Book Review The Origins of Major War (2000)

With The Origins of Major War Dale C. Copeland attempts to answer two related questions: (1) Given their destructiveness, why do major wars occur?, and (2) Why do states initiate international crises in situations in which the risk of major war knowingly becomes acute? Copeland’s answer to these questions is a theory that he calls dynamic differentials. Copeland’s theory is that major wars or crises that significantly increase the likelihood of major war are initiated by declining great military powers in an attempt to halt the rise of a competing state.

Copeland identifies three intervening variables that affect the probability of this situation leading to a major war or a crisis: (1) the polarity of the system, (2) the aspects of the dominant power’s decline, which consist of the depth of the decline and its inevitability, and (3) the levels and trends of economic and potential power because of their effect on the perceived aspects of decline. Under Copeland’s theory, multipolar systems are less likely to lead to major war or crises because no state will initiate either without being more powerful than all the other great powers in the system combined. In a bipolar system, by contrast, even the militarily weaker of the two powers might initiate a major war or crisis because such a state only needs to take on one other state and because there are no other great powers that the weaker state needs to worry about taking advantage of the situation to usurp first place in the system even if it were to be successful. As stated, the levels and trends of economic and potential power matter because of their effect on the declining state’s perception of its decline. The steeper and more inevitable the decline is expected to be, the more likely that the declining power will start a major war or initiate a crisis. That is to say that major war seems like a viable option to a state that believes it is unable to arrest its decline solely through internal reform.

Copeland uses 13 historical cases as evidence for his theory. In chronological order they are: the Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic War, The French-Hapsburg wars of 1521-1556, the Thirty Years War, the wars of Louis XIV, the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, the origins of the Cold War, the Berlin crisis of 1948, the Berlin crisis of 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis. He goes into detail on only four cases, though: World War I, World War II, the origins of the Cold War, and the Cuban missile crisis. Before delving into a critique of Copeland’s theory it probably would be good to lay out his definition of what a major war is. Copeland defines a major war as a war with three characteristics: (1) all the great powers in a system are involved, (2) the wars are all-out conflicts fought at the highest level of intensity (that is, full military mobilization), and (3) they contain a strong possibility that one or more of the contending great powers could be eliminated as sovereign states.

Now for the critique. While Copeland’s theory has a lot of intuitive appeal, his evidence is a thin reed to hang it on. Ironically the case that he says provides the hardest test for his theory, World War I, is actually the one that seems to most strongly conform to its premises. Copeland makes a fairly strong argument that Germany’s leaders started World War I because of their fear of what a future Russian colossus would do to them. The case of World War II also provides decent support, but, for varying reasons, the other cases are not convincing.

My main problem with Copeland’s theory, though, is his insistence on distinguishing between systemic and unit-level causes of major war, as if the systemic causes do not stem from the same source that the unit-level ones do: the human mind. His focus on systemic causes has the tendency to make it seem like he’s trying to say that people who govern states are simply automatons in service to the interests of the state. He doesn’t dig any deeper to ask why the leaders of a state like Germany in 1914 would have such a fear of a rising power like Russia. It’s doubtful that they were concerned about the future security of Germany qua an independent state. What they were most likely concerned about was their own and their descendants’ future ability to reap the benefits of their privileged positions within German society, that it would instead be Russians enjoying the benefits of those positions of power.

Of course, Copeland would probably retort that the people making these decisions about war and peace never mentioned that, but that is hardly proof that that was not their primary motivating factor in making their decisions. There are two reasons why there might not have been any written evidence of their base motivations: (1) it was such a basic fact of the situation that it didn’t need to be voiced, or, more likely, (2) it’s not something that decent people are allowed to admit to. But the pre-20th century cases are the best example of this alternative explanation, particularly the wars of Louis XIV. Copeland says that Louis’s concern in waging his wars against the Hapsburgs was the security of France. But why was Louis concerned about France’s security? Was he worried that the Hapsburg armies would invade French territory and do unspeakable and horrible things to his subjects? Maybe. But if he was, it was only insofar as such actions affected him, Louis XIV, King of France. Louis was concerned about France losing its position as the most powerful country in Europe because he didn’t want to be king of the number two country on the continent, or, even worse, he didn't want to lose his position as king. He wanted to remain number one for both the physical and emotional perks that such a position provides for the guy who’s on top. Because of this dynamic, none of the pre-20th century cases really support Copeland’s argument because these wars weren’t fought between states, they were fought between warlords with armies. Only the case of the Napoleonic Wars approaches the concept of state-versus-state warfare, and even that falls short. Napoleon may well have created a modern nation-state in France, but his desire to secure France from its enemies was as much about securing his hold over the French throne as it was about securing the French people from foreign invasion.

