February, 2011

Some Final Responses

by Andrew Mack
The Conversation
February 28th, 2011

Thanks to Erik, John and for their thought-provoking contributions. To Erik The long-term data is indeed interesting. Harvard’s Steven Pinker has a fascinating new study being readied for publication that also tracks a significant decline in violence in human affairs. And I certainly agree that a decline in the number and deadliness of armed conflict [...]

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The Perils of Nuclear Peace

by John Owen
The Conversation
February 17th, 2011

Erik Gartzke raises a terrific question concerning nuclear peace. If more countries acquire a second-strike nuclear capability, fewer pairs of countries will fight. Russia has such a capability; China probably has one; India might attain one as its rise continues. If we treat the European Union as a sort of superstate, it has a robust [...]

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A Response and a Question

by Bartosz Stanislawski
The Conversation
February 17th, 2011

Erik Gartzke asks: Couldn’t the presence of “nonstate threats” imply an important corollary for Andrew Mack’s thesis? If states really are not fighting much any more, extremists must resort to the admittedly more marginal acts of insurgency and terrorism. Even Mao Zedong said that these tactics seldom work in and of themselves, except that poor [...]

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Two Questions

by Erik Gartzke
The Conversation
February 15th, 2011

To Bartosz Stanislawski: Couldn’t the presence of “non-state threats” imply an important corollary for Andrew Mack’s thesis? If states really are not fighting much any more, extremists must resort to the admittedly more marginal acts of insurgency and terrorism. Even Mao Zedong said that these tactics seldom work in and of themselves, except that poor [...]

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A More Secure World? In Some Ways Yes; In Some Ways No

by Bartosz Stanislawski
Reaction Essay
February 14th, 2011

Bartosz Stanislawski offers a mixed assessment of today’s human security picture. Although wars have become fewer and less deadly, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Nonstate actors are of particular concern today, in that, while states’ behavior may be modeled rationally, groups with an eccentric ideological or religious motivation cannot be so modeled. The result, obviously, is insecurity. The role of the mass media is also important, in his view. While much progress has been made, and while that progress is underreported, the media tend strongly to report violent conflict in a way that fills up the 24-hour news cycle. The result can be unjustified pessimism. Neither it nor its counterpart, unjustified optimism, is warranted.

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Don’t Discount Hegemony

by John Owen
Reaction Essay
February 11th, 2011

John Owen agrees that both democratic peace theory and commercial peace theory have some explanatory power, and that both of them may be working in tandem right now. But what started the virtuous circle? Is there a deeper explanation? Owen suggests that U.S. hegemony is that underlying factor. Hegemonic peace theory is distasteful to many, in that it claims one nation must be richer and more powerful than the rest to set the world at peace. Though distasteful, it might still be correct; if so, we should not welcome the decline of American hegemony.

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Security in an Insecure World

by Erik Gartzke
Reaction Essay
February 9th, 2011

Erik Gartzke argues that modern states have engaged in fewer and less deadly wars because it is now very often more profitable to trade than to plunder. The wave of midcentury wars can be explained as having two causes; these wars were often either anticolonial conflicts, in which the great powers effectively gave up their strategies of plunder, or ideological proxy conflicts stemming from the Cold War (or, of course, a mixture of both). Neither cause obtains much anymore. Today’s wars tend to be between poorer, less militarily capable countries, with the great powers acting in a policing role. Whether this trend continues will depend to a great extent on the trajectory of the economically rising east Asian states.

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A More Secure World?

by Andrew Mack
Lead Essay
February 7th, 2011

Andrew Mack outlines a dramatic decline over the last several decades in the number of battlefield deaths and of wars overall. Reason, he argues, for cautious optimism. He reviews several arguments for why this decline has taken place. He dismisses the “nuclear peace” theory, noting that the world’s nuclear powers have been involved in many wars. He suggests that several other things may be driving the trend. First, democracies tend not to fight one another, and there are more democracies now. Second, the gains that nations realize from international trade now far exceed those they could otherwise realize through plunder. In our era, conquest doesn’t pay like it used to. International support of insurgent groups shriveled after the Cold War. And International peacekeeping institutions grew. Mack argues that while each has its partisans, these explanations are not mutually exclusive.

Read: A More Secure World?