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The concept of security
- DAVID A. BALDWIN
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- 17 April 2001, pp. 5-26
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Redefining ‘security’ has recently become something of a cottage industry.
E.g. Lester Brown, Redefining National Security, Worldwatch Paper No. 14 (Washington, DC, 1977); Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, 68 (1989), pp. 162-77; Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, 8 (1983), pp. 129-53; Joseph J. Romm, Defining National Security (New York, 1993); J. Ann Tickner, ‘Re-visioning Security’, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Oxford, 1995), pp. 175-97; Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 313-26; Martin Shaw, ‘There Is No Such Thing as Society: Beyond Individualism and Statism in International Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, 19 (1993), pp. 159-75; John Peterson and Hugh Ward, ‘Coalitional Instability and the New Multidimensional Politics of Security: A Rational Choice Argument for US-EU Cooperation’, European Journal of International Relations, 1 (1995), pp. 131-56; ten articles on security and security studies in Arms Control, 13, (1992), pp. 463-544; and Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton (eds.), Rethinking America's Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (New York, 1992). Most such efforts, however, are more concerned with redefining the policy agendas of nation-states than with the concept of security itself. Often, this takes the form of proposals for giving high priority to such issues as human rights, economics, the environment, drug traffic, epidemics, crime, or social injustice, in addition to the traditional concern with security from external military threats. Such proposals are usually buttressed with a mixture of normative arguments about which values of which people or groups of people should be protected, and empirical arguments as to the nature and magnitude of threats to those values. Relatively little attention is devoted to conceptual issues as such. This article seeks to disentangle the concept of security from these normative and empirical concerns, however legitimate they may be.
Informally special? The Churchill–Truman talks of January 1952 and the state of Anglo-American relations
- A. P. DOBSON
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- 17 April 2001, pp. 27-47
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When Churchill became Prime Minister and Anthony Eden Foreign Secretary in 1951 they had to try to adjust Britain's world role to match her capabilities, while confronting a wide range of problems. Britain faced a balance-of-payments crisis and troublesome questions from the USA about both dollar aid and trade with Communists. In the Middle East the nationalization of the massive Anglo-Iranian Oil Company operations by the Iranian leader Mossadeq was another difficult issue: Britain emphasized the need to coerce the Iranians in order to safeguard her economic interests, whereas the Americans saw Cold War dangers in pressurizing Iran. They feared British policy would destabilize Iran and create opportunities for a Communist takeover. In Egypt also, nationalist forces caused a division between the two allies, with the USA evincing more caution for fear of being tainted with colonialism and thereby alienating Third World countries from the Western camp. In Europe, Britain dragged her feet on integration and the creation of a European Army, which made more difficult the agreed aim of rearming Germany. In NATO the British resented the appointment of an American as the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT); and they worried about America's strategic plans and general stance towards the Soviets, and about the atom bomb regarding both its possible use and the breakdown of wartime Anglo-US cooperation. There were American doubts about the integrity of Britain's security after the Klaus Fuchs spy case and her failure to make reforms suggested by the Americans, and there were relatively minor disagreements on such issues as the choice of a standard rifle for NATO and the location of NATO headquarters. The most immediate trouble-spot for Anglo-US relations, however, was the Far East where there were differences about the Korean War, the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Nationalist Chinese on Formosa, and the Japanese Peace Treaty.
Democratization and foreign policy change: the case of the Russian Federation
- ALEXANDER V. KOZHEMIAKIN
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- 17 April 2001, pp. 49-74
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Theorists of international politics have recently observed an apparent anomaly: democracies do not seem to fight each other.
See, e.g., Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, 80:4 (1986), pp. 1151-69; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, 1993); Rudolph Rummel, ‘Libertarian Propositions on Violence Between and Within Nations’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 29:3 (1985), pp. 419-55; David Lake, ‘Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War’, American Political Science Review, 86:1 (Mar. 1992), pp. 24-37; Clifton Morgan, ‘Democracy and War: Reflections on the Literature’, International Interactions, 18:3 (1993), pp. 197-204; John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 87-125. It should be emphasized, however, that some analysts question the validity of the ‘democratic peace’ argument. See, e.g., Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19:2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49; David Raymond Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions: A Reappraisal of the Theory that “Democracies do not Go to War with Each Other”’, Review of International Studies, 20:3 (1994), pp. 207-23. For the response of the ‘democratic peace’ theorists to these criticisms, see Bruce Russett, ‘The Democratic Peace: “And Yet it Moves”’, International Security, 19:4 (Spring 1995), pp. 164-75; Bruce Russett and James Lee Ray, ‘Why the Democratic-Peace Proposition Lives’, Review of International Studies, 21:3 (1995), pp. 319-23. Increasingly part of conventional wisdom, this proposition has been mechanically converted into a policy prescription, according to which the process of democratization invariably exerts positive effects on international security. Thus, for example, in his 1994 State of the Union address President Clinton declared that, ‘the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to supprt the advance of democracy elsewhere’.‘Excerpts from President Clinton's State of the Union Message’, New York Times, 26 January 1994, p. A17. Similarly, Shimon Peres, when Israeli Foreign Minister, announced that Israel should ‘encourage’ democratization among its neighbours in order to strengthen the process of peace settlememt in the Middle East.Cited in Cohen, ‘Pacific Unions’, p. 223.
