintain the status quo.32 Expansion is a relatively easy sell because it promises to increase the pie and make everyone better off. Balancing is a costly policy that will, at best, maintain the size of the pie and, more likely, dramatically shrink it for most citizens, since it requires ratcheting up taxation and switching from butter to guns. Thus, unless the target is unambiguously known to be an insatiable predator, elites and the public will see balancing as a self-defeating policy that risks unnecessary arms racing and possibly a bloody war. Second, Snyder’s theory is underspecified and pertains only to constitutional oligarchies, not emerging democracies. To explain this, I must clarify the conditions under which elite fragmentation leads to expansion or underbalancing behaviors, to which I now turn. Elite Fragmentation and Overexpansion versus Underbalancing Snyder claims that overexpansion occurs because the costs of imperialistic programs are spread widely among the masses, while the benefits are concentrated in the hands of a few. States with cartelized systems are most susceptible to overexpansion and self-encircling policies for two reasons: (1) there are many concentrated interest groups (e.g., the military, big business, and parochial pressure groups with an interest in war, military mobilization, empire, or protectionism) and (2) the central authority and institutional structures are so weak that the state can be easily hijacked by “special interest” elite groups for their own purposes. Forced to engage in a competitive process to mobilize mass support for their parochial policies, powerful elite groups propagate strategic rationales for their preferred policies, which they eventually come to believe through “blowback.” These rationalizations are the “myths of empire,” which include the belief that conquest pays, that military success will induce bandwagoning and falling dominoes, and that threats and offensive strategies are the most effective means to enhance the state’s security and influence.33 These myths would be relatively harmless if they were not translated into actual policies of expansion and excessive military preparations through a peculiar domestic dynamic characteristic of cartelized regimes. Given the weakness of central authority and the praetorian nature of society,34 the policy process is driven by logrolling among competing elite groups, which generates more extreme expansionist policies than any indi-

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vidual group would prefer on its own: “logrolling works by giving each group what it wants most, so that even if only some of the groups in the coalition favored policies leading to war and expansion, that would be enough to make their adoption likely.”35 The arguments presented in this chapter, however, suggest that Snyder’s theory is underspecified. Elite fragmentation, which is similar to Snyder’s notion of competing elite groups, is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for overexpansion. To the contrary, extreme elite polarization typically produces policy paralysis, not bold and risky grand strategies. Specifically, the degree of elite cohesion combines with the level of elite consensus and the extent of the democratizing process (viz., whether it is a transition to liberal oligarchy or full democracy and whether it dramatically changes the balance of class power) to produce several grand-strategy predictions, only one of which is overexpansion. Consider a hypothetical German case during the Wilhelmine era. Assume that there are only four elite groups of equal bargaining strength that exert influence over German foreign policy: (1) pan-Germans, (2) Junkers, (3) the German Navy League, and (4) Industrialists. At any given time, each of the four groups may support the status quo over expansionist policies. When they do support expansion, however, the four groups are fragmented along the following lines: Pan-Germans and Junkers favor continental expansion, while the Navy League and Industrialists support colonial expansion. In table 2.1 (below), elite consensus/dissensus refers to whether elite groups agree that there are structural opportunities for German expansion and whether Germany should take advantage of those opportunities. Each group can either vote to expand now or to maintain the status quo. In this stylized, hypothetical case, overexpansion is defined as the combination of continental and colonial expansion; limited expansion is defined as either continental or colonial expansion; no expansion means that Germany will not undertake either colonial or continental expansion. As table 2.1 below shows, the decision among the four groups to expand now or maintain the status quo yields a total of sixteen possible permutations, each accompanied by one of four predicted bargaining outcomes, namely, overexpansion, limited expansion, no expansion, or unable to predict. Only five of the sixteen possible combinations are predicted to result in overexpansion, since they contain at least three groups that prefer to “expand now.” In contrast, the predicted outcome for seven bargaining situations is either no expansion or limited expansion. In these situations, a minimum of two groups that share a common interest prefer the status quo. Finally, four of the sixteen bargaining situations are unpredictable because the groups that share common interests (continental or colonial) are divided over whether to expand now or keep the status quo.

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TABLE 2.1. Predictions on German Expansion Based on Elite Consensus/Dissensus PG = Pan-Germans, JU = Junkers, NL = Navy League, IN = Industrialists Preferences for expansion PG = Continental, JU = Continental, NL = Colonial, IN = Colonial Outcomes Overexpansion = Continental and Colonial Expansion Limited Expansion = Continental or Colonial Expansion No Expansion = Neither Continental nor Colonial Expansion No Prediction = Group preferences could produce either overexpansion or no expansion but are unlikely to produce limited expansion Situation 1 PG: expand now JU: expand now NL: expand now IN: expand now

Situation 2 PG: expand now JU: expand now NL: expand now IN: status quo

Situation 3 PG: expand now JU: expand now NL: status quo IN: expand now

Situation 4 PG: expand now JU: status quo NL: expand now IN: expand now

Overexpansion

Overexpansion

Overexpansion

Overexpansion

Situation 5 PG: status quo JU: expand now NL: expand now IN: expand now

Situation 6 PG: expand now JU: expand now NL: status quo IN: status quo

Situation 7 PG: expand now JU: status quo NL: status quo IN: expand now

Situation 8 PG: status quo JU: status quo NL: expand now IN: expand now

Overexpansion

Limited Expansion (Only Continental)

Unable to Predict

Limited Expansion (Only Colonial)

Situation 9 PG: status quo JU: expand now NL: expand now IN: status quo

Situation 10 PG: expand now JU: status quo NL: status quo IN: status quo

Situation 11 PG: status quo JU: expand now NL: status quo IN: status quo

Situation 12 PG: status quo JU: status quo NL: expand now IN: status quo

Unable to Predict

No Expansion

No Expansion

No Expansion

Situation 13 PG: status quo JU: status quo NL: status quo IN: expand now

Situation 14 PG: status quo JU: status quo NL: status quo IN: status quo

Situation 15 PG: expand now JU: status quo NL: expand now IN: status quo

Situation 16 PG: status quo JU: expand now NL: status quo IN: expand now

No Expansion

No Expansion

Unable to Predict

Unable to Predict

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What this hypothetical case shows is that complex policy processes are more likely to generate cautious policies than politically risky ones, such as overexpansion. Overexpansion through elite logrolling can occur only when a majority of elite groups favor expansion in different geographic areas. These are exceptional cases, however. Typically, a bargaining process among competing elite groups will generate blocking coalitions, resulting in policy inertia or the adoption of unfocused half measures or both. In general, such policies offer elites the benefit of low domestic costs (e.g., no increased taxes) but carry the risk of policy failure (viz., underreacting to threats and opportunities). This begs the question: why did the German case turn out as it did? The determining factor in these types of cases is the pattern of democratic transition, that is, (1) whether the transition from a nondemocratic regime (either totalitarian or authoritarian) is to a constitutional (or liberal) oligarchy or to a restricted or full democracy and (2) whether the transition to democracy drastically changes the underlying constellation of contending political and social forces. In the transition from an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime to a liberal or constitutional oligarchy, the dominant classes and the old ruling elites still control the state apparatus, but they must now compete for mass allies against newly mobilized groups. In this highly politicized atmosphere of mass politics, elites will be tempted, in varying degrees, to mobilize the masses through nationalist propaganda designed to whip up support for predatory expansion. These jingoistic appeals to militarism and nationalism, when combined with a weak central authority, an entrenched military, unstable coalitions, and logrolling-type bargaining among elites, unleash an impassioned hypernationalism among the mass public, which then becomes an uncontrollable force for recklessly expansionist foreign policies with a high risk of war. This is the theory put forth by Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder to explain their statistical finding that democratizing states are more likely to fight wars than are states that have not undergone a regime change.36 The problem with their discussion of historical cases, however, is that it focuses on Palmerston’s Britain, Napoleon III’s Second Empire, Wilhelmine Germany, Imperial Japan, and present-day Serbia and Croatia. These are not democratizing states but rather liberal or constitutional oligarchies. As Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John Stephens point out: “If participation is limited to a few (as in mid-nineteenth-century Britain), the regime may be liberal because issues are openly discussed or because state action is limited by solid individual rights, but it remains an oligarchic regime; one cannot speak of democracy. If the state apparatus is not made responsible [to the elected parliament] (as in the Germany of Bismarck and Wilhelm II), the most inclusive system of suffrage and the

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best protection of civil rights are not sufficient to create a ‘rule of the people’ in any meaningful sense.”37 Logrolling among elites within liberal oligarchies typically engenders overly expansionist policies because the participants at the bargaining table are exclusively or overwhelmingly members of the old ruling classes (e.g., the landed elite, the military, the bureaucracies, imperial interest groups, and other conservative elites from the dominant classes). This should come as no surprise because liberal oligarchies are, by definition, regimes in which the state apparatus is not responsible to the parliament. Hence, the interests and views of the subordinate classes have little effect on the decisionmaking process, regardless of whether the regime allows mass participation.38 Returning to the cases of Wilhelmine Germany, Second Empire France, Victorian England, and Imperial Japan, the key question is: who was and was not invited to the bargaining table? Political agents of the subordinate classes were conspicuously absent in Germany and France because the liberal movement could not overcome preindustrial cleavages within the middle classes; as such, liberal hegemony and the inclusion of the working classes within a competitive political process had yet to be established in these countries. In Imperial Japan, a council of military elder statesmen decided who would govern. As for Britain, it cannot even be called a democratizing state until the Second Reform Act passed in 1867, giving the vote to one in three males. Indeed, it was not until after the First World War that all male citizens over the age of twenty-one and females over the age of thirty who met residency requirements were given the right to vote. In all these cases, the power brokers were the same economic and political elites that had represented the dominant classes prior to the move toward democracy. Still in power but now threatened by social change and mass participation, the old elites tried with varying success to create a nationalist frenzy for expansion. Whether the masses actually bought into the elite-driven myths of empire is debatable. History shows that subordinate classes, especially the working classes, are not so easily duped. That liberal oligarchies have indeed overexpanded is not evidence that the masses actually supported any of the brands of rash imperialism that were being peddled by the ruling elites. After all, liberal oligarchies, by definition, can do any fool thing they choose to without the public’s support (which is not to say that they would be wise to do so or have typically acted as if they were completely unconstrained by their publics). Nor is the argument supported, much less proven, by the observation that once war came, the masses volunteered to fight. Presented a fait accompli to either fight or surrender, most citizens will naturally rally around the flag and fight; this is not proof, however,

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that the median voter was brainwashed by elite propaganda or that s/he mindlessly supported reckless expansion. For all these reasons, the claim that democratizing states are the most war prone is misleading. What Mansfield and Snyder show, instead, is that liberal oligarchies, not emerging democracies, exhibit the peculiar domestic politics that are most conducive to overexpansion. Their cases are of states that had adopted some of the formal trappings of democracy; the new democratic institutions, however, did not rest on the power of formerly excluded classes but rather on the dominant influence of agrarian elites, the military, the government bureaucracy, or a hegemonic party. What, then, are the characteristic domestic dynamics and external behaviors of democratizing states? If the dominant elites remain heavily represented after the initial installation of a restricted or full democracy, the new democratic elites and their allies among the previously excluded classes will be especially wary of strengthening the military (e.g., France during the period 1877 to 1898). In these situations, there will be high levels of elite dissensus, elite fragmentation, and government or even regime instability. Assuming that the primary goal of most elites is to gain or maintain political office, intense interparty competition will generate universal appeals to subordinate classes based on material improvements; that is, butter over guns will be the most politically expedient choice for both old and new elites. It can be further expected that an energized, if not militant, labor movement will find natural allies among new elites in the Liberal party. This Labor-Liberal union will work against defense spending, urging the state, instead, to take more responsibility for guaranteeing full employment, a more equitable distribution of goods and services, more equal opportunity, and greater security against the hazards of illness and old age. In cases, such as Latin America, where the middle classes needed the working class to succeed in the transition to democracy, there is an even more powerful bias against military spending and expansionist foreign policies.39 When the middle class is highly fragmented or hyperfractionalized, however, democratization unleashes unmanageable societal and political polarization. The inability of the middle class to consolidate itself subverts any hope of a liberal stabilization by means of Lib-Labism—the mobilization of labor through an alliance with the liberal establishment.40 Indeed, the presence or absence of Lib-Labism is what distinguishes liberal and aliberal democratization processes. In democratizing aliberal societies, it is precisely because labor was shut out of the political process prior to reform that trade unions were forced to create coherent organizations with centralized leadership; and it was precisely this organizational strength that enabled trade unions to penetrate the lives and consciousness

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of the working classes. In contrast, where a consolidated middle class had already established the hegemony of liberalism and Lib-Labism, the working classes remained politically weak and disorganized. Thus, when democratization finally eliminated the traditional barriers to working-class power in aliberal societies, the new balance of class power derailed the liberal democratic experiment. The structural setting of a powerful labor movement and disunited middle class prohibited the building of alliances across the middle and working classes and led, instead, to a corporatist solution, either social democracy or fascism. This pattern is nicely illustrated in interwar Europe. According to Gregory Luebbert’s structuralist theory of regime change, only the relatively mature liberal democracies (Britain, France, and Switzerland) were capable of surviving not only the Great War but the subsequent interwar crises.41 The triumph of markets over politics, the co-optation of labor, and rightcenter dominance enabled liberal democracies to muddle through these crises despite extremely fragmented elites and polarized societies. In contrast, the democratizing regimes of their aliberal neighbors were too fragile to withstand these shocks, and they were replaced by either the hegemony of the working class (social democracy) or its total destruction under brutally centralized regimes that put a premium on the extractive capacity of the state (fascism). Social democracy emerged where urban socialism attracted the support of the family peasantry (Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and Sweden), which solidified the political dominance of the working class and the subordination of markets to politics; and these states demonstrably underbalanced. Where this process did not occur (Germany, Italy, and Spain), fascism arose, crushing the labor movement and harnessing the working class to the state; these countries overexpanded. The key point is that when there is a dominant but fragmented middle class within a competitive political process that includes labor, elite fragmentation will push in the direction of underbalancing behavior and policy paralysis.42 Thus, although regime survival in liberal democracies during the interwar period remained strong, their capacity to forge coherent and effective balancing strategies in response to dangerous external threats proved dangerously weak. This point will be elaborated upon in the case studies of interwar Britain and France presented in chapter 3. How the Variables Go Together: Causal Schemes and Predictions CAUSAL SCHEMES

Unlike standard balance-of-power theory as articulated by Waltz and other structural realists, in which states respond in a timely and systematic way to dangerous changes in relative power, the theory proposed here

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offers a more elaborate causal chain of how policy adjustments to changes in relative power normally occur: Causal Scheme 1: Normal Balance of Power Model Changes in relative power → elite consensus about the nature of the threat and the degree of elite cohesion → mobilization hurdles as a function of regime vulnerability and social cohesion → continuity or change in foreign policy (i.e., balancing, bandwagoning, appeasement, half-measures, etc.) A more generalizable and simple formulation—one that takes into account the possibility that some of the independent variables will not be present in all cases of (under)balancing behavior—is the following “additive” causal scheme: Causal Scheme 2: The Additive Model Rise of external threat → social fragmentation (cohesion) + government or regime vulnerability (stability) + elite fragmentation (cohesion) → elite disagreement or nonbalancing consensus (elite balancing consensus) → underbalancing (balancing) behavior For extremely incoherent states—what will be referred to as “oversized,” ethnically stratified states, which typically reside in the Third World—the causal schemes above may fully explain why they underbalance. But the more logical sequence is: Causal Scheme 3: Extremely Incoherent States Model Rise of an external threat → social fragmentation → government or regime vulnerability → elite fragmentation → elite disagreement about how to respond to threat or elite consensus not to balance → underbalancing behavior and very high probability of further state disintegration (e.g., civil war or revolution) The above causal scheme conforms with Coser’s observation that in highly fragmented precrisis groups, the rise of an external threat will not cause greater group cohesion but, instead, further group disintegration. Yet another causal scheme may emerge in highly fragmented democratic states—one that causes underbalancing in the form of half measures, muddling through, and incoherent grand strategies. When several threats emerge, polarized democracies may witness the formation of a strong elite consensus that the environment is an extremely dangerous one and some form of balancing behavior must be undertaken in response. But because the society is highly polarized politically and because the democratic process, when working properly, mirrors that social fragmentation within its political institutions and elected representatives, the political system will produce highly unstable governments composed of elites with very differ-

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ent views about two fundamental questions: With whom should the state align? And against whom should the state balance? The result will be even greater government instability and, as a result, an incoherent grand strategy composed of half measures and inconsistent and ephemeral policies. Interwar France, as will be discussed, provides an exemplary case of this sort of underbalancing behavior and its causes. Note that this is the only causal scheme in which elite disagreement/consensus is not the proximate cause of (under)balancing behavior. The following causal scheme captures this type of underbalancing by incoherent democratic states: Causal Scheme 4: Polarized Democratic Model Rise of external threat(s) + high degree of precrisis social fragmentation and government instability → elite consensus that the external environment is dangerous and the state must adopt a balancing policy → elite and social fragmentation regarding with whom to align and against whom to balance→ even greater government instability → underbalancing in the form of half measures and incoherent grand strategies Although the theory presented here is one of domestic politics, elites and their perceptions of the strategic setting play an important role in the state’s decision to balance against a threat or not to do so. Since cognitive theories reside in the first image or decisionmaking level of analysis, one might conceive of them as competing rather than complementary theories with those at the second image or state level. This view—which might be called the “never mix levels of analysis in an explanation” rule—was widely accepted for decades in the field. In recent years, however, it has rightly come to be seen as an unproductive and mistaken rule. Explanations at different levels of analysis may be complementary as well as competing. It depends on the theories under consideration and what is being explained. In terms of the present concerns, only the most cynical observers would argue that decisionmakers make policy choices strictly on the basis of how they think they will affect their own political fortunes, that is, without any concern whatever for what they truly believe will best serve the national interest. To the extent that policymakers are not solely motivated by such narrowly construed political self-interests, cognitive theories of threat perception may be a useful supplement to the type of “second image” theory I have presented to explain underbalancing behavior. Unfortunately, as the literature review of threat perception presented in the prior chapter shows, studies of how leaders perceive threats are heavily biased toward explaining why leaders exaggerate or overestimate the likelihood that others will harm them; little has been written about the opposite propensity of leaders to underestimate dangerous threats. Yet history is filled with prominent examples of this latter phenomenon. For instance, prior to June 22, 1941, Stalin had been deluged with warnings for several months from his own intelligence sources and those of the British and

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Americans that Hitler planned to attack the Soviet Union; he had even been given the correct date and time of the German attack. This information should have been unnecessary, however, for the Soviet leader to perceive a grave threat to his country’s very survival, since Germany’s military intentions were not—and could not have been—kept a surprise. It was impossible to conceal the vast German forces—which consisted of, among other things, 3.2 million men, 600,000 trucks, and 750,000 horses— ranged between the Baltic and Black Sea (the “biggest front line in history,” as Hitler called it). Still Stalin, disposed against all evidence and experience to trust Hitler, cavalierly brushed aside these warnings and thereby facilitated a military catastrophe against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, that remains unparalleled in military history—one that took the Red Army four long years to overcome.43 Interestingly, Nikita S. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs: “Stalin was so afraid of war . . . that even when the Germans tried to take us by surprise . . . [he] convinced himself that Hitler would keep his word and wouldn’t really attack us.”44 To be sure, Khrushchev was often loose and fast with the facts, especially when he wanted to make a point, and he never missed an opportunity to denigrate his predecessor. Nevertheless, his insight in this case appears to hit the nail right on the head, and it is a nicely generalizable one: leaders who strongly want to avoid war tend to process information in ways that make war appear far less likely (at the extreme, even unthinkable) than more dispassionate and objective analysis of the situation would suggest is the case. And just as an entire citizenry (or a large part of it) may at times exhibit anxiety over an objectively irrational fear of surprise attack (e.g., the Copenhagen complex), entire populations may fear war to such an extent that they delude themselves into believing that war has become an illegitimate and unthinkable tool of statecraft. Through the mechanism of wishful thinking and other motivated biases, a pacifist population of this sort will tend to deny the very possibility—or dramatically underestimate the probability—that war may come and sooner rather than later. Preparations for war under these circumstances are tantamount to political suicide, since the average voter will see war mobilization and alliances as not only unwarranted but downright reckless and immoral. And because liberals believe so strongly in the power of ideas to move the world, their motto is: “Right thinking leads to right action and, of course, wrong thinking to wrong action.”45 So what does all this add up to in terms of the independent variables of the model and underbalancing policies? In my view, elite consensus is often a two-stage process. In the first stage, elites assess the strategic environment and reach their own subjective judgments about the level of threat it presents. This judgment is then either reinforced or changed depending on how high the hurdles to mobilization are given the degree of: (1) social fragmentation, (2) social cohesion against military preparations for war,

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(3) elite fragmentation, and (4) regime/government vulnerability. Thus, in the final decisionmaking stage, elites in extremely incoherent states, which cannot adopt prudent balancing policies for reasons of domestic politics, wind up downgrading the threat through processes of wishful thinking and other motivated biases. The causal scheme for this type of underbalancing behavior is as follows: Causal Scheme 5: Underbalancing through Wishful Thinking Changes in relative power → elite consensus that the environment is threatening → high mobilization hurdles as a function of regime vulnerability, social fragmentation or cohesion against war preparations, and elite fragmentation → elite consensus to downgrade threat perception through wishful thinking and other motivated biases → some form of underbalancing behavior or no change in foreign policy

GENERAL PREDICTIONS If we treat elite consensus/dissensus for a balancing strategy as the dependent variable (that is, do elites perceive a threat and agree that the gains from balancing against it exceed the political costs and risks of doing so?), state coherence can then be cross-classified in three directions, as elite fragmented or cohesive, socially fragmented or cohesive, and regime stable or unstable, setting up eight different categories as shown in the following diagram. In figure 2.1 (below), heavy shading indicates a great likelihood that an elite consensus will arise in favor of balancing behavior, and lighter shading shows that elite consensus for balancing is less likely to take place. The generalization made here is that state coherence is greatest in the lowerright-hand eighth of the diagram (cell 8), and it is least in the upper-lefthand eighth of the diagram (cell 1). Accordingly, states in cell 8 will be most likely to form an elite consensus to balance, since they possess all the internal attributes that facilitate timely and effective policy adjustments to changes in the strategic environment; whereas the state’s ability to adjust to external threats diminishes as one proceeds upward and to the left.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have offered a domestic-politics model to explain why threatened states often fail to adjust in a prudent and coherent way to dangerous changes in their strategic environment. The model fits nicely with recent realist studies on imperial under- and overstretch. Specifically,

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Balancing Consensus Least Likely

(1)

Unstable Regime

Unstable Regime

(5)

Stable Regime

(3)

Unstable Regime

Elite Cohesion

(2)

Elite Fragmentation

Social Fragmentation

Stable Regime

(6)

Unstable Regime

(7)

Social Cohesion

(4)

Stable Regime

Stable Regime

(8)

Balancing Consensus Most Likely Figure 2.1 State Coherence and Likelihood of Elite Consensus to Balance

it is consistent with Fareed Zakaria’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy from 1865 to 1889, when, he claims, the United States had the national power and opportunity to expand but failed to do so because it lacked sufficient state power (i.e., the state was weak relative to society).46 Zakaria points out that the United States did not take advantage of opportunities in its environment to expand because it lacked the institutional state strength to harness resources from society that were needed to do so. I am making

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a similar argument with respect to balancing rather than expansion: incoherent, fragmented states are unwilling and unable to balance against potentially dangerous threats because elites view the domestic risks as too high, and they are unable to mobilize the required resources from a divided society. The arguments presented here also suggest that elite fragmentation and disagreement within a competitive political process, which Jack Snyder cites as an explanation for overexpansionist policies, are more likely to produce underbalancing than overbalancing behavior among threatened incoherent states.47 This is because a balancing strategy carries certain political costs and risks with few, if any, compensating short-term political gains and because the strategic environment is always somewhat uncertain. Consequently, logrolling among fragmented elites within threatened states is more likely to generate overly cautious responses to threats than overreactions to them. This dynamic captures the underreaction of democratic states to the rise of Nazi Germany during the interwar period.48 In addition to elite fragmentation, I have suggested some basic domesticlevel variables that regularly intervene to thwart balance-of-power predictions. The main point is that incoherent states, whether great powers or small ones, often cannot balance against threats as the theory predicts because they are constrained by domestic political considerations.

CHAPTER THREE

Great-Power Case Studies Interwar France and Britain, and France, 1877–1913

THIS CHAPTER PRESENTS three case studies. The two interwar cases may be seen as “crucial” ones for the theory in a sense that they “have come to define, or at least to exemplify, a concept or theoretical outcome,”1 namely, underbalancing behavior. For two reasons, however, they are not “easy” or “extreme” cases for the theory. First, the values of two of the intervening causal variables—regime vulnerability and social cohesion—are relatively low when compared with “most likely” cases, such as late Qing China, late Tokugawa Japan, Mogul India, or Austria-Hungary. Second, they are “most likely” or “easy” cases for realist balance-of-power theory, in that they involve two great powers directly threatened by another unmistakably aggressive great power—one that they had fought a bloody lifeand-death struggle against a mere twenty years prior. If Hitlerite Germany is not a threat to be balanced against, what would qualify as one? The third case is a longitudinal study of France from 1877 through 1913. I selected this case and divided it into two parts because the values of the independent variables change dramatically during this period. Accordingly, we would expect to see a corresponding change in the dependent variable as predicted by the theory. By considering only great powers under conditions of clear threats to their survival, the cases challenge balance of power in its own bailiwick, so to speak.

BRITAIN DURING THE 1930S: A DOMESTIC CLIMATE FOR APPEASEMENT Interwar British defense policies provide an exemplary case of poor strategic adjustment in the form of overly cooperative behavior in response to an increasingly threatening external environment. Indeed, between “1920 and 1938, British defense spending was consistently less than 5 per cent of national income per annum—less than at any time before or since; and this at a time when Britain’s imperial commitments had almost reached their maximum historic extent.”2 To borrow Arnold Wolfers’s metaphor, the house was unmistakably on fire, and yet the British did not rush to exit as if compelled by an irresistible force.3 Britain’s policy of appeasement

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(accompanied by its commitment to “peaceful change,” “limited liability,” diplomacy, disarmament, and unilateral arms limitation under the aegis of the Ten Years’ Rule of 1919) prior to World War II is all the more puzzling because it was so distinctly different from the balance-of-power doctrine Britain had adhered to prior to 1914. Why did interwar British elites so consciously reject balance of power as a mode of behavior when Anglo-German antagonism was, objectively speaking, much more marked in the 1930s than before World War I? The key to understanding British foreign policy during the interwar period is to recognize the trade-off between internal and external stability. More precisely, British elites refused to put at risk their ability to stabilize the domestic political system in exchange for enhanced external security. Accordingly, British policy toward the outside world was circumscribed by the imperative—overwhelmingly supported by policy elites of all parties, captains of industry, and public opinion—that foreign and security policies must not interfere with the primary goal of safeguarding the viability and efficiency of Britain’s sociopolitical system; this required Britain’s complete freedom of action to develop internally as its elites saw fit. In practice, this meant a rejection of the “old” balance-of-power strategy, which would have put British domestic policy at the mercy of alliance politics. Specifically, British elites were not prepared to give France (or Belgium or Soviet Russia) a say in British domestic disputes by including the French (or any other ally) in joint military staff talks or coordinated rearmament measures. Determined to maintain its isolation from the continent and its nonaligned strategy, the British government formulated a two-track, appeasement-cum-rearmament strategy. Limited rearmament, which focused solely on strengthening the Royal Air Force and air defenses against a bomber attack from Germany, would support the primary strategy of appeasement, which centered on disarmament talks and negotiations, mostly bilateral, for peaceful change. As Gustav Schmidt argues, “British policy in the fields of security, armaments and foreign affairs in the 1930s may be seen . . . as motivated by a fear of destabilization of the domestic status quo, which led . . . to a greater willingness to accept changes in the international status quo. . . . [It] was linked to the expectation that the relative autonomy of decision-making in all questions relevant to the development of British society and politics had to be upheld.”4 The articulation of this guiding principle corresponded with, and was in response to, the social unrest and protest that arose during Britain’s transition from a war to a peacetime economy in the 1920s, when the government was also forced to set priorities to check inflation caused by the cost of war. Britain’s consistent preference for disarmament and a cooperative peace strategy with respect to Germany was based on the assumption that rearmament would set off an inflationary spiral through

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excessive borrowing and a scramble for skilled labor and other scarce resources, all of which would result in a financial crisis similar to that of 1931. Thus, Stanley Baldwin maintained in 1936: “In the postwar years we had to choose between . . . a policy of disarmament, social reform and latterly financial rehabilitation and . . . a heavy expenditure on armaments. Under a powerful impulse for development every government of every party elected for the former.”5 The primacy of sociopolitical stabilization over rearmament and external security persisted despite mounting evidence of the “German peril” and even after the Ten Years’ Rule—a document prepared by the Finance Committee of the British cabinet in August 1919 and made self-perpetuating in 1928, which “stipulated that British defense forces should formulate their armament programs based on the assumption that Britain would not be engaged in a major war for the next decade”—was annulled in 1932 (with effect from 1934).6 Indeed, the Defense Requirements Committee’s 1935 guideline, which pronounced the DRC’s assumption that the urgent and immediate need for Britain to achieve greater security took precedence over financial considerations, was never implemented. British policy did not adjust in response to a dramatically changed strategic environment because elites were paralyzed by the threat of social unrest and fears that the domestic political system could not stand the strains of rearmament. Once again, Schmidt explains: “ ‘Security policy’ was still subject to the directive that Britain could rather afford to take risks over the defence issue than run the risk of dividing the country along class lines. This maxim put into practice the crucial lesson drawn from political experience since the turn of the century; namely, that trade unions had learnt how to exert pressure through industrial action in key industries (mining, railways, shipping). Governments in any case preferred ‘willing co-operation’ to ‘industrial conscription’ but hesitated in enforcing accelerated rearmament because they feared granting concessions to labour in related-issue areas.” Throughout the 1930s, trade unions remained profoundly suspicious of national rearmament because of the danger of industrial conscription. Thus, as Schmitt further notes: “Against this backdrop, the rearmament campaign, justified on foreign policy grounds, seemed risky even when individual, influential union leaders (Bevin and Citrine) made it known that, in their opinion, ‘collective security’ demanded considerable efforts for rearmament in Britain, regardless of which government was in power.”7 Labor’s preference for social legislation was the primary obstacle to military spending, but not the only one. The economic dislocations caused by World War I and the Great Depression gave rise to popular demands among the middle class for expenditures on social programs, making military spending extremely unpopular among the general public and, therefore, politically unfeasible. Arguably the most famous example of the pop-

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ularity of pacifism in Britain occurred in February 1933, when the celebrated Oxford Union, after heated debate, sustained the motion by a vote of 275 to 153: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”8 Driven by these domestic constraints on British security policy, total expenditures for all three services accounted for roughly 10 percent of the national budget in 1933—a paltry sum when compared with the 30 percent figure prior to World War I. Unwilling to risk rearmament for fear of the domestic instability that it would unleash, British elites recast balance of power and deterrence in terms not of military power but rather domestic political stability. Thus, Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, reasoned: “Nothing operates more strongly . . . to deter a potential aggressor from attacking this country than our stability . . . but were other countries to detect in us signs of strain, this deterrence would at once be lost.”9 The British case may be conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily, divided into two periods: January 1933–February 1936 and March 1936–March 1939. Throughout both periods, British domestic politics were highly fragmented among the three major parties (Labour, Conservative, and Liberal) and competing elite factions within those parties. Indeed, Donald Watt remarks that “Britain’s ruling e´lites exhibit an extraordinary degree of fragmentation in their attitudes to Europe in the 1930s.”10 Yet, prior to Nazi Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, British elite fragmentation was surprisingly accompanied by an overwhelming consensus among those same elites and the public for appeasement. Isolationists on the Right, pacifists on the Left, and pro-League enthusiasts at the Center all supported, for various and not entirely compatible reasons, conciliation of the revisionist dictators through the machinery of collective security as against a more proactive balancing policy of rearmament and defensive alliances (see table 3.1 below). Conservatives, who dominated the government, supported limited rearmament, focusing on bombers and air defense, to ensure British security—defensive measures that would not be useful as contributions to European and French security. Their preferred grand strategy was one of Fortress Britain as against Britain’s traditional “balancer” role vis-a`-vis the continent. In contrast, left-wing parties supported a more internationalist, multilateral grand strategy centered on the “rule of law” and collective security. Yet, they consistently denied the government the necessary means for Britain to play a leading role in a system of collective security based on “peace through strength.” These aspects of the case underscore two points: (1) elite consensus regarding policy preferences is not necessarily accompanied by a similar consensus on grand strategy or elite cohesion and (2) elite consensus is not a sufficient condition for appropriate balancing behavior. Consensus

