Mearsheimer Readings Notes

Anarchy and the struggle for power – John Mearsheimer  Hegemony is the final goal.  Great powers seek to maximize their share of world power.  Why States Pursue Power: 5 assumptions of the international system. Together, depict states sometimes have reason to think and behave aggressively.  Friedman: the best theories will be found to have assumptions that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions.  Mearsheimer rejected Friedman’s view. He believes the explanatory power is the ultimate criterion for assessing theories and that theories based on unrealistic or false assumptions will not explain much about how the world works.  5 Assumptions:  The international system is anarchic. Not chaos, but that the system comprises of independent states that have no central authority above them.  Great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the opportunity to hurt and possibly destroy each other.  States can never be certain about other states’ intentions. It is impossible to predict another person’s decisions with 100% certainty.  Survival is the primary goal of great powers. States want to maintain territory and autonomy of their domestic political order. Dominates other motives. Ex: Stalin in 1927 said “We can and must build socialism, but in order to do so first we must exist.”  Great powers are rational actors.  Only motive that is common to all states is survival.  Three patterns of behavior: fear, self-help, and power maximization.  State behavior: states act towards their own self-interest.  Little room for trust among states. They anticipate danger. All great powers are potential enemies. Ex: reaction of UK and F to German reunification after the cold war.  911 problem: the absence of a central authority to which a threatened state can turn for help—reason for states to fear each other.  The consequences of war sometime cause states to view each other not just as competitors, but as potentially deadly enemies.  Self-help. Alliances are only temporary conveniences. EX: WW2 the US fought with China and Soviets but then flopped and partnered with Germany and Japan against China and Soviets during the Cold war.  Therefore, states want to be the most powerful. Kant: “it is the desire of every state to arrive at a condition of perpetual peace by conquering the whole world, if that were possibly.”  Pursuit of power stops only when hegemony is achieved.  Difficult to determine how much power is enough b/c of the balance of power over time. Ex: few expected the collapse of the Soviet Union.  All states are influenced by this logic. More power = survival. Peace is not likely to break out in this world.  Security dilemma: reflects the basic logic of offensive realism. The measures a state takes to increase its own security usually decreases the security of other states. Hertz 1950: the best way for a state to survive in anarchy is to take advantage of other states and gain power at their expense.  States are not concerned with balance of power, but instead are concerned with amassing power without regard to how much power other states control. Power is an end in itself.  Calculated aggression:  Not every state can be the king of the hill. They do not all have the ability. Depends on how military is distributed.  Cost of offense might be too high and do not justify the expected benefits.  Great powers are not mindless aggressors so bent on gaining power that they charge headlong into losing powers or pursue Pyrrhic victories. They think carefully about balance of power and how other states will react to their moves.  Great powers are often unsure about how their own military forces will perform.  They are also sometimes unsure about the resolve of opposing states as well as allies.  Defensive realists: Threatened states balance against aggressors and ultimately crush them. There is an offense-defense balance that is usually heavily tilted toward to defense. Therefore, great powers should be content with the existing balance of power and try not to change it by force.  Historically, offense sometimes succeeds and sometimes does not. 60% success.  Hegemony’s limits:  A hegemon is a state that is so powerful that it dominates all other states in the system. No other state has the military to put up a serious fight against it. Only great power.  Europe in 19th century was multipolar. UK thought they were hegemon, but they were not.  Hegemony means domination of the system, the entire world. However, sometimes can be applied to particular regions. EX: global hegemon vs. Regional hegemons.  It is virtually impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony unless is has clear-cut nuclear superiority.  EX: US is most powerful state on the planet today, but it does not dominate Europe and Asia the way it does in the western hemisphere. We have no intention of conquering these distant regions.  There has never been a global hegemon, probably never will be. Best outcome is to be a regional hegemon. US is the only regional hegemon in modern history.  Regional hegemons prefer there are at least 2 great powers located together in other regions so they can focus on each other and leave everyone else alone.  US is an offshore balancer when great powers in regions cannot contain a potential hegemon emerging. We have done this 4 times.  