Conditions of War and Peace

Conditions of
war and peace
Kiichi Fujiwara
Professor, Graduate School for Law and Politics,

Policy Alternative Research Institute
The University of Tokyo
Conditions for War and Peace
Index
1. When war becomes necessary
1.1. Can war be necessary?
1.2. Theories of just war
1.3. Deterrence or war-fighting?
1.4. Invasion and third power intervention
1.5. Civil war, human right and collective security
1.6. Case I: The Fall of Yugoslavia
1.7. Failed states and the responsibility to protect
1.8. Case II: The case of Libya
1.9. Limits of intervention
2. Power transition and war
2.1. Power transition in international politics
2.2. Theories of power transition and hegemonic wars
2.3. Who attacks first?
2.4. Case I: Spain and Great Britain
2.5. Alliance and power transition
2.6. Case II: Alliance and First World War
2.7. Military power and economic power
2.8. Case III: The rise of Japan, 1960s-1990s
2.9. Case IV: The rise of China, 1990s-2010s
2.10. Can hegemonic wars be avoided?
3. Democratic peace, democratic wars
3.1. Two forms of liberalism
3.2. Theories of democratic peace
3.3. Nationalist mobilization and war
3.4. Case I: The French Revolution
3.5. Militarism and civilian control
3.6. Case II: German militarism and First World War
3.7. Wars led by civilian government
3.8. Case III: The war on Iraq
3.9. Toward the age of democratic wars
4. Conditions for peace
4.1. Three arguments for peace
4.2. Deterrence as the condition for peace
4.3. Deterrence failures
4.4. Case I: Germany, Japan, and the origins of Second World War
4.5. International institutions and rule of law
4.6. Limits of international institutions
4.7. Security dilemma and arms control
4.8. Case II: Nuclear development in North Korea
4.9. Case III: Security dilemma in East Asia
4.10. Between power politics and the rule of law
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Kiichi Fujiwara
Professor, Graduate School for Law and Politics, Policy Alternative Research
Institute, The University of Tokyo
Kiichi Fujiwara is professor of International Politics at the
University of Tokyo. A graduate of the University of Tokyo,
Professor Fujiwara studied as a Fulbright student at Yale
University before he returned to Japan at the Institute of
Social Science (ISS). He has held positions at the University of
the Philippines, the Johns Hopkins University, the University
of Bristol, and was selected as a fellow of the Woodrow
Wilson International Center at Washington D.C. Prof.
Fujiwaras works on international affairs
include Remembering the War, 2001; A Democratic Empire,
2002; Is There Really a Just War? 2003; Peace for Realists, 2004
(winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005; revised edition
published in 2010); America in Film, 2006; International
Politics, 2007; War Unleashed, 2007; Thats a Movie! 2012.
Sho Hayase
Teaching Assistant
Sho Hayase received his Bachelor of Arts in Occidental History from the Department of
History, University of Tokyo. He also received his Masters degree in Public Policy from the
Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo in March 2013. He majored in
International Public Policy, and completed his research thesis entitled The Use of Force by
Democratic Countries toward Authoritarian Countries. He joined the Education Abroad
Program and studied at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at
the University of California, San Diego between September 2012 and March 2013. He is
interested in Power Transition in International Relations, Security Dilemma, Bargaining
Theory, Triangular Relationship in East Asia and Pacific Region, and Complexity of States
Action and Recognition.
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1. When war becomes necessary

1.1. Can war be necessary?
In this course I would like to think with you about conditions for war and peace. This is a
question that has plagued the thoughts of many thinkers in the past. War, of course, is a
terrible destruction. So many people die, and so many peoples' living are uprooted. And
therefore, it is only legitimate to think that wars of all kinds should be eliminated from the
Earth.
But when it comes to the measures for peace, what we need to prevent warfare, then
suddenly the whole discussion becomes so complicated. For example, one way to avoid war
would be to have a strong military and show force to ones neighbors, so that you would not
be attacked so easily. The other extreme would be to eliminate all possession of arms, that
weapons should disappear from the planet, so that people can enjoy peace. And as you can
see, thinking about condition of war and peace is an extremely controversial manner, matter
that does not allow easy answers. And that is exactly what I want to do in this course. Instead
of providing you answers, I want to provoke your ideas, your reactions, and your internal
difficulty in facing the problems.
Let's start from the easiest and the most difficult question. Can war be necessary? That alone
is an extremely controversial issue. For we would like to think that war is unnecessary, but
that not may be the case, and there's a problem. As wars produce much disasters and
calamities, it is easy to reach conclusions that wars are not desirable. But then what war is not
desirable? What is not desirable is an invasion to your homeland. Even if it accompanies
many victims of such aggression, it must be legitimate to fight against the invaders, and then
you have the heroes who fight against the invaders and the victims who suffer because of
the aggression from the invaders. In this light, the war is necessary here, its the invasion that
is unnecessary and that must be fight back. This combination of hero and victim is almost
ambiguous when we follow the tradition of war memories in every country. Starting from the
from the First World War to the Second World War, you see many war memorials that are
dedicated to those people who passed away and those people who fought gallantly against
the enemies. But at the same time, we must start to think that war is something that cannot
be avoided anyway.
That war is like part of our human nature cannot be challenged. So this leads to this question,
can wars be avoided? In many ways, wars were seen as something similar to natural
disasters. Just like earthquakes or fires, war is something that just happened, and was the will
of the God that dictated such calamities; God's ways are always so difficult to know for the
mortals and that is something that is beyond our reach.
At the same time, there were some ideas that emerged essentially in Europe in the 17th
century, that war is not a natural disaster but something conducted by humans, and because
it is conducted by humans we can change it; if its a human behavior then it can be
controlled. I'm not arguing that those in 17th Europe argued about abolishing warfare, far
from it, but they were arguing that war is actually a tool of a state's policy. A government has
a right to use war as a rational tool of foreign policy, so if you follow that line, then the
argument is quite different from the one that you might anticipate from taking wars as
natural disasters.
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In many ways, it was this legacy of the Renaissance or the humanitarian views on war, not
humanizing war but taking it as a human behavior, that formed the basis of international
law. And of course, we can argue that wars of self-defense are an inherent right of individual
nations, and also, so long as governments decide to go to war there is no reason that such
action should be limited. But then, the argument should go even further than that. For
example, take a case where a large of number of people are being massacred, something
that happens all the time in many wars, but it can also happen without a war. Take for
example a dictator who is killing people in his or her land, thousands of people are being
slaughtered by the dictator. Should such situation be allowed to continue? Then you have a
very different question here. This is not about war as a rational tool of foreign policy, this is a
question about intervening into a humanitarian disaster and save people from tyranny and
violence.
We will discuss later about this question of responsibility to protect. So as you can see, this
avoidance of war is closely related to another question that is if wars should be avoided.
Under certain circumstances, might be the case that we should fight war to save people, and
refusing to participate in a military action against a violent villain, would be taken not only
cowardice, but as a conspiracy of silence that allows so many people to die. But then, if it is
the case, there can be a necessary war, and we also have to pay attention to the fact that war
brings out much casualties and destruction. We can argue that war is necessary when its
killing a large number of people, but the destruction brought about by that war could be
much larger than the war itself.
And that leads to the final question here: when are wars necessary and when are wars
unnecessary? Establishing a principle on this issue is not only important in observing wars,
but also in proposing very concrete foreign policy. If we fight unnecessary wars, then we are
simply allowing people to be involved in mass killings, and we are allowing people who do
not have to die to pass away before their fate.
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1.2. Theories of just war

Here I'd like to discuss with you about just war. The word itself might cause alarm among
many of you who think that there cannot be a just war. And as a matter of fact, many people
might assume that just war theories are justifications of war that glorify warfare, that praise
war; but this is far from the truth.
The origin of just war theories dates back to the Roman Empire, even
before Christianity. Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the main philosophers of
the Roman Empire, who competed for political power with Julius Caesar,
focused on this very essential question: can we make distinctions between
a just war and an unjust war? Wars involve so much destruction and
calamity and loss of human lives, so they certainly seem unjust. But at the
same time, wars were necessary to defend one's homeland, one's people
and one's property.
In the classical days, the power of Rome in wars was somehow balanced by the power of the
opponents. And therefore, whatever Rome wished to do in war was somehow limited by the
power of the opponent. But that was not the only story, because Rome became so strong
that there was no military capability that could force Rome into concession. And when you
have such a strong power, how can you stop that power from abusing its power
That was a question that Cicero faced when Rome became too strong, because Rome might
be able to fight wars anyway and that alone might lead into a dictatorship. Cicero of course
opposed the extension of the emperors power, and he thought that a certain legal restraint
would be necessary to limit the power of the emperor. When Cicero talked about a just war,
he was not justifying it; quite the opposite, he was somehow ruling out wars that are not just.
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So there for just war theory emerged as an argument that tried to
establish what wars are just and what wars are not. And then Augustine
of Hippo, another Roman philosopher in the Christian base, went
further along with this argument and established several principles,
some of which are written down here. For Augustine of Hippo the
central question was how could Christians justify massive killing and
massive warfare; there should be a line to be drawn between things that
Christian could and could not do.
Centuries later Michael Walzer, an American philosopher,
somehow established this study of a just war. Walzer was
writing its questioning after the Vietnam War. The question
was what the American's could, because the United States
were so strong that they could fight wars of their choice,
even if others might think that such wars were illegitimate.
So Scilo, Augustine of Hippo and Michael Walzer, all shared
this view that we should draw a line between what can be
done and what should not be done in warfare.
One of the central issues here is about the cause of the war, what wars can be fought and
what wars should not be fought. This is called the question of jus ad bellum, that essentially
means what wars can be fought and which wars should not be fought. Something that is
central is a just cause, that a war should be based on a cause that is just; in other words, wars
that cannot be legitimized in the in the origin are unjust by itself. The actor must be a public
authority, an authority that governs a certain tract of land under legitimate grounds, which
also means that if this is an abusive dictator whose authority in his land is quite questionable,
then that would not be an actor of a just war.
Then we have the question of proportionality, the amount of destruction that might
accompany that war should be more or less limited, and smaller than the gains that can be
achieved by fighting that war. Lets say for example that you are trying to save 10.000 people
in a conflict, but you estimate that if you start a war, then 100.000 people might die. In that
case the proportionality principle is obviously violated.
And such question leads to another question which is the other side of the just war theory:
what wars should not be fought? So long as our argument holds water, I think this is quite
clear. Lets suppose there is a war that does not have a just cause, for example a king that
wants a territory of the neighbor; the only reason why he wants that territory is because he
wants a larger tract of land. That is not a just cause. In a more extreme case, if there is a rather
sadistic political leader, who takes interest in killing a large number of people, that is
certainly not a just cause.
One of the just causes that has been accepted is the right of self-defense; a war that is
aimed at defending one's own land is almost automatically assumed to be a just war. Also,
from the rule of public authority, we can argue that a power that lacks public authority, say
for example a strong man who has a large number of armed guards but who was not
recognized as a legitimate political leader, that is not the public authority and therefore he
does not have the legitimate right to conduct warfare. The other case would be terrorism,
where an armed group that is eager to use act of violence even including suicide and that
has terrorist organization. That would most certainly not be a public authority because that
group lacks the legitimate grounds or political rule.
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You might say, however, that all of this is merely academic, and in effect it is. Because wars
are fought by governments or nations and there are very few international authorities that
can impose international law on the behavior of individual states. And if that is so, this whole
discussion about just war is a mere facade, is meaningless, because if there is no authority
that can actually enforce their decision on the behavior of individual states, then all these
things is simply talk, and strong powers may able to do whatever they wish.
That is true, but we also have to pay attention to two things. One is that many nations share
a third in commitment in the preservation of the status quo, the state of things as they are.
When that is the case many governments may agree on certain principles of international
relations, and the preservation of such principles even if there are not international
authorities; and that of course is the origin of international law. Without a world government,
nevertheless, there can be and there have been international bodies that do enforce certain
decisions, with limits of course, but with some power. And also, we should also pay attention
to the role of major powers, sometimes called empires: when a power is so strong that its
decision cannot be deterred by other powers. Then again that power cannot be restrained
by other powers. So therefore, just like in the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar or the
United States in the present day, the role of justice and the argument about just war is in our
hands.
Among the many questions related to just war, the most important one is about legitimate
means. What can be done in a war? What can be allowed in a war? Can a war be fought by all
means? In a way, this is a very academic question. For a soldier fighting in the theater, the
question's quite obvious: he wants to do everything so that he can beat the enemy and
secure his own safety, and to that extent, using the maximum destructive weapon, weapons
of mass destruction. There's no question that such means would be welcomed by the
soldiers, who are willing to fight in the warfare. But this becomes a major issue when the
amount of destruction that can take place from individual weapons develops so massively,
and that is why the use of certain weapons becomes a major issue in the study of war. This
issue about legitimate means in a just war is usually discussed in terms of jus in bello, that is
the method allowed in warfare. Jus in bello is usually discussed as two principles or
combination of two principles.
The first one is the distinction principle, which origin is old but quickly developed in the
19th and 20th centuries: this is about making distinction between those who are fighting the
war, the combatants, and those who are not fighting the war, the non-combatants. In more
easier terms, it means that a soldier may attack a soldier, but not civilians, for the civilians are
not fighting the war. Now this principle might sound quite self-evident to many of you, but if
you accept this principle this certainly limits the kind of action you can take. For example,
there might be an opportunity where you can fight against a large number of enemy
population and you are not sure who is a combatant and who is a non-combatant. You can
certainly not ask the enemy, so therefore it might be logical to kill them all, but that is against
distinction principle. And this gives a very strong limitation to the kind of strategies that can
be used in warfare.
The second one is the proportionality principle: means that the causalities or injuries or
destruction that accompanies warfare should not exceed the expected advantages that
come out with warfare. If war is aimed towards a legitimate objective, it has a legitimate aim.
Then the way you carry out that war should also be limited in a way that the destruction and
the casualties and the injuries brought about by that war should always be kept to a
minimum, so that the good that is produced by the war should never be less than the bad.
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But then again this is a very serious issue, which relates to the tools of war: what exact tools
of war should be ruled out from warfare? This is a very difficult issue and very few
governments are willing to pay attention to it. At least up until the 18th century, the limitation
of the tools of war was essentially, an academic question. The war that changed the situation
was the Crimean War. The Crimean War was not a war that started as a world war of any kind.
This just was essentially a war that included the Russians, and the Turks, and the Brits, and
the French. In many ways a traditional warfare, but even during the traditional warfare, so
many soldiers died from sickness diseases, malnutrition, and it became very difficult to save
them from the their injuries. Can such a situation where the wounded soldiers are dying in
the battlefield, be allowed?
This was a question that the British philosopher as well as a nurse Florence Nightingale
faced. Observing the calamity of warfare in the Crimean War, where she worked as a nurse,
she strongly argued that protecting the health of wounded soldiers should be recognized.
And that such medical treatment should be done, irrespective of the side that that is fighting
the war.
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Another person who is important in this context is Jean Henri
Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, an organization that
provides health and medical treatment to those wounded soldiers
in the battlefield, regardless of nationalities. The Red Cross would
help the enemy as well as our side, and by providing medical
treatment across national borders, they argued that the horror of
warfare should be limited to a minimum. But then this is only about
the site lines of warfare, it's not about limiting weapons as such,
because it is very difficult to limit the use of weapons even if they
are destructive. Or put it the other way around, it is difficult to limit
the use of weapons of mass destruction, precisely because of the fact that they can produce
mass destruction. And how can weapons of mass destruction be kept out of use?
We have a good case here, and that is the poison gas. Poison gas, or the mustard gas, was
used quite extensively in the First World War. It produced many deaths, especially in those
dugout benches where the soldiers were living. You throw poison gas into those trenches
and a huge number of people would die almost immediately. The use of poison gas is not
allowed, and when the Hussein government used gas one of the poisonous gasses in the
repression over the Shiite's minorities, this became one of the very strong reasons to think
about overthrowing the regime. There are some evident motives to ban the use of poison
gas. It might move in one direction, but because of the wind direction it might move into the
othe, meaning that it might attack the enemy, but then the fighting side might also be
destroyed. That is one reason why the ban on poison gas was easier than others.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, or chemical weapons, biological weapons or nuclear

weapons, the ban is a bit more complicated. Nuclear weapons are most certainly one of the
weapons of mass destruction. The foremost weapons of mass destruction, it might also
achieve certain stability in international relations, by providing a very strong power of
deterrence. If you have nuclear weapons, then it becomes very difficult to attack your
country, so long as you can use that nuclear capability against your enemy. And if nuclear
weapon is one guarantee for your survival, then it follows, that even if this is a weapon of
mass destruction, it should be kept in use.
This has been a matter of debate, but we have to remember that nuclear weapons have not
been used since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and regardless of all the
discussion about nuclear proliferation, the number of nations that still hold nuclear weapons
is not that large. The speed of nuclear proliferation has been much less than accepted, which
might show that show that the inhuman nature of nuclear weapons is recognized by the
practitioner themselves. And although we are far away from illegalizing nuclear weapons,
the youth or even the position of weapons of mass destruction is no longer guaranteed.
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1.3. Deterrence or war-fighting

Up to now we've been discussing about the question of war and justice. But then there is a
legitimate line of argument that denies applying the question of justice in warfare. For
warfare is an area where morals and law play very little role, and the only way of preventing
warfare, these people argue, is that we should be better armed, and strong enough so that
the enemy cannot attack us. The argument that a certain major military power can force
other nations not to attack is called deterrence: when you have a large military capability, so
that when other powers attack you can retaliate with very strong power, there is a likelihood
that the other power may not attack you.
The argument of deterrence is an interesting, because while it rules out any role of law or
justice or morals in international relations, at the same time it is not a military argument at
all. The focus here is on defense of ones land: the use of military power here is not about
winning a war, but preventing a war. So deterrence theory is an interesting combination of
realist arguments that rule out legal or moralistic understanding of international relations,
but also refrains from more offensive interpretation of international relations about
maximizing power. This is about defense, survival and prevention of warfare, they will argue,
and then the central question here is whether war can be deterred. If deterrence is strong
enough, then position of arms and military would prevent the occurrence of war. So
therefore, we really don't have to talk about justice, or human rights or anything, but simply
build up a strong military, and make sure that the other side will not attack you.
This is nice as long as it works. But then there are certain questions that come along with a
successful deterrence. The question here is when deterrence works, and when it doesnt
work. Take for example a terrorist who is about to start a suicide bombing of his or her
enemy. That terrorist is eager to risk his or her life for this military action. Can you deter this
act of terrorism? I'm afraid not, because telling him or her that we're going to kill him or her
will not prevent the action, because that person is ready for death already. A power that is
ready to take the risk of massive warfare can never be deterred. This is a question we usually
call the question of aggressive power, which means that a power that is willing to take the
risk of massive warfare cant almost, by definition, be deterred; we cannot deter an
aggressive power. And this is the question that comes along with Nazi Germany where Hitler
was willing to start a war in Europe regardless of the military cost.
The nice thing about reality is that there are very few aggressive powers. There might be
many terrorists, but there are very few aggressive powers that are eager to start a war, risking
a major war. One of the key cases of successful deterrence took place in the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962. In 1962, a major missile base in Cuba, which was built obviously by the Soviet
Union, was detected by the United States. And this started a few days that brought the world
very close to nuclear combat. If the Soviets were ready to risk warfare, then they could have
used nuclear weapons against American soil. And if the Americans, who are far more
superior in military capability, were willing to take the risk, they could have attacked the
Soviet Union here. But both sides, actually during this crisis tried to stay away from the use of
nuclear weapons. The naval blockade that was imposed on the Soviet Union and Cuba was
of a very limited degree, and the Soviets were eager to negotiate. After all, they agreed to
pull out nuclear missiles from Cuba, and moreover, out of this crisis the United States and the
Soviet Union agreed on several measures that would prevent accidental warfare, including
installing a hotline, a telephone line between the United States and the U.S.S.R. so that an
accidental warfare may not take place. And also they started to agree on a regime and that is
now a part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty scheme.
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Here we can see a case where war was deterred. But then, the final question here again,
comes back to our mind. Can an aggressive power be deterred? No. And if that is the case,
then deterrent strategy will not be able to prevent warfare between a power and an
aggressive power. If there is a power that is eager or willing to accept the risk of warfare,
deterrence will not work. So deterrence as such does not automatically guarantee peace at
all. It is a useful strategy for national defense, but there are several loopholes that might lead
to new round of international instability.
And we can take several cases where a new nation with nuclear capabilities emerged in the
globe and that produced instability. Like for example in 1964, Peoples Republic of China
tested their nuclear weapons. Now I doubt if China was willing to invade any country at this
moment and I'm pretty sure along with many specialists, that China was more interested in
defending their own soil in their development of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, China was
taken to be a much less trustworthy power than the Soviet Union and this was after the
Cuban Missile Crisis I described. And Soviet Union was taken to be a more reliable partner in
diplomatic negotiations, while China was taken to be a much more aggressive power. So
although I doubt if China was actually an aggressive power, there was a suspicion and
anxiety that China might one, and that alone was sufficient in making the relationship
between the United States and China a very tense one.
Another case would be the nuclear development of North Korea. Again I do not think North
Korea's intention in developing nuclear capability was offensive. North Korea's policy was far
more offensive in the 1970's than in the late 1980's or 1990's, for the obvious reason being
that North Korea was far outnumbered in terms of major capability compared to her
neighbors. But nevertheless, here we are talking about the nation that started the Korean
War, which was not deterred by American presence and crossed the 38th parallel. So even if
North Korea may not be an aggressive power, there was an anxiety that Pyongyang may be
working on an aggressive design, even if that a possibility is a limited one. That limited
possibility could not be ruled out and therefore, the nuclear development of North Korea
invited a series of international crisis for obvious reasons.
So deterrence is one way to reduce the possibility of warfare. And then it does come with
hidden costs, for after all deterrence implies that each nation should develop a major military
capability, a large arsenal and large number of major troops. It's very costly and also very
disruptive to the life of many, but even more than that deterrence is not sacrosanct,
deterrence can break down. And even if there are no aggressive powers, the very possibility
that a certain power might be aggressive, the perception itself would make the terrorist
extremely unstable as seen in the case of China in 1960s or North Korea since the mid 1990s.
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1.4. Invasion and third power intervention