There are, however, other issues with the 20th century cases that Copeland uses, primarily with the Cuban missile crisis case. Copeland contends that the crisis was initiated by the US for two reasons: (1) Soviet MRBMs and IRBMs in Cuba drastically reduced the US’s advantage in strategic nuclear weapons and (2) failure to confront the Soviets would have undercut the US’s position with its allies. While this is true, saying that the US initiated the crisis is like saying that the guy who shoots someone who has broken into his house initiated that situation. It is true that the Soviet Union was permitted under international law to put their missiles on Cuban territory and to point them at the US. But what Copeland fails to acknowledge is that the Soviets did this secretly. Why would the Soviets choose to do in secret what they were perfectly allowed to do in public? Because they knew that putting those missiles in Cuba was a major upsetting of the prevailing balance of power and that the US and its NATO allies would strenuously oppose the move, thus precipitating a crisis. It’s the same reason why a burglar seeks to enter a normally well-guarded home when no one is there or when people are asleep: to prevent the crisis that would occur if he tried to do so in broad daylight when everyone is ready for him. You can't punch a bear in the face and then complain when it tries to tear your head off.

And lastly, Copeland tries to position this theory as a way of helping address future concerns, especially for future (from his perspective in 2000) US leaders dealing with a rising China. Copeland states that, if his theory is correct, then US policymakers a decade hence—basically now—would be faced with a dilemma of what to do about a rising China. His theory states that US leaders will contemplate three basic options: (1) initiate a preventive war, (2) initiate a cold war, or (3) do nothing. In 2012 the Obama administration announced a “pivot” to Asia, which, as most people have rightly surmised, is in response to a rising China in East Asia. This would seem to bear out Copeland’s theory that the declining power, the US, has taken the initial steps of creating a new cold war against a new rising power. But this doesn’t really answer the question of why the US has decided to make this pivot. For the past three years, or so, China has been increasing its agitation in East Asia against many of its neighbors, especially the US ally Japan. But China also has growing problems with other regional states, like the Philippines, Vietnam, and India. The US might have just been looking for an excuse to make this pivot, but China’s more belligerent attitude in the region has handed it one on a silver platter. Copeland’s theory is that systemic forces impel rising states into acting mildly because they know that, given time, they will eventually make it to the top without having to waste resources on a major, or even minor, war. The differing rates of growth in power will take care of things for them. What Copeland’s theory fails to account for, though, is the hypernationalism of modern nation-states, especially ones that carry major grudges against the prevailing system, like China. Time might well get for China the top spot in the international system, but that would likely do little for the Chinese rulers and citizens of today. Recent events in East Asia are showing that the contemporary Chinese leaders and citizens are likely unwilling to wait for the spoils of being the dominant power that will only possibly accrue to their country in the future; they want those spoils now and are willing to upset the present international system created by the US and its allies to get them. And this is, after all, a rising power that is causing the current problems in the world system in general and in East Asia in particular.

Why Attacking Syria Would Be a Mistake

Though the likelihood of a US attack on Syria has recently been substantially reduced, it is still enough of a possibility that Americans should still be concerned about its occurrence, whether they are for it or against it. I am personally opposed to such an attack, at least as the situation stands today. There are two basic reasons for my opposition. First, such an attack would not be in furtherance or defense of any vital US interest, which should always be the first issue in any use of US military force. Second, even if successful, such an attack is likelier to have a negative than a positive impact on US national security.

