Week 4 - Understanding conflict Flashcards
What is the structure orienting our thinking in the study of war?
The state
We cannot talk about war without talking about the state. Because the state shapes our thinking of war. War always involves some notions of a state; whether the forming of a state, growth, expansion, etc
1648: the result of the reformation of peace of Westphalia (region in Germany)
The Reformation created this split between the Catholics and protestants who did not want to be under the authority of the pope.
The sanctity of the sovereignty of the state created by Westphalia gets picked up by the UN and is enshrined in the UN charter.
No one state gets to tell another state what to do
The state is always attempting to monopolize violence to obtain complete violence over the population territory that it governs
The state legitimizes its monopoly and use of violence
Public goods reinforce the state’s use of violence
War as famously argued by Charles Tilly (1985), is at the centre of state-making
“War made the state and the state made war”
“The art of war is of vital importance to the state” (sun tzu) Chinese general
What is the relationship between state-making and war-making? (4)
States use war to eliminate or neutralize “their own rivals outside the territories in which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of force” (Tilly 1985,181) (direct threat to the state)
States use war to eliminate or neutralize “their rivals inside those rival territories” (Tilly 1985, 181) (foreign threat)
States use war to eliminate or neutralize “the enemies” of their citizens or clients if we talk about states going to war on behalf of an alliance, for example (internal political strife)
States use war as a means of extracting the resources necessary to perform the state functions of protection, defense, and development
Defining war (thomson and levy)
war is “sustained coordinated violence between political organizations”
- War is defined by sustained violence
- The violence in war is reciprocated
- The actors in war are organizations, not individuals
Who, how, why are they fighting?
Violence does not exist in a vacuum - thompson and levy point out the violence in war is purposeful and that purpose involves influencing the behavior of the adversaries of the state in such a way that advances the interests of the state
- Distinction between behaviour and motivations
- Prof disagrees and believes we must study motivations in order to study behaviours
3 levels of analysis for the study of war: Waltz’s FATHER OF WAR STUDIES (1959) three-level of analysis:
- The individual level: foreign policy decisions are explained by the people who hold power
- Example: Hitler and ww2
The problem of this analysis: states make war, not individuals
- Hitler didn’t have the individual means, he relied on the state
- WAR IS AN INSTITUTION NOT AN INDIVIDUAL - The national or nation-state level: foreign policy decisions are explained by the interactions between state and society
- Public opinion
- Democratic peace theory
- Institutional explanation for understanding war - The system-level: foreign policy decisions are explained by the structure of the international system
- Number of major powers in the system
- Distribution of military and economic power
- Power of alliances
- Factors that are closely associated to the distribution of power
- CORE LEVEL OF ANALYSIS and why states are so central in our analysis - Interaction level: Foreign policy decisions are determined by the bilateral interactions between pairs of states
- International arena and within that are smaller interactions
Realist theories of war
A theory focused on explaining the rational pursuit and preservation of power among actors within an anarchic system
- Everyone does whatever they want
- The origin of realist theories dates back to Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War
- Power and the threat of its loss as well of its possibility of staying brings nations to war
The Security Dilemma
- A state’s pursuit of its rational interests in an anarchic world structure leads to uncertainties about long term “gains”. This uncertainty creates what is called a “security dilemma” or a conflict spiral, which leads to war
Offensive strategy
- A strategy in which states pursue regional hegemony because there is too much uncertainty in the world system and regional hegemony will allow them greater stability.
- An example of an offensive strategy is the development of alliances
Defensive strategy
- States find themselves at war not because of the anarchy of the world system, but because of domestic pressures.
- A defensive strategy will focus on avoiding hegemony from another state and seeking to maintain the equilibrium of power, wherein power is traditionally understood as territorial integrity
Two examples of realist theories of war
Capability Distribution Theory:
- Relative equality between political actors is generally associated with a dispute escalating to war while great disparity in capability is associated with no war
Arms Race Theory of War (Historical Cases):
- There is a statistically significant relationship between the presence of mutual military buildup and the outbreak of a dispute that escalates to war, if a five year window of opportunity is examined
- Time frame is usually 5 years because if you see a state putting its military resources together and you will see it as a threat and start your own arms race
The rivalry theory of war
The onset of war is a process that comes out of the interaction of states over time
The conflict resolution literature technique and research shows that this is the hardest kind of conflict to end
Very limited success of conflict resolution ending because what is underlying rivalry is territorial issues… usually regime change is the only solution but it is very unlikely.
Bargaining model of war
War is costly and inefficient
War happens because of the choices that individuals make based on the information that is available to them
Bargaining plays a huge role when establishing the legitimacy of war
An example of the bargaining model is former US President George W. Bushs’ decision to invade Iraq based on information that Sadam Hussein’s regime was harboring weapons of mass destruction.
Psychological Theories of war
Different leaders produce different outcomes, and these outcomes are “often significant enough to have a causal impact on the probability of war” (Levy)
A classic example of this theory is the understanding among IR scholars that had Al Gore won the presidential election in 2000, the US would not have invaded Iraq
Liberal Theories of war (aka 4 liberal theories of peace)
Democratic peace theory:
- democracies rarely fight each other
Model of Institutional Constraints:
- Certain political institutions, such as electoral institutions, institutional checks, and balances, the decentralization of power, and the free press, prevent or inhibit political leaders from taking unilateral military action, ensure an open public debate, and require an open public debate, and require leaders to secure a broad base of public support before adopting risky policies
- Example: Canada did not go to war with the US in Iran
Selectorate model:
- Argues that political survival is the primary goal of political leaders
- As a result of this goal of political survival, the selectorate model predicts that autocracies will initiate wars against weak democracies but rarely against strong democracies
- Due to the risk democratic leaders only initiate wars they are confident in winning by contrast autocratic leaders don’t have to devote as many resources as democratic leaders because they don’t need to be accountable to the people and will engage in war more frequently. Power is centralized in autocratic regimes so that are less affected politically if they lose.
Economic interdependence and peace
- The higher the levels of trade between two states, the greater the economic deterrent effects of a bilateral war
- Trade acts as a deterrent
Cynthia Enloe’s (1990) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: making feminist sense of IR politics
A feminist understanding of the militarization of politics and society forces us to examine conflict from the ground up rather than simply focusing on the international
Argument of book: underneath the violences practices of war is the reproduction of gender assumptions of behaviour and structures of war as well as the power itself
Where are the women?
- Forces us to change both the scope and substance of the study of war
A contribution feminist IR makes to the study of war is a new and deeper theorization of collaborative power
- Collaborative power plays a role in motivating soldier, and establishing alliances
Amanda Chisholm’s (2022) the gendered and colonial lives of gurkhas in private security
The military system continues to relegate women to the margins of peace and security
The Gurkhas: warriors from nepal apart of the british army for almost 200 years. The Gurkhas Brigade.
The money that the husbands send back reveals the way women hold the fort down at home and become apart of the culture and institutions of the Gurkhas Brigade.
Levy and Thompson - Model of Institutional Constraints
certain political institutions such as electoral institutions, checks and balances, decentralization of power – prevent or inhibit political leaders from taking unilateral military decisions - constrain the war like behavior of states and individuals and require open public debate and strong public support before you can adopt a risky policy
Example - Jean Chretien not fighting with Bush, or engage - institutional constraint
