International Security

Question 1

Learning Objectives

Answer 1

• Define war and its types
  
  • Examine scope of armed conflict historically
  • Understand war’s causes
  • Consider decline of war thesis

Question 2

Categorizing War
Armed conflict can occur:

Answer 2

Armed conflict can occur:
* Between states (interstate)
* Between a state and a non-state armed group within its territory (intrastate) or outside of it (extra systemic)
* Between non-state armed groups (non-state)
* Between an armed group and civilians (one sided violence)

Question 3

Why do states go to war?

Answer 3

• Information asymmetries
  
  • Commitment problems
  • Issue indivisibility

Question 4

Information asymmetries

Answer 4

• Capability
  
  • Resolve
  • War Costs
  • When the other side knows things and you don’t vice versa

Question 5

Commitment Problems

Answer 5

• States may be unable to commit themselves to following through on an agreement and may also have incentives to renege on it.
  
  • There’s no penalty for reneging on the promises
  • Saying you’re going to do something and getting others to believe you–may be lying–less credible

Question 6

Issue Indivisibility

Answer 6

• Lots of issues (territory) that cant be divided –two people cant take half and half
  
  • Any effort at resolution would have to find a way to share–zero sum (mine or nothing)
  • Makes compromise hard and a lot of pressure for violence

Question 7

The case for Decline-ism

Answer 7

• There’s some sense that war is on a decline
  
  • Wars between great powers particularly
  • Careful political agreements (league of nations)–ww11 happened right after
  • We are not experiencing war to nearly the same quantity that we have before
  • Stable well governed states has made the cline of war go down over time

Different Answers
* Harder to kill in modern warfare–fewer people dying, not less intense or less war, we have gotten a lot better at tending to wounded people in the battlefield because of modern medicine–medics in war, better equipment, nature of tactics, however, People are still fighting a lot
* The odds–people are skeptical because even though we’ve been through a long period of peace, it hasn’t been long enough that we can rule out that this has just been happening because of chance. 80 years since ww11–probability of seeing no wars is lower than seeing 1 or 2. the chances of seeing no wars is still reasonably large, however 2 or 3 times less than seeing 1 or 2 wars. It could just be random chance