We've been talking about major powers. When we talked about just war, we discussed about
the Roman Empire and the United States, and when we talked about deterrence, we talked
about the United States or the Soviet Union. All of them are countries with quite large
military power. But then what happens to minor powers? What happens to countries that
dont have large military? How can they defend themselves? For it is one thing to argue that
the right of self defense is accepted in international society, but it is quite another to argue
that self defense can work for any nation when you don't have a large military. It might be
very difficult to defend your line. What happens then?
One possibility is that weak powers would depend on the protection provided from major
powers. Alliances are not necessarily made among equal powers; as a matter of fact, the
number of alliances in history has been alliances that involved smaller powers and large
powers. Small powers would rely on a large power for her defense in case other countries
might invade. And in return, of course the small power would provide several conditions that
are favorable to the major power. But that can be extremely vulnerable in certain situations.
Say, for example, a power that is so proud that power is not eager to enter into any alliance.
How can the power survive? It's a weak power, and it wants to survive but not enter into any
alliance. One case would be for example Switzerland, which has a very small tract of land.
Each citizen now own and owes the responsibility to become of fighter, and there is
conscription established for each male in Switzerland. With the mountainous landscape, it
becomes very difficult to invade the country. But Switzerland might be an exceptional case,
and when you form an alliance with a power that might be eager to take over your land
you're in trouble. What do you do?
In many ways, third power intervention can actually mean intervention for certain secular
gain. The developing of the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire, for example,
was supported by Great Britain; without British support, I doubt that Greek could win
independence. But then, why did Great Britain support the independence of Greece? The
reason's quite simple. United Kingdom was interested in weakening the Ottoman Empire, so
the intervention from Great Britain was certainly not for humanitarian reasons at all. Great
Britain intervened because wanted to have a geopolitical advantage visa vie Turkey, and it
had little to do with the human rights of people living in Greece.
And if that is the case then we cannot expect third power to behave as a guardian of peace
and liberty, or stability. Third powers intervene basically based on their self interest, and not
necessarily for the defense of the smaller nations. There have been cases where an invasion
toward a power that is if not defenseless, weak, caused a reason for a large warfare. Take for
example the Second World War, or the First World War, when Germany attacked France.
Germany attacked France, but it did not cross the German-French border. Instead, Germany
attacked France passing Belgium, and of course that meant Belgium became a battleground.
And that alone, this victimization over the Belgian people provided a very good reason for
Great Britain to be engaged in a war against Germany. So intervention might actually cause a
reason for another intervention in this light, and in this case, the neglect of independence of
Belgium produced a large warfare.
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But will intervention produce stability? This leads to a
rather difficult question. It might be the case that
intervention will produce stability at the risk of liberalism
or democracy. In 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary.
Hungary, however, was not posing any threat to the Soviet
Union, far from it: Hungary was only moving away from
Soviet dominance by producing a more liberal
government. But that was taken as a move threatening
the integrity of Soviet influence, and the Soviet Union
invaded Hungary. Now this case was a clear invasion, but
then if you aid Hungary you'll be entering into a total
combat with the Soviet Union. In this particular case, the
Soviet intervention into Hungary did produce stability,
which was also an authoritarian regime imposed against
the will of the Hungarian people. In this case the western
nations were facing a very cruel choice: would you trade
your liberty, or would you trade your peace?
If you trade your liberty then the Western
nations should have intervened in Hungary and
push away the Sovites from Hungarian soil. But
this should have produced a massacre, a major
war between the USSR and the western nations.
And in this particular case, the west decided not
to choose liberty: they chose stability which, in
essence, meant that Hungary belonged to the
Soviet Bloc, and the will of the Hungarian people
was denied.
The other case would be the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, United States intervened in South
Vietnam. At this point, the United States was not invading South Vietnam, but protecting
South Vietnam from domestic Communist movement. That move proved to be unsuccessful
as the number of Communist rebellion inside South Vietnam became so strong, aided by
North Vietnam, and the United States started a war against North Vietnam. In this case, some
people might argue that the United States was fighting for the sake of freedom. But that
fight actually developed into a major war between North Vietnam and the United States, and
potentially involving the relationship between China, Soviet Union and the United States.
Here the choice of liberty, from the American viewpoint, actually meant much instability in
the region.
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So we have a dilemma here. International interventions are certainly not limited to the ones
directed to the defense of a smaller country. An alliance might provide a guarantee for
peace, but as long as major powers follow their own set of interest, we cannot expect such
universalized kind of intervention. There is always a choice between stability and
intervention, and if you intervene you might be able to bring out some results that are
desirable. But the destruction that comes along with it could be large when natural
intervention includes an escalation into major warfare. In Hungary there was no major
action, and the Hungarian people suffered from dictatorship for such a long time. In Vietnam,
the United States intervened, and the whole theater was full of massive killings. Which one
do you decide to choose?
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1.6. Civil war, human right and collective security

When we talk about war, we usually talk about international wars, conflicts that are fought
between governments like the Second World War or the First World War. But when you take
a look at the history of warfare, the larger number of wars is actually civil wars, wars that are
fought not between governments, but inside a certain country. However civil wars, because
they are not international wars, are not necessarily the concern of international society. As a
matter of fact there is a nagging question here. Why should we be concerned about civil
wars? Civil wars can become threats to the survival of other nations as instability in a certain
land might escalate into other regions as well. But take for example the American Civil War,
that was fought between the North and the South. I do not think there was much possibility
that the civil war in the United States would escalate into a war between United States and
the United Kingdom, or between the United States and France. It was a war with very little
possibility of expanding into an interstate war.
And so long as civil wars do not suppose a threat to the survival of other nations, you might
rightfully argue that civil wars are not and should not be the concern of other nations. In
traditional international relations, there is this principle of non intervention into domestic
affairs that is only related to the authority of a certain government: they should not be
invaded or intervened by outside powers. And from this rule you might argue that an
intervention into a civil war is almost by definition a violation of the principle of sovereignty
and non-intervention. But having said that, this is not exactly the case, in many cases we can
see, especially after the end of the Cold War, there has been a number of civil wars that have
attracted much attention from overseas. Take for example the breakdown of the Yugoslavian
Federation. Yugoslavia was a nation composed of several districts, republics that had each
certain amount of autonomy, but were still part of the Federation. And many republics such
as Slovenia or Croatia, and eventually Bosnia, decided to move away from that Federation,
which caused a major war. If you do agree with Slovenia or Croatia as independent nations, it
is an interstate war, and if you disagree about their sovereignty, then it's a civil war. But the
question here is not academic, the question here is that the possibility of the war in
Yugoslavia expanding into other regions was relatively limited. But nevertheless, a large
number of people being killed in Yugoslavia invited much attention.
A case where a civil war expanded into international warfare would be the series of warfare
including the civil war in Rwanda, the civil war in Congo, and the Congo wars. In this
particular case, the Rwanda civil war ended up with the evacuation of a large number of
Hutu rebels into the Congo. The Tutsis, who became the ruling group in Rwanda, were very
much concerned about the Hutu rebels in the Congo, and therefore Rwanda was eager to
expand military operations across the border to Congo. In this particular case the Congo
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regime could not sustain itself, and this whole intervention led into a war of liberation
against the Mobutu regime. But afterwards, after the fall of Mobutu, Rwandans were taken as
uninvited guests, and this led to a war between Rwanda and Congo, and that developed into
an all scale warfare, including several surrounding countries, like Zimbabwe or Angola.
So you can see that there are several cases of civil wars: civil wars that may not involve, may
not develop into threats to other nations, while there are civil wars that may develop into
major military escalation. But here we have a question, should intervention to civil wars be
allowed? For, like I said, the civil wars are by definition military conflicts within a certain
border, and an intervention into civil war does need some certain justification. But then there
can be justifications, because if a large number of people are dying in a certain land, it is
extremely difficult for us to accept it as a fact of life. Yes, wars do happen, and yes, it is very
difficult to put a limit on civil wars as opposed to international wars. But it was very difficult
for people living in Europe to observe the killings in Yugoslavia. And eventually, there was a
mass scale NATO intervention into Yugoslavia. In the case of Rwanda and Congo, the
international involvement was very much limited, and the slaughters that took place in
Rwanda, essentially conducted by the Hutus against the Tutsis, were taken to be examples of
a double standard of international society where mass killings in the western world is not
accepted, but mass killings n the non-western world is more or less accepted.
We should always pay attention to the fact, however, that intervention into a civil war itself
can bring about an escalation of warfare. An in that particular case, the intervention and the
war that followed would become a cause of concern. And after all, intervention into civil wars
may not be done from humanitarian purposes. When the Khmer Rouge was occupying
Cambodia and killing a large number of people, Vietnam intervened into Cambodia. This was
a clear violation of the sovereignty principle, but then at the same time this had a character.
The Vietnamese invasion had shared a character with other humanitarian interventions,
simply because the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering so many people of their own. In this case,
I doubt if the intention of the Vietnamese in invading Cambodia was humanitarian, but at
the same time the Vietnamese invasion, which was denounced by the international
community, actually brought an end to the large scale killings committed by the Khmer
Rouge against the Cambodians.
So we are left with this question: should intervention to civil wars be allowed or not? The
answer to this question would be very different. On the one hand, we do see cases where
international intervention to civil wars did produce positive results, by putting an end to
mass scale killings, such as the case of Yugoslavia. We also see cases where interventions to
civil wars actually accelerated the amount of killings by an escalating warfare. And we see
ambiguous cases such as Libya, where the international intervention was made to stop the
mass scale killings. But the intervention itself brought about a large scale, a large scale killing,
and also a production of a failed state, a state that cannot govern its land. So here we are left
with a dilemma. Civil wars should not be left alone, if a large number of people are dying. But
at the same time, if you intervene, that intervention itself might be making a source, an
origin of calamity, might be starting a large scale killing. And this, of course, is the case of just
war extended into the case of civil war.
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1.7. Case I: the fall of Yugoslavia

Let's examine more closely about the fall of Yugoslavia. This was the largest case of military
action that took place in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Why did it start?
What kind of intervention took place? And which were the consequences? Those are the
subjects that I'd like to discuss in this section.
The first question, of course, is what caused the breakdown of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian
Federation took the form of federation, in the sense that each republic had a certain
autonomy within the Federation. If you add up the number population, the Serb population
was much larger in all of Yugoslavia; but if you take individual republics, the Serb population
tended to be a minority. The Serbs were a minority in Croatia, minority in in Slovenia, a
minority in anywhere outside the Serb Republic. Maintaining this situation in a stable
manner was an extremely difficult thing to do. Tito, the leader who led Yugoslavia in the
Second World War post-war years, was a very careful administrator. He was a Croatian, and
somehow downplayed the simple fact that the Serbs composed the majority of Yugoslavia.
And somehow expanded the autonomy of individual republics, and this was the right thing
to do, but at the same time this strengthened the claims that were made from the republics
to the Yugoslavian government.
After Tito, Slobodan Milosevic became the political leader.
And Milosevic, unlike Tito, was not shy away from putting
forward the Serb first, he was much more overt Serbian
nationalist, although his nationalism was opportunistic in
many ways, which caused the alarm from the other
republics aside from the Serb Republic. In June 25th 1991,
Croatia and Serbia declared independence. And Croatia
becoming independent along with Slovenia was a severe
blow to the integrity of Yugoslavia, as two major parts of
Yugoslavia would become independent. How to face the
situation itself was a major issue for the European
community which was turning into the European Union.
But because of a strong initiative from Foreign Minister
Genscher of Germany, the European community did
accept Croatia and Slovenian independence.
After the outbreak of Ten-Day War, the Slovenian eventually won their independence, along
with the Croatians. Now if you have Slovenia and Croatia independent, then that leads to a
very difficult situation in Bosnia, which is close to both Slovenia and Croatia, in the sense that
the majority are the Muslims and not the Serbs. But the situation was much more difficult
because the population distribution in Bosnia was much more even compared to Croatia,
which had the strong Croatian majority, and Slovenia which had an even stronger Slovenian
majority. And after the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, vigilantes, independent
citizens' groups composed of Serbs, started to arm themselves in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
aware that their position would be endangered by the Muslims who wished who wished to
win independence. If Croatia and Slovenia could win independence, why not them? And as
the situation became much tenser, on March 3rd 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina declared
independence, and that followed a major period of warfare, especially in the town of
Sarajevo.
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One of the most important events that took place during this war in Bosnia was the
Srebrenica massacre. In June 11th 1995, a large number of Serbian forces, along with United
States Air Forces, started to surround Srebrenica, a place with a large population of Muslims,
and a major military assault was imminent. The Commander of United Nations Forces
stationed there and asked New York for permission to be engaged, to protect the Muslims
from major assault by the Serbs. United Nations declined this request, and just like the
Commander was afraid about, a major massacre against the Muslims took place. The
Srebrenica massacre is one event that is remembered up to this day, showing the inability of
international community to protect people. At the same time this ignited the anger against
the inhuman atrocities committed by the Serbs and the Yugoslavian government, and this
lead to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, starting from March to August, 1995; and after this
bombing, the Dayton Agreement was reached in November 1995. There was another
sideshow where Kosovo tried to win independence from Yugoslavia. And although major
powers were reluctant to be engaged, as the crisis became imminent, this time they
engaged at an early stage, and NATO started bombing on 1999.
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Let's take our time and think about the consequences of United Nations intervention in
Yugoslavia. I think we can make a strong statement that we are no longer afraid about an
outbreak or civil war in the regions that used to be part of Yugoslavia. Serbia, Croatia
Slovenia Macedonia, and all those republics have become more or less peaceful. So to that
extent, the United Nations intervention in Yugoslavia was successful. But that's not the
whole story, because the United Nations was unsuccessful in bringing the end to the civil
war, it were the NATO forces that brought about success. Remember that in Srebrenica, the
United Nations did essentially nothing in preventing people to be killed, and it was NATO
that provided the force to end the civil war in Yugoslavia. So the case of Yugoslavia shows
the lack of international support in providing safety to people living in Yugoslavia, and it also
shows the use of military force in protecting people from the development of a major civil
war. This is one case where we may wish to talk about a necessary war. In Srebrencia it might
be the case that the United Nations should have engaged and protected people from
Serbian assaults. It may have been the case that NATO should have intervened much earlier
before so many people in Bosnia were killed.
In fact, if you see such a large scale civil war developing in the region, producing miseries to a
huge number of people living there, you can make a very strong case that there is a case
where you should fight a war and not shy away from it. And just like the rest of Europe
watched the the discrimination of Jewish population in Germany without doing anything,
just like so many people including not only those in Europe but elsewhere or the United
States, with Washington's silence over the deportations, the violence, the killings against the
Jewish population in Germany. You may make a very strong case that the international
community was watching Yugoslavia without doing nothing. This is what we call the
conspiracy of silence, when we decide to do nothing, we decide not to see what's going on.
And this is a case of a necessary war.
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1.8. Failed states and the responsibility to protect

Here I'd like to discuss about the failed states and the responsibility to protect. Both are very
ambiguous terms, so let's go back to a very simple question. Who is responsible for the
protection of the people living in a certain nation? We usually assume that the security of the
nation of the people relies in the hands of the governments that rule. Now as a matter of fact,
people would demand protection to the government. And if that government does not
provide protection, then that government, maybe may lose the coming election, if you have
democratic governors.
But what happens when we don't have democracies? What happens when the government
is poor? What happens when the government is weak, or doesn't have the resources to
provide security or safety to the people? What happens when the government does not have
the will, the intention to protect the people? If the state cannot offer security for the people,
and moreover, if the state becomes the enemy in taking away safety from the people, where
would the people go for safety? This is the basis of the argument about the responsibility to
protect. When there is a situation where the security of the population cannot be expected
to be provided by the government in that region, the argument goes that international
communities share the responsibility to protect the safety of the people. This was one
argument that developed in the United Nations in phase of such serious mistakes, as
committed in Srebrenica, that when the government cannot be expected to provide security
we have the responsibility to protect these people.
This is a very nice argument, but it's a very difficult one to carry out, as the will and the power
of the international community in providing safety to the number of people living in such far
way places when there is no immediate threat to the major powers. There's really no reason,
except for moral grounds, to actively support security for the people living there. Moreover,
we have another question about the lack of governance. Now, it is one thing to talk about
the government that is eager to repress the population there. It is quite another to argue
when the government does not have the capacity to provide, when the government is poor
or it is weak, or when the government does not have the military capability to protect the
people from other calamities. This is called a failed state which does not have the capacity
to govern its own territory.
There have been cases of failed states such as the Sudan. Sudan had been involved in a very
lengthy civil war between North Sudan and South Sudan and also the Darfur region in the
western part of the territory. There have been many dictatorships in Sudan. So it is not only a
question of the strength of the authority, but you have to remember that the power of the
state itself was extremely weak and could not control the territory. Take Afghanistan after
the Soviet pull out. Now it's true that Taliban became the ruling party ruling group on, in
Afghanistan. But we very much doubt if Taliban had the capacity to govern the whole of
Afghanistan. Many regions in Afghanistan had their own autonomy, away from the
government which essentially means militant groups, terrorist groups, and religious
extremists on their own; and the length on the strength of Taliban in ruling Afghanistan was
very limited. Now the trouble is that it is easy to talk about the rogue state that is eager to
use military force around the territory, but talking about a failed state is something totally
different. We're talking about the lack of governance, lack of capacity, the weakness of
government. What would you do in a situation like this?
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Here we are in a serious problem. Simply sending troops to defend people is insufficient, you
might be able to win a war but that's not the point. The point is that the government itself is
so weak and so fragile, that without external support it cannot provide safety to the
population. In that case, the only way is for the external powers to work as governments for
the people, as if the international community is providing government to a certain region.
Such situation has taken place in a number of cases. In Afghanistan, the Karzai administration
was extremely fragile, and could only support its rule by support from the multinational
forces. You can also take cases like Sudan, where a failed state was left alone for a lengthy
period and the people just kept on suffering from the lack of governments, and here the lack
of credible governance itself was as bad as having a dictatorship that is eager to repress
people.
And then, this leads to another basic problem here. Can the international community protect
people overseas? By international community, we're talking about a large number of
governments, including major powers. They might be rich enough and they may have the
military capability, so in terms of resources they might have the resources to protect people
overseas. The question here is the will. Are the major powers willing to use their own
resources, military power, and economic resources to protect people overseas? The history is
not very convincing here. Many peace keeping operations conducted by the United Nations,
operated with a shoe string budget, a very small budget, and the reluctance of major powers
to send a large number of troops. The question is and even more serious when you consider
that an intervention against a rogue state might end up introducing a failed state. There's a
dictatorship repressing and even killing a large number of people, there's a humanitarian
disaster. So there's every good reason for a major military intervention. Now, with that
military intervention you crush that dictatorship, stop that repression, but unless you build
up a credible government in the land, then instead of a dictatorship you're producing a
failed state, and that failed state can produce many calamities to the people living there.
What happened after the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Saddam Hussein administration was
certainly not a democracy, extremely violent against their own people as on their neighbors,
but it was also a pretty strong government. And after that invasion, over throwing Saddam
Hussein only produced anarchy in Iraq, where political authority was so fragile and they
could not cope with the even simplest request of personal safety for the population. In this
particular case intervention produced a failed state. I can happily report that the Iraqi
situation has improved, but we have almost an immediate case of the intervention into
Libya, with all the just causes this also produced a possibility of a failed state.
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1.9. Case II: the case of Lybia

