Impact of World War I

- Global Reach
- Enormous Cost
o 15 million people were killed
- Economic Cost
- Political Cost
Key Actors in WWI
- European System
o Multi-polar
o Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) and Triple Alliance (Germany,
Austro-Hungary, and Italy)
The Outbreak of WWI July Crisis ( June 28, 1914 August 1, 1914)
- 28 June: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
- 5 July: German blank check of support for Austro Hungary
- 23 July: Austro Hungary harsh ultimatum to Serbia
- 25 July: Serbia rejects ultimatum
- 28 July: Austro-Hungary declares war on Serbia (after German Pressure)
- 29 July: Russia partial mobilization in South against AH
- 30 July: Russia and AH general mobilization
- 31 July: German ultimatum to Russia to stop mobilization
- 1 August: Germany declares war on Russia and invades Luxembourg
- 3 August: Germany declares war on France
- 4 August: Germany launches Schlieffen Plan (plan was to go thru Belgium and enter
France to quickly get rid of France)
Realist Perspective & Explanation for War:
- Rise of German Power: By 1913 German power exceeded GB by 40% and had great
power conversion capability
- Multi-polarity
o Dangerous- many conflict dyads
o Balancing- states forming tight, inflexible alliances
o Buck-passing
- Rigid Alliances and Preemptive War
o Alliances to rigid
o German Preemptive War
o Bipolarity of alliances
- Power Transitions and Hegemonic Decline
o Some believe Hegemony is most stable
o Britain is a declining power
o Leads to power transition-Theory -War is most likely, of longest duration, and
greatest magnitude, when a challenger to the dominant power enters into
approximate parity and unhappy with the system in place (i.e. Germany and GB)
- Domestic Politics and German Aggression
o Narrow Interests take over policy- logrolling- (exchanging political favors,
especially the trading of influence to achieve passage of projects that are of
interest to one another)
Liberalist Explanations of War:
- Failure of Diplomacy- Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck
o Bismarcks secrecy- From Westphalia to WW1, NW Chap3 --
o Wilhelms blunders-
- Misperceptions
o German misperceptions:
Thought Britain would remain neutral in 1914 and that conflict would stay
localized
Did not expect Russia to go to war
- Breakdown of civilian institutions NEED
- Weak Domestic Institutions NEED
Identity Explanations:
- Nationalism- is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves an individual identifying
with, or becoming attached to, ones nation
o Germany- Germany was once comprised of smaller states and was formed into a
large state which eventually became one of the most powerful nations in the
world
o Serbian nationalists in AH- assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand
- Militant Nationalism Cult of the Offensive
o Refers to a strategic military dilemma, where leaders believe that offensive
advantages are so great that a defending force would have no hope of repelling the
attack; consequently, all states choose to attack.
o Most notably know for the development of the Schlieffen Plan but ultimately the
war developed into trench warfare
- Liberal Nationalism (Ernest Renan)- often defend the value of national identity by
saying that individuals need a national identity in order to lead meaningful, autonomous
lives and that democratic polities need national identity in order to function properly.
