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Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Randall L. Schweller
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

Realists have long viewed uneven rates of growth among states as a major cause of wars. According to strict logic of realpolitik, a declining dominant power should launch a preventive war against a rising challenger as a prudent long-term security strategy. But historically, power shifts have only sometimes resulted in war. Although preventive war has been the preferred response of declining authoritarian leaders, no democracy has ever initiated such a war. Instead, depending on the regime type of the rising challenger, democratic states have chosen accommodation, defensive alliances, or internal balancing to solve the problem of impending decline. In addition to establishing the correlation between preventive war and authoritarian regimes and explaining why democratic states forgo this option, this essay (1) develops a model based on the domestic structures of the leader and challenger that predicts which strategy will be employed by a declining dominant power and (2) tests the propositions against historical survey data and several in-depth case studies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1992

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References

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12 Here anarchy means not conflict but rather the absence of a sovereign arbiter to make and enforce agreements.

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15 Rummel (fn. 1, July 1983), 34; emphasis in original.

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18 Chan (fn. 1). However, Maoz and Abdolali (fn. 1) find that “as the proportion of democratic-democratic interaction opportunities increased, so did the level of conflict in the system. On the other hand, the correlations between the proportion of autocratic-autocratic interaction opportunities and the same dispute measures were slightly negative, but … statistically insignificant” (p. 26).

19 Singer and Small (fn. 1), 55; Doyle (fn. 14), 212. Specifically, Doyle's definition requires male suffrage of at least 30% and female suffrage to be granted within a generation of its initial demand.

20 Weede (fn. 1) disagrees, stating that “economic freedom is usually not part of definitions of democracy” (p. 655). But the current democratization of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union seems to demonstrate that, in addition to political freedom, a market and private-property economy may be an indispensable ingredient of democracy.

It is important to note, however, that the addition of juridical rights and economic freedom to the definition of democracy has had no effect on the coding (democratic or nondemocratic) of the cases in this study, as all politically free states also contained both of these elements.

21 Rummel defines freedom in the expansive sense as economic freedom plus political freedom (civil liberties plus political rights). See Rummel (fn. 1, March 1983), 30–31. Doyle (fn. 14) refers to the institution of a market and private-property economy in his definition of a “liberal regime” (p. 212). A liberal democracy obviously implies both economic and political freedom.

22 Kant, “Eternal Peace,” quoted in Waltz (fn. 17), 333.

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24 I am using the definition of war developed by the Correlates of War (cow) Project, which requires at least 1,000 battle deaths to members of the interstate system. Under this definition the cow project has identified 118 international wars for the 1816–1980 period, of which 67 are interstate wars and 51 are extrasystemic wars. See Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982)Google Scholar. The major empirical studies of warfare differ in their definitions of war, however. For an excellent discussion of how these differences affect the data sets and conclusions of the studies, see Mansfield, Edward D., “The Distribution of Wars over Time,” World Politics 41 (October 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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29 Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 6468Google Scholar. This facet of my argument—that democratic public opinion and institutions militate against preventive war directed at strong but not weak opponents—is consistent with Downs's theory.

30 Hume, , “Of the Balance of Power,” in Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1741–1742) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 346–47Google Scholar. For the “complaisance” of liberal Great Powers, see Doyle (fn. 17, 1983), 323, 337–38. For the internal causes of declining power, see Gilpin (fn. 8), 159–68.

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32 See, e.g., Kennedy, Paul M., “The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865–1939,” in Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1945: Eight Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 1539Google Scholar.

33 For instance, in response to Churchill's accusation that Baldwin had acted irresponsibly by not proposing a greater rearmament effort in 1935, the prime minister responded: “Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and we must rearm, does anyone think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.” Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, speech in the House of Commons, quoted in Craig, Gordon A. and George, Alexander L., Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time, 2d ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 64Google Scholar.

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42 Vagts (fn. 4), 264.