Let's take a look more closely at Libya. You must be aware that
Colonel Gaddafi was the ruler of that land. And Gaddafi, although
he changed his foreign policy toward the western world in the last
years of his reign, was a clear dictator who did not allow any
expression of human rights for the people living in Libya. This was
an authoritarian regime, a regime that took away human liberty
from the people living in that land. And you might also be aware
that there was a pretty large intervention by NATO forces to Libya,
which overthrew the Gaddafi regime. But let's go back to the origin
of what happened. When Colonel Gaddafi was ruling Libya, and
when there was no major uprisings against the Gaddafi regime, the
interest of the Western society toward Libya was very much
limited. When Gaddafi changed his policy toward the West, and
started to normalize ties with the Western nations, this move was welcomed. And major
European nations, including United Kingdom, appreciated the change in Gaddafi's policy.
But even when Gaddafi was changing his policy toward western powers, he certainly did not
change his policy towards his own people, and the regime was extremely repressive.
It all started to change in the year 2011. At the end of year 2010, a street merchant in Tunisia
killed himself, burned himself in protest against the abuse of a petty bureaucrat. And that
suicide led to a massive uprising in Tunisia that overthrew the regime. And that further led to
another revolution in Egypt, where massive uprisings against the government rolled down
the reign of President Mubarak. This chain of events is usually called the Arab Spring, when
suddenly people living in North Africa and the Arab world started to oppose their own, the
tyranny that has been ruling in their land and this spread out to Libya as well. More on the
eastern side of Libya, including the major city Benghazi, but also even in Tripoli, which is the
capital of the state.
In February 16th 2011, protest in Eastern Libya escalated, clashes with security forces took
place at a massive scale, and many civilians were killed. The response from the Gaddafi
regime was extremely violent: his forces suppressed uprising Tripolli and Misrata. And we
believe a large number of civilians were slaughtered in Misrata, in spite of the fact that the
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civilians were unarmed. The repression against those movements not only included gunfire,
but also gunships, airplanes and some major battleships, just crushing by fist against the
people who stood up against Colonel Gaddafi. Misrata is in the middle of the way between
Tripoli and Benghazi: Gaddafi's forces advanced from Tripoli, Misrata and came very close to
the second major city of Libya that is Benghazi. There was a very large possibility that
Gaddafi's force entered Benghazi, so that a large number of people would be killed.
Facing this situation, the United Nations were very much alarmed, and with a strong
initiative from the French and British governments, and with a strong initiative from United
Nations Ambassador Susan Rice of the United States, this organism adopted resolution 1973:
the resolution allowed for a no-fly zone against the rule, against the forces of Gaddafi. This
resolution was supported by the Arab League, as well as the Western Powers: for those major
powers, in the Middle East, and Europe, and the United States, the situation surrounding
Benghazi was beginning to become a humanitarian disaster, and if a large number of people
are were about to be killed, the United Nations should do something.
We can see here the difference between the United Nations reaction to Srebrenica and the
reaction to the Libyan situation. The United Nations did so little, almost nothing, in face of
the crisis in Srebrenica and the last massacre followed; after that this argument about
responsibility to protect became so popular and widely accepted. And in many ways Libya
became a test case, a test a test case for the United Nations, whether their commitment to
responsibility to protect can really be translated into actual foreign policy. To go back to the
principles, I think it is clear that before the NATO intervention there was an imminent danger
of humanitarian disaster. Without a military intervention many people, including myself, are
convinced that a large scale killing would have taken place in Benghazi.
But that's not the whole story. A military intervention to Libya could produce two results,
both of which are quite undesirable. One consequence would be a power vacuum: crushing
the Gaddafi regime might be legitimate in the sense that Gaddafi was ruling his country in a
most authoritarian manner, but if you crush the regime, can you really provide a credible
government in Libya? This was the case why the Americans and the multinational forces got
burned a bit in Afghanistan and Iraq. Intervention in those countries may have been
legitimate, for afterward, Talibans were authoritarian; and the Hussein regime was running
an authoritarian regime as well. But having said that, after the invasion in Afghanistan and
Iraq, in both nations a relatively weak state emerged, a weak state close to a failed state
situation. An intervention to Libya could very well produce a failed state instead of a rogue
state.
And secondly, the intervention itself with all the gun power and the military capability might
kill people too. It did kill people and here we have the question proportionality. Many people
were about to be killed in Benghazi, so you should intervene, to protect the people there;
but at the same time, if you intervene and if your intervention includes the killing of many
civilians, not only combatants but non-combatants, then can the intervention be justified?
The answer is not clear at the moment. We have reasons to believe that after the fall of the
Gaddafi regime, there is no credible government that rules Libya altogether, that the central
authority is very much weak in government. But at the same time we do not hear cases of
major civil war breaking out in Libya as a consequence of the breakdown of the Gaddafi
regime. What we can say is that some of the troops that were under the command of Colonel
Gaddafi moved to Mali, and actually accelerated the civil war in Mali but not in Libya. But
there is a possibility that Libya might end up as a failed state.
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Here you have a dilemma. This is not a clear case, such as Yugoslavia, where international
intervention prevented a humanitarian disaster, and also provided a liberal credible
government to the people. We do not see such result yet. It is possible that the intervention
produced a failed state in Libya, the situation is not that bad as to be depicted as a failure,
but there is a possibility. Responsibility to protect is not only a noble principle; it is a principle
that should be carried into actual foreign policy. But there is also always a possibility that the
intervention that follows this idea of the responsibility to protect can actually open a can of
worms, and make the situation much more undesirable than before.
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1.10. Limits of intervention

Weve had some discussion about the way we should think about war and peace, and in the
beginning we have been talking about major wars like First World War and Second World
War, which involved a large number of military troops, fought by major powers, and very
possibly produced mass casualties. And in spite of the large number of casualties, some wars
may have been necessary, like for example in face of the expansion of Nazi Germany, where
you can make a very strong argument that you have a situation where war is necessary.
But in essence, when we talk about international relations between major neighboring
powers, we do not necessarily need to talk about justice. For this is essentially a matter of
military capability; this is about the success of deterrence strategy, or the failure of the
deterrence strategy. However, after the end of the Cold War, we have entered into a very
new world where the balance or imbalance of the metro capability of each power is not the
important issue. In a phase of a large number of civil wars taking place: in Yugoslavia,
Rwanda Congo, Sri Lanka. There's really no need to talk about balancing, but we do need to
talk about whether we should intervene or whether we should not. In this kind of situation,
when it comes to major capability, the power of those who may intervene it's much larger
than the ones of those who are fighting. In case of Yugoslavia there's no question that the
fire power of the Milosevic regime was much smaller than the aggregate power of the NATO
nations. In case of Iraq, in case of Afghanistan, in case of Libya, the fire power of those
countries was almost nothing compared to the aggregate power of the major powers. And in
many ways, the international work relations we face right now are quite different from the
past, in the sense that we have a choice whether to intervene or not.
It may be true that we should not intervene. We should not have intervened into Libya and
we should not have intervened into Yugoslavia, because they did not pose any major threat
toward the survival of us. But at the same time, it is very difficult to live with a large number
of people being killed in Yugoslavia or Libya, and accept that as a fact of life. And this is how
our current situation relates to the just war theory, whether we can really make a
discrimination between compote-nets and non-compote-nets, whether we can refrain from
using weapons of mass destruction in caring out our objective. When we are conquering
such major challenges to human survival in Libya or in Yugoslavia, you also have to pay
attention to another fact. This is really not international war, in the classical sense we're
talking about, we are talking about a question of intervening into a society that may have
different values, different history, different cultural backgrounds, and change it. Now we can
always work on the principal that everybody is aspiring for liberty, that everybody is aspiring
for democracy; everybody aspires to live in a western style political system. But we always
have to remember that this universalist view may be taken in very different lights, that an
intervention that aims for the liberation of people might also be taken as a naked military
power invasion, which destroys the traditional life in certain societies.
And here we face a very different difficult question. What are the differences between
invasion and liberalization? It might be worth to remember that some of the arguments or
Western Colonialism accompany ideas about liberalization. When there was a scramble for
Africa, when major European nations invaded on Africa and made colonies out of it, the
justification was that the Arabs were taking Africans away for slavery and we should liberate
Africa from Muslim dominated slavery system. But of course, what actually happened was a
beginning of ruthless rule by the colonialists. On the other hand, we should not rule out such
intervention as an intervention against different cultures for there are actually a living people
suffering from dictatorships, and it is very difficult to accept repression and slaughter in
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terms of cultural varieties and multiculturalism. We certainly cannot argue that some nations
are eager to accept mass killings than others: it may be true that there may be little reaction
or resistance against such killings, but this could be more circumstantial than as a product of
culture.
This leads to a more concrete question about the condition of legitimate intervention. When
intervention cannot be ruled out by the military firepower of the adversary, then we can
make our own decisions about what interventions that should take place, and what
interventions we should not follow. In other words, we have to set our own principles about
legitimate intervention in major conflict. And if we push this issue even further, this relates to
a dilemma about values. Which values should be our priority, peace, liberty, or justice? Now it
is easy to argue that all these are necessary. Peace is better than war, liberty is better than
autocratic rule, and justice is better than injustice; but sometimes we do face situations
where we have to make a choice.
Say for example, a society is governed under an extremely authoritarian regime, where
human rights of the inhabitants are totally neglected, and there's no liberty allowed for the
people living there. This situation is certainly not the one that can be called liberal, but it can
also be peaceful in the sense that the government is strong enough to repress any kind of
opposition from the society. In such a situation, should it be our objective to intervene and
liberate the people away from authoritarianism? In a way, destroy the stability of the society,
to promote a democratic revolution. On the other hand, when we treasure peace to liberty,
can it be justified if we simply neglect the inhuman suffering of people, because an
intervention would produce large scale instability. In Yugoslavia, there was no real major
threat towards surrounding nations, but NATO decided to intervene, and this certainly was
not done to preserve peace in the region. This intervention was necessary to restore liberty
and safety of the populace. The Yugoslavian case was successful, but we're not sure if the
intervention in Libya has produced similar results, because in this particular case the safety of
a large number of people was endangered.
So intervention may have been just, but a just cause is insufficient to legitimize a military
operation when it destroys the integrity of governance in that society, if intervention simply
means a move from a dictatorship to a failed estate. Then we must call it a failure, and this
brings us back to the question about the conditions of peace and war. It is so very easy to
denounce warfare of such, and talk about the evolution of arms. That's one view, but by
doing so, we might be turning blind eyes against the tyranny of authoritarian regimes, and
the people suffering. We might be turning our eyes against violent conflicts surrounding us,
and simply trying to keep our own peace. On the other hand, if we try to justify a major
intervention, along with noble ideas, we might end up justifying interventions based on the
promotion of very narrow interests disguised under such noble ideas as liberty or justice.
And these are the questions that you have to answer when studying about the conditions of
war and peace.
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2.
Power transition and war
2.1. Power transition in international politics

I would like to talk about power transition in international politics. Power transition is a
concept that focuses on the rise of certain powers and the decline of other powers.
When a major power appears in international relations, there is a possibility of a large
instability, and that is what power transition theory is focused about. This is related to the
two models of international system. One the one hand we have the more traditional
arguments about the balance of power in international relations. The other argument is one
that focuses on hegemony, the role of a major power in international relations.
Let's first take a look at the balance of power. The balance
of power is an equilibrium theory, in the sense that the
system essentially would maintain stability overtime.
When a certain power tries to expand, then other powers
would somehow exert influence so that that rising power
would return to the original position. In that sense, the
distribution of power in international relations would
essentially be the same. That argument applies for example
to the balance of power after the Congress of Vienna in early 19th century, or the Cold War
system, where the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States was a
cornerstone of international politics.
But there is another way of looking at things. This is an
argument that focuses on hegemony, where there is one
power that surpasses the power of others. And unlike
balance of power theory, which argues that the equilibrium
or the mutual restraint given by individual power adds to
the stability of the system, the hegemonic order focuses on
the strength of certain hegemonic power over other
nations. Now we can also see such situations, for example
Pax Romana, where the Roman Empire exerted extensive influence over the European area.
Or for that matter the Pax Britanica, where Great Britain exerted a certain influence in the
globe. And of course, some people talk about Pax Americana, where the United States
exerted hegemony in the world.
Power transition takes place when there is a challenger
against a position of the hegemonic power, the
hegemon. Imagine that one power, which used to be
subject to the great influence of the hegemon, starts to
expand its power and by that challenges the influence of
the major power. When such rising power takes place, there
is a certain instability in the international system. George
Modelski has argued that there is a long cycle of hegemony
in international relations. He argues that in the 16th century,
Portugal and then Spain were the major hegemonic power in international relations, and
then starting from the 17th century, and on to the 18th century, there was the rise of
Netherlands, followed by the rise of Great Britain, which took over the role of Portugal and
Spain.
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Some might argue that there was hegemonic change here, that the hegemonic power
changed from Portugal Spain to Netherlands and Great Britain. In the 19th century, we
observed the rise of Great Britain, and then British rule in international relations come to be
challenged by the rise of Germany. In the latter half of the 19th century Germany was already
larger economic power than the United Kingdom. The focus here is about the past, of course,
and we don't really talk about power transition in the 20th century, or for that matter the 21st
century. The discussion about power transition was essentially in the realm of historians who
argued about the changes in international political history before the rise of Great Britain.
And then we have a question here. Has there been any power transition in the past century?
In the 20th century, there was a transition from Great Britain to the United States, but it
should be clear enough that there was no hegemonic war fought between Great Britain and
the United States. As a matter of fact, both in First World War and Second World War, Great
Britain and the United States fought on the same side. There were challenges, of course.
Germany, at least so long as Europe was concerned, was a major power in Europe, and there
was a contestation between Great Britain and Germany. But we have to remember that in
the war between Great Britain and Germany, fought twice, Great Britain was the victor, and
Germany lost in this war.
There was another challenger after the end of the Second World War: U.S.S.R., the Soviet
Union, was certainly a major military power, and most certainly was at odds in geopolitical
interest with the United States. Although this was a period of Pax Americana, or the
American hegemony, the USSR did not somehow give in to American interest. But then we
also know the result, here again there are no hegemonic wars. There was much geopolitical
tension between United States and USSR that led to the arms race, especially about nuclear
weapons, but that did not lead to a major catastrophic war. And moreover, with the end of
the Russo-American Cold War, it was Russia that broke down and became a capitalist
democracy. And ever since the end of the Cold War, very few people doubt if Russia has
become a challenger against American position.
So to this extent we have not seen any hegemonic wars in the past century. If there was a
hegemonic war, then the hegemon won the war, and not the challenger. But we have a very
new development in international relations today. The People's Republic of China is possibly
the first case where we observe expansion in both economic and military power, unlike West
Germany and Japan, which were economically major powers. Germany and Japan did not
pose geopolitical threat towards the United States, but China could very possible be a
potential threat to the United States or the western world. So the question here is whether
the rise of China poses a challenge to international society, and whether the rise of China
would lead to a major power transition and the period of political instability in international
relations. That is why, with the rise of China, the theory of power transition, once again,
started to attract much academic attention.
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2.2. Theories of power transition and hegemonic wars

Let us now focus on the particular relationship between power transition and hegemonic
wars. What is the relationship between the rise of a certain power and the possibility of
warfare? How does a change in the distribution of power in international relations affect the
possibility of war? We have to think about two dimensions here.
The first dimension is what happens when a nation develops into a major power. Now
remember that when power was limited at a certain stage, the extent to which that power
could carry out foreign policy would be limited by the size of the power that the country
possesses. And to that extent, for example, if your naval capacity is limited then there is no
chance that you could fight against a major naval power; once you have a stronger navy,
then there is a possibility that you can compete with the major naval power that used to be.
Or take for example a large army: when your military capability on land is limited you cannot
face to fight a war against a major military power neighboring your borders, but if you have a
larger military, there might be a chance that if you start a war then you can win.
The point here is that expansion of power opens opportunities in geopolitics. And when that
rising power is lured, attracted by the opportunity that the expansion of power provides,
then there is a likelihood, not a certainty, that that power might try to use that force against
its neighbors. You can see this from another dimension. What happens when a major power
declines in its influence? Why decline takes place has been explained in several ways. For
example smaller powers take advantage of the certain provision of public goods from the
major power, that's one of the favorite arguments, but that's not the point I'd like to discuss
here. The question is the consequence, what happens when a power starts to decline? This
means that what used to be possible before would become impossible afterwards.
When you have a larger military power, you could hold your political position vis--vis with
your neighboring countries without much effort. But with a relative decline of your power,
maintaining the stability will become much more difficult. If the rising power grasps
opportunity by rising, then a declining power loses on opportunity in international relations
for the sake of securing power. This only talks about opportunity, and it certainly does not
talk about inevitability. The question here is, does power transition really invite major wars?
It was Professor Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organsk who coined out the concept of hegemonic
wars. In discussing about changes in international relations, Organski argued that the
change from one major power to another accompanies hegemonic wars, wars fought
for the sake of securing hegemony or acquiring new hegemony. He discussed about the
rise of Spain that had become the larger military empire in Europe, and then the rise of Great
Britain that succeeded the rise of Spain, and of course about the war fought between them.
And then there was the rise of Germany, that certainly arose after the humiliating defeat in
face of the Napoleonic France. After reunification Germany became the major power in 19th
century in Europe, and then went on to fight a war against Great Britain. If you take a look
here, you can see some difficulty in forming a theoretical argument, because in the
hegemonic war between Spain and Great Britain, Great Britain won, and there was a new
hegemonic power in international relations. In the hegemonic war between Great Britain
and Germany, it was Great Britain that won the war again, not Germany; Germany did not
win a hegemonic position.
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Out of this alone you might argue that the result of hegemonic wars is unpredictable: one
power might lose, but one power might win, and there's no telling about it. Moreover, we
have another problem, because although the war between Great Britain and Germany ended
with the victory of Great Britain, it was United States that arose as the hegemonic power after
the two World Wars, which indicates a rather troubling finding that the major power that
comes out from the hegemonic war, may not be the power that competed to the old empire.
So to this extent, we can argue that hegemonic wars may take place, and have taken place,
but we still do not find a consistent pattern that describes the possibility of warfare in terms
of power transition.
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2.3. Who attacks first?

Let's take an even closer look about the outbreak of war. One of the key questions in
discussing about warfare is which side starts the war, if is it the rising power that attacks first
or the declining power that breaks hostilities. Let's take a look at this question, because it's a
highly abstract question but I'd like you to think about the results without any prior
knowledge. Nation A has been a hegemonic power during the past century, but nation B has
arose in power challenging A's hegemony; to repeat, A is the hegemonic power that is
relatively declining, and B is a rising power that is rising. Under this situation, which nation is
more likely to attack first, A or B? Would a rising power attack first or declining power attack
first?
Let's start from the first question: why would a rising power challenge major powers? This
was something that was almost assumed in Organski's works. And Modelski did not doubt
about the possibility of a rising power challenging major powers. But we have to make sure
that a challenge is different from war. A rising power, of course, by its military expansion is
challenging the position of a major power. But there is a possibility that the old power may
not try to fight against the new power. Imagine further a possibility that the old power
somehow accepts the military expansion over lesser power. If that is the case then a rising
power can somehow expand military capability without risking the possibility of warfare.
You also have to remember that the rising power is still rising, and there is a gap of capability
between the rising power and the old hegemonic power. And of course if you want to win a
war, then it is much easier to win a war with a larger capability that surpasses the power of
your opponent, than fighting a war with limited capabilities, less than the power of your
opponent.
So if there is a possibility that a major power will somehow accept your expanding role. Then
it would be rational to expect that the rising power would not try to fight a war against a
major power unless it is provoked. This may sound rather foolish, but this was exactly the
case, for example, if you take the relationship between Great Britain and Germany in the 19th
century. Germany was a rising power, there's no question about that; this country, which was
Prussia originally, expanded its territory through a series of warfare, for example a war
against Denmark or Austria. Both wars somehow ended successfully for the Germans, and
Prussia expanded her territory considerably. The final war was the one between France and
Prussia. The war was started by French assault, but that French attack was somehow part of
the scheme laid out by the German government. And this laid the cornerstone of the
unification of Germany, with the coronation taking places in all France.
So you see a major power developing in the continent and you might want to think that
Great Britain would do everything to stop the expansion of Germany. But the opposite was
actually the case: Great Britain tried to accommodate the rise of Germany into stable
international affairs in Europe. And quite far away from isolating Germany, Great Britain
reached hands to Germany so that the Anglo-German agreement would provide a
cornerstone of European stability. One of the reasons for doing so was that a unified
Germany, following British thinking, would be much more stable than a fragmented
Germany in the center of the European continent. So therefore you have the Berlin Congress,
a conference that led to what was called the new balance of power in Europe. The key here
was the British accommodation of German expansion.
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There is no question that Great Britain was the old major power and Germany the rising
power. But in this particular instance, Germany kept on fighting wars against smaller powers
and Great Britain kept on accepting that position, in a way Germany could expand influence
without waging a war against United Kingdom.
Let's now take a look at another line of argument here. What would a declining power do?
Why would a declining power challenge rising powers? Now this is actually more logical than
a war waged by the rising power. Imagine a situation where a major power is being
challenged by a lesser power. There is still enough gap in capability, so the rising power is
much weaker than the old power. But if the rising power is expanding rapidly, then as time
goes by the gap would narrow and it would become more difficult to fight a war in the
future against that rising power than now. If that is the case, then it is only logical to start a
war at an early phase, and crush the development of military capability of a lesser power.
This argument is almost identical to the argument put forward by the balance of power
people. Balance of power being a cornerstone of realist ideas in international relations,
assume that major powers would react strongly against a rising power. But unlike the
hegemonic war argument, in this particular case the rising power would somehow be
deterred from rising. So we reach a conclusion here: which one would be more likely to
attack first, rising powers or declining powers? The argument it's most certainly in favor of
the declining power attacking first against the rising power. But then we do face a very
important exception that cannot be explained.
Arguments about power transition usually focus on the hegemonic wars fought between
Great Britain and Spain. Spain was the major power and Great Britain was a rising power, and
there was a hegemonic war and Great Britain beat the Spaniards, and the Spanish fleet was
somehow destroyed by British advances. If the argument that a rising power is unlikely to
start a war against a major hegemonic power holds, then the Anglo-Spanish war is most
certainly taken to be an exception to the rule. Our next step is to examine whether this was
actually the case.
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2.4. Case I: Spain and Great Britain

