POS 304404: Great Power Politics 03012006

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics03/01/2006

• Course Status
• Weekly written assignment due.
• Paper topic description returned.
• Expanded paper description assignment
  distributed.
• Midterm exam review guide distributed last week.
• Midterm next Wednesday night.
• Course Agenda
• Website.
• Follow-up last week.
• Presentation Iran.
• Discussion question.
• Readings.
• Mearsheimer Chapter 5 Haas Chapter 4.
• Videos
• Nazi Ideology, 1939 (Munich to Nazi-Soviet pact).

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• Mearsheimer Chapter 4 Conclusions.
• Armies paramount.
• Most dangerous states.
• Continental powers with large armies.
• Insular states.
• Unlikely to initiate aggressive wars against
  other great powers.
• most peaceful world one where all great powers
  were insular states with survivable nuclear
  arsenals.
• World does not exist.

3

• Air Power/Strategic Bombing.
• Morality?
• Depleted Uranium as case study.
• Decapitation Strikes.
• Morality of War.
• jus ad bellum (justification for going to war).
• Jus in bello (just conduct of war).
• Air campaigns military necessity,
  proportionality.

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• Strategic Bombing Morality.
• Myth of Distant Punishment.
• Douhet the origin.
• Based on assumption that strategic bombing would
  inflict mass psychological casualties.
• Erroneous linkage between frontline psychological
  casualties and rear/civilian area psychological
  casualties.
• RAND 1949 Study of Germany.
• No increased incidence of psychological
  casualties.
• No erosion of national will during aerial
  bombardment.
• Modern Psychological Theory.
• PTSD - psychological casualties induced by
  proximate threat - not distant threat posed by
  strategic bombing.
• Strategic bombing analogous to other disasters.

5

• Strategic Bombing Morality.
• Myth of effectiveness of antiseptic remote
  control air campaigns.
• about as sound as claiming you can police New
  York City with cruise missiles.
• Strategic Bombing may be illegal vis-à-vis Geneva
  Convention.
• ICRC SIrUS research project.
• Survey of 26,000 war related injuries.
• Weapons responsible for superfluous injury or
  unnecessary suffering (Geneva Convention).
• Myth of distant punishment - psychiatrically
  unsound, psychologically impotent, strategically
  counterproductive, morally bankrupt, soon to be
  illegal.

6

• Strategic Bombing Morality.
• Myth of technological fix.
• US extensive research projects re
• Super Precision Munitions.
• Precision reduction of collateral damage
  increased efficiency of weaponry.
• March 2003. Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said.
  "We can achieve much 'shock and awe' by hitting
  just critical points."
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
• Military Robots1, 2?
• Surveillance, Tactical Strikes, Strategic
  Bombing.
• Maxwell Air Force Base Index.
• Predator.
• GlobalHawk.
• DarkStar.
• StrikeStar (Air Force 2025).

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• Depleted Uranium.
• Used extensively in Gulf I, Gulf II, Kosovo.
• Gulf II - A-10 Warthog Aircraft fired 300,000
  rounds.
• Superdense metal, used in armor penetrating
  munitions.
• DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
• DU shells fired from air platforms.
• Vaporizes on contact.
• Debate re radiation and health effects.
• Example of environmental fall out from Great
  Power/Imperial conflict.
• Agent Orange of 1990s and present?
• Health effects on military personnel and
  civilians in conflict areas.
• BBC Website re Depleted Uranium.
• Christian Science Monitor.
• War Crime? Not according to ICTY - rejected
  investigation of Clinton Admin and NATO.

8

• Decapitation.
• Difficult to accomplish.
• Borders on assassination.
• Erroneous assumptions about leadership.
• Need for actionable intelligence.
• Cases
• Assassination of Dudayev.
• Iraq 2003 Shock and Awe - attempted
  decapitation strike.
• Various US Predator Strikes.
• Isolation of leadership.
• Iraq 2003 Shock and Awe.
• Seems to have disrupted command and control over
  Iraqi military.
• Did not disrupt command and control over
  insurgents.
• Regime already substantially weakened.

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• Discussion Question 03/01/06
• Strategies for Survival and Origins of World War
  II.
• Mearsheimer profiles a number of strategies for
  survival in Chapter 5. Are any of these
  strategies for survival evident in the behavior
  of states discussed in Haas Chapter 4, or does
  ideology overwhelm decisions to select
  strategies for survival?

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• Haas 1930s and the Origins of the Second World
  War.
• Policies brought about WWII universally agreed
  upon.
• Motives for policy choices - not agreed upon.
• Application of ideological distance model to 3
  cases.
• Nazi Germany, UK and France, Soviet Union.
• Nazi Foreign Policy.
• Mearsheimer and Copeland - Nazi ideology neither
  necessary or sufficient cause.
• Germany had actual potential to become hegemon.
• Timing explained but not motive.
• Motive - belief in inevitability of war with
  Soviet Union.
• Anti-communism and racial hierarchy.
• Ideological and Racial Distance.
• Realist theories cannot explain Germanys
  leaders decision to wage a war of annihilation.
• Beck Group/Military resisters vs. Nazi
  foreign/national security policies.