Historically the US has had six major foreign policy goals, three of which have been pursued since the country’s founding and three which are comparatively recent in time. They are: 1) to obtain and maintain control over as large a swathe of land on the North American continent as is feasible; 2) to be the strongest country in the Western Hemisphere, if not a hemispheric hegemon; 3) to maintain the ability of American ships and commerce to freely traverse the world’s seas; 4) to ensure that no state secures a hegemonic position in Eurasia; 5) to maintain US access to cheap and reliable sources of energy; and 6) to obtain the reduction of barriers to the free flow of goods, services, and capital across international borders. Since the end of the Cold War three other major goals have been added to the list. They are: 1) to promote the spread of democracy and market-based economies; 2) to counter the use of terrorism, especially international terrorism; and 3) to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. There are other, less important goals that the US has pursued or is currently pursuing, but these nine make up the major goals that have driven or that currently drive US foreign policy.

Of the nine foreign policy goals stated above, only the most recent three are truly implicated in the Syrian civil war. US involvement in the war could be a move in furtherance of US interests if we were able to: 1) get a democratically elected regime in place in Damascus that 2) governed Syria in a liberal manner (i.e., protected the rights of all of Syria’s people, not just one sectarian or ideological group, and permitted such groups to have a voice in government) and that 3) agreed to destroy, under international supervision, whatever WMD programs Assad might currently have.

Of course, the above results would almost of necessity require a major Western, and predominantly US, invasion and occupation of Syria. So, the limited strikes that President Obama has been contemplating unleashing on Assad’s forces are far below the level of action that would be required to get that done. And any notion that the US is about to attempt another Iraq scenario in Syria is patently ridiculous at this point. Not only does Obama have no intention of trying that, but there’s almost no way at this point that he could get it through Congress.

So, if the limited strikes that Obama is contemplating wouldn’t be enough to further a major foreign policy goal of the US, what then is Obama trying to accomplish? Taking him at his word, the attack would have two goals: 1) to punish the regime for its use of chemical weapons and 2) to deter Syria or other states from using such weapons in the future. Assuming that such goals are in the interest of the US, is such an attack likely to achieve them? The answer to that question regarding the first goal is: Maybe; the answer regarding the second one is: Not likely.

Whether such an attack would successfully punish the Assad regime depends on what is meant by “punish.” Clearly Obama doesn’t mean by this that the attack should be such that it either kills Assad or causes him to lose power, because then the idea of deterring him from future chemical weapons use would have no meaning. But he also isn’t talking about simply killing Assad’s soldiers because, while Assad doesn’t necessarily view them as cannon fodder—he doesn’t, after all, have a limitless supply of them—he’s already decided to throw them into the fire of combat, so losing a few hundred of them would likely be an acceptable outcome of being able to use chemical weapons against the rebels. But taking out some of the equipment that Assad has been using to attack rebels might be another matter, especially aircraft. This might be a successful punishment of Assad, and is something that would likely be the focus of any such attack. Such equipment, however, can be easily replaced by Russia.

The deterrence aspect of Obama’s plan is, however, very likely to fail. It’s not as if Assad doesn’t already know about the taboo that exists against using chemical weapons. For him to make the decision to use them anyway—and in spite of the warning that Obama issued last year—means that he believes himself to be in a pretty desperate situation. (This, of course, assumes that it was in fact Assad who ordered the use of such weapons and that his military hasn’t gone rogue or that it wasn’t the rebels who used the weapons in the hope of forcing the hand of the US.) The kind of attack that’s being contemplated on Syria isn’t likely to move the needle much, if at all, when it comes to the calculations of Assad’s, and other chemically-armed, regimes facing the type of all-or-nothing rebellion that Assad is up against. Dictators like Assad will do what they have to do to survive. You don’t become or remain a dictator by being easily dissuaded from doing bad things to innocent people.

If the worst that would come of an attack on Syria is that the goal of punishing Assad will likely not be much of a success or easily undone by Russian, Iranian, and/or Hezbollah assistance and the goal of deterring future use of chemical weapons is likely to only be marginally successful, then attacking Syria might actually be worth it because of the issue of US credibility that has been put in play by the administration’s admonishments to Assad about using chemical weapons. But, in reality, there is a much worse outcome to such an attack that provides a very strong argument against launching it, and that is that it might actually be “too successful” and, therefore, very bad for the US.