Minority rights in Europe: from Westphalia to Helsinki
- JENNIFER JACKSON PREECE
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- 17 April 2001, pp. 75-92
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Sovereign insiders and minority outsiders
The ‘problem of minorities’, with its numerous implications for both international theory and practice, has been a significant issue in international society for centuries. It has constituted an ongoing friction between states, a pretext for separatism, irredentism and intervention, and a direct and indirect cause of local and general wars.
Among the best works which examine various aspects of the ‘problem of minorities’ are the following: I. Bagley, General Principles and Problems in the International Protection of Minorities (Geneva, 1950); I. Claude, National Minorities: An International Problem (Cambridge, MA, 1955); G. Gotlieb, Nation Against State (New York, 1993); W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, 1995); J. Laponce, The Protection of Minorities (Berkeley, CA, 1960); C. Macartney, Nation States and National Minorities (London, 1934); J. Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge, 1990); H. Miall (ed.), Minority Rights in Europe (London, 1994); D. Moynihan, Pandaemonium; Ethnicity in International Politics (Oxford, 1993); and P. Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities (Oxford, 1991). Why?
Intermittent republics and democratic peace puzzles
- WILLIAM R. THOMPSON
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- 17 April 2001, pp. 93-114
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The fact that democracies seldom fight other democracies has been explained monadically — there is something about democratic institutions that constrains decision-makers — and dyadically — there are normative sentiments shared by democracies that make their conflicts less probable in the first place and less likely to escalate when they do occur. The problem is that empirical analyses rarely support the contention that less authoritarian states are discernibly less likely to initiate wars. Moreover, the presence or absence of normative ties between democracies has proven difficult to measure directly. Even more problematic is the tendency to pursue regime type explanations as if regime type arguments, in either their monadic or dyadic manifestations, are likely to be necessary and sufficient. While no one explicitly argues that they are necessary and sufficient, the systematic assessment of competing explanations (regime type versus alternatives) is still very much in its infancy. Not only is it fair to say that we do not know for sure what it is about regime type that restrains conflict within some dyads; we also do not know how much relative explanatory credit to give to regime type.
Arguments and evidence on the democracy-war generalization may be found in Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago 1942/65); Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (Indianapolis, 1957; Dean Babst, ‘Elective Governments — A Force for Peace?’, The Wisconsin Sociologist, 3 (1964), pp. 9-14; Peter Wallensteen, Structure and War: On International Relations, 1920-1968 (Stockholm, 1973); R. J. Rummel, ‘Libertarianism and International Violence’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27 (1983), pp. 27-71; Steven Chan, ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 28 (1984), pp. 617-48; Erich Weede, ‘Democracy and War Involvement’, ibid., pp. 649-64; Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), pp. 1151-69; Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, 1993); Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace/Zones of Turmoil (Chatham, NJ, 1993); and James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia, MO, 1995). Alternative approaches to developing greater specification, examining rival hypotheses, and presenting still more arguments can be found in Melvin Small and J. David Singer, ‘The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816-1965’, Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 1 (1976), pp. 50-69; William K. Domke, War and the Changing Global System (New Haven, CT, 1988); Zeev Maoz and Nasrin Abodali, ‘Regime Type and International Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33 (1989), pp. 3-35; Richard L. Merritt and Dina A. Zinnes, ‘Democracies and War’, in Alex Inkeles (ed.), On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989); George Modelski and Gardener Perry III, ‘Democratization from a Longterm Perspective’, in N. Nakicenovic and A. Grubler (eds.), Diffusion of Technologies and Social Behavior (New York, 1991); Stuart A. Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36 (1992), pp. 309-41; Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, ‘Alliance Contiguity, Wealth, and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict Among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?’, International Interactions, 17 (1992), pp. 245-68; David Lake, ‘Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War’, American Political Science Review, 86 (1992), pp. 24-37; Randall Schweller, ‘Domestic Structure and Preventative War: Are Democracies More Pacific?’, World Politics, 44 (1992), pp. 235-69; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason (New Haven, CT, 1992); T. Clifton Morgan and Valerie Schwebach, ‘Take Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: A Prescription for Peace?’, International Interactions, 17 (1992), pp. 305-20; Alex Mintz and Nehemia Geva, ‘ Why Don't Democracies Fight Each Other? An Experimental Assessment of the “Political Incentive” Explanation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 37 (1993), pp. 484-503; William J. Dixon, ‘Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict’, American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), pp. 14-32; James D. Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), pp. 577-92; Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security, 19 (1994), pp. 5-49; David E. Spiro, ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, ibid., pp. 50-86; John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, ibid., pp. 87-125; and William R. Thompson, ‘Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart Before the Horse?’ International Organization, 50 (1996), pp. 141-74. In particular, Bremer, ‘Dangerous Dyads’, and Maoz and Russett, ‘Alliance Contiguity’, have made some headway in examining the relative contribution of dyadic regime factors versus other sources of influence. However, Maoz and Russett's examination is limited to a restricted set of variables and the post-1945 era. Bremer's analysis has a longer time-span but his study is characterized by important operationalization problems and also fails to check the temporal stability of the outcome. More work along these lines is definitely warranted.