The ideal situation is for any great power to be the only regional hegemon in the world. We are a status quo power. Why we will soon miss the cold war - John Mearsheimer      Untamed anarchy is a prime cause of armed conflict - we will lament the loss of order the cold war gave to anarchy of international relations. Prospect of major crises and wars in Europe will likely increase dramatically now that the Cold war is fading through history. Distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace. We may, however, wake up one day lamenting the loss of the order that the Cold War gave to the anarchy of international relations. For untamed anarchy is what Europe knew in the forty-five years of this century before the Cold War, and untamed anarchy-- Hobbes's war of all against all--is a prime cause of armed conflict. My argument is that the prospect of major crises, even wars, in Europe is likely to increase dramatically now that the Cold War is receding into history. The next forty-five years in Europe are not likely to be so violent as the forty-five years before the Cold War, but they are likely to be substantially more violent than the past forty-five years, the era that we may someday look back upon not as the Cold War but as the Long Peace, in John Lewis Gaddis's phrase.  Distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace. Peace in Europe since 1945 is due to… 1) The bipolar distribution of military power on the continent 2) The rough military equality between the polar powers – US and USSR 3) The fact that each of these superpowers are armed with a large nuclear arsenal We know that the new Europe will involve a return to the multipolar distribution of power that characterized the European state system from its founding.  The Peace of westaphalia in 1648 – 1945  plagued by war from first to last.  1900-1945  50 million Europeans were killed in wars caused by the instability of this state system.  Since 1945, roughly 15,000 Europeans have been killed in wars. Europe is reverting to a state system that created powerful incentives for aggression in the past.  Belief that the prospects for international peace are not influenced by the domestic political character of states  the character of the state system (not individual units composing it) that drive states to war. A Hard theory of peace What caused the era of violence in Europe before 1945, and why has the postwar era, the period of the Cold War, been so much more peaceful?  Multipolar distribution of power in Europe.  Imbalances of strength that often developed among the great powers as they jostled for supremacy or advantage. Bipolarity  The Cold War, with two superpowers serving to anchor rival alliances of clearly inferior powers.  Bipolar system is more peaceful because only two major powers are in contention.  Generally demand allegiance from minor powers in the system, likely to produce rigid alliance structures  the smaller states are then secure from eachother as well as from attack by the rival great power.  A bipolar system only has one dyad across which war might break out. Multipolarity  Europe in 1914, with France, Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Russia positioned as great powers.  Multipolar systems are the most dangerous geometry of power.  Much more fluid and many such dyads  war is statistically more likely.  Wars in multipolar systems that involve only minor powers or only one major power are not likely to be as devastating as conflict between two major powers.  Small wars always have the potential to widen into big wars. Deterrence is difficult to maintain in a multipolar state system because power imbalances are commonplace, and when power asymmetries develop, the strong become hard to deter.  Two great powers can join together to attack a third state (as Germany and the Soviet Union did in 1939, when they ganged up on Poland)  A major power might simply bully a weaker power in a one-on-one encounter, using its superior strength to coerce or defeat the minor state (Germany’s actions against Czechoslovakia in the late 1930’s)  Ganging up and bullying are largely unknown in a bipolar system  because with only two great powers it is impossible to produce the power asymmetries that result in ganging up and bullying. Deterrence is more problematic under multipolarity because the resolve of opposing states and size/strength of opposing coalitions are hard to calculate in this geometry of power.  The shape of the international order tends to remain in flux  because of the tendency of coalitions gaining and losing partners.  This can lead aggressors to conclude falsely that they coerce others by bluffing wwar or even achieve victory on the battlefield. In 1939 Germany hoped that France and Britain would stand aside as it conquered Poland, and again failed to foresee the eventual American entry into the war.  As a result, Germany exaggerated its prospects for success, which undermined deterrence by encouraging German adventurism. Prospects for peace are affected by the relative military strength of those major states.  Bipolar and multipolar systems are likely to be more peaceful when power is distributed equally in them. Power inequalities invite war because they increase an aggressors’ prospects for victory on the battlefield.  