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TABLE 3.1. British Elite Views on Grand Strategy, January 1933–February 1936 Elite Groups

Grand Strategy

Mass of Conservatives (Stanley Baldwin, Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain)

Passive appeasement; limited liability; armed forces for national defense to promote British isolationism and neutrality

Winston Churchill Conservatives

Arms and allies against Germany

Labour

Disarmament and international conciliation; “yes” to limited armaments for the League of Nations and collective security; “no” to armed forces for national defense

Liberals

Strongly pro-League; opposed to rearmament and British neutrality in Southern and Eastern Europe; strongly opposed to economic nationalism

Lloyd George Liberals

Active appeasement; determined pursuit of settlement with Germany

Policy Outcome: Elite Consensus for Appeasement

among elites and the masses may form in support of an alternative policy to balancing (e.g., appeasement and conciliation of the threat). In this case, an overly cooperative strategy with respect to Germany arose because it was the lowest common denominator among elites—one that promised the least domestic political costs but high policy risks of failure. After the Rhineland crisis, policy consensus for appeasement among British elites was replaced by an intense but unevenly matched political struggle (Britain moved from cell 2 to cell 4 of figure 2.1). A new consensus arose among elites regarding the external environment: Germany was seen as the primary threat to British security and, in response, a more proactive policy had to be undertaken. British elites, however, divided into two camps: (1) those who supported the government’s policy of appeasement, but who now favored active over passive appeasement and limited rearmament for British defense11 and (2) those who favored Winston Churchill’s Grand Alliance proposal for an offensive-defensive alliance among France, Britain, and the Soviet Union, supported by staff arrangements and the moral backing of the League of Nations (see table 3.2). Churchill’s supporters, referred to elsewhere as the “antiappeasers,”12 believed that German aggression could be deterred only by an AngloSoviet military alliance. Thus, Robert Boothby, Churchill’s close friend, confided to Lloyd George in late 1938: “There is no doubt whatever that [Foreign Minister Joachim von] Ribbentrop told Hitler that the British

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TABLE 3.2. Two Competing British Grand Strategies, March 1936–March 1939 Elite Groups: The Appeasers

Grand Strategy: Chamberlain Appeasement

Mass of Conservatives Tory Isolationists Nazi sympathizers Labour and Liberal pacifists

Active appeasement; limited liability on the continent; rearmament for national defense of the homeland and the empire

Elite Groups: The Anti-Appeasers

Grand Strategy: Chuchillian Deterrence

Mass of Labour Right-wing Tories Lloyd George Liberals

Armed coercive League of Nations to resist the aggressors and impose disarmament on Germany; Grand Alliance with Russia and France to encircle Germany; commitment to defend Eastern and Southern Europe Policy Outcome: Underbalancing

government was much more concerned about class interests than national interests; and that unless and until direct political and military contacts were established between the British and the Russians, he could rest assured that the British government did not mean business.”13 Although they were badly outnumbered, the “antiappeasers,” whose members included Leopold Amery, Clement Atlee, Boothby, Churchill, Hugh Dalton, Anthony Eden, Lloyd George, Harold Macmillan, Harold Nicolson, Archibald Sinclair, and Major General Sir Edward Spears, might have been predicted to carry the day because they were far more talented and eloquent politicians than Neville Chamberlain’s supporters. They did not triumph over the appeasers, however, partly because they were hopelessly fragmented politically and could not—or, more accurately, would not— form a united front in opposition to Chamberlain, whose supporters included the mass of Conservatives, old isolationists on the Right, Liberal and Labour pacifists, and a few Nazi sympathizers. Churchill’s problem was that his supporters from the extreme right wing of the Tories refused to become politically intimate with Labour. Likewise, Labour’s leadership worried about upsetting its own supporters by mingling with Tories. Moreover, within the Conservative Party, Eden “had no intention of voluntarily subordinating himself to Churchill . . . and, without him, the prospect of a substantial Conservative secession disappeared.”14 Thus, appeasement and “the spirit of Munich,” in which Hitler was portrayed as a mere pan-German who could be satisfied by negotiated settlements that put Germans living in other countries back in Germany,

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shaped British grand strategy up until Hitler’s seizure of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. In the years 1937–39, the Treasury, Chamberlain, and his colleagues, Sir John Simon, and Sir Thomas Inskip, continued to hope beyond reason that an international settlement could be reached. Defying the warnings of the British Foreign Office and military, they succeeded in delaying broad and prudent rearmament in favor of the so-called Inskip Doctrine, which advocated staying the “appeasement” course through limited rearmament coupled with more active efforts at peaceful preventive diplomacy.15 The British interwar case follows the causal pattern described by the Underbalancing Through Wishful Thinking Model presented in the prior chapter: Causal Scheme 5: Underbalancing through Wishful Thinking Changes in relative power → elite consensus that the environment is threatening → high mobilization hurdles as a function of regime vulnerability, social fragmentation or cohesion against war preparations, and elite fragmentation → elite consensus to downgrade threat perception through wishful thinking and other motivated biases → some form of underbalancing behavior or no change in foreign policy Yet, the question arises: if Churchill and opposition parties shifted their position to favor balancing, what prevented the governing party from doing so? The answer is that Chamberlain and the right wing of the Conservative Party had compelling political and social reasons to remain committed to appeasement. A peaceful solution to Europe’s problems would strengthen Chamberlain’s position with the party at large, checking rivals such as Eden and further isolating Churchill. In addition, with the election year of 1940 drawing nearer, the avoidance of war would not only sustain but enhance the Conservative Party’s appeal in the country at large. More important still, Chamberlain and the governing party feared that another war of attrition, like that of 1914–18, would result in a dramatic shift in the domestic social order toward the working class. As Paul Kennedy points out: “Already the Labour Party spokesmen and trade unions were making it clear that, if war came, the price for their fullhearted support would be the ‘conscription of wealth’ as well as manpower, and the nationalization of certain key industries. Churchill, Eden and their friends might have been willing to pay this price; but there was little sign that Chamberlain, or many industrialists, or most of the Conservative Party, were. As Oliver Stanley, the President of the Board of Trade, put it to an acquaintance in September 1938, ‘. . . whether we win or lose [a war], it will be the end of everything we stand for.’”16

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FRANCE: A DOMESTIC CLIMATE FOR HALF MEASURES AND MUDDLING THROUGH Like Britain, France during the interwar period represents a prototypical case of underreaction to an extremely dangerous external environment. In a mere twenty-two years, France went from hegemonic grandeur to humiliating defeat. The primary cause of French decline was that, while Germany rearmed, France was wholly distracted by internal troubles (France would appear in cell 1 of figure 2.1). French society was extremely fragmented by deep and wide ideological and class divisions, and these conflicts were played out in a weak political system that encouraged indecisive and muddled leadership. As David Thompson noted about French democracy during the Third Republic: “If the function of democratic government is to be a mirror or a photographic negative—reflecting or reproducing accurately the conflicts of social and political forces—the Republic worked well enough. If the function of democratic government is something more positive than this . . . it worked less well.”17 The French government exhibited extreme regime instability, witnessing an astounding thirty-five changes in prime ministers between 1918 and 1940, and twenty-four changes of ministry between 1930 and 1940. With the exception of the Communists, France also lacked strong, disciplined parties, though there was no shortage of them. As the Socialist leader Leon Blum lamented prior to becoming Prime Minister on June 4,1936, “Ah, if only there were political parties in France and if these parties had an organization and doctrine.”18 The result was a political system dominated by personalities with only loose and shifting party allegiances. In addition to France’s vulnerable and unstable ruling regimes and highly fragmented society, French elites made different and contradictory assessments about the degree of threat in the external environment. One faction, dubbed the “Optimists” by the historian Rene´ Girault, saw Hitler as a buffoon with a penchant for swaggering but who would, nonetheless, act rationally as long as the British and French insisted on normal negotiations. A second faction, dubbed the “Realists,” maintained that Hitler had expansive ambitions that would be tamed only by the threat of war from an overwhelmingly powerful countercoalition of states aligned against Germany. A third faction, the “Pessimists,” agreed with the Realists that the Optimists were underestimating the extent of Hitler’s revisionist goals and his willingness to risk war to achieve them. But they, unlike the Realists, supported Hitler’s expansionist aims in East-Central Europe at the expense of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, believing that these gains would satisfy Hitler and thus preserve a separate peace in the West.19

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In the absence of any elite consensus on the nature of the external environment, it is not surprising that French leaders could not agree on a policy to confront it. Given Germany’s overwhelming population and industrial advantages, France would not be able to defeat Germany on its own after the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, which brought to a close the era of Versailles.20 Yet, elites were hopelessly divided along ideological lines over the question with whom France should ally. The communists demanded that France be ready to fight in an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany. Socialists and most others in the noncommunist left, however, insisted that war should be out of the question and held firm in their belief that there were peacefully negotiable solutions to all foreign policy problems. Attributing the outbreak of the First World War to tight alliances and balance-of-power politics, they supported the League of Nations and collective security as the only legitimate instrument to maintain international order and prevent another disastrous war. The Center in France supported traditional military alliances with Italy, Poland, and the Little Entente against Germany, but it would not honor its commitments to these allies without British support. The British, however, consistently claimed that they had no interests in Eastern Europe and were perfectly happy to see the entire area fall under German, rather than Soviet, control. This led to a perverse chain reaction, whereby Poland, for instance, would not balance against Germany without French support, and the French would not support Poland without British support.21 Meanwhile, the Right, whose slogans were “better Hitler than Blum” and “better Hitler than Stalin,” wanted to balance with Germany against the Soviet Union and its “Communist conspiracy of International Jewry,” which they saw as the most dangerous threat to French values and way of life. Finally, “[r]adicals and others in the center divided three ways. Some sided with the pacifist socialists. Some sided with the right. Some, however, said that France had to uphold the alliance treaties and, if necessary, go to war.”22 Paralyzed by elite fragmentation, France proved politically incapable of choosing sides and forging a reliable and internally consistent alliance system. Thus, when war came, France, having sold out its allies in the East and clinging to a reluctant ally in Britain (Albion did not acquire the adjective “perfidious” for nothing), found itself fighting essentially alone against Germany. In summary, shaped by the inherent weaknesses of French society and the fragility and fragmentation of its political system, the French response to the German challenge was an incoherent series of half measures and indecisive muddling through. French grand strategy, if it can be called that, rested on a combination of contradictory policies that included elements of balancing, buck-passing, bandwagoning, and appeasement—a grand strategy best described by the foolhardy maxim that “half a Maginot

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line is better than none.” And so, by 1938, France still had no great-power allies and was devoting a paltry 8.2 percent of national income to military expenditures.23 “In fact, from 1935 through 1938, the Italians spent more on their armed forces in actual dollars than did the French.”24 The dismal failure of the French High Command and the Ministry of Armaments to train and equip the French Army has been well documented elsewhere and need not be repeated here.25 The French case nicely illustrates the Polarized Democratic Model of Underbalancing presented in chapter 2: Causal Scheme 4: Polarized Democratic Model Rise of external threat(s) + high degree of precrisis social fragmentation and government instability → elite consensus that the external environment is dangerous and the state must adopt a balancing policy → elite and social fragmentation regarding with whom to align and against whom to balance→ even greater government instability → underbalancing in the form of half measures and incoherent grand strategies What was arguably most responsible for the French defeat, however, was the lack of patriotism and fighting spirit that afflicted the French population. As an astute observer—one who had regular and confidential meetings with the leading French statesmen and military elites prior to and during the war—wrote in 1942: Something more serious than a shortage of indispensable arms afflicted the French Army. Something was amiss. At a juncture most critical for the fate of France the army was no longer the source of inspiration and strength it had always been to the nation. This time it did not rejuvenate patriotism. “If only the civilians hold firm.” That is what Forain quoted Verdun’s defenders as saying in the last war. The phrase would have been meaningless in 1939 and 1940. The Army was the epitome of a nation cut to its depth by political and social quarrels. Of course there had been reconciliation as the war drew nearer and nearer. But the passionate element in individuals often seemed to be kept in reserve for tasks other than fighting the enemy.26

The story of the onslaught of the German blitzkrieg and the French Army’s collapse without putting up a serious fight in June 1940 is a wellknown one, and it, too, does not need to be retold here. Suffice it to say that within a month, the French National Assembly deputies had gathered at Vichy to vote 569 to 80 in favor of a collaborationist regime under Marshal Pe´tain; it would take two more years before the maquis began to offer anything resembling staunch resistance to the occupation. In the end, as an American diplomat keenly remarked, French interwar policy was not that of a “statesman but the policy of an undertaker.”27 This insight is consistent with the arguments presented in chapter 2: con-

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fronted by a serious threat, incoherent states that suffer from deep social and political divisions have a greater propensity to adopt “undertaker” grand strategies than to act in accordance with balance-of-power theory.

THIRD REPUBLIC FRANCE, 1877–1913: FROM INERTIA TO EFFECTIVE BALANCING The grand strategy of Third Republic France between the years 1877 and 1913 provides an exemplary case for illustrating the theoretical arguments presented in chapter 2. This is because there is variation on the dependent variable, and this variation corresponds precisely with the predicted changes in the causal variables. The case divides into two time periods: 1877 to 1898, and 1899 to 1913. In the first period, 1877–98, France tripled its colonial possessions. As will be discussed in the case study, it expanded on the cheap, however, and the expansion was accomplished through a strategy of fait accomplis activated by interest groups in the periphery. What is more important from the perspective of underbalancing is that France did not concentrate its attention on balancing against Germany during this period. This underbalancing occurred despite Bismarck’s success, until 1894, in isolating France from the rest of the continent through his hub-and-spoke alliance system, and while Britain remained in splendid isolation. Although France was able to conclude a military alliance with Russia, it made only sluggish efforts to mobilize military forces against Germany. What this shows is that elite fragmentation and other features of incoherent states may allow cheap (over)expansion as Jack Snyder claims, but it is not conducive to internal balancing behavior, as I have argued. Between 1877 and 1898, France would appear in cell 3 of figure 2.1 (a state unlikely to exhibit balancing behavior). French elites were divided among procolonialists and continentalists, republicans and monarchists, and anticlericalists and the established Catholic Church. Procolonialists saw opportunities in the external environment for French colonial expansion and, after 1882, viewed Britain as the primary threat to French interests. They also wanted to extract more resources from society to support the colonies that had already been acquired. Conversely, continentalists perceived a direct threat from Germany, and they were driven by a burning obsession to regain Alsace-Lorraine. The republicans and anticlericalists opposed increased military spending, fearing the potential threat of a strong and independent army to the existing domestic institutional order, while the monarchists and Catholic Church supported increased military spending, consistent with their historic ties to the French army. Taken

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together, French elites exhibited dissensus in both (1) their perceptions of threats and opportunities in the external environment and (2) their views on the appropriate policy risks associated with the balance between internal and external order. This dissensus was at the root of elite fragmentation regarding what type of expansion (colonial or continental) and whom to balance against (Britain or Germany).28 Regarding social cohesion, French economic stagnation throughout the late-nineteenth century raised the political costs and risks for all elite groups seeking increased resource extraction for military programs. While economic class issues did not surface in France as they did in Germany and Britain (for example, prior to 1894, industrial unions were illegal in France, and their legal status came at the price of accepting a provision that forbid them from political activity), peasants, small landowners, shopkeepers, and the marginal middle class united against increased taxation. Hence, social cohesion in France, by raising the political costs of extraction, worked against increases in military spending for defense and opportunistic expansion. In terms of regime vulnerability, Third Republic France was typically unstable. There were twenty-four French Premiers from 1878 to 1896; and only two Foreign Ministers lasted as long as two years (W. H. Waddington, December 1877 to December 1879; and Alexandre Ribot, March 1890 to January 1893). Thus, French foreign policy became a roller coaster ride, moving “from the cautious Anglophile policy of Waddington to the policy of European Concert adopted by Freycinet; continuing with a return to an Anglophile policy under Barthe´lemy Saint-Hilaire, vigorous assertion under Gambetta, and a return to European Concert during Freycinet’s second term of office; ending with the Anglophile policy pursued by Duclerc.”29 During this time, France tripled its colonial possessions from one to three million square miles, adding as protectorates or annexations Tunisia, Annam, Tonkin, Madagascar, the Congo basin, Upper Senegal, the French Sudan, part of Somaliland, numerous islands in the South Pacific, and several points along the West Coast of Africa. Nevertheless, French colonial expansion, though dramatic in scale, was relatively costless and, when not undertaken by governors and officers of the existing French colonies, was largely accomplished under Jules Ferry’s two terms as Premier between 1881 and 1885. France’s acquisition of Tunis as a protectorate in May 1881 typifies the low cost and cautious nature of French colonial expansion. The move was strongly supported by all the Great Powers except Italy at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Bismarck encouraged French colonialism as a way to keep Paris contented and pacific, to prevent a Franco-Russian alliance, and to foment Anglo-French discord. Seeking to “distract French attention from

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the ‘hole in the Vosges,’ ”30 Bismarck told the French ambassador that “the Tunisian pear is ripe, and it is time for you to pluck it; the insolence of the Bey has been the August sun upon this African fruit which may spoil, or be stolen by another, if you leave it upon the tree too long!”31 For his part, Lord Salisbury urged France to take Tunis as compensation for Britain’s acquisition of Cyprus and as a means of associating France with Britain’s Near Eastern policy. Still, the “French hesitated a good deal even over the small trouble and expense involved in acquiring Tunis. They disregarded Bismarck and Salisbury, and were concerned rather that Tunis should not go to anyone else than that they should acquire it for themselves.”32 Though the Tunisian annexation “had shown that colonial acquisition was possible without great bloodshed and expenditure of money,” the “occupation of Tunis in 1882 and the steps towards the consolidation of Indochina were greeted . . . with indifference and hostility in France.”33 The French Parliament and public, still soured by the Second Empire’s great imperial disaster in Mexico, were fed up with the costs in blood and treasure of the expeditions in Tunisia, Madagascar, and Indo-China. The cause of their weariness toward Ferry is evident by the timing of his two losses of the Premiership: after the grab of Tunisia and during what was widely seen as a “disastrous” undeclared war against China over Tonkin in 1885 (in which only two hundred Frenchmen were killed!). In a revealing exchange at the outset of the Tonkin expedition, Georges “Clemenceau accused Ferry of weakening the French defenses on the continent, but General Campenon, Minister of War, replied that most of the 25,000 troops in the Far East were Algerian troops.”34 Early French expansion in the colonies was instigated by colonial officials without the prior knowledge or approval of Paris. Later colonial expeditions were set in motion by civil servants, professional diplomats, military men, and the Comite´ de l’Afrique franc¸aise, a private group founded in 1890 by a handful of influential imperialists “to convince a reluctant public and an apathetic Chamber of the value of colonialism.”35 During his second Premiership, Ferry “undertook aggressive actions without properly informing Parliament of his intentions. He never had any longrange plan, but he moved opportunistically whenever a chance presented itself. If he thought he could easily add to the French domain, he moved in as he did in Annam and Madagascar. His formula was to subsidize, seize and suppress abroad and then to explain his actions at home.”36 Once France’s reputation had became inextricably tied to these adventures, the Chamber of Deputies, motivated by patriotism rather than economic gain or opportunistic expansion, reluctantly supported them to defend French prestige and national honor. After Ferry’s second Premiership, French political opinion over imperialism was divided between the colonialists and the revanchards. The colo-

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nialists, led by Euge`ne Etienne (Undersecretary of State of Colonies), The´ophile Delcasse´ (Minister for the Colonies), and the Comite´ de l’Afrique franc¸aise, viewed imperialism as a truly patriotic endeavor: colonial expansion offered France the only means available to restore its prestige after the humiliation of 1870, and the surest path for future revanche against Germany. Led by Georges Clemenceau, the revanchards attacked the colonialists for wasting vast sums of money and sending troops abroad when the vital work of France was on the Franco-German border. Lacking public and elite support, French colonial expansion was accomplished only haltingly after 1895. The economy-minded Chamber demanded a very real profit from the colonies to the home country, which they could not provide; and then the Deputies thwarted proposals to make the colonies profitable by voting down the “Etienne project” for commercial concessions in western Africa in 1892.37 The period 1877–98 ended with the fiasco of the Fashoda crisis. Seeking revenge for the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the French colonialists entertained dreams of establishing a post in the reaches of the upper Nile, which remained under British control. For Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux, Delcasse´, and other French colonialists, “the Fashoda expedition was conceived as a lever to force the British to negotiate the Egyptian question and thus to increase France’s great-power prestige.”38 To that end, the colonialists sent Captain Jean Baptiste Marchand, allotted with an absurdly inadequate force of just 160 Senegalese infantrymen, on a march toward the Nile and Fashoda. Marchand’s small military unit was obviously no match for Lord Kitchener’s army, which arrived at Fashoda in September 1898, having just taken Khartoum in August. Supremely overmatched by the British forces, the French backed down, preferring a humiliating diplomatic defeat to certain slaughter on the battlefield. Whether French imperialism succeeded in restoring France’s prestige among the great powers is debatable. What is clear is that French adventures in the periphery diverted precious resources away from continental defense against Germany. Moreover, French colonial expansion deepened the Anglo-French estrangement that began after Britain’s military intervention in Egypt in 1882 and allowed it to persist for nearly two decades. One can reasonably argue that colonial concessions retarded French economic growth and industrialization as well. In summary, France suffered from elite dissensus, elite fragmentation, high regime vulnerability, and a society that was united against increased resource extraction by the central government. These factors increased the political risks of raising military spending and frustrated attempts by elite groups to implement sensible policy changes. As predicted by the theoretical arguments presented in chapter 2, French foreign and military policy during this period was characterized by inertia and incoherence caused by

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a fragmented and complex policy process. Consequently, France underbalanced against Germany. Because all the variables were in the same direction, namely, toward high degrees of fragmentation and government vulnerability, the Additive Model of underbalancing best captures the causal scheme for this case. Causal Scheme 2: The Additive Model Rise of external threat → social fragmentation + government or regime vulnerability + elite fragmentation → elite disagreement or nonbalancing consensus → underbalancing behavior Several key events occurred after 1898, moving France from cell 3 to cell 8 in figure 2.1 (a state most likely to balance), that enabled France to pursue a coherent and effective balancing strategy against Germany prior to World War I. First, the monarchist elements faded politically, and the Catholic Church was disestablished in 1905. Given the diminished power of these elite groups, republicans and anticlericalists could now support increased military spending for contintental defense without fear that the army would restructure France’s domestic political institutions. In other words, the risks to internal order of mobilizing resources for external order decreased significantly. Second, procolonialist sympathies among elites dried up because by the end of the century there was simply no territory left that could be grabbed safely. It became obvious to most everyone that further French colonial expansion carried an unacceptable policy risk of producing dangerous competition with other European great powers; and so there were no perceived opportunities in the external environment— ones in which the costs did not exceed the expected benefits. In addition and most important, Article 13 of the 1900 Finance Act required colonies already acquired by France to pay their own way. This eliminated the cause of the split between procolonialists and continentalists. Finally, the French economy also took off at the end of the century, which reduced the domestic political costs of greater resource extraction by the state. As a result of all of these events and changes in the domestic and international political landscape, the French policy process became far less complex. As elites (procolonialists, continentalists, republicans, and anticlericalists) no longer viewed the policy process in zero-sum terms, the French Parliament could and did enact positive policies; it no longer simply preserved the status quo through blocking coalitions that thwarted the favored policies of competitive elite groups. And so a consensus emerged among French elites that the country’s security required increased military spending to defend against Germany. In addition, regime stability increased dramatically in France after 1898. France was led by only three Premiers between 1899 and 1909 (Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, June 1899 to June 1902; Emile Combs, June 1902 to

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January 1905; and Georges Clemenceau, October 1906 to July 1909) and went through only two changes in Foreign Ministers between 1896 and 1911 (The´ophile Delcasse´, June 1896 to June 1905, and Stephen Pichon, October 1906 to March 1911). Moreover, in the years prior to the war, Raymond Poincare´—a hard-boiled realist who firmly believed in the logic of balance of power and that “the strength and cohesion of the alliances on both sides were the best guarantee of peace”—became Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.39 Then, in 1913, Poincare´ was elected President, in no small part because of the revival of French nationalism. As James Joll points out: “Since the Agadir crisis in 1911 there had been a revival of [French] popular nationalism directed against Germany, reawakening memories of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. As the atmosphere of tension in Europe grew during the Moroccan crisis and the Balkan wars, many Frenchmen became more aware of their restless neighbor across the Rhine and more sensitive than for several years about the lost provinces.”40 Poincare´ took full advantage of the rise in French nationalism to make policy decisions unilaterally, often without any prior consultation. Thus, he viewed the alliance with Russia as an indispensable element of French security; it had to remain tight no matter what the domestic costs, for example, the establishment of a three-year compulsory service law in 1913. In summary, after 1898, French grand strategy was facilitated by elite consensus and cohesion, increased regime stability, and growing social cohesion and nationalist sentiment against Germany. As a result of these reduced domestic constraints on its foreign and military policy, France followed a coherent and effective balancing strategy against Germany. By 1913, French military spending was 84 percent higher than its 1904 level, while total central government spending as a percentage of GDP fell from 10.4 percent in 1900 to 8.8 percent in 1912. In addition, France enjoyed a tight military alliance with Russia, was spending 36 percent of its budget on defense, and had called up 83 percent of its conscripts. Thus, France in the years leading up to World War I behaved precisely as balance-ofpower theory predicts: it balanced against Germany by mobilizing men and arms and by tightening its alliance with a powerful and reliable great power. The coherence of this balancing strategy contrasts starkly with the prior period (1877–98), when French defense and foreign policy was characterized by episodic colonial expansion sparked by the fait accomplis of Jules Ferry and a small group of bureaucrats, colonial governors, and parti colonial enthusiasts.

CHAPTER FOUR

Small-Power Case Studies Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, and the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870

WHEN WE MAKE THE causal statement, X → Y, we are also saying: no X → no Y. I have put forward a set of jointly sufficient conditions (namely, social and elite fragmentation, elite disagreement, and government/regime instability) to explain underbalancing behavior. In other words, I have suggested that A + B + C + D → Y. Thus, when we find a case in which all the causal variables are in the extreme opposite direction (high degrees of social and elite cohesion, elite consensus, and government/ regime stability), we should expect to find no evidence of underbalancing behavior (no A + no B + no C + no D → no Y).1 Instead, a country with these characteristics represents the ideal mobilizing state. Further, if such a mobilizing state perceives that its neighbors are badly divided internally, according to the logic of my theory, it should expect them to underbalance. Given structural incentives for expansion in its external environment, the ideal mobilizing state would be predicted to take advantage of the opportunity to increase its prestige, actual power, and security by conquering its internally weaker neighbors. The story of Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance provides just such a case. Nineteenth-century Paraguay was an exemplar of a “coherent” nation-state—one that precisely comported with standard realist assumptions about the state as a unitary actor that seeks power and security to survive in an uncertain and dangerous environment. Coherence in this sense does not mean that the state’s goals or policies to achieve them proved rational or prudent in practice. Rather, it implies a high degree of national cohesiveness, whereby the state enjoys complete elite and social cohesion, elite consensus, and regime stability. In these respects, nineteenth-century Paraguay had the makings of a “hypermobilizing” state: a classic power-maximizing, revisionist entity.2 Moreover, Paraguay’s leader, Solano Lo´pez, perceived that his large neighbors, Argentina and Brazil, were badly divided nations; as a result, their populations could not be expected to unite behind their respective states to put up any kind of fight against Paraguay, which had the largest military and far and away the most patriotic citizens in South America at the time.

