Red lines
How New and Assertive Is China's New Assertiveness?
Alastair Iain Johnston
International Security, Spring 2013, Pages 7-48
Abstract:
There has been a rapidly spreading meme in U.S. pundit and academic circles since 2010 that describes China's recent diplomacy as "newly assertive." This "new assertiveness" meme suffers from two problems. First, it underestimates the complexity of key episodes in Chinese diplomacy in 2010 and overestimates the amount of change. Second, the explanations for the new assertiveness claim suffer from unclear causal mechanisms and lack comparative rigor that would better contextualize China's diplomacy in 2010. An examination of seven cases in Chinese diplomacy at the heart of the new assertiveness meme finds that, in some instances, China's policy has not changed; in others, it is actually more moderate; and in still others, it is a predictable reaction to changed external conditions. In only one case - maritime disputes - does one see more assertive Chinese rhetoric and behavior. The speed and extent with which the newly assertive meme has emerged point to an understudied issue in international relations - namely, the role that online media and the blogosphere play in the creation of conventional wisdoms that might, in turn, constrain policy debates. The assertive China discourse may be a harbinger of this effect as a Sino-U.S. security dilemma emerges.
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Capabilities, Cooperation, and Culture: Mapping American Ambivalence Toward China
Shelley Wick
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Sino-American relationship is arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Whether this relationship remains peaceful or becomes conflictual will have far-reaching economic and political ramifications. For more than two decades, American analysts have been attempting to answer one question: Is China a threat to the United States? The result has been a voluminous collection of data that equally supports contradictory answers. I contend that if we want to understand the probable course of the Sino-American relationship, we need to ask a different question: When and why are Americans likely to perceive China as a threat? This paper reports the results of a social psychological experiment designed to explore the basis of American attitudes toward other states in general and toward China specifically. Contrary to expectations that economic insecurity drives American attitudes toward economic competitors, this study finds that American attitudes toward China are shaped primarily by cultural and institutional judgments. These results contribute to the field of IR by challenging preconceptions about the extent and potential impact of Americans' economic insecurities, by contributing to a nascent constructivist literature that examines how threat is constructed in the national imagination, and by informing how policymakers approach important bilateral relationships.
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"Generalissimo of the Nation": War Making and the Presidency in the Early Republic
William Adler
Presidential Studies Quarterly, June 2013, Pages 412-426
Abstract:
This article explores the nature of congressional-presidential relations regarding war making in the early republic. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that Congress was not primary in war making during this period. Examining small wars, particularly those against native tribes, demonstrates how little influence Congress had, with oversight generally occurring only after the fact. Rhetorical presidential support for Congress's role did not accord with their practical readiness to initiate and manage hostilities unilaterally. The willingness of modern presidents to act without congressional consent is therefore not necessarily a historical aberration.
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First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis Instability in U.S.-China Relations
Avery Goldstein
International Security, Spring 2013, Pages 49-89
Abstract:
Since the mid-1990s, much has been written about the potentially disruptive impact of China if it emerges as a peer competitor challenging the United States. Not enough attention has been paid, however, to a more immediate danger - that the United States and a weaker China will find themselves locked in a crisis that could escalate to open military conflict. The long-term prospect for a new great power rivalry ultimately rests on uncertain forecasts about big shifts in national capabilities and debatable claims about the motivations of the two countries. By contrast, the danger of crisis instability involving these two nuclear-armed states is a tangible near-term concern. An analysis that examines the current state of U.S.-China relations and compares it with key aspects of U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War indicates that a serious Sino-American crisis may be more likely and more dangerous than expected. The capabilities each side possesses, and specific features of the most likely scenarios for U.S.-China crises, suggest reasons to worry that escalation pressures will exist and that they will be highest early in a crisis, compressing the time frame for diplomacy to avert military conflict.