The size of the gap in military power between the two leading states in the system is a key determinant of stability. Small gaps foster peace; larger gaps promote war. Nuclear weapons are a powerful force for peace.  Deterrence is more likely to hold when the costs and risks of going to war are clearly harsh.  More useful for self defense than aggression.  Is both sides’ nuclear arsenals are secure from attack, creating mutually assured destruction, neither side can employ these weapons to gain a meaningful military advantage. Defenders usually have the advantage because they value freedom more than aggressors value new conquests. Nuclear weapons bolster peace by moving power relations among states toward equality. States that possess nuclear deterrents can stand up to each other even if their arsenals vary greatly in size, as long as both have an assured destruction capability.  Mutually assured destruction helps alleviate the vexed problem of miscalculation by leaving little doubt about the relative power of states. No discussion of the causes of peace in the twentieth century would be complete without a word on nationalism.  Hypernationalism  belief that other nations or nation states are both inferior and threatening  greatest domestic threat to peace although not a leading force in world politics.  The problem had worsened when domestic elites demonize a rival to drum up support for national security policy. Hypernationalism finds its most fertile soil under military systems relying on mass armies.  Sacrifices are required to sustain, and the state is tempted to appeal to nationalist sentiments to mobilize its citizens to make them.  Quickening of hypernationalism less likely when states can rely on small professional armies or on complex high-technology military organizations that operate without vast manpower.  For this reason, nuclear weapons work to dampen nationalism, because they shift the basis of military power away from mass armies and toward smaller, hightechnology organizations. Hypernationalism declined sharply in Europe after 1945 not only because of the nuclear revolution but also because of the post war occupation forces that kept it down.  Decisive change came in the shift of the prime focus of European politics to the US and Soviet Union.  With less expectation for war, neither superpower felt compelled to mobilize its citizens for war. Bipolarity, an equal balance of military power, and nuclear weapons--these, then, are the key elements of my explanation for the Long Peace.  What will keep the peace in the future? What new order is likely to emerge if NATO and the Warsaw Pact dissolve, which they will do if the Cold War is really over, and the Soviets withdraw from Eastern Europe and the Americans quit Western Europe, taking their nuclear weapons with them—and should we welcome or fear it? New European order will be multipolar.  Germany, France, Britain and maybe Italy will assume major power status.  Soviet Union will decline from superpower status because moving forces out of Eastern Europe will make it more difficult for the Soviets to project power onto the continent.  The four/five power system will be prone to instability.  Distribution of nuclear weapons among the major states are less certain. The “Europe without nuclear weapons” scenario Many wish to eliminate nuclear weapons and believe it to be the most peaceful arrangement possible.  Nuclear-free Europe has the distinction of being the most dangerous among the envisionable post-cold war orders.  The caution nuclear weapons generate, the security they provide, the rough equality they impose, and the clarity of the relative power they create will be lost.  Peace would depend on the number of poles and distribution of power among them.  Geometry of power would look like it did between world wars  design for tension, crises, and possible war. Soviet Union and a unified Germany would likely be the most powerful states in a nuclear-free Europe.  Band of small states would lie between.  Small states will likely fear Soviets as much as the Germans, so probably will not cooperate with Soviets to avoid German aggression.  Scenarios where Germany uses force against Poland, Czechoslovakia, or even Austria are possible in a nuclear-free Europe. In a grave warning, a member of President Mikhail Gorbachev's negotiating team at the recent Washington summit said, "You have the same explosive mixture you had in Germany in the 1930s. The humiliation of a great power. Economic troubles. The rise of nationalism. You should not underestimate the danger." Conflict between Easter European states might also threaten stability of new European order.  Tensions already exist between Hungary and Romania over Romania’s treatment of Hungarian minority in Transylvania (former Hungarian region with 2 million ethnic Hungarians).  Polish-German border could also be a source of trouble  Poland and Czechoslovakia have a border dispute, if Soviets allow some of their republics independence, Poles and Romanians could claim that territory.  Civil war in Yugoslavia is a possibility  Yugoslavia and Albania might come to blows over Kosovo, a region of Yugoslavia harboring a nationalistic Albanian majority. Warfare in Eastern Europe could cause suffering and might widen to include major powers especially if disorder created fluid politics that offered opportunities for expanded influence, or threatened defeat for states friendly to one of another of the major powers.  