By “too successful” I mean that a US-led attack on Syria might be so damaging to Assad’s war machine and the morale of his soldiers that it could tip the very precarious balance that currently exists between the Syrian military and the rebels in favor of the rebels. This might seem to be a curious thing to think would be bad for the US, but the Syrian civil war isn’t being waged in Middle-earth; it isn’t really a fight pitting good rebels against an evil regime. Yes, the Assad regime is evil, but so are the strongest rebel groups fighting against it. Any notion that the “moderate” rebel factions would gain power from a rebel victory is nothing more than a pipe dream. All a rebel victory would do is exchange one kind of evil for another, the kind that would be much more inclined to attack US interests and citizens either directly or by supporting international terrorist organizations. Not only that, but the jihadists, in this case, would also be able to lay their hands on the Syrian arsenal of high tech weaponry, including Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile.

So while it would be in the interests of the US to remove the Assad regime from power, that foreign policy goal doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The US government must make its decisions about Syria with an eye on what is likely to follow Assad before it engages in any action that furthers his removal from power. As the situation now stands, that consideration weighs strongly in favor of not doing anything to tip the scales in favor of the rebels, which includes the shipment of small arms to the rebels, which are highly likely to wind up in the hands of the jihadist groups.

Whither NATO? (Part IV)

In this my last post on NATO, I’m going to discuss what the US can do with that organization in light of its current seeming lack of a mission and the fact that it cannot be wound up without drawing attention to the fact that the pivot to Asia is really focused on balancing against China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific region. You can see first three posts here, here, and here.

So, to what end can the US still put NATO to good use? The answer to that is the creation of a truly integrated European military, or at least a pseudo-integrated European military. That is to say that the US should encourage its European allies through the auspices of NATO to pool their military resources, including personnel, equipment, facilities, and, most important of all, procurement euros.

There are two primary caveats, one short-term and one long-term, that go along with the US attempting to bring this about. The short-term caveat is that there is currently a bit of a backlash in many European states at the moment against supranational institutions and anything that smacks of a “federal” Europe. Of the big European NATO militaries—France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK (though it is in NATO, I’m leaving Turkey out of this)—only Germany and Poland have any kind of stomach presently for further European integration. The long-term caveat is in part derived from the short-term one in that this is by its very nature a long-term project. Even if Europe was not presently going through an integrationist crisis, this is a policy goal that would have a multi-decade time horizon for success.

So what would an integrated European military structure look like? First of all it goes without saying that there is no one blueprint that a European military must have. It could be something as basic as national militaries specializing in certain aspects of military power all the way up to a truly integrated military structure in which national militaries become subsumed under the banner of a European “flag.” Obviously the former is more likely than the latter unless there is a breakthrough in European relations over the coming years that sees the creation of a truly federal Europe.

But at a minimum what an integrated European military should have is a shared budget. That is to say that there should be a centralized budget for Europe’s militaries for all aspects of military funding, but especially for administration and procurement. By creating a single military bureaucracy, Europe’s NATO members could increase non-administrative military spending without actually having to add euros to the budget. And by combining their procurement efforts, better deals with defense companies could be had because of the larger number of units that can be guaranteed to the company relative to individual national procurement budgets.

The biggest roadblock to a truly integrated European military structure is that such a structure would necessarily mean the loss of national control over that military. There would have to be a supranational entity to determine when and how to use the military, so it likely would have to come about in conjunction with the creation a federal European government. The less integrated forms of military integration can be accomplished, though, without greater European federalization, including a movement toward national specialization in certain military functions (though having one or a few states specialize in land forces would likely not be a good idea since those countries would be most likely to take the brunt of any casualties if the force were sent into action, which would be an unfair and politically untenable thing to expect of them).

Assuming that it would be possible to create some kind of unified and integrated European military structure, the obvious question arises of why it would be in the interests of the United States to foster and encourage such a situation. It would be in the interest of the US to do so because an integrated European military would be more likely to have the kind of out-of-area fighting capability that Europe’s individual states currently lack. With the exception of the UK and France, no European NATO ally can currently conduct out-of-area military operations without the assistance of the US, and even the British and French cannot sustain such operation very far from Europe or for more than a few weeks.