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Driven by Solano’s voracious appetite for power and prestige, Paraguay engaged in “hypermobilizing” or overexpansionist behavior: anxiously seeking to enhance its power and prestige at its neighbors’ expense, the state perceives irresistible opportunities in the external environment whether they exist or not. The state recklessly expands in a frantic attempt to take advantage of what it sees as a closing window of opportunity. As for Argentina and Brazil, they were the very definition of severely fragmented states at both the elite and societal levels. As the theory predicts, both of them underbalanced against each other and, as this chapter argues, against Paraguay. Indeed, Argentina and Brazil were much wealthier and vastly larger states in terms of both geography and demography than was Paraguay. When war broke out in 1864, however, their combined forces along with those of Uruguay were far smaller than the militia fielded by Paraguay. In fact, had it not been for Marshal Lo´pez’s inept diplomacy, military strategy, and battlefield tactics, Paraguay might have conquered Brazil and then turned around and soundly defeated the weaker Argentina. Put otherwise, Brazil and Argentina so poorly armed themselves that they gave Paraguay a very real chance to achieve regional dominance and thereby overthrow the balance of power on the Continent. As it turned out, the Allies took five years to defeat the seemingly minor country of Paraguay. In the words of Charles Kolinski: “The superhuman defense of the Paraguayans is almost unequaled in the history of warfare. That a tiny, landlocked country would resist the two large nations in whose shadow she lived at first glance seems incredible. That the Paraguayans, with few means at their disposal, should be able to maintain this bitter, unequal struggle in the face of overwhelming odds for five discouraging years is equally difficult to comprehend.”3 The story of this “superhuman” defense is the subject of this chapter. ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR The war, which lasted from 1864 to 1870, pitted a landlocked Paraguay against Argentina and Brazil, which were assisted by Uruguay (called the Banda Oriental at the time). Most if not all of the blame for the outbreak and widening of the war lay with Francisco Solano Lo´pez, the dictatorial leader of Paraguay. Known as the “would-be Napoleon of South America,” Lo´pez recklessly and with supreme confidence plunged Paraguay into war for the purpose of territorial expansion and enhanced prestige. Regarding the latter, Solano Lo´pez accurately assumed that neither Brazil nor Argentina took any account of Paraguay’s interests when they formulated their policies. He also correctly viewed Brazil’s intervention in Uruguay in September of 1864 as an affront to the region’s lesser pow-

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ers. But for reasons that had no basis in reality, Lo´pez irrationally concluded that the preservation of Uruguayan independence was crucial to Paraguay’s future security and prestige within the South American balance of power. In accordance with his master plan to create a Paraguayan “third force” between Argentina and Brazil, Solano Lo´pez steadfastly came to Uruguay’s aid. With the Argentines sitting passively on the sidelines as Brazil invaded Uruguay, Solano Lo´pez decided to seize a Brazilian warship in November 1864; this action was followed by a successful Paraguayan invasion of Mato Grosso (Brazilian territory) in March 1865. Then, apparently unaware that Argentina had already made the decision to side with Brazil against Paraguay, Solano Lo´pez launched an attack against Brazil’s main force in Uruguay. When Argentina refused to grant Paraguay permission for its army to cross Argentine territory to attack the Brazilian province of Rı´o Grande do Sul, Solano Lo´pez sent his forces into Argentina with the expectation that this move would spark a separatist domestic rebellion in Argentina—one that would eliminate it as a player in the war. Thus, on March 17,1865, President Lo´pez convoked an extraordinary session of the National Congress to declare war on Argentina and to confer upon him the rank of Marshal. Rather than setting in motion an Argentine civil war, however, Lo´pez’s actions had the opposite effect: they set the stage for the May 1865 signing by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (now reduced to puppet status) of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance, by which these nations vowed to destroy the Lo´pez government and prevent the future independence of Paraguay. The allies more than fulfilled their vow. By war’s end, Paraguay had suffered not only a decisive defeat but utter devastation. From a prewar population of approximately 525,000, Paraguay was left after the war with only 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men. Paraguay’s fatalities in terms of its prewar male population eclipse those of any other country in the history of warfare. Indeed, no other defeated state’s losses even approach the percentage of Paraguay’s male population killed in the war (over 90 percent).4 Destitute and utterly destroyed as a nation, Paraguay endured a lengthy occupation by foreign troops and had to cede large patches of territory to Brazil and Argentina. The object of Lo´pez’s war was “not, as was later to be represented, fear for the territorial integrity and independence of Paraguay, but plans for a ‘forward policy,’ a claim to ‘a place in the sun,’ a sounding-board for the voice of Francisco Solano Lo´pez.”5 Small wonder that Lo´pez’s Paraguay has been frequently compared with Prussia under Frederick the Great and Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Like them, Lo´pez was convinced that his foes were paper tigers; that the divided Argentines, even after an un-

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provoked attack, stood no chance of uniting behind President Bartolome´ Mitre to preserve the Republic. Lo´pez’s logic—heroically assuming that a strategy that cost Paraguay 90 percent of its male population in a suicidal war can in any way be seen as logical—was, nevertheless, quite consistent with the arguments presented in this book: incoherent, divided states will not balance or will do so ineffectively. This coupled with the fanatic patriotism and hypernationalism of the Paraguayan people and soldiers provided Lo´pez with an alluring motivation to expand. As a contemporary observed: “The Paraguayans were the most respectful and obedient men imaginable. From the soldier to the General, everyone squared up, with his cap in his hand, to his superior officer, who never returned the salute.”6 The problem for Lo´pez and, more important, for the Paraguayan people was that his perception of Brazil and Argentina as badly divided states was no longer accurate at the time he chose to wage war—“in fact, it lagged several decades behind a swiftly advancing reality.”7 True, both countries suffered from regional differences that had regularly exploded into civil wars. Indeed, prior to 1861, there were two separate Argentine states: one governed by the porten˜os at Buenos Aires; the other by Confederalists scattered throughout the interior provinces. By the 1860s, however, these wounds had largely healed (though the scars remained). With the old caudillos dead, discredited, or otherwise gone from the political landscape, Argentina could no longer be accurately portrayed as merely a congeries of provinces; it was a constitutional republic. For its part, Brazil was a constitutional empire tied together by the force of nationalism deliberately forged by Pedro II. Thus, as John Williams points out: “In any serious contest, Brazil and/or Argentina would react as a nation reacts and would not revert to ‘ravening’ caudillo-ridden regionalism. Failure to appreciate the maturity of his neighbors and overconfidence in his own nation and its increasingly modern military led Francisco Solano to redefine Paraguay’s borders outwards.”8 That noted, Paraguay did enjoy a “large and efficient military machine equipped with the most up-to-date armaments.” In the decade preceding the war, Lo´pez had pioneered a number of innovations, such as the telegraph, a multiple Congre`ve rocket-launcher, river-mines, torpedoes, and the steam locomotive—all considerably in advance of his rivals. This gave Paraguay vast technological superiority and useful tactical assets in the war.9 Moreover and quite surprisingly given its size, Paraguay fielded a much larger army than any of its rivals at the start of the war. Just as important, its army possessed “an infinitely superior fighting spirit” compared to the armies of its larger neighbors.10 Lo´pez clearly understood what was required in terms of military hardware and innovations for Paraguay to defeat its enemies. He was far less

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proficient, however, in implementing his ambitious schemes, as the Victorian traveler and historian Captain Richard Burton noted at the time: “The war . . . was altogether premature: had the cuirassed ships and the Whitworths ordered by the Marshal-President begun the campaign, he might now have supplied the place of Mexico with a third great Latin empire.”11 The lessons of the War of the Triple Alliance and their relationship to the domestic-cohesion/(under)balancing arguments presented in chapter 2 are nicely summarized by John Hoyt Williams: Impressed by the unity and strength of his own country, Lo´pez did not notice the growing cohesion of his neighbors, which were fast becoming nations. Armed with a certain degree of modern militarization (that lacked basic infrastructure), Francisco Solano was fooled by memories of a fragmented Argentina (he had, after all, as recently as 1859 mediated between two warring regional caudillos) and a disunited Brazil (whose people had in the past fled into Paraguay for peace). He felt that Paraguay could weaken and perhaps cause the collapse of one or both neighbors and create a new balance of power.12

THE EXTRAORDINARY COHESIVENESS OF PARAGUAY When the war began, Paraguay was the only bona fide “nation-state” in the region. Rooted in narrow traditions of paternalism and community solidarity, Paraguayan nationalism thrived within and as a result of a unique cultural environment that was more Indian than Spanish in nature. This distinct culture provided Paraguayans with their own language, Guaranı´, and a strong sense of “national” identity that dated back to the colonial era. Neither Argentina nor Brazil could claim anything close to Paraguayan nationalist sentiment. The extraordinary degree of nationalism and unity of Paraguayan society as well as the advantages that this national cohesion afforded Paraguay over Brazil and Argentina can be traced to the wildly different origins of these three states’ paths to nationhood and the dissimilar paces of their nation-building processes. Paraguayan Culture and Common Identity Paraguay was largely overlooked by the European states that colonized the rest of South America. The Spaniards began their occupation of Paraguay only after they failed to settle Buenos Aires. By 1580, however, the Spaniards had reestablished the future Argentine capital and, therefore, chose to let their Paraguayan settlements decay. This apathy toward Paraguay was the key to its uncommon social evolution. That said, the Span-

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iards made some significant contributions to Paraguayan society that altered its direction to nationhood. Most important, the Spaniards introduced the Roman Catholic religion and bureaucratic structures of government that replaced the traditional leadership of the mburuvicha´. With the arrival of the Franciscan pueblos in the 1560s and the Jesuits in the 1610s, Paraguay witnessed the birth of a unique Hispano-Guaranı´ culture and common identity that clearly defined it from the rest of South America.13 Owing to the near absence of new Spanish immigrants to Paraguay, these trends were left to consolidate over the next two centuries. Appearing to many as a timeless place that existed outside history, Paraguay nonetheless faced constant threats from the Guaicuru´ raiders and later the Mamelucos. Consistent with Coser’s theory of in-group cohesion, this persistent external pressure gave rise to a strong sense of identity and group cohesiveness among the Paraguayan people. During the eighteenth century and continuing into the early nineteenth century, Paraguay was nominally under the control of the porten˜os, the ruling elite class and mercantilists of Buenos Aires who served as middlemen between the Old and New World. Although the porten˜os succeeded in integrating Paraguayans into the greater colonial economy, Paraguay, more than any other colony in South America, remained essentially in splendid isolation. Argentina’s path to nationhood could not have been more different. It had no unique language, culture, or tranquil existence apart from the rest of the world. Its independence was a top-down process engineered solely by mercantilist elites from the busy port city of Buenos Aires. Angered and disappointed that the Spanish empire had failed to defend the Plata against Britain’s occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, the porten˜os decided to break away from Cadiz and establish a new Argentine nation in 1810. This decision quickly led to the political dissolution of Spanish rule over the region and to the rise of the porten˜os’ political aspirations as selfappointed rulers of the New World. In June 1810, the porten˜os “sent emissaries upriver to announce the advent of the new order, asking each Litoral community in turn to recognize the authority of Buenos Aires as the proper substitute for the Spanish Cortes. Since the viceroyalty still existed in name, the porten˜os felt that they had every right to do so.” The porten˜os selected the reviled Colonel Jose´ de Espı´nola to take power in their name over the Guaranı´ province. As might be expected, the Paraguayans let it be known that they would rather fight than bend an inch to the will of the opportunists from Buenos Aires. In response to the Paraguayans’ intransigence and unenlightened view of the Patriot cause, the porten˜os sent an expeditionary force under the command of Manuel Belgrano to compel them by force of arms to

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come to their senses. On January 15, 1811, six thousand poorly armed Paraguayan locals, which received no help from the Spanish Governor Velasco in Asuncio´n or his militia, roundly defeated Belgrano’s larger and better-equipped forces. (Somewhat comically, Velasco, being the scoundrel that he was, fled the city under the mistaken belief that the Paraguayans had been routed by Belgrano, which would have left the latter’s forces unimpeded in their march to Asuncio´n.) In May 1811, militia officers at Asuncio´n mutinied against the Spanish governor and Spain itself in a bloodless coup. In firm control of Asuncio´n, the officers received the quiet support of most Paraguayans as the legitimate rulers of the nation of Paraguay. “As far as they were concerned, neither Spain nor Buenos Aires deserved Paraguayan loyalty. They were willing to negotiate many things, including friendly relations with the mother country and the port city, but ultimate power they refused to barter away. Sovereignty, they now insisted, rested with themselves.”14

NATION-BUILDING IN PARAGUAY, BRAZIL, AND ARGENTINA How to Build a Nation: Paraguay Nation-building in Paraguay began under the dictatorship of Dr. Jose´ Gaspar de Francia, who took over the country in October 1814 and remained its leader until his death on September 20, 1840. Ruling like a Bourbon absolutist, Dr. Francia (also known as El Supremo and the Caraı´) “favored the enhancement of state power over internal rivals and competing states. Having attained the highest political office, he intended to use his authority comprehensively. Not only did he proceed to formulate policy on foreign relations and the domestic economy, but he also addressed the most minute budgetary matters.”15 Surrounded by potentially far more powerful enemies, Paraguayans accepted the absolute power of their ruler and, in fact, viewed the strengthening of state power as imperative for Paraguay’s future survival and autonomy in an extremely hostile world. Thus, Francia had free reign to destroy any and all institutions within Paraguay that could possibly compete with the state and its claim to allencompassing power and authority: “Virtually any thing or group that stood between El Supremo and his exercise of supreme authority was limited, bound, or emasculated.”16 Because the Church was the only nongovernment entity that could possibly compete with the state, it became the central target of Francia’s paranoia and, as such, he insisted on complete control over it. By 1816, the Francia government established financial stewardship over the Church, collecting all Church monies and paying clerics a regular salary. In 1823, Francia closed the seminary, the only

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institution of higher education in Paraguay. Then, in 1824, he dissolved the nation’s monasteries and decreed the secularization of all monks.17 The most important policy instituted by Francia in terms of nationbuilding was his decision to establish a cordon sanitaire around Paraguay, which prohibited the entry of foreigners and the exit of those who sought to leave. This isolationist policy in the extreme turned Paraguay in on itself. It had the effect of “reinforcing the Hispano-Guaranı´ identity of the Paraguayans. They abandoned all pretense of belonging to a greater community of Americans, Spaniards, or anyone else. This feeling, which grew more pronounced as the decades went by, become the principal element in Paraguayan nationality. Nothing comparable existed in Buenos Aires, the Litoral provinces, or Portuguese Brazil.”18 Paraguay became the paragon of an autarkic state, practicing self-sufficiency and a diplomatic policy of nonintercourse with the rest of the world. Notwithstanding its brutally repressive character, Francia’s rule left a positive legacy for the future development of Paraguay as a strong and unified nation. “Seen from the village level, Francia’s domestic policies were populist—a forced leveling and homogenization of a largely rural society. Herein lie the seeds of Paraguayan unity in later decades; a unity and sense of purpose and national cohesion fostered by the Caraı´. Under his sway began a retreat from the city to the countryside, a surge of selfsufficiency, a certain pride in self and nation, a resurgence of Guaranı´ over Spanish, and a near deification of the leader.”19 On the downside, however, Francia “left a nation that was shorn of intellectual and administrative talent and one that was unusually suspicious and inward-looking.”20 As will be discussed, the Lo´pez family’s rule after Francia’s death hurriedly modernized Paraguay, not only continuing but vastly quickening the pace of Paraguay’s nation-building development. How Not to Build a Nation: Argentina and Brazil As successful as Francia was in building a nation, Argentine and Brazilian leaders failed miserably in their attempts to achieve this task. Argentina struggled with lawlessness and anarchy throughout the 1810s and 1820s. Spanish royalists centered in Buenos Aires, porten˜os espousing the Patriot cause, and gaucho cavalrymen led by Jose´ Gervasio Artigas fought relentlessly with each other for the right to rule over Argentina. In the end, elites, merchants, landowners, and clerics put their faith in local strongmen, or caudillos, for safety. Thus, the 1820s has been called the “Age of the Caudillos,” which gave Argentines some sense of identity but did little else to further the goal of Argentine nationalism and nation-building. For its part, Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until September 1822, when twenty-four-year-old Pedro I declared its independence and

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appointed himself as monarch of the new empire. For the average Brazilian, independence and the emperor had little practical effect on their lives; it did nothing to change their grueling existence and political impotence. Power remained in the same propertied hands of the elites that held sway over Brazil during colonial times. “The common people had their symbol of unity and future greatness in the person of the emperor, but little else; they themselves had no role in the political decision making. Brazilian nationhood was thus like the bright gilt on a religious statuette—it was decorative and fine, but only clay lay just underneath.”21 In 1825, Brazil and Argentina went to war against each other over the Banda Oriental (present-day Uruguay). In what became known as the Cisplatine War, both sides performed miserably. As the theory presented in this book predicts, when a state suffers from severe social fragmentation and disunity, external threats will not strengthen internal group cohesion but will cause the group to further disintegrate, possibly leading to civil war and revolution. This is precisely what happened in both Argentina and Brazil. For both states, the case unfolded in the manner described by causal scheme 3 presented in chapter 2: Causal Scheme 3: Extremely Incoherent States Model Rise of an external threat → social fragmentation → government or regime vulnerability → elite fragmentation → elite disagreement about how to respond to threat or elite consensus not to balance → underbalancing behavior and very high probability of further state disintegration (e.g., civil war or revolution) In Brazil, the war devastated Pedro I’s authority. Instead of the Brazilian people rallying behind their country, the “only imperial units to defend the ‘national cause’ consistently and wholeheartedly were composed of recently arrived German immigrants.” The war bankrupted the state, and Brazilians blamed the emperor. A mutiny within Pedro’s military in June 1828 led his own deputies to call on him to account for his actions and to make a series of compromises, which Pedro refused to consider. Rather than force a certain civil war, Pedro abdicated on April 7, 1831, “leaving his five-year-old son, Pedro II, as heir in a regency government that provided neither adequate budgets nor ideological solidity.”22 Between 1831 and 1848, no less than twenty minor revolts and seven major ones broke out in various parts of the country; in three of the latter, the leaders declared independent republican governments.23 The consequences of the war were just as severe for the Argentine rulers. The mounting costs of the Cisplatine War unraveled Bernardino Rivadavia’s stillborn Unitarian (or Centralist) regime. Rival porten˜os, Federalists who favored a decentralized state, forced Rivadavia to resign in July 1827, leaving his successor, Manuel Dorrego (a fellow Unitarian), in charge.

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Because Dorrego was forced to make major concessions to the Federalists, returning Unitarian troops captured and executed him. “His death set off a chain reaction ending in a new rebellion by Federalist landowners. The leader of this uprising was Juan Manuel de Rosas . . . [who] effectively crushed the Unitarians in Buenos Aires. But to retain power, he had to quell Unitarians in the interior provinces while sponsoring other provincial strongmen. It was a task that kept him busy for the next quarter century.”24 Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, Rosas’s authoritarian rule kept the peace in Argentina but it failed to bring national unity and never managed to bring the provinces under centralized government control. The idea of national integration did not appeal to a largely agrarian population with scarcely any communication, little or no political participation, and loyalties divided among thirteen provinces. Carlos Antonio Lo´pez and Further Paraguayan Nation-Building The corpulent and despotic Carlos Antonio Lo´pez succeeded El Supremo as dictator of Paraguay, and he served as President until his death in September of 1862. In terms of his leadership goals, all Carlos Antonio’s policies were designed with one thing in mind: to ensure the defense and survival of the Paraguayan state: If Lopez opened schools, he did so because literacy was a basic key to national strength and unity, to say nothing of effective propaganda. When he opened commercial floodgates, it was not to acquaint his rustic people with the blessings of corsets and champagne, but to purchase arms and machinery. As he built a railroad he did not think of Sunday outings or national prestige, but directed the track to military purposes. If he entered the world of diplomacy, he did so to protect his weak nation in other nations’ flags and insure its survival. When he constructed ships at Asuncio´n, he built them to guarantee Paraguayan control of the rivers, to preclude a future blockade. As British and other foreign technicians poured into the country, they were set to work almost entirely on the creation of a military-industrial complex, and the greatest project of the era was a huge, sprawling fortress of Humaita´, the “Sevastapol of the Americas.”25

Carlos Antonio Lo´pez immediately began to make changes in the way Paraguay was governed, creating “a new state apparatus to replace the colonial structures that had been the mainstay of the Francia regime. His innovations included new ministerial positions, a reorganized treasury, and a military officer corps.”26 A comparison of the raw numbers between Francia and Lo´pez reveals the progress of the military buildup under the latter: by 1827, Francia had organized a standing army of 5,000 men with a reserve of another 20,000; by 1857, Carlos Antonio Lo´pez had raised that to 18,000 with a reserve of 46,000.27

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Almost as important as the swelling of the Paraguayan military under Lo´pez was the decline of Paraguay’s Hispano-Guaranı´ national character, especially its native Guaranı´ oral culture. The prior Francia government had built its legitimacy not only on the charisma and iron hand of the dictatorial leader but also on its embrace of ordinary country folks and their traditions; they, in turn, considered his regime a model of how a responsible government should act. Lo´pez did not share Francia’s love of and respect for Paraguay’s traditional values and customs. In his eyes, Guaranı´ not only implied but helped to preserve an artificial division between the state and the community; the modernization that Lo´pez planned had no room for such a division or for backward-looking traditions. He would be known as the “Great Builder,” and his many accomplishments along these lines merited him the title. Brazil and Argentina, 1845–1864 During the 1830s, Brazil witnessed little domestic peace, as provincial revolts erupted throughout the country. Brazilian elites were fragmented between moderate reformers, radicals who sought a new constitution, and reactionaries who wanted Pedro I to return as monarch; and the country was socially fragmented along class and regional lines. These centrifugal forces mired the process of nation-building and prevented the birth (much less growth) of a genuine national identity. With the exception of Paraguay, however, Brazil was in better shape than its Spanish-speaking neighbors. The main reason for this was the relative cohesion of its national elites. The fact that Brazil did not break apart into several countries was due in large part to “an elite that by the place and content of training, by career pattern and occupation [virtually all public employees and, of them, mostly magistrates], constituted a closely united group of people, ideologically homogenous, statist oriented, and practical in government matters.”28 Moreover, with the coming of age of Dom Pedro II by the mid-1840s, Brazil finally had a figure around which to build the semblance (though not substance) of nationalism and political cohesion. By all accounts, Dom Pedro de Alcaˆntara was “a thoughtful, peace-loving monarch who could yet place his nation’s honor above all other considerations”; under Pedro II’s leadership, Brazil was an “empire bent on retaining its supremacy” on the Continent.29 Yet, it took the Farrapo Revolt of 1835–45—actually a series of revolts and seizures of provincial capitals by rebel bands composed of hard-line ranchers and gau´chos—to demonstrate the very real dangers of placing provincial interests above all others. “As the Farrapo insurgency subsided, many in the imperial government felt reassured that Brazil had finally

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gained control over its own destiny. . . . Brazil had begun to function as a ‘nation’ of elites, the emperor included, who shared a narrow view of the country’s identity. . . . The whole continent was reassessing the direction of politics, combining the quest for modernization with a more assertive nationalism, a willingness to look outward rather than inward, and a desire to settle accounts with foreign opponents.”30 As if following Charles Tilly’s now familiar phrase, “war made the state, and the state made war,” Brazilian elites viewed modernization as inextricably linked to war and the projection of military power.31 In their eyes, only great powers like France and Britain deserved their peoples’ loyalty— a loyalty that could be earned only through hard-fought conquests on the battlefield. Thus, the development of Brazilian nationalism and nationbuilding in general required, in their minds, successful imperialism and territorial expansion. The obvious target was Rosas’s Argentina. Argentina made far less progress than Brazil in its quest to modernize and build a nation. In 1852, Rosas and his Buenos Aires forces were defeated at Monte Caseros by an allied army composed of a Brazilian expeditionary force, a Uruguayan unit, and a provincial army under the command of Justo Jose´ de Urquiza. As a result, the provinces were united under the new constitution of 1853. But the claim of national unity under the constitution and its principles of political liberalism proved more a distant goal than a political reality. Instead, there were now two distinct Argentine governments: the provinces under the Federalists and the government of Buenos Aires under the Unitarians. As expected, the new peace was short-lived. Bartolome´ Mitre, who later became governor of Buenos Aires in May 1860, championed national unity as “a high and great cause.” His idea of nationhood, however, was the old Unitarian view that the city of Buenos Aires should hold sway over the rest of Argentina. Mitre’s Federalist rival, General Urquiza, believed in a strong Argentina built on coequal provinces. The two men were headed for an inevitable clash, which came in 1859. Urquiza and his provincial army defeated Bartolome´ Mitre and his forces of Buenos Aires in the Battle of Cepeda on October 23, 1859. A peace agreement was then brokered by none other than Francisco Solano Lo´pez, by which Argentina became the Argentine Confederation. The agreement gave the interior and Litoral provinces an equal voice with that of Buenos Aires in setting national policy. For the porten˜o government in Buenos Aires, however, the agreement was little more than a temporary expedient. Thus, a third civil war in less than a decade broke out in 1861. This time Mitre’s porten˜o forces attacked the center of the Confederal position at Pavo´n and crushed its front lines. The porten˜o army’s victory at the Battle of Pavo´n on September 17, 1861, spelled the end of the Argentine Confederation and finally united

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the country. It also made Mitre the most powerful Argentine leader since Rosas. Nevertheless, Mitre’s rule was far from complete: Urquiza still controlled Entre Rı´os, and the extent of the porten˜o government’s power did not reach the western provinces. In short, though Argentina had made some progress in centralizing government authority, it was still a long way away from becoming a bona fide nation-state at the time war came in 1864. Torn by elite and social fragmentation, Argentina could not be expected to balance against Paraguay or Brazil with any sense of urgency or efficiency. It was not a smoothly functioning “normal” state as is assumed by standard balance-of-power theory. A COMPARISON OF THE MILITARIES: HYPERMOBILIZING AND UNDERBALANCING The domestic-politics explanation of how balance-of-power theory actually operates in practice predicts that disunited, incoherent states will engage in some form of underbalancing behavior when confronted with dangerous threats. Conversely, united and coherent states will be able to mobilize their countries’ resources for whatever purposes they decide upon (whether they are prudent or reckless ones is beyond the scope of the theory). Argentina and Brazil fit the profile of the former type of state; Paraguay is a paragon of the latter. Consistent with the theory presented in chapter 2, Argentina and Brazil severely underbalanced. Paraguay, in contrast, devoted all its energies to revise the established order. Through the total mobilization of Paraguay’s internal resources, both human and material, Solano was determined to overthrow and dominate his far larger and potentially more powerful neighbors. Paraguay’s Military Modernization, 1855–1864 Prior to assuming the presidency, Solano Lo´pez spent two years (1853– 54) in Europe, where he was particularly struck by Napoleon III, whose leadership style of militaristic despotism and whose rise to power he not only admired but equated with his own career. A devout political realist, Solano Lo´pez “understood European politics relatively well. A balance of power between the various states had secured peace since 1815, and anything that threatened the balance also threatened the well being of each nation. Solano Lo´pez took this principle as proven fact, assuming its applicability for the Plata (which necessarily put Brazil in the worst light). . . . [The] lessons he learned in Europe had terrible consequences for Paraguay.”32 Seeking the glitter of Bonapartism and to emulate Napoleon III, Lo´pez began to modernize and transform Paraguay’s military machine.33

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Assisted by the Blyth Brothers (who acted as general agents for the Paraguayan government in the purchase of industrial and military hardware) and British contract sailors and officers, Lo´pez set out to build a military infrastructure second to none in the Plata and a naval force stronger than that of Argentina. This military modernization program was launched in earnest in 1855: “After the 1850s, foreign arms purchases continued to take up a good portion of the budget. Yet more and more arms were produced locally, with the Asuncio´n Arsenal and Ybycuı´ ironworks casting 12–, 24–, 32–pounder cannon and shot of all calibers. The Paraguayans constructed wagons for the Quartermaster Corps together with fixed and mobile gun carriages. State shipyards also built the Ypora´ and Salto Guaira´ (in 1856), El Correo (in 1857), Apa (1858), and Jejuı´ (1859), all sizable, modern steamers designed for both commercial and military purposes.”34 By this time, Paraguay was beginning to resemble not so much Second Empire France but rather a South American version of Prussia. Argentina and Brazil: Underbalancing Behavior As the historian Thomas Whigham observed: “One might suppose that a country as large as Brazil would build a military establishment on a commensurate scale. Yet . . . a sizable military never received proper government endorsement. For the first forty years of its existence as an independent state, Brazil’s standing army rarely rose above sixteen thousand effectives, with a reserve of Guardia Nacional units totaling another two hundred thousand men. . . . The guard possessed few of the characteristics usually associated with a professional military.”35 Given a history of hostile relations with its neighbors, Brazil should have had every incentive to build a formidable military, and yet it did not do so. Elite and social fragmentation within the country as well as regime vulnerability constrained Brazilian attempts to build arms and train and equip a large standing army. These attempts were all the more meager because Brazil’s political elites typically mistrusted militarism, which they saw as a force for instability on the continent. Consequently, Brazilian political elites were not only extremely reluctant to militarize their own country but viewed all South American countries’ defense establishments with grave suspicion. The composition of the army bespoke its low status within Brazil, especially among the elite ruling class, which distrusted the officer corps but downright detested the common soldier. Because Brazil did not institute universal conscription, the job of recruiting soldiers fell to the police. Rewarded with a handsome cash bonus for each recruit, police officers sent press gangs into the streets to round up inductees from the ranks of society’s undesirables, mostly drunks, delinquents, petty criminals, and the

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feebleminded.36 The Brazilian government called this practice “recruitment,” but it was actually a form of impressment: “Men who did not work, who did not obey authorities, and did not seek the service of an employer or a National Guard commander would be impressed.”37 Brazil’s imperial navy was a wholly different story. By the early 1860s, Brazil’s navy had become the largest, best-equipped, and most welltrained in South America. The navy boasted total manpower of 4,236 officers and men and forty-five vessels—all fitted with state-of-the-art guns, including seventy-pounder Whitworths that could pierce ironclads and deliver punishing blows to shore defenses. The navy’s most important relative advantage over its competitors, however, was its well-trained officer corps, whose professionalism was unrivaled on the Continent.38 By 1865, Argentina, like Brazil, possessed a pathetic ragtag fighting force composed of 184,478 effectives (mostly reserves) from various Guardia Nacional units. Also like its Brazilian counterpart, the Argentine guard remained an essentially provincial institution with only rudimentary training and little, if any, combat experience. By comparison, the other guard units, each controlled by a separate province, were in even worse shape. Poorly funded and scarcely trained, these units could be counted on for virtually nothing in a war against any serious opponent. As would be expected given the army’s low status and the atrocious living conditions of the average soldier, morale was low and there was no sense of patriotic spirit among the ranks. As Whigham observes, “the average Argentine soldier found it difficult to see himself as part of a ‘national’ project. He saw no sense in soldiering on anything but a conditional and short-term basis. His nature inclined him to an impetuous courage, but patriotism was a feeling that others had to construct for him.”39 The military balance when war broke out illustrates the underbalancing of Argentina and Brazil against the very real threat presented by Paraguay.40 A glance at the map suggests that Brazil and Argentina with the addition of Uruguay dwarfed tiny Paraguay, such that any military contest between these two sides would be suicide for Paraguay. The military numbers, however, tell a different story. In January of 1865, Paraguay had an army of roughly 70,000 men. Argentina’s regular army was only around 6,000 strong, with roughly 6,000 additional soldiers from the National Guard that could be called into service. Brazil had a standing army of about 14,000 men, with 25,000 in the reserve; Uruguay had only 2,000 to 2,500 soldiers. Thus, the Triple Alliance could only field a combined army of 55,000 strong against Paraguay’s better trained militia of 70,000 soldiers. Moreover, Paraguay’s army “was mobilized and ready to move, while those of the alliance countries were scattered, disorganized, and hardly in a fit state for war.”41

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% of Total Population for All Four States

Paraguay Argentina Brazil Uruguay

3.5 15.1 79.2 2.2

Source: These figures are taken from Diego Abente, “The War of the Triple Alliance: Three Explanatory Models,” Latin American Research Review 2, no. 2 (1987), p. 55.

What Went Wrong for Paraguay? The short answer is everything that mattered, namely, the three core assumptions of the Paraguayan grand strategy for victory. First, given the demographics of Paraguay and its enemies (see table 4.1 above), Paraguay could only win a short, offensive war in blitzkrieg fashion; it had absolutely no chance of winning a long war of attrition. Second, Paraguay could not fight a two-front war; instead, it had to knock out Brazil and then, if necessary, take on Argentina. Third, Lo´pez was counting on separatism in Brazil and Argentina, especially that Urquiza or some other caudillo would oppose the war and join forces with Paraguay against Mitre. If this occurred, Argentina’s war efforts would be crippled.42 All three of these crucial assumptions turned out to be false. By May 1865, Paraguay was fighting a bloody war of attrition on two fronts, and Urquiza, who wanted to go down in history as a patriot rather than a traitor, had joined forces with the Allied Commander, General Mitre. The first battle was a northern expedition by Paraguay units into Mato Grosso in March 1865. It would be the only victory for Paraguay in the war. Emboldened by the success of this first offensive, Lo´pez launched a second southern offensive directed at Brazil’s main field army in Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul. This expedition turned out to be a disaster that sealed Paraguay’s fate. When Mitre refused transit of Paraguayan troops through part of Corrientes, Lo´pez declared war on Argentina, needlessly creating a two-front war. On May 1, 1865, the Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed in Buenos Aires. After four months of fighting in the south in what became known as the Battle of Uruguayana, Paraguay had lost roughly 18,000 regular troops, and with them most of Paraguay’s best small arms and fieldpieces. As Williams declares: “The Lo´pez offensive was over.”43 It was now a savage war of attrition that Paraguay could not win. A series of battles between May and September only demonstrated the ineptness of Solano Lo´pez’s military leadership: “Lo´pez, whose concept

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TABLE 4.2. The War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870 State

Entry

Exit

Forces: 1864

Population: 1864

Argentina

1864

1870

12,000

2,250,000

10,000

Brazil

1864

1870

39,000

11,000,000

100,000

Paraguay

1864

1870

70,000

525,000

304,000

Uruguay

1864

1870

2,000

1,000,000

10,000

Losses

Source: Onwar.com, Armed Conflict Events Data. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/ tango/triple1864.htm

of tactics was to pit the acknowledged, almost fanatical bravery of his men against Allied cannon, was horrendously wasteful of human resources. The result was not only a litany of lost battles but casualty rates often double those of his enemies. . . . By 1867, before the chronological midpoint of the war, the Lo´pez government had reached the bottom of the demographic barrel—Paraguay was running out of people.”44 Little more needs to be said of the war other than that it is simply remarkable that Paraguay was able to fight on for another three years. Table 4.2 above provides the sobering details of the war and its consequences.