Eastern Europe directly adjacent to Soviet Union and Germany, considerable economic and strategic importance  offering temptations to these powers than past conflicts in the Third World offered to the superpowers.  Eastern European states would have strong incentive to drag major powers into their local conflicts  since the results of conflict would be determined by the relative success of each party in finding allies. It is difficult to predict the precise balance of conventional military power that will emerge in post-Cold War Europe. The Soviet Union might recover its strength soon after withdrawing from Eastern Europe.  In this case, Soviet power would outmatch German power.  Or centrifugal national forces might pull the Soviet Union apart leaving no state equally powerful to a unified Germany. Germany and Soviet Union might emerge as equal strength powers.  With their marked military inequality between the two leading countries would be especially worrisome.  Although there would be cause for concern if their power were balanced. A non-nuclear Europe would likely be especially disturbed by hypernationalism,  Since security in such an order would rest on mass armies, which, as we have seen, often cannot be maintained without a mobilized public.  Problem would be most acute in Eastern Europe because of its uncertain borders and irredentist minority groups.  Germany has done well at combatting hypernationalism, but the recent call of some prominent Germans for a return to greater nationalism in historical education is worrisome. For all these reasons, it is perhaps just as well that a nuclear-free Europe, much as it may be longed for by so many Europeans, does not appear to be in the cards. The “Current Ownership” Scenario Under this scenario Britain, France, and the Soviet Union retain their nuclear weapons, but no new nuclear powers emerge in Europe. The Germans are not likely to be willing to rely on the Poles or the Czechs to provide their forward defense against a possible direct Soviet conventional attack on their homeland.  Nor are they likely to trust that the Soviet Union will not use nuclear blackmail against a non-nuclear Germany.  Hence they will eventually look to nuclear weapons as a means of security  just as NATO has done. Small states of Eastern Europe will have strong incentives to acquire nuclear weapons to avoid nuclear blackmail by major powers. Clearly, then, a scenario in which current ownership continues, without proliferation, seems very unlikely. The “Nuclear Proliferation” Scenario The most probable scenario in the wake of the Cold War is further nuclear proliferation in Europe.  Outcome is laden with dangers but might provide the best hope for maintaining stability.  Everything depends on how production is managed. Mismanaged proliferation could produce disaster; well-managed proliferation could produce an order nearly as stable as that of the Long Peace. Danger that could arise from mismanaged proliferation.  Could give one of the existing nuclear powers a strong incentive to stop a non-nuclear neighbor from joining the club  like when Israel used force to stop Iraq from acquiring a nuclear capability.  An unstable nuclear competition could emerge among new nuclear states.  They might lack resources to make their nuclear forces invulnerable  could create firststrike fears and incentives.  By increasing the number of fingers on the nuclear trigger, proliferation would increase the risk that nuclear weapons would be fired by accident or captured by terrorists or used by madmen. These dangers can be lessened if the current nuclear powers take the right steps.  They can extend security guarantees.  They can provide technical assistance to help new nuclear powers secure their deterrents.  They can help to socialize nascent nuclear societies to understand the lethal character of the forces they are acquiring. Proliferation should ideally stop with Germany. It has a large economic base, and so could afford to sustain a secure nuclear force.  Germany would feel insecure without nuclear weapons, and this could lead to the disturbance of tranquility in Europe. I am pessimistic that proliferation can be well managed.  The members of the nuclear club are likely to resist proliferation, but they cannot easily manage this tricky process while at the same time resisting it--and they will have several motives to resist. Established nuclear powers will be wary of helping new nuclear powers to build secure deterrent because it goes against the grain of state behavior to share military secrets with other states.  Knowledge of sensitive military technology could be turned against the donor state if that technology were passed on to adversaries. Proliferation in Europe will undermine legitimacy of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and this could open the floodgates of proliferation worldwide.  Current nuclear powers will not want this to happen so they will probably spend their energy trying to thwart proliferation instead of seeking to manage it. The best time for proliferation to occur would be during a period of relative international calm.  