So let's consider the Anglo-Spanish War that was fought between 1585 and 1604, the very
famous war that that led to the crush of two navies, the British and the Spanish. What was
this about? The first question of course is about Spain hegemony. What was Spain's global
hegemony and how they did start to decline? One question that should be addressed here is
whether that decline had anything to do with this war between Spain and England. As most
of you will know, after Columbus and all that exploration over the globe, Spain expanded her
trade over a vast tract of land that was unthinkable in the old Europe. With the fall of Italian
city states that were dependent on the Mediterranean trade, the new marine routes opened
by Spain added immensely to the wealth of the Spanish Empire. And as everybody knows,
Spain was the first larger large colonial empire composed by the European powers.
This empire eventually declined, as Spain's naval power, and trade capacity also declined as
the British influence grew. But we also have to remember that late 16th century to early 17th
century was not the period that showed British rise and Spanish decline, far from it. With
Philip the Second enthroned, Spain was the country with a largest influence over the globe.
And that is only until the middle of 17th century that Spain's influence in the globe really
starts to show signs of decline. So the argument that late 16th century was a period of
transition from Spain to Great Britain is quite exaggerated and quite inaccurate.
Moreover, we have to think about the reason why Great Britain challenged Spain, in the
sense that Great Britain was also a maritime empire. And Great Britain was very much
involved in international trade, not only among the European nations, but also cross-Atlantic
trade with the newly founded North American colony, that were British possessions. But such
development takes place from mid to late 17th century, So Great Britain was in no way in a
position to challenge Spanish supremacy at sea in early 17th century. The puzzle here is that
the Anglo-Spanish War took place when Spain was immensely strong, and Great Britain, both
in trade and navy, was still of limited capability. Then how did this war ever get started? First,
we must start thinking about the origin of the Anglo-Spanish War.
In 1584, Philip the Second of Spain planned an attack against England, because Spain was
interested in curbing the influence of England under Queen Elizabeth the First. There was
some more eminent danger for the wealth of Spain that was very much related to what is
now part of the Netherlands, the Low Countries as they are called. The Low Countries, with
their magnificent manufacturing capability, were very important in the trade that led to
Spanish wealth; in essence, without the control over the Low Countries, the Netherlands
Spain's growth would be gone. However, there was a religious difference between Spain and
the Low Countries, for they were essentially, Protestant, while Spain was essentially Catholic.
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As a matter of fact Spain was the vanguard of the struggle against the Muslims, who
occupied Spain and the Spanish kings kicked out the Muslims from their land, in a process
called La Reconquista when the Spanish throne was taken to be the guardian of Catholic
faith. The Spanish Hapsburgs therefore had a very strong view about preserving the interest
of the Catholic Church, and that ran into great difficulties between the Low Countries and
Spain.
Queen Elizabeth the First of England tried to maintain a strong relationship with the Low
Countries; as you might recall in Great Britain, which was a Catholic country, there was a
Church of England that broke away from the Catholic Church. In that sense Great Britain was
in a position to protect interventions from the Catholic Church against other European
nations, so this was not really about hegemony or control over the world, this was essentially
about the relationship between Spain and the Low Countries, and British involvement in the
region.
But of course Philip the Second was very much
convinced that he could win the war against Great
Britain, for the naval capacity of Great Britain was
very much limited. The Spanish fleet, the Armada as
it was called, had never been defeated, and
departed for England to meet the English fleet. Off
the shore of Plymouth there was a skirmish that
finished in a British victory, but that failed to give a
significant damage to the Spanish fleet. Here what
was very important was the Spanish fleet to move to
the north, so that they could connect the Flemish
low land center to Spain through a North Sea route; and remember that North Sea was not
really under control of the British navy.
There was certainly a fight. But then the Armada, the Spanish fleet, flew away from the British
fleet and went into the North Sea. And at this moment, most of the Spanish fleet was still
much intact. But in the end, only about half of the ships returned to Spain, so there was
decisive defeat inflicted upon the Spanish fleet. What happened? The British fleet failed to
give a significant attack on the Spanish fleet, that went north bound and on behalf of the
Mediterranean to Spain. So the Spanish fleet did experience a terrible defeat, but the reason
was not the British fleet. What was it? It was the pirates, for this was a period when the North
seas were somehow occupied by the power of British pirates. And Spanish advances into the
North seas met a very strong resistance
from the pirates much stronger than the
British Navy.
Of course, it is very difficult to make a
distinction between British Navy and
pirates, because after all, the British navy
was composed of ex-pirates. But then,
when we want to talk about the winner
and the loser of this war, we can
certainly say that Spain lost the war, but
we can't be sure if Great Britain won the
war.
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If there was any victor in this war, it was the British pirates, who crushed the Spanish Armada.
Moreover, after this humiliating defeat, Spain somehow reassembled their military capability
and kept on fighting against the British forces in early 17th century. The focus on the defeat of
the Armada in late 16th century is essentially a nationalist hero story, that was so popular
among the British population, but it's quite far away from the truth. For eventually in early
17th century, Spain regained her influence over Great Britain.
Then what crushed Spain? Why did Spain end up in a miserable situation quite unlike a major
economic or military power? It was essentially the Thirty Years War. First the Spanish
Hapsburg and the Austrian Hapsburg broke away; of course it was a rather uneasy alliance
based on blood kin relationship, and could not be sustained forever. As Spain and Austria
broke away, the gross tract of land occupied by the Hapsburg household somehow was
divided, and moreover, in the Thirty Years War, both Spain and Austria came out on the side
of the losers. We can never be sure who won the war in the Thirty Years War, for this was one
of the major wars in the European region, that led to so much calamities and so much death,
that victory doesn't mean much. What we can say is the middle part of Europe was totally
destroyed, but we can be sure about the loser of the war, and that is the Habsburgs, both
Spain and Austria.
So the argument here that the Anglo-Spanish War was a hegemonic war is quite far away
from the truth. The war itself led to the victory of Great Britain, for only a very limited period
of time, and Spain somehow regained her strength against Great Britain. And of course you
have to pay attention to the fact that it was Spain, not Great Britain, that started the war. It
was not the challenger that started the war. Great Britain was somehow involved, for they
were aware that Philip the Second started the war and they had no choice, but the rising
power did not start the war. Everything that has been connected to the hegemonic war
theory, does not really apply to the Anglo-Spanish War.
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2.5. Alliance and power transition

Next I'd like to talk about the role of the alliance. Wars are not only fought among major
powers, wars are fought between alliances. Each power has its own ally in case of war, so a
power would expect its ally to join hands in fighting against that adversary. For example, this
is the case presently in the United States, with an extensive alliance network in Europe, with
NATO, and in East Asia, with South Korea and Japan, so the United States will expect the
allies to fight on their side. And in History, of course, that was also the case.
There were many alliances before the First World War, before the Napoleonic Wars, where all
powers had certain allies that they counted on their support in case of war. Now here's a
question: does power transition affect alliance behavior, when there is a change in the
distribution of power in international relations? When there's a rising power and there's a
declining power, would that change in the distribution of power? That's power transition.
Will power transition change the behavior of the allies? Please take a look at the following
question. Nation A has been a hegemonic power during the past century, but nation B has
arose in power and is challenging nation A hegemony; under this situation, would the allies
of nation A suppress the rise of nation B, or switch sides to nation B?
The situation is that nation A has certain allies, and nation B is raising. One scenario would be
that nation A, along with its allies, would join hands in suppressing the rise of nation B. The
other possibility would be that nation A allies would change sides and switch their loyalty to
this newly rising power, nation B. But let's start from the first part of the question. Will allies
rally around rising powers? Might be the case that if there is a rising power, and the power is
expanding, then theoretically it is possible that a certain nation would change her ally to the
rising power instead of the declining power; the rising power has many opportunities in the
future, they might say, so therefore let's shift our alliance to the rising power. But think what
happens when they do that: when they were allied to a major power, they could count on
the support offered from the major power, and when considering the length of time that the
alliance may have been in effect, there could be a certain incredibility attached to the old
alliance.
You break away from that old alliance and find a new ally in the form of the rising power, and
then you are essentially turning against the major power to which you were allied. Switching
sides would automatically make you extremely vulnerable, and moreover, there is very little
credibility given to the alliance with the new rising power, so you're doing something
extremely stupid. You are breaking away from an old friend, who can assure you some
support in times of war, and finding a new friend in the form of rising power. You are
essentially turning against the old friend, who knows the particulars about your military
capability, and in case of war you might at disadvantage in fighting against that major
power.
In essence, if you switch sides to the rising power, you are risking the safety of your own
geopolitical strategy and security. On the other hand, the allies might actually punish rising
powers, for that is what allies are for. Take a look at balance of power theories. If there is a
rising power, allies are supposed to gang up together, strengthen their relationships, and try
to control the rise of that power. Such actions have been often quite observed in
international relations in times of war, alliances are not weakened but strengthened. And
when there is a certain threat to the alliance, not only the major powers, but also the allies to
that major power would not break away but strengthen their relationship.
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We saw case like this in a very recent time, in the year 2010. China was a focus of attention in
international affairs, as China was expanding into the Blue Water Navy, they had it for the
first time since the Ming dynasty. And their naval activities was sending alarming signals to
the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea and of course Japan. And this was also a period when
it seemed that China was not putting pressure against North Korea. This South Korean vessel,
Cheonan, was attacked and sunk by a North Korean tie. But after this attack, China took sides
essentially with North Korea, and put pressure on South Korea, not North Korea, which
invited some reaction from South Korea. Later that year, North Korea attacked Yeonpyeong,
one of the islands which is a South Korean territory. But China again put pressure on South
Korea, not North Korea, after this incident.
What happened afterwards is very important here. South Korea strengthened ties with the
United States, and then Japan also strengthened ties with United States. And there was a
joint military exercise in the Yellow Sea, which is very close to China. Here the United States is
of course the major military power, and is allied to the South Korea and Japan. But remember
that China is the major rising power, so theoretically there might be a possibility of other
nations switching sides from the United States to China. But that didn't happen here, what
really happened was that the old alliance was actually strengthened in face of the rising
power.
So basically I think we can argue that allies do not tend to switch sides, but rather strengthen
old alliances in the face of a rising power. And I'd like to establish this point by a more close
examination of the origin of First World War.
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2.6. Case II: Alliance and First World War

Now let's talk about the origin of the First World War. The First World War was the first major
war in Europe fought after the Napoleonic Wars. There was almost one century interval
between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War; between them, Europe enjoyed a
relative peace and prosperity. Of course, there was the Crimean War, but the scope of this
conflict was quite limited. In fact, before the First World War many people including Norman
Angell imagined that war had become essentially a delusion that will never take place.
Such optimism was crushed by the outbreak of the First World War, which led to massive
killings and that and also provoked the weakening of Germany, that led to another period of
instability that caused the Second World War, a very major conflict with great sacrifices. Why
did this war get started? If you take a look at alliance structure before the First World War,
you can see that Europe was essentially divided into two camps. One was conformed by
Great Britain, France, and Russia. Do not ever think that Great Britain and France were on
good terms along History, certainly not; in fact, it was the confrontation between Great
Britain and France that characterized the history of modern Europe. However, after the
Fashoda Crisis, that is now part of Sudan, the British forces and the French forces came very
close to an engagement, but somehow they successfully avoided that war. The British forces
and the French forces formed an Entente, a certain kind of alliance, and therefore with that
Entente Great Britain and France became part of one group. And on a different context,
Great Britain and Russia, as well as France and Russia, also formed an Entente, leading to the
three powers in one same group.
Great Britain, France, and Russia: among these three, none were major rising powers. Great
Britain was already a declining power compared to Germany, France was a power that had
been miserably defeated by the war with Prussia and had not recovered ever since, and
Russia was a power that lost the war to Japan, a rising power in Asia; very few people
thought that a major power such as Russia could lose the war against Japan, but Russia did.
So none of the three powers were rising powers; they were more, accurately said, the
declining powers.
On the other side was the alliance between Germany and Austria. Germany was certainly a
rising power, although Austria was not. Austria, as a matter of fact had difficulty in
maintaining its position in Europe after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. So this is essentially
the combination of the declining power and the rising power. You can take a look at the
changes in alliance structures, and if there was a chance when Germany expanded
diplomatic relations, this was in the 19th century, and not in the 20th century.
In the 19th century was Chancellor Bismarck, when Germany
successfully concluded a treaty with Russia and also with Austria.
And with these three powers brought together, Germany could
somehow boast of an expansive diplomatic influence in Europe. But
that treaty with Russia was short-lived, for the confrontation
between Russia and Austria was very strong. The deteriorating
relationship between Russia and Austria made it impossible for
German to maintain alliance with Russia. And in early 20th century,
although it was obvious that Germany's military position was
expanding rapidly along with economic production, this was the
period of the arms race, the naval arms race between Great Britain
and Germany.
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Germany was unsuccessful in expanding an alliance network. Here you can see clearly that
the rising power Germany had difficulty in attracting major new allies abroad. Now the
alliance did nothing to restrain the outbreak of war. One might assume that if you have a
stable alliance, then each side would be deterred from going to war, but that didn't happen.
Going back to this, one power that is not included here is Serbia, that was in a very bad
relationship with Austria. The Slav population in Serbia looked forward for the protection
from Russia, and these two countries had very strong relations while Austria was in a conflict
with Serbia. And then a Serb killed the prince of Austria, and with this assassination Austria
declared a war against Serbia; you can't do nothing when your prince is assassinated, but
you're by your adversary. If this ended on such, then Austria would certainly have won the
war, because in terms of military capability there was no comparison between Austria and
Serbia. But Russia was very much aware of this situation, for if Austria fought against Serbia,
and if the Slavic population in Serbia was annihilated by the Austrian advances, then this
would challenge Russia's role as a protective guardian of the Slavic population.
So therefore, when Austria invaded Serbia, it was almost automatically inevitable that Russia
would be involved in a war against Austria. Now you compare Serbia and Austria, and it's
clear that Austria was much stronger. But if you compare Russia and Austria, then the reverse
is the case, Russia was much stronger than Austria. Remember that Austria was a declining
power, and although Russia was also a declining power, when it comes to military
capabilities, Russia was much stronger. If Russia beat Austria, then this would not though
only endanger Austria's position in Europe, but also Germany's position, for Germany was in
alliance with Austria. So seeing this, Germany declared war on Russia, for without German
support, it was clear that the Russians would beat Austria; and the only way that situation
could change was by Germany declaring war on Russia.
You also have to remember that France was also an ally of Russia. When Russia entered into
the war and fought against Germany, there was no question that Germany would prevail, for
in terms of military capability Germany was much stronger than Russia. You combine Austria
and Germany, and the combination was much stronger than Russia, which means that if
Russia was defeated, then this would endanger the position of France. So therefore, France
declared war and Germany declared war on France. And at this moment, we see a situation
where Germany and Austria on the one hand, and Serbia, Russia and France on the other
hand were ready to fight a war.
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There was a side story here. Germany was placed between France and Russia, and it was very
difficult to fight both powers, as France is located on the west side of Germany and Russia on
eastern side. So Germany coined a strategic plan that allowed a simultaneous attack against
France and Russia: the Schlieffen Plan. It was not exactly simultaneous, for the plan assumed
that the Russian would be slow on mobilization, sending troops to the front line, and
Frenchmen would be much quicker in moving their troops to the border. So the idea was to
destroy France first, and then move on to the Eastern front and crush the Russian advances.
Militarily speaking, this did not work at all, for Russia, using the new railway system, moved
much more rapidly than the German's thought. The Frenchmen were much more clumsy in
moving, as most of the railway networks was centered in Paris and all troop had to be
brought into the capital and then to the front.
But there was another issue here, and that was involvement of Great Britain. To carry out the
Schlieffen Plan, it was necessary to move German troops across Belgium. The French troops
were stationed along the borderline between France and Germany, so it was almost a suicide
to try to cross that route. So the German plan was to cross Belgium and then move on to
France. Militarily speaking, this was a nice plan; but politically speaking, this was a disaster
because by invading Belgium, which was still a neutral country in this world war, it gave
reason for England to be involved. The 4th of August 1914 Germany invaded Belgium, and
Great Britain declared war on Germany.
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Take a look at this process and you can observe at least three major findings. The first finding
is that throughout the process of First World War, none of the powers described here
changed sides in the alliance; so therefore, there was no shifts or switches to another power
during the outbreak of this war. The second point is that the alliance structure did not deter
each nation to fight each other: if you combine the sources, Germany and Austria on one
hand, and Great Britain, France and Russia on the other, and you essentially have a tie. So this
balance of military capability means that if you start fighting, this will be a very, very much
disastrous war. But those who were engaged in the war did not think like that, they did not
think about the amalgamated capability of each side. They were only thinking about the
possibility of their allies losing in the war. Russia was afraid that Serbia might lose in a war
against Austria, and Germany was afraid that Russia might prevail in a war against Austria. If
you combine France and Russia against Germany and Austria, this would lead to a major war
but slightly in favor of Germany, so Great Britain joined the war later on.
Although going to war would be a very risky decision, each side was trying to avoid not a
total war, but a war that worked to their disadvantage. So therefore the alliance system did
not restrain each nation from going to war. And finally, we can argue that this was not a
hegemonic war at all. Germany was not eager to fight against Great Britain; in fact, it was
essential for Germany not to fight against Great Britain, because if Great Britain was brought
into the picture, then Germany's military position would be compromised immensely. But
there was nothing they could do about it. Germany did not challenge British hegemony, but
Germany could do nothing about British involvement in the war.
So was the First World War a hegemonic war? I do not think that it was a hegemonic war,
because Germany was not acting to achieve hegemony over Great Britain. Germany instead
was trying to secure its role in European politics. The same goes for France, Russia and Great
Britain. All powers were essentially aiming for how things would be at that certain point, they
were trying to preserve what we called the status quo. But a status quo policy did not deter
each nation from entering into war. First World War was not a hegemonic war, and the
alliance network did not stop the possibility of a real conflict.
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2.7. Military power and economic power

When we talk about power transition, what power are we talking about? I use the word
military capability quite often. As a matter of fact, discussion about power transition is
usually about military power: the size of the military, the technological sophistication of the
airplanes, the tanks, all those weapons, these are very tangible. When we talk about power,
we are usually talking about military power. But the economy is also a major source of power
and influence in international relations, because if you have a strong economy you can
support a large military, and even without a large military, if you have economic resources
you can somehow send oversea development days, you can work on economic sanctions.
When major powers are dependent economically to your economy, then you are in a very
strong position towards other powers.
But then there is a question. Is there a difference between military power and economic
power in international relations? The first question here is about military power and
economic power. Are all military powers economic powers as well? Are all countries that are
major military powers also major economic powers? If these two overlap, then there's little
sense in making distinctions between military power and economic power. But that's not the
case.
Take a look at Netherlands in early 17th century. The Netherlands did have a navy, but
relatively weak compared to the Spaniards and the British forces. And of course, in case of
military capability, Netherlands experienced a long decline, but maintained a very strong
position in European trade. You get closer to the modernity, say for example the period after
the Second World War, and you'll see a sharper difference between economic power and
military power. Germany is certainly a major economic power, without Germany the
Eurozone cant be sustained. Now Germany is a major military power too, but compared to
the economic supremacy in Europe, its military capability is very much limited, more or less
on par with France. Japan is the second major economic power in Asia, only next to China,
but in terms of military capability, it is not that much. China is a nuclear power, but Japan is
not, so you might argue that Japan is an equivalent power, but not a major military power.
So therefore, there are occasions when military powers may not be major economic powers,
and major economic powers may not be military powers. So having established that, let's
move on to the next question. Nation A has been a major economic power during the past
century, but nation B has arose in economy challenging nation A hegemony. Would this
enhance the possibility of war between A and B? You can see that the question is almost
identical to the previous question, except in the sense that I'm talking about economic
power, and not military power. Now, hard transaction usually accompanies transaction in
both the ranges. When Spain was in decline, Spain was declining both in terms of military
and economic influence, and when Great Britain was rising, Great Britain was raising both in
military and economic influence. But then there are cases like Japan or Germany, where you
see a rise in the economy that does not accompany a major increase in military capability.
Take for example a case like Japan: Japan was defeated in the Second World War, and
militarily became an ally of the United States. And most certainly Japan was not an enemy of
the United States, there was no way Japan could fight against United States, because there
were military basis of the United States near Tokyo. But Japan had become a major economic
power. Has Japan's increase in economic power somehow destabilized international
relations? A similar question could be applied to China. China is a major economic power and
a major military power. But when it comes to the extent of rising capabilities, I would daresay
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that China is more of a rising economic power, than a military power. I'm not discounting
China's military capability, but the rapid rise in China's economic power is much more
evident than its rise in the military, where the gap between the United States and China is
still very much large.
Weve got two questions here. How will major powers react toward rising economic powers?
In terms of military capability, rising military power would most certainly pose a threat to the
position of a major military power. So even if the major power does not directly confront the
rising military power, it is logical that the major military is full of anxiety about the threat
posed by the rise of a new power. In terms of economy, that is not exactly the case. You have
a major economic power, and that power might take away some shares in the international
market, so that power might force you to the position of a declining power. But there is also
a possibility that rising economic power offers a new opportunity for the major power to
expand. For if zero sum gain is the rule in military affairs, one's gain is the loss of others, that
is not necessarily the case in economic matters. If there is a rising economy, there is a
possibility that you can make a larger profit out of transaction with that rising economy. So
the rise of an economic power might be perceived as an opportunity for a major power.
And how will rising economic powers react toward major powers? You can always think
about the possibility that a rising economic power perceives one's resources as tools for
foreign policy. Just like in military terms, that power might think that an expansion in
economic power gives certain opportunities to change the behavior of the traditional
powers. Assume that one country is buying treasury bonds from another, the treasury bonds
issued by a major power are being purchased by the rising power; imagine an extreme
situation where 20-30% of the treasury bonds issued by the major power are being bought
out by the rising power. You might think that the rising power might use this as a leverage to
change the policy of the major power. If you do anything, all the treasury bonds will be sold
to the market and then you'll be in trouble. But it doesn't work that way, because if that
rising power start selling those treasury bonds to the market, then most certainly the prices
of that treasury bond will decrease. And if the price falls down, then not only the major
power, but also the rising power will suffer, by the drop over their prices.
This is the interactive character of economic power. When you use economic resources to
challenge on the position over a major power, then that itself would have a boomerang
effect, and turn against your own interest. You try to challenge the hegemonic position of a
certain power in the economy, and that will ruin your position in economic transactions. So
therefore, even if rising powers would expect to expand their economic power,
confrontation with a major power is an irrational choice for that purpose. If you confront a
major power in the course of your rise, you would be endangering your own economic
position. So therefore, I think we can argue that there is a sharp difference between the
impact of military power and economic power in power transition. Let us investigate further,
taking the cases of Japan and China.
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2.8. Case III: the rise of Japan (1960s-1990s)