If the Europeans were to develop a true out-of-area operations capability, then a sort of division-of-labor could be worked out between the US and Europe in which the US takes responsibility for the Asia-Pacific and Western Hemispheric regions while Europe takes responsibility for Europe and Africa with shared responsibility over the Middle East and South Asia. The US would not only save on operational by not getting directly involved in European or African issues, but there would also be the savings of not having to support European operations there either.

Of course, such a division of labor would necessarily require a closer coordination between the US and Europe than currently exists. But one of the primary reasons why the US doesn’t currently coordinate closely with European countries is the feeling among many US policy makers that it would be fruitless to do so. Many US policy makers see Europe as more of a nuisance than a partner in the international relations arena. This is so not only because of the relative weakness of Europe’s national militaries but also because of the multiplicity of European states that must be coordinated with. An integrated European military could resolve both issues and make Europe a much more potent partner in the US’s efforts to enforce the international order that was created in the aftermath of World War II and that has redounded to the US’s (and its allies) benefit for many decades.

Whither NATO? (Part III)

In this third post on the future of NATO I'll discuss the current status of NATO in America's foreign policy in light of the announced pivot to Asia. You can read my first two posts on this topic here and here.

Given the announcement by the Obama administration of an American “pivot” to Asia, a not unreasonable question to ask is: What should the US do, if anything, with NATO?

To answer that question, you must first ask a different one: What purpose does NATO serve in the contemporary international system? As I pointed out in my two previous posts, NATO began as a North-American/Western-European effort to defend Western Europe from a possible Soviet invasion. The US had two primary reasons for entering this alliance: to keep the Soviets out of Western Europe and to keep Western Europeans from entering into a working relationship with the Soviets. Those purposes disappeared, however, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and NATO’s role shifted to performing the security function of bringing former communist Eastern European countries into the democratic, free-market fold and to acting as a legitimizer for US military efforts outside the European region.

The first of those roles is no longer an important one for NATO to play as the post-Communist expansion of Europe has almost been completed (though, admittedly, the economic and political roles of that effort played by the EU are currently on shaky ground). And the second of those roles is no longer a viable one since world opinion no longer sees America’s European allies as being independent actors because of their dependence on the US for their ability to engage in out-of-area military actions. It’s also highly unlikely that those allies will, after Afghanistan, ever again allow themselves to be put into the fire solely out of a feeling that they must uphold their commitments under NATO.

Given that the two post-Soviet roles for NATO have gone by the wayside, it would seem that a prudent thing for the members of NATO to do would be to wind the organization up and call it a day. Unfortunately for the US, that would likely, however, be a mistake. With the pivot to Asia currently underway, the US has its hands full with trying to convince China that the pivot is not about containing or confronting China’s rise. If the US were to dismantle its European alliance because it no longer has a real world rationale for existing, but did not also dismantle its Asian alliances, the obvious question to ask would be: What threat remaining in the Asia-Pacific region necessitates the continuation of these alliances. Given Russia’s weakness in the Asia-Pacific region, the only logical threat, either present or near-term, that exists is China. North Korea and Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups might be threats to the US, but North Korea is only a threat to the US because of its alliances with South Korea and Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region is simply not where the action is when it comes to anti-American terrorism. So, any move to dismantle NATO without also dismantling the US’s alliances in Asia would only manage to drive China into an even higher state of anger regarding the pivot to Asia, which would be bad for America and especially bad for its allies.

This does not mean, however, that NATO must spend its future days as a weight around America’s ankle. There is something that the US can do through NATO in conjunction with its pivot to Asia that could make the organization as vital to US security in the 21st century as it was in the second half of the 20th. I’ll discuss what that is in my fourth, and final, post on NATO.

Whither NATO? (Part II)

In this post I'll briefly discuss the post-Soviet era of NATO up until today. In the first post on this topic, which you can read here, I briefly discussed the Cold-War era of NATO.