Proliferation amidst a crisis would be dangerous, since states in conflict with an emerging nuclear power would have powerful incentive to interrupt the process by force. However, opposition to proliferation by citizens of potential nuclear powers would be so heavy and the external resistance from the nuclear club so great, that it might take a crisis to make these powers willing to pay domestic and international costs of building a nuclear force.  Proliferation is likely to occur under international conditions that virtually ensure it will be mismanaged. Is War Obsolete? Many students of European politics will reject my pessimistic analysis of post-Cold War Europe. They will say that a multipolar Europe, with or without nuclear weapons, will be no less peaceful than the present order. Each of the scenarios (“soft” theories of peace) are flawed.  The First scenario would remain peaceful because Europeans recognize that even a conventional war would be horrific  national leader will try to avoid war.  The Second scenario rests on the "obsolescence of war" theory, which posits that modern conventional war had become so deadly by 1945 as to be unthinkable as an instrument of statecraft  war is yesterday’s nightmare. o Key flaw is the assumption that all conventional wars will be long and bloody  it is still possible to gain a quick and decisive victory on the conventional battlefield and avoid the devastation of a protracted conflict. o Conventional wars can be cheap, nuclear wars cannot because neither side can escape devastation by the other regardless of what happens on the battlefield. o Thus, the incentives to avoid war are of another order of intensity in a nuclear world than they are in a conventional world. o There is no systematic evidence demonstrating that Europeans believe war is obsolete. o Public opinion on national-security issues is fickle and responsive to manipulation by elites and changes in international environment. o Possibility that German thinking about the benefits of controlling Eastern Europe will change once American forces withdraw and Germans are left to provide for their own security  and that they would countenance a conventional war against a substantially weaker Eastern Europe state to enhance their position via-a-vis the Soviet Union. Finally, only one country need decide that war is thinkable to make war possible. Is Prosperity the path to peace? Proponents of the second optimistic scenario base their optimism about the future of Europe on the unified European market coming in 1992--the realization of the dream of the European Community.  A strong EC ensures the European economy status open and prosperous and can keep the states cooperating with one another.  Threat of an aggressive Germany removed by enclosing the newly unified Germany in the benign embrace of the EC. This scenario is based on the theory of economic liberalism, which assumes that states are primarily motivated by the desire to achieve prosperity and that leaders place the material welfare of their publics above all other considerations, including security.  Stability flows from the creation of a liberal economic order, not from military power. A liberal economic order works in several ways to enhance peace and dampen conflict.  Requires significant political cooperation to make the trading system work  makes states richer.  The more prosperous a state grows, the greater their incentive for further political cooperation.  Benevolent spiral relationship sets in between political cooperation and prosperity. A liberal economic order fosters economic interdependence  where states are mutually vulnerable in the economic realm.  When interdependence is high  there is less temptation to cheat or behave aggressively toward other states because all states can retaliate economically. Finally, some theorists argue, an international institution like the EC will, with ever increasing political cooperation, become so powerful that it will take on a life of its own, eventually evolving into a superstate. In short, Mrs. Thatcher's presentiments about the EC are absolutely right.  Flaw  main assumption underpinning it is wrong.  States are not primarily motivated by the desire to achieve prosperity.  Survival in an anarchic international political system is the highest goal a state can have. Proponents of economic liberalism largely ignore the effects of anarchy on state behavior and concentrate instead on economic motives.  When this omission is corrected, their arguments collapse for two reasons. o Competition for security makes it difficult for states to cooperate, which according to theory of economic liberalism, they must do. o When security is scarce, states become more concerned about relative than absolute gains. o The reject even cooperation that will yield an absolute economic gain if the other state will gain more, from fear that the other might convert its gain to military strength and then use this strength to win by coercion in later rounds.  Cooperation is much easier to achieve if states worry only about absolute gains.  Goal  ensure the overall economic pie is expanding and that each sate is getting at least some part of that increase. However, anarchy guarantees that security will often be scarce; this heightens states' concerns about relative gains, which makes cooperation difficult unless the pie can be finely sliced to reflect, and thus not disturb, the current balance of power. Interdependence is likely to lead to conflict as to cooperation because states will struggle to escape vulnerability that it creates, in order to bolster their national security.  