Here I would like to discuss the case of the rise of Japan, from 1960s to 1990s. This case is
important in the sense that Japan has become a major economic power without challenging
the military position of the hegemonic power, which is of course the United States. The first
question here is what were the causes that led to Japan's economic rise? You might want to
think that Japan wanted to regain both economic and military power after the Second World
War, and it was only because the United States did not allow Japan to expand into military
spheres that Japan's military capability was limited. That is not the case. As a matter of fact,
the focus on economic power became possible precisely because Japan tried to use the
military capability of the United States for its defense. The argument is a very simple one.
Japan destroyed itself by waging a major war against the international community, including
the United States. The economy was weak in Japan, and military expansion further
weakened Japan's economic position. What is important after losing the war is economic
recovery. But that cannot be possible if Japan tries to put so much natural resources in
military building. Using the military alliance with the United States signed in 1946, even
before the alliance, using the military power with United States was one solution to this
question. By relying on American military power, Japan could somehow achieve her defense
on the cheap, and somehow use the resources that may have been used for military
purposes to economic recovery.
So one of the major causes that led to Japan's economic rise was essentially the focus on
economic resources, to the effect of relatively neglecting the expansion of military capability.
I'm not arguing that everybody supported this policy, but this became essentially the main
line policy followed by Prime Minister Yoshida and afterwards. It was not a coincidence that
Japan became a major economic power, and still did not become a major military power.
This was not the problem between Japan and the United States, so long as Japan was still a
minor power, both in economy and military, a weak Japan was still relatively stronger in
terms of economy in the post-war years in the region, for Japan was still an advanced
industrial country in East Asia. And Japan served the role of a very reliable ally for the United
States, for example, in the war in the Korean peninsula.
But as Japan's economy started to develop and challenge the position of the United States in
the international market, then there were a series of trade conflicts. As shown in the diagram,
Japan's relative increase in GDP went hand in hand with a more or less stagnating
expenditure on the military. From the American viewpoint, this was seen as free-riding. The
Japanese were using the American forces, so that the Japanese could take the opportunity
and expand her economy and challenge the American economy, and then eventually even
take over the global hegemonic position in the economy.
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So this policy of relying on American military capability for defense and focusing on
economic development became more and more unsustainable in the 1960's. With the
competitive Japanese economy, we had a series of trade conflicts that started with the textile
conflict in the 1960's, and all the way into the 1990's when both countries had a
semiconductor conflict. All of these were characterized by the relative competitive
advantage of Japanese economy, as opposed to the declining competitive advantage of
American economies.
There was no way that the United States could change on that competitive position, but
United States could exert pressure on the Japanese government, so that the flooding of
Japanese goods in the American market could be restrained. And the United States also
started to expand to strengthen pressure on the Japanese government for more expenditure
on defense purposes. The argument was that the United States would no longer allow free
riding over American hegemony. Now to this extent, this was not really against the interest
of the Japanese government, for so long as the Japanese government could rely on a strong
relationship with the United States. And so long as it could, Japan stayed in that alliance
framework, managing trade conflicts with the United States, and Japan was not a major issue
to the stability of East Asia.
It was a cost, eventually paid by the Japanese government. For example, in the textile
conflict between United States and Japan, the Japanese government, paid a large sum of
money for destroying some of the textile machines. So it did a company government
scheme, and occasionally the Japanese government was helped by some new generation of
airplanes and battleships from the United Ships, in a way to somehow make up for the
trading balance between the US and Japan.
But the more important question here is that Japan's management of trade issues with the
United States didnt jeopardized the stability. There was always talk that if Japan keeps on
free riding on American hegemony, then the Americans will pull out and they wont allow
the Japanese to rely on security assurances. But by doing that, it would actually decrease
North Americas influence in East Asia, and it would works against American interests. On the
Japanese side there was always this fear of abandonment, that the United States would no
longer provide security to Japan. And although there was much awareness about the
possibility of abandonment in alliance issues, the alliance relationship was not a real concern
on both sides of the Pacific.
It was the end of Cold War changed the geopolitical picture of the region dramatically, when
geopolitical instability started to show its face, for Japan was no longer a necessary ally when
Russia disappeared from the enemies list of the United States. There was anxiety over the
role of Russia in the post Cold War world, but Russia was no longer a communist power and
China was still not a major military power, so there was little reason for the United States to
be concerned about instability in East Asia. But then, from the Japanese viewpoint, the rise of
China did pose a major geopolitical challenge to Japan. And because China was rising, and
Japan needed more support from the United States, there was a certain geopolitical
instability that emerged after the end of the Cold War. But a point here is that it had nothing
to do with Japan's economic rise. And the irony is that this geopolitical instability somehow
took place at the same time when Japan's economic position in the international market
started to erode.
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2.9. Case IV: the rise of China (1990s-2010s)

After the discussion about Japan's rise, I'd like to
talk about China's rise. The rise of China has been
the most significant development in the East
Asian region, and not only in East Asia, but in
global politics during the past few decades. China,
that was essentially a military power that lacked
economic foundation, has shown a remarkable
economic development to the extent that now
the second largest economy in the whole world.
Moreover, the rise of Chinese economy
accompanied the rise of Chinese military power. So after the Second World War, this is the
first chance that we see a major power emerging in the globe, both in terms of economy and
military.
The Soviet Union was another power that challenged America's position in geopolitics, but
lacked economic foundation. Germany and Japan were major economic powers that were
not military contenders to the position of the United States. So China is in many ways unique
in its rise in both military and economy. The first question here is the causes of China's rise.
The cause of China's military rise is rather simple to understand. For China, as a communist
power, was threatened by not only the military power of the Western world, including the
United States, but also the neighboring Soviet Union. That China was facing a double threat
from the United States, as well as U.S.S.R., was one cause for China to change its diplomatic
relations and normalize ties with the United States. But normalizing ties was not sufficient to
strengthen China's position to defend her homeland, and therefore, a rapid increase in
military capability was essential. This became more important when China was defeated
miserably in the invasion to Vietnam: China invaded Vietnam after the invasion of Cambodia,
and China lost the war against Vietnam, a lesser power, much to the humiliation of China's
tradition.
Military expansion became one of the most important policies in the Four Modernization
program under Deng Xiaoping. The economic rise was also a priority, as Deng Xiaoping
stressed that without the modernization of the economy, there was no way that China could
sustain itself in the future. So therefore, opening doors to the international market China
welcomed foreign capital, and also rapidly started to change is communist economy, which
was essentially modeled after the Soviet Union. And with the trade liberalization and
utilization of the domestic market, China's economic rise followed the path of its neighbors,
such as Asian nations like Indonesia or Thailand, but at a much higher speed and also at a
much larger scale.
China's economic rise was in effect the largest rise we have ever seen in East Asia, including
Japan. We have two questions though. First of all, let's focus on the economic and military
capability of China today. Is China a hegemonic military power? I don't think so. When you
pay attention to the growth rate of Chinese military expenditures, and expansion of military
capabilities, you might come to the conclusion that China has already become a major
economic and military power, and I have no question about that. But to use the word
hegemonic, it has to surpass the power of other nations. And even in sheer military
capability, China is a major military power, but is no comparison to the position of the United
States. In terms of nuclear war heads, we can estimate that China has 300 nuclear war heads,
while the United States or Russia have more than 2.000. In naval capacity, China is expanding
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its naval capacity for sure, but even compared to Russia, China's whole naval capacity is still
very much limited. The point here is that China, which used to be a land nation with major
focus on the army, has expanded into navy. That itself is a major change, nut that does not
mean that China has become a major military power. The gap between China and United
States, and even with Russia, is still enormous.
Moreover, if you play attention to the Alliance network here, China's weakness is even more
pronounced, for China does not have an ally. If there is an ally, that is North Korea, and the
day when China join hands with North Korean in fighting against Western powers, is will be
China's own suicide. So there's no way that China can rely on the power of allies to face the
challenges from the Western World. Although China is a rising military power, the gap
between China and the West is still very much large, and China most certainly is not a
hegemonic military power.
Is China today then a hegemonic economic power? There is some ground to this argument,
for China is not only an emerging economy, it has shown the highest growth rate for a
sustainable period. You take a look at emerging economies and you see high growth rate
which cannot be sustained, there is a boom and bust. In the case with China, you do not see
bust, you can see decline over a certain period but, on average, China's growth rate has been
sustained at a remarkably high rate, and it has continued up to this day. Although the world
hegemonic economic power is still very much debatable, the rules of the game of trade are
not in the hands of China. The rules of the game in trade relations and international finance
are still very much determined by the European major powers and the United States. And
even the role of Japan, a major economic power, is still very much limited when it comes to
shaping international regimes in trade and finance. So China is a large economy to be sure,
but it's not large enough, or does not have the power to set the rules for international
institutions.
So therefore, China is a major economic power, but still lacks a hegemonic power. The next
question here is whether China's rise has led to geopolitical instability. And on this particular
point, I would say that yes, China's rise has led to geopolitical instability, because of the
expansion of China's naval capabilities, and the fleet moving in the green the blue waters,
challenging the territorial rights of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan. From the Chinese
viewpoint, China was a maritime empire in the Ming Dynasty, and that position was taken
away by outside powers, so its expansion into the blue water may be seen as a defensive
action, or pervasive interest. But in terms of international relations, this is a clear expansion of
China's activities that threaten the stability of international borders on the sea, and to that
effect there has been concern, not only in Japan but also in the Philippines and Vietnam, that
China's rise has challenged the status quo of the region.
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Having said that, whether China is eager to challenge the position of the United States is
another story, is challenging her neighborhood seats and the borderlines of Vietnam, the
Philippines, or Japan. But when it comes to her relationship with United States, there's every
good reason to argue that China is paying much attention so that a major conflict between
China and the United States can be avoided.
China is a rising power, and it's taking advantage of the lesser powers around China. But
whether China is eager to challenge the hegemonic position of the United States, in
international relations, remains to be seen, and there is no evidence to argue along that line.
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2.10. Can hegemonic wars be avoided?

In concluding this talk about power transition, I'd like to go back to the original question: can
hegemonic wars be avoided? We started out discussion about power transition in
international relations, the rise of new powers and the decline of old powers. And we also
discussed about theories that describe such power transition to bring out instability in
international relations through hegemonic wars, wars that are fought for the sake of new
hegemony in international relations.
But then if we check historical records, we are not really sure if there has been a hegemonic
war in the past. Such wars that have been depicted as hegemonic wars, wars fought for the
position of a hegemon in international affairs such as the Anglo-Spanish wars in late 16th
century to early 17th century. Or the war between Great Britain and Germany, and the two
world wars where the Germans and the British fought each other. There is very good reason
to doubt if these were actually hegemonic wars or were intended as hegemonic wars.
As we have discussed in the Anglo-Spanish War, first of all it was not Great Britain that
started the war, it was Spain that did it; the rising power did not start the war against the
declining power. And furthermore, in this particular case, Great Britain defeated part of
Spanish fleet, but not totally at all. And it was a sideline, the fight between British pirates and
the Spanish Armada that eventually led to the demise of the Spaniards fleet. And moreover,
the Spaniards did pull themselves together and prevail over British Naval supremacy. So
even with a focus on the intention of the war, the Anglo-Spanish War was not a hegemonic
war, and neither the outcome was decisive in favor of a British influence.
Now take a look at the two world wars. Great Britain prevailed in the end, but that was not
the decisive factor, for the major power that came out over the two world wars was the
United States, that fought hand in hand with the British forces in the two conflicts. And
moreover, Germany was not eager to fight against Great Britain at all; if there was anything, it
was to avoid British participation in the First World War, that was essential for the war plans
of the Germans, but it did not work out that way. This was not the original intention of the
German forces, and in this sense, the First World War was not a hegemonic war.
The Second World War may be argued as a hegemonic war, to the extent that the Third Reich
under Adolf Hitler was eager to secure a large empire in Europe. Depends on the definition
of the word hegemony, but the naked power that the Nazi administration aspired for in
Europe was most certainly an aspiration for hegemony. But then Germany was defeated
completely, and the result was not a change in hegemony. To that extent, even in the
Second World War the result was a return to the status quo, and not to a new hegemony. If
there was anything, it was a change from the British leading role to a leading role played by
the United States. But remember that there was no war fought between the United States
and Great Great Britain, so all arguments about hegemonic wars in the past are of dubious
value.
And if we take a look at the relationship between power transition and major wars, we are
not sure if power transition has been a cause for major wars. Take a look at the rise of
Germany in 19th century: the rise of Germany didn't start in the 20th century, it started in the
19th century, and Germany was fighting wars with her neighbors, amalgamating several
territories, and finally winning unification. And when Prussia was expanding and forming the
core of the German empire, Great Great Britain was not restraining the activities of Prussian
forces, but actually accommodating the new role played by the new German Empire in
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European affairs. There was a power transition in the sense that German manufacturing
output already surpassed that of Great Great Britain in middle 19th century; there was a
power transition in terms of economy. And also even also in terms of military capability,
Germany was catching up already with Great Britain in middle 19th century, but here power
transition did not accompany warfare. Moreover, power transition from Great Britain to the
United States, as we have discussed here, also was not accompanied by warfare.
So the argument that power transition has been and will be a cause of major wars is already
something that we must cast some doubt about. And this leads to this third question: can
hegemonic wars be avoided? If power transition does not necessarily accompany major
wars, the answer to this question should be clear enough. Hegemonic wars can be avoided,
and have been avoided. This is a major lesson for us, because the rise of China has caused so
much alarm, not only among practitioners of international politics such as politicians or
diplomats, but also in the academic community, to the extent that major professors and
scholars have started to argue about power transition again, and the possibility of
hegemonic wars.
But if we only focus on the past, then there is very
large possibility that the war with China and the rest of
the world can be avoided for it is destructive to
world's life. And this leads to another question. If that
is so, if a hegemonic war can be avoided, then why is it
that we have an incessant series of conflict between
China and her neighbors? Right now there is an
extremely serious territorial dispute between China
and Japan over the Senkaku/Tiaoyutai Island.
On this particular issue I would like to support the
position of the Japanese government, not because I'm
Japanese, but because I believe the action of the Chinese forces here is challenging the
status quo of the region. Even if you do not take sides in territorial disputes, you must take
sides in the maintenance of the status quo: any action that rocks the stability of international
relations must be taken as a challenge to stability, and that is exactly what the Chinese are
doing. But then I doubt if the Chinese government is eager to seriously challenge the
situation here, because we see a relationship between domestic politics and decision
making. The nationalization of Sekaku Islands in the year 2012 was actually an
accommodating act from the Japanese government toward the Chinese government. Mr.
Ishihara, The mayor of Tokyo, was moving toward a more confrontationist line by making
Senkaku a territory of the government of Tokyo. Prime Minister Noda's decision to
nationalize the islands was intended to put the islands under the control of the national
government, so that it is not placed under the control of Governor Ishihara. But that did not
work out, as it ignited fury in China in terms of demonstration and mass violence.
Here you also have to take into account that this was in the transition period from Hu Jintao
to Xi Jinping, and there was much domestic dispute about the naming of the members in the
public bureau, so domestic politics played into power transition. And when a proud nation
tries to exert itself in its foreign policy and has the support of a sizable member of the public,
rationality of decision making in the foreign policy can give away to a nationalist agitation.
So therefore, we have to move our focus to playing power calculation to the role of domestic
politics in foreign policy in our discussion about the democracy and nationalism in
international relations.
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3.
Democratic peace, democratic wars
3.1. Two forms of liberalism

In this chapter, I would like to discuss about the relationship between democracy,
nationalism, and international relations. This might sound rather strange to you, because
democracy and nationalism refer to domestic politics. And in essence, these two are not
necessarily related to international affairs at all. But at the same time, such political
ideologies that have a strong influence in domestic societies, can also have implications for
foreign policy making.
First, I'd like to discuss about the relationship between democracy and international
relations, but as you can see, the word democracy itself is open to various interpretations
and politicians have abused the word so much that the meaning has become so unclear. So
let's start from two pillars, liberalism and democracy, and what these two words mean. The
question here is this: what is liberalism? We use the word liberal democracy as if liberalism
and democracy are closely connected together, but actually there are differences here.
Liberalism essentially means rule of law as limits toward the exercise of political power.
When a king wishes to do this and that, a constitution would be the institution that limits the
exercise of ruthless political power that the king may wish to do. Rule of law as a restraint
toward the exercise of political power is the key cornerstone of liberal political ideas. It also
leads to political pluralism as opposed to autocratic rule. Autocratic rule, almost by
definition means a concentration of power, and political pluralism means that political
power is held by different institutional organs that have a check and balance relationship.
Like the parliament, like the office of the prime minister, or the president, and of course, the
judiciary.
And finally, liberalism means political competition and power contestation. This actually
goes hand in hand with pluralism. If political power is held in several organs, there could be,
and there must be competition for political power. The point is that that competition should
play out in a non-violent manner, that a change of political power to another group should
take place in legally guaranteed political procedures without the use of violence. I described
here some characters of liberalism and many of you might argue that this is the identical to
democracy. No, it's not, for I did not once use the word participation.
And what is democracy? Democracy is about participation. First of all, in terms of values,
this is about universal Human Rights, not Human Rights of the selected few, but everybody,
men or women. And this leads to the second point, which is the actual implementation of
this principle, that is political participation is open to the civilian society. In more
institution terms, this means universal suffrage. Everybody essentially has a right to vote,
regardless of gender, religion, creed, or ethnicity. Now these two things, although they
overlap, are quite different. Liberalism can take place in a society where political power is in
the hands of a limited elite. There can be rule of law, there can political pluralism, there can
be political competition without universal suffrage, and that was exactly the case, for
example, in the early 19th century Great Great Britain.
I'm not arguing that liberalism is elitist and should be kicked out because liberalism, even if
participation is limited, is a very important factor that limits the exercise of political power.
And that is one thing that rules out fall into the dictatorial use of political power. So if
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democracy is a mere progress from liberalism to a more advanced stage, that would be an
easy argument, but that is not so, for when you are expanding political participation there is
always the possibility that the mass public might endorse the use of ruthless political power.
What happens when a majority in a society accepts a dictatorship? What happens when
people vote for a political leader who is ready to use dictatorial rule? Here you can see that
there is an almost inherent contradiction between liberalism and democracy. And that
contradiction carries on in our discussion about democracy.
If you take a look at historical development, you can see three waves of democratization,
following the classification of Professor Samuel Huntington. The first wave starts in early 19th
century and ends up in the fascist takeover of Italy somewhere around 1922. This was
essentially about installing liberal political institutions that allowed a certain suffrage, not to
everybody, but essentially to male population in the society. There was a limit to the
membership; first of all, there was a geographical limitation. Even if we take this long period
from early 19th century to 1922, a little more than 20 countries can be called democracies at
this moment. Most of them were inhabited by Caucasians, white populations, and people
who had the right to vote. So this was essentially European affair and a North American affair.
The second wave is the one that took place between from the end of the Second World War
to early 1960's. This was a magnificent period when stable democracies expanded in Western
Europe, East Asia and several other regions. Japan became a full-fledged democracy during
this period, and so did India. Democracy was no longer a political form limited to the
European sphere.
An then we see a third wave of democratization starting from the formal dictatorship, in
Portugal and Spain, and expanding into the new democracies, in the form of military rule in
Latin America, and all the way expanding into Southeast Asia where the fall of Ferdinand
Marcos in 1986 was the harbinger of liberalization in Southeast Asia. And then, of course, we
should not forget the real revolution of our time which is the fall of communist dictatorships,
in Eastern Europe and Russia. The third wave, in terms of geographical coverage, was by far
the largest expansion of democratic regimes in history, and some might argue although
some might disagree, that the Arab Spring that started in the spring of 2011 was a
continuation of the third wave.
Now we have a question here. With the third wave of democratization, democracies are no
longer limited to European nations or North Africa. We see democracies in South East Asia,
we see democracies in Latin America, we see democracies not only in the Western Europe,
but also in the eastern part of the continent. We even see democracies emerging in the Arab
and North African world, so we can talk about the world community of democracies. The
question here is, does a transition to democracy change international relations? Does
transition to democracy make the world a safer place?
President Woodrow Wilson, of the United States, justified the First World War as a war that
would make the world safe for democracies. And in saying that, he was talking about three
things. One, he was arguing for a world that had to be safe for a democracy, that is, the
United States; he was talking about the security of the United States. But not only that, he
was also talking about the security of democracies in Europe: the United States may have
been threatened by German advances, but there was a war going on in Europe, and to aid
democracies in the European continent was one of the aims of Woodrow Wilson. There was
another aim which was expanding democracies in the world; as envisioned in Wilson's
participation in the Paris Peace Conference, his aim was not only defending the security of
democratic nations but also expanding democratic governance in the world.
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Here we see a Wilsonian notion that combines democracy, which is essentially a form of
domestic political institution, to the state of international affairs. The Wilsonian notion,
therefore, combined democracy at home and democracy as an idea and an institution in the
global state of affairs. But then we come back to this question, does the transition to
democracy really make the world safe? Does the transition to democracy have an impact in
international relations? And that is our second question.
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3.2. Theories of democratic peace