- Socialist Nationalism movements that are dedicated to national liberation, in the view
that their nations are being persecuted by other nations and thus need to exercise self-
determination by liberating themselves from their oppressors
- Social Darwinism- survival of the fittest but applied to international relations (or states)
World War Two
- Most Destructive War Ever:
o 40-50 million killed
o Truly global
o Mass murder of civilians
o Atomic bombing of Japan
- Interwar Period:
o Major Costs
Lives lost (listed above)
Major financial burdens
Great Depression lead in from WWI
Harsh Sanctions against Germany
o Collective Security
Make aggression illegal and outlaw offensive wars
Deter aggression by forming a collation of all nonaggressive states
If deterrence failed and aggression occurred, all states would punish
aggressor
Leads to development of League of Nations- which the collation would
make decision about threats not balance of power
o League of Nations
Giving up some sovereignty (to help prevent war)
Cannot make own decisions
US senate refuses to ratify because it doesnt want to give up
sovereignty, viewed as an offshore balancer, and has isolationism
views
Successes and Failures of League
Settled some Minor Disputes
Started some disarmament negotiations
Became a center of diplomatic negotiations
Failures
Japan invades Manchuria (1931)
Italy invades Ethiopia (1935)
o Versailles Settlement
Signed June 28
th
, 1919
Harsh peace for Germany
After WWI- Germany greatly weakened
Lost 25,000 square miles of territory
Army reduced to 100,000
No air force
Major reparations
War Guilt Clause- Nazis used this as a major campaign issue to
gain power
- Outbreak of the War
o 1920s
Relatively Peaceful
Multi-polar, but no strong alliances
o Early 1930s
League Failure
Hitlers rise to power
o Key Events for Germany
1934- signed non-aggression pact with Poland
1935- renounces disarm clause of Versailles
1936- allies with Japan and Italy & remilitarized Rhineland
1937- send forces to help Spanish fascists
1938
pushes idea of self-determination for Germans in Sudetenland
Occupies rest of Czechoslovakia
Signs pact with USSR
Invades Poland- start of War
France and Britain declare war
1940
Moves troops to Norway
Blitzkrieg against France
Defeats France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, with Britain
driven off continent
1941
April: invades Yugoslavia and Greece
June 22: invades Soviet Union
By December owns most of Europe
December: after Pearl Harbor attack Germany declares war on US
o Separate Origins Pacific War
1936: alliance with Germany (Japan)
1930s: nationalists and military gain control of government
1937: Attack China
1940: Japan extend control over French Indochina
1941: Pearl Harbor
- Causes of WWII
o Individual (first image)
Hitler- one of the most prominent figures in World War 2, led Nazi
Germany into trying to conquest Europe and wanted to build the perfect
race. He took a broken Germany and turned them back into one of the
largest super powers in the world. Biggest flaw was trying to invade
Russia and was greatly weakened due to the loss suffered in Russia
o State (second image)
US did not get involved for internal reasons (focused on economy & US
values) which emboldened Hitler to try and conquest Europe
Class conflict in Britain; encouraged Hitler
Myths of Empire- One loss will lead to many losses and conquests always
increase power, Offensive advantage (first strike has a large advantage),
states will bandwagon rather than balance (NEED MORE)
o System (third image)
Realist Explanation
Germany is the problem here.
o Balance of Power
o Security Dilemmas
Offensive Realism
o Expansionism best way to guarantee security
Defensive Realism
o Growing Russia preventive war
Buck-passing in Multipolarity
o No one took responsibility for Germanys rise to be the
hegemon non-existent repelling force
Misperceptions
Appeasement- giving into Hitler, letting him rise to power and
hoping that giving in to him will prevent conflict which obviously
didnt happen
o May be just that Hitler wasnt deterable
o May also be that appeasers had no choice; other states
didnt not have the ability to deal with Hitler till 1930s
Cold War
- Origins of Cold War
o Reasons to Expect Cooperation
US and USSR vs. Germany
Both states appear secure
Both strong militarily
Separated by the Atlantic
Neither faces a powerful neighbor
But each side has a different view of the post war world
United States
o WWII a result of protectionism, lack of institutions, and
democracy
o Want liberal world order
USSR
o Communism vs. global capitalist threat
o Bore the brunt of WWII
o Battleground emerges
Soviet economy in ruins, but US most powerful. Soviet Union got no help
Us cut off the Lend Lease assistance program that supplied allies
assistance and materials between 1941 and August 1945
Potsdam 1945 agreement was that Vietnam was to be partitioned at the
16
th
parallel, reparations to be paid
Germany- 10% of the industrial capacity of the western zones
unnecessary for German peace economy would be transferred to
the SU within 2 years
Poland Agreement- declared it would settle the reparation claims
of Poland from its own share of the overall reparation payments
Indochina- part of the agreement that Vietnam was to be
partitioned at the 16
th
parallel
Marshall Plan, 1947- was the American initiative to aid Europe, in which
the US gave economic support to help rebuild European economies after
the end of WW2 in order to prevent the spread of CommunismMoscow
saw this as capitalist imperial aggression
Germany- first major crisis of CW
1948, Western powers announce they would unify the currency of
the western zones of Germany
SU responded with Berlin Blockade
Berlin airlift response
1949, German Democratic Republic
Eastern Europe
USSR conquered most of the Eastern Europe at the end of WW2
USSR sees it as a legitimate security buffer and just for winning
the war, US sees it as expansionism
East Asia
SU neutral in war against Japan
Then seize Manchuria and some Japanese islands
Other areas
Western Europe
Eastern Mediterranean
Middle East
o Containment and deterrence
Strategy US adopted to deal with USSR in the CW. Surrounding the
Soviet Union with US allies and US bases.
