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11. The Global Puzzle: Order in an Age of Primacy, Power-Shifts and Interdependence

Author:
Graeme P. Herd
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
How can the US maintain its relative primacy in an age of power-shifts and interdependence? Power-shifts generate multiple peer competitors, who first establish their predominance within their geopolitical neighbourhoods, and then selectively challenge the US for leadership of global strategic agendas. The net strategic effect is the incremental erosion of US relative primacy. By contrast, growing interdependence generates a shared realization that all states are weakened by structural and systemic threats which no one state – even the US – can manage alone. Paradoxically, with regards to US relative primacy, the net strategic effect is the same: to maintain its relative primacy, the US must take the lead in managing structural and systemic strategic challenges interdependence generates; if this management is to be effective, efficient and legitimate then power needs to be shared, “prime player” status is eroded, primacy is lost by design.
Topic:
International Affairs, Political Theory, and Power Politics
Political Geography:
United States

12. American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security

Author:
Richard K. Betts
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
While American national security policy has grown more interventionist since the Cold War, Washington has also hoped to shape the world on the cheap. Misled by the stunning success against Iraq in 1991, administrations of both parties have pursued ambitious aims with limited force, committing the country's military frequently yet often hesitantly, with inconsistent justification. These ventures have produced strategic confusion, unplanned entanglements, and indecisive results. This collection of essays by Richard K. Betts, a leading international politics scholar, investigates the use of American force since the end of the Cold War, suggesting guidelines for making it more selective and successful. Betts brings his extensive knowledge of twentieth century American diplomatic and military history to bear on the full range of theory and practice in national security, surveying the Cold War roots of recent initiatives and arguing that U.S. policy has always been more unilateral than liberal theorists claim. He exposes mistakes made by humanitarian interventions and peace operations; reviews the issues raised by terrorism and the use of modern nuclear, biological, and cyber weapons; evaluates the case for preventive war, which almost always proves wrong; weighs the lessons learned from campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam; assesses the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia; quells concerns about civil-military relations; exposes anomalies within recent defense budgets; and confronts the practical barriers to effective strategy. Betts ultimately argues for greater caution and restraint, while encouraging more decisive action when force is required, and he recommends a more dispassionate assessment of national security interests, even in the face of global instability and unfamiliar threats.
Topic:
International Relations, Political Theory, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231521888
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

13. Conflict Prevention: Principles, Policies and Practice

Author:
Lawrence Woocher, Jonas Claes, and Abiodun Williams
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Conflict prevention is widely endorsed in principle—including in the 2010 U.S. National Security Strategy—but too rarely put into serious practice. It is thus important to narrow the gap between rhetoric and action in preventing violent conflicts. The interest of elites in exploiting ethnic differences for political gains, the absence of well-established mechanisms for prevention in certain regions, and the destabilizing role of external meddling continue to impede the development of effective prevention strategies. Yet, much progress has been made in the field of conflict prevention, both at the normative and the operational levels. As a crucial actor in conflict prevention, the United States should work with others to forge a consistent approach to countries at risk, urge countries to deal with arbitrary borders through negotiation rather than violence, and support greater cooperation between regional organizations.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Education, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States

14. Harnessing Post-Conflict "Transitions": A Conceptual Primer

Author:
Nicholas J. Armstrong and Jacqueline Chura-Beaver.
Publication Date:
10-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, members of the international community have undertaken more than 20 major operations to stabilize post-conflict societies, yielding mixed results. Stability operations are tremendously complex and demand successful direction of multiple, simultaneous transitions that range from transforming violent conflict to a sustainable, peaceful environment, to the process of forging sustainable governing institutions from fragile or nonexistent infrastructure. Yet, the very notion of transition eludes policymakers, professionals, and scholars because the concept lacks precise meaning, and its application varies according to context and conditions. At no other time has understanding transition been more critical, especially as “clear, hold, build, transition” becomes the dominant theme for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together, professionals and academics share the challenge and opportunity to improve how the international community conducts stability operations—through the comprehensive understanding and implementation of transition.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Theory, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