CONCLUSIONS By the mid-nineteenth century, Paraguay had become a rising, dissatisfied challenger to Brazilian hegemony in South America—a rising challenger that wanted prestige commensurate with its newfound power and that ultimately sought to overthrow the balance of power on the Continent. In some ways, Paraguay was justified in its dissatisfaction. It was not taken seriously by its neighbors despite its very real increase in actual power relative to its rivals. As John Williams declares: “There is no doubt that in 1864, Francisco Solano ruled a nation, unified, debt-free, and technologically advanced in relation to other nations of the continent.”45 Yet, Lo´pez made the critical mistake of perceiving Argentina as the same divided state of 1852–1861, when two Argentinas had coexisted: Buenos Aires and the Confederation composed of the interior provinces. The Paraguayan President never realized that Argentina emerged as a relatively united nation after the Battle of Pavo´n in 1861. And it was precisely to keep the nation-building process on track that General Mitre—whose attention was not focused on the balance of power in the region (as Lo´pez saw the war) but rather on the balance of power within the former viceroy-

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alty of the Rı´o de la Plata—chose to fight against Paraguay rather than to ally with it against the regional hegemon, Brazil. Justly fearing that a victorious Paraguay would threaten a new partition of Argentina, Mitre sought nothing less than the total defeat of the Lo´pez government. This was the only way to accomplish his main goal in the war: to seal Argentine unity and preserve it well into the future. For its part, Brazil had its own good reasons for seeking to pursue the war to the bitter end: Brazil needed to depose the Lo´pez government and then exert complete political control over Paraguay. Otherwise, Mitre could not prevent Argentina from annexing Paraguay or reaping excessive spoils from the war and thereby posing a potential threat to Brazil’s regional preponderance. Brazil achieved this central objective and managed to keep control over future Paraguayan governments for decades after the war’s end. Unlike three decades ago in the Cisplatine War, when Argentina and Brazil were so internally divided that external threats tore the countries further apart, the nation-building process had proceeded to the point where external threats now strengthened “in-group” social cohesion. Just as Coser hypothesized, the degree of precrisis group cohesion determines whether an external threat will unite or further divide the group. By 1865, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil had all crossed the threshold required for external threats to increase in-group cohesion. And so, as the historian Chris Leuchars points out, “the war represented something of a coming of age [for the Allied countries]. For Argentina and Uruguay, barely out of swaddling clothes as independent and integrated nations, it was a chance to gain that military honor and sense of history that they lacked. For the Brazilians, it was an opportunity to test the national army in a real war, and finally to show themselves as allies, rather than outsiders, to the other South American nations. The demonic figure of Lo´pez provided an enemy that they could all easily understand, and in those exuberant months the war took on the guise almost of a crusade.”46

CHAPTER FIVE

Why Are States So Timid? State Coherence and Expansion in the Age of Mass Politics

ALTHOUGH THE BRITISH EMPIRE according to J. R. Seeley and Winston Churchill was acquired in a fit of absentmindedness, territorial expansion usually advances through a deliberate and collective will to imperial power, through a single-mindedness for expansion shared by both rulers and ruled.1 This was the secret to Paraguay’s soaring regional ambitions and its miraculous staying power in a terribly lopsided war; and nineteenth-century Paraguay is by no means an isolated case of this general principle. History shows that those restless leaders who have not only succumbed to imperial temptations but most zealously pursued their expansionist aims have generally led strong and unified polities, not weak and fragmented ones. Which is not to say that domestic unity is a sufficient condition for ambitious territorial aims and the initiation of wars of aggression; it is, however, a permissive cause for such behavior and a prerequisite for sustaining the state’s efforts once it has decided to embark on an offensive course of action. Prudent expansion has always been a core realist principle of state action. Operating within an anarchic, self-help environment, states must provide for the means of their own security and whatever other desires they develop; they must devise strategies, chart courses, and make decisions about how to meet internal and external exigencies. In a world characterized by scarcity and conflicting interests, realists see power as a fundamental feature of international politics and political life more generally. More specifically, anarchy means that states are basically alike in the tasks that they confront; they are “distinguished primarily by their greater or lesser capabilities for performing similar tasks.”2 Accordingly, a state’s most important attribute is its relative power, which is composed of both material and nonmaterial capabilities. While the aims of states may be endlessly varied, power is an essential means for any end they pursue. Realists argue, therefore, that expansion and preventive aggression to gain control over scarce resources are often the best means of achieving more power and security in an anarchic setting that resembles Hobbes’s state of nature.3 In this spirit, John Mearsheimer alleges that all great powers that have not achieved regional hegemony are revisionists with aggressive inten-

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tions. He further argues that states with the potential to dominate their regions will vigorously strive to achieve this form of hegemony. In his words, “anarchy and uncertainty about other states’ intentions create an irreducible level of fear among states that leads to power-maximizing behavior . . . ; the structure of the international system, not the particular characteristics of individual states, causes them to think and act offensively and to seek hegemony.”4 If this brand of offensive realism is correct, we should see many Paraguays throughout time and space. Yet there have been relatively few bids for hegemony in recent history. This is especially true in the Third Word, which consists of regions where significant power inequalities exist among neighboring states that should, according to offensive realism, engender opportunistic expansion. Since the end of the Cold War, however, very few Third World states have fought interstate wars, and the vast majority of Third World states have not even confronted significant external threats. As Jeffrey Herbst observes: “Even in Africa, the continent seemingly destined for war given the colonially-imposed boundaries and weak political authorities, there has not been one involuntary boundary change since the dawn of the independence era in the late 1950s, and very few countries face even the prospect of a conflict with their neighbors. Most of the conflicts in Africa that have occurred were not, as in Europe, wars of conquest that threatened the existence of other states, but conflicts over lesser issues that were resolved without threatening the existence of another state.”5 Likewise, K. J. Holsti comments: “The search for continental hegemony is rare in the Third World, but was a common feature of European diplomacy under the Habsburg, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Wilhelmine Germany, Hitler, and Soviet Union and, arguably, the United States.”6 Potentially powerful states such as India, South Africa, China, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Brazil have chosen to remain potential regional hegemons rather than actual ones. None has even contemplated much less actively pursued a grand strategy to achieve this exalted status. And so what Gerald Segal claims about contemporary China can be said for all these countries: “China remains a classic case of hope over experience, reminiscent of de Gaulle’s famous comment about Brazil: It has great potential, and always will.”7 Why have we seen so few wars of aggression in modern times? Why do we see so few regions with hegemons or even aspiring ones? What explains this contemporary timidity to maximize and exert power, to dominate one‘s neighbors when it is possible to do so? Consistent with the arguments presented in this book, the nature of the state, its degree of elite and societal unity, partly explains why states regularly pursued regional and, less often, global hegemony prior to the Cold War but have rarely done so since 1945. Along these lines, this chapter extends the theory of elite and societal fragmentation as causes of underbalancing to cover cases of underexpansion or underaggression, de-

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fined as the suboptimal reluctance to use force or build up military power in pursuit of profit or security or both. Because, as Geoffrey Blainey puts it, “international war is armed violence on a large scale rather than an episode of pickpocketing,” national will and unity in addition to motives, adequate financing, and organization are essential for offensive wars of aggression.8 To the extent that states deviate from classical realism’s power-maximizing and unitary-actor assumptions, they will not behave as classical and offensive realists expect. The same domestic divisions that plague defensive balancing behavior also inhibit offensive motives for war. In the course of making this argument, I claim that the exemplary mobilizing state was best captured, in practice, by the fascist state. In the modern age of mass politics, fascism provided the necessary political content missing from realism to implement the principle that states should expand when they can. Surprisingly, fascism shared many of realism’s core assumptions about world politics and views about the nature and role of the state. There are two very significant differences between fascism and realism, however: fascists did not believe in the balance of power and they activated realist principles with a racist ideology that, unfortunately for humankind, succeeded in mobilizing the passions of the multitudes. Through unparalleled ruthlessness and brutality, fascism managed to forge into existence a unified national community with a will to power for power’s sake. The fact remains, however, that fascism worked extremely well as a tool to mobilize national resources for state expansion. It is important to point out that mobilization capacity is only one important aspect of a realist foreign policy; it alone tells us nothing about how a state chooses to use its enhanced capabilities. On this score, fascism proved an abysmal failure. The aggressive aims of fascist regimes far exceeded what realists would call prudent and necessary expansion. In the end, the hubris of fascist leaders set in motion a recklessness in foreign policy that resulted in total disasters for themselves, their nations, and the rest of the world. That said, there is no reason why fascist states must be led by dictators with an insatiable and utterly reckless lust for territorial expansion. Indeed, had Munich succeeded or if Germany had not attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Hitler and Mussolini would have accomplished bold but prudent expansion for their states—expansion consistent with a realist view of appropriate state interests and behavior because it did not provoke an overwhelmingly powerful counterbalancing coalition. EXPANSION AND THE NATURE OF POLITICAL REGIMES A country’s size, population, and abundance of resources tell us something about its potential for power on a regional, continental, or world stage. Material factors alone, however, tend to obscure more than they

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reveal; they are often poor predictors of a state‘s power trajectory. Thus, Hans Morgenthau writes: The size of French territory was greater at the end of Louis XIV’s reign than it had been at its beginning, but France was weaker at the end of the reign than it had been at the beginning. The same inverse relation of size of territory and national power is revealed by a comparison of Prussian territory and power at the death of Frederick the Great in 1786 with the same factors ten years later. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Spain and Turkey possessed vast territories exceeding in size the territories of any of the major nations of Europe. But they were counted among the weakest nations actively engaged in international politics.9

To be sure, there is some minimum threshold of material resources that a state must possess in order to have a viable chance of achieving some form of hegemony, whether regional, continental, or global. We may conclude, therefore, that a country’s natural endowments will either permit or prevent it from entertaining realistic aspirations for hegemonic (or plain great-power) status. But material factors alone do not determine the actual level of state power or its place in the international pecking order. They do not tell us whether a state will be able to mobilize those resources and do so in a timely manner in order to respond successfully to structural-systemic incentives and opportunities. Nor do they tell us the purposes of state action, that is, whether a state is willing to pursue a dynamic foreign policy or aspires to some form of political hegemony. For this we need to know something about the internal or domestic makeup of the state; more specifically, we need to know whether or not there are constraints on the development and exercise of the state’s potential power and whether there is a national will to amass power. Once again, Morgenthau observes: “National character and, above all, national morale and the quality of government, especially in the conduct of foreign affairs, are the most important . . . components of national power.”10 Using a similar logic, Robert Strausz-Hupe´ reaches the somewhat paradoxical conclusion: “For the determinants of a state’s behavior in international politics, realists place greater weight than do idealists on non-material factors, such as patriotism and nationalism.”11 In short, realists argue that the accumulation and projection of national power depend on the prior existence of a strong state backed by national will and unity of purpose. Thus, when we look at the internal workings of states that have failed to reach their full power potential, we typically see internal rot and underdevelopment due to political instability, high indebtedness, mismanagement, corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and deep ethnic, religious, and regional cleavages—all of which combine to prevent the state, despite

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its relative abundance of material resources, from making a credible bid for regional or continental leadership. This rot from within largely explains why we do not see hegemonic bids in the so-called Third World despite the fact that there is no shortage of ostensibly viable candidates.12 Moreover, if it is true that war made the state and the state made war, then the absence of war in the Third World partly explains why Third-Word states remain weak and incapable of waging interstate wars of any kind, much less hegemonic ones. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether or not there exists a national will to acquire power forcibly, expansionist behavior and powermaximizing grand strategies require, at a minimum, a significant amount of existing state power, that is, a strong state able to command and exercise extractive and regulatory powers, the two minimal functions of government.13 These tasks, in turn, depend on the political regime’s degree of effectiveness and political authority. Effectiveness is nothing more than a government’s ability to get things done. To be effective, a government must mobilize and allocate resources to meet its policy commitments as well as organize the many institutions, each with their own functionally specific tasks and resources, that constitute the modern state. Simply put, a “government is more or less effective, depending on the resources and organization it commands.”14 The effectiveness of a regime is also related to its scope. In Samuel Huntington’s words: “Scope refers to the extent to which the political organizations and procedures encompass activity in the society. If only a small upper-class group belongs to political organizations and behaves in terms of a set of procedures, the scope is limited. If, on the other hand, a large segment of the population is politically organized and follows political procedures, the scope is broad.”15 In addition to scope, regimes differ according to their degree of autonomy from societal interests and pressure groups. A political regime that expresses the interests of only one social group is less autonomous than one that encompasses the interests of several social groups. The issue here is whether the regime has a clearly defined existence with its own interests and preferences apart from domestic pressure groups. This, in turn, depends on whether the regime is insulated from societal groups or easily penetrated by them. Moreover, regimes that are easily penetrated by political groups within society tend to be vulnerable to groups, agents, fifth columns, and ideas from outside the society as well.16 The political authority of regimes is composed of two elements: compliance and consent. Compliance refers to the ability of a regime to get its population to act as de facto subjects; as such, it is a measure of the regime’s ability to control its population through coercion or the actual use of force. Consent is the basis of voluntary obedience to the regime’s regulations; it is simply a measure of the population’s support for the regime.17

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In practice, a regime’s effectiveness and political authority are interrelated, for the success of any policy is partly a function of the cooperation of the affected citizenry. As Richard Rose points out: “Subjects who have internalized norms favoring unquestioning obedience and positive commitment to the regime per se can be governed with far more economy of means and predictability, and less of a control apparatus, than can persons in regimes relying upon specific and contingent sources of compliance.”18 And just as effectiveness is partly determined by authority, authority is largely a function of the public’s perception of the regime’s effectiveness. Thus, when there is a significant rise in the public’s disappointment and frustration with the regime’s performance due to either a visible policy failure or a general perception of a decline in its ability to solve societal problems, meet citizens’ expectations, or deal with a severe crisis, it will lead to a loss of public confidence in the regime. If the effects of the unsolved problems are severe and widespread, the regime will ultimately be repudiated altogether. Ineffective governments are not long for this world.19 To summarize this section, a political regime that is able to mobilize and allocate resources to meet its policy commitments, has broad scope over societal activities and social groups, is autonomous from domestic and outside pressure groups, can command compliance from its subjects, and enjoys the general consent of its citizenry will be less constrained to act in accordance with international systemic incentives than will a political regime that does not have these characteristics.

STATE COHERENCE AND THE USE OF FORCE FOR EXPANSION In addition to regime effectiveness and authority, aggressive expansion requires national unity of purpose, and not just any purpose. The goal must be a will to power, a desire to dominate others and expand at their expense. In this regard, the would-be expander must enjoy significant domestic unity among the rulers and the ruled, such that the state behaves as if it were a homogeneous, unitary actor. As Niall Ferguson points out, for “those ambitious states that seek to exert power beyond their own borders, power depends on both the resolve of the masters and the consent of the subjects.”20 The thrust of this statement is precisely right, but I would substitute the word “compliance” for “consent.” In theory, it matters little whether the compliance of the people arises voluntarily (consent) or is coerced by the state. If one were forced to choose between the two, however, most scholars would follow the conventional wisdom that state power works best when the people view it as legitimate, when citizens

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voluntarily consent to the exercise of state power. With respect to aggressive strategies, however, I disagree with this view. When the state seeks to project power for greedy expansionist reasons, the issue is not national security, revenge, justice, or humanity but rather an amoral will to power, a lust for gains made at the expense of others. Coerced compliance is in practice and over the long haul more reliable for these purposes than is voluntary consent. For the latter, the state relies on contingent sources of compliance, such as effectiveness and political persuasion, to gain cooperation from its citizens; this is the hallmark of consent. For the former, obedience to the state is internalized by the subjects. Coerced compliance is, therefore, preferable to consent for the purposes of aggressive operations motivated by opportunistic gain. After all, compliance that is voluntarily given can just as quickly be voluntarily withdrawn, especially when military adventures drag on longer than originally planned and the costs of war begin to soar. In contrast with consent, compliance by means of state coercion can be relied upon to weather these storms, to ride out the many vagaries and vicissitudes of bloody and expensive wars of attrition. Democratic politicians must ask: How long can citizens be expected to consent to a policy that costs not only money but also lives? This question poses the most common and difficult problem for territorially ambitious liberal democracies as opposed to their authoritarian and totalitarian counterparts: the public becomes impatient for quick results and demands, in Michael Ignatieff’s phrase, “imperialism in a hurry.” Such public impatience works against effective imperial power, which requires the state to control “the subject people’s sense of time, convincing them that they will be ruled forever. . . . Empires cannot be maintained and national interests cannot be secured over the long term by a people always looking for the exit.”21 This constant “searching for an exit” is related to what Ferguson calls “attention deficit”—a disorder inherent in the political system itself. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued, and many have, that the political process characteristic of liberal democracy militates against adherence to long-term goals and farsighted leadership. Along these lines, Ferguson writes: It is not just that first-term American presidents have only two and a half years in office before the issue of securing reelection begins to loom. It is the fact that even sooner, midterm congressional elections can have the effect of emasculating their legislative program. It is the fact that American politics operates on three tiers simultaneously: the national, the state and the local. How could Californians be expected to pay full attention to the problems of nation building in Baghdad in the summer of 2003, when a self-selected mob of amateur politicians was noisily bidding to recall their incumbent governor? It is the fact that the federal executive itself is anything but a homogeneous entity.22

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Democracies, because they rely on domestic pluralism and popular participation, are, in the eyes of most realists, especially sluggish on the uptake; they do not respond rapidly to challenges and opportunities in their external environment.23 This sluggishness is compounded by an excessive reluctance to use military force and coercion, even when the situation calls for these measures. Thus, Stanley Hoffmann maintained: “A liberal view of international affairs suffers from a complete misunderstanding of the role of force in world history. . . . Consequently, there still remains an instinctive inhibition in America’s approach to the use of national force.”24 Democracy’s principal virtue—that it responds to and is constrained by mass sentiment—often makes foreign policy the prisoner of passive national moods and public opinion. In order to mold public moods rather than merely respond to them, democratic leaders feel compelled to exaggerate threats and opportunities. Lamenting this natural weakness of democracies in foreign policy (viz., the need for leaders to oversell threats in order to shake the public from its normal mood of pacifism), Walter Lippmann declared: “It seemed impossible to wage the war [against the Axis Powers] energetically except by inciting the people to paroxysms of hatred and to utopian dreams. . . . The war could be popular only if the enemy was altogether evil and the Allies very nearly perfect.”25 To be sure, Americans have always been willing to fight for their interests; and the United States has fought more than its fair share of wars from the Revolution to the Cold War to the current war in Iraq. Moreover, the United States has gone to war for all kinds of objectives: for independence in 1775, for honor and trade in 1812, for territorial expansion in 1846, for humanity and empire in 1898, for neutral rights in 1917, for national security in 1941, and for revenge and nation-building in 2003. Throughout it all, the widespread belief (some would say myth) has persisted among Americans that they are a peaceful people; in their eyes, the United States has always been a reluctant belligerent. In most cases, this is not an entirely erroneous claim, especially since the genuine arrival of mass politics at the outset of the twentieth century. Americans and their governing elites have always been averse to large-scale armed conflict. They prefer, instead, to wage limited wars against far weaker opponents at home (e.g., the American Indian wars) or abroad (e.g., the Korean and Vietnamese wars). The fact that some of these wars became quagmires rather than quick victories on the cheap illustrates the folly of democratic leaders and their military strategists, not a willingness of the polity to wage expensive wars. Even Manifest Destiny, America’s own novel form of expansionism that arose in the 1840s, was rooted more in idealism than realpolitik. In Frederick Merk’s view: “It was less acquisitive, more an opportunity for neighboring peoples to reach self-realization. It meant opportunity to gain admission to the American Union. Any neighboring peoples, established in

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self-government by compact or by successful revolution, would be permitted to apply. If properly qualified, they would be admitted. . . . A free, confederated, self-governed republic on a continental scale—this was Manifest Destiny.”26 Some contemporaries even argued that Manifest Destiny represented not aggression but its opposite.27 John O’Sullivan, who coined the term “Manifest Destiny,” insisted on the eve of the Mexican-American war that the United States would never follow the European mode of expansion, waging wars of conquest for greedy purposes: There are some things this nation will never do. It will never be the forcible subjugator of other countries; it will never despoil surrounding territories; it will never march through the blood of their unoffending inhabitants; it will never admit within its own Union those who do not freely desire the boon. The parallel of its territorial extensions will not be found in the history of the dismemberment of Poland or of the British conquests of India; and no patriots will ever rally upon their native hills to protect their own rights or their country’s liberties from our rapacity.28

Likewise, colonialism, in Thomas Jefferson’s view, “was contrary to the genius of American institutions. If attempted, it would subvert the liberties of the Republic itself.”29 As for any concept of empire by the United States over the entire continent or notion of imperial conquests through armed aggression to achieve such hegemony, both Federalists and Jeffersonians repudiated these ambitions as unthinkable. The general point is a simple but elusive one: expansion, even on a very large scale, such as that which the United States experienced in the nineteenth century, need not occur through aggression. Territorial growth alone does not prove or imply that the state must have pursued an offensive-realist, power-maximizing foreign policy. Growth can occur by means other than aggressive expansion at the expense of other foreign powers. Making this point, an editorial in the New York Morning News on October 13, 1845, defended the U.S. annexation of Texas against the widespread charge among Brits that it was an act of aggression: It is looked upon as aggression, and all the bad and odious features which the habits of thought of Europeans associate with aggressive deeds, are attributed to it. . . . But what has Belgium, Silesia, Poland or Bengal in common with Texas? It is surely not necessary to insist that acquisitions of territory in America, even if accomplished by force of arms, are not to be viewed in the same light as the invasions and conquests of the States of the old world. No American aggression can stab the patriot to the heart, nerve the arm of a Kosciusko, or point the declamation of a Burke; our way lies, not over trampled nations, but through desert wastes, to be brought by our industry and energy within the domain of art and civilization. We are contiguous to a vast portion of the globe, untrodden

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save by the savage and the beast, and we are conscious of our power to render it tributary to man. This is a position which must give existence to a public law, the axioms of which a Pufendorf or Vattel had no occasion to discuss.

Aside from the Mexican-American, Indian-American, and Spanish-American wars, U.S. growth in territory and power was accomplished by the attractiveness of its political system, which proved so seductive that other republics voluntarily relinquished their sovereignty and applied for admission to the American Union. In other words, it was accomplished by Mission—the true “expression of the national spirit” and “a force that fought to curb expansionism of the aggressive variety.”30 As for imperial expansion, Americans are far too inclined to lose interest in protracted undertakings to carve out an empire. They have neither the stomach for foreign conquests nor the patience and resilience needed to maintain far-flung colonial possessions. As Charles Krauthammer puts it: The United States is “unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word ‘empire’ in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy.”31 America’s occasional bouts with imperialism have been rooted not in European-style power politics but rather in the trinity “free government, free commerce, and free men.” Even Theodore Roosevelt, who embraced realpolitik and balance-of-power policies, spoke of Manifest Destiny in terms of civilizational, not aggressive, imperialism. In his Corollary of 1904 to the Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt paints the United States as a reluctant but determined enforcer of its hegemonic order in the Western Hemisphere: All this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our heady friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the U.S., however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing and impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.32

To reiterate the point: we must distinguish between aggressive and nonaggressive expansion and between safe and risky expansion. All states, whether democratic or autocratic, can be expected to engage in nonag-

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gressive expansion as well as cheap, relatively safe expansion in the periphery—for example, Russian and U.S. hinterland expansion and the grab for colonies by the great powers in the nineteenth century. But these wars are not at the center of offensive realism’s claim that all great powers or potential ones are revisionist until they have achieved some form of regional hegemony. For this type of expansion, states must be willing to accept high risks and costs. Liberal democracies have shown little or no appetite for risky, aggressive expansion. WHY WE SEE SO FEW CASES OF EXPANSION IN THE MODERN WORLD Aggressive expansion requires a unified state composed of elites that agree on an ambitious grand strategy, and a stable and effective political regime with broad authority to pursue uncertain and risky foreign policies. According to selectorate theory, whether or not the government requires mass support for war (expansionist or otherwise) depends on the nature of the regime.33 Leaders of autocratic regimes depend on support from a small coalition of essential backers to stay in office. Because autocracies are small-coalition systems, autocrats wage war in pursuit of private benefits (the spoils of victory) for themselves and their cronies in the form of wealth, territory, tribute, and other booty acquired from the vanquished. If autocrats lose the war, they can still remain in office by compensating their cronies with private goods. Leaders of democratic regimes, in contrast, depend on support from a large coalition to stay in office. Accordingly, they must seek public goods from war, which can be provided only through victory. As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues explain: “Because leaders of large-coalition regimes must provide public goods to survive in office, their war aims are oriented toward enhancing public well-being at home. To this end they fight wars with the primary intention of imposing policies on their foes.”34 Moreover, according to the logic of selectorate theory, autocrats will accept lower prospects of victory when they go to war than will democratic leaders; they are also more likely to wage high-risk wars for greedy expansion than are democrats.35 Once democracies are engaged in war, however, they are more likely to try harder to win (remobilize rather than surrender) than are small-coalition systems; and, given their objectives of regime change and nation-building, democracies demobilize slower than autocracies after the war.36 For the present purposes, the key point is that regime type, according to selectorate theory, determines the kinds of wars that states initiate: smallcoalition systems instigate risky offensive wars for private goods; whereas large-coalition systems tend to commence relatively safe wars for public

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goods, that is, for policy objectives such as enhanced national security, regime change to depose autocrats, human rights, or nation-building. Here, selectorate theory supports the claim that I will make in the next section that fascist states are model expansionists. But its assumption that fascists states are small-coalition systems and its accompanying logic—that this explains the wars they choose to fight and how much effort they will exert to achieve victory in prolonged wars—are inconsistent with my arguments. Let me explain. Selectorate theory works well in explaining why small-coalition systems would wage risky but limited expansionist wars, or anticipated ones, and why. The logic breaks down, however, when applied to large-scale hegemonic wars, whether for regional or global supremacy. In such wars, the aspiring hegemon must assume a high probability that the war will be a prolonged one, necessitating a remobilization campaign, and that victory will incur the costs of regime change and occupation. Moreover, because the reigning hegemon in modern times has always been a liberal democracy, rising challengers of the established order have invariably been autocratic states that anticipate resistance from powerful democratic states, which must be defeated, deposed, and, at least initially, occupied in order to achieve a successful hegemonic transition. After all, the primary goal of hegemonic war is to impose a new order that will better promote the rising challenger’s ideological values and political objectives than the established order it seeks to overthrow. This goal directly contradicts the following assertion by Bueno de Mesquita and his colleagues: Since autocrats hardly ever defeat democrats and even less often depose them and then occupy their territory, autocrats are unlikely to face the need to enforce their rent-seeking society against people accustomed to living with a high level of public goods. So, when victory leads to the extraction of wealth from the vanquished, there is little need to incur additional costs by pursuing such activities as regime replacement, nation building, or the like. When wars are fought to achieve policy objectives, as is true for large-coalition regimes, it is often necessary to commit additional resources to over-seeing the implementation of the desired policies in the vanquished country or otherwise to incur costs in maintaining a policy-based settlement.37

Hegemonic wars, however, are total wars. To wage them, leaders must first secure, or believe that they have secured, a compliant mass public that unreservedly supports the state’s expansionist policies and is willing to make the necessary sacrifices asked of it to implement the strategy to win the war and to enforce the peace settlement after victory. To achieve this internal unity, the state must possess either enormous despotic power (control over subjects/citizens) or an ideology capable of mobilizing passions into a nationalist fervor or, preferably, both.38 In other words, when

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the goal is hegemonic or large-scale expansionist war, autocratic states are essentially large-coalition systems: leaders need the support of not just their essential supporters but also a large portion of the citizenry. Otherwise, they have no chance of victory. Now let us bring realism back into the discussion, since it is the only theory of international politics that prescribes expansion under certain conditions. What does it have to say about the domestic politics of expansion? The answer is: very little. Realism provides neither a theory of despotic power nor an ideology for whipping up nationalist sentiment to wage large-scale wars. Indeed, there is nothing about the realist creed that would stir the passions of average citizens in support of the state, much less cause them to rise up as one without regard to hardship. Large-scale mobilization campaigns in pursuit of risky and aggressive expansion require a crusade of some kind, which is precisely what realism decries as a basis for foreign policy.39 Realism is, instead, a cynical and largely pessimistic political philosophy about why things remain the same, why wars and conflict will persist, why the struggle for power and prestige among states will endure, and why, in Morgenthau’s words, “man cannot hope to be good but must be content with being not too evil.”40 At its core, realism is a hollow political doctrine, as E. H. Carr asserts: realism, though logically overwhelming, does not provide us with the springs of action which are necessary even to the pursuit of thought. . . . Consistent realism excludes four things which appear to be essential ingredients of all effective political thinking: a finite goal, an emotional appeal, a right of moral judgment and a ground for action. . . . The necessity, recognized by all politicians, both in domestic and international affairs, for cloaking interests in the guise of moral principles is in itself a symptom of the inadequacy of realism.41

As a normative theory, realism does not offer much practical political advice for representative elites trying to gain or remain in power. It lacks the normative content (viz., the idealism, utopianism, moral principles, the “ought” as opposed to “is”) that would make it an effective political platform in an age of mass political participation. Indeed, realism’s limitations are most evident under conditions when its prescriptions are most needed, namely, when structural changes call for dramatic departures in current foreign policy, such as costly arms buildups to balance against rising adversaries or territorial conquests for the purposes of hegemony, empire, or eliminating dangerous power vacuums. Small wonder that the golden age of balance of power occurred from 1648 to the Napoleonic era, when: (1) the state truly was an individual and, therefore, fit the realist assumption of a unitary, intentional actor; (2) the state floated above society rather than being integrated with it; and

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(3) war between states overlaid rather than engulfed the lives of average citizens. Thus, Thomas Schelling’s description of war during those times: It was a contest engaged in by monarchies for stakes that were measured in territories and, occasionally, money or dynastic claims. The troops were mostly mercenaries and the motivation for war was confined to the aristocratic elite. Monarchs fought for bits of territory, but the residents of disputed terrain were more concerned with protecting their crops and their daughters from marauding troops than with whom they owed allegiance to. They were . . . little concerned that the territory in which they lived had a new sovereign. Furthermore, as far as the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria were concerned, the loyalty and enthusiasm of the Bohemian farmer were not decisive considerations. It is an exaggeration to refer to European war during this period as a sport of kings, but not a gross exaggeration. And the military logistics of those days confined military operations to a scale that did not require the enthusiasm of a multitude.42

Prior to mass politics, the state truly could be considered an individual; it was embodied in and personified by the ruler. The pursuit of greedy, aggressive, and opportunistic foreign policies that promised to maximize the state’s relative power did not require mass participation; it did not rely on the people’s voluntary or coerced compliance. Consequently, rulers could more easily follow realist prescriptions in this period than afterward. Monarchs could simply take their foreign policy cues from objective and material factors in their external environment, such as changes in the balance of power or the opening of power vacuums, and act on them. They did not have to couch the rationales for their actions in terms that would appeal to a “Bohemian farmer,” in slogans and phrases that the masses would understand and be eager to mobilize behind. In short, realist states were, like all states, rent-seeking, small-coalition systems. In contrast, for rulers to practice realpolitik in the modern age of mass politics, realist principles must be infused with ideological content that arouses a significant portion of the citizenry. Fascism proved to be just such an ideology. Its declaration (most associated with the Nazi geopolitician Andreas Haushofer) of a struggle among races for space and power that must end ultimately in a world empire offered a “pan-idea” or rationale for military mobilization and national expansion.43 Searching for a philosophical dressing that would make their (power) political salads more palatable to their war-wearied and disillusioned constituencies, fascist leaders latched on to Social Darwinist ideas and Oswald Spengler’s pessimistic message of the West’s decline and fall, of the uniqueness of culture and the facelessness of mass civilization.44 Which is in no way to suggest that realists are fascists. Just the opposite. What I am saying is that with the onset of mass political participation,

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fascism provided the ideological content, the “springs to action,” missing from realism. It was, in Klaus Hildebrand’s phrase, “ideologized” power politics.45 To be sure, this fusion of rational power politics and racism proved disastrous for humankind. Also needless to say, contemporary realists of all stripes condemn fascism; there can be no question of their disgust for racist ideologies. And surely no realist would have advised their use to animate realist principles of state power and interests. But, in my view, this is precisely what fascism did: it posited an unrelentingly dangerous world and championed as a remedy for this intolerable condition wars of expansion to maximize the nation’s power at the expense of others (e.g., Hitler’s racist war of annihilation). Brutality and ruthlessness were portrayed as necessities for the victimized group’s survival; and dissent within the group, whether among elites or within society, was not tolerated. The next section explores some of the links between fascism and realism. Given space limitations, however, the argument must remain more of a sketch than a finished portrait. FASCIST STATES: AGGRESSIVE NATIONALISM AND EXPANSION Fascist states were quintessentially bold expansionists. If we want to know something about why states have been so timid in their accumulation and use of force and remain so today, it is probably instructive to examine the characteristics of this particular type of state, which was anything but timid in its foreign policy behavior. Fascism arose in the aftermath of the First World War as a new political philosophy that would solve the problem of eroding state power and the decline of Europe in the modern age of mass politics. It was a response to five interwar crises of liberal democracy: (1) the military crisis of the Great War and its destructive and demoralizing consequences; (2) the economic crisis of the Great Depression; (3) the political crisis created by the rapid and disruptive transition of many countries toward democratization; (4) the ideological crisis presented by the Russian Revolution and the communist threat; and (5) the cultural crisis of the perceived decline and decay of European civilization.46 The basic assumption of fascism, advanced on a grand scale by the Great Depression, was that democratic capitalism had failed miserably as a form of political, social, and economic organization. Fascists detested liberal democracy because of its inherent weaknesses and distortion of the organic nation’s collective will. Unlike fascist regimes, parliamentary systems do not recognize absolute truths or monopolies on virtue but, instead, tolerate conflicts of interest and search for unprincipled compromises. For fascists, liberal democracy’s endless wheeling and dealing by so-called representative elites, who prefer operating in smoke-