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Leaders' Cognitive Complexity, Distrust, and the Diversionary Use of Force
Dennis Foster & Jonathan Keller
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some scholars have suggested that when faced with domestic political problems, leaders employ simplified decision processes, preferring action to deliberation and highly visible diversionary uses of force to alternative policies. Others contend that domestically embattled leaders will pursue a more rational examination of the costs and benefits of various options - the sort of deliberation that will lead them to reject diversionary force in favor of less risky measures. Drawing on research in political psychology, we argue that leaders' cognitive processes are not constants but variables, and that both models are correct under certain circumstances. Leaders low in conceptual complexity (CC), and especially those with hawkish leanings, will pursue simplified decision-making procedures and embrace diversionary strategies, while leaders who are high in complexity will pursue a more thorough consideration of risks and alternatives and generally avoid diversionary actions. We examine these expectations by testing the interactive effect of economic misery and leaders' CC on American force usage for the period 1953-2000. The findings indicate that more conceptually simple leaders - particularly when high in distrust, a trait linked to more hawkish policy inclinations - are significantly more likely to engage in diversion.
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The Circuitous Nature of Operation Ajax
Ofer Israeli
Middle Eastern Studies, March/April 2013, Pages 246-262
Abstract:
In seeking to protect its economic interests and its control of oil resources in Iran, Britain planned to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Dr Mohammad Mossadegh in a military coup d'état following his decision to nationalize the Iranian oil industry in 1951. However, the British initially faced strong opposition to this plan from the US under the Truman administration, which preferred a more diplomatic approach to the crisis and did not see British interests as being in line with its own. Facing this opposition and after unsuccessful attempts to oust the Iranian leader through economic pressure and propaganda campaigns, the British skillfully leveraged American fear of Communism to secure Washington, under the Eisenhower Administration, as a partner to lead a joint US-UK mission to overthrow Mossadegh. This paper explores the reasons behind the shift in American policy regarding this issue, exploring whether it was the Brit's successful use of covert, circuitous tactics to achieve their intended outcomes or solely a result of ideological differences between the two US administrations
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Into Justice Jackson's Twilight: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis of Treaty Termination
David Schnitzer
Georgetown Law Journal, November 2012, Pages 243-280
Abstract:
Envision this scenario: a president, seeking a significant shift in foreign policy from the path of his predecessors, announces to the world that the United States is terminating a treaty between the nations. The overwhelming majority of Senators, two-thirds of which approved the treaty, strongly disagree with the decision; a majority of members of the House of Representatives, who, along with a majority of the Senate, approved enabling legislation, are similarly distressed. Consulting the Constitution, they discover that it is silent on the question of treaty termination authority. Seeking judicial relief, they are told that their claim is nonjusticiable, and should a president seek to terminate any of the other roughly 1,130 Senate-approved treaties on the books, they would be similarly without legal recourse. Imagine their further bafflement upon learning that the first time the United States terminated a treaty, only a decade after the Constitution was ratified, that termination was, without question, a power of Congress.
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Ian Fleming and the Public Profile of the CIA
Christopher Moran
Journal of Cold War Studies, Winter 2013, Pages 119-146
Abstract:
This article represents the first major analysis of the appearance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the James Bond novels of British spy fiction writer Ian Fleming. The article shows that Fleming was remarkably influential during the early Cold War in establishing the public profile of the CIA. The novels, which include manifold references to the agency and its staff, were published at a time when the CIA kept out of the public limelight and when other cultural forms, including Hollywood, refrained from making too much fanfare about intelligence matters. Drawing on recently declassified material, including the papers of fabled CIA Director Allen Dulles, the article demonstrates that the agency took a keen interest in Bond, even drawing inspiration from his adventures and the novels' depictions of technology.
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The Decline of Arms Control: Media Coverage and Elite Opinion in the United States
Mischa Hansel
Contemporary Security Policy, Spring 2013, Pages 64-93
Abstract:
Is arms control becoming irrelevant? This analysis offers a new way of testing the decline of arms control. Rather than focusing on foreign policy outputs and international outcomes, this analysis examines perceptions of security policy decision makers and opinion leaders through their references to arms control. Salience and framing analysis are used to evaluate the marginalization of arms control in political communication. Empirically, the article examines selected American media coverage, research institute publications, and the Congressional Record. This research confirms a dwindling number of references to the concept of arms control over the last two decades. This trend is not explained by the emergence of new technological issues, nor does it follow the chronological pattern of actual arms control successes and failures. Rather it hints at a more fundamental transformation of political thought.