Three Phases
1946- Beginnings
o US worried about USSR power
o George Kennan- warning about Soviet intentions
o Churchill also warns of dangers Iron Curtain
1947-1953 Full Onset
o Truman Doctrine- specifically stated that it would support
Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to
prevent them from failing into the Soviet sphere. (Fear of
the spread of Communism & seen as the start of CW)
o Marshall Plan
o NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)- the
organization constitutes a system of collective defense
whereby its members states agree to mutual defense in
response to an attack by any external party
o Shocks of 1949- Soviet Union detonated its first atomic
bomb and the control of China fell to Mao Zedong
(Communist party)
o NSC-68- spurred by George F. Kennansent a telegram
from Moscow to US stating that the Soviet regime was
expansionist and the influence needed to be contained
thus steamrolled American foreign policy in the CW
o Korean War
1954 1989 Maintenance
o Berlin Crisis, 1958-1961
o Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
o Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 1979
o Reagan Defense Build-Up, 1980s
o Proxy Wars
1963-1978 Dtente- relations became less and less strained
- Causes of CW
o Schools of thought among historians
Traditionalists- Stalin and USSR are to blame blatant expansionism
Revisionism- American expansionism is to blame
Post-revisionists
Inevitable given the bipolar distribution of power
No one to blame
Security Dilemma in action
o Levels of analysis
Individual Level
Truman and Stalin personality
Misperceptions about threats
Problems
o Cold War lasted longer than these two
o Ignore deep causes
State Level
Communism vs Capitalist
Threat exaggeration to get domestic support
Problems:
o Doesnt explain cooperation in WWII
System Level
Cold War is no ones fault consequence of anarchy
Problems
o Explains rivalry, but not why level of hostility varied over
time
o Why did CW not turn hot?
Bipolarity
Independence and Interdependence
Domestic Influences
Nuclear Weapons
Reconnaissance Revolution
Ideological Moderation
Rules of superpower game
o Why did CW end?