Though the Soviet Union ceased to exist during the presidency of George Bush, the answer to what would become of NATO after the Soviet Union’s collapse wasn’t answered until the presidency of Bill Clinton. There are three likely reasons why Bush failed or chose not to address the NATO issue when the Soviet Union collapsed. First, the administration’s European/Eurasian policy was far too concerned with what to do about the former Soviet Union. There were 13 new states that needed varying degrees of assistance in the raising up of their countries to the status of functioning states. More importantly, though, was the issue of the large nuclear arsenal that was spread over a vast territory of the former Soviet Union, and not all of the warheads were located on Russian soil. Second, not long after the Soviet Union collapsed Bush had to worry about his re-election campaign, which by that time looked decidedly more difficult than it did less than a year before. Third, Bush and his advisers were by nature cautious and conservative operators. Even if Bush had won re-election, his administration likely would not have addressed the NATO issue until the second half of his second term.

Clinton, however, didn’t rush to judgment about what to do with NATO either. Clinton came into office promising the American people that he would be focused on domestic issues, particularly the economy. Beginning in 1994, however, NATO began setting up partner organizations with several states on its European periphery, including Russia itself in the Partnership for Peace. The intent in establishing these organizations was to extend military contacts to regional states in an effort to reduce tensions in the region by developing military-to-military contacts between the NATO members on one side and the non-NATO members on the other. The decision to establish these partnership organizations was a clear statement that the NATO member-states saw the organization as having a role to play in a post—Cold-War world.

Cooperation between NATO and the former communist countries was initially good, but the relationship with Russia started to sour in the late-90s, mostly because the West lost interest in Russia and Russian officials felt that their interests and concerns were being ignored by the United States, if not being actively worked against. The relationship with Russia took a particularly difficult turn when NATO offered membership to three former Soviet satellite states: Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic (the western part of the former Czechoslovakia). NATO would eventually add nine more states, all of which were former Eastern European communist states. With this expansion, Russia now had states on its border that the US had pledged to defend in the event of a military attack. The strategic depth that the former Soviet empire gave to Moscow had now virtually disappeared.

This expansion of NATO, while deleterious to the West’s relationship with Russia, was meant to serve two goals. By bringing these countries into the NATO fold (and the EU fold as well), it was hoped that their status as democracies would be solidified and that they would become peaceful members of the European family of nations. Expansion also presented the US with the opportunity of using NATO as a base of operations to support its foreign policy in other regions. That is to say that the US hoped to be able to use NATO as a vehicle for lending legitimacy to “out-of-area” operations. The types of operations that the US had mind were on display during NATO’s operations in the Balkans in the 1990s.

The big test of this US goal arose, of course, on September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks of that day the US used the military forces of several NATO allies in its operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda. The irony, of course, is that the George W. Bush administration wasn’t all that crazy about going into Afghanistan under the guise of NATO; it was actually interested in establishing the US’s right to act unilaterally in such situations, or, at most, with a coalition of the willing. But despite the major dust-up that happened between the US and UK on one side and France and Germany on the other over Iraq and the depths of unpopularity that the Afghan War would sink to in the opinion of many Europeans, the NATO operation in Afghanistan is still going to this day, and, if negotiations between ISAF and Afghanistan bear fruit, would still continue in a supporting role even after the end of 2014, which is when the US plans to have a good number of its troops out of Afghanistan.

And despite the sometimes rocky relationship that exists between NATO’s members, the alliance is actually in fairly decent shape today, at least from a political point of view. Militarily, however, the capabilities of all the member-states, save the US, have deteriorated since the end of the Cold War. In its heyday, NATO was more politically than militarily unbalanced. That is to say that the US had a greater surfeit of political and diplomatic push and pull in the world vis-à-vis its NATO allies than it did of military push and pull from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. The reverse is true today. The US is still the world’s leading military power, but its diplomatic and political power has been eroded a great amount over its actions in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The US’s NATO allies, by contrast, have largely maintained their level of political and diplomatic influence since the end of the Cold War, but their military capabilities have been seriously eroded, which was on display during the recent operation against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces in Libya when the Brits and French needed US support to pull off even that limited military operation so close to Europe’s shores.

In the next post I’ll discuss the future of NATO in light of the Obama administration’s announcement of the pivot to Asia.

