All of it Flashcards
What are national interests?
Interests attributed to the state itself, usually security and power.
When is an action strategic?
When it’s influenced by expected actions of others.
What is a (political) interest?
What actors want to achieve through political action –> preferences over outcomes that might result from their political choices.
Rational actor approaches of decision making
Actors adopt strategies to obtain desired outcomes given what they believe to be the interests and likely actions of others.
How may we understand an actor’s positions and choices?
By adopting their mindset to understand their goals, interests, and constraints. (=Einschränkungen)
What’s cooperation
Two or more actors choose a policy that makes at least one better off relative to the status quo whithout making the others worse off.
What’s coercion? (= Nötigung)
Threat or imposition of costs to get an actor to do something it does not want to do.
What’s compellence? (=Zwang)
An effort to change the status quo through the threat of force.
What’s deterrence?
(Definition, not Dr Strangelove)
An effort to preserve the status quo by threatening the other side with unacceptable costs if it seeks to alter the current relationship.
(2) Types of deterrence
- Deterrence by denial (ex ante): lowering the likelihood that an adversary will achieve its aims. (e.g. build a wall)
- Deterrence by punishment (ex post): imposing costs on the adversary in the event of an attack. (e.g. ICJ persecution for…)
Interplay of defense and deterrence
Defense: defending when attack has begun
Defense capabilities play into the deterrence equation.
Two core questions of nuclear deterrence theory for the US during the Cold War
- How to prevent attacks on the US and its allies abroad?
- How to wield (=eingesetzt werden) nuclear threats to gain bargaining advantages over the Soviet Union?
Definition of deterrence
Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack. (Dr. Strangelove)
Three key komponents of nuclear deterrence
- Rationality
- Credibility
- Means, perception, communication (deterrence only works if threats are communicated to the adversary)
Paradoxes of MAD (mutually assured distruction)
+ solution
Under MAD, the threat of nuclear retaliation implies suicide and is therefore hardly credible, i.e. not a straightforward deterrent.
Nuclear war must be made more likely for it to become less likely.
Solution: Doomsday machine, burning bridges
Why do individuals rebel?
Dissatisfaction with the status quo
Rebels usually claim public goods as their goods. How is a public good defined?
- non-rivalry
- non-excludable
The rebel’s dilemma
For a rebellion to succeed, individuals have to participate. Participation is costly/ risky –> free-riding problem, cause even those who don’t participate profit from potential gains
Solutions to rebel’s dilemma
- Changing material incentives to participate
- Ideology
- Rebel institutions/ self-government
- Introducing hierarchy
When is the rebel’s dilemma valid?
(obvious)
If collective action is risky relative to nonparticipation
Parkinson (2013): the role of organizational and social context (to a rebellion)
- social networks are the backbone of a rebellion
- not all rebels fight at the frontlines
- everyday social networks are central to mobilization, organization and growth of rebellion
Shesterinina (2016): The role of social structures and threat perception (to a rebellion)
- how do individuals form their threat perception in civil war?
- social structures and networks filter information and lead to collective threat framing
Types of conflicts and their goals
Territorial conflicts:
- separatist conflicts: Non-state actor want to seperate a territory to form an independent state
- Irredentist conflicts: Non-state actor wants to detach a territory from one country and ‘reunite’ it with another
Conflicts about the government:
- Non-state actors try to seize control of the government
Types of Warfare
- Conventional warfare: Symmetric military technologies between adversaries. They can directly confront each other.
- Irregular warfare: Asymmetric military capabilities that priviledge the state. Non-state actors can challenge and harass the state, but lack the capacity to confront in a direct and frontal way.
- Symmetric, non-conventional warfare: Both sides lack advanced military capabilities
Types of conflict: Number of actors
Conventional two actor conflicts with one non-state armed group challenging the state
Multi-actor conflicts
- External supporters
- Tend to last longer
- Veto players make solutions harder
Which factors favor the occurence of a civil conflict?
- Collier & Hoeffler: Opportunity structure favorable to greedy bandit rebellion
- Fearon & Laitin: State weakness, large population, instability
Definition of nationalism
Collective action designed to bring in accordance the national boundaries with those of its government.
- Distinction between included and excluded groups
What’s a necessary condition for a conflict?
Dissatisfaction with the status quo
What does conflict prediction do?
Aims to build models that will help assess the probability of civil conflict. May aim at predicting conflict onset, escalation, continuation
What’s coercion?
Attempting to influence outcome of a dispute by threatening the use of force: “Do what I ask or else!”
What is bargaining?
Bargaining is about deciding how to divide the object of a dispute between two players.
Why do people fight, if war is not the preferred manner of sorting out problems?
- War is a substitute for diplomacy
Why is there a bargaining range between two players?
Because war is ex-post inefficient!
The existence of a bargaining range implies that both players should always have incentives to locate peaceful settlements that avoid the cost of war.
what is the puzzle of war?
+ Three logically consistent solutions to the puzzle (!)
Both sides would be better off if they agreed to divide up the contested good rather than fighting a costly war.