In time of crisis or war, states that depend on others for critical economic supplies will fear cutoff or blackmail; they may well respond by trying to seize the source of supply by force of arms. EX. Japan and Germany during interwar period. EX. During Arab oil embargo of early 1970s, talk of America using military force to seize Arab oil fields. In twentieth-century Europe two periods saw liberal economic order with high levels of interdependence. According to the theory of economic liberalism, stability should have obtained during those periods. It did not.  First case  contradicts economic liberals. 1890 – 1914: time of greatest economic interdependence in Europe’s history yet those years led to WWI.  Second case  Cold war years: much interdependence among EC states and peaceful relations  centerpiece of economic liberals’ argument. We see a correlation in this period between interdependence and stability but that does not mean that interdependence has caused cooperation among the Western democracies.  More likely the Cold War was the prime cause of cooperation among the Western democracies, and the main reason that intra-EC relations have flourished.  Potentially dangerous Soviet Union forced western democracies to band together to meet a common threat  threat muted concerns about relative gains by giving each Western democracy interest in seeing its alliance powers grow powerful. America’s hegemonic position in NATO, the military counterpart to EC, mitigated effects of anarchy and induced cooperation.  America provided protection against Soviet threat and guaranteed o EC state would aggress against another  allowed states to grow their economies to become tightly interdependent. Take away the present Soviet threat to Western Europe, send the American forces home, and relations among the EC states will be fundamentally altered.  Without common Soviet threat or American night watchman, Western European states suspicious of each other.  Worry about imbalance in gains and loss of autonomy that results from cooperation  conflict more likely. In sum, there are good reasons for being skeptical about the claim that a more powerful EC can provide the basis for peace in a multipolar Europe. Do Democracies really love peace? Under the third scenario war is avoided because many European states have become democratic since the early twentieth century, and liberal democracies simply do not fight one another.  At minimum  presence of liberal democracies in Western Europe renders that hald of Europe is free from armer conflict.  At maximum  democracy spreads to Eastern Europe and Soviet Union = peace. The idea that peace is cognate with democracy is a vision of international relations shared b y liberals and neoconservatives. “Peace-loving democracies theory” First  Authoritarians more likely to go to war than leaders of democracies, because they aren’t accountable to their public who carry main burden of war.  People more hesitant to start trouble and speak against war, less power or say  the greater their power, the fewer wars. o Flaw  not possible to sustain this claim. o Just as likely to fight wars as are authoritarian states, not with other democracies though. o Mass public can become deeply imbued with nationalistic fervor, prone to aggression and indifferent to costs. o Authoritarian leaders often fearful of going to war because war tends to unleash democratic forces that can undermine the regime  war can impose high costs on authoritarian leaders as well as their citizenry. Second  citizens of liberal democracies respect popular democratic rights and view democratic governments as more legitimate than others.  Won’t impose foreign regime on a democratic state by force, an inhibition on war missing from other international relationships is introduced when two democracies face each other. o The second argument, which emphasizes the transnational respect for democratic rights among democracies, rests on a secondary factor that is generally overridden by other factors such as nationalism and religious fundamentalism. o Possibility that a democracy will revert to an authoritarian state  one democratic state can never be sure that another democratic state will not turn on it sometime in the future. It appears that no liberal democracies have ever fought against each other – this issue is in doubt. First:  Democracies have been few in numbers over past two centuries  not many cases where there were any in a position to fight.  