Containment worked
Imperial Overstretch- but USSR still strong and could have continued
US buried USSR with military build up
Three others
Precipitating causes- Gorbachev: glasnost (was a policy that called
for openness and transparency in government institutions and
activities in the Soviet Union) and perestroika (literally meaning
restructuring, referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political
and economic system)
Intermediate Causes- Liberal ideas of democracy and openness
paved the way for Gorbachev revolution
USSR cant compete with information revolution
Deep Causes
Decline in communist ideology & decline in Soviet economy
Uses of force
- Types:
o Defense: resistance against physical attack. The deployment of military power to:
Ward off enemy attacks
Minimize damage to oneself, if attacked
Kinds of Defense
Preemptive- is launched in anticipation of immediate enemy
aggression (Iraq War)
Preventive- initiated to prevent another party from attacking, when
an attack by that party is not imminent or known to be planned
(Pearl Harbor)
Aim is to defeat aggression
Success is depends on relative power
o Deterrence: discouraging the enemy from taking military action by raising the
costs and lowering the benefits of aggression. Maintaining the status quo by
discouraging the opponents from changing their behavior
Aim is to prevent aggression
Success depends on rationality, credibility, and the adversarys motivation
& power
o Coercion/Compellence: threat or use of force to make an adversary do something
that he or she would not otherwise do. Efforts to change behavior of states by
manipulating the costs and benefits to alter behavior
Aim is to reverse a policy, usually to reverse aggression
Kinds of Coercion
Punishment
Denial
Success depends on credibility
o Swaggering: the deployment of military power for purposes other than defense,
deterrence, or compellence
Objectives more diffuse: prestige and national pride
- Dr. Strangelove
o Deterrence: require the creation of fear. The enemy must fear that the costs of
attack with outweigh the benefits
o Ability to produce fear depends:
Ones own capabilities and resolve
Adversarys emotional states
o Having missiles and willingness to use them
o Communication
o MAD (mutual assured destruction) makes nuclear war so illogical that deterrence
may suffer unless credibility of suicide:
Automation ensure retaliation: Doomsday Machine
How to make threat credible? Decentralization, devolution of authority
Nuclear Weapons
- Nuclear Age:
o Manhattan project of the early 1940s
o Begins in 1945 with the detonation of two atomic bombs against Hiroshima and
Nagasaki
o Soviet Union exploded atomic weapon in 1949
o Nuclear States today:
United States
Russia
China
Great Britain
France
Israel
India
Pakistan
North Korea
- Military Consequences
o Destructive power that is hard to comprehend
Atomic bombs dropped on Japan were created by atomic fission
Hydrogen bombs created by atomic fusion
Largest Explosion
1961 USSR test of 60 megaton hydrogen bomb
o Physical Effects
Radiation
Nuclear Winter
Assured Destruction
o Real Military Impact- destruction before military victory
- Terms
o Counterforce: weapons targeted at enemys forces
o Countervalue: weapons targeted at enemys civilian population
- Consequences in MAD
o Political Effects in MAD
Revived concept of limited war as opposed to total war
Crises replaced war as moments of truth in IR
Deterrence not defense is now top priority of states
Development of de facto regime of superpower prudence
The nuclear taboo
- Nuclear deterrence: raise costs and lower benefits of aggression not through defense but
through massive retaliatory capability
o Requires: Some weapon survival, command and control must be reliably
maintained weapons must not be susceptible, survival forces must not require
early firing in response to what may be a false alarm
o Does deterrence increase the prospects for peace?
Waltz says yes!
Wars risk retaliation and ones destruction
States act with more care if costs of war are high
Deterrence does more for security than conquest
Certainty about relative strength makes war less likely
o Do nuclear weapons make war less likely?
Waltz says yes!
Half-century of nuclear peace
States are deterred by the prospect of suffering
Deterrent strategies less damaging than war-fighting strategies
- Are we still in MAD?
o Are we safer?
Sagan says no! He challenges requirements of stable deterrence:
Challenges assumption that state behave rationally
Military biases could encourage preventive war in transitional
periods
Military biases can hinder invulnerability of 2
nd
strike capabilities
Accidents can happen
o New nuclear states risky!
- Proliferation
o Seen by many as the single most important threat to international security today
Proliferation problem:
State trying to acquire them
Terrorists
o Good news: hard to make bombs
o Bad news:
Risk of theft
Enriched plutonium
Easy to deliver
o Why Acquire WMD:
Response to stronger states Security Dilemma logic
Fear of unconventional inferiority
Terrorism
- Changes in meaning over time
o French Revolution: was an instrument of governance, was once associated with
revolution, democracy, and virtueturned into abuse of power, more criminal
o Late 19
th
century/Early 20
th
Century
Industrial Revolution- new universalist ideologies in response to
exploitive conditions of 19
th
Century capitalism
Left-wing, anti-state organizations
Examples
Narodnya Volya
Fenian Brotherhood
o 1930s- Repression by totalitarian states
Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia
State terrorism, use of death squads
o Post WWII- Revolts by nationalist and indigenous groups to oppose European
rule
Wars of Liberation
o 1960s-1970s
Nationalist and ethnic groups outside of colonial framework
Radical, ideologically motivated groups
Left-wing political organizations in Western Europe and Latin
America
o 1980s- Destabilize west as part of global conspiracy
Government sponsorship of terrorist activity
o 1990s
Narco-terrorism
Gray area phenomena
o 9/11- Changed framework for thinking about terrorism
- Definitions
o What is terrorism?