- Incomplete information
- Commitment problems
- Indivisibility (war occurs when both sides prefer war to getting nothing)
Bargaining theory:
Name a theoretical example for commitment problems
Prisoners dilemma
Bargaining theory:
By what are commitment problems caused?
Actors expect a power-shift in the future.
Bargaining theory:
Variants of commitment problems
- Bargaining over objects that are a source of future bargaining power (e.g. strategic territory)
- Prevention: war in response to changing power
- Preemption: War in response to first-strike advantages
Criticism of bargaining model
- Focus on process up to war, what comes after war is missing
- Two-player action
- Information failure due to cognitive biases
How to avoid war according to the bargaining model? (5 but actually 3)
- Raising the cost
- Increasing transparency
- Dividing apparently indivisible goods
- Providing outside enforcement of commitments
- (Raising the utility of peace)
What do states fight over? (3)
- Territory
- National policy
- Regime type
Militarized Interstate Disputes (definition)
Interactions involving:
1. Threat to use of force
2. Display of force
3. Actual use of military force
Levels of analysis in int’l conflict (3)
- Individuals
- States
- Int’l system
Often interconnected
(Dyadic) democratic peace
(Tipp: Hatten wir schon bei Neyer)
Pairs of democracies are less likely to fight than other pairs of states.
Explaining the democratic peace (2 explanations)
- Normative explanation:
- Democratic norms promote compromise
- Non-dem. have norms in which political conflicts are more likely to be resolved through violence - Institutional explanation:
- War is costly, so generally unpopular among publics
- In dem., leaders are generally more reliant on public support than non-dem. are
audience costs!
- Dem. are less able to bluff
What are audience costs?
Punishment of leaders who fail to:
1. fulfill their commitments
2. pursue a policy that the audience wants
What is a consequence of audience costs (for int’l politics)?
- As audience costs are higher in democracies, threats coming from democracies are more likely to be taken seriously than those coming from autocrats
What’s delegation?
An act where one person or group, called a principal, relies on another person or group, called an agent, to act on the principal’s behalf.
Short: agent acts on the principal‘s behalf.
Risks / perils (= risk) of delegation
- perils arise from the fact that power is delegated
- people to whom power is delegated may abuse this power
What’s agency loss?
Describes the difference between the ‘perfect’ and ‘actual’ outcome from delegation.
Why is terrorism and its definition highly controversial
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter
What is terrorism?
(adjectives and how they ‚work‘)
- political
- violent or threatening violence
- usually asymmetric
- designed to have far-reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target
- conducted by an individual, an organization with a chain of command or conspirational cell structure
What is the fundamental question of terrorism?
Why would weak political actors engage in political violence against more powerful ones?
The strategic logic of terrorism
- Terrorist organizations are too weak to impose their will directly by force of arms
- Bluffing is insufficient
- terrorism is a form of costly signalling
Terrorist strategies vs tactics
Strategy:
A high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty and finite resources. e.g. intimidation
Tactic:
A conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks (e.g. hijacks, suicide bombings)
The strategies of terrorism (Kydd and Walter) (5)
- Attrition (=Abnutzung): Demonstrate capacity and resilience
- Intimidation: Intimidate to pressure the gov to change policies.
- Provocation: Provoke gov until disproportional reaction to prove the gov is “evil”
- Spoiling: spoiling peace process by convincing the target the moderates cannot be trusted
- Outbidding (=Überbietung): outbidding opponent
What is state repression?
Actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual, for imposing a cost on the target as well as deterring specific activities and / or beliefs perceived to be challenging to gov personnel, practices or institutions.
Why measure state repression?
Measurement of state abuse of violence to support truth, accountability, reconciliation, memory
How to measure state repression (3)?
- Events-based measures (collecting info of repressive events)
- Standards-based measures (aggregate widely comparable measure of represion)
- (Survey based measures)
Why do states use repression?
Coercive (=zwingende) responsiveness
(Increases the costs of collective action)
How do fully democratic regimes deal with repression?
- increase the costs of using repression
- democratic values are in contrast to repression
Dealing with repression: autocracies vs democracies
- All leaders desire to stay in office.
- Leaders with large winning coalitions (dem) more interested in broad support of the population.
- Leaders with small winning coalitions (autocracies) more interested in keeping small circle of elites happy, and the rest quiet.
repression in democracies
(Targets, methods, accountability)
- Targets: outsiders and minorities
- methods: hard to detect methods
- accountability: blame-shifting
Definition of ‘civilian’
A civilian is anyone who is not a member of the armed forces or of an organized armed group.
Forms of violence against civilians
- genocide
- ethnic cleansing
- mass killings
- one-sided violence
What’s a genocide / ethnic cleansing?
The purposeful policy designed by one ethnic/ political group to remove by violent means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group.
What’s mass killing?
Intentional killing of massive number of noncombatants.
–> massive number: at least 50k
Targeted vs indiscriminate violence
selective/ targeted violence:
Targets are chosen on the basis of individualized suspicion
indiscriminate violence:
Targeting not based on individualized suspicion.