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• Haas 1930s and the Origins of the Second World
  War.
• UK and France Foreign Policies, 1933-1939.
• Centrality of relative power concerns.
• Significant puzzles remain.
• Domestic party ideology and balancing choices.
• Party ideology accounts for differences in
  perception of threat.
• Conservatives fear of ideological subversion
  pushed appeasement.
• Conflation of threats of war and revolution.
• Socialists.
• Ideology amplifies perception of German threat -
  that power-centered arguments cannot explain
  (133).

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• Haas 1930s and the Origins of the Second World
  War.
• UK and France Foreign Policies, 1933-1939.

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• Haas 1930s and the Origins of the Second World
  War.
• Soviet Foreign Policies.
• Two periods - 1933-1941.
• 1933-summer 1939.
• Clear understanding of German threat.
• Balancing against Germany.
• Realists theories capture Soviet
  policies/decision making during this period.
• But ideological distance between Soviet and all
  powers also major influence.
• Fear of internal subversion.
• Summer 1939 - 1941
• Nazi-Soviet Pact.
• Intra-capitalist vs. capitalist-socialist war.
• Reduced incentives to cooperate with UK after
  defeat of France.
• Ideological distance explains Soviet misguided,
  paranoid understanding of British intentions
  (145).

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• Goals and Strategies for Survival.
• Great Power Goal - Maximization of Power.
• Regional, not global hegemony, the goal.
• Global hegemony difficult if not impossible.
• Wealth maximization.
• Preeminence of land power.
• Nuclear superiority.
• Difficult if not impossible to achieve.
• US 1945 to early 1950s.
• Strategies.
• Gaining Power War, Blackmail, Bait and Bleed,
  Bloodletting.
• Checking Aggressors Balancing, Buck-passing.
• To Avoid Appeasement, Bandwagoning.

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• Strategies Gaining Power.
• War.
• Controversial.
• Losing proposition - not necessarily.
• Aggressors lose? Nuclear logics.
• Pyrrhic victories.
• Acquisition and maintenance of empire.
• Prohibitive cost of empire.
• Extraction of resources.
• Lieberman.
• Benefits of aggression.
• Acquisition of territory and population.
• Strategic territory.
• Eliminate vanquished state - alter balance of
  power.

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• Strategies Gaining Power.
• Blackmail.
• Threatened use of force.
• More likely to work against minor powers.
• Great powers have formidable relative strength.
• Bait and Bleed.
• Causing rivals to fight one another.
• Provoke competitor power involvement in
  quagmires.
• Difficult to trick states into war.
• Danger of competitor winning war - gaining power.

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• Strategies Gaining Power.
• Bloodletting.
• Causing warring rivals to bleed each other
  white.
• Truman quote - p. 155.
• Lenin - imperialists groups fighting each other.
• US, Soviet Union and Afghanistan.

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• Strategies Checking Aggressors.
• Balancing.
• Great power assumes direct responsibility for
  preventing aggressor from upsetting balance of
  power (p. 156).
• Creation of defensive alliances to contain.
• External balancing.
• Slow and Inefficient.
• Internal balancing.
• Rapid internal mobilization.
• Offshore balancers - US, UK.

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• Strategies - Checking Aggressors.
• Buck-passing.
• Get another state to bear the burden of
  deterring/fighting aggressor.
• Measures.
• Good diplomatic relations with aggressor.
• Cool relations with buck catcher.
• Defensive buildup to deflect aggressor to other
  powers.
• Prophylactic build up of forces.
• Amplify strength of the buck catcher.
• Allure of buck-passing.
• Danger of free riding w/n balancing coalitions.
• Offensive dimension of buck-passing - US/UK and
  Soviet Russia WWII.
• Drawbacks - buck-catcher does not check
  aggressor buck-catcher become powerful and
  upsets balance.

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• Strategies To Avoid.
• Bandwagoning.
• Aligning with aggressor.
• Strategy of the weak.
• Hope that aggressor is merciful.
• Thucydides dictum.
• Strong do what they can and the weak suffer what
  they must.

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• Strategies To Avoid.
• Appeasement.
• Threatened state makes concessions.
• Surrender territory of third state.
• Appeaser committed to checking the threat.
• Fanciful and dangerous strategy.
• Likely to make rival more dangerous.
• Conceding power realist reasons.
• Primary and secondary threats.
• Buying time for mobilization.
• Conclusion.
• Waltz (defensive realist) overlooks
• Imitation of aggression, not only balancing.
• Innovation/strategic surprise.

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• Next week.
• Midterm Exam.
• March 15th, Spring Break.
• March 22nd, class cancelled, written assignments
  turned in via e-mail.
• No Discussion Question 03/08/06
• Strategies for Survival and Origins of World War
  II.
• No written assignments due for either graduate or
  undergraduate students.