Three prominent cases  Britain and US (1832-present); Britain and France (1832-1849 and 1871-1940); and Western democracies since 1945. Second:  Explanations why war didn’t occur for these cases… must be ruled out before theory of peace-loving democracies can be accepted. o British and Americans not blissful in nineteenth century, but harmonious in the twentieth  because common threats forced them to work together. o Same thing with British and French. o Soviet threat goes far in explaining absence of war among Western democracies since 1945. Third:  Third, several democracies have come close to fighting each other, suggesting that the absence of war may be due simply to chance. o France and Britain approached war during the Fashoda crisis of 1898. o France and Weimar Germany might have come to blows over the Rhineland during the 1920s. o The United States has clashed with a number of elected governments in the Third World during the Cold War, including the Allende regime in Chile and the Arbenz regime in Guatemala. o Last, some would classify Wilhelmine Germany as a democracy, or at least a quasi-democracy; if so, the First World War becomes a war among democracies. While the spread of democracy across Europe has great potential benefits for human rights, it will not guarantee peaceful relations among the states of post-Cold War Europe.  Most Americans find this argument counterintuitive  they see US as peace-loving due to their democratic behavior  generalize that democracies are more peaceful than authoritarian states  democratization of Europe would eliminate the threat of war. Missing the Cold War Developments that threaten to end the Cold war are dangerous  the West has an interest in maintaining peace in Europe.  Therefore, maintaining Cold war order  interest to continue Cold war confrontation.  Complete end to the cold war would create more problems than it would solve. The fate of the Cold war is mainly in the hands of the Soviet Union.  Only superpower that could overrun Europe  take this threat away and America will likely abandon the continent.  This will bring an end to the bipolar order that has kept peace of Europe for past 45 years. There is little the Americans or Western Europeans can do to prolong the Cold War.  Domestic politics prevent it  western leaders cannot base national-security policy on the need to maintain forces in Central Europe just to keep Soviets there.  Idea of propping up a declining rival counters the basic behavior of states. States are principally concerned about their relative power in the system  they look for opportunities to take advantage of one another.  States do not ask which distribution of power best facilitates stability and then do everything possible to build or maintain such an order.  They prefer to see adversaries decline and do what they can to speed the process and maximize distance of the fall.  Each pursues the narrower aim of maximizing its power advantage over potential adversaries. The remarkably stable system that emerged in Europe in the late 1940s was the unintended consequence of an intense competition between the superpowers.  The Soviet Union is leaving Eastern Europe and cutting its military forces largely because its economy is floundering badly.  US should try to prevent a complete withdrawal from Europe. Should complete Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe prove unavoidable, the West would confront the question of how to maintain peace in a multipolar Europe. Three policy prescriptions are in order. First  US should encourage limited and carefully managed proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe.  Best hope for avoiding war in post-Cold war Europe is nuclear deterrence.  Ideally, nuclear weapons would spread to Germany but to no other state. Second  Britain and the US, and continental states, will have to counter any emerging aggressor actively and efficiently to offset the ganging up and bullying that will likely arise postcold war.  Because of geography or problems of coordination, both being physically separate from the continent could mean they don’t care what happens  this mistake that resulted in both states failing to counter Germany in the past cannot happen again. Both states must maintain military forces that can be deployed against Continental states that threaten to start a war.  Must persuade their citizens to support a policy of continued Continental commitment  This will be more difficult than it once was, because its principal purpose will be to preserve peace, rather than to prevent an imminent hegemony, and the prevention of hegemony is a simpler goal to explain publicly.  This is an unaccustomed task, as the basic nature of states is to focus on maximizing relative power, not on bolstering stability. If the Soviets adhere to status quo policies, they could play a key role in countering Germany and maintaining order in Eastern Europe.  Important that the US cooperate with its former adversary. Third  a concerted effort should be made to keep hypernationalism at bay, especially in Eastern Europe.  Nationalism likely to reemerge once Soviet and American forces leave the heart of Europe.  The teaching of honest national history is important to avoid hypernationalism.  