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CIAO DATE: 12/02
Summer 2000 (Volume 25 Issue 1)
Editor's Note
Structural Realism after the Cold War by Kenneth N. Waltz
"Every time peace breaks out, people pop up to proclaim that realism is dead." So says Kenneth Waltz of Columbia University, who argues that claims of structural realism's demise are greatly exaggerated. According to Waltz, only changes of the international political system — in other words,changes that would render international politics as we know it obsolete — would require new thinking about how states behave. Changes in the system, including changes in polarity and weaponry, do not diminish realism's explanatory power. Waltz considers three phenomena that some theorists assert are transforming international politics — the spread of democracy, increased national interdependence, and the changing role of international institutions — but finds nothing to suggest that any of these have caused states to begin subordinating their national interests to international concerns.
The Banality of 'Ethnic War' by john Mueller
John Mueller of The Ohio State University advances an alternative explanation for the violence that ripped through the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s. Mueller claims that in both cases the bloodshed was not the result of ethnic hatred that inflamed entire groups to attack one another. Rather it was the work primarily of "small, ill-disciplined, and essentially cowardly bands of thugs and bullies."These bands, recruited by political leaders and operating under their general guidance, could have been stopped by "any organized, disciplined, and sizable army" if the international community had recognized them for what they were. Mueller considers some of the implications that the mischaracterization of much internal conflict as ethnic violence could have on future peacekeeping missions.
Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security by Keir A. Lieber
Keir Lieber of the Brookings Institution critically assesses the offense-defense theory to determine how technology, in particular, has shaped the relative ease of offense and defense and the probability of war. Lieber examines four "watershed" technological developments since 1850 — the emergence of railroads, the artillery and small arms revolution, the innovation of the tank, and the nuclear revolution — to challenge the conventional wisdom that some innovations favor offense, whereas others favor defense. Lieber concludes that "although technology can occasionally favor offense or defense, perceptions of a technological balance have little effect on the likelihood of war."
Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination by Ward Thomas
Ward Thomas of the College of the Holy Cross traces the evolution of the norm against international assassination from Roman times to the present, seeking answers to three questions: Where did the norm come from? How much does it in infuence state actions? And why does it seem to prevail over other ethical injunctions, such as the principle of proportionality in warfare? Thomas maintains that, historically, great powers have prohibited political assassination because it reinforces their position vis-a-vis other state and nonstate actors and legitimizes acceptable forms of violence such as large-scale intervention and war. Thomas then explores the likelihood that the norm against assassination may be in decline given recent structural changes to the international political system, including an increase in nontraditional modes of violence such as terrorism and guerrilla warfare.
Understanding Decisionmaking, U.S. Foreign Policy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Review Essay by Barton J. Bernstein
Stanford University's Barton Bernstein reviews the 1999 revised edition of Essence of Decision by Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow. Bernstein begins with a brief overview of the 1971 edition of Essence, in which Allison laid out three now-famous models — the rational actor, organization process (renamed "organization behavior" in the revised edition), and bureaucratic politics — to explain decisionmaking processes. Bernstein recognizes that Essence has been influential, but contends that the revised edition neither explains the Cuban missile crisis nor resolves some of the conceptual problems of the first edition.
Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or, Was Anybody Ever a Realist?) by Peter D. Feaver, Gunther Hellman, Randall L. Schweller, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, William C. Wohlforth, Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik
Peter Feaver, Gunther Hellmann, Randall Schweller, Jeffrey Taliaferro, and William Wohlforth argue against points made in Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik's fall 1999 article "Is Anybody Still a Realist?" Legro and Moravcsi respond to their critics.