Whither NATO? (Part I)

With the Obama administration's recent announcement of a "pivot" to Asia, the question arises of what the future holds for the US's relationship with Europe. But as the pivot is essentially a military-diplomatic move, the question is particularly pertinent regarding the US's European allies in NATO.

NATO has been the military-diplomatic backbone of the liberal world order since it was formed in 1949. NATO was an alliance created for the nominal purpose of the collective defense of its members against unprovoked aggression. Its unstated purpose was specifically to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the US had an even more silent purpose in entering into the alliance because, given the importance that Western Europe had to US national security, there was little question that the US would act to defend Western Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion.

By legally binding itself to defending Western European countries, the US was attempting to accomplish two things. First, there was the assurance given to both friend and foe of the US's intention to defend Western Europe. The US put its reputation on the line by formally allying with Western European countries, which would help push those countries away from communism or some kind of modus operandi with the Soviets. Second, the US was attempting to break the cycle of engagement with and retrenchment from the world that had characterized US foreign relations to that point. By entering into a legally binding agreement to defend Western Europe, US policymakers were trying to get the American people to support an effort to use American power to actively manage world affairs, or, they at least hoped to get the American people's resigned acquiescence.

While the alliance's defensive rationale never had to be used against the Soviets, during the course of the Cold War it had been a fairly successful alliance. To the extent that it helped achieve the unstated goals of keeping the Western Europeans and Soviets at arms-length from each other—at least for the first years of the alliance—and convincing the American people to assume a global superpower role, it was a success. It’s highly doubtful that NATO was the decisive factor in preventing a communist takeover of Western Europe, but even there it—along with the Marshall Plan—played a role by giving the Western Europeans the financial breathing space required to get their economies up and running again.

And while NATO had reached a point of existential danger of sorts when France began pulling out of the alliance in the late-1950s (ending with its exit from the integrated military command in 1966), the first event that really raised a question about the alliance’s existence was the event that marked its greatest triumph: the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. For an alliance whose existence was built upon defending Western Europe from a Soviet invasion, the fact that the Soviet Union no longer existed naturally raised the question of: now what?

In the next post I'll discuss a little about the post-Soviet history of NATO before ending with a third post on what I think the future of NATO should be, or if there even should be one.

First Post

I decided to take Matthew Yglesias's advice and start writing for free. Not that I expect anyone to actually read what I write here. This is primarily just a place for me to put my own thoughts on "paper" without the necessity of keeping a journal (which I've always found to be a bit teenage-girlish).

For anyone who might actually read this, though, my posts will primarily be about international relations and U.S. foreign relations and foreign policy. While not everyone considers those three categories to be entirely separate, I do. International relations deals with the nature of state-to-state relations (i.e., the way that things like the structure of the world system and human behavior affect the way in which states interact). Foreign policy is what a state wants from other states and the process by which it comes to that decision. Foreign relations is how states go about getting what they want; it's where the rubber meets the road. For example, what the U.S. wanted from Afghanistan on September 12, 2001 was to stop being a haven for al-Qa'ida. That was the U.S.'s foreign policy for Afghanistan. How the U.S. went about getting it was to initiate a war against Afghanistan that sought to topple the Taliban government and capture al-Qa'ida's leaders in Afghanistan. That was the U.S.'s foreign relations with Afghanistan.

Some might see this distinction as artificial, but I do think it helps distinguish between ends and means when it comes to the international arena. Not every country in the U.S.'s shoes could have gone the route of waging war to achieve the goal of clearing Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida, and those limitations of the means of achieving an end have ramifications for what the state will want as its end. For example, states that don't have the military means that the U.S. does will more likely than not have more pacific foreign relations with other states than the U.S. does even in exactly similar circumstances. If Peru had been the target of al-Qa'ida on 9/11, then Peru likely would have instituted a foreign policy of altering its foreign relations in such a way as reduce the likelihood of it being targeted again. This is so not because Peru is inherently more pacifist than the U.S., but because Peru simply doesn't have the means of clearing Afghanistan of al-Qa'ida forces.

I don't anticipate posting more than twice a week here, so this one should hold me over until at least Tuesday.