States that teach a dishonestly self-exculpating or self-glorifying history should be publicly criticized and sanctioned. None of these tasks will be easy. In fact, I expect that the bulk of my prescriptions will not be followed; most run contrary to important strains of domestic American and European opinion, and to the basic nature of state behavior. And even if they are followed, peace in Europe will not be guaranteed. If the Cold War is truly behind us, therefore, the stability of the past forty-five years is not likely to be seen again in the coming decades. EXTRA NOTES: o The new Europe will involve multi-polar distribution of power which was plagued with war from the founding of the European state system. o Post-war era more peaceful due to multipolar distribution of power in Europe and the imbalance of strength that developed among the great powers as they fought for supremacy. o Bipolar system more peaceful because they demand allegiance from minor powers which are secure from each other as well as from the attack by the rival great power. o Deterrence is difficult to maintain in a multi-polar state system because when power asymmetries develop, the strong become hard to deter. A major power might simply bully a weaker power in a one on one encounter which is unknown in a bipolar state. The resolve of opposing states and the size and strength of opposing coalitions are hard to calculate because the shape of international order to remain in flux. The aggressors can coerce others by bluffing war. o o The size of the gap in military power between two leading states in the system is a key determinant of stability. Small gaps foster peace, large gaps promote war. o Nuclear weapons are a powerful force for peace. States that possess nuclear deterrents can stand up to one another o The single greatest domestic threat to peace is hypernationalism o Bipolarity, an equal balance of military power and nukes, are the key to elements for the long peace. o Without nukes, Europe would have crisis, tension, and possibly war. USSR and unified Germany would be the most powerful states. Europe would be disturbed by hypernationalism. o A scenario in which current ownership continues without proliferation seems very unlikely. The Germans will eventually look to nuclear weapons as the surest means of security. o The most probable scenario is further nuclear proliferation in Europe. Well-managed proliferation could help bolster peace. By increasing the number of fingers on the nuclear trigger, proliferation would increase the risk that nuclear weapons would be fired by accident or captured by terrorists or used by madmen o The best time for nuclear proliferation to occur would be during a time of relative international calm o Obsolescence of war theory posits that modern conventional war had become do deadly by 1945 as to be unthinkable as an instrument of state craft. The fact that WWII occurred casts doubts on this theory. The key flaw is the assumption that all conventional wars will be long and bloody wars of attrition. o There is no systematic evidence that Europeans believe war is obsolete. o Prosperity will make for peace (unified European Market). This scenario is based on economic liberalism which assumes that states are primarily motivated by the desire to achieve prosperity and that leaders place the material welfare of their publics above all other considerations including security. Stability flows from creation of a liberal economic order o A liberal economic order requires significant political cooperation to make states richer. It fosters economic interdependence. When interdependence is high, there is less temptation to cheat or behave aggressively toward other states because all states can retaliate economically. o This theory has one grave flaw: states operate in both an international political and international economic environment and the former dominates the latter when the two systems come into conflict o When security is scarce, states become more concerned with relative than absolute gains o In times of crisis or war, states that depend on others for economic critical supplies will fear cutoff or blackmail. They may respond by trying to seize the source of supply by force of arms o The cold war was the prime cause of cooperation among western democracies and the main reason intra-EC relations have flourished o Without a common soviet threat or an American night watchman, western European states will look upon one another with abiding suspicion o War is avoided under the peace-loving democracies theory because liberal democracies simply do not fight one another. In a democracy, the citizens are more hesitant to start trouble because it is they who must pay the price. Citizens of a liberal democracy respect popular democratic rights and democratic governments are viewed as or legitimate than others o The west has an interest in maintaining the cold war order and has an interest in continuing the cold war confrontation o The fate of the cold war is mainly in the hands of the Soviet Union How to maintain peace in a multi-polar Europe: 1) US should encourage the limited and carefully managed proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe. 2) Britain and the US and continental state will have to counter any emerging aggressor actively and efficiently in order to offset the hanging up and bullying that are sure to arise in post-cold war Europe. Both states must maintain military forces that can be deployed against continental states that threaten to start a war. 3) A concerted effort should be made to keep hypernationalism at bay. States that teach a dishonestly self-exculpating or self-glorifying history should be publicly (punished?) and sanctioned. o Power inequalities invite war because they increase an aggressor’s prospects for victory. o The size of the gap in military power between the two leading states in the system is a key determinant of stability: small gaps foster peace; larger gaps promote war.