Political Motivations
Influencing the audience to further political objectives
Targets Civilians
Dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical
infrastructure
Intended to cause psychological trauma?
Traumatized enough to affect public influence, thru intimidation or
coercion
- Motivations
o Victimization
o Pursuit of Power (redistribution of power)
Desire sovereign nation-state
Desire for Islamic Palestinian State
Desire for Islamic state in own region
Terrorism as a spoiler
- Mobilization
o Radicalization
Process by which groups mobilize people to convince them to support
their strategy and tactics
Moral disengagement
o Selective Incentives
o Communication
- Root causes
o Structural
Grievances
Political repression
Political Inequality
Poverty
o Democracy
o Religion
o State Weakness
- Suicide Terrorism
o Robert Pape: Terrorism is a tool design to coerce occupiers into leaving an
occupied territory (national homeland)
Suicide attacks follows a strategic logic: to coerce a target government to
change policy, to mobilize recruits, and gain financial support
Schelling says it demonstrates credibility
Five principles
Suicide Terrorism is strategic
Designed to coerce modern democracies to make significant
concessions to national self-determination
It pays
Moderate suicide terrorism has led to moderate concession
Containments
Occupation
Why target democracies?
Democracies vulnerable to coercive punishment/soft targets
o Publics have low thresholds of cost tolerance
o High ability to affect state policy
o Terrorists must think their opponent will be somewhat
constrained (Democracies)
- How Terrorism ends Cronin article
o 6 Causal Pathways
Catching or killing leaders
Crushing terrorism with force: brute force
Achieving the strategic objective
Moving toward a legitimate political process
Implosion and loss of popular support
Moving to other malignant forms
- Counterterrorism Major CT measures
Iraq War
- Afghanistan
o US had support from NATO to dismantle Al Qaeda and remove Taliban from
power
o Launched Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 7
th
, 2001
o NATO support for security and reconstruction in Kabul and in Afghanistan as a
whole after 2006
- Widening the conflict
o US acted alone
o 2003 the State of the Union address, Bush extended the conflict to include rogues
states supporting terrorism (Axis of Evil Iran, Iraq, and North Korea)
- Leading up to Iraq War
o US claim that Iraq possessed WMD
o 2002 UN Security Council passed resolution 1441 called for Iraq to cooperate
with UN weapons inspectors
o October 2002, gets congressional authority to use force against Iraq
o US and British point to UN security council resolution 687. France and Russia
threatened to veto any use of force
o Belief that widening war to Iraq would fuel terrorism
o UN weapons inspectors needed more time
o March 2003- Invasion of Iraq
- What was the primary argument behind US decision to invade Iraq?
o WMD- this was basis of US argument the decision to invade Iraq
o Preemptive war
o Saddam Hussein was not deterrable
- Trying to Guild support for the war:
o Colin Powell speech to the UN in 2003
Saddam had WMD
Aluminum tubes were being used to build these WMD
Later said intelligence was wrong
o Bushs State of the Union Address
Yellowcake uranium (source was unstable, thus also proven wrong)
- Evidence: Saddam Hussein did not have WMD
o Iraq Survey Group: found no nuclear or other WMD agents
o 9/11 Commission concluded that unilateralism was unnecessary and called for
more emphasis on multilateralism
o Main informant wasnt credible
- Iraqi Link to Al Qaeda
o Risk that al Qaeda could get WMD
o Linking invasion to the broader war on terror
Evidence: No link was found between the two
AQ members had some contact with Iraqi officials in mid 1990s
Bombings in Africa in 1998 no connection to Iraq
USS Cole attack no connection to Iraq
o Unlikely that there would have been collaboration because Saddam and Osama
had ideological differences
o View became widespread because many in administration wanted to overthrow
Saddam
- War
o Debate on Number of Troops Necessary
o Looting
o Reconstruction problems- administration early on underemphasized the
importance of reconstruction plans
De-baathification
Awarding contracts not to Iraqis but to Americans
Disbanding Iraqi firms
Disorganized
o Costs
Lives lost
Economic
Civil War
Civil Wars
Military Intervention
- What is intervention?