43 Although he is inconsistent on this point, even Hans Morgenthau has written that the national interest of a state must be constrained by its own morality. See Morgenthau, , In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 3637Google Scholar; and idem, , “Letter to the editor,” International Affairs 35 (October 1959), 502Google Scholar. See also Thompson, Kenneth W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of the skepticism of political realists about international morality, see Beitz, Charles R., Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

44 May, Ernest R., Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 159Google Scholar. May clearly distinguishes between the humanitarianism that produced the war and the imperialism that grew out of it.

45 Hofstadter, , The Age of Reform (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 93, 271Google Scholar. See also Merk, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1963)Google Scholar. Merk concludes that the true expression of the national spirit has always been mission, not imperialism, manifest destiny, or continentalism.

46 For Brodie's discussion of the moral issue of preventive war, see Brodie (fn. 26), 236–37; for his discussion of why preventive war has always been an unrealistic policy for the U.S., see pp. 223–41. Morgenthau also acknowledges that preventive war is “abhorrent to democratic public opinion” and states:

It is especially in the refusal to consider seriously the possibility of preventive war, regardless of its expediency in view of the national interest, that the moral condemnation of war as such has manifested itself in recent times in the Western world. When war comes, it must come as a natural catastrophe or as the evil deed of another nation, not as a foreseen and planned culmination of one's own foreign policy. Only thus might the moral scruples, rising from the violated moral norm that there ought to be no war at all, be stilled, if they can be stilled at all.

See Morgenthau, , Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 203, 232Google Scholar.

47 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 379Google Scholar. See also Potter, R. B., War and Moral Discourse (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1969Google Scholar).

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49 Daniel Webster, quoted in Bowett, Derek W., Self-Defense in International Law (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), 59Google Scholar.

50 The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg stated: “It must be remembered that preventive action in foreign territory is justified only in case of an ‘instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation’ (Caroline Case).” Quoted in Bowett (fn. 49), 60.

51 The meaning of a preemptive attack is somewhat ambiguous. It sometimes implies that the preemptor is aware of an imminent enemy attack and thus is compelled to strike the first blow. At other times it refers to an “anticipatory counterattack” waged after the adversary's attack has been launched but before its impact has been felt. Under both definitions, the existence of an immediate threat and a very short time frame for decision making characterizes a preemptive attack; a preventive attack, by contrast, is motivated by long-term forecasting.

52 The classic doctrine of bellum justum did, however, include preventive war. See Osgood and Tucker (fn. 7), 292.

53 See Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 62Google Scholar. See also Osgood and Tucker (fn. 7), 296–97. The issue of whether preventive war can ever be included in the doctrine of the just war is far more complicated than the schematic treatment I am able to offer here. For a comprehensive discussion of this matter, see Tucker, Robert W., The Just War: A Study in Contemporary American Doctrine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960), 15Google Scholar, 71, 105–45. For a rebuttal to Tucker's argument, see Ramsey, Paul, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), 6169Google Scholar.

54 Otto von Bismarck, quoted in Walzer (fn. 53), 63.

55 This is not to say that whenever a nondemocratic state is in the process of being overtaken by a rising challenger it will respond by unleashing a preventive war. In 1866, for example, France did not intervene to prevent either side in the Austro-Prussian War from winning and uniting the loose German confederation under its leadership.

56 Curiously, Engels believed that universal military service would democratize society. He declared in 1891 that “contrary to appearance, compulsory military service surpasses general franchise as a democratic agency.” History has proved otherwise, however. See Neumann, Sigmund and Hagen, Mark von, “Engels and Marx on Revolution, War, and the Army in Society,” in Paret, Peter, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 277–80Google Scholar.

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58 Doyle (fn. 14), 213. By contrast, John Stuart Mill extends the principle of nonintervention to nondemocratic states undergoing a democratic revolution, arguing that intervention is only justified when a democratic state, or aspiring democratic state, is threatened by a foreign government. See Mill, , “A Few Words on Non-intervention,” in Mill, , Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), esp. 410–13Google Scholar.