What explains violence against civilians?
- violence as a warfare strategy
- NOT just an by-product of war
- pre 1990: ‘collateral damage’
- Desperation: civilian victimization as tactic to force an armed actor to cease fighting
What’s the ‘draining the sea’-strategy concerning violence against civilians?
Military strategy to disrupt civilian support of the enemy
The logic of indiscriminate (=wahllos) violence
If the ‘guilty’ cannot be identified, then attack those who are somehow associated with them.
Reasons for joining an armed group
- material incentives
- ideological incentives
The Commander’s Dilemma
- Create a fighting force that is capable of unhesitating violence while
- maintain control over the level, form and targeting of violence
What explains sexual violence in armed conflicts?
Combatant socialization
Combatant socialization
Involuntary recruitment creates weak social ties and cohesion –> Sexual violence to contribute to cohesion (=Zusammenhalt)
Key lessons from research on sexual violence
- Not all actors perpetrate sexual violence in armed conflicts, solutions must be actor specific
- sometimes it’s ordered directly to hurt civilians
What’s a cyber attack?
Deliberate action to disrupt computer systems/ networks or the contained information.
Key features of cyber attacks
- No direct attack on target.
- No physical limitation
What’s cyber warfare?
State cyber attacks aimed at penetrating the computers or networks of another state to cause damage or disruption.
Three conventional beliefs about cyber warfare
- Asymmetry: Low entry barriers & anonymity protects weak actors
- Offensive-dominance: Cyber attacks are easier than cyber defense, few security considerations in design of the internet
- Deterrence-failure/ attribution problem: If attribution is not accurate, assured retaliation will be hard to implement.
The trilemma of cyber operations
Successful cyber operations need to ideally maximize speed, intensity, and control. Increasing two of these will diminish the third.
Tobler’s first law of geography
Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things (geographically).
Conflict trap
- conflicts causes / begets (= erzeugt) conflict
- same countries tend to be afflicted over and over again
Galton’s Problem
Clustering of crisis could be due to:
- common shock (e.g. draught) or
- cause of interdependence
Contagion (= Ansteckung):
Mechanisms of diffusion (of conflicts)
(5)
- Competition
- Coercion (= Nötigung): Dominant actors directly coerce weaker actors to adopt policy changes.
- Learning: Adopting policies with beneficial outcomes
- Emulation (= Nachahmung)
- Transnational actors
How does civil war spread?
Through cultural ties and the movement of people
Refugees and civil wars:
Mechanisms leading to conflict
-
Direct fighting:
With refugees, “importation” of combatants, arms, ideologies –> facilitate spread of conflict. -
Indirect fighting:
Provision of resources, support of domestic groups of similar ethnicity or political faction. -
Changing balance of power:
Refugee flows can change the ethnic balance in a country. - Refugees as “threat”
Correlation of refugees & terrorism?
Refugee inflows per se do not influence terrorism in the host country
(How) does climate change influence conflict?
Climate change is not the cause of armed conflict, but it may be a multiplier
Buhaug’s points (on climate & refugees/ conflict)
- Climate conditions correlate with armed conflict
- Conflict itself causes vulnerabilities to climatic changes
- Climatic changes may be a cause of conflict
- Existing studies have many limitations, incl. selection bias
- Climatic changes may spark conflict only where the breeding ground is right
What’s peacekeeping in (int’l affairs)?
What does it include?
The deployment of int’l personnel to help maintain peace and security.
Includes conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement, peacekeeping.
Principles of peacekeeping
- Consent of the parties
- Impartiality (= Unparteilichkeit)
- Non-use of force except in self-defense and defence of the mandate
Generations of UN peacekeeping
- Generation: Cold War: Non-violent, mainly for monitoring and establishing buffer zones (Lebanon, Cyprus)
- Generation: Late 80s: Incl military/police
- Generation: 90s onwards: Permission to use force to defend mandate, monitor/ assist HR / elections (Rwanda, Balkans)
- Generation: late 90s/early 00s: ‘Brahimi Report’, more strategic operations, more resources, more staff
Geopolitics of peacekeeping
- Security Council often ‘paralyzed’ by geopolitics
- Whether/ when states consent to PKO on their territory is impacted by geopolitics (e.g. Mali)
Women and peacekeeping:
- Key for peacekeeping
- Where could there be some improvement?
Key for peacekeeping: call for increased participation of women at all levels
Improvement: Protection against sexual violence, preventing sexual exploitation and abuse BY peacekeepers
Why peacekeeping can/ should work
Why peacekeeping can/ should work: - Deterrence
- Increasing the benefits of peace
- providing information / reducing mistrust
- neutral enforcement
Critique to peacekeeping (missions)
- Dominant peacekeeping/-building culture shaped interveners’ understanding
- assumptions about the reasons for violence
- cookie-cutter-/ one-size-fits-all-approach
Why would peacekeeping NOT work?
- peacekeepers don’t have resources to apply enough “sticks and carrots”
- peacekeeping is itself not credible
- peacekeepers cannot be trusted
- What happens when peacekeepers leave?