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filled back rooms, constituted nothing less than a “constant conspiracy against the public weal.” Thus, fascists proclaimed that “democracy is not really a form of government but a kind of anarchy. The rule of the sum of individual spontaneity means the paralysis of the spontaneity of the common weal and its voice.”47 A precise definition of fascism, one that all would agree on, is no easy matter. Unlike socialism, it did not offer a systematic theory.48 Instead, fascism comprised a list of essential and common elements: antiliberalism, anti-Marxism, anticonservatism, antisemitism, antiparliamentarism, hypernationalism, authoritarian statism, corporatism and syndicalism, imperialism, idealism, voluntarism, romanticism, mysticism, militarism, and violence.49 At its core, fascism combined aggressive hypernationalism with statism to form a highly militaristic and extreme version of nation-statism. Broadly speaking, the motivation behind this modern blueprint of the nation-state was to “forge a new, wholly disciplined state which would revive real or mythical glories of a past age or achieve a new pre-eminence for their race.”50 In the domestic sphere, fascists sought to transcend social conflict and build the “new man” by “cleansing” the nation of minorities and political opponents and by co-opting classes and other interest groups within state corporatist institutions. Along these lines, Michael Mann provides the most succinct and coherent definition: “fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism.”51 As a solution to the fraud of liberal capitalism and the menace of communism, fascists attempted to provide a third way between capital and labor, right and left, that would rally elements of capitalist society among all classes that perceived themselves as most directly vulnerable and immediately imperiled by the Bolshevik threat. The passion that Mussolini and Hitler sought to inspire in their followers was whipped up as an antidote to Marxist-Leninist fervor; and, for this purpose, fascists borrowed many of their enemy’s authoritarian methods. Placing wars of conquest at the center of their aims, fascist regimes may be described as expansionist military dictatorships with a high degree of state-sponsored mobilization. The fascist mission was national aggrandizement and purification, not a socioeconomic revolution; “they never dreamed of abolishing property or social hierarchy.” Instead, they wanted “a revolution in the world power position of their people. They meant to unify and invigorate and empower their decadent nation.”52 Through the use of modern techniques of mass mobilization that played on the fears, emotions, and passions of the citizens, fascists produced the ultimate mobilizing state motivated by the single-minded purpose (obsession) of expansion. What were fascism’s core assumptions about the nature of world politics and the role of the modern state? First, fascists view the group (or conflict

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group) rather than the individual or class as the primary unit of political order.53 For fascists, the primary conflict group is the racially pure nationstate, people’s community, or Volk.54 Second, fascists view the world in terms of a life-and-death struggle among the races for space and power, which will ultimately produce a world empire. Third, fascists place the concept of state power at the core of international politics and see the drive for power (whether for reasons of greed, prestige, or security) as the primary goal of state behaviors and grand strategies. As Mann puts it: “Fascists worshipped state power.”55 Fourth and related to the prior point, fascists proclaim that states, because they operate within a fiercely competitive and dangerous realm, possess a natural will to power and right to control others. Thus, fascism posits “the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.”56 Fifth, fascism rejects the notion that economic forces are the prime movers of history; instead, major events such as global war and change are driven by politics and the search for power.57 Sixth, fascism embraces economic nationalism and champions autarky or economic self-sufficiency as an instrument of political power and a necessity for war preparedness. Along these lines, just as Hitler spoke of living space for Germans in Eastern Europe, where German farmers would emigrate to recapture Germany’s mythical past, Japanese agrarianists spoke of Manchurian colonization as a way to export the rural social problem and recapture Japan’s imagined, harmonious past: This new, imperial agrarianism rendered empire as space: vast empty tracts of fertile farmland providing lebensraum for Japan’s overcrowded and socially conflicted villages. . . . In the context of empire, agrarianism became transmuted from an ideological tradition expressing rural interests against city interests, and landlords against tenants, into a nationalist ideology. This shift was the key to the success of the Manchurian settlement movement in building a broad consensus among the policy-making elite at the center and periphery of the Japanese polity.58

In the realm of international political economy more generally, fascism attacked free trade and laissez-faire market mechanisms, striking at the heart of economic liberalism. Even in Britain, where Manchester liberalism had been a basic consensus value of Victorian politics, fascists advocated the twin policies of protection for British industry and the establishment of imperial preference as antecedent foundations for the establishment of an autarkic British Empire. According to British fascists, economic liberalism was the root cause of Britain’s decline in power and rampant unemployment. In their eyes, only an economic program of protection, imperial preference, and a planned economy under firm govern-

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mental direction within a “corporate state” system could check the sharp decline in British power in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.59 The central feature of the British fascist program to revive the national economy was the corporate state, which was to be the machinery of central direction. It would set the limits within which individuals and interests would function. . . . The economic system was to be divided into twenty corporations, ranging from agriculture, iron and steel, textiles and public utilities to professional, domestic and pensioners’ sectors. All twenty corporations would be represented in a National Corporation. . . . The corporations were to be entrusted with the functions of planning, control, and social welfare. Strikes and lock-outs would be forbidden. Instead, each corporation would regulate wages, hours, and conditions of work.60

Seventh, economic power is an instrument of national policy to be used as a weapon to acquire power and influence abroad, primarily through the use of the export of capital and the control of foreign markets.61 Finally, fascism views the state as a unitary actor with properties we associate with human beings. A central foundation of fascism is “the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.”62 For fascists, the state really is a person; it is the embodiment of an all-seeing, allknowing charismatic leader. Of course, dictators are not all-powerful; they cannot rule a country by themselves. In reality, fascist regimes rested on a complex arrangement between the fascist party and powerful conservative forces, on cartels of party, industry, army, and bureaucracy, all held together by “profit, power, prestige, and especially fear.”63 Nevertheless, fascist regimes were dictatorships built on the principle of “the superiority of the leader‘s instincts over abstract and universal reason”; they were political regimes based on powerful leaders, who, free from virtually all societal, legal, and governmental constraints, could act with extraordinary autonomy, speed, and decisiveness.64 Dynamism, heroism, decisive action, and, above all, military expansion are the keys to fascist leadership. Thus, Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists in 1932, criticized Britain’s political system, which “by its whole structure and methods, makes action impossible; more than that, it produces a type of man to whom action and decision are impossible, even if he had power.” In contrast, Mosley asserted, “Fascism is the greatest constructive and revolutionary creed in the world. . . . It challenges the existing order and advances the constructive alternative of the Corporate State. . . . It combines the dynamic urge to change and progress, with the authority, discipline and the order without which nothing great can be achieved.”65

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These core ideas of Fascism were drawn from the Italian art movement called Futurism, which flourished in the first few decades of the twentieth century and advocated a cult of violence, industry, technology, war, and speed. In his Futurist manifesto, Filippo Marinetti, arguably the movement’s most flamboyant spokesman, organically linked what the movement perceived as the most basic human traits and motivations (violence, patriotism, busyness, agitation, impatience, and aggression) with two essential activities, work and war (“the necessary and bloody test of a people’s force”), which would facilitate the nation’s most basic goals: (1) technological, commercial, and artistic progress, and (2) the concomitant domination of peoples who prove weaker on the battlefield.66 In Marinetti’s phrases: “We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia. . . . We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers. . . . We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind. . . . We will sing of great crowds excited by work.”67 This Futurist rant exhorts its followers to worship war, aggression, and industry and to move from passive contemplation to action, from slowness to speed, from the solitary individual to the crowd, from respect for past ideas and lifestyles to a herdlike conformism with modern wisdom and ways. Curiously, Futurism’s key concepts are the same ones that animate realist philosophy and theories of world politics: power, dynamism, and aggression. Realists portray the international system as a dynamic realm of perpetually rising and falling powers; the actors in this system are, by necessity, vigilant, dynamic, proactive, and opportunistic. Prudence in an ever-dangerous environment requires the realist state to be vigilant of changes in the distribution of capabilities, to redress imbalances of power that currently threaten the state or may do so in the future, and to be ready at all times to seize opportunities to increase its power at the expense of others. And because the world is driven by fierce positional competition for scarce material and social goods, the state’s domestic and foreign policies must be dynamic: if the state is not moving forward, then it is falling behind. During “good times,” it must run faster just to stay in place. Thus, when aggression promises benefits that outweigh costs, prudent states unhesitatingly take to the offensive, expanding their power bases and improving their relative positions within the system. Vigilance, speed, and aggressive action—these are the essential qualities of the realist state. That said, there are two very important distinctions between fascism and offensive realism: (1) fascism refuted balance-of-power logic, positing, instead, that bandwagoning dynamics shape international politics;68 and (2) fascism created a mass-based hypernationalism by means of racist ideology and propaganda that worked to energize the disillusioned masses of postwar Europe, to whip them into a nationalist frenzy in the name of

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greatness and sacrifice. It was the hope of fascist leaders that as a result of these modern psychological techniques, the entire civilian population except for the undesirable, corrosive, and impure races within the country would come to see the nation and the people’s community as the highest attainment. Through the state’s manipulation of public opinion by means of racist propaganda as well as fear, the masses would unite in passionate nationalism behind the fascist party and state; and paying no heed to the sacrifices required of them, they would support wholeheartedly the state’s relentless drive for power and revenge over its enemies.69 In fundamental ways, fascism is offensive realism with a racist and social Darwinist overlay—one built on a repertory of familiar themes: “the primacy of the ‘race’ or the ‘community’ or ‘the people’ (the Volk, for Germans) over any individual rights; the right of the strongest races to fight it out for primacy; the virtue and beauty of violent action on behalf of the nation; fear of national decline and impurity; contempt for compromise; pessimism about human nature.”70 If we substitute “states” for “races,” are not these familiar realist themes? And, lest we forget, is not modern realism rooted in late-nineteenth-century geopolitics—a pseudoscience that evolved (no pun intended) from popular social Darwinist ideas of the time? Fascism essentially combined realism’s state-centric ideas—its worship of state power—with a paramilitary hypernationalism to form a modern and virulent form of nation-statism. The goal was a completely unified, coherent, and organic nation-state—one with a supermobilizing capability for waging, at a minimum, expansionist wars of aggression and, if necessary, total wars of annihilation. This conjunction of realist and fascist thought can be found in the writings of Carl Schmitt. One of the leading political theorists during the Weimar period, Schmitt decided, after the Enabling Act of March 1933, to become the self-appointed ideologue of the Nazi regime. In his famous essay The Concept of the Political, Schmitt attacks modern parliamentary liberalism for negating the concepts of the state and the political and for undermining state authority and power by stirring up centrifugal forces. Liberalism’s greatest crime against the state is its pluralistic notion of human identity, its creation of new political spaces for subnational and supranational associations that would compete with the state for the individual’s loyalty. For Schmitt, the concept of the political turns on the fundamental distinction between friend and enemy. By this definition, Schmitt accords centrality to those who are with you and those against whom you struggle; the “high points of politics” are “the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.” Along with the friend-enemy distinction, war and the possibility of death are necessary for the existence of politics. This is because, as Schmitt puts it: “only in real combat is

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revealed the most extreme consequence of the political grouping of friend and enemy. From this most extreme possibility human life derives its specifically political tension. A world in which the possibility of war is utterly eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics. . . . War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”71 Consistent with realism and its Hobbesian “state of nature” analogy, Schmitt believed that states constantly confront each other in the international arena with the ever-present possibility of war. The friend-enemy grouping is not about “my” enemy or a “universal” enemy but rather “our” enemy. It is this inherent group-ness or we-ness that distinguishes politics from other nonpolitical activities. Here, Schmitt wants to excise from politics any notion of justifying actions on the basis of universal moral principles. Because everyone belongs to humanity, humanity has no enemies: “The adversary is thus no longer called an enemy but a disturber of the peace and is thereby designated to be an outlaw of humanity.”72 Liberal universalism of this kind dismisses the centrality of conflict rooted in group identities; it is, therefore, a dangerous and unrealistic negation of politics and the role of the state—a common realist charge against liberal idealism. Also consistent with realism, Schmitt indivisibly linked the state and politics. Summarizing Schmitt’s views on this matter, George Schwab writes: “Concretely speaking, only states, and not just any domestic or international association, are the bearers of politics. Hence only states may conduct with each other relations which in an ultimate sense are binding on their respective members. . . . It thus follows that in concrete circumstances it is the prerogative of the state to define the content and course of politics.” Accordingly, only the state has the authority to distinguish between friends and enemies of the group; and because war is the ultimate political act, only the state as sovereign has the authority to make that decision. In Schmitt’s words: “The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping. In its entirety the state as an organized political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction.”73 Of course, Schmitt’s work was only one of many influences on fascist political thought. Its intellectual origins can also be traced, among many other figures, to Vilfredo Pareto, whom Mussolini made a fascist senator and whose book, A Treatise of General Sociology (1916), gained great fame despite its ponderous and dull style. Not lacking in scholarly ambition, Pareto sought to arrive at the essence of man, which he claimed was irrational and constant; this he called the “residues.” The residues took on

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constantly changing forms according to impermanent and artificial rationalizations called “derivations.” This dual conceptualization of human behavior led Pareto to formulate a doctrine of elite power. As George Mosse explains: “The main business of the elite must be to manipulate the residues though controlling their derivations. Here propaganda came into its own, for the residues were irrational and thus the derivations had to appeal to the irrational in man. Only the elite, the practitioners of Pareto’s system, knew that all this could be grasped scientifically and therefore manipulated. . . . What was the underlying motive? A longing to grasp and maintain power.”74 Given the irrational essence of man, Pareto’s elite could not rule by reason; society had to be governed by propaganda and force. Schmitt and Pareto were not alone in their disgust at parliamentary government and party politics. “After 1918 parliamentary government, so precious to Liberals, was under attack everywhere.”75 The vices of parliamentary government—disorderly class conflict, political corruption, and moral decline— engendered centrifugal domestic forces that “often caused states to immerse themselves in internal political struggles, and this not only weakened the state’s posture vis-a`-vis other states, but undermined the sovereign state in general.”76 The alternative to parliamentary government was the organic state, which “would fuse the population into a whole through the ideology of the Volk.”77 Unlike parliamentary government, fascist regimes would be responsive to the true nature of man: his primeval instincts to identify himself with a group, to be heroic, to seek danger and adventure in a perpetual quest for power, which is desirable for its own ends. This intoxication with power, which was thought to be rooted in man’s primitive instincts, is compatible with classical realism’s view of human nature and its basic premise that all states have an insatiable appetite for power. Thus, Hans Morgenthau, the father of modern-day realism, averred that “the selfishness of man has limits; his will to power has none. For while man’s vital needs are capable of satisfaction, his lust for power would be satisfied only if the last man became an object of his domination, there being nobody above or beside him, that is, if he became like God.”78 If all or most states were, in fact, motivated by a natural, animal-like instinct to acquire power over others, if they all came with an animus dominandi, then we would see far more bids for hegemony than have occurred throughout history. Put differently, if all states were ruled by fascist regimes, offensive realism’s predictions of state behavior and international politics would be more accurate than they have proven to be. States would not regularly pass up opportunities to expand. Instead, stronger states would absorb weaker ones on a regular basis. They would possess the internal unity and strength, the ruthlessness, and will to power required for expansion and empire. It is precisely these qualities, which permit (one

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might say, propel) powerful states to fill structural holes when they open, that are most lacking in liberal, capitalist democracies. To be sure, fascist regimes did not expand simply when opportunities arose; they expanded recklessly and with terrible consequences for their nations. In this sense, fascism contradicts realism’s foundation in instrumental rationality and the promotion of material interests over nonmaterial values. As Michael Mann puts it: Fascists were motivated by a highly emotional struggle to cleanse their nation of “enemies,” and so they indulged in reckless aggression and terrible evil. That aggression and evil usually did not benefit them materially. Fascists were too aggressive for their own good—especially their keenness for war. They were chronically overconfident about what the new man could achieve. And though material interests drove forward some of the atrocities against Jews and other “enemies” (looting was ubiquitous), genocide is another matter. It did only material harm to Germany (and both army generals and SS officers entrusted with economic planning knew it). The fascist combination of morality, aggression, and murder ultimately confounds material interest theories. Fascists were driven by both value and instrumental rationality. Eventually, the former predominated and destroyed them.79

In practice, fascist leaders were, indeed, overconfident, reckless, and too aggressive for their own good. I see no reason why this “had to” have occurred, however. There is nothing inherent in fascism that predisposes its leaders to privilege—so dramatically and at such great cost—values over material interests. I know of no requirement that fascist states be led by absurdly reckless dictators with unlimited-revisionist aims. Consider the historical counterfactual that Hitler and Mussolini had decided to conclude their wars of conquest in 1939, or even in 1941. Had that happened, would not Germany and Italy have captured significant material gains without provoking an overwhelmingly powerful, counterbalancing coalition? And would not realists have applauded (if only begrudgingly so) their efforts on behalf of Germany and Italy?

PUTTING IT TOGETHER: FOUR POSSIBLE WORLDS Table 5.1 below combines the theoretical arguments made in this chapter with those made earlier in chapter 2. Taken together, the arguments yield four possible worlds. Standard realist theory assumes that both the aggressor and the defender are unitary and motivated actors. In such a world (see upper-left quadrant of table), the stability of the system is determined by the distribution of power (or correlation of forces) between revisionists and status quo states. When we relax this assumption of unitary-motivated

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TABLE 5.1. Four Possible Worlds Defender Is Unitary and Motivated

Fragmented and Unmotivated

Unitary and Motivated

Standard realist accounts. The correlation of forces between revisionist powers and status quo powers determines the degree of system stability.

Dangerous world in which aggression is likely to pay.

Fragmented and Unmotivated

Very safe and stable world.

Safe but unstable world.

Expander Is

actors, three more possible worlds emerge. The most dangerous world is one in which potential defenders are internally fragmented, while revisionist challengers are internally united and highly motivated to expand (see upper-right quadrant). The least dangerous world is one in which revisionist states are internally fragmented and unmotivated and defenders are internally unified and highly motivated to preserve the status quo (see lower-left quadrant). In the final world (lower-right quadrant), both expanders and defenders are fragmented and unmotivated. As long as this situation holds, the system will be safe. The problem, however, is that it is an inherently unstable equilibrium: fragmented and unmotivated defenders present opportunistic expanders with an irresistible temptation to get their acts together quickly in order to take advantage of the situation. If this occurs, however, then fragmented and unmotivated defenders have every incentive to unite and motivate their countries as well in order to deter these opportunistic expanders. This action-reaction dynamic should quickly move the world from the lower-right quadrant to the upper-left quadrant of table 5.1. When this occurs, it validates realist balance-of-power theory: threatening and powerful aggressors arise and are balanced by determined defenders of the status quo. Many times, however, the world has not worked this way; that is, balance-of-power dynamics have not predicted the course of international politics. Instead, the world has moved from the lower-right quadrant of table 5.1 to the upper-right quadrant (the most dangerous world). Why? Because, as I have argued already, it is easier to unify the state and society for conquest and expansion than for balancing against threats. Successful territorial conquest produces gains in the form of rewards, glory, and pres-

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tige; it is behavior driven by what one covets. In contrast, balancing behavior entails costs to preserve what one already has; and, when misapplied, it may actually make an unwanted and unnecessary war more likely to break out.

CONCLUSIONS Foreign policy, by its very nature, straddles the boundaries of domestic and international politics, the state’s internal political processes and its relationship to the external environment. The study of foreign policy, therefore, requires knowledge of politics within and between states, of comparative and international politics. The purpose of this book has been to explore some of the features of this border region. One of the many difficulties in the study of foreign policy is the diversity of the subject matter. The nature of domestic politics, for instance, is qualitatively different in democratic states as compared with nondemocratic states, in great powers compared with weak powers, in modern states compared with premodern ones. Working against this diversity, however, is the fact that the issues at stake in foreign policy often concern those that are most central to the nation-state: its survival in a dangerous world and its place on the ladder of international prestige and power. Given the seriousness of the business of international politics, problems of foreign policy “may be seen as too central to the survival of the state to be left to the same interplay of forces as domestic politics, too closely associated with the basic values of nationhood to be an appropriate subject for partisan debate and factional advantage.”80 If this were true, then states of different attributes could be expected to react similarly when exposed to the same external stimulus; and so theories of foreign policy could usefully treat states as if they were billiard balls or black boxes that need not be opened to reveal the unique domestic structures and political processes that lay within. To be sure, this structural-systemic view of states as “like units” has proven to be very useful for theory construction. Moreover, the goals and behaviors of states and not just hypernationalist (e.g., Paraguay) or fascist ones can be explained by realist balance-of-power logic. I have argued that factors at the domestic level—particularly those that affect the state’s ability to behave as a unitary, coherent actor—play important roles as intervening variables, combining in various ways to alter the trajectory of states’ foreign policies. A summary of the hypotheses and empirical findings is provided below in tables 5.2 and 5.3.81 It would be a serious mistake, however, to dismiss the many insights offered by structural realist theory. After all, who would deny that objective factors in the external environment can be used to account for many of the interests, motivations, and behaviors of states? Consider, for in-

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TABLE 5.2. Summary of Four Domestic-Level Variables Elite Consensus

Elite Cohesion

Social Cohesion

Regime Vulnerability

Degree of shared perceptions about the nature of the problem and what to do about it.

Extent to which political leadership is fragmented by persistent internal divisions.

Relative strength of Degree to which ties that bind indiregime or government viduals and groups to is threatened. the core of society

1. Do policy elites agree that there is an external threat? 2. Do they agree about the nature and extent of the threat? 3. Do they agree on what is the best policy? 4. Do they agree on the domestic political risks and costs associated with different policy options?

1. Is there a struggle among elites for domestic political power? 2. If so, are there opportunists willing to collaborate with an external threat? 3. If there are multiple threats, do elites agree on how they should be ranked? 4. Do elites agree on with whom states should align? 5. Are elites divided over whether domestic resources should go to defend the core or the periphery?

Extent to which members of society accept the same rules of the game and support society’s institutions as legitimate and appropriate mechanisms to settle disputes among them.

1. Is government rule based on coercion or is it self-legitimating? 2. Is government meeting the expectations of the people? 3. Does government enjoy the broad support of the masses? 4. Can government minimize domestic interference in its policy decisions?

No consensus or consensus not to balance produces underbalancing.

Elite fragmentation usually leads to underbalancing (can also lead to overexpansion, but only in oligarchies).

In a socially fragmented state, masses do not perceive threat to the state as threat to them; and leaders worry about political risks of internal mobilization.

Vulnerable regimes less able to mobilize resources and more constrained in policy choices.

stance, the basic distinction between status quo and revisionist states. Generally, the most powerful states in the system, usually those that won the last major-power war, seek to uphold the status quo and to protect their privileged place within the established order. In contrast, great powers that have lost some territory, often because they were the losers in the last major-power war, fall into the revisionist category. They can be expected to take actions to redress their grievances when their growth in

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TABLE 5.3. The Five Causal Schemes Causal Chain

Case(s) in Book

Normal Balance of Power Model

Changes in relative power → elite consensus about the nature of the threat and the degree of elite cohesion → mobilization hurdles as a function of regime vulnerability and social cohesion → continuity or change in foreign policy

The Additive Model

Rise of external threat → social fragmentation + government or regime vulnerability + elite fragmentation → elite disagreement or nonbalancing consensus → underbalancing

France, 1878–98

Extremely Incoherent States Model

Rise of external threat → social fragmentation → government or regime vulnerability → elite fragmentation → elite disagreement or nonbalancing consensus → underbalancing and high probability of further state disintergration

Argentina and Brazil in the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–70

Polarized Democratic Model

Rise of external threat(s) + high degree of precrisis social fragmentation and government instability → elite consensus that the external environment is dangerous and state must balance → elite and social fragmentation over with and against who to balance → even greater government instability → underbalancing in the form of half-measures and incoherent grand strategies

France during interwar period

Underbalancing through Wishful Thinking

Changes in relative power → elite consensus that the environment is threatening → high mobilization hurdles as a function of regime vulnerability, social fragmentation or cohesion against war preparations, and elite fragmentation → elite consensus to downgrade threat through wishful thinking and other motivated biases → some form of underbalancing behavior of no change in foreign policy

Britain during interwar period

power permits them to do so. Rising powers tend to be revisionist states desirous of greater prestige and political influence commensurate with their newly enhanced material capabilities. In addition to these basic state interests, the behavior of states can also be explained by objective factors in their external environment. States that are attacked usually fight back, and this reaction often preserves a balance of power. Similarly, when a state’s survival is put at risk, it typically reacts by building arms and form-

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ing alliances. And most states, like nature, do abhor a vacuum, and so it can be expected that powerful states will feel obliged to fill vacuums with their own power. Structural explanations of this kind, however, require strong compulsion in the external environment. To explain state behavior, objective external factors must be so compelling that they leave all actors of varying attributes with no choice but one course of action; that is, the behavior in question must conform to a single-exit or so-called straitjacket option.82 There are two problems with this logic. First, even if one accepts the soundness of the logic, the empirical conditions under which such theories can be expected to operate properly (that is, their scope conditions) are extremely limited. Arnold Wolfers makes the point crisply: “Where less than national survival is at stake, there is far less compulsion and therefore a less uniform reaction.”83 In the absence of overwhelming compulsion in the environment, national differences can be expected to affect the behavior of states. Theory, therefore, must descend beneath the exterior crust of the state and explore its internal workings (the processes hidden within the black box) to account for these variations in states’ responses to their environment. Second, “straitjacket” logic gives the false impression that intense structural-systemic pressures obviate the need to explore state power and the strength of state-society relations. It says in effect: when external pressures are great, all states regardless of their internal attributes will behave similarly. According to the conventional wisdom, the only possible exceptions to this privileging of structure over agent are the very strongest of strong actors. In this vein, Richard Samuels claims that uniquely powerful and clever leaders can “stretch” structural constraints and defy the “great forces” of history.84 Conversely, according to this logic, weak states will be especially buffeted about by strong external factors. This logic essentially posits an inverse relationship between structural-systemic effects and agent power: the weaker the agent, the stronger the effects of structure; the stonger the agent, the weaker the effects of structure. I have made the opposite argument in this book: only strong and unified states can effectively adapt to structural-systemic incentives, even when they are quite compelling and intense. In other words, for structural systemic explanations to work, they must be applied to strong agents—those capable of taking dramatic and timely steps to adjust their internal and external policies to changed circumstances. Stable and unified regimes that govern united polities have the capacity to mobilize the necessary national resources to deal with new threats and opportunities. In contrast, unstable and fragmented regimes that rule over divided polities will be significantly constrained in their ability to adapt to systemic incentives; they will be least likely to enact bold and costly policies even when their nation’s survival is at stake and they are needed most. In terms of strategic adjustment, Thucydides’ adage, though not its meaning, is turned somewhat on its head: the strong do what they must and the weak suffer what they can.

Notes

PREFACE 1. Kenneth N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. v.

INTRODUCTION BALANCE OF POWER AND THE PUZZLE OF UNDERBALANCING BEHAVIOR 1. John Adamson, “England without Cromwell: What If Charles I Had Avoided the Civil War?” in Niall Ferguson, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 92 2. The British Monarchy Web site. http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/ Page76.asp. 3. Ibid. This is not John Adamson’s view, however. 4. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1979), p. 166. James D. Morrow makes this point in “Social Choice and System Structure in World Politics,” World Politics 41, no. 1 (October 1988), pp. 87–88. 5. K. J. Holsti, “International Relations Theory and Domestic War in the Third World: The Limits of Relevance,” in Stephanie G. Neuman, ed., International Relations Theory and the Third World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 106. 6. For various explanations, see the essays in G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2002). 7. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 3. 8. See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 220, 223–24, 257, 261, 267, 273. 9. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), chap. 1. 10. Marc Trachtenberg, “The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914,” International Security 15, no. 3 (Winter 1990—91), p. 120. 11. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966), p. 197. 12. Alfred Vagts, “The Balance of Power: Growth of an Idea,” World Politics 1, no. 1 (October 1948), pp. 82–101. For comprehensive treatments of balanceof-power theory, see Michael Sheehan, Balance of Power: History and Theory (New York: Routledge, 1996); Evan Luard, The Balance of Power: The System of Interna-

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tional Relations, 1648–1815 (London: Macmillan, 1992); Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962); Edward V. Gulick, Europe’s Classical Balance of Power (New York: Norton, 1955); and John A. Vasquez and Colin Elman, eds., Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003). 13. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Extrait du projet de paix perpetuelle de M. l’abbe´ de Saint Pierre, as quoted in Ernst B. Haas, “The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda?” World Politics 5, no. 4 (July 1953), p. 453. 14. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 163. 15. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security 25, no. 1 (Summer 2000), p. 28. 16. Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy,” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997), p. 117. 17. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 15. 18. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 21. 19. See, for example, the description of the policymaking process in Warner R. Schilling, “The Politics of National Defense: Fiscal 1950,” in Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 5–27; and Roger Hilsman, The Politics of Policy Making in Defense and Foreign Affairs (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). 20. Nicholas John Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), p. 25. 21. For a review and analysis of the various works by these neoclassical realists, see Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51, no. 1 (October 1998), pp. 144–72; and Randall L. Schweller, “The Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism,” in Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds., Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), chap. 9. 22. See Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); William Curti Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 23. Paul Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory,” and Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” in International Security 19, no. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 72–138. Also see Robert

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Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Kevin Sweeney and Paul Fritz, “Jumping on the Bandwagon: An Interest-Based Explanation for Great Power Alliances,” Journal of Politics 66, no. 2 (May 2004), pp. 428–49. 24. Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 196. 25. Ibid., p. 26. 26. Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 137–68. 27. For penetrating critiques of systemic-level conceptualizations of the offense-defense balance, see Jonathan Shimshoni, “Technology, Military Advantage, and World War I: A Case for Military Entrepreneurship,” International Security 15, no. 3 (Winter 1991), pp. 187–215; and Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Military Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), chap. 2 and pp. 194–95. Also see Stephen Biddle, “Rebuilding the Foundations of Offense-Defense Theory,” Journal of Politics 63, no. 3 (August 2001), pp. 741–77. 28. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 270–73. 29. See Schweller, Deadly Imbalances, and Schweller, “Tripolarity and the Second World War,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 1 (March 1993), pp. 73–103. 30. See, for example, Jack S. Levy and Michael M. Barnett, “Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962–1973,” International Organization 45, no. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 369–95, and Levy and Barnett, “Alliance Formation, Domestic Political Economy, and Third World Security,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (December 1992), pp. 19–40. 31. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit,” p. 135; Jack Levy, “Balance and Balancing: Concepts, Propositions, and Research Design,” in Vasquez and Elman, Realism and the Balancing of Power, p. 135. I am grateful to Thomas Christensen for his insights regarding this definition. 32. This view of appropriate and over- or inappropriate balancing follows Robert Jervis’s spiral and deterrence models. See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3. 33. See Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit.” 34. This is, however, a very unusual state of affairs—one that will last for only a relatively short period of time for reasons that I will explain in chapter 5. 35. See E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Harper and Row, [1939] 1964), pp. 80–82. Also see William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security 24, no. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 5–41. 36. Yet incoherent states may be more likely than coherent ones to wage offensive and diversionary wars. As Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue, poorly institutionalized democratizing states, which they call “incoherent” democracies, are especially war prone because competing elites employ nationalist rhetoric to

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mobilize mass support; elites then get locked in to the belligerent foreign policies unleashed by this process. See Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 5–38, and Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War,” International Organization 56, no. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 297–337. 37. Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956). The seminal work on the group-binding functions of conflict is Georg Simmel, Conflict, trans. Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955). 38. John R. Ferris, “ ‘The Greatest Power on Earth’: Great Britain in the 1920s,” International History Review 13, no. 4 (November 1991), p. 730. For a concise study on the dimensions of state capacity, see John A. Hall and G. John Ikenberry, The State (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). In their view, the strength of a state has traditionally been seen as a function of its ability: (1) to act autonomously and arbitrarily, free from constitutional constraint; (2) to penetrate and organize society; and, contrary to the first attribute, (3) to share power with other societal actors by coordinating and adapting infrastructural services for the benefit of society. 39. For correctives, see Zakaria, From Wealth to Power; Michael Barnett, “High Politics Is Low Politics: The Domestic and Systemic Sources of Israeli Security Policy, 1967–1977,” World Politics 42, no. 4 (July 1990), p. 561; and Michael Mastanduno, David A. Lake, and G. John Ikenberry, “Toward a Realist Theory of State Action,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 4 (December1989), pp. 457–74. 40. For a discussion of the assumption of constant mobilization capability and systemic theory, see Andrew Moravcsik, “Introduction: Integrating International and Domestic Theories of International Bargaining,” in Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 10–11. 41. Klaus Knorr, The War Potential of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 198; also see Alan C. Lamborn, The Price of Power: Risk and Foreign Policy in Britain, France, and Germany (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991), p. 43. 42. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 202. 43. Quoted by Paul Y. Hammond, “The Political Order and the Burden of External Relations,” World Politics 19, no. 3 (April 1967), p. 444. 44. Ibid., p. 448. 45. Edward E. Azar and Chung-in Moon, “Legitimacy, Integration, and Policy Capacity: The ‘Software’ Side of Third World National Security,” in Azar and Moon, eds., National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats (College Park: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, 1988), pp. 77–78; also see Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner, 1995), pp. 11, 21.