In discussing about the relationship between democracy and international relations, I would
like to focus on the theory of democratic peace, the argument that connects democracy and
peace. But then this argument is composed of two parts. One is more philosophical, under
the influence of Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher. The other is far more recent,
developed from the argument by Michael Doyle, Bruce Russett and several scholars in
So first, I'd like to talk about the more philosophical brand of democratic peace theories. The
argument follows the argument of Immanuel Kant. What did Kant think as necessary for
perpetual peace? Kant sketched his ideas in his essay Perpetual Peace: A philosophical sketch,
published in 1795. You have to remember that the year that it was published, as you can see,
this was in a time of the French Revolution, and Kant, of course, was living in Germany, but
he was well aware of the development there. In this sketch, as he calls it, he proposes three
foundations for perpetual peace. One is constitution as enacted by republican governments:
it's not a constitution that may be dictated by the kings, it has to be enacted by republican
governments. Secondly, Kant argues that the law of nations as founded on a federation of
free states is necessary; the federation of free states, of course, with the republican
governments in its first condition. And thirdly, he argues about the law of world citizenship:
it's not a law between governments, it's a law of world citizenship and the freedom of
emigration.
A very interesting argument here, but essentially, the whole sketch boils down to the first
condition, constitution enacted by republican governments. And of course, you are well
aware that there were very few republicans at the time this essay came out. There was a
French revolution, but the majority of polities were monarchies, and even among those
monarchies, constitutional monarchies were very limited. So constitution itself was an
aspirational goal, but not a reality at the time.
We have to go into the details further. I have a question, which might trouble you: did Kant
really think republicanism is a condition for peace? Yes, in some parts of this essay, Kant
seems to argue that a republican form of government is far more peaceful than other form of
government. But we have one question here, is republicanism the same as democracy? Was
Kant really arguing that monarchies should be kicked out in favor of a republican form of
governance? And then we see something very interesting. No, Kant was not arguing that
monarchy should be over, overthrown. Unlike our present use of the word republicanism,
Kant was totally happy using the word republicanism along with constitutional monarchy. So
long as the use of political power of the monarch is limited by a constitution, Kant would call
that polity a republican form of government. And moreover, Kant does not talk about
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universal suffrage: he talks about free states, he talks about world citizenship. But you have
to be careful here, he does not talk about universal suffrage; he is not talking about a
government elected by every male, let alone female, living in the land. So although he is
arguing that republicanism and the constitution enacted by republican form of government
is essential to perpetual peace, his argument is far more nuanced, unrestrained.
Why is that? That is connected to the second question. Was the French revolutionary
government republican? Yes, it was republican, no question about that. The French
revolution overthrew the rule of the king, the Bourbon dynasty was terminated in terms of
political power, so far as the revolutionaries were concerned, and the heads of the kings
were chopped off. But Kant was not in support of the French Revolution: as a matter of fact,
Kant was very afraid that such mob violence would destroy the republican form of
governance, so his rather conservative take on the republican form of government is not the
reflection of his conservatism. His view reflected his horror toward the terror that
accompanied the French Revolution. So he was arguing that republicanism is a condition of
peace, but at the same time, his definition of republicanism is quite different from the ones
we might think of.
And this leads to another question: are democracies really peaceful? We must make a
distinction between democracy and liberalism, for liberalism is essentially about the restraint
on the use of political power, and on this Kant was arguing about a liberal form of
government. Democracy rests on the assumption that everybody should be able to
participate in decision making, but there was always a fear that democracy might work as a
path toward dictatorship. In fact that was exactly how the Greek philosophers thought of
democracy as a rather troublesome form of polity that would open the path toward
dictatorship and war. And if you allow everybody to participate in choosing their own
leaders, democracy might actually end up in support of dictatorship and also in mass
mobilization for war.
I'm not arguing that democracies are more dangerous than others, but Im telling that the
argument democracies are peaceful itself should be rated with some caution. But then,
nevertheless, Kant's argument had a tremendous impact in the political ideas that followed.
In the time of Immanuel Kant, of course, there was relatively limited number of
representative forms of government, so Kant was just working on the theoretical possibility.
But in early 19th century, Great Great Britain started to develop more liberal institutions than
before. And the Manchester liberals who argued against the Corn Law, argued about free
trade, as well as liberal order in international relations. The Manchester liberals are known for
being the advocates of free trade, and arguing against a colonial empire, which Great Britain
had at that moment. But they were also arguing that a free government would open path to
a more peaceful society. And on this aspect they were disciples of Immanuel Kant, as well as
being disciples of Adam Smith, who proposed the expansion of free trade. If you take a look
at socialism, you can see that the socialist idea about international relations was again
heavily influenced by liberal ideas such as Immanuel Kant. Fabian society, which was one of
the organs that developed into the labor party in United Kingdom, proposed peace and
socialism, and the expansion of socialism as a harbinger of peace in Europe.
And this of course, goes well with another line of argument that is communism. Communists
were supposed to be international, far more international than the bourgeois, and they also
argued that the move toward communism would open the path for international peace.
That was not the case when the Soviet Union emerged, but such liberal ideas were still and
can still be found in the communist movements in late 19th century.
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And last, we reach the Wilsonian Liberalism. Woodrow Wilson was not a scholar of
international relations, and many of his ideas were actually borrowed from the Fabian
society. So when Wilson talked about the world safe for democracy, it reflected two things.
One was the American experience of building democracy in her land, the new world, free of
war. The old world, Europe, was fighting the First World War, but the new world was already
more advanced in installing democratic, political institutions; he was so heavily influenced by
the Fabian ideas that combined the realization with peace. So therefore, Wilson's idea was
not only about defending democratic governments, but also expanding it and expecting
international peace that might come out of it.
The legacy of Immanuel Kant was the arguments about liberal peace. All these arguments
were so important before the Second World War, or for that matter the First World War, but
were somehow forgotten in the world after the Second World War. The reason is the Cold
War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which established the basic structure
of international relations in the world that followed the Second World War. And under this
situation, the basic backbone of international security was the nuclear deterrence between
the United States and USSR.
Facing nuclear weapons, you don't talk about democracy, authoritarianism, or otherwise.
There was this question about communism, but that was not the real motive in foreign
policy. If the promotion of democracy was paramount as an objective of American foreign
policy, logically speaking the United States must have worked for the liberation of the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, but of course that could not be done because that would risk the
possibility of a nuclear war. But with the end of the Cold War, and with the third wave of
democratization in the world, suddenly we're placed in a community of democracies, devoid
of basic geopolitical contestation such as the Cold War. And we enter the period when we
can really talk about connecting democracy and peace.
And here we have one question. Have there been wars between stable democracies? The
first scholar to answer this question was Michael Doyle, who in his essay Kant, liberal legacies
and foreign affairs, argued that there has been no wars between democracies in History. He
was not arguing that there should be no wars between democracies; this was not a
normative argument, this was more an empirical argument where he found out that there
has been no wars fought between democracies. And Doyle was arguing that, after all, Kant
may have been right, that democracies really might not fight each other. He was careful to
add two arguments attached to this. First he argued that when there's a choice, democracies
choose authoritarian regimes as their adversaries, and not democracies, and by this token,
the absence of wars between democracies was not a coincidence, but a consequence that
comes from the democratic form of governance. And second point here was that wars
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fought by democracies are not necessarily peaceful, not necessarily defensive, democracies
can fight offensive wars against authoritarian regimes.
So in no ways was he arguing that democracies are peaceful. That was not his point, and this
is a major departure from Kant's argument, but he was arguing that democracies do not fight
each other. There have been no cases of such, and this has caught attention of many scholars
of international relations, especially after the end of the Cold War, because it seemed that the
expansion of democracies might be the cause for a more perpetual peace.
Why democratic peace? Why is there no war between democracies? There were two
hypotheses here. The first hypothesis is institutional, political decisions made in democracies
are restrained by representative institutions, just like in a company of whose stock is open to
the market. Key leaders cannot make decisions without considering the impact from the
domestic society, so otherwise they would lose elections. And such institution restraint on
the decision made by political leaders, lead to moderation over high-risk decisions such as
fighting wars. This institutional hypothesis was adopted by some scholars, but found very
much unconvincing in face of evidence. So therefore, most scholars jumped to the
normative hypothesis, that war against democracies cannot be accepted by democracies as
both societies share common values and political institutions, and therefore they choose to
fight against dictatorships and not democracies.
But this all boils down to this fact that democracies have not fought each other. It might be
true that there is an absence of war, but is democracy the reason for the absence of war?
Many realist scholars have argued that it comes from the lack of common enemies, or the
presence of common enemies. European nations did not fight each other because the Soviet
Union was a much larger threat to their survival: the Soviet Union was threatening the
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survival of Great Britain, France, Italy, or Germany, and that's why all those democracies
belonged to one group; it is mere coincidence that they happen to be democracies. There
was another argument by the economic liberals: they argued that it was not democracy, it
was the free market, the expansion of trade in the world after the end of the Second World
War, that made more costly for each nation to go to war. This is in essence an Adam Smith
argument, not the Kant argument, the free trade was the factor that somehow restrained
these governments to go to war.
I don't want to take much time in discussing the details of this debate, which continued at
least two decades. But as of now, I feel I can point out two things. One is that war is a
relatively rare event in international relations. So therefore, an absence of war may be
explained by a number of causes or independent variables. Democracy might be one of the
important variables, but most certainly that is not alone in the variable defining and the
outcome. The lack of war may have come from the presence of a common enemy, the lack of
war may have come from an expansion of trade, the lack of war may be due to the simple
fact that most democracies are also extremely rich countries; it was the case up until the
second stage, the second wave of democratization.
The second caveat I'd like to add here is that there is a new element included in this
discussion, the stability requirement. Mark O'Doyle was not clear about this, but his
successors such as Bruce Russett explicitly included the word stability, that there have been
no wars between stable democracies. The stability requirement is an important one, because
we love to think about unstable democracies. Has there been a war between unstable
democracies? Yes. The fact of the matter is that those unstable democracies turn out, change
into authoritarian regimes before fighting a war. Weimar Germany was one of the most
democratic nations after the end of the First World War, but it crumbled down of course with
the Nazi takeover, and with the Nazis there was a major war. I think we can make a strong
case that Japan after the 1920s was also a highly liberal regime: there was a suffrage for male
population, women were not included. But in terms of political participation, Japan was in
many ways very close to a democratic form of governance in the 1920s. And that liberal
order, of course, crumbled down onto a more totalitarian regime. And with the rise of
militarism, Japan was engaged in a self-suicidal war that killed so many, out and inside of
Japan.
From these two cases we should argue that the breakdown of unstable democracies
preceded the outbreak of war. So therefore, the scholars who used to argue democratic
peace are now arguing three pillars of democratic, of liberal peace. Democratic rule is one
condition important in preserving peace, but that's not all. They argue that open market is
also important. In this way they are combining the argument of commercial peace theory
into the democratic peace theory. Democracies as well as free trade play a large role in
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preserving peace, and moreover, they argue that the role of international institutions is
important in keeping peace. The argument about three pillars also indicates that the
argument about democratic peace alone would not suffice to explain the absence of war.
And there is where the trouble begins.
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3.3. Nationalism, mobilization and war

Following our discussion about democracy, I'd like to move into our discussion about
nationalism. Now nationalism might sound like something that is very much related to war,
and very much alien to democratic form of government. I very much disagree with that
argument, for nationalism is an ideology that you can find in democratic form of
governments, as well as in authoritarian societies. So let's start thinking about this broad
range of nationalists ideas.
What is the relationship between democracy and nationalism? The easier one that we usually
discuss in democratic societies is the authoritarian nationalism, nationalism found in
authoritarian regimes where discussion is about national unity, where each individual does
not really count unless that individual is aware that he or she is member of a community that
is the nation, or the folk. And each individual regains his or her importance by being a
member of this folk or nation. This is an ideology that emerged essentially in Germany
among historicists' theories, philosophers that combined the state and society, with the idea
of folk or nation. And as it takes the idea of nation, preceding the importance of individuals
and individual freedom, authoritarian nationalism has taken to be the opposite of liberal
ideas, or for that matter, democracies. But we also have to be aware that after all, most
nationalism takes place in democratic societies, and most democracies are national
democracies, they are not universalist in the notion, their membership is limited to a certain
nation.
Then, what about liberal nationalism? Liberal nationalism assumes that the member is
included in a civil society, and that civil society of course preserves their own right of
freedom, but at the same time belonged to a certain nation. it is this delicate balance
between the idea of a nation and the idea of individual citizenship that makes our discussion
about liberal nationalism extremely complicated. Take a look at this diagram and you can see
that nationalism cross cuts the boundaries between authoritarian regimes and democracies.
The nationalism you find in the French revolution was not about the French people, or to be
more precise, the definition of the French people was much broader than the cultural
definition of a Frenchmen. Anybody who was studying the French language was included in
the French citizenship, and in this sense there was much broader than, for example, the antiSemitic French nationalism in late 19th century, where the Jewish population was excluded
from the idea of the French nation.
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And of course nationalism can be found in many authoritarian regimes; as a matter of fact,
most dictators after the Second World War tried to justify their rule through a certain kind of
nationalist ideas. So therefore, nationalism is an ideology found in both authoritarian
regimes and democracies. But that's not the whole story. Nationalism is about a nation, is not
a theory about a community of nations, it is about your own nation, it is about the
importance of your nation, it is about the history of your nation, it is about the importance of
your belonging to that nation. And the paradox here is that this kind of nationalism can go
hand in hand with democratic institutions as well as authoritarian dictatorships.
Nationalism most certainly entails a national representation of History. History is talked
about as national history: the history of the Japanese nation, the history of the Chinese
nation, the history of the British nation. Those words itself are of dubious value, for there are
many people living in Great Britain or for that matter, Japan or China, whose mother tongue
was not the same as others; there were always minorities, large or small, in any society. But in
many cases, with United States or U.S.S.R. as very important exceptions, ethnic nationalism
somehow emerged along with a democratic reading of one's history, which also means that
national representation of history could go at odds with other national representation of
History. Teaching national history as opposed to other forms of History became a paramount
feature of universal education in every nation including authoritarian regimes as well as
democracies.
Along with such national education you also see national armies and mobilization.
Preserving the independence of your land becomes an important factor in nationalist ideas,
and the role of national armies was paramount in preserving the independence of one's
nation; now Kant here was exceptional, because he was talking about the world composed
of republican form of governance. In most cases, there was discussion about one's own
nationalism, one's own nation, and one's own republic, with very little regard for the
consequence of the world. And the more salient feature here is a focus on national armies.
There is an inherent contradiction between democratic universalism and nationalism: for
nationalism is about one nation, while democratic universalism is about the whole world.
And the irony extends to many other cases, where universalism is a part of a policy of major
advanced industrial democracies with large military capabilities, as opposed to and exclusive
expression of nationalism as found in developing nations.
But that alone does not rule out the possibility of nationalist mobilization as found in many
European nations, and do not for a minute think that the European nations were devoid of
such nationalist agitation. Does nationalism promote peace? The answer, unlike the
relationship between democracy and peace, is quite straightforward. Very few people would
argue that nationalism would promote peace. There have been many cases where nationalist
ideas have been connected to international strife and conflicts; it starts from the very
beginning. The articulation of nationalism in the western world starts from the French
Revolution, but the French Revolution, as we will discuss later, expanded into a revolutionary
war. Whether this was a war of liberation or oppression, differ by your viewpoint. The
Frenchmen might have thought that it was a war of revolution, but the Germans, of course,
thought that this was a naked invasion, and eventually that revolutionary end up in the
Napoleonic Wars, which was, of course, a threat for invasion.
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Then we see several cases of wars of national liberation, especially in the case of anti-colonial
nationalism. In many cases, such as in Indonesia or Vietnam, if not Algeria, colonies could not
win independence without fighting war against their former masters. So therefore,
establishing a national republic necessarily required a major war against the colonial
masters, so liberation was closely connected to wars of liberation. And then of course, we
also see many cases of ethnic and religious conflicts, in some cases interstate wars, and in
some cases civil wars. Here nationalism is an ideology that dictates the conduct of
international war or civil wars, and we can also argue that new and unstable democracies are
rampant with cases of excessive articulation of nationalism that leads to violent conflicts. So
unlike democracy, nationalism does not promote peace as such, and we have to find ways
where nationalism can somehow work along with a more peaceful world.
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3.4. Case I: the French Revolution

Let's talk about the French Revolution and international politics. The French Revolution was
the first revolution in the European world that brought about the republican form of
governance aspired by numerous philosophers in 18th century. And at same time it was a
revolution that brought about violence and terrible massacres against French citizens, as
well as tyranny of Napoleon's empire. Here we can discuss about the very early cases where
democratic form of governance and nationalism played in shaping the kind of international
relations that we will see in the later days.
The first question is about the Frenchness of French Revolution. We talk about the French
Revolution, but whose French revolution was that? Who were the actors in the French
Revolution? A very brief overview will tell you that it was a revolution with very different
actors, with very different aspirations. First, there was of course the landed aristocracy who
had much grievances and frustrations over the conduct the monarchy. And it is not too
much to argue that the liberal ideas, the aspiration for freedom, was essentially a call from
the landed aristocracy against the monarchy, which has very little to do with bourgeoisie or
the urban poor. The urban bourgeoisie, of course, was another factor in the French
Revolution; but their political role was actually quite limited, and calling the French
Revolution a Bourgeoisie Revolution would be not a mistake, but an exaggeration. And then,
of course, the role of the urban poor was critical in the fall of Bastille and so many colorful
events that illustrated the French Revolution. Many of them actually supported the
monarchy, and because of that became the victim of the terror against the majority of the
population. There were killings in Vande and several other villages where peasants who were
marked as monarchists were slaughtered in indiscriminate violence. You take a look at all
this, and the idea that the French citizens stood up against the revolution, and you can see
that is an exaggeration, for there were many revolutions played out by very different actors
simultaneously. Who is a Frenchman itself is an open question in the Revolution.
But our real question here is whether the French Revolution led towards international
welfare. Was there an inevitable relationship between the revolution and war? I believe there
was. I hope you take a brief moment to look at this map, and see the expansion of the French
forces toward the neighboring countries. The idea, of course, was to defend the revolution:
the revolutionaries were afraid that the kingdoms that surrounded France would intervene
into the revolution and crush it. So therefore, they thought that defending the revolution
was central in their priorities and they rallied support for a national army. Initially, therefore
their power was weak, but eventually turned out that national armies were far stronger than
standing armies of the surrounding neighboring kingdoms. National armies could easily be
committed to very difficult military campaigns, because soldiers there were not fearful of
dying for their own country.
This was what a very long time ago Machiavelli found out.
Machiavelli argued that republics were a far better form of
governance, and one reason he said was that republics could rely on
national armies where the soldiers fought fiercely. And built on this
national army, Napoleon could assert a dramatic impact in the total
invasion of Europe, which could not be imagined in the years of the
French monarchy.
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This is a map of Europe in 1805 when the Napoleonic forces were making great advances in
the neighboring regions, including Spain, Italy, all the way to Sweden, and of course
eventually to Russia. Here there was an inherent connection between revolution and war: to
defend the revolution you had to fight against your enemies. And during that fight national
armies were far superior to the standing armies which could not rely on such ideologies as
nationalism. So were the French Revolution and the wars that followed related to each
other? We have a disturbing answer here: yes. The French Revolution and the wars that
followed were related to each other. The French Revolution did bring out the republican
form of governance, which led to a dictatorship that invaded the neighbors, because the
Revolution had to be defended. It expanded into a massive warfare to the neighboring
regions, and the Napoleonic Empire did emerge out of the French Revolution for a very
practical reason.
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The peace that followed the Napoleonic Wars also gives us some troubling findings. After the
Napoleonic Wars, the kings or their representatives got together in Vienna, where they
couldn't reach an agreement. But then Napoleon made a comeback, and his comeback was
defeated at Waterloo. Napoleon was sent further away, and becoming aware that there was
the possibility of another Napoleon and another revolution occurred, the kings agreed for a
new meeting in the Congress of Vienna.
In 1855, they reached agreement and that agreement produced two results. One was the
return of the Ancien Rgime: the kings restored the power in their lands, what was changed in
the French Revolution in the direction of republicanism. That change was kicked out, and the
old order was re-established in their lands, and to this extent there is no question that the
Congress of Vienna was a conservative, if not a reactionary, scheme. But there is an irony
here, because at the same time the monarchs and the powers agreed for the principle of the
Concert of Europe. They used the word balance of power, but this balance of power was not
about fighting each other, this was about preserving the order in Europe, based on
agreement by major powers.
The concept of Europe has two variations. One is the British variation which is more
essentially about an agreement between governments. On the other hand, the Russian
variation is about an agreement among monarchs based on shared Christendom, but
nevertheless the character is the same, the character is that the agreement between
governments is the cornerstone of peace in Europe. So this is an irony, for the conference of
Vienna was totally reactionary in installing monarchies back into order, at the same time it
provided a peace that was most conservative, that certainly had little to do with
republicanism or democracy, but based on the agreement between governments.
But then, such counter-revolutionary and anti-nationalist agreement provided peace in
Europe, for the time if not until the Crimean War, all the way perhaps into the First World
War. So we see conservative peace as opposed to democratic peace, or nationalist peace, as
an irony here.
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3.5. Militarism and civilian control