o External actions that influence the domestic affairs of another sovereign state
o Spectrum of influences: low to high coercion
High end:
Limited military action
Full scale military intervention
- Judging Intervention
o Evaluating intervention:
Realists- intervention justified to maintain the balance of power
Cosmopolitans- is justified if it promotes individual justice and HR
State moralists- is justified when it is to defend a states territorial integrity
or to defend its sovereignty against external aggression
o Exception to the rule of nonintervention Michael Walzer
Threat must be imminent
Preventive vs Preemptive
Intervention needed to balance a prior intervention
When threatened with massacre
Right to assist secessionist movements when they have demonstrated their
representative character
- Human Rights (HR)
o HR norm challenges the sovereignty norm
Enforcement interferes in internal affairs of states
UN and IGOs are limited in what they can do
UN had declared that HR take precedence over concerns of state
sovereignty
- Humanitarian Intervention
o Is the forcible interference in domestic affairs of another state in order to avert
violation of Human Rights
o Evolving norm that is justified
o Kinds Barnett and Snyder
Bed for the night
Do no harm
Comprehensive peace building
Bank a decent winner
o Examples
North Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda (failure), Kosovo
- Human Security
o Traditionally security meant the protection of the sovereign territorial integrity of
states from external military threats
o Human security challenged state centric notion of security focuses on the
individual
o Increase in Humanitarian Intervention. Why
Increase in intrastate conflict ethnic cleansing, displacement
Democratization- more Humanitarian awareness
Globalization crises
- Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect
o Genocide NW 216
o R2P was in large a measure to the failure of past responses to genocide
Relatively young, same fate to the genocide convention
Obstacles- power politics, self-interest, free-rider problems
Robert Pape Pragmatic Standard of HI
- Genocide- Since WW2, it has been the most well known standard of HI.
- R2P calls for the international community to intervene whenever a population is
suffering serious harm and to assume the responsibility for achieving the following
objectives:
o Stop genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity
o Prevent harm by helping states protect their populations before humanitarian
crises occur
o Re-build the society after intervention by creating new political, economic, legal
and other institutions
- Mass Homicide campaigns
o When govt has killed several thousand of its citizens in a concentrated period of
time and its is likely to kill many times that number (20,000- 50,000)
- Low cost military plans
o Undertake HI if military operations can be effective within the time required to
save a significant number of lives
o Should also have an international coalition of important states in the region- both
to serve as an international check and balance and to eliminate causing more
regional problems
- Enduring Security
o Must have an exit strategy that provides enduring security to the threatened
population one that doesnt create more harm
Schelling
- Deterrence vs Compellence
- Diplomacy vs Force
- Brute force vs Coercion
o Taking what you want vs making someone give it to you
o The threat of pain and damage are very powerful
o Violence is most successful when threatened, not used
- Commitment
o Deterrence is about intentions
- Credibility
o Sometimes it helps to be seen as irrational, not in control
o Relinquishing control to the other side
o Trip wire
- Brinkmanship: the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of or to the brink
of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome
- Nuclear vs Conventional Weapons
o Differences:
Not number of people they can kill but speed with which they can kill
Centralization of decision
War not in human hands
War less military
Targets of attacks- relationship of civilian violence to warfare
Three stages of noncombatant involvement in warfare:
o Civilized warfare
o Napoleonic wars
o Massive Civilian violence- power comes from bargaining
and capacity to hurt