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46. See, for example, Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 131; Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, chap. 9; a notable exception is A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 47. See John Mueller, Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation of World Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), chap. 2. 48. By pointing out these simplifications in the measurement and conversion of national capability, I do not mean to suggest that structural balance-of-power theory is unhelpful. It offers a useful and quite necessary first cut at how states should react to threats or would react if they were not constrained by domestic costs and risks and/or did not suffer from various “software” deficiencies. 49. Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, p. 13. 50. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Evaluating Theories,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 4 (December 1997), p. 915. 51. Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. 6. 52. Though this may be an obvious point to some, it is one worth making. Any causal explanation is incomplete until sufficient antecedent conditions (a single one or a complete set of them) are stated. To assert that a condition or set of conditions is necessary to cause an event is to provide something less than a full explanation, since the conditions laid out are, by definition, insufficient to cause the effect that one is attempting to explain. 53. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 290–95; and Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 214. Also see William Dray, Philosophy of History, 2d ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 64–65. 54. See Dray, Philosophy of History, chap. 2. 55. There is one lone exception, where an elite consensus to balance exists but the state underbalances anyway. This exception to the rule that elite consensus/ disagreement is the proximate cause of (under)balancing behavior will be discussed when we turn to specific causal schemes. 56. I am grateful to Deborah Larson for this point. 57. Dray, Philosophy of History, p. 68. 58. The classic example is A.J.P. Taylor’s controversial book, The Origins of the Second World War (Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1964). Taylor blames European leaders for causing the war by simply allowing Hitler, who is portrayed as a mere opportunist, to act as he did. 59. This is not to deny the importance of chance, contingency, and unintended or unforeseen consequences in history. Rather, it is to say that few outcomes in history were so predetermined that actors could be seen as straitjacketed into taking one and only one action; that compulsion in the environment was so intense that no other decision could have been made or action taken by any rational actor under the circumstances. 60. I am grateful to Jack Snyder for these insights. For an illuminating discussion on this subject, see Jack Snyder, “ ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’: Evaluating Empirical Aspects of Normative Research,” in Elman and Elman, Progress in International Relations Theory, chap. 10.

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61. John Gerring, Social Science Methodology: A Critical Framework (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 219.

CHAPTER ONE PRUDENCE IN MANAGING CHANGES IN THE BALANCE OF POWER 1. Quoted in Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 1. 2. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. xv–xvi. 3. Martin Wight, Power Politics, ed. Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1978), p. 144. 4. For the important distinction between “usable” state power and national power, see Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 7. 5. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 54. 6. Ibid., pp. 23–24. 7. Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, pp. 14–15. Wolfers uses the race-track analogy to explain this type of external compulsion for gains. 8. Wight, Power Politics, p. 163. 9. This motivation is related to so-called deathwatch wars. See Blainey, The Causes of War, chap. 5. 10. Nazli Choucri and Robert C. North, Nations in Conflict: National Growth and International Violence (San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman, 1975). 11. Ibid., pp. 16–19. 12. Ibid., p. 28. 13. Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, 30, no. 2 (January 1978), p. 169. 14. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception; also see Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” pp. 183–85. 15. Quoted in Charles E. Neu, An Uncertain Friendship: Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 1906–1909 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 142. For a lateral-pressure perspective on the U.S.-Japanese security dilemma, see Nazli Choucri, Robert C. North, and Susumu Yamakage, The Challenge of Japan before WWII and After: A Study of National Growth and Expansion (London: Routledge, 1992). 16. A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), pp. 246, 265. 17. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Ashfield Press, 1976), pp. 48–50. 18. George Edmundson, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), p. 5. 19. For a full discussion of scarcity and positional competition, see Randall L. Schweller, “Realism and the Present Great-Power System: Growth and Positional Competition over Scarce Resources,” in Ethan Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

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20. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 105. 21. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 584. 22. See Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). 23. Jack Levy makes this point in Levy, “Balances and Balancing,” p. 143–46. 24. Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Castereagh, Metternich, and the Problem of Peace, 1812–1822 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 2 (emphasis in original). 25. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 61. 26. Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace, In a Series of Letters (1796),” in Works, Vol. 8 (London: J. Owen, 1815), p. 98. Burke also said: It is, that this new system of robbery in France, cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it must be destroyed, or that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its vulnerable parts. These are my inferences. In one word, with this Republick nothing independent can co-exist. The errors of Louis the XVIth were more pardonable to prudence, than any of those of the same kind into which the Allied Courts may fall. They have the benefit of his dreadful example.

Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace, Letter 2: On the Genius and Character of the French Revolution as It Regards Other Nations,” in Select Works of Edmund Burke. A New Imprint of the Payne Edition, Vol. 3, foreword and biographical note by Francis Canavan, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), p. 184. 27. Quoted in Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), p. 42. 28. Quoted in Lewis B. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 1938–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1948), p. 219. 29. Quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 166–67. 30. See David M. Edelstein, “Managing Uncertainty: Beliefs about Intentions and the Rise of Great Powers,” Security Studies 12, no. 2 (Autumn 2002), pp. 1– 40; and Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 111–12. 31. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 35. 32. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3. 33. Ibid., p. 58. 34. For the original formulation of GRIT, see Charles E. Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962). 35. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security 27, no. 4 (Spring 2003), pp. 10–11. 36. Paul Kennedy, “The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865–1939,” in Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1945 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), p. 16 (emphasis omitted).

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37. Lance E. Davis and Douglass C. North, Institutional Change and American Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 31. 38. Raymond Cohen, Threat Perception in International Crisis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 3. 39. Charles Lockhart, The Efficacy of Threats in International Interaction Strategies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1971), pp. 7–8; the quotation appears on p. 8. For a seminal discussion of the confusion that arises from the dual conceptualization of threat as an influence attempt and as a perception of anticipated harm, see David A. Baldwin, “Thinking about Threats,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15 no. 1 (March 1971), pp. 71–78. 40. J. David Singer, “Threat Perception and National Decision Makers,” in Dean G. Pruitt and Richard C. Snyder, eds., Theory and Research on the Causes of War (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 41. 41. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 48–54. 42. Ibid., pp. 48–49. 43. Cohen, Threat Perception, p. 6. 44. Dean G. Pruitt, “Definition of the Situation as a Determinant of International Action,” in Herbert C. Kelman, ed., International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 399–407; the quotation appears on p. 400. 45. Klaus Knorr, “Threat Perception,” in Knorr, ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), p. 84. 46. Ibid., p. 85. 47. Ibid., pp. 98–99; the quotation appears on p. 99. 48. Cohen, Threat Perception, p. 177. 49. Ibid., p. 181. 50. As Schelling observes in his discussion of tacit bargaining and physical frontiers: “there is just no other stopping place that can be tacitly acknowledged by other sides.” Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 259. 51. Cohen, Threat Perception, pp. 188–89. 52. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; see also Pruitt, “Definition of the Situation as a Determinant of International Action,” pp. 403–4. 53. See Irving Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1977); Jervis, Perception and Misperception, esp. chap. 4; and Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). For a refutation of these arguments as they relate to strategic adjustment, see Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 40–49. 54. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 143–45; the quotation is on p.145. 55. Pruitt, “Definition of the Situation as a Determinant of International Action,” p. 402. 56. Jonathan Steinberg, “The Copenhagen Complex,” Journal of Contemporary History 1, no. 3 (July 1966), pp. 23–46 at 23. 57. Ibid., p. 42, 44, 46, 24. 58. Morrow, “Social Choice and System Structure in World Politics,” p. 85.

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CHAPTER TWO A THEORY OF UNDERBALANCING 1. I am grateful to Alan Lamborn for pointing this out. 2. According to social choice theory, political outcomes are determined by structure, preferences, and the way they interact through actors’ strategies. A theory of international politics, therefore, must specify state preferences, strategies, and structural factors at the systemic level. See Morrow, “Social Choice and System Structure in World Politics,” pp. 75–97 3. For a similar discussion on collective-action problems and institutional design, see Alexander Wendt, “Driving with the Rearview Mirror: On the Rational Science of Institutional Design,” International Organization 55, no. 4 (Autumn 2001), pp. 1023–24. 4. See Donald A. Sylvan and James F. Voss, eds., Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision Making (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). From the perspective of critical history, the classic statement of this kind of explanation and understanding is Collingwood, The Idea of History, esp. p. 283. 5. David A. Lake and Robert Powell, eds., Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 6. For adjustment failures that take the form of either overly cooperative or overly competitive behaviors in response to rapidly changing strategic environments, see Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire. 7. Alan C. Lamborn, “Theory and the Politics in World Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 1997), p. 212. 8. George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 19. 9. Ibid., p. 2. 10. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, testimony before the Independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, April 8, 2004. She might have added that the Korean War was the dramatic event that triggered the United States to ratchet up its defense spending at the outset of the Cold War. See Robert Jervis, “The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34, no. 4 (December 1980), pp. 563–592. 11. It is not a sufficient condition for balancing, however. Even in countries where there is a moderate to high level of elite consensus that (a) one particular state poses the most dangerous threat to the state’s survival and (b) its military power must be checked by building arms and forming alliances, the policy may still be thwarted because of a disjuncture between elites’ policy preferences and those of the society. A good example is the Hoare-Laval debacle in response to Italy’s attack on Ethiopia in 1935. The problem was that British and French elites wanted to build and bolster their alliance with Italy against Germany, but their more liberal societies demanded punitive League actions in response to Italy’s unprovoked attack against a weak African country. In the end, the Anglo-French publics got their way, and League sanctions were imposed on Italy. French and British participation in these collective security measures quickly drove Mussolini into Hitler’s orbit and, in the process, dashed a key element (viz., maintaining the

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Italian check against German expansion in Austria and the Balkans) in the grand strategies of Britain and France. 12. Joe D. Hagan, “Regimes, Political Oppositions, and the Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy,” in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), p. 346. I define “regime” in the conventional way as the permanent institutions within the state, whereas “government” refers to the group of people occupying the important positions in the regime. 13. James D. Morrow, “Arms versus Allies: Trade-Offs in the Search for Security,” International Organization 47, no. 2 (Spring 1993), p. 216. 14. Azar and Moon, “Legitimacy, Integration, and Policy Capacity,” p. 84. 15. This argument is widely used to explain the absence of mass armies in the Third World. For the claim that weak states led by illegitimate regimes cannot afford the internal risks posed by mass armies, see Alexander Wendt and Michael N. Barnett, “Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization,” Review of International Studies 19 (1993), pp. 321–47; and Steven R. David, “The Primacy of Internal War,” in Neuman, International Relations and the Third World, p. 88. For a related argument with respect to China, see Erika Strecker Downs and Philip C. Saunders, “Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism: China and the Diaoyu Islands,” International Security 23, no. 3 (Winter 1998–99), pp. 114–46. 16. See Volker Then, “Introduction,” Peter L. Berger, ed., The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies, a Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998), p. xvi. Peter Berger writes: “Essentially the notion of ‘normative order’ means the way in which any human group tries to answer two fundamental questions: Who are we? And, How are we to live together?” Peter L. Berger, “Conclusion,” in ibid., p. 355 (emphasis in original). 17. Jacques Semelin, Unarmed against Hitler: Civilian Resistance in Europe, 1939–1943, trans. Suzan Husserl-Kapit, foreward by Stanley Hoffmann (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), pp. 64–65. 18. The classic statements of the group-binding functions of conflict are Simmel, Conflict; and Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict. 19. For comprehensive reviews of the literature, see Arthur A. Stein, “Conflict and Cohesion: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 20, no. 1 (March 1976), pp. 143–72; and Jack S. Levy, “The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique,” in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., The Handbook of War Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 259–88. For studies that embrace the proposition that external threat increases internal cohesion, see Daniel S. Geller, Domestic Factors in Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1985); and Bruce Russett, “Economic Decline, Electoral Pressure, and the Initiation of Interstate Conflict,” in Charles S. Gochman and Alan Ned Sabrosky, eds., Prisoners of War? Nation-States in the Modern Era (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990), chap. 9. 20. Ernst Haas and Allen Whiting, Dynamics of International Relations (New York: McGraw Hill, 1956), p. 62. Also see Levy, “The Diversionary Theory of War”; Richard Rosecrance, Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), p. 294; and Michael Stohl, War and Domestic Political Violence:

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The American Capacity for Repression and Reaction (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976), pp. 19–20, chap. 3. 21. Simmel, Conflict, pp. 87–88 22. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict, p. 92. 23. Simmel, Conflict, pp. 97–98. 24. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict, p. 93; Similarly, Coser writes: “The degree of group consensus prior to the outbreak of the conflict seems to be the most important factor affecting cohesion. If a group is lacking in basic consensus, outside threat leads not to increased cohesion, but to general apathy, and the group is consequently threatened with disintegration” (pp. 92–93). Also see Levy, “The Diversionary Theory of War,” p. 272. Unfortunately, as Arthur Stein points out, the “outgroup conflict increases internal cohesion” idea “has been called a ‘ubiquitous principle’ and ‘Coser’s strongest theme.’ . . . None of Coser’s qualifications and necessary conditions are mentioned, nor is the counter-hypothesis elucidated. As [R. W. Mack] points out, ‘Coser’s The Functions of Social Conflict runs the risk of being accorded that peculiar form of academic obeisance in which a work is cited by everyone and heeded by no one.”’ Stein, “Conflict and Cohesion,” p. 145. 25. For exceptional studies that correctly employ Coser’s hypothesis, see Arthur A. Stein, The Nation at War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Christensen, Useful Adversaries; and Michael C. Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). For a critique of the “external conflict produces internal cohesion” logic that informs the scapegoat theory of war, see Blainey, The Causes of War, chap. 5. It is undeniable that embattled leaders have often believed that an external threat would increase internal cohesion, and so they created threats where none existed in the hope of gaining domestic unity and support for their regime. Yet, as Arthur Stein wisely points out, this misguided and risky strategy usually backfires: “[P]olitical leaders who count on foreign adventures to unify their country and cement their positions should think again. Manufacturing crises may enable leaders to expand the powers of the state but, in one manifestation or another, cohesion will surely decrease. Only if there is a perceived threat will cohesion increase.” Stein, The Nation at War, p. 87. 26. Mark R. Thompson, “Building Nations and Crafting Democracies—Competing Legitimacies in Interwar Eastern Europe,” in Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell, eds., Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe, 1919–1939 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 20–38. 27. Alon Peled, A Question of Loyalty: Military Manpower Policy in Multiethnic States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 28. Hagan, “Regimes, Political Oppositions, and the Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy,” p. 344. 29. Mattei Dogan and John Higley, “Elites, Crises, and Regimes in Comparative Analysis,” in Dogan and Higley, eds., Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 18; also see Jaroslaw Piekalkiewicz and Alfred Wayne Penn, Politics of Ideocracy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

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30. Among democracies, there should be a strong relationship between the degree of social cohesion and that of elite cohesion, the latter mirroring the former. 31. See Snyder, Myths of Empire, pp. 6–7. 32. See Schweller, Deadly Imbalances, pp. 19–26. 33. Snyder, Myths of Empires, pp. 39–49. For a similar argument to explain why democratizing states are most warprone, see Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000) pp., 66–83 and chap. 3; Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and War,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 3 (May/June 1995), pp. 19–38; Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War” and “Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War.” 34. Praetorian societies are those in which there is great pressure for mass political participation but institutions for effective participation are weak. 35. Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” pp. 31–32. 36. Ibid. 37. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 43–44. 38. For example, logrolling in Wilhelmine Germany, an exemplary case in Mansfield and Snyder’s theoretical discussion of how democratization leads to war, was done by old economic and political elites representing the established interests of the Junkers, Industrialists, Navy League, and Pan-German groups. The economic and class interests of the newly enfranchised masses from the working and middle classes were nowhere to be found. 39. In those rare cases where the power of the once-dominant classes has been so marginalized that the old rulers no longer pose a serious threat to the new regime, pro-democratic elites may be able to support the military without fear of a breakdown in the democratizing process. Balance of power should make fairly accurate predictions about the behavior of these states in response to external threats (e.g., France, 1899–1913). 40. Gregory M. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 41. Ibid. 42. Moreover, as discussed above, elite fragmentation will lead to underbalancing in cases of democratizing states where the old elites retain enough power to derail the transition. 43. See, for instance, Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. 1–7. 44. Quoted in ibid., p. 7. 45. Robert G. Gilpin, “No One Loves a Political Realist,” Security Studies 5, no. 3 (Spring 1996), p. 3. 46. Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, pp. 44–89. 47. Snyder, Myths of Empire.

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48. Relatedly, Deborah W. Larson offers an institutional argument to explain why small states in Eastern and Central Europe cracked under Hitler’s pressure rather than balancing against it. See Larson, “Bandwagoning Images in American Foreign Policy: Myth or Reality?” in Jervis and Snyder, Dominoes and Bandwagons, chap. 4. For historical details of the various cases, see Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).

CHAPTER THREE GREAT-POWER CASE STUDIES 1. Gerring, Social Science Methodology, p. 219. 2. Andrew Roberts, “Hitler’s England: What If Germany Had Invaded Britain in May 1940?” in Ferguson, Virtual History, p. 284. 3. Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, pp. 13–16. 4. Gustav Schmidt, The Politics and Economics of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy in the 1930s (Hamburg: Berg, 1986), pp. 25–26, 28. 5. Stanley Baldwin, March 11, 1936, Cab. 28–83, p. 295. As quoted in ibid., p. 228. 6. Michael L. Roi, Alternative to Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), p. 5. 7. Schmidt, The Politics and Economics of Appeasement, p. 254. 8. Quoted in R.J.Q. Adams, British Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of Appeasement, 1935–1939 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 9. 9. Quoted in Gustav Schmidt, “The Domestic Background to British Appeasement Policy,” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker, eds, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), p. 109. 10. Donald C. Watt, “The European Civil War,” in ibid., p. 14. 11. William R. Rock defines the difference between active and passive appeasement in these terms: “The former [passive appeasement] involves the impromptu and piecemeal sanctioning of an adversary’s advance—by means of armament amassing treaty violation, or the development of economic and ideological spheres of interest—to a more powerful position in an area where the appeasing power has vital interests. . . . The latter [active appeasement] begins with a sympathetic hearing for the concrete grievances and demands laid down by a potentially or actively aggressive adversary, perhaps even with an invitation to formulate and state grievances or demands more clearly, and proceeds through negotiation towards the satisfaction of the demands.” Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 25. 12. Neville Thompson, The Anti-appeasers: Conservative Opposition to Appeasement in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); and Louise Grace Shaw, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), chap 4. 13. Quoted in Shaw, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, p. 82.

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14. R.A.C. Parker, “Alternatives to Appeasement,” in Patrick Finney, ed., The Origins of the Second World War (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 219. 15. For details on the Inskip Report of March 1938, see Robert Paul Shay, British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 190–91. 16. Paul M. Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London: Fontana Press, 1981), p. 298. 17. David Thompson, Democracy in France: The Third and Fourth Republics, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 171. 18. Quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 10. 19. Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 150. 20. For the details and ramifications, see James Thomas Emmerson, The Rhineland Crisis, 7 March 1936: A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1977). 21. See Anna M. Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers, 1938–1939: A Study in the Interdependence of Eastern and Western Europe (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968); and Roman Debicki, Foreign Policy of Poland, 1919–1939: From the Rebirth of the Polish Republic to World War II (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962). 22. May, Strange Victory, p. 154. 23. According to the Correlates of War data set, France’s percentage share of military expenditures among the European great powers was a mere 5.6 in 1938, and 3.7 in 1939. By contrast, France held a 19.3 percent share of military expenditures among European great powers in 1910, and an 18.7 percent share in 1914. See Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 250–52. 24. Williamson Murray, “Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German Experiences,” in Williamson Murray and Alan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 13. Also see MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 294–95. 25. For a brief but extraordinarily detailed account of the inadequacies of French military preparations prior to 1940, see Pertinax, The Grave Diggers of France: Gamelin, Daladier, Reynaud, Pe´tain, and Laval (New York: Howard Fertig, [1942], 1968), pp. 20–33. For more recent accounts, see Murray and Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period; and May, Strange Victory. For the most charitable account of French military preparations, see R.H.S. Stolfi, “Equipment for Victory in France in 1940,” History 52, no. 183 (February 1970), pp. 1–20. 26. Pertinax, The Grave Diggers of France, p. 33. Lord Wolseley made a similar observation about the British public during the Victorian era: “The people of England lack the public spirit that would cause them to support the burden of an army and a navy of a strength commensurate with our duties and responsibilities.” Quoted in Ferris, “ ‘The Greatest Power on Earth,’ ” p. 732.

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27. Quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power In Europe, 1914–1940 (London: Arnold,1995), p. 228. 28. Lamborn, The Price of Power, chap. 8. 29. Agatha Ramm, “Great Britain and France in Egypt, 1876–1882,” in Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, eds., France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 75. 30. Thomas F. Power, Jr., Jules Ferry and the Renaissance of French Imperialism (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), p. 47. 31. Quoted in ibid., p. 39. 32. Alan J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 273. Also see Power, Jules Ferry, chap. 2. 33. James J. Cooke, New French Imperialism, 1880–1910: The Third Republic and Colonial Expansion (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1973), pp. 10, 12. 34. Power, Jules Ferry, p. 168. 35. Cooke, New French Imperialism, p. 35. 36. Power, Jules Ferry, p. 195. 37. The “Etienne project” was revived by Delcasse´ in 1894, when the new Minister of Colonies secretly made concessions to private firms and then had to defend them to a hostile Chamber. See ibid., p. 60. 38. Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 29. 39. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, p. 20. 40. James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (London: Longman, 1992), p. 116.

CHAPTER FOUR SMALL-POWER CASE STUDIES 1. If the causal variables are individually sufficient to cause the state to underbalance (and I believe that any individual variable at an extremely high value is sufficient to produce underbalancing), then their absence is jointly necessary for strategically appropriate balancing. All have to be absent to get the right level of balancing. I am grateful to Colin Elman for this point. 2. Although Paraguay was not a great power, it should be pointed out that John Mearsheimer’s brand of offensive realism posits that all nonhegemonic great powers seek to maximize their relative power and to revise the established order. In this sense, Paraguay’s goals were consistent with offensive realism. See Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. 3. Charles J. Kolinski, Independence or Death! The Story of the Paraguayan War (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1965), p. 3. 4. It is reasonable to conclude that Paraguay’s losses in the war will, in all likelihood, never be eclipsed or even remotely matched. Even if a nuclear apocalypse were somehow unleashed on the world, it is unlikely that 90 percent of the male population would be wiped out.

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5. Pelham Horton Box, The Origins of the Paraguayan War, Part II (Urbana: University of Illinois at Urbana, 1927), p. 210. 6. George Thompson, The War in Paraguay with a Historical Sketch of the Country and Its People and Notes upon the Military Engineering of the War (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869), p. 56. 7. John Hoyt Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, 1800– 1870 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), p. 197 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., p. 106; Thomas L. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, vol. 1, Causes and Early Conduct (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), pp. 182–91. 10. Gilbert Phelps, Tragedy of Paraguay (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), pp. 102–3 11. Quoted in ibid., p. 107. 12. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, p. 226. 13. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, chap. 1; Wiliams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, chap. 1. 14. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, pp. 29, 32. 15. Ibid., p. 39. 16. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, p. 56. 17. Ibid., p. 60. 18. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 40. Also see Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, chap. 4. 19. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, p. 61. 20. Chris Leuchars, To the Bitter End: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002), p. 3. 21. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 46. 22. Ibid., pp. 48–49; Fernando Uricoechea, The Patrimonial Foundations of the Brazilian Bureaucratic State (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 1980), p. 45. 23. Jose´ Murilo de Carvalho, “Political Elites and State Building: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” in David H. Levine, ed., Constructing Culture and Power in Latin America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 413. 24. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 51. 25. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, pp. 110–11. 26. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 65. 27. Box, The Origins of the Paraguayan War, p. 185. 28. Carvalho, “Political Elites and State Building,” p. 413. 29. Kolinski, Independence or Death! p. 17. 30. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 63. 31. Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 42. 32. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, pp. 178–179. 33. Ibid.; Box, The Origins of the Paraguayan War, pp. 280–81; Phelps, Tragedy of Paraguay, pp. 58–59 and chap. 3. In late November 1864, it was rumored that Solano Lo´pez, patterning himself after Napoleon III, would declare himself Em-

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peror of Paraguay in January 1865. See the note by the American Minister in Buenos Aires, quoted in Phelps, Tragedy of Paraguay, p. 73. 34. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, pp. 182–83. For the most detailed discussion of Brazil’s Guarda Nacional during this period, see Uricoechea, The Patrimonial Foundations of the Brazilian Bureaucratic State, chaps. 4 and 5. 35. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 166. 36. Hendrick Kraay, “Reconsidering Recruitment in Imperial Brazil,” Americas 55, no. 1 (July 1998), pp. 7–8. See also Uricoechea, The Patrimonial Foundations of the Brazilian Bureaucratic State. 37. Kraay, “Reconsidering Recruitment in Imperial Brazil,” p. 7. 38. Kolinski, Independence or Death! pp. 56–58; Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 170. 39. Whigham, The Paraguayan War, p. 173. 40. The best discussion of the military balance is Kolinski, Independence or Death! chap. 4. 41. Leuchars, To the Bitter End, p. 48. The figures for the military balance are taken from pp. 47–48. 42. Phelps, Tragedy of Paraguay, pp. 95–96. 43. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, p. 209. 44. Ibid., pp. 212, 214. 45. Williams, The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic, p. 191. 46. Leuchars, To the Bitter End, p. 55.

CHAPTER FIVE WHY ARE STATES SO TIMID? 1. See Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 294. 2. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, esp. pp. 95–97. 3. For a complete discussion of these realist arguments, see Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire, pp. 21–31. For the argument that, under certain conditions, anarchy forces even status quo, defensive powers to act like aggressors, see Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” pp. 167–214. 4. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 43, 53. According to Mearsheimer there has only been one regional hegemon, the United States. Thus, he writes: “Even when a great power achieves a distinct military advantage over its rivals, it continues looking for chances to gain more power. The pursuit of power stops only when hegemony is achieved” (p. 34). 5. Jeffrey Herbst, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security 14, no. 4 (Spring 1990), p. 123. 6. Holsti, “International Relations Theory and Domestic War in the Third World,” p. 106. 7. Gerald Segal, “Does China Matter?” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 5 (September/ October 1999), p. 28. 8. Blainey, The Causes of War, p. 88. Blainey makes a different point: that motives alone are insufficient causes of war. States with motives for war also need

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arms, adequate finance, and government organization if they are to prosecute it with any chance of success. 9. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, pp. 197–98. 10. Ibid., p. 198. 11. Robert Strausz-Hupe´, Democracy and American Foreign Policy: Reflections on the Legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 85. 12. See, for example, Julius O. Ihonvbere, “Nigeria as Africa’s Great Power: Constraints and Prospects for the 1990s,” International Journal 46, no. 4 (Summer 1991), pp. 510–35; and Mohammed Ayoob, “India as Regional Hegemon: External Opportunities and Internal Constraints,” International Journal 46, no. 4 (Summer 1991), pp. 420–48. 13. This is the essential argument in Zakaria, From Wealth to Power. 14. Richard Rose, “The Nature of the Challenge,” in Rose, ed., Challenge to Governance: Studies in Overloaded Polities (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980), p. 7. 15. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 12. 16. Ibid., pp. 20–21; Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, pp. 38–39. 17. As Richard Rose puts it: “The type of authority that a regime exercises can be distinguished by the degree to which its population acts in accord with regulations concerning the maintenance of the regime and has diffuse cultural orientations approving the regime.” Rose, “Dynamic Tendencies in the Authority of Regimes,” World Politics 21, no. 4 (July 1969), pp. 602–28 at p. 604 (emphasis in original). In a later work, Rose claims that political authority is composed of popular consent and effectiveness, which replaces his former element of compliance. See Rose, “The Nature of the Challenge.” Rose’s substitution of effectiveness for compliance is wrongheaded, in my view, because it confounds the issue of political authority (compliance and consent) with the separate issue of the resources available to a regime and its ability to use those resources to meet its policy goals and commitments (regime effectiveness). 18. Rose, “Dynamic Tendencies,” p. 604. Also see Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 324. 19. So-called crises of ungovernability may arise from either a decline in effectiveness, a loss of consent, or, most likely, from a combination of the two. See Rose, “The Nature of the Challenge,” pp. 6–7. 20. Ferguson, Colossus, p. 299. 21. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (London: Vintage, Random House, 2003), pp. 90, 115. 22. Ferguson, Colossus, pp. 293–94. 23. For a thorough and insightful discussion of realist views on democracy and its weaknesses in foreign policy, see Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), chap. 1. 24. Quoted in ibid., p. 9. See also Zbigniew Brzezinkski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA-USSR (New York: Viking, 1968), p. 382.

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25. Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955), pp. 23–24. 26. Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation (New York: Vintage, 1963), pp. 24, 29. 27. Quoted in ibid., p. 25 n. 3. 28. New York Morning News, November 20, 1845. 29. Merk, Manifest Destiny, p. 8. Jefferson’s view on this matter was shared by virtually all politicians, parties, and American citizens. 30. Ibid., pp. 261–62. 31. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2004), p. 2. 32. Quoted in Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), p. 107. For a study on hegemonic enforcement, see Yoav Gortzak, “How Great Powers Rule: Order Enforcement in International Politics,” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2005. 33. For selectorate theory, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 34. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “Testing Novel Implications from the Selectorate Theory of War,” World Politics 56, no. 3 (April 2004), p. 370. 35. Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival, pp. 269–72. 36. Bueno de Mesquita et al., “Testing Novel Implications from the Selectorate Theory of War,” pp. 363–88. 37. Ibid., pp. 370–71. 38. For the distinction between despotic and infrastructural power, see Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results,” in Mann, ed., States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp 1–32. 39. Along these lines, Thomas Christensen, a neoclassical realist, develops a sophisticated two-level model that explains how elites manipulate ideology and conflict to mobilize popular support for expensive, long-term security strategies. See Christensen, Useful Adversaries. 40. Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 192. For realism’s amoral, pessimistic nature, see Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, chap. 6; John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994–95), p. 48; Keith L. Shimko, “Realism, Neorealism, and American Liberalism,” Review of Politics 54, no. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 281–301; Gilpin, “No One Loves a Political Realist,” pp. 3–8; and Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 321. 41. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 89, 92. 42. Schelling, Arms and Influence, pp. 27–28.

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43. See Robert Strausz-Hupe´, Axis America: Hitler Plans Our Future (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941); and Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942). 44. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926–28). Indeed, Hitler claimed Spengler as his political guru. See Strausz-Hupe´, Democracy and American Foreign Policy, p. 114. 45. Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, trans. Anthony Fothergill (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), p. 107. 46. See Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 23–24. 47. Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965), p. 107. 48. H. R. Trevor-Roper, “The Phenomenon of Fascism,” in S. J. Woolf, ed., Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 20–21. 49. See Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism. 50. S. J. Woolf, “Introduction,” in Fascism in Europe, p. 2. 51. Mann, Fascists, p. 13 (emphasis in original). 52. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 142. 53. Ibid. Paxton writes: “Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilizing a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle. . . . [A Fascist foundation is] the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it” (pp. 40–41). 54. To German romanticists, the term “Volk” connoted far more than just “people.” Embodying the life spirit of the cosmos, the Volk conveyed the connection of the human soul with its native landscape—a virtuous “rural rootedness” that stood in contrast with urban dislocation. More specifically, “Volk” signified “the union of a group of people with a transcendental ‘essence.’ This ‘essence’ might be called ‘nature’ or ‘cosmos’ or ‘mythos,’ but in each instance it was fused to man’s innermost nature, and represented the source of his creativity, his depth of feeling, his individuality, and his unity with other members of the Volk.” George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, [1964] 1998), p. 4 and chap. 1. 55. Mann, Fascists, p. 14. 56. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 41. 57. For this core fascist tenet, see Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 10. For the realist view on this issue, see Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 114–20. 58. Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), p. 334. See also, R. P. Dore and Tsutomu Ouchi, “Rural Origins of Japanese Fascism,” in James William Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 181–209.