15. Parliamentary War Powers Around the World, 1989-2004. A New Dataset

Author:
Dirk Peters, Wolfgang Wagner, and Cosima Glahn
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
War powers have been contested between governments and parliaments throughout the history of democratic politics and political theory. On the one hand, the authorisation of standing armies, of conscription and of taxes for the purpose of waging war has been the raison d'être of early modern parliamentarianism ever since the English nobility reached a constitutional settlement in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Moreover, as few decisions potentially have a more severe impact on the lives of citizens than decisions regarding military missions, one can argue that no meaningful notion of democracy could possibly exempt them from parliamentary control (see Lord, 2008). On the other hand, theorists of democratic politics have been concerned that parliamentary influence over military deployments would threaten to undermine executive flexibility and thus hamper the effectiveness of military operations. Machiavelli, Locke, Montesquieu and de Tocqueville all argued that the executive should be able to decide autonomously over the deployment of armed forces (see Damrosch, 2002: 43; Owens and Pelizzo, 2009). Both arguments have survived significant changes in the nature of armed conflict, with self-defence and peace-support missions replacing war as legal and legitimate forms of military force (Neff, 2005).
Topic:
Democratization, Political Theory, History, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States

16. US Trade and Wages: The Misleading Implications of Conventional Trade Theory

Author:
Robert Z. Lawrence and Lawrence Edwards
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Conventional trade theory, which combines the Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, implies that expanded trade between developed and developing countries will increase wage equality in the former. This theory is widely applied. It serves as the basis for estimating the impact of trade on wages using two-sector simulation models and the net factor content of trade. It leads naturally to the presumption that the rapid growth and declining relative prices of US manufactured imports from developing countries since the 1990s have been a powerful source of increased US wage inequality.
Topic:
Economics, Political Theory, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States

17. Pragmatismus und wirtschaftliches Handeln

Author:
Jens Beckert
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
What alternatives to rational choice theory do exist to explain economic phenomena? I argue that American pragmatism presents a viable alternative for the explanation of key economic incidences. First I illustrate the foundations of pragmatism using three problems regularly encountered in action theory. Then I show how innovation, institutional change, price formation and actors' preferences can be analyzed based on pragmatist premises. I conclude by reflecting on why pragmatism has found so little recognition in economics.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States and America

18. Man in his Natural State: The New World and Locke's Second Treatise

Author:
Joel A. Konrad
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Over the past four decades an effort has been made to relieve John Locke's writing of its central position in the foundation of the “American Republic,” as historians of political philosophy have tended to devalue his role in the pantheon of America's founding philosophers (Huyler 1995; Pocock 1975; Bailyn 1967). Although we have a robust historiography that considers the question of Locke in America, we have surprisingly few scholarly studies on the role of America in Locke's thought, particularly of the conceptual imagery of the Americas and its peoples in Locke's Second Treatise (Bailyn 1967; Pocock 1975). The studies that do consider this connection do not situate his work into a broader historiography concerning the impact of the New World on Europe during the three centuries after its discovery. Instead, scholars have largely approached the question from the perspective of political theory and with the relatively limited goal of explicating his political thought more clearly. In this paper, I am interested in reading Locke as a crucial moment in the larger impact of the New World on Europe during the three centuries after its discovery.
Topic:
Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

19. Sun Zi's Art of War and U.S. Joint Professional Military Education

Author:
Phillip C. Saunders
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) and National War College (NWC) jointly hosted a conference on “Sun Zi's Art of War and U.S. Joint Professional Military Education” on October 6, 2009. This was the first conference to bring together leading academic experts and faculty from all major U.S. military academies and senior Service schools. The morning session, an integral part of the NWC core course on war and statecraft, featured speakers who explored the historical context and modern military applications of Sun Zi. The afternoon session provided a forum for dialogue and an exchange of ideas between leading academic experts from civilian institutions and professors and military practitioners who teach Art of War at professional military education (PME) institutions. The panelists addressed a range of topics relevant to how to teach Sun Zi, including identifying best practices and potential pitfalls, translation issues, research gaps, and opportunities to engage foreign counterparts.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, War, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States

20. In Memoriam—Irving Kristol

Author:
Christopher DeMuth
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
AEI senior fellow Irving Kristol—godfather of the neoconservative movement and one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century—died peacefully on September 18 at the age of eighty-nine. Mr. Kristol's connection to AEI began long before he became a full-time scholar at the Institute in 1988. In 1973, he gave the first of AEI's Distinguished Lectures on the Bicentennial of the United States. The lectures were delivered at historic sites around the country, and Mr. Kristol's lecture, “The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution,” was given at St. John's Church in Washington, where many of the nation's presidents have worshipped. We reprint excerpts from it below after a tribute to him written by Christopher DeMuth, the D. C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI.
Topic:
Cold War, Politics, International Affairs, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States and Washington