DANCEST 805 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Preemptive War, Neoconservatism, Tyrant
Document Summary
While reading, focus on agency vs structure. Stoessinger john why nations go to war. Chapter 10 why nations go to war. Communists had no capability to intervene: only when both india and pakistan developed nuclear weapons, they started treating each other with respect and gradually developed their own regional balance of power. In 1991, saddam hussein believed that americans were too weak, hence invaded kuwait: bush did not strike north korea the same way he stroked iraq because he had an accurate perception. On the eve of each war at least one nation misperceives another"s power of the north korean military capabilities: according to this, the beginning of a war is an accident. It was not a war between two hostile african tribes it was the massacre of close to a million tutsi by hutu extremists in 1994. Tutsi were considered superior by belgians and germans because they were taller and of a lighter colour.