What would happen when nationalist mobilization takes place in an authoritarian regime
that places a very strong emphasis on the role of the military in society? This is question of
militarism. Militarism has been discussed as the origin of major wars. The focus was on
German militarism before First World War, or for that matter Japanese militarism before
Second World War. And the question here is what militarism is, and how it relates to warfare.
First of all, let us discuss what militarism is. Militarism is an ideology that puts first of all a very
strong emphasis on the role of the military in politics. Under militarist regimes the military
performs an independent body that cannot be restrained by civic institutions such as
parliament. The prototype of militarism goes back to the day when the General Staff of
Prussia, which is part of Germany right now, played a major role in achieving victories and
achieving the unification of Germany. The central role of the General Staff in Prussia led to
regimentation of the whole society, that was modeled after the national army in Germany.
Another example would be the Japanese military, what was called Gunbu in Japanese; again,
the position of the Japanese military in the Japanese government was insured against any
intervention from the civilians, as it was raised directly under the control of the emperor
which could not be touched by the parliament.
And this independence of the military leads to another character of militarism which is the
absence of civilian control. Civilian control means that civilian representatives have authority
over key decision making related to warfare and security. And if in the military has
independence over key decision making, that means the civilian control is ruled out.
Additionally one might argue that national army has served as a role model of the whole
society. The structure of the military became the prototype of the whole country, and each
institution in the society, such as public schools, were modeled after the model of the
national army. The glory and heroism that was attached to the national army, that became
the center of political integration under the militarist regimes. This might simply sound like
an authoritarian regime where civic participation is severely limited, which is true. But we
also have to pay attention to the fact that people living under militarist regimes did in many
ways passively or even openly support the nationalist cause; although they did not have
political opportunity to participate in key decision making, they identified with the glory of
the national army and the victories delivered.
Now let's move on to another question. Does militarism lead toward to war? Is militarism the
key cause for starting warfare? It is true that German militarism played a large role in the
beginning of First World War, as military consideration took a predominate role, and
somehow kicked out political considerations that might be more prudent in the
management of international relations. Military strategy became the paramount state
objective in achieving security, and without civilian institution to control the decision of the
General Staff in Germany, militarism had a direct relationship with the outbreak of First
World War. Similar arguments can be made about Japanese militarism. In this particular case,
Japan did have more representative organs that could somehow restrain the decision of the
government, based on the parliament. But like I said, the military was somehow immune to
any intervention from the parliament, and with this independence they successfully installed
an institution starting from 1937, where the military took over the political regime and
represented the government, while the parliament became essentially a rubber stamp
organization, that simply followed the decisions made by the Junta.
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The two experiences, German militarism and Japanese militarism, led to a widespread belief
that civilian control of the military is the key measure to control not only the military, but also
control the possibility of warfare. The argument goads that if there had been civilian control
in Germany before First World War, or civilian control of the military before Second World
War in Japan, they may not have been engaged in self-destructive warfare.
The question leads to another theoretical question here: does civilian control really limit the
possibility of war? Now here we find a paradox, for when we discuss about civilian control,
we are actually talking about two things. One of course is a classical argument where the
civilians, through the actions of the parliament, restrain the decision of the military; prime
ministers or presidents who are responsible to the public would somehow restrain the
activity of the military, which might lead to excessive and unnecessary warfare. Damage is
not only limited to Japan or Germany: after the Second World War, in the United States,
which is of course a democracy, there was this fear that the military industrial complex would
lead to aggressive warfare, and even President Eisenhower warned to the public of the
calamities that might ensue from the growth of the military industrial complex.
Here we are making an argument based on the
assumption that the military prefers war and the civilians
are far more restrained when it comes to the issue to war
and peace. But that may not be so. Samuel Huntington,
one of the most renowned American political scientists,
argued that military professionalism is also a source for
constraining military behavior. Huntington was essential a
rather conservative political scientist, and his argument,
made in The Soldier and the State, was that if the military
follows its own professional lines, then they would refrain from making excessive
commitment to aggressive warfare. This line of argument of military professionalism as a
source of civilian control is almost the opposite of the traditional arguments about civilian
control, which asserts that the role of the civilian is critical in restraining military order.
Huntington is arguing that the action of the military can be restrained by the military itself.
That was not the case in Germany or Japan, but if you take a look at other actions taken by
the military, then we can also say that Huntington's argument is rather convincing. So we are
talking about two kinds of civilian control: one that is asserted from the civilians, and the
other one that is asserted by the military itself.
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3.6. Case II: German militarism and First World War

Before developing our argument further, lets go back to the case of German militarism and
First World War. As I have argued there has been an established relationship between
militarism and German engagement in this major conflict. The question here is the basis of
German militarism, where did it come from? What did it mean?
We have to go way back into History, in the middle 18th century.
Prussia was a part of what Germany is today, only one of the
kingdoms, but despite it was a small state, militarily speaking it
was a major one, and had developed what is called a standing
army. A standing army is not formed of mercenaries or hired
soldiers, it is a military organization that exists in times of war or
even in times of peace, always trained by the order of the state.
And with the development of a standing army in Prussia,
Frederick the Great, who reigned from 1740 to 1786, showed a
remarkable talent in leading Prussia to major victories. The most
important victory was the Seven Years' War. Prussia was allied to
France before, but Frederick the Great changed the ally and
started a new alliance with Great Great Britain, and with a remarkable strength shown by the
standing army under his leadership, Prussia turned out to be the major power in late 18th
century.
The Seven Years' War was of course one of the origins of the French Revolution, as France
had to pay a large sum of money in waging the war, and that crushed the fiscal basis of the
French state. The Seven Years' War also was one of the reasons why the United States was
formed: the settlers declared independence from Great Great Britain, as the American colony
was forced to pay the bill for waging this war. But this didn't happen in Prussia, there the
political system was strong enough to sustain a major war without breaking down by fiscal
restraints. That was due to a standing army under Frederick the Great, and then followed a
long chain of victories in the 19th century.
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Prussia was a nation destroyed by the Napoleonic Wars, but then in
Prussia the General Staff, the kind of strategists who planned out
the course of war, became an independent body. General Staff was
an obscure institution in early 19th century, but emerged as the
central command in the Prussian military led by Moltke the Elder, a
very successful strategist who led Prussia into a series of victories
against Denmark, Austria, and eventually France. The series of
victories, however, had a hidden price: with a strong standing army,
and also with a series of victories to her credit, Germany, after
unification, became a nation proud of military achievements.
The national army became the model of the society, those who composed the military
essentially came from the upper echelons of the society. The elite, the Junkers, were the
source of recruitment for the officer corps of the German military. The German historian
Eckart Kehr argued that the center of gravity of German militarism was in the plains, and he
was right, as it was in the more conservative districts. The Junkers, the elites, held immense
political power, and that was the origin of German militarism as well. There was a limited
attempt toward representative organs, but under Chancellor Bismarck, the growth of
representative political organs institutions was extremely limited, and after Bismark,
Germany became more and more involved in identifying military victory with the glory of
the nation. People living in Germany, who were deprived of their Human Rights still showed
enthusiastic support for German military victories. And it was this combination of nationalist
mobilization and the lack of democratic governance that lead to what we now know as
German militarism.
Now let's think about the next question, how militarism affected the beginning of First World
War. It certainly did, as shown at the Schlieffen Plan of attack to France and Russia. Schlieffen
Plan was one military strategy coined by the Chief General Staff Schlieffen when he thought
that Germany could attack both France and Russia. This was known to be one of the
geopolitical difficulties that Germany carried all along, as it is somehow sandwiched between
two major military powers, France and Russia. And therefore, the argument goes that any
interaction from Germany would be limited in scope. But working under the assumption that
the Russian mobilization would come later than the French, Schlieffen argued that Germany
should first strike France, and then later on Russia, and therefore using the difference in the
speed of mobilization Germany could attack both nations.
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This wasn't really a military strategy, but was a total disaster when it comes to political
consideration, for the plan does not pay any intent to recognize the strong relationship
between Belgium and the United Kingdom. Belgian was a neutral state, but had a very
strong relationship with Great Britain, and the only way that the Schlieffen plan could be
carried out was by an invasion through the Belgian borders. This of course would not only
endanger Belgium's independence, this is in effect an act of war not only against France, but
also against Belgium, a violation of neutrality, and it is easy to see that the United Kingdom
would not accept such violation. This is a typical military strategy that was coined without
any attention to political relationship between governments. And this, of course, could be
carried out simply because there was a total absence of civilian control in the beginning, and
also the planning of the war.
We should also quickly add that militarism was a way of life that assumed a total mobilization
of the society for war purposes. Furthermore we should recognize that the German
government overrated her offensive capabilities in terms of the degree to which national
mobilization can serve war purposes. It was not the Nazi regime, but nevertheless, there was
a very strong mobilization that centered on the military. Whatever Kaiser Wilhelm, the
Emperor, would say, the nation would follow, and this mobilization was one of the strengths
of Germany in carrying out the war.
But such focus on nationalist mobilization failed to see the negative effect of war on the
morale of the public. When Germany was winning the war, the nation was enthusiastically
supporting the war. But First World War was a very much disastrous conflict, where the war
was fought in the trenches, and British, French, or German soldiers would kill each other
without any prospect for winning the war. As the stalemate over the geopolitical situation
continued year after year, support for the war went away, and there was much disintegration
taking place in Germany, that finally ended up in a revolution against the Emperor. Such
turmoil that was brought about by wartime efforts was not recognized precisely because
Germany was a nation under authoritarian rule and therefore, this dependence on national
mobilization under militarist regime actually worked against German interest, once Germany
started to lose the war.
But what happened after First World War? Did the militarism in Germany go away? Well, not
exactly. After First World War, although there was a major revolution against the Emperor
and there was emergence of the Weimar Republic, one of the most democratic republics in
the European continent of the time, militarist institutions still survived.
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The military was not dismantled, and also there were many nationalist militants who
participated in First World War, and who were disillusioned by the loss of the war. Those who
were frustrated after the war engaged in a series of coups like the Putsch, and then
eventually joined NSDAP which we usually call the Nazi party. So militarism survived after
First World War and formed one of the seeds for the emergence of the Nazi regime in
Germany.
After Second World War, there was a total demolition of both Nazism and nationalist
militancy under a democratic rule, and for the first time in German history, civilian control
was been established. Today, Germany still holds a major military, but very few, if any, of
Germany's neighbors fear German aggression today, as Germany is recognized as part of the
European Union. And if there's any major action taken by the German forces, it is not taken to
be an aggressive action based on German militarism. So in many ways the days of militarism
in Germany came to an end after the Second World War.
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3.7. Wars led by civilian government

Militarism in Germany was dismantled after Second World War, and so was the militarist
regime in Japan as well. With the elimination of militarism in two major military powers, one
might assume that the cornerstone of peace had been laid in such societies. And in effect the
end of the Second World War led to an expansion of democratic governance, not only in
Germany or Japan, but also in Italy and several other European nations, let alone India or
some Asian nations as well. And with the introduction of democratic governance, one might
assume that civilian control had been in place and therefore, the possibility of warfare had
been reduced.
This argument does not hold since there have been many authoritarian regimes after the
Second World War as well. There have been military governments in South-East Asia or Latin
America, which did not have civilian control at all. But there is also an interesting question.
Can we assume that civilian governments are more peaceful? Can we assume that civilian
governments tend to increase the possibility of peace? This may not be the case, for many
wars have been led by civilian governments, sometimes unwisely.
Let's start from a very simple question. Does the military always support warfare? Does the
military like wars? Is the military militant in pursuing the course of unnecessary warfare? This
is an exaggeration, to say the least, for there have been many cases where the military has
been reluctant in supporting warfare. In the previous section I have argued that Samuel
Hunnington pointed out the professionalism of the military as one source of restraint on the
behavior of the military. This argument assumes that professionalism needs not go in the
direction of excessive warfare, and this is, in many ways, understandable, because if the
soldiers have to fight wars and fighting unnecessary wars, that will cost huge sacrifice for the
soldiers without achieving any major objective. We will always have to remember that cost
of war weights very heavily on military institutions if the war ends up in a victory, that
military cost may be somehow be able to consume. But if the war ends up in an ambiguous
manner or in a total defeat, then it would be much larger to concern for the military.
So therefore, the military as an institution has a provisional interest in the pursuit of rational
and winnable wars. And that leads to the definition of war aims that should be clear, cut and
also possible to achieve. An ambiguous war aim, such as the disruption of certain political
regime, would be very much of a challenge to the military, as the war is ambiguous and is
difficult to achieve. So therefore, we can assume that military professionalism somehow
disagrees with high risk strategic decisions.
Of course, we also have to assume that under civilian control the military does not have a
way to react against decisions made by the civilians. If the president and the parliament
decide to go to war, the military simply has to follow. But, nevertheless, this means that the
prudence or the professionalism of the military can be easily overruled by a more
adventurous initiative from the civilians. The paradox here is that if we have civilian control,
then there is no way we can stop the civilians from being engaged in unnecessary warfare.
On this point you might argue that civilians are inherently more peaceful than military
officers. But I must disagree to this statement, for there is no reason why civilians are more
restrained in launching a war.
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One point about civilian government is that civilians are always dependent on support from
the domestic society, and if this civil society wishes to be engaged in a war, then civilian
governments may be responsible to demands from the public to start a war. Say if there are a
number of people being killed your neighborhood region, 10.000 people were slaughtered
by a dictator. The military might think that the war is unwise, as the country's heavily
guarded and breaking through that defense wall that the military has enacted in the
neighborhood country could be very disastrous and the number of casualties on our own
forces. So the military might be reluctant to start a war, but nevertheless, in face of mass
killings in the neighborhood regions, the public might be curious about the lack of initiative
in the civilian government, and the civilian government might be forced to start a war, even
when the military as professionals disagree with that decision. In short, civilian governments
may support military engagement, when domestic society expects tough action.
Military professionalism is not dependent on domestic support, but civilian government is,
which leads to another point. Civilians might outweigh the political benefit expected from
the war, as compared to the risk and cost of military operation. Reducing the risk or the cost
of military operation is essential for the military as such risk and cost can destroy the whole
institution. But that's a question for the civilians and for the military, and not for the civilian
government. The civilian government, if it states an objective that is so important and if the
benefit from such action is so important, might override the decisions made by the military.
This was certainly the case in the
Falklands War between Argentina and
Great Great Britain. The Argentinian
junta occupied the Falklands Islands or
Islas Malvinas, which were under British
control. The Thatcher administration in
Great Britain took a very strong position
against the Argentina invasion and
disregarding the opposition from the
military, declared war on Argentina and
was eventually successful in bringing
out victory.
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From this, you can see that there are cases of war when the civilians took initiative against
the reluctant military. The military, as a professional institution, might be unlikely to support
a war that involves high risk and high cost, but the civilians might set the agenda that
overrules such reluctance of the military. In the past History, we see more and more instances
of wars that has been led by the civilian government against the reluctance of the military.
The Gulf War in 1999 was one case where the where the military was somehow reluctant to
be engaged. Here the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and there
was much demand for the international society to fight back against this naked invasion of
Kuwait. However, fighting against the Iraqi invasion could be an extremely costly affair, and if
the military sets the objective of the war as the regime change in Iraq, that the Hussein
administration should be crushed, then such an ambiguous war aim would be very difficult
for the military to swallow. Colin Powell, who was a Chief of Staff during the Gulf War, shared
his reluctance of this war to American journalists before the war. But nevertheless George
Bush Senior, President of the United States, declared war on Iraq and was eventually
successful.
Another war on Iraq, that took place in the year 2003, is an even clearer example of a war that
was started from an initiative or the civilian government. The war on Iraq was immensely
unpopular, even before it was fought among the American military. But nevertheless,
President George Bush Junior declared war on Iraq, and led America into one of the longest
military engagements in its history. So let us now take a closer look on the war on Iraq.
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3.8. Case III: The war on Iraq

So let's now discuss about the war on Iraq. The war on Iraq started the March 20th 2003, and
somehow ended by the year 2009, although there are several American troops still staying in
Iraq. The number is very small, but that means that the United States was engaged in the war
in Iraq, and that the Iraqi theater lasted for more than six years. This is far longer than
American engagement in the Second World War, and as a matter of fact, this on par or even
longer than American engagement in Vietnam; it is very difficult to ascertain the length of
major engagement in Vietnam, but I think we can say that American engagement in Iraq is at
best the same in Vietnam and, at worst, much longer.
How did this war get started? The first question, of course, is who wanted this war. Who were
the advocates of the war on Iraq? Who thought the war was necessary? If you take a look at
the advocates, you can find out that the number of people who supported the war on Iraq
was extremely limited. It has a very small circle, a circle of people who came to be called neoconservatives or neocons in the Bush administration, whose activity started even before
taking office. During the Clinton administration the new conservatives were arguing that
United States should start a war against Iraq, and liberate the country from Saddam Hussein
and authoritarian tendencies. This was a war for regime change, not the kind of war that the
military would pursue, but they thought that the past decision to withdraw from Iraq was a
failure that led to the massacre of Shiites in Iraq, and the argument goes that the United
States should have directly engaged and kicked out Saddam Hussein from political power.
People who were active in the political action committee took public office when the son of
President George Bush Senior became the next president. Multiple names such as Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld or Vice President Cheney, were all included in the neo-con group along
with Paul Wolfowitz, who was also the key man in designing the war plan for Iraq. But there
was a difference. Wolfowitz, for example, was more of an ideologue, who thought that the
war in Iraq would start a chain reaction of democratization. The Middle East was one region
that was left out from the transition to democratic governance in the world: you had
democracies in Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, but the Middle East
was an exceptional case. And Wolfowitz's argument was that if they broke the Hussein
regime in Iraq, then there would be a chain reaction of democratization that could extend to
other autocratic regimes in the region, including Iran, of course.
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There were others who did not pay much attention to democracies. Vice President Cheney
was more interested in the way America fought a war. According to Cheney, American
involvement in Yugoslavia during the time of President Clinton was a failure because
American troops were under the command of NATO. Vice President Cheney's argument was
that the United States was strong enough to fight alone and did not have to rely so much on
the allies. With the supreme air power that the American armed service holds, Cheney
argued, reliance on allies had become unnecessary, unlike in the past. Donald Rumsfeld, the
Defense Secretary, also argued that with the revolution in military technology, the United
States had such a supremacy over other powers that they did not have to consider much
about the participation of allies. The amazing thing about the beginning of the war on Iraq
was that the opinions held by the small group of politicians in the Bush administration
somehow carry on today.
I dont think there was any possibility of war on Iraq before 2001. In the year 2001, as we all
know, there was a terrorist attack on World Trade Center, the Pentagon and other places in
the United States. September 11th attack was a critical blow to the security mind that the
American public held. America used to be the safest nation in the world, but now the United
States was endangered by the act of terrorists. And this made it easier for anybody living in
the United States to accept the necessity of the war on terror, and this was a word used by
President Bush: the war on terror. And of course, the attack on the Hussein regime was
legitimized as one part of this war on terror. So it was not only the neoconservatives, it was
also the civil society, the Congress, the Senate, who even passively supported the war on
Iraq. The September 11 attack showed that the security of the United States is vulnerable.
And there was much support for the war on Afghanistan. Whether Taliban was central in the
war on terror is a matter of debate, but many Americans accepted that he war in Afghanistan
was necessary as Al-Queda, the terrorist organization, was somehow housed in the territory
of Afganistan, so to crush them thay had to crush the Talibans. The irony here is that the
Taliban regime collapsed in a very short period of time, but the activities of Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan and the Pakistan borders kept on going for a couple more years.
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So the war on terror provided a wonderful opportunity for the neoconservatives to revive
their interest in the war on Iraq. This was an unwinnable proposal before the September 11th
attack. But after September 11, the American public was ready to endorse such attack. In this
context, it is interesting to see that the military was extremely reluctant in starting a war
against Iraq. Some of the war plans were published in the Los Angeles times in 2002: the plan
was very clear and complete. Only the military can provide such information, and of course, it
was a leak from the military showing that the armed service was not in support of the war on
Iraq. This was a war of regime change, an ambiguous war aim, which is exactly the kind of
war that the military dislikes.
The war seemed to have come to a successful end with the fall of Baghdad in April 9th 2003.
But that is not the whole story, as immediately after American takeover, the whole
occupation started to collapse. The military was understaffed, they were not ready to handle
the occupation that had become necessary in governing Iraq. And moreover, the United
States was not ready for the kind of difficulties that the occupation might face. They were
resting on the assumption that once the United States broke the backbone of the Hussein
administration, then the Iraqis would come out in support of the United States, rejoice and
work together to build a democratic governance.
But that did not happen at all. What happened is that after the destruction caused by the
war, instead of an authoritarian regime under Saddam Hussein, anarchy reigned in Iraq. In
the region close to Bagdad, a series of terrorist activities had blossomed out. Iraq, under the
authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein, was one of the rare examples where terrorist
activities were not so common; but after the American invasion, there was a growth of
terrorist activities.
The war was justified to the minds of the public saying that the Hussein administration hold
weapons of mass destruction. That weapons of mass destruction were not found by United
Nations inspectors before the war, and after the war still nobody could find them. Chemical,
biological, nuclear weapons, nothing at all. On January 24th 2004, former United States
inspector, David Kay, testified in front of the Congress that they were wrong regarding
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which took away one key cause for the intervention.
In the year 2007, four years after the invasion, President Bush increased troop deployment to
Iraq, and afterwards the situation in Iraq started to civilize, and in effect the United States
could withdraw the majority of troops from Iraq. You might think of this as a victory, but the
military did not think so, as the number of troops who were engaged in Iraq came close to a
third of American army personnel, and also third of American marines who had to stay day to
day in Iraq in fear of terrorist attacks. This totally destroyed the moral of the American
military as they were fighting a war against their will which was started by a civilian
government.
The irony here is that the war on Iraq followed the rules. The Congress approved of this war,
the Senate approved of this war. The military may have disliked the war, but it was not in a
position to challenge the decision made by the President. This is a war that could not have
been stopped by civilian control, and was not stopped. And there you see a case of a war
that was led by a civilian government, one that cannot be stopped by civilian control or the
military.
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3.9. Towards the age of democratic wars

