POLS1005 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Bargaining, Preventive War, World Politics
[Week 5]
World Politics – Frieden Lake Schultz
International Institutions and War
• Chinese forces also invaded Tibet, which neighbors China on the west. China long claimed
sovereignty over this vast, mountainous region, but Tibet had declared independence from
China in 1911
THINKING ANALYTICALLY ABOUT INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND WAR
• Alliances form when states have compatible interests that motivate them to cooperate
militarily
• Alliances often seek to influence bargaining interactions with some third party by influencing
that adversary’s beliefs about allies’ willingness to fight together in the event of war
• In contrast – collective security organisations (e.g. UN) form around a common interest in
reducing violence within and between countries
- Primary challenge is to facilitate collective action by the international community to
deter, end, and prevent the recurrence of international and civil wars
ALLIANCES: WHY PROMISE TO FIGHT SOMEONE ELSE’S WAR?
• WWII in Europe started as a territorial dispute between Germany and Poland, which resulted
in Britain and France declaring war on Germany (France and Poland had long-standing
promises, codified in treaties and Britain made a similar commitment to Poland). This was
followed by Soviet Union invading Poland and Italy joined the German side
• Italy and Germany forged the so called Pact of Steel
• Germany and the Soviet Union unveiled the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
• Alliances – institutions that help their members cooperate militarily in the event of a war
• Offensive alliance – an agreement between states to join one another in attacking a third state
- Molotov Ribbentrop Pact – between Germany and Soviet Union which promises not to
attack each other and the agreement to divide Poland between them in WWII
• Defensive alliance – states pledge to come to one another’s defense in the event that either is
attacked
- The British and French pledges to Poland in WWII
- NATO
Interests and Alliances
• Alliances form when states have compatible interests that provide the basis for cooperation
and sometimes states share a common interest in achieving the same outcome
- During WWII when Britain and France shared Poland’s interest in its own survival due to
the fear of Germany’s increasing power
• Balance of power – a situation in which the military capabilities of two states or groups of
states are roughly equal
• According to this view, alliances form when two or more states need to combine their
capabilities in order to match the capabilities of another state and thereby counter the threat to
their security
- Common interests thus arise from a common threat posed by the power of a stronger state
or bloc
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Limitations of the balance of power theory:
1. Not all alliances form with the intent of balancing a stronger state
- When the Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany against Poland, it joined the stronger state,
exacerbating rather than alleviating the imbalance of power in Central Europe – example of
bandwagoning
- Bandwagoning – a strategy in which states join forces with the stronger side in a conflict
- Often offensive alliances as they have a desire to cooperate for a common gain
2. States can often choose many potential partners in order to balance the capabilities of a stronger
state
- Saudi Arabia sought allies against Egypt in 1957 rather than Israel that has a stronger
military
- Ideological and religious incompatibility between Saudi Arabia and Israel makes the alliance
unthinkable
- A shared cultural or religious identity can help explain why some pairs of states see each
other as particularly attractive allies
3. Not all strong powers provoke similar balances responses
Alliances and Interstate Bargaining
• The possibility of intervention by ally influences international bargaining by changing the
likely outcome and costs of war for each side
• The possibility of intervention can affect whether or not the opposing sides reach a bargain
• When the parties to a dispute have different information about what third parties will do, this
uncertainty can heighten the probability of a bargaining failure leading to war
- (August 1990) Iraq didn’t know whether the US would defend Kuwait and its doubts
about America’s threats to that effect helped the result of the Persian Gulf War
• Alliances are institutions formed by states in response to common interests and these
institutions may shape states’ interests in a way that helps them act as a cohesive group, but at
all times decision-making power rests with the states, not the alliance itself
- E.g. in June 1941 Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact two years after it was
formed by invading the Soviet Union and grabbing Poland for itself
How Alliances Establish Credibility
• Whether or not an alliance can successfully further the interests of allied states depends on
their willingness to fight on one another’s behalf and on their ability to signal this willingness
in a credible manner
• The goal is both to heighten the allies’ interests in aiding one another and to influence the
interaction with the rival state by shaping its expectations
• What alliances must do to increase their chance of success:
- Make it more likely that allies will fight on one another’s behalf than they would in the
absence of an alliance – can be done by:
• Decreasing the costs of fighting
• Increasing the benefits of fighting
• Increasing the costs of not fighting – abandoning the ally
- Alliances must do these things in a way that leads adversaries to believe that the allies
will indeed fight together
• States may fear that the failure to come to an ally’s defense after making such a public
commitment, would hurt their credibility in future conflicts
• Despites the challenges of establishing credibility – states have historically honored their
alliance commitments in war about 70% of the time
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• The states most likely to violate agreements are those that have experienced a significant
change either in their power or in their domestic regimes
• There is evidence that states with defensive alliances are less likely to be targeted by
militarized actions in the first place
Why aren’t alliance commitments ironclad?
• States attempt to avoid entrapment by limiting their commitments or leaving those
commitments purposely ambiguous
• In an effort to control opportunism by their allies, states rarely forge ironclad agreements that
they must fulfill – but rather – states attempt to reserve a measure of discretion for themselves
on when, how, and to what extent they will meet their alliance obligations
- United States relations with China and Taiwan
• There can be a trade-off between the credibility of alliances and efforts to control alliance
partners
• The more credible the guarantee to an ally the greater the incentive for that ally to behave
opportunistically
Analyzing the European Alliance System (1879, 1990)
• Alliances are institutions that states create in order to facilitate cooperation in support of
common interests
• The success or failure of an alliance depends on:
1. The strength of the interests that brought the allies together
2. The ability of the alliance to alter the members’ preferences so that in the event of war,
fighting is preferable to the abandonment
3. The effectiveness of the alliance is convincing the adversary of this fact
4. The ability of the partners to limit the risk of entrapment
Pre-World War 1: Two Armed Camps
• An entente is generally seen as a weak form of alliance requiring consultation and
coordination not necessarily a strict commitment of military assistance
• By the first decade of the twentieth century, the major powers of Europe were divided into
two armed camps:
- Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy
- Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia
• This alliance network created the possibility that any small conflict could drag all the
European powers into war
• Whether or not an ally would actually fight in the event of war was a crucial question in
determining how hard a state could push or how much it should give
• Uncertainty about who would join a prospective war created considerable scope for errors
The Interwar Period: 1919-1939
• By the Treaty of Locarno (1925), Britain pledged to defend Belgium and France in the event
that either was attacked by Germany and to ensure that Germany respected the
demilitarization of the Rhineland region, which bordered on those countries
• By Germany bandwagoning alliances with Italy, the Soviet Union and eventually Japan
strengthened Hitler
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Document Summary
International institutions and war: chinese forces also invaded tibet, which neighbors china on the west. China long claimed sovereignty over this vast, mountainous region, but tibet had declared independence from. In contrast collective security organisations (e. g. un) form around a common interest in reducing violence within and between countries. Primary challenge is to facilitate collective action by the international community to deter, end, and prevent the recurrence of international and civil wars. This was followed by soviet union invading poland and italy joined the german side. The british and french pledges to poland in wwii. Interests and alliances: alliances form when states have compatible interests that provide the basis for cooperation and sometimes states share a common interest in achieving the same outcome. Common interests thus arise from a common threat posed by the power of a stronger state or bloc. Limitations of the balance of power theory: not all alliances form with the intent of balancing a stronger state.
