Does growing economic interdependence among great powers increase or decrease the chance of conflict and war? Liberals argue that the benefits of trade give states an incentive to stay peaceful. ...Realists contend that trade compels states to struggle for vital raw materials and markets. Moving beyond the stale liberal-realist debate,Economic Interdependence and Warlays out a dynamic theory of expectations that shows under what specific conditions interstate commerce will reduce or heighten the risk of conflict between nations.
Taking a broad look at cases spanning two centuries, from the Napoleonic and Crimean wars to the more recent Cold War crises, Dale Copeland demonstrates that when leaders have positive expectations of the future trade environment, they want to remain at peace in order to secure the economic benefits that enhance long-term power. When, however, these expectations turn negative, leaders are likely to fear a loss of access to raw materials and markets, giving them more incentive to initiate crises to protect their commercial interests. The theory of trade expectations holds important implications for the understanding of Sino-American relations since 1985 and for the direction these relations will likely take over the next two decades.
Economic Interdependence and Waroffers sweeping new insights into historical and contemporary global politics and the actual nature of democratic versus economic peace.
One of the most important questions of human existence is what drives nations to war-especially massive, system-threatening war. Much military history focuses on the who, when, and where of war. In ...this riveting book, Dale C. Copeland brings attention to bear on why governments make decisions that lead to, sustain, and intensify conflicts.
Copeland presents detailed historical narratives of several twentieth-century cases, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. He highlights instigating factors that transcend individual personalities, styles of government, geography, and historical context to reveal remarkable consistency across several major wars usually considered dissimilar. The result is a series of challenges to established interpretive positions and provocative new readings of the causes of conflict.
Classical realists and neorealists claim that dominant powers initiate war. Hegemonic stability realists believe that wars are most often started by rising states. Copeland offers an approach stronger in explanatory power and predictive capacity than these three brands of realism: he examines not only the power resources but the shifting power differentials of states. He specifies more precisely the conditions under which state decline leads to conflict, drawing empirical support from the critical cases of the twentieth century as well as major wars spanning from ancient Greece to the Napoleonic Wars.
Charles Glaser's Rationalist Theory of International Politics nicely extends his work on contingent realism begun in the mid-1990s. The rationalist theory he puts forward focuses on three main causal ...variables: material factors such as the offense-defense balance and power; informational variables, primarily leader uncertainty about the motives of key adversaries; and a state's motives per se, namely, whether it is a security-seeking actor of has "greedy" non-security reasons for acting. This article focuses on two groups of arguments the author found powerful; arguments that start from a rationalist foundation but which potentially undermine the generalizability and empirical value of Glaser's theory. Adapted from the source document.
One of the most important questions of human existence is what drives nations to war-especially massive, system-threatening war. Much military history focuses on the who, when, and where of war. In ...this riveting book, Dale C. Copeland brings attention to bear on why governments make decisions that lead to, sustain, and intensify conflicts.
Copeland presents detailed historical narratives of several twentieth-century cases, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. He highlights instigating factors that transcend individual personalities, styles of government, geography, and historical context to reveal remarkable consistency across several major wars usually considered dissimilar. The result is a series of challenges to established interpretive positions and provocative new readings of the causes of conflict.
Classical realists and neorealists claim that dominant powers initiate war. Hegemonic stability realists believe that wars are most often started by rising states. Copeland offers an approach stronger in explanatory power and predictive capacity than these three brands of realism: he examines not only the power resources but the shifting power differentials of states. He specifies more precisely the conditions under which state decline leads to conflict, drawing empirical support from the critical cases of the twentieth century as well as major wars spanning from ancient Greece to the Napoleonic Wars.
If there is one puzzle that animates all research on the origins of the Pacific War, it is this: Why would a small island nation such as Japan start a war with an adversary possessing a much larger ...economic base and thus a much greater capacity to wage total war? This essay will show that Japanese officials were very aware of the risks they were assuming, and that they went to war only with great reluctance and only after seeking a diplomatic way out. In the end, they chose war for one simple reason: they believed that without a war Japan would decline to profoundly that it would become vulnerable to future attacks from either the United States or traditional enemies such as Russia. Preventative war became the rational lesser-of-two-evils option in an environment where no allies existed to help Japan maintain its long-term security. Adapted from the source document.
Over the past decade, the English School of International Relations (IR)
has made a remarkable resurgence. Countless articles and papers have been written on the
School. Some of these works have been ...critical, but most have applauded the
School's efforts to provide a fruitful ‘middle way’ for IR theory, one that
avoids the extremes of either an unnecessarily pessimistic realism or a naively optimistic
idealism. At the heart of this via media is the idea that, in many periods of history,
states exist within an international society of shared rules and norms that conditions their
behaviour in ways that could not be predicted by looking at material power structures alone. I
f the English School (ES) is correct that states often follow these rules and norms even when
their power positions and security interests dictate alternative policies, then American realist
theory – a theory that focuses on power and security drives as primary causal forces in
global politics – has been dealt a potentially serious blow.
In response to Jeffrey Taliaferro's & Robert Kaufman's critiques (both, 2001) of his The Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell U Press, 2000), Copeland addresses the international relations theory & ...the historical debate inherent in their arguments. Copeland outlines the discussion regarding offensive & defensive realism, then questions whether prospect theory, proposed by Taliaferro, augments & improves his own theory of dynamic differentials, concluding that it does not. Copeland addresses Kaufman's comments on his views of WWI, WWII, the Cuban missile crisis, & the Cold War. Copeland reaffirms his dynamic differentials theory & contends that history must be properly understood & synthesized to reduce the risk of its being repeated. K. Larsen