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59. Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the National Front (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 6–7, 122–23. 60. Robert Benewick, The Fascist Movement in Britain (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1972), pp. 143–44; also see A. Raven Thomson, The Coming Corporate State (London: Greater Britain Publications, 1937). 61. For Nazi Germany’s use of these kinds of policies, see Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, [1945] 1980). 62. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 41. 63. Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 396–97. 64. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 41. 65. Quoted in John Stevenson and Chris Cook, Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics, 1929–1939 (London: Longmans, 1994), pp. 223, 225. 66. The goals were, in short, technological, artistic, political, and military primacy. 67. Quoted in Mark Slouka, “Quitting the Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness,” Harper’s Magazine 309, no. 1854 (November 2004), pp. 57–65 at 65. 68. See Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book, trans. Salvator Attanasio, intro. by Telford Taylor (New York: Grove Press, [1928] 1961); Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, esp. p. 93; Geoffrey Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion (Leamington Spa, U.K.: Berg, 1986), chap. 5; Derwent Whittlesey, Charles C. Colby, and Richard Hartshorne, German Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942); Snyder, Myths of Empire, pp. 92–95; and Schweller, Deadly Imbalances, pp. 100–112. 69. War propaganda and censorship are usually seen as instruments of the state to shape public opinion. Japanese imperial jingoism during the 1930s, however, was the product of both state repression and of the unofficial propaganda and private self-censorship of the pro-war mass media. As Louise Young explains: “In Japan’s case, imperial jingoism was responsive to government direction, but never perfectly controlled by it. Driven more directly by the opportunities for technological and commercial advance at a time when the national crisis stimulated demand for Manchurian-theme products, the mass media promoted the war on its own volition and in its own interests.” Young, Japan’s Total Empire, pp. 87–88. 70. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 38. 71. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1927] 1996), pp. 67, 35. 72. Ibid., p. 79. 73. George Schwab, “Introduction,” in ibid., pp. 6–7, 27–28. 74. George L. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 3d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988), p. 299. 75. Ibid., p. 343. 76. Schwab, “Introduction,” p. 12. 77. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, p. 345. 78. Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, pp. 192–93. 79. Mann, Fascists, p. 22.

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80. William Wallace, Foreign Policy and the Political Process (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 9. 81. I am grateful to Colin Elman for constructing these tables. 82. That noted, structural-systemic theories can explain international events and enduring qualities of international politics (that is, outcomes of international politics) by making assumptions about state motivations. In so doing, however, these theories cannot explain variations in the motivations and foreign policy behaviors among states over space and time. For this distinction between theories of international politics and foreign policy, see Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, pp. 14–15. 83. Arnold Wolfers, “The Actors in International Politics,” in Discord and Collaboration, p. 15. 84. See Richard J. Samuels, Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

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Index

accidents, 3 actions. See state, actions, intentions, and foreign policy goals of actor(s), 16, 18, 46 additive variables, 16, 17 administrative power. See power, administrative Africa, 59, 80, 104 Agadir crisis, 84 agents, 18 aggression, 6, 103 aims, 18, 29–31, 59, 76, 103 air defense, 70, 72 alliance, 1, 2, 5, 77, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87, 99, 100 alliance politics, 70 alliances, 2, 7–8, 9, 72, 73, 77, 84 allies, 9, 50, 86 Alsace-Lorraine, 2, 79, 84 American Civil War, 2 American presidents. See United States, presidents of American Union. See United States Amery, Leopold, 74 anarchy, 16, 103–104 Annam, 80 antecedent condition(s). See condition(s), antecedent antiappeasers, 73–74 anticlericalists, 79, 83 anxiety, 42 appeasement, 5, 49, 73; active and passive, 73, 143n11; consensus among public and elites for prior to remilitarization of the Rhineland, 72; of domestic opposition, 12; domestic politics of Britain’s policy of, 69–75; domestic politics of interwar France’s policy of, 77; as form of engagement, 36; and nonbalancing, 10; and preventive diplomacy, 75; and rearmament, 70, 75; and underbalancing, 7, 77 appeasers, 74 appropriate balancing. See balancing, appropriate

Argentina, 20, 21, 85, 87; and Argentine Confederation, 96; armed forces of, 99; and Battle of Cepeda, 96 (see also Argentina, and Federalists; Argentina, Centralists/Unitarians; Jose´ de Urquiza, General Justo; Mitre, Bartolome´; Solano Lo´pez, Francisco); and Battle of Pavon, 96–97, 101; British occupation of, 90; and Buenos Aires government, 96; and caudillos, 88, 92; and Centralist regime, 93 (see also Rivadavia, Bernardino); and Centralists/Unitarians, 93, 94; civil wars within, 88; and Confederalists, 88; and constitution of 1853, 96; and control of Paraguay, 90–91; decision to fight Paraguay in order to maintain, 101; and defeat by Brazil at Monte Caseros, 96; divisions within, 87–88; elite and social fragmentation in, 97; and extent of government’s control over western provinces, 97; and Federalist provinces and Buenos Aires Unitarians, 96; and Federalists, 93, 94, 96; and fight with Federalists, 96; as incoherent state, 97, 129; lack of nationalism within, 89, 92; nationbuilding in, 90–91, 92, 96–97; Paraguay’s desire to have a naval force stronger than that of, 98; path of to nationhood, 90; and porten˜os, 88, 96; and porten˜os and nation-building, 90–91, 92 (see also Gervasio Artigas, Jose); and Solano Lo´pez’s grand strategy, 100; and Spain, 89; status of the army of, 99; underbalancing behavior of, 86, 97, 99; unification of, 96–97; and war with Brazil over Uruguay, 93–94 armed forces, 13 armies, 12 arms building, 1, 5, 9, 50, 72 arms limitations, 70 arms races. See arms spiral(s) arms spiral(s), 5, 10, 23 assumptions, 7, 13, 85 Asuncio´n, 91, 98. See also Paraguay Atlee, Clement, 74

166

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Index

Austria-Hungary, 2, 22, 69 authority. See state(s), authority of Azar, Edward, 14, 50 Baghdad, 109 balanced power, 8–9 balance of power, 6; and ability to explain behaviors and goals of fascist and nonfascist states, 127; additive model of, 63; and balancing, 6; and balancing and states, 97; Britain’s adherence to the doctrine of prior to 1914, 70; changes in, 22–23; changes in, as dangerous, 43–44; changes in, and domestic politics, 53; changes in, as structural factor, 59–60; and domestic politics, 4, 23, 97; easy cases for theory of, 19, 69; elegance and power of theory of, 14, 15; Eurocentric domain of, 11; and Europe, 11; explanatory and predictive accuracy of theory of, 13, 14, 126, 152n82; and extractive capacities of states, 13, 134n38; and failure to capture trade-offs between internal and external stability, 14; and failure to explain state behavior, 11, 18, 126; and fascism, 105, 121; fascist leaders’ lack of belief in, 21; fighting back and the preservation of the, 130; and fragmented revisionist and status-quo states, 126; and France’s behavior after 1898, 83–84; golden age of, 115; and incoherent states, 79; and intensity of external pressures, 15; and irrational state actions and domestic politics, 15; lack of, for specific state actions, 15; as law of nature, 4–6, 11; logic of theory of, 84; model of, 63, 129; necessary conditions of, 11; and neglect of domestic politics of extraction, 13–14; and neglect of security software, 14, 134n45; and normative-prescriptive hole in theory of, 21, 115; and normative-prescriptive theory, 11, 18, 21; origins of, 4; perceptions of, 7; and powermaximizing and unitary actors, 105; and predictions about consequences and outcomes of state actions, 15, 16; and Renaissance, 4; and responsibility for outbreak of World War One, 77; Revolutionary/Napeolonic France and the European, 14; and rising states, 22– 23; and self-help, 15; shortcomings of theory of, 15, 62–63; in South America,

86, 87; and states’ constant mobilization capability, 13, 134n38; and treatment of security hardware, 14; and underbalancing, 17; and underexpansion, 105; underspecified elements of, 11; and unipolarity, 9; and unitary actors, 11; War of the Triple Alliance as struggle over the, 101– 102. See also balancing; Mearsheimer, John; neoclassical realism; nonbalancing; realism; underbalancing; Waltz, Kenneth balances of power, 2, 5 balancing, 16; ability to engage in (see government, vulnerability of; social cohesion); additive variables and likelihood of states engaging in, 16; against the predominant power, 10; and alliance formation, 1; and alliances, 9, 72; alternative policies to, 73 (see also appeasement; engagement; nonbalancing; underbalancing); and ambiguity of the external environment, 47; appropriate, 10, 21; and arms building, 1, 20, 72; and balance of power theory, 6, 97; and buck-passing, 8, 9; by coherent states, 4 (see also state(s), ideal mobilizing; state(s), fascist; Paraguay); costly internal, 11; costs of, 46, 47, 48; costs of, to policymakers, 5; counter-coalition, 125 (see also alliance; alliances; alliance politics); definition of, 9–10; and democracies, 48–49; difference between fighting back and, 9; domestic constraints on, 11–13, 23, 50; domestic costs of, 5; and elite cohesion, 11, 97; and elite consensus/dissensus, 135n55, 139–140n11; and elite consensus as proximate causal variable, 48; and elite consensus about threats, 11, 16, 135n48, 51, 79, 80; and expansion, 20, 127; external (see alliance; alliances; alliance formation; alliance politics); and extremely incoherent states model of underbalancing, 93; and fascism, 20–21; French Right’s desire to engage in with Nazi Germany against USSR and international Jewry, 77; hyper-, 10; and hyper-/ overbalancing, 10; inappropriate, 23; by incoherent states, 11, 88 (see also underbalancing, extremely incoherent states model of); inefficient, 10, 12; infrequency of, 11; internal, 79; and internal dissent, 21; interwar France’s attempts at, 77; lack of during the Cold War, 2;

Index likelihood of states engaging in, 46; and military hardware, 9; and peer competitors, 10; and political and social integration, 12 (see also social cohesion); and political subjugation, 9; prudent, 6; rareness of, 16; and realism, 15; risks of domestic political, 47, 48; risks to policymakers who want to engage in, 5; and social cohesion, 11–12; and state unification, 126; structural incentives to engage in, 4; and structural realism, 1; and Third Republic France against Germany, 79, 83–84; and threat perception, 37– 41; timing of, 22; under- (see underbalancing); and underbalancing, 9–10; willingness to engage in (see elite(s), cohesion of; elite(s), consensus) Baldwin, Stanley, 71, 73 Banda Oriental. See Uruguay bandwagoning, 2, 5, 7, 12, 49; domestic politics explanation of, 7; and expansion, 24; and fascism, 121; interwar France’s, 77; and nonbalancing, 10; potential balancers’ willingness to engage in, 10; revisionist, 22; and revisionist states, 7; with threats, 7; and underbalancing, 7, 10 Baroque, 1 behavior(s), 16, 23 Belgium, 70, 111 Belgrano, Manuel, 90–91. See also Argentina; Paraguay Bengal, 111 Bevin, Ernest, 71 bilateral negotiations, 5 binding strategy, 49. See also nonbalancing; underbalancing bipolarity, 2, 44 Bismarck, Otto von, 2, 79, 80–81 Blainey, Geoffrey, 3, 104 blame, 18 blitzkrieg, 78 Blum, Leon, 76, 77 Blyth Brothers, 98. See also Paraguay; Solano Lo´pez, Francisco Board of Trade, 75 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 14, 104 Boothby, Robert, 73, 74 boundaries, 40, 41. See also Schelling, Thomas Brazil, 20, 21, 85; and absence of a national identity, 95; and Argentina, and development of nationalism, 96; army com-

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position in, 98–99; and battle at Monte Caseros, 96; civil wars within, 88; distrust of militarism in, 98; elite cohesion in, 95; Farrapo Revolt of 1835–45, 95– 96; fragmentation in, 95, 98; as incoherent state, 97, 129; independence of, from Portugal, 92–93; intervention of, in Uruguay, 86–87; and narrow view of nation’s identity, 96; nationalism in, 88; nationalism in, development of, 96; nationalism in, lack of, 89, 92; nation-building in, 92–94, 95–96; navy of, 99; and Paraguay, 87, 88; as potentially powerful state, 104; regime vulnerability in, 98; as regional hegemon, 102; and revolts that occurred as a result of war with Argentina, 93; social fragmentation in, 95, 98; and Solano Lo´pez’s grand strategy, 100; underbalancing behavior of, 86, 93, 97, 98–99; and view of the link between modernization and war, 96; and views of Britain and France, 96; and war with Argentina over Uruguay, 93 Britain. See Great Britain British Empire. See Great Britain, Empire British Union of Fascists, 120 buck-catching, 8 buck-passing, 2, 5, 12, 49; and balancing, 9; and great powers, 7–9; interwar France’s attempts at, 77; and less threatened powers, 8; and multipolarity, 8; and nonbalancing, 10; and underbalancing, 7, 8, 10 Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 113, 114. See also selectorate theory Buenos Aires, 88, 89, 90, 92, 96. See also Argentina buffer states. See state(s), buffer building arms. See arms building bureaucracy, 3, 11, 90 Burke, Edmund, 111, 137n26 Burton, Captain Richard, 89 Cadiz. See Spain Campenon, General, 81 capabilities, 14; material and nonmaterial, as they relate to power, 103; measurement and conversion of, 135n48 capacity. See mobilization capability; policy capacity; power, administrative; security software Caprivi, Leo von, 2 Caraı´. See Gaspar de Francia, Dr. Jose´

168

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Index

Carr, E. H., 21, 133n35, 115, 137n20 case studies, 69 Catholic Church, 79–80, 83, 91–92 Catholicism. See Catholic Church; Roman Catholicism caudillos. See Argentina, and caudillos Causa, 34 causal explanation. See cause(s) causality, 16 causation, 17, 18 cause(s), 15, 16; combination of permissive and proximate, 17; elite consensus as a profound/proximate, 47, 48; of expansion, 24; permissive, 16, 17; profound/ proximate, 16, 17; rational, 16; as reasons that limit the freedom of agents, 18; unit-level and structural, 46; of war, 16, 24, 103 Center, 77 challengers. See rising powers Chamber of Deputies. See French National Assembly; French Parliament Chamberlain, Neville, 18, 73, 74, 75 Charles I, 1 China, 104; Qing, 69 Choucri, Nazli, 25 Christensen, Thomas, 6, 7–8, 132n22, 133n26, 133n31 Chung-in Moon, 14, 50, 134n45 Churchill, Winston, 18, 73, 74, 75, 103 Cisplatine War. See War of the Triple Alliance citizen loyalty, 12 city-states. See state(s), Greek citycivil war. See American Civil War; English Civil War class, 11, 71, 74, 80 classical realism, 24, 105, 124 Clemenceau, Georges, 81, 82, 83 coercion, 7, 12 coercive diplomacy, 9 cognitive biases, 44 Cohen, Raymond, 39, 40 coherent states. See state(s), coherent Cold War, 2, 3, 4, 104, 110 collective security, 48, 71, 72, 77 Collingwood, R. D., 16 colonialists, 81–82, 83 colonies, 9; French, 79–81; great powers’ grab for, 113 Combs, Emile, 83 Comite´ de l’Afrique franc¸aise, 81, 82

Communists, 76, 77 community solidarity, 89. See also Paraguay competence, 15. See also security software Concert of Europe, 80 conditions, 16; antecedent and jointly sufficient, but not necessary, 16, 135n52; conflict, 12; of global economic expansion and competition between states, 27; and in-group cohesion, 12, 52–54, 134n37; jointly sufficient, 16, 17; and out-groups, 12 (see also Coser, Lewis; in-group cohesion; Simmel, Georg); and overlapping non-security interests, 27; permissive, 16, 17; proximate, 16, 17; sufficient, 103, 135n52; of underbalancing, 16 (see also elite(s), cohesion of; social cohesion; elite(s), dissensus); and war (see rising powers, when they are dangerous) conflict dyads, 8 conflict group(s), 118–119. See also fascism Congo basin, 80 Congress of Berlin, 80 conscripts, 84 Conservative Party, 72; Churchill’s faction within, 73, 74; mass of, 73, 74; right wing of, 75 continental defense, 83 continentalists, 79; and demise of the monarchists and the Catholic Church, 83 Copenhagen complex, 42, 43, 65 Coser, Lewis, 12, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63, 90, 102, 141nn24, 25. See also in-group cohesion Council of Four, 26 counterfactual, 125 counterweight, 4 Crisis, 11. See also Agadir; Fashoda Croatia, 59 Cromwell, Oliver, 1 Crown, 1 crucial cases, 19. See also France, interwar; France, Third Republic; Great Britain, interwar cultural divisions, 11 culture, 89–90 Czechoslovakia, 62; Hitler’s desire to expand at the expense of, 75, 76 Dalton, Hugh, 74 decision(s), 15, 16 Defense Requirements Committee (DRC), 71

Index defense spending, 71, 78; and hurdles to resource extraction, 80; in Third Republic France, 82–83, 84 defensive strategies, 7, 72 DeGaulle, Charles, 104 Delcasse´, The´ophile, 82, 84 democratic transitions, 59–62 democracies, 48–49; domestic politics in, 127; and empire/expansion, 109, 112– 113; fascists’ beliefs about, 117–118; as large coalition systems, 113; poorly institutionalized/incoherent, 133–134n36 (see also state(s), incoherent; democratic transitions; Mansfield, Edward; Snyder, Jack); and realism, 110; as reigning hegemon, 114; and underbalancing of Nazi Germany (see France, interwar; Great Britain, interwar; Nazi Germany); and war, 109–114 Denmark, 62 dependent variable, 16, 19; elite consensus as the, 47; error of selecting on the, 20. See also variables deterrence, 47, 133n32; antiappeasers’ Grand Alliance proposal against German aggression in order to strengthen, 73, 74 diplomacy, 70, 104 disarmament, 70, 71 dispositional factors, 23 dissent, 21 distancing, 7, 10, 12 diversionary war. See war(s), diversionary divisions, 11, 71, 76, 77, 79, 95 domestic instability. See internal stability, tradeoff between external stability and domestic political process, 5, 9 domestic politics, 9; and alliance politics, 70; and appeasement, 69–75; and balance of power theory, 4, 97; and balancing, 5; and changes in the balance of power, 23; and constraints on balancing, 11–13, 18, 19, 47, 50, 53, 70–72, 73; in democracies, great powers, nondemocracies, and weak powers, 127; and domestic social order (see internal stability); and explanation of underbalancing, 11– 15, 16, 18, 19; and foreign policy behavior, 6–7, 9, 127; and management of rising powers, 24; and mobilization capability and national power, 6; permission granted by for adoption of long-term grand strategy, 23; processes of, and re-

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sponses to external forces, 6; and rationality of irrational state actions, 15; rational unitary actor assumption and, 7; and realist theory, 6; and state mobilization capability, 13–15; and threat perception, 18; as variable in foreign policy behavior, 6 Dorrego, Manuel, 93–94. See also Argentina; Rivadavia, Bernardino Duclerc, 80 Dutch Republic, 26, 27 easy cases, 19 economic capabilities, 14 economic gains, 81 economic nationalism, 119 economic prosperity, 24 economy, 13; Britain’s transition from a war to a peacetime, 70 Eden, Anthony, 73, 74, 75 effectiveness. See state(s), effectiveness of Egypt, 82 elite(s), 5; and aggressive expansion, 113; Argentine that ruled Paraguay, 90–91; behavior and choices of, 31; and blame for wars, 34; Brazilian, 95, 96; and Brazilian distrust of militarism, 98; British, 70–72; cohesion of, 16, 17, 19, 47, 54– 56, 72, 84, 95, 128; and domestic costs of balancing, 5, 72; and domestic political process, 5; and fascism, 123; French, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83; and poorly institutionalized democratizing states, 133– 134n48; risk-taking propensity of, 11, 46, 71; and selling of offensive schemes to their publics, 21 —consensus, 47–49; and agreement about the costs of risks of preferred policy, 48; and ambiguity of external environment, 47; and consensus about grand strategy, 47, 66, 72, 135n55, 139–140n11; and cognitive constraints on their assessment of threats and ability to engage in strategic adjustment, 41–43; and consensus not to balance, 93, 128; and nonbalancing, 49; and polarized democratic model of underbalancing, 77; about threat(s), 11, 48, 52, 75, 77, 84, 128 —dissensus: and established great powers’ perceptions of demands and intentions of rising powers, 53; and threat perception, 80; and underbalancing, 16, 17, 82. See also elite(s), fragmentation of; Mosse,

170

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Index

elite(s) (cont.) George; Paraguay; Pareto, Vilfredo; state(s), fascist; state(s), ideal mobilizing —fragmentation of, 11, 19, 62, 72, 79, 80, 82, 86, 95, 97; and balancing, 55; and democratic transitions, 59–62; and extremely incoherent states model, 93; and French alliance system, 77; and overexpansion, 19, 55–62; as permissive condition for underbalancing, 33; sources of, 36, 54–55; and underexpansion, 104–105 —and underbalancing, 24, 36, 19, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56–62, 66, 72, 75, 82, 97, 104, 128; and control of foreign policy, 45; and elites’ preferences, 47; and extremely incoherent states model, 93; and relationship with the masses, 72; states that enjoy high degree of, 85; and wishful thinking model, 75 elite risk-taking propensity. See elite(s), risktaking propensity of El Supremo. See Gaspar de Francia, Dr. Jose´ empire, 109, 110. See also Great Britain, Empire; Manifest Destiny enduring rivalry, 26–27, 70 engagement, 10; appeasement as a form of, 36; model, 35–37 England. See Great Britain English Civil War, 1 Espı´nola, Colonel Jose´ de, 90. See also Argentina; Paraguay etatism. See statism ethnic groups, 11 Etienne, Euge`ne, 82 Europe, 12; balance of power and, 4, 11; British elites’ fragmented attitudes towards, 72; Francisco Solano Lo´pez’s time in, 97; and Paraguay, 20, 89 expansion, 6, 24; aggressive, 113; and balancing, 127; and bandwagon dynamics, 24; as best way to gain scarce resources, 103; conditions of global economic, 59; continental and colonial, 80; costs and risks of, 113, 127; danger of not engaging in, 55; and democracies, 109, 112– 113; and democratic transitions, 59–62; and development of nationalism and nation-building, 96; European mode of, 111; and fascism, 20, 116, 117–125; French support for Hitler’s desire to engage in, 76; and high capability coun-

tries, 25; hypothetical model of Wilhelmine German, 57–59; and internal dissent, 20–21; lack of aggressive, in the modern world, 113–117; and logrolling, 55, 56; and manifest destiny, 110–111; and mobilization capability, 14, 85–86; moral reservations about, 21, 124–125; and national unity, 108; and nature of political regimes, 105–108; nonaggressive, 112–113; opportunistic, 5, 24, 80, 81; opportunities for coherent states to engage in, provided by underbalancing, 20; over-, 6, 19–20, 86; over-, and elite fragmentation, 56–62; over-, and incoherent states, 79; Paraguay’s (see Paraguay); realism’s propositions about, 21, 103, 105; reckless, 6, 105; (see also Paraguay; state(s), fascist); as result of lateral pressure, 56; state coherence and the use of force for, 108–113; territorial, 103; Third Republic France’s colonial, 79–82, 83, 84; timing of, 24; under- (see underexpansion); United States’, 110–113; as way to unify the state, 126. See also Manifest Destiny explanation(s), 15–18. See also Occam’s Razor external balancing. See balancing external pressures. See pressures, external external security, 14; trade-off between internal stability and, 14, 50, 70–72, 75, 80, 83 extractive capacity, 13; balance of power theory’s assumptions about, 13–14; French colonialists’ desire to enhance, 79, 80; politics of, 13, 19 factions, 11 Far East, 81 Farrapo Revolt, 95–96. See also Brazil fascism, 118; and assumptions about world politics, 118–125; and belief in bandwagoning dynamics, 121; in Britain, 119– 120 (see also Mosley, Sir Oswald); and elites, 124; failure of, as a guidepost for state behavior, 21; and futurism, 121; and Hobbesian state of nature, 122; and hypernationalism, 121–122; and international political economy, 119–120; and liberal democracy, 117–118; and liberalism, 122–124; links between the state and politics of, 123; origins of, 117–118;

Index and realism, 20–21, 105, 116–117, 121– 125, 150n53; and refutation of balance of power logic, 121; and rejection of economic determinism, 119; and the state as unitary actor, 120; and worship of state power, 122. See also Hitler, Adolf; Pareto, Vilfredo; Schmitt, Carl; realism, and fascism; state(s), fascist fascist leaders, 41. See also fascism; Hitler, Adolf; Mussolini, Benito fascist state. See state(s), fascist Fashoda crisis, 82 Federalists. See Argentina Ferguson, Niall, 41, 108, 109 Ferry, Jules, 80, 81, 84. See also France, Third Republic fighting, 5, 9 Finance Act of 1900, 83 Foreign Office, 75. See also Great Britain foreign policy, 6, 127; belligerent, and poorly institutionalized democratizing states, 133–134n36; inertia and incoherence of Third Republic France’s, 82–83; interwar Britain’s, 69–75; offensive realist, power-maximizing, 111; recklessness in, 105; theory of, 31 Fortress Britain, 72 forward policy, 87 fragmentation. See elite(s), cohesion of; social cohesion France, 2; emergence of as a great power after 1815, 52; Louis XIV’s, 106; Revolutionary (First Republic), 14 —interwar, 37, 62, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76–79, 129; alliance system of, 77; defeat of by Nazi Germany, 78 —Napoleonic, 2, 14; wars of, 22 —Second Empire, 59, 60, 81; Brazilian elites’ beliefs about, 96; and Paraguay, 97, 98 —Third Republic, 79, 129; and ability to balance against Germany after 1898, 83– 84; and Agadir crisis, 84; and alliance with Russia, 2, 79, 84; and Alsace-Lorraine, 79, 84; and Bismarck, 2, 79, 80– 81; class divisions in, 80; colonial possessions of, 79–82; defense spending of, 79– 80; from 1877 to 1913, 79–84; elite fragmentation in, 79, 81–82, 83; and Fashoda, 82; and the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War, 82; and hurdles to increased resource extraction, 82; regime

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vulnerability of, 80, 82, 83–84; threat posed by Britain to colonial possessions of, 79, 80–81, 82; threat posed by Germany to, 79; and undeclared war against China over Tonkin, 81; and underbalancing against Germany, 79–83 Franco-Prussian War, 82 Frederick the Great, 87, 106 Frederick William II, 28 free-riding, 7 free will, 18; and role of chance, 135n59 French Indo-China, 81 French National Assembly, 78 French Parliament, 81, 83 French Sudan, 80 Freycinet, 80 Friedberg, Aaron, 6, 7 futurism, 121 Gambetta, Leon, 80 Gaspar de Francia, Dr. Jose´, 91–92, 94, 95. See also Paraguay general staffs, 17 geopolitics, 40 George, Lloyd, 73, 74 Germany, 2; and Agadir crisis, 84; and Alsace-Lorraine, 2, 79, 84; and antagonism with Great Britain, 70; and Austria-Hungary, 2; and balancing, 83–84; and Bismarck, 2, 59; and Caprivi, 2; class divisions in, 80; counterbalancing of, 2; hegemony of, 2; Nazi (see Hitler, Adolf; Nazi Germany); and Paraguay, 87; and revanchards, 81–82, 83; and Russia, 2, 79, 84; and Third Republic France, 79–84; and underbalancing, 79–83; Wilhelmine, 59, 60, 104, 142n38; Wilhelmine, and hypothetical model of expansion, 57–59. See also Nazi Germany; Prussia Gervasio Artigas, Jose´, 92 Gilpin, Robert, 24 Girault, Rene´, 76 government, 14; and aggressive expansion, 113; and authority (see state(s), authority of); and effectiveness (see state(s), effectiveness of); and expectations of the people, 49–50; and mass armies, 50; as mobilization hurdle, 47; states with low degree of, 85; and underbalancing, 7, 16, 17, 78, 93, 98, 128 (see also Brazil); vulnerability of, 12–13, 47, 49–50, 80,

172

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Index

government (cont.) 82, 83–84, 128; See also Paraguay; state(s), authority of Grand Alliance, 73 grand strategy, 17, 72 Great Britain, 2; and American Civil War 2; balance of power doctrine of, 70; Brazilian elites’ beliefs about, 96; cabinet Finance Committee of, 71; and Chamberlain, Neville, 18; and Churchill, Winston, 18, 73; class divisions within, 80; and conquest of India, 111; and counterbalancing of Napoleonic France, 2; and defense expenditures during the First World War, 72; Elizabethan, 26, 27; emergence of as a great power after 1815, 52; Empire, 103; and fascists’ desire to create an autarkic, 119–120; and Fashoda crisis, 82; and First World War, 70, 71; and intervention in Egypt, 82; and Nazi Germany, 2; and occupation of Argentina, 90; Palmerston’s, 59; and Prussia, 2; and seizure of Cyprus, 81; and splendid isolation policy, 79; and Third Republic France, 79, 81; threat posed by to French colonial possessions, 79, 80– 81, 82; Victorian, 60 —interwar, 62, 69–75, 129; and AngloGerman antagonism, 70, 71; and Churchill, 73, 74, 75; class divisions within, 71; defense policies of, 69; Defense Requirements Committee in, 71; domestic politics during, 72; elite policy consensus after Rhineland, 73; and France, 37, 72, 76, 77; imperial commitments of, 69; and interests in Eastern Europe, 77; Manchester liberalism of, 119; and Munich, 74–75; Nazi sympathizers within, 74; need for skilled labor in, 71; pacifists within, 74; popularity of pacifism in, 71–72; and public and elite consensus for appeasement prior to Nazi remilitarization of the Rhineland, 72, 73; refusal to rearm, 70–71; and Soviet Union, 73, 74; and trade-off between internal and external stability, 70, 71; and traditional balancer role, 72 Great Depression, 71, 117 great powers, 7; Brazilian elites’ beliefs about, 96; buck-passing and, 7–8; and changes in international order, 53; conflict among, 25; directly threatened, 8;

domestic politics in, 127; emergence of new, 22, 23, 25–26; expansion of, 24– 25; and grab for colonies, 113; interests of and the impact of the international order, 23; interwar France’s lack of allies that were, 78; less threatened, 8; polar and second-ranking/lesser, 9; power transitions among, 22; status of, 106; and support for Third Republic France’s colonial expansion, 80; that are not regional hegemony, 103–104; under multipolarity, 7, 8. See also polar powers; rising powers; states Griswold, A. Whitney, 58 group cohesion. See in-group cohesion growth, 23; and great power competition, 25; national, 23, 25, 27; and power-maximizing foreign policy, 111; territorial, 112: uneven rate of, 24. See also Gilpin, Robert Guaranı´, 92. See also Paraguay Gulick, Edward V., 43 Haas, Ernst B., 51, 131–132n12 half-measures, 2, 7, 12. See also states, incoherent; underbalancing Hall, John A., 134n48 Hanotaux, Gabriel, 82 Hapsburgs, 104 hard cases, 19 harmony of interests, 10 Haushofer, Andreas, 116. See also fascism; Nazi Germany hegemon(s), 10, 147n4: democracies as, 114 hegemonic wars. See war(s), hegemonic hegemony, 104, 106 Herbst, Jeffrey, 104 Herodotus, 22 hiding, 7, 10. See also nonbalancing; underbalancing Hildebrand, Klaus, 117 Hitler, Adolf, 3, 52, 65, 73, 104, 105, 117, 118, 119, 125; counterfactual of concluding wars of conquest before 1939 or 1941, 125; French perceptions of the aims of, 76, 77; perception of as a panGerman nationalist, 74; and seizure of Czechoslovakia, 75. See also fascism; Nazi Germany Hobbesian state of nature, 103, 123 Holsti, K. J., 2, 41, 104

Index human responsibility, 18 Humiliation of 1870. See Franco-Prussian War Huntington, Samuel, 107 hypermobilizing states. See Paraguay; state(s), coherent; state(s), fascist; state(s), hypermobilizing idealism, 110 idealists, 106 identity, 51; Brazil’s lack of a national, 95; Paraguayan, 89–90, 92 ideological divisions, 11 Ignatieff, Michael, 109 illegitimacy, 12–13 immigrants, 93 imperialism, 112. See also expansion inadvertent nuclear war, 10 incoherent democracies. See democracies, poorly institutionalized incoherent states. See state(s), incoherent independent variable, 19 India, 104; British conquest of, 111; Mogul, 69 Indo-China. See French Indo-China Indonesia, 104 industrial unions. See trade unions industry, 70 inferences, 39; and predispositions, 41–42 inflation, 70 influence, 24, 25 informational problems, 7 in-group cohesion, 11; and balancing behavior, 11–12; and external conflict, 11– 12, 52–54, 93 (see also Argentina; Brazil; Cisplatine War; Coser, Lewis; Simmel, George); and external threats and nation-building, 102; and group as a going concern, 12; lack of in Brazil and Argentina, 89; in oversized states, 53; in Paraguay, 89–91; and uniformity of threat perception, 52–53. See also Coser, Lewis; in-group cohesion; Paraguay innovations, 88 Inskip, Sir Thomas, 72, 75 Inskip Doctrine, 75 instability, 24, 55. See also government, vulnerability of integration, 12, 14. See also Coser, Lewis; security software; Simmel, Georg intentions, 38. See also aims; state(s), actions of