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72 Eden, , Facing the Dictators (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 397Google Scholar. Eden also wrote:

Academically speaking, there is little dispute that Hitler should have been called to order, if need be forcibly, at his first breach of an accepted international engagement. But nobody was prepared to do it, in this country literally nobody. Even the most warlike proclaimed that the League Council must be called, which would not have endorsed the use of force, (p. 412)

73 Parker (fn. 60), 364.

74 Thomson (fn. 68), 171.

75 In addition, the Third Republic's history of political scandals, most notably the Stavisky affair of 1934, had entirely discredited the parliamentary system. One French officer exclaimed, “Literally I have never met a single one of my poilus who has not expressed his disgust for the parliamentary regime”; comments of a French officer, June 1940, quoted in Adamthwaite, Anthony, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 12Google Scholar.

76 Laval had resigned in response to the public's denouncement of the Hoare-Laval proposals, which sought to appease Italy through territorial concessions at the expense of Ethiopia.

77 Thomson (fn. 68), 200.

78 Harry Truman, quoted in Gaddis, John Lewis, “The Origins of Self-Deterrence: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1945–1958,” in Gaddis, , The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 106–7Google Scholar.

79 NSC-68, April 14, 1950, reprinted in Etzold, Thomas H. and Gaddis, John Lewis, eds., Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 431–32Google Scholar.

80 Lebow (fn. 4, 1984), 172. Addressing the American public, Truman said, “We do not believe in aggression or preventive war. Such a war is the weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Quoted in Buhite, Russell D. and Hamel, William Christopher, “War for Peace: The Question of an American Preventive War against the Soviet Union, 1945–1955,” Diplomatic History 14 (Summer 1990), 382Google Scholar. Truman's disdain for preventive war was evidenced by his dismissal in 1950 of Major General Orvil Anderson as commandant of the Air War College following Anderson's public remarks in favor of preventive war. See Brodie (fn. 26), 229.

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82 The Soviet test in 1953 was not of a superbomb, as Soviet historians have claimed, but rather was of a type of thermonuclear weapon. It was not until November 1955 that the Soviets successfully tested a superbomb with a yield of 1.6 megatons. See Holloway, David, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 24Google Scholar.

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89 Eisenhower, March 29, 1957, quoted in Gaddis (fn. 39), 153. Dulles remarked similarly in his famous speech on massive retaliation that the attempt to meet aggression “by being ready to fight everywhere … could not be continued for long without grave budgetary, economic, and social consequences.” John Foster Dulles, U.S. secretary of state, address before the Council on Foreign Relations, January 12,1954, quoted in Osgood, Robert E., Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 209Google Scholar.

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98 In the years 1966–75 Israel's military expenditure averaged 49.8% of the national budget. See Leitenberg, Milton and Ball, Nicole, “The Military Expenditures of Less Developed Nations as a Proportion of Their State Budgets,” in Eide, Asbjorn and Thee, Marek, eds., Problems of Contemporary Militarism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 289Google Scholar.

99 Handel (fn. 95), 9.

100 It is worth noting that the Israelites under David's leadership waged two preventive wars, first against the Philistines and then against Damascus. For a good discussion on the similarities between the ancient Jewish states and contemporary Israel and on how the history of the ancient Israelites affects Israeli foreign policy decision making, see Roberts (fn. 96), chap. 1.

101 For an excellent discussion of the effects of the international system on domestic structure, see Gourevitch, Peter, “The Second Image Reversed,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978)Google Scholar.

102 For discussions that forecast the return of multipolarity in Europe, see Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snyder, Jack, “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Christensen, Thomas J. and Snyder, Jack, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44 (Spring 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 For similar arguments, see Evera, Stephen Van, “Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Winter 1990–91)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the exchange between Russett, Bruce M. and Mearsheimer, John J. in “Back to the Future, Part III: Realism and the Realities of European Security,” International Security 15 (Winter 1990–91).CrossRefGoogle Scholar