Development and war

Question 1

(I). Charles Tilly: War Made the State:

Question 2

“State Made War and

Answer 2

war made the state

Question 3

• Tilly argues that

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through a process of natural selection, in which weak states were destroyed by the strong in numerous wars, only the strongest states survived.

Question 4

• In effect, for Tilly, it is not possible to distinguish between war

Answer 4

Development

Question 5

(II). Capitalist Imperialism and War:

Answer 5

• Many theorists, such as Karl Marx, Johan Galtung, and Noam Chomsky have identified the link between capitalism and imperialism:
  o They all argue along the lines that because of the diminishing rate of return on capital investment in domestic industries, there is significant pressure to export capital abroad to increase the rate of return.
  o Also, there was a problem of overproduction and the need for new markets.

Question 6

• However, Lenin’s hypothesis is both theoretically and empirically flawed:

Answer 6

o (1). Theoretically, if capitalism wanted to maximize the return on investment, then they would have gone to war sooner over vital territories, ignoring the poorer areas.
 Statistics: There is evidence that capitalism causes peace (Schneider and Gleditsch 2010). Contract intensive societies is also associated with decreased inter-state conflict (Mousseau, 2009, 2012).
o (2). Most historical evidence shows that “trade followed the flag,” meaning that empires were established before commercial interests were present.
 This argument was popularized by the pacifist Bertrand Russell. This came to be called the scandal school theory.
 Jacob Viner (March 1929) found little evidence of this relationship.
o (3). China was never colonized and global war occurred sooner, and all the capitalists were allies, not enemies as Lenin had hypothesized.
 France, England, and the United States fought together, and the United States have very few colonies: the Philippines and Cuba.
 The war occurred not over the colonies but over territory, Alsace and Lorraine, and allies, such as Serbia, in the heart of Europe.
 In fact, it has been argued that the colonial period shifted military effort and wars from Europe to non-Europe.
* This is termed the safety-valve hypothesis, because it was argued that colonial pursuits actually decrease the incidence of major-power war.
o (4). Finally, Lenin’s most fundamental assumption, that the flag follows trade: that European militaries colonized parts of the world that had trade potential, is wrong.
 In fact, trade followed the flag more often than not, with perhaps the exception of the millennium-old European fascination with trade with China.
 Statistical evidence: Control over colonies and multinational corporations are positively linked with the incidence of international conflict (Alcock and Young 1974).

Question 7

*lenin He therefore tried to explain the rise of European imperialism, and hypothesized that

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the Europeans would cooperate dividing up the world until they ran out of colonies.

Question 8

Nazli Choucri: Lateral Pressure Theory:

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• This research program is termed Lateral Pressure Theory, and argues that as states develop economically and their populations increase, they make demands on international resources, called lateral pressure, and that this increases the use of military force and the likelihood of war

Question 9

Jack Snyder: Over-expansion:

Answer 9

Jack Snyder, using domestic economic development, explains why extreme over-expansion has been common among some of the great powers. By over-expansion Snyder meant expanding in such a way as to provoke overwhelming counter-coalitions.

Question 10

Jack Snyder: Over-expansion, provides 3 prerequisites for over-expansion:

Answer 10

o (1) Belief in the domino theory (the belief that gains and losses are cumulative).
 The domino theory is a belief that argues that expansion adds to the state’s strength in terms of the state’s ability to defend itself, because it adds resources, and that this permits further expansion.
 The inverse of the belief is that losses on the periphery lead eventually to collapse of the center because of a loss of those resources, and that this decline is impossible to stop.
o (2) Belief in the Offensive Advantage.
 Offensive advantage operates under the principle that the best defense is a good offense.
 Cumulative gains and the avoidance of cumulative losses in the imperial periphery can be reaped through aggressive actions.
 The best and cheapest way is to avoid cascading dominoes is to prevent the 1-st domino from falling.
o (3) Belief in Paper Tigers and Bandwagoning.
 A belief in Paper Tigers implies that opponents will back-down if faced with threats.
 A Paper Tiger is a state believed to have aggressive intentions but weak capability.
 States also behave according to bandwagoning logic: they will join the side with the stronger appearance.

Question 11

o Balance of power logic argues that

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states will balance against the largest single threat to the system by joining a larger defensive coalition.
o Therefore, by over-expanding, you are provoking a self-encirclement by making unnecessary enemies.

Question 12

A belief in the domino theory, offensive advantages, and bandwagoning, tends to lead to

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the need for aggressive foreign polices:

Question 12

In the early industrializers, such as England, France and the United States, democracy prevailed because

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of the absence of intense pressure to force industrialization for security reasons.

Question 13

In late-late developers, there emerged unitary political systems ruled by a dictator, such as the Communist Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, or Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler which

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had to rebuild following reparations and the depression.

Question 14

Countries where the timing of industrialization started only moderately late, as in Germany, Japan, and Italy, had sought a political system more

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centralized than democracy to facilitate industrialization, but the state could not overcome powerful domestic groups, such as the military, urban industrialists, the state bureaucracy, traditional landowners, and finance capitalists focused abroad, to centralize the state.

Question 15

• The link between logrolling in cartelized states and over-expansion is as follows:

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o (1). These narrow groups create logrolled coalitions between the diverse interests of different domestic groups, in which each member derives a benefit from the promotion of the shared goal.
 While this solves the collective action problem, it makes learning difficult because once the logrolled coalition is formed, no one group is actually in charge.
o (2). This logrolled coalition pays for over-expansion by capturing the state and using its tax revenues. It also uses the state’s control over information to obtain a monopoly of information and through propaganda to popularize the three aforementioned myths of imperialism.
o (3). The logrolled coalition falls victim to its own propaganda and comes to believe that expansion is necessary, and this is reinforced by pressure from the masses that have either come to accept the imperial myths or segments of which have joined the logrolled coalition.
 This elite self-delusion is termed blowback, and describes propaganda that has taken on a life of its own.
o (4). Logrolled coalitions have diverse interests that combine into imperialism, and taken individually are low-risk and moderate, but taken together constitute over-expansion.
o (5). Some of the members of the logrolled coalitions inevitably will fall into relative decline, such as the traditional landowners relative to the urban capitalists.
 This leads them to shorten their time horizon, increase their risk-acceptance, and to advocate aggressive foreign policies to regain their original power position.

Question 16

Criticism

Answer 16

• Realist critics argue that over-expansion cannot be derived from domestic level variables because it is a systemic level outcome occurring between states.
  o The same cartelized behavior in one geopolitical setting may not produce the same amount of self-encirclement in another geo-political setting.
• Critics also point out that the benefits of late development do not apply to late-late-late developers because of dependency:
  o The entry costs of capitalism are too high and therefore states are actually structurally inhibited from developing by the most advanced capitalist states.
  o This criticism is weakened by the fact of development in states such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
• The current relevance of Snyder’s theory is wonder about the political structural effects of industrialization in states such as China, India, and Iran, and to see whether these structures will produce the cartelisation necessary for the promotion of over-expansion.