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interest groups, 79 interests, 17; class, 74; and classical realism, 54; colonial and commercial, of Elizabethan England and the Dutch Republic, 26; national, 73; overlapping nonsecurity, 26 internal balancing. See arms building; balancing internal politics. See domestic politics internal stability, 103; trade-off between external security and, 14, 28–29, 50, 70– 72, 75, 80, 83 international community, 34 international conflict. See conflict internationality, 15 International Jewry, 77 international order, 22–23, 44; collective security as instrument to maintain, 77; legitimacy of, 28, 35 International Political Economy (IPE), 119–120 international politics, 1, 2 international system, 23, 104, 125–126 intervening variables, 15, 69, 127 interwar period, 8–9; Britain’s underbalancing during the, 69–75; France’s underbalancing during the, 76–79. See also Chamberlain, Neville; Christensen, Thomas; Churchill, Winston; Great Britain, and Nazi Germany; interwar France, and Nazi Germany; Hitler, Adolf; Italy, and Nazi Germany; Japan, and Nazi Germany; Mearsheimer, John J.; Nazi Germany; Schweller, Randall; Snyder, Jack; Soviet Union; United States isolationists, 72, 74 Italy, 2, 9, 22, 77, 80 Japan, 2, 22, 25–26, 59, 60, 69, 119 Jefferson, Thomas, 111 Jena, Battle of, 14 Jervis, Robert, 25–26, 33 Johnston, Alastair Iain, 34 jointly sufficient conditions. See condition(s), jointly sufficient Jose´ de Urquiza, General Justo, 96, 97, 100. See also Mitre, Bartolome´ Kaiser Wilhelm II, 42, 87 Kennedy, Paul, 22, 75 Khartoum, 82 Khruschev, Nikita, 65

174

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Index

Kitchener, Lord, 82 Knorr, Klaus, 13–14, 39, 49 Kolinski, Charles, 86 Kosciusko, 111. See also Poland Krauthammer, Charles, 112 labor, 71 Labour Party, 71, 72, 75; antiappeasers within, 74; pacifists within, 74 lateral pressure theory. See rising powers, structural factors of; rising powers, when they are dangerous Latin America, 38. See also Argentina; Brazil; Paraguay; South America; Uruguay Layne, Christopher, 12, 43 leadership, 27 League of Nations, 72, 73, 77 learning, 18 legitimacy, 14; of institutions, 51; of international order, 28, 35; regime, 14; rulers’, 12–13; of state power, 108–109; vulnerable regimes’, 12. See also government, vulnerability of; illegitimacy; security software Leuchars, Chris, 102 levee en masse, 14 Leviathan, 27 Levy, Jack, 9 liberalism, 122–124 Liberal Party, 72, 73, 74; Lloyd George’s faction within, 73, 74 limited liability, 70 Lippmann, Walter, 110 Little Entente, 77 living space, 25, 119. See also fascism; Hitler, Adolf Lo´pez, Carlos Antonio, 94–95 Louis XIV, 104, 106 Louvre, 1 Luebbert, Gregory. 62 Macmillan, Harold, 74 Madagascar, 80, 81 Maginot Line, 77–78 major powers. See great powers Mamelucos. See Paraguay Manchuria, 119 Manifest Destiny, 110–111, 112 Mann, Michael, 118, 119, 125 manpower capabilities, 14 Mansfield, Edward D., 59, 61

Manuel de Rosas, Juan, 94, 96, 97. See also Argentina Marchand, Jean-Baptiste, 82 Marinetti, Filippo, 121 Marxist-Leninism, 118. See also Communists; threat(s), Bolshevik mass armies, 26; vulnerable leaders fears of, 50 mass politics, 5, 116; and relationship between realism and fascism, 116–117. See also democracies; democratic transitions; domestic politics material power. See power, material material resources. See power, and material resources Mato Grosso. See Brazil Mburuvicha, 90 Mearsheimer, John J., 5, 8, 103–104 Merck, Frederick, 110 Mexico, 81, 89 military balance, 99 military buildups, 24, 94–95 military capabilities, 15 military hardware, 9 military policy, 82 military spending. See defense spending miscalculation, 3–4 mistakes, 18 Mitre, Bartolome´, 88, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102. See also Argentina; Buenos Aires; Jose´ de Urquiza, General Justo mobilization capability, 9; and attainment of hegemony, 106–107; balance of power theory’s assumptions about, 13, 134n40; and balancing by coherent states, 97; created by social fragmentation and government vulnerability, 47; and domestic politics, 12–13 46, 47 (see also government, vulnerability of); and expansion, 6; fascism as a tool to enhance the state’s, 105; of Franco-Russian militaries against Germany, 79; hurdles to, 75; and ideology, 114; of incoherent states, 11 (see also democracies, poorly institutionalized); mass armies and, 12; and missed opportunities, 14; and national power, 6; and realist foreign policy, 105; and reckless aggression, 6; state-sponsored program of, 118; and state’s resources, 6, 106; and state strength, 107–108; and threat inflation, 15; and unanswered threats, 14;

Index and war, 13; weak regimes’ ability to enhance, 12. See also fascism; Schmitt, Carl mobilization hurdles. See mobilization capability, hurdles to mobilizing state. See Paraguay; state(s), ideal mobilizing modernization, 96, 97–98 Mogul India. See India, Mogul monarchists, 79–80, 83 Monroe Doctrine, 112 Monte Caseros, Battle of, 96. See also Brazil; Argentina; Jose´ de Urquiza, Justo; Manuel de Rosas, Juan; Uruguay moral issues, 21 Morgenthau, Hans, 4, 106, 115, 124 Morrow, James, 43, 50 Mosley, Sir Oswald, 120 Mosse, George, 124 motivated biases, 39–40, 43 muddling through. See nonbalancing; underbalancing multilateral negotiations, 5 multipolarity, 7–8 Munich, 3, 74–75, 105 Mussolini, Benito, 105, 118, 123; counterfactual of concluding wars of conquest before 1939 or 1941, 125 mutual kill. See nuclear revolution myths of empire, 60. See also Snyder, Jack Napoleon. See Bonaparte, Napoleon Napoleon III, 59, 97 Napoleonic Wars. See war(s), Napoleonic national cohesion, 85, 92. See also in-group cohesion; patriotism nationalism, 84, 96 national resources, 13 national will, 14. See also security software nation-building, 91–97; in Argentina, 90– 91, 92, 96–97, 101, 102; in Brazil, 92– 94, 95–97, 102; and external threats and in-group cohesion, 102; in Paraguay, 91– 92, 94–95 nation-in-arms, 2, 14. See also leveeen-masse naval bases, 25 Nazi Germany, 2; and blitzkrieg, 78; and Carl Schmitt, 122; Churchill’s proposed Grand Alliance to counterbalance, 73; counterfactual of concluding wars of conquest before 1939 or 1941, 125; and France, 2, 69, 76–78; and French Right’s

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desire to balance against Soviet Union and international Jewry in concert with, 77; and Great Britain, 2, 69–75; and Italy, 2; and Japan, 2; and Munich, 105; as polar power, 19; and population and industrial advantages after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 77; and remilitarization of the Rhineland, 72, 73; and Soviet Union, 2, 76, 105; threat posed by, 69; and United States, 2. necessary condition(s). See condition(s), necessary neoclassical realism, 6, 7, 19. See also Christensen, Thomas; Elman, Colin and Miriam; Friedberg, Aaron; Rose, Gideon; Schweller, Randall; Snyder, Jack; Wohlforth, William C.; Zakaria, Fareed neorealism. See balance of power; realism, structural; Waltz, Kenneth N. Netherlands. See Dutch Republic Nicolson, Harold, 74 Nigeria, 104 nomothetic explanations, 30 nonalignment, 70 nonbalancing, 10; and democracies, 48 (see also balancing; democracies, balancing efforts of); as inappropriate strategy (see underbalancing) normal diplomacy, 10 normative prescriptive theory, 11, 21, 23, 115 North, Robert, 25 nuclear revolution, 3 Occam’s Razor, 15 occurrences, 16 offense-defense balance, 8; defining and measuring, 17; operational, strategic, and tactical, 18; perceptions of, 17–18. See also Christensen, Thomas; Snyder, Jack opportunities, 6, 59, 19–20, 80 Optimists, 76 order, 14 O’Sullivan, John, 111. See also Manifest Destiny outcomes, 15, 16 out-group conflict, 11–12. See also Coser, Lewis; in-group cohesion; Simmel, Georg overbalancing. See balancing overkill. See nuclear revolution Oxford Union, 72

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pacifism, 48: popularity of in interwar Britain, 71–72 pacifists, 72, 77 paper tigers, 87. See also myths of empire Paraguay, 6, 19, 20, 85; and aggression, 6; ambitions of, 103; and Argentina, 87; and Battle of Cepeda, 96; and Brazil’s intervention in Uruguay, 87; bureaucratic structures of, 90; and Carlos Antonio Lo´pez, 94–95; cohesiveness of, 89–91; decline of, 95; demographics of, 100; and Dr. Jose´ Gaspar de Francia, 91–92, 94, 95; and elimination of institutions that competed with the state, 91–92; and emergence of national unity, 92; and emulation of European despotism, 97–98; and Europe, 20; and Francisco Solano Lo´pez, 85, 86, 87, 88–89, 92, 96, 97– 98, 100, 101, 102; and Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, 87; and Guaicuru and Mamelucos, 90; identity of, 89–90; and intervention in Uruguay, 87; isolationist policy of, 92; military innovations and technological superiority of, 88; military modernization of, 1855–64, 97–98; nation-building in, 91–92, 94–95; naval force improvements and, 98; and need for subjugation of Solano Lo´pez’s government, 102; and offensive realism, 104; patriotism and hypernationalism of, 88, 89, 92; and porten˜os, 90–91; and Prussia under Frederick the Great, 87, 98; and Second Empire France, 97, 98; and Spain, 89–90; as ideal-mobilizing state, 37, 38, 85, 86, 97; as a third force between Argentina and Brazil, 87; threat posed by, 99; unique Hispano-Gurari identity of, 90, 92; and War of the Triple Alliance, 87, 88, 100–101. See also ingroup cohesion Pareto, Vilfredo, 123–124. See also fascism Parliament, 1. See also Great Britain parsimonious explanations, 30. See also Occam’s Razor party factions, 12 paternalism, 89 patriotism, 88. See also nationalism peace, 3, 72 peaceful change, 70 Pedro I, 92, 93, 95. See also Brazil; Pedro II Pedro II, 88, 93, 95. See also Brazil

peer competitors, 2, 10. See also rising powers perceptions, 47; of demands and intentions of rising powers, 53; elites’, 47; of the external environment, 46 (see also elite(s), consensus of); of offense-defense balance, 17–18 (see also Christensen, Thomas; Snyder, Jack); of power, 16 (see also Friedberg, Aaron; Wohlforth, William C.); of state’s authority and effectiveness, 108; of threat (see threat(s), perceptions of) Pessimists, 76 Petain, Marshal, 78 Pichon, Stephen, 84 Poincare´, Raymond, 84 Poland, 22, 76, 77, 111 polar powers, 19 policies, 12; offensive, how elites sell them to their publics, 21; types used to manage changes in the balance of power, 18, 33–37 policy capacity, 14, 134n38; and policies of appeasement and coercion, 12. See also security software policymakers, 5 policy process, 48–49, 82–83 policy-relevant theories, 10 political constraints. See domestic politics political influence. See influence political parties, 70 political process, 5 political psychology, 3 political subjugation, 20 polities. See state(s) population density, 56 population size, 13 porten˜os. See Argentina, and porten˜os Portugal, 92–93 positive feedback process, 25 positivist, 15 Powell, Robert, 16 power, 4–5; absolute, held by Paraguay’s leaders, 91; administrative, 13 (see also security software; state(s), power of); aspiration for, 4–5; balance of (see balance of power); balanced, 8; building up military, 105; and classical realism, 124; and domestic politics of mobilization capability, 15; elements of, 13, 103; of elites in Brazil, 93; fascists’ worship of, 122; great-power competition for, 57; legitimacy of, 108–109; links between mod-

Index ernization and the projection of, 96 (see also power, political and military); material, 13, 103, 105–106; material and nonmaterial components of, 103; and material resources, national interests, and political influence, 24; maximizing, 9, 105, 111; maximization of, 116; maximization of, for profit and security, 21; maximization of, for security, 85; military, 9; national, 13, 6; perceptions of, 7; political and military, 24, 119; potential, 14, 105, 135n48; relative, 75, 103; state, 27; state, and latent national power, 14, 106; states’ need for, 103; unbalanced, 19; underreactions to dangerous, 46; will to, 108, 109, 124 power shifts, 45; conditions under which they’re dangerous (see rising powers, when they are dangerous); among great powers, 22; hegemonic, 114; and threat perception, 36; variation in great powers’ responses to, 23, 46 power transitions. See power shifts power vacuum, 24 predispositions, 39, 43; and inferences, 41–42 pressures, 6; external, 15; and identity in Paraguay, 90; and similarities in state behavior, 130; systemic, 6 prestige, 57, 59 private goods, 113. See also selectorate theory problem construction. See problem representation problem representation, 47 procolonialists, 79 Pruitt, Dean, 42 Prussia, 2, 14, 22, 87, 98, 106. See also Bismarck, Otto von; Caprivi, Leo von; Germany public goods, 113–114 public opinion, 70. See also domestic politics; selectorate theory Qing China. See China-Qing radicals, 77 railways, 71 rationality, 125 rational unitary actor assumption, 7, 11, 85, 105, 115 raw materials, 25, 27

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realism, 11; accuracy of predictions of, 11, 152n82; and buck-passing, 7–8 (see also Christensen, Thomas; Mearsheimer, John J.; Snyder, Jack); Carl Schmitt and, 21; and the challenges about underbalancing, 16; classical (see classical realism); and democracies, 110; and domestic politics explanation of underbalancing, 5–9; and economic prosperity, 24; and expansion, 4–5, 21, 115; expansion and aggression as best means to gain resources, 103; extent to which states deviate from the assumptions of, 105; and fascism, 20–21, 105, 116–117, 121–125, 150n53 (see also Fascism; Schmitt, Carl); foreign policy informed by prescriptions of, 111; Hobbesian state of nature and, 123; and lack of attention to revisionist states, 7; and lack of revisionist states in the Third World, 104–105; and liberal idealism, 123; limitations of, 115; neoclassical (see neoclassical realism); and nonmaterial factors, 106; normative-prescriptive hole in, 21, 115; as normative theory, 115; offensive, 20, 105, 113, 124, 145n2; powermaximizing, 105, 106; predictions, 3, 24; principles of state action, 103, 116; and rational unitary actor assumption, 11, 85, 105, 115, 125–126; and security software, 29; standard theories derived from, 125 (see also balance of power); structural, 19 (see also balance of power; Waltz, Kenneth N.); studies on imperial over- and understretch, 67–68 (see also Snyder, Jack; Zakaria, Fareed) Realists. See balance of power; Christensen, Thomas; Mearsheimer, John J.; Morgenthau, Hans; neoclassical realism; realism; Snyder, Jack; Waltz, Kenneth N.; Wohlforth, William C.; Wolfers, Arnold; Zakaria, Fareed realpolitik, 110, 112, 116. See also realism rearmament, 70–72; British refusal to engage in coordinated, 70; conservatives’ support for limited, 72, 75 reform, 71 regimes. See state(s) regime vulnerability. See government, vulnerability of Reinsurance Treaty, 2 relative gains, 102 religious divisions. See divisions

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Renaissance, 4 republicans, 79, 83 residues. See Pareto, Vilfredo resources, 12, 13, 24, 103 Revanchards, 81–82 revisionist aims. See aims, revisionist revisionist states. See state(s), revisionist rhetoric, 133–134n36 Rhineland, 72; and British responses before and after remilitarization crisis, 72, 73; industrial and population advantages after Germany’s seizure of, 77 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 73 Ribot, Alexandre, 80 Right, 77 Rio Grande do Sul. See Brazil rising challengers. See rising powers rising powers, 23; as autocratic states, 114; and engagement model, 35–37; intentions of, 28–31; policy responses to, 33– 37; recognition of their true nature, 44; risk-taking propensity of, 12, 31–33; structural factors of, 25–27; unit-level factors, 27–33; when they are dangerous, 23–25 risks, 80; of balancing, 46, 47; and costs of expansion, 113; elites’ willingness to take, 11 (see also elite risk-taking propensity); political, 11, 73; of raising military spending in Third Republic France, 82; rising powers’ propensity to take (see rising powers, risk-taking propensity of) Rivadavia, Bernardino, 93. See also Argentina Roman Catholicism, 90 Roosevelt, Theodore, 26, 112 Rose, Richard, 108 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 12 Royal Air Force, 70. See also Great Britain Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 59 rules of the game, 40. See also boundaries; Schelling, Thomas Russia, 2, 22, 79, 84, 113. See also Soviet Union Saint-Hilaire, Bartholomew, 80 Salisbury, Robert, Lord, 80 Samuels, Richard, 130 scarcity, 27 Schelling, Thomas, 3, 41, 116, 131n9 Schmidt, Gustav, 70, 71

Schmitt, Carl, 21, 72, 122–123, 124. See also fascism; state(s), coherent; state(s), fascist; state(s), ideal mobilizing Schroeder, Paul W., 7 Schwab, George, 123 Schweller, Randall, 6, 7 Second Reform Act of 1867, 60. See also democratic transitions; Great Britain sectoral interests, 11 security dilemma, 25; and conflict as a result of scarcity, 29; between the U.S. and Japan, 26. See also rising powers, structural factors of; rising powers, when they are dangerous security hardware, 14 security policy, 70 security software, 14 security studies, 3 Seeley, J. R., 103 Segal, Gerald, 104 seizure of territory, 9. See also expansion selective search, 41 selectorate theory, 113–115 self-help, 15, 103. See also realism sequencing, 17 Serbia, 59 Silesia, 111 Simmel, George, 48, 51 Simon, Sir John, 75 Sinclair, Archibald, 74 Singer, J. David, 38, 39 situational factors, 23 small powers. See state(s), small Snyder, Jack, 6, 7–8, 55, 56, 59, 61, 79, 133–134n36 social cohesion, 11–12, 14, 15, 51–54, 69, 84, 86, 95; and balancing behavior, 11– 12, 16, 17, 80, 84, 85, 97, 128; and external threats, 51–52, 93; and mobilization hurdles, 47; and political costs of extraction, 80; sources of cleavages and, 51; states that enjoy high degrees of, 85 —and underbalancing, 16, 17, 19, 69, 75, 76, 80; and extremely incoherent states model of, 93; as permissive condition for underbalancing, 17; and polarized democratic model of, 78. See also Coser, Lewis; in-group cohesion; Paraguay; Simmel, Georg social conflict, 118. See also Coser, Lewis Social Darwinism, 21, 116, 122

Index social fragmentation. See social cohesion social goods, 27 social groups, 46 socialism, 118 socialists, 76, 77 social legislation, 71 Solano Lo´pez, Marshal Francisco, 85, 86, 87; aims of, 88–89; and Argentina, 100; Argentina and Brazil’s desire to depose the government of, 102; and Argentine Confederation, 96; demographic weakness of the government of, 100, 101; and desire to emulate European despotism, 97–98; and Jose´ Gaspar de Francia, 92; logic of, 88 Somaliland, 80 South Africa, 104 South America, 20, 85, 87, 89, 90, 99. See also Argentina; Brazil; Latin America; Paraguay; Uruguay South Pacific, 80 Soviet Union, 2; and interwar Britain, 70, 73; and interwar France, 76, 77; and Nazi Germany, 2, 76, 105; as polar power, 9; and search for continental hegemony, 104; and United States, 2 Spain, 22, 26, 89–90, 106 Spanish, 92 Spears, Major General Sir Edward, 74 speed of kill. See nuclear revolution Spengler, Oswald, 116 spiral, 21; arms, 21; model, 33–34, 44, 47 splendid isolation policy, 79 Spykman, Nicholas, 5 stability, 29. See also government, vulnerability of; internal stability; security software Stalin, Joseph, 64, 65, 77. See also Soviet Union Stanley, Oliver, 75 state(s), 11; coherence of and the use of force for expansion, 108–113; as rational unitary actors, 7, 11, 115, 116; realist, 116; Third World, 104 —actions, intentions, and foreign policy goals of, 15, 106; of fascist states, 118; of great powers that have not achieved regional hegemony, 103–104; legitimacy and the exercise of state power for revisionist and aggressive, 108–109; need for

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power regardless of, 103–104, 148n8; realist principles of, 103; of rising powers, 59; will to power as a, 108 —authority of, 49, 107–108, 148n17; and aggressive expansion, 113; and compliance, 107, 108, 109; and consent, 108, 109 —autocratic: as large coalition systems, 115; as rising challengers, 114; as small coalition systems, 113–114 —coherent, 11, 19, 85, 103; ability to mobilize resources, 97; ability to wage war, 133–134n36; and aggressive expansion, 113; domestic factors that affect states’ ability to act as, 127; when both statusquo and revisionists are, 125–126 —effectiveness of, 50, 107, 108; as source of compliance, 109 —fascist, 20–21, 117–125, 127; ability of to wage aggressive wars, 122; and arrangements with conservative cartels, 120; as bold expansionists, 117; as ideal mobilizes, 105; as model expansionists, 114; and offensive realism, 124; powerful leaders of, 120 (see also Haushofer, Andreas; Pareto, Vilfredo; Schmitt, Carl) —fragmented, 12, 86, 103, 128; and balance of power theory, 126; and external threats, 93; revisionist states, 126; and underbalancing, 19–20 —power of, 103; and ability to martial national resources, 106; classical realism’s views about the appetite for, 124; as core of international politics, 119 (see also fascism, and assumptions about world politics); and exercise of for aggressive purposes, 109; legitimacy of, 108–109; relative, 103, 116; strengthening of Paraguay’s, 91–92; trajectory of, 106 —revisionist, 10, 44; and bandwagon, 7; classic power-maximizing, 85; distinction between status-quo states and, 128–129; fragmented and unmotivated, 126; great powers that are not regional hegemons, 103–104; grievances of, 21; lack of attention from realist theories, 16; popular support within Britain for conciliating, 72; rising powers as, 129–130; unitary, 125–126; as unitary actors, 125–126 —small/weak, 19; domestic politics in, 127

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rising powers (cont.) —status-quo, 7–8; distinction between revisionist states and, 128–129; as fragmented actors, 126; as unitary actors, 125–126 —and war, 107, 116; breakdown of selectorate theory with regard to hegemonic wars, 114; and degree of reliance upon mass support in order to stay in office, 113–117 state mobilization capacity, 12–13. See also mobilization capability; state(s), power of statism, 118. See also fascism status quo, 5; economic prosperity and states’ willingness to overthrow, 24 Steinberg, Jonathan, 42 Stephens, Evelyne, 59 Stephens, John, 59 strategic adjustment, 24; cognitive constraints on, 41–43 Strausz-Hupe, Robert, 106 structural factors, 25–27 structural incentives, 4–5 structural pressures. See pressures, external structural realism. See balance of power; realism, structural; Waltz, Kenneth N. structural systemic theories. See balance of power; realism, structural; Waltz, Kenneth structural theory. See balance of power; realism, structural; Waltz, Kenneth Sweden, 22, 62 Switzerland, 62 systemic pressures. See pressures, external tacit bargaining model, 41. See also Schelling, Thomas technology, 7, 20, 56 Ten Years’ Rule of 1919, 70, 71 third-image theory. See balance of power; realism, structural; Waltz, Kenneth N. Third World, 8–9, 104, 107 Thompson, David, 76 threat(s), 18; balancing against, 7; bandwagoning with, 7; Bolshevik, 118; Britain’s failure to respond to during the interwar period, 69–75; conceptions of, 37–38; conversion of hardware assets to meet, 29 (see also security hardware); and domestic politics, 18, 50; elite consensus about, 23, 48, 52, 75, 77, 84, 128; emergence of, 51 (see also power shifts; rising challengers; rising powers); exaggera-

tions of, 9; and explanation of balance of power theory and incoherent states, 97; fragmented states’ underreactions to, 25; and illegitimate rulers, 12–13; and incoherent states, 79, 93, 97 (see also Argentina; state(s), fragmented, and external threats); infrequency of, 11; and legitimate rulers, 12; mobilization hurdles, 47 (see also underbalancing); and national unity, 52–54 (see also social cohesion); and nation-building, 102; and neoclassical realism, 6–7; posed by Britain to French colonial possessions, 79; posed by Guaicuru and Mamelucos to Paraguay, 90; posed by Paraguay to Argentina and Brazil, 99; posed by rising powers (see rising powers, when they are dangerous); preference to conciliate before Rhineland crisis, 73; and state-building, 126; states that fail to recognize, 7; and underbalancing, 93 —French elites’ perception of: during the early Third Republic, 79–80; hiding from, 16; during the interwar period, 76, 77; overreactions to, 9 —perception of, 36; and assessment of actors’ capabilities, intentions, resolve, and risk-taking propensities, 43; and balancing behavior, 37–41; cognitive constraints on, 41–43; experientially, situational, and strategically easy, 40; as intervening variable between power shifts and state responses to threats, 36; and underbalancing through wishful thinking, 75 —states’ responses to, 20, 36, 47; Third World, 104; underreactions to, 9, 10, 14, 15, 25, 59 Tilly, Charles, 96 Tonkin, 80, 81 Tories. See Conservative Party trade unions, 71, 75, 80 trading powers. See Dutch Republic; Great Britain, Elizabethan tripolarity, 8, 44 Trojan Horse dilemma (53–54). See also Coser, Lewis; in-group cohesion Tsar. See Russia Tsebelis, George, 48 Tunis, 80–81 Tunisia, 80–81 Turkey, 105

Index unbalanced power, 2, 5, 8 underaggression, 20, 104–105. See also underbalancing; underexpansion underbalancers, 20. See also state(s), incoherent underbalancing, 3, 5–6; additive model of, 63, 83, 129; additive variables and, 16; antecedent conditions conducive to, 16; and appeasement, 7, 10; Argentina’s, 86, 97, 99; and balance of power theory, 6, 97; and balancing, 1, 10; and bandwagoning, 7, 10; as behavior that defies balance of power logic, 17; Brazil’s, 86, 93, 97, 98–99; and Britain during the interwar period, 37, 69–75; and buck-passing, 7, 10; as definition of, 15, 22; dependent variable, 16; and distancing, 7, 10; domestic politics explanation of, 4, 6, 11–13, 18; and elite cohesion, 11–12, 16, 19, 56–62, 72, 75, 77, 82, 93, 97, 104; and elite consensus about threats, 11, 16, 93, 135n55; and elites’ blame for wars, 18; extremely incoherent states model of, 63, 93, 129; and fragmented states, 19–20; and France during the interwar period, 37, 76–79; as generalizable behavior, 16; and half-measures, 7, 78; hard cases for the theory of, 19; and hiding, 7, 10; and importance of the sequencing of additive variables, 17; as imprudent state behavior, 54; and inaction, 10; joining of permissive and proximate causes to explain, 17; jointly sufficient conditions for, 17; and lessons of the War of the Triple Alliance, 89; and muddling through, 7, 78; and neoclassical realism, 6, 16; and nonbalancing, 10; and normal diplomacy, 10; and opportunities to expand, 20; and overexpansion, 19, 55–62; polarized democratic model of, 63, 78, 129; and regime vulnerability, 16, 17, 18, 69, 93; and social cohesion, 24–25, 36, 69, 93; and structural realist theory, 1; as theory of mistakes, 22, 34; and Third Republic France, 79–83, 129; by Third World states, 104; and underexpansion, 104; and waiting, 16; through wishful thinking model, 66, 75, 129 underexpansion, 39, 104–105 underreaction(s). See underbalancing understanding, 15–18 undertaker policies, 78–79

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uneven rate of growth, 24 unified polities. See state(s), coherent Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). See Soviet Union unipolarity, 2 Unitarians. See Argentina United States, 2; and annexation of Texas, 111; Civil War of, 2; and Cold War, 110; and conquest of the Philippines, 26; emergence of as a great power, 22, 26; expansion of, 110–113 (see also Manifest Destiny); and First World War, 110; and Great Britain, 2; Indian Wars of, 110, 112; and Japan, 26; and Korean War, 110; and Mexican-American War, 110, 111, 112; navy of, 26; and Nazi Germany, 2; presidents of, 109; as reluctant belligerent, 110; Revolutionary War of, 110; and search for continental hegemony, 104; and Second Gulf War against Iraq, 110; and Second World War, 110; and Soviet Union, 2; and Spanish-American War, 57, 110, 112; and Vietnam War, 110; and War of 1812, 110; wars fought by, 110–111 Upper Senegal, 80 Uruguay, 19; Brazil’s intervention in, 86– 87; and defeat of Argentina at Monte Caseros, 96; and Paraguay, 87, 99; war between Argentina and Brazil over, 93 variables, 16; additive, 16, 17; dependent, 16, 19, 47; error of selecting on the dependent, 20; independent, 19; intervening, 15, 69, 127 Velasco, Governor, 91 veto players, 48 violence, 24 volk, 119, 122, 124, 150n54. See also conflict groups; fascism Von Wright, Georg Henrik, 51 Waddington, W. H., 80 Waldeck-Rousseau, Pierre, 83 Waller, Sir William, 1 Walt, Stephen, 78 Waltz, Kenneth N., 2, 4, 15, 16, 62. See also balance of power war(s), 26; absence of, and state weakness, 107; in Africa, 103; of aggression, 103, 104–105; American-Indian, 110, 112; anarchy as permissive condition for, 16;

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war(s) (cont.) of attrition, 7, 75, 100, 109; avoidance of, and benefits for Chamberlain’s government, 75; Balkan, 84; in blitzkrieg fashion, 100; colliding interests and the outbreak of, 58; and democracies, 109–113; diversionary, 51, 133–134n36; economic prosperity as preliminary to, 24, 55; of 1812, 110; elites’ blame for, 34; expansionist, and fascism, 122; First World (see World War One); France’s undeclared against China, 81; French perception of Hitler’s willingness to risk, 76; hegemonic and regime type, 114–117 (see also selectorate theory); international, 105; Korean, 110; limited expansionist, 114; and the lives of average citizens, 116; means essential for, 105; Mexican-American, 110, 111, 112; Napoleonic, 22; and modernization, 96; offensive, 133–134n36; possibility of and resource scarcity, 59; preparations for and underbalancing, 75; preparedness for, 119; for private goods, 113 (see also selectorate theory; state(s), and war, and reliance upon mass support); for public goods, 113–114; regimes’ need for mass support in order to wage, 113; and remobilization campaign, 114; Revolutionary (American), 110; Second Gulf against Iraq, 110; Second World (see World War Two); Spanish-American, 58, 110, 112; states that lost the last, 129 (see also state(s), revisionist); states that won the last, 128–129 (see also state(s), status quo); Triple-Alliance (see War of the Triple Alliance); two-front, 100; Vietnam, 110

war mobilization, 13, 151n69 war proneness, 133–134n36 War of the Triple Alliance, 19, 85, 86, 87, 99, 100, 129 (see also Argentina; Brazil; Paraguay; Uruguay); consequences of for Argentina and Brazil, 93–94; and military balance between Paraguay and Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, 99; nation-building in Argentina and Brazil after the, 102; Paraguay and, 87, 100– 101; and underbalancing, 89 Watt, Donald, 72 Webb, John, 1 Westphalia, Peace of, 22 Whigham, Thomas, 98, 99 Whitehall, Palace of, 1 Whiting, Allen, 51 Wight, Martin, 24 Williams, John, 88, 89, 100, 101 Wilson, Woodrow, 26 wishful thinking, 43. See also underbalancing, through wishful thinking model Wohlforth, William C., 6, 7 Wolfers, Arnold, 5, 69, 130, 132n17, 135n49 World War One, 18, 19, 24, 59, 110; alliance patterns prior to, and unbalanced power, 8; Anglo-German antagonism and, 70; and Great Britain, 70, 71, 72; and origins of fascism, 117; outbreak of, and tight alliances and balance of power politics, 77 World War Two, 19, 110, 117; alliance patterns before, 8, 9; Britain’s policies prior to, 70 Zakaria, Fareed, 6, 49, 67