leaders personality

Question 1

what did waltz say “”
what does it mean

Answer 1

• In Waltz’s seminal work, ‘man, state, and war’ he argued that human nature is constant, but war varies (sometimes happens, sometimes doesn’t) and so, human nature does not cause war
• This means that we can ignore all peoples individual nature and characteristics as they cannot be relevant to whether people go to war or not

Question 2

what is the miracle of the house in brandenburg

Answer 2

The miracle of the house of Brandenburg- how individual leader preferences can determine foreign policy behavior

Tsarina Elizabeth (leader of the Prussians) hated Frederick the great and wanted to kill him and weaken Austria, but she suddenly died. So Peter the third came to power who loved Frederick the third and thus told the Prussian army to stop attacking, almost overnight. This demonstrates how individual leader preferences (tsarina Elizabeth vs peter the thirds preferences) can determine foreign policy behavior. Peter the third contributed to the development of Prussia which became Germany which started World War one and two and the holocaust.

Question 3

what did WHITLARK look at

Answer 3

J.F. Kennedy vs Johnson
Leader beliefs: Different people have different beliefs due to different experiences. For example, threat perception.

Whitlark looked at whether US leaders and willing to use force to stop other countries from getting a nuclear weapon
- argued that the willingness to use force depends on beliefs about consequences of nuclear proliferation (that being other states getting nuclear weapons) and whether they belief in deterrence or not
- Kennedy was a proliferation pessimist he was very worried that there would be a domino effect where if one country gets a nuclear weapon then another will etc
- He was very worried about communist china (chicoms) getting nuclear weapons and thus had debates with his foreign policy staff over whether they should use force to destroy the chinese nuclear weapon program before they developed it (but Kennedy was assassinated)

• ## On the other hand, Johnson who next came in power was not a proliferation pessimist and was not concerned about other states having nuclear weapons as he did not believe that it would have an impact/ domino effect