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Leaders First, Countries After: Mediated Political Personalization in the International Arena
Meital Balmas & Tamir Sheafer
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study is the first comparative analysis of mediated political personalization in the international arena; its contribution to the research in the field is twofold: (a) through a longitudinal analysis, it shows that media coverage of foreign countries focuses increasingly on state leaders rather than on the countries per se; and (b) it accounts for variations in the level of mediated political personalization between pairs of countries: the greater the distance between a pair of countries, in terms of values, political interests, economic relations, and geographical distance, the more their news coverage of each other focuses on the foreign country's leader at the expense of other political aspects.
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Counterproductive Counternarcotic Strategies?
Camilla Andersson
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We model the economic incentives surrounding opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Specifically, we examine the impact of eradication policies when opium is used as a means of obtaining credit, and when the crops are cultivated in sharecropping arrangements. The analysis suggests that when perfect credit markets are available, an increased risk of eradication will lead to less land being allocated to opium poppy. However, when opium is used as a means of obtaining credit, an eradication policy can rather increase land under poppy cultivation. Furthermore, the unintended effects of eradication can be augmented in sharecropping arrangements.
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The Geography of Inter-State Resource Wars
Francesco Caselli, Massimo Morelli & Dominic Rohner
NBER Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
We establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-State conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be more likely when at least one country has natural resources; when the resources in the resource-endowed country are closer to the border; and, in the case where both countries have natural resources, when the resources are located asymmetrically vis-a-vis the border. We test these predictions on a novel dataset featuring oilfield distances from bilateral borders. The empirical analysis shows that the presence and location of oil are significant and quantitatively important predictors of inter-State conflicts after WW2.
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Mission Afghanistan: Who Bears the Heaviest Burden
Marion Bogers & Robert Beeres
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, May 2013, Pages 32-55
Abstract:
This paper contributes to the literature concerning burden sharing in specific crisis response operations. We provide a quantitative expression of burden-sharing behaviour of the NATO and Non-NATO allies during the International Security Assistance Forces operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010. We conclude that the military contribution of the United States, as expressed by the average number deployed, surpasses the total contributions of the NATO EU and Non-NATO countries. However, the relative contribution of the United Kingdom, as expressed in terms of relative population size and Gross Domestic Product exceeds the contribution of the United States. We also conclude that the relative numbers of casualties of the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Canada exceed the burden of the United States.
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Explaining Nonratification of the Genocide Convention: A Nested Analysis
Brian Greenhill & Michael Strausz
Foreign Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains the large variation in the time taken by states to ratify the 1948 Genocide Convention? The costs of ratification would appear to be relatively low, yet many states have waited several decades before ratifying this symbolically important treaty. This study employs a "nested analysis" that combines a large-n event history analysis with a detailed study of an important outlying case in order to explain the main sources of this variation. Surprisingly, the results of our event history analysis suggest that states do not become more likely to ratify once the treaty has become widely adopted by others. We use the case of Japan to examine this relationship in more detail. We argue that once the norm embodied in a human rights treaty develops a "taken-for-granted" character, the rate of ratification can slow down because the marginal costs of additional ratifications begin to outweigh the expected benefits.
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Azar Gat
Journal of Peace Research, March 2013, Pages 149-157
Abstract:
The article reviews and assesses the recent literature that claims a sharp decrease in fighting and violent mortality rate since prehistory and during recent times. It also inquires into the causes of this decrease. The article supports the view, firmly established over the past 15 years and unrecognized by only one of the books reviewed, that the first massive decline in violent mortality occurred with the emergence of the state-Leviathan. Hobbes was right, and Rousseau was wrong, about the great violence of the human state of nature. The rise of the state-Leviathan greatly reduced in-group violent mortality by establishing internal peace. Less recognized, it also decreased out-group war fatalities. Although state wars appear large in absolute terms, large states actually meant lower mobilization rates and reduced exposure of the civilian population to war. A second major step in the decline in the frequency and fatality of war has occurred over the last two centuries, including in recent decades. However, the exact periodization of, and the reasons for, the decline are a matter of dispute among the authors reviewed. Further, the two World Wars constitute a sharp divergence from the trend, which must be accounted for. The article surveys possible factors behind the decrease, such as industrialization and rocketing economic growth, commercial interdependence, the liberal-democratic peace, social attitude change, nuclear deterrence, and UN peacekeeping forces. It argues that contrary to the claim of some of the authors reviewed, war has not become more lethal and destructive over the past two centuries, and thus this factor cannot be the cause of war's decline. Rather, it is peace that has become more profitable. At the same time, the specter of war continues to haunt the parts of the world less affected by many of the above developments, and the threat of unconventional terror is real and troubling.
