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CIAO DATE: 12/01
Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 2001)
This article determines the effects of information warfare (IW) by examining three levels of conflict - between the US and nuclear armed peer competitor such as Russia; the US and a small, non-nuclear state; and with a threshold nuclear state like Iraq or North Korea. In the first case, I argue that IW capability increases the ability of the US to destroy Russia's strategic nuclear forces, it strengthens the damage limitation capability of the US, and increases US conventional deterrence capabilities. Despite these benefits, IW does not supplant the nuclear revolution because, first, the US will not be able to avoid nuclear retaliation to the extent that an attack will be worth the political benefit; second, the danger of inadvertent escalation mitigates the advantages that the US gains in its increased ability to destroy Russian nuclear forces with conventional weapons. With respect to small states, IW makes fighting a conflict easier and increases the ability of the US to intervene in the Third World. IW capabilities will augment the already prodigious advantages that accrue to the US when it fights such a state. The principal danger is that the US will underestimate its opponent. As the experience in Vietnam or Somalia shows, when the US fights an enemy who is willing to pay a high cost to prosecute the war, while the US is not, the potential exists for a US defeat. Concerning the third case, IW strengthens the ability of the US to destroy the nuclear or biological forces and command and control network of a threshold state. Thus, the US may believe that it has a splendid first strike capability. This is a dangerous situation because the threshold state, not the US, possesses advantages in the balance of resolve and it has an incentive to escalate. In the event of war, even a limited one, the danger of inadvertent escalation amplifies the risk that nuclear or biological weapons will be used. My analysis shows that IW cannot eliminate the dangers present whenever the US confronts a state armed with nuclear or biological weapons. I conclude by discussing two unintended consequences of information warfare: the danger that it will increase the perception of the US as a threat; second, that it will hinder effective military cooperation with US allies because they will lack the ability to fight with US forces.
Two schools of thought on democratic foreign security policy dominate the literature. Traditional realists and liberals assume that democracies are necessarily weak states that lack the structural autonomy to conduct policy independently of domestic opposition. Neorealists assume that, like other states, democracies choose their policies according to the dictates of the international system. In this article, I unpack the concept of 'democracy' by examining the institutional, procedural and normative bases of foreign security policy autonomy, and construct a model to explain their impact on actual policy independence in different democracies. To test this model against the traditional and neorealist alternatives, I analyze British, French, and American policies toward German rearmament after World War II. I pay particular attention to the ability of national leaders to make controversial decisions when faced with domestic opposition (policy independence) and their capacity to use domestic political opposition as a means of securing concessions in international negotiations (domestic constraint projection). My findings indicate that the French Fourth Republic possessed less independence from domestic opposition than neorealists would expect, while the US and Great Britain were considerably more independent than traditional theorists would expect. Furthermore, the French were uniquely able to impose their will on the more powerful Anglo-Saxons through domestic constraint projection.
In the past fifty years, preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) have become increasingly ubiquitous in international politics. Dozens have formed since the Second World War and nearly every member of the World Trade Organization is party to at least one. Despite the proliferation of studies concerning the economic implications of PTAs, little attention has been given to the political consequences of these international institutions. This lack of research is significant since the impact of these arrangements bears heavily on long-standing debates concerning the relationship between international trade and political conflict. This article provides preliminary evidence that PTA membership tends to inhibit interstate conflict. We outline several mechanisms through which PTAs may achieve this end, and our statistical analysis of military disputes of the post-Second World War era supports this argument. Specifically, we find that pairs of countries that belong to the same PTA are considerably less likely to become involved in military disputes.
This article challenges the assumptions of realist arguments on grand strategy. Realists ignore the role of grand strategy in safeguarding a declining hegemon's economic strength. For long cycle and power transition theorists, a declining hegemon will respond by punishing all competitors even though this strategy will require ever-increasing resource extraction for global defense. While neorealists contend that the relative power of the challengers and the geo-strategic worth of the locale will dictate the hegemon's response. For such realists, cooperation among states is rare. The article argues that the dyadic nature of the foreign commercial policy of rising and declining states will guide the hegemon's allocation of national resources between its political economy and its national security. Among liberal dyads, the hegemon will prefer a strategy of cooperating with contenders, even in strategic locales. Punishing liberal states will create the false illusion of incompatibility and can escalate into a hostility spiral, prolonging the hegemon's high level of defense expenditure. Among non-liberal dyads, the hegemon will prefer a strategy of punishing contenders. Cooperating with competitors will become appeasement, eroding the leader's national security interests. To illustrate this argument, the article examines Spain (1621-40), Britain (1889-1912), Britain (1932-39), and the United States (1945-70).
This article examines the interaction between political interest and humanitarian action, taking as its point of departure the oft-heard lament of humanitarian practitioners that effective humanitarian action is significantly impeded by political interference resting on state calculations of interest. After an examination of the contested terms of discourse about politics, interest, and humanitarianism, the article analyses how political interests in the field and at the level of the great powers and donor states affect humanitarian action positively and negatively and, conversely, how humanitarian action shapes calculations of political interest at all levels. The article emphasizes that political interest is not an immutable constant, but is determined by complex political processes in which humanitarian actors can and should play a political role. Effectiveness is attained not by staying above or outside politics in an effort to sustain humanitarian imperatives of independence, neutrality and proportionality, but by consciously engaging in the political process through advocacy to ensure that humanitarian concerns get an appropriate hearing in the political arena.
This review article critiques the new edition of Graham Allison's famous work, Essence of Decision. Originally published in 1971, the text had an impact on the course of foreign policy analysis - and, indeed, on political science - that few have matched since. The new edition, published in 1999 and now co-authored with Philip Zelikow, amends the original work in important ways. Despite its popularity, the theory and empirical substance of the first edition was roundly attacked from various quarters, however. This article contends that the new edition has unfortunately failed to properly address the criticisms of friend and foe alike, has failed to update the analysis in a way which ties the book into current developments in the study of foreign policy decision-making and has compounded the problems present in the original by introducing new methodological and theoretical difficulties.