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1. Racing toward Tragedy? China's Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma

Author:
G. John Ikenberry and Adam P. Liff
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In the post–Cold War period, scholars have considered the Asia Pacific to be ripe for military competition and conflict. Developments over the past decade have deepened these expectations. Across the region, rising military spending and efforts of various states to bolster their military capabilities appear to have created an increasingly volatile climate, along with potentially vicious cycles of mutual arming and rearming. In this context, claims that China's rapid economic growth and surging military spending are fomenting destabilizing arms races and security dilemmas are widespread. Such claims make for catchy headlines, yet they are rarely subject to rigorous empirical tests. Whether patterns of military competition in the Asia Pacific are in fact attributable to a security dilemma–based logic has important implications for international relations theory and foreign policy. The answer has direct consequences for how leaders can maximize the likelihood that peace and stability will prevail in this economically and strategically vital region. A systematic empirical test derived from influential theoretical scholarship on the security dilemma concept assesses the drivers of bilateral and multilateral frictions and military competition under way in the Asia Pacific. Security dilemma–driven competition appears to be an important contributor, yet the outcome is not structurally determined. Although this military competition could grow significantly in the near future, there are a number of available measures that could help to ameliorate or manage some of its worst aspects.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Cold War
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition

Author:
Brendan Rittenhouse Green
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Realist, liberal, constructivist, and hybrid theories of international relations agree that the United States made historic commitments to the defense of Europe shortly after World War II. These commitments, however, were neither as intense nor as sweeping as many claim. Initially, Washington sought withdrawal from Europe through a strategy of buck-passing.Only after a decade and a half did it adopt the familiar balancing grand strategy providing for a permanent presence in Europe. This shift suggests the need for a new theory to explain U.S. grand strategy, both past and present.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Washington

3. "Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origins of Security Studies"

Author:
David Ekbladh
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Security studies is commonly thought to have emerged as a response to the Cold War, but its roots reach much further back. Historian Edward Mead Earle and his colleagues first addressed the problem of security to cope with the unraveling of the international order in the 1930s. Earle was instrumental in paving the way for security studies as it exists today, laying the foundations for an important discipline that seeks to combine history, economics, and political science to build bridges between the government and academia and use scientific inquiry to inform policy and guide grand strategy.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Cold War
Political Geography:
America

4. "Confronting Soviet Power: U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War"

Author:
Paul Avey
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
U.S. policy during the early Cold War is better explained by balance of power logic than ideology. Not only did the United States initially seek to cooperate with the Soviet Union, shifting toward a confrontational approach only when the balance of power tilted in the Soviet Union's favor, but it later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. Given the vast differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology, the United States' willingness to put ideology aside in these instances suggests that relative power concerns are more important in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies than is ideology.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union

5. Correspondence: Debating the Sources and Prospects of European Integration

Author:
Ulrich Krotz, Jean-Yves Haine, Norrin M. Ripsman, Sebastian Rosato, Richard Maher, David M. McCourt, Andrew Glencross, and Mark S. Sheetz
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In "Europe's Troubles," Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain. The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War removed the strategic rationale for preserving the community that European governments had built over many decades. At best, according to Rosato, Europe will continue to muddle along. At worst, the entire European project will collapse.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe

6. Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally against the Leading Global Power?

Author:
Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The end of the Cold War and the emergence of the “unipolar moment” have generated considerable debate about how to explain the absence of a great-power balancing coalition against the United States. The proposition that near-hegemonic concentrations of power in the system nearly always trigger a counterbalancing coalition of the other great powers has long been regarded as an “iron law” by balance of power theorists, who often invoke the examples of Spain under Philip II, France under Louis XIV and then under Napoleon, and Germany under Wilhelm II and then under Adolf Hitler. That the United States, which is generally regarded as the “greatest superpower ever,” has not provoked such a balancing coalition is widely regarded as a puzzle for balance of power theory. Fareed Zakaria asks, “Why is no one ganging up against the United States?” G. John Ikenberry asks why, despite the unprecedented concentration of U.S. power, “other great powers have not yet responded in a way anticipated by balance-of-power theory.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States

7. Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War

Author:
Francis Gavin
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Many scholars and practitioners share the view that nuclear proliferation and its effect on U.S. national security interests constitutes the gravest threat facing the United States, that it is worse than ever before, and that new, more effective policies are needed to confront the problem. At the same time, the history of nuclear proliferation—in particular, the history of the Cold War—reveals little about contemporary nuclear dangers and possible policy solutions. According to this view, the so-called Long Peace offers few meaningful lessons that can be applied to the complex and dangerous world we face today.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States

8. Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy

Author:
Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, scholars and foreign policy analysts have debated the type of world order that the United States should strive to create—a hegemonic system, a multilateral institutional system, or a great power concert. Initially, a major issue was whether attempts to maintain U.S. primacy would stimulate counter - balancing from other states. But since the 2003 Iraq War, a new consideration has emerged—how to persuade other states to cooperate with U.S. global governance. States that do not oppose efforts by the United States to maintain stability may nonetheless decline to follow its leadership. This is a matter for concern because although the United States can act alone, it cannot succeed on such issues as controlling terrorism, curbing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), rebuilding failed states, or maintaining economic stability without help from other states.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Iraq

9. Biosecurity Reconsidered: Calibrating Biological Threats and Responses

Author:
Gregory Koblentz
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Advances in science and technology, the rise of globalization, the emergence of new diseases, and the changing nature of conflict have increased the risks posed by naturally occurring and man-made biological threats. A growing acceptance of a broader definition of security since the end of the Cold War has facilitated the rise of biosecurity issues on the international security agenda. Developing strategies to counter biological threats is complicated by the lack of agreement on the definition of biosecurity, the diverse range of biological threats, and competing perspectives on the most pressing biological threats. A comprehensive definition of biosecurity that encompasses naturally occurring, accidental, and deliberate disease outbreaks can help to further research, analysis, and policymaking. Operationalizing this broad conception of biosecurity requires a taxonomy of biological threats based on a levels-of-analysis approach that identifies which types of actors are potential sources of biological threats and the groups most at risk from these threats. A biosecurity taxonomy can provide a common framework for the multidisciplinary research and analysis necessary to assess and manage these risks. It also has implications for how to prevent and respond to biological threats, as well as for the future of biosecurity research.
Topic:
Cold War and Globalization

10. Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War

Author:
David A. Lake
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The Iraq war has been one of the most significant events in world politics since the end of the Cold War. One of the first preventive wars in history, it cost trillions of dollars, resulted in more than 4,500 U.S. and coalition casualties (to date), caused enormous suffering in Iraq, and may have spurred greater anti-Americanism in the Middle East even while reducing potential threats to the United States and its allies. Yet, despite its profound importance, the causes of the war have received little sustained analysis from scholars of international relations. Al-though there have been many descriptions of the lead-up to the war, the fighting, and the occupation, these largely journalistic accounts explain how but not why the war occurred.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and America