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Forced to Be Free?: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Rarely Leads to Democratization
Alexander Downes & Jonathan Monten
International Security, Spring 2013, Pages 90-131
Abstract:
Is military intervention effective in spreading democracy? Existing studies disagree. Optimists point to successful cases, such as the transformation of West Germany and Japan into consolidated democracies after World War II. Pessimists view these successes as outliers from a broader pattern of failure typified by cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Those in between agree that, in general, democratic military intervention has little liberalizing effect in target states, but contend that democracies can induce democratization when they explicitly pursue this objective and invest substantial effort and resources. Existing studies, however, often employ overly broad definitions of intervention, fail to grapple with possible selection effects in countries where democracies choose to intervene, and stress interveners' actions while neglecting conditions in targets. A statistical examination of seventy instances of foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) in the twentieth century shows that implementing prodemocratic institutional reforms, such as sponsoring elections, is not enough to induce democratization; interveners will meet with little success unless conditions in the target state - in the form of high levels of economic development and societal homogeneity, and previous experience with representative governance - are favorable to democracy. Given that prospective regime change operations are likely to target regimes in poor, diverse countries, policymakers should scale back their expectations that democracy will flourish after FIRC.
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The Effects of World War II on Economic and Health Outcomes across Europe
Iris Kesternich et al.
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate long-run effects of World War II on socio-economic status and health of older individuals in Europe. We analyze data from SHARELIFE, a retrospective survey conducted as part of SHARE in Europe in 2009. SHARELIFE provides detailed data on events in childhood during and after the war for over 20,000 individuals in 13 European countries. We construct several measures of war exposure - experience of dispossession, persecution, combat in local areas, and hunger periods. Exposure to war and more importantly to individual-level shocks caused by the war significantly predicts economic and health outcomes at older ages.
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Stopping the legal flow of weapons: Compliance with arms embargoes, 1981-2004
Jennifer Erickson
Journal of Peace Research, March 2013, Pages 159-174
Abstract:
This article examines sending state compliance with arms embargoes. Arms embargoes are one of the most frequently used types of economic sanctions but they are perceived as one of the least effective. One major problem with arms embargoes, many argue, is sending states' failure to implement them. Yet studies tend to focus on cases of arms embargo violations, not compliance in the context of arms export practice more broadly. Using a series of new arms embargo variables, I conduct a statistical analysis of the relationship between arms embargoes and small and major conventional arms transfers from 1981 to 2004. Contrary to popular expectations, I find that arms embargoes on average restrain sending states' arms exports. If arms embargoes do indeed have difficulty changing targets' behavior, or achieving other measures of ‘success', additional explanations must also be considered. I suggest that arms embargo target selection and the intractable challenge of cutting off illicit arms flows are two important plausible alternatives. This finding also provides optimism for compliance with international commitments in the absence of institutionalized enforcement mechanisms. Major exporters overall appear to implement sanctions, despite strong economic incentives to ignore them and a lack of formal accountability mechanisms to punish violators.
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Early stages in the evolution of covert action governance in the United States, 1951-1961
Kristian Gustafson
Public Policy and Administration, April 2013, Pages 144-160
Abstract:
The U.S. government started to establish a formalised covert action capability only in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in response to the perceived Soviet threat. The difficult process of establishing the first inter-agency management organisation for this new activity, the Psychological Strategy Board, and its successor, the Operational Coordination Board, serves to highlight the peculiar characteristics of covert action and its management. Very little current scholarship deals with inter-agency bodies in the U.S. context, and this article aims to fill this void. The article concludes that while covert action itself remains in the shadows, policy coordination for it must be well-managed at the very centre of government to account for strong policy interests in this activity from other agencies, particularly the Departments of State and Defense. This task is complicated by the nature of U.S. national security architecture and U.S. government culture overall, which poses high structural obstacles to inter-agency cooperation.