Now after this lengthy discussion, let us come back to the original question. Do democracies
make the world safer? It was the hope expressed in the writings of Immanuel Kant: that a
move toward a more open society, where the government is responsible to the public, that
condition to move to an open political sphere would lead to a perpetual peace. Kant of
course was careful in not arguing that democracy itself would lead to peace, his argument
was far more careful.
First of all, he didn't talk about democracy, he was talking about republicanism and he was
also careful to not argue, not to glorify the French Revolution, for he had his own skepticism
toward mass mobilization. But nevertheless we would like to believe, we would certainly like
to believe that democracies are far more peaceful than other forms of governance. And we'd
like to believe that the world community of democracy, like the one we have right now,
would lead to a world that is much safer than before. But even when we talk about
democracies, we also must be aware that there is another line of thought that goes in a very
different direction.
Democracies open a possibility for popular participation, yes. But then the expansion of
popular participation, following the writings of 19th century liberals in Great Great Britain,
might actually crush the backbones of a liberal society, for the number of people who now
participate in politics might open a possibility for a dictatorship, or even a war. It all boils
down to whether you trust the public, or you don't trust the public. The Kantian argument
rests on the assumption that people are far more rational when it comes to war. Kings might
fight wars without thinking about his or her own survival, they can fight wars using up
people's money through heavy taxation; so the king's purse and the king's life are not in
danger in a war. But the commoners are different, because the commoners are the ones who
might die in the war, who suffer from heavy taxes, and therefore it seems quite rational to us
then that people would be far more prudent in opposing unnecessary wars, but that may not
be the case.
Because a transition to democracy does not necessarily lead to stability. When democracy
accompanies an assertion of nationalism and national glory based on ethnic identities, then
the move toward democracy, but actually make the world a more difficult place to live. And
that leads to cautious argument about the effect of transition to democracies in international
relations. In effect, the transition to democracies would lead to more credible governments
in the world, and that might increase the possibility of peace. At the same time, in the short
period that follows the transition to democracies, which might be unstable, this is the period
when ethnic parties and religious parties will play a large role in defining the nation's policy,
as shown in unstable new democracies in the Middle East and North Africa such as Egypt or
even Iran at the initial stage after the revolution.
The period after the overthrow of dictatorship is a period when ethnic and religious
identities surface quite dramatically, and can lead to crisis between countries. Instead of
talking about democracies as something that resembles our own political institution, we
should focus on actual existing democracies, right after the transition from authoritarian
regimes. And the sad finding here is that the period following the transition to democracy is
the period that can actually be, more unstable than before. When we assume that
democracies don't fight each other, and when we further assume that the absence of war is
due to the form of politics that is democracy, then you might argue that promoting
democracies overseas is the right way to promote peace in the world.
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Paul Wolfowitz was one of them. He defended that promotion of democracy in the Middle
East would not only make governments more responsible to the people living there, but also
lead to a more stable peace in the region, and in this light a war for democratization could be
justified.
But this is a typical case of war based on extremely vague and broad objectives. If the war for
democratization is justified, then the aim of the war is reaching change. Changing
authoritarian regimes to democratic ones can that be easily done. In the war on Iraq the
American government assumed that after a multi-national invasion of Iraq, and after the
downfall of the Hussein regime, the Iraqi people would get together, join forces with the
Americans and the international community and build democratic institutions. But that was
not the case. The advocates of democracy in Iraq after the multinational invasion were
composed of Muslim dominant population that did not welcome American presidents in
Iraq, and today the country is under a more Muslim oriented leadership than before. And
although it is a democracy, it is a far cry from the American model of democracy. When you
consider the casualties, the number of people who died to bring out this transition to
democracy in Iraq, whether this was a prudent decision is very much a subject of debate.
We should also be aware that this call for democratization, a war for democratization, is
actually based on double standards, for we did not talk about the destruction of the Soviet
dictatorship in the Soviet Union. It was a communist rule, and so many people died during
political assassination, collectivization of the agriculture, and some series of fatal
misjudgments in the Second World War. But nevertheless, the Soviet Union was too strong
militarily to be crushed, so therefore we turned a blind eye toward the dictatorship there.
That may have been wrong, but this was also prudent because waging a war against the
Soviet Union would have involved so many people today.
Similar case can be made about North Korea. North Korea again is placed under a
dictatorship, and you might argue that the dictatorship in North Korea is far harsher than the
rule we found in southern Iraq. But nevertheless, waging a war against North Korea is quite
different from waging a war against Iraq, where the allied forces already had the power to
control the air before the 2003 attack. So in essence, when we talk about the war for
democratization, we are only talking about the war for democratization against a minor
military power. And there's nothing wrong about that actually, if we consider the simple fact
that although democracy might bring about peace, the cost of war can also be immense.
Finally, can we answer this question: is democracy a condition for peace? In the long run yes.
I myself was a believer that democratic governance would be and should be a condition for
peace in the long run; just like the expansion of free market and free trade, is a condition for
peace in the long run. But whether this is something that can be imposed from above,
whether we can force democratization from the outside using military means is a totally
different manner. And that is a lesson that we can learn from the failure of the war on Iraq.
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4.
Conditions for peace
4.1. Three arguments for peace

In concluding this course on the conditions for war and peace, I'd like to go back to the
original question about conditions for peace. What kind of arguments are there? What
element, what condition would be necessary for promoting perpetual peace? Please take a
look at the following question. Among the five following concepts, which do you think is
more important in keeping peace?
One argument would focus on military power, we can assume that military power is
essential in keeping peace. Another argument would be democracy, on the premise that
promoting democracy would promote peace in the world. An economist might argue that
free market is critical in the establishment of international peace, but an international
lawyer might argue that no, it's the international institutions that keep peace in a more
sustainable manner. And finally, there might be a more idealistic take on the issue, and argue
that we should do away with arms and weapons and military, because the abolition of arms
is critical for establishment of peace.
Each of these arguments been made in the field of international politics. Of course, military
power is a source for war, but also military power can be used to deter one's enemy; this is an
argument that has been pursued by what we call realist in international relations. And then
there is a focus on the formal politic, on governance, the argument that democracy is critical
in establishing peace is what we have called political liberalism. The argument that focuses
on free market and free trade would be the school that we call the economic liberalism; it
goes back to Adam Smith and the Manchester liberals, who argued that promoting free
market is critical for peace. A focus on international institutions and organizations such as
United Nations, would be the liberal institutionalism argument, centered the international
lawyers, practitioners and scholars of international law, but has also a very strong following
among the students of international relations. And then finally, the argument that abolition
of arms is necessary is a line of argument that is called pacifism in the world; it's a minority
argument, but it still has an almost religious following in the world.
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Realism assumes that the state is the key basic actor in international relations. Each state has
the right to have military forces, and outside the state, the kind of military capability in the
hands of individuals or social groups, or for that matter, international organizations has only
a negligible impact in keeping peace. So therefore the assumption is that the world is in a
state of anarchy, there is no government in the world, there is no central power that has the
coercive capacity to enforce its will in the world. And if there is no international governance
to speak of, what would be the possible action left for individual governments?
The argument would be that each state would pursue security and survival through actions
of self-defense, so the argument goes in two directions here. Offensive realism would argue
that each nation wishes to maximize political power, and whenever there's an opportunity to
invade, for example, and take away territories from other power, each country would do so.
The defensive realism would argue that it's not the maximization of power but defending
one's interest, defending one's territorial rule is the key element in defining individual action
of governments.
What kind of consequence would follow from such assumption of possible action? This
would be the classical world of balance of power and deterrence. If there is nothing in the
world that stops an aggressive war other than military capability of your own. There can be
civility, only if all those powers balance out and deter the other from engaging in excessive
warfare. Realist argument is crude, harsh, rude, but at the same time it is extremely real in the
sense that, in effect, there is no international organization with the coercive capacity, and it is
true that individual states do prefer security and survival through self-defense. So therefore,
although crude, it does depict one very important aspect of international society.
Let's move on to the other extreme. The other extreme would be pacifism that takes war as
a crime to Humanity. Unlike the liberals, they are not arguing about criminal actions started
by each state as crimes, for pacifists do not make a distinction between aggressive powers
and defensive powers, because all actions that use weapons itself are a crime. And in this
light, the possible that each state should take, would be the abolition of arms. The
consequence could be total and perpetual peace, as nobody can fight without military forces
or weapons. But this also opens the possibility of rogue powers taking opportunity of this
situation, which is essentially a power vacuum. If nobody has military power, then one that
has some military power will have an opportunity to take over the globe.
Pacifism is an extreme ideology that emerged at the end of major world wars, and became
widespread in Europe after First World War, as war itself was taken to be a crime to
Humanity. It also found a large following in Japan after the Second World War; in many ways,
the adherence to pacifism was a way to disregard the responsibility for starting a war in
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Japan, and the extremely negative reaction to war itself is a character that still carries up to
this day in the Japanese society.
But nevertheless, I should point out that pacifism is but an extreme case of liberal ideas.
Liberalism is an argument in international relations that is located as the opposite of realist
assumptions. The assumption here is different from realist argument in the sense that they
take civil society as a basic actor in international relations; this might sound strange, as it is
the government that decides foreign policy. It is rather odd to argue that the civil society is a
basic actor in international relations.
However, if we can assume that each government is dependent on the will of the public, and
that each government is responsible to the civil society from whom they are elected, then
the state becomes a neutral institution which merely reflects the will and the preference of
the civil society. So, in essence, the liberal assumption about the international society rests
on the degree to which each society is open politically.
There are three variants of liberal ideas. The first variant would be one we called political
liberalism, which focuses on the form of governance in each country, and here the spread of
democratic governance, governments that are responsible to the people, would be critical in
the promotion of peace in the world.
The second variant of liberal ideas would be what we call economic liberalism, where the
argument is not about the political structure, but the way the market is structured, the
promotion of free trade in an open market would make each nation more dependent to each
other, and with this increase of interdependence, the likelihood of war would recede
because the nations would be more and more dependent to each other, and the cost of war
would shoot up quite high. So therefore free trade here is assumed to be a deterrent against
excessive militant behavior.
The third variant of liberal ideas would be liberal institutionalism, an argument we usually
associate with international law and international institution. The argument here is that the
promotion of institutional building, institution building in international relations is critical in
maintaining peace. Balance of power is always conditional to certain uncertainties and
security dilemma, of which well will discuss later. But if we focus on institutional building,
then we can somehow curb the impact of security dilemma and promote a more sustainable
peace.
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From here I will discuss some elements that are attached to each. And first let's start from the
realist argument and see if deterrence really works to promote peace in the world.
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4.2. Deterrence as the condition for peace

Let's start from the realist argument, which focuses on military power as a condition to
peace. The argument is that it is only with robust military capability that we can stop
aggression and defend ourselves. This leaves arguments such as balance of power and
deterrence, the kind of arguments that has been quite widespread ever since 17th and 18th
century, and still carries much credibility here and now.
The realist argument boils down to the utility of deterrence, so we have to first think about
what deterrence means. Deterrence is a very simple strategy. Assume there are two nations,
A and B. There is a possibility of war between them, but the war hasn't started yet. Also
assume that nation A and nation B hold significant amount of military capability, both have
strong military forces, and nation A sends a signal to nation B that in case of attack, nation A
would retaliate, so nation A sends a strong signal to nation B that retaliation revenge would
take place if nation B invades nation A. Then it would be very difficult for nation B to invade
nation A without accepting a huge lost and cost.
In essence, this is identical to the balance of power theory. The difference between
deterrence and balance of power is that war fighting was part of the balance of power
system. If the balance is endangered, then all you have to do is to start a war, and somehow
challenge the rising power. Deterrence is different in the sense that it rests on the defensive
realist assumption that each nation is eager to defend one's survival but is not necessarily
interested in maximizing its interest. And if deterrents work then without democracy,
without free market, without evolution of wrongs, without international institutions, just
because you have a major military and just because you are sending signals that you would
retaliate against a massive attack, then peace will prevail. So this is the model that has been
accepted among realists as the basis for peace.
Here we will discuss about a model between two powers, now this can expand into a three
power model or a four power model. Also you might argue that deterrents is associated with
nuclear weapons, and in effect it is true that deterrence strategies have been developed
through discussions about nuclear strategy, but as a strategy this needs not be associated
with nuclear weapons as such. The difference is that the cost of retaliation, the cost that you
can inflict upon your adversary, is much larger when you do have nuclear weapons. So
therefore, you see a clear sign of deterrence in nuclear strategies and that clarity is lost when
the discussion is not about nuclear capability. But to repeat, deterrence applies to nonnuclear situations as well as nuclear situations.
Now the question here is how deterrence can be sustained. If the deterrence works, then we
can start worrying about conditions of war and simply start building up our own major
capability. But can we be really sure that deterrence strategy would work, can we be sure
that we can deter our adversary? The success of deterrence rests on two very important two
conditions. The first condition is that retaliation should be sent as a clear signal, that there is
no question whatsoever that an act of aggression would be met by massive retaliation. You
might think of this as common sense, but that is not necessarily so. If your adversary starts an
all-out war, then there is every good reason for you to revenge, retaliate with all of your
capabilities. But if the advance from the adversary is limited, if the damage caused by that
attack is quite limited, then whether you should be engaged in retaliation, or whether you
should be engaged in diplomatic negotiation regarding some compensation over the
damage, and the normalization of the ties can be a matter of debate.
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So the action that can take place after an attack can be a subject of debate, it depends on the
signal you send to the other side. If you're sending ambiguous signals, for example saying
that we would not be pleased if we are attacked, the unpleasance is clear, but the kind of
action you'll take would be very unclear. If the adversary is cautious a power, interested in
minimizing their risk, then even a statement like we are not pleased would be sufficient to
deter their aggressive actions. But if your adversary is working on wishful thinking that the
other side might not actually retaliate, then a mild expression such as show of displeasure
might be taken as an evidence of the lack of intention to retaliate. This is a question about
ambiguous signals.
Another problem which appears quite often in international relations is mixed signals.
Concerning a possibility of an attack from an adversary, some politicians might argue that we
would retaliate with all our force. But other politicians, or other bureaucrats, other diplomats,
might argue that we can take some damage, but not big ones, and we would consider if we
should retaliate or not. In effect, one government is sending several signals to the adversary.
And when a government is sending mixed signals to the adversary, there is a possibility that
the adversary might take this as a case of lack of determination, and they might focus on the
less aggressive signal sent from the power and start aggression. So ambiguous signals and
mixed signals, are two examples where deterrence can fail quite easily.
Another condition for successful deterrence is the possible acceptance of status quo. Think
about a situation where you are afraid that the other side is going to attack you at any
moment, the war might break out at any moment. If there is a perceived imminence of
attack, if there is a perception that the present peace would not be kept and the other side
might attack at any moment, then this will lead to a possibility of preemptive attack, and the
action of course would not be deterred. The more heightened the perceived imminence of
attack, the less possibility over success for deterrence.
There is also a condition where a government perceives aggression as the only remaining
choice to sustain survival, which comes close to the first example of perceived imminence
of attack. Then there is no acceptance of the status quo, and therefore deterrence might
break down. And this leads to the second question, has deterrence really stopped wars? This
is a question that is not easy to answer. Realists would argue that deterrence has worked, or
otherwise, we would all be dead. Here, the lack of war is perceived to be evidence that shows
the success of deterrence; there have been no wars, so deterrence worked.
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An evidence that shows the failure of deterrence would be the outbreak of Second World
War, a clear example that deterrence did not work. We talk about the failure of peace in the
Munich Conference in 1939. The reason why we can talk about the Munich Conference as a
failure was simply because the Nazi attack on Poland followed after the Munich Conference.
Here the outbreak of war is shown to be an evidence of the failure of deterrence, but this
brings out a problem for us, because it becomes very difficult to prove success or failure of
deterrent strategies. So we need to start a careful discussion about deterrence failures, and
that is our next agenda on the table.
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4.3. Deterrence failures

Now we are going to think about cases where deterrence fails. Like I said, usually we argue
that deterrence failed because a war broke out, and we argue that deterrence was successful
when there is no war. But aside from those rather crude observations, can we set some
theoretical category that explains the failure of deterrence?
I think we can talk about two categories here. One would be the case of aggressive powers,
powers that are ready to accept the cost of retaliation cannot be deterred. When nation A is
sending signals that if you invade they are going to retaliate, usually nation B would stop
thinking about invasion. But imagine if nation B thinks that the signal from nation A is false,
that nation A is not really willing to start a war, but only bluffing. Then nation B might start a
war. There is a danger, of course, that nation A was not bluffing, but was really eager to start
a war in case of invasion. But assume further that if nation A attacks us, we can somehow
sustain damages of lets say 10 million people. If you have a determination to accept the cost
of retaliation, then it logically follows that deterrence cannot work, because your claim of
retaliation will not change behavior of your adversary. This is an extremely rare case in
But there is one case that has had a tremendous influence in the idea of international
relations and that of course is Germany, and NSDAP or the Nazi regime. I think we can make
a pretty strong argument that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party was ready to start a war in
Europe regardless of actions from the British or the French government, and to that effect
the conference in Munich was futile for peace keeping, because whatever conclusions that
may come out from the Munich peace conference, Hitler would have started a war. The
Munich metaphor has been used quite often in international relations, and sometimes rather
mistakenly I should say.
Soviet aggression after the Second World War was discussed in terms of the Munich
metaphor, that we should never repeat the mistakes that we have committed in the Munich
conference and that we should stand firm against Soviet actions. But today very few scholars
argue that the Soviet Union was interested in starting a war in the European theatre after the
Second World War. The reason of course was that the Soviets were heavily defeated in the
Second World War, and the statements Stalin made in the party congress were essentially
bluffing and not much of a war plan. We also use the word Munich in describing Saddam
Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. But Iraq was not Germany, Iraq did not have the power to
conquer the Middle East. As a matter of fact, we're talking about a power that could not even
win a war against Iran. So the Munich metaphor as applied to the Gulf War is a gross
exaggeration.
But having said that, we cannot rest our case under the assumption that Nazis are rare in the
world, for there is a case of suicide bombers. Assume you're facing a suicide bomber and
you're telling him that if you do that I'm going to kill you. And of course it doesn't work,
because the terrorist here is ready to commit a suicide, and there is no way you can stop a
suicide bomber by threatening to kill him. Terrorism is one political action that cannot be
deterred by near and aggressive action. Sending signals to extreme terrorist organizations
would be futile as they are ready for being killed, in act of terror itself.
This aggressive power case has been discussed quite extensively in the study of deterrence
failures, but there is another category, that I would call preemptive attack. Imagine a
situation where a power is convinced that the adversary is ready to attack at any moment.
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That power cannot be easily deterred, for they are convinced about the possibility of
invasion from the other side. So the question is not about deterrence, the question is about
starting a war on your terms. If you're late in starting a war, then you could suffer from a
gross disadvantage in the war theatre. When the situation is so tight that the occurrence of
war is thought to be imminent, then it becomes extremely difficult to deter an aggressive
action.
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 is a case in point. I do
not think that the Japanese military had war plans to attack
the United States in the middle 1930s. The Japanese case in
the Second World War is closer to the German militarism in
First World War, rather than the Nazi takeover of Europe in
the Second World War, as the Japanese were involved in a
quagmire, an escalation of conflict that they did not foresee.
When Japan invaded China in 1937, they did not envision a
long war, they thought that the Chinese forces would be
crushed in a very short period of time. That was not the case,
and the Japanese invasion of China ended up in a very long
war which the Japanese could not end with victory.
Moreover, Japanese sustained aggression in the Chinese
theatre, isolated Japan from the international community
and led to equal mixed sanctions especially after Japanese
army took advantage of the launch of the Bishe regime in France and invaded into China. In
this situation the Japanese, although they were not ready for a major assault on the United
States, were very much aware that the United States might attack Japan at any moment. This
was a war that the Japanese could not win at all, for the military capability of the United
States was far stronger than that of Japan.
The rational choice, and the choice I believe the Japanese government should have taken,
was to refrain from conflict and dont start a war. But the other option was to work on a
preemptive attack and take advantage of that attack in destroying as much as possible of
American forces. And that is exactly what happened in Pearl Harbor in 1941. This was a case
of pre-emptive attack, not exactly by an aggressive power committed to a long war, but by a
power who thought that war is imminent and therefore they should take advantage of that
situation.
Another case would be the Sino-Indian border conflict of 1962. There were a series of
conflicts that related to China's influence or takeover in Tibet, that led to a series of
skirmishes between Indian forces and Chinese forces.
But in the end, the Chinese thought that the war with
Indian forces was imminent and that they should take
advantage over preemptive attack. The Indians were
not sending signals to China about retaliation, and the
Chinese took advantage of the situation and started a
major assault on the border. The war ended in favor of
the Chinese forces as the Indians were not prepared
for this preemptive attack.
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So you can see that deterrence can fail, not only by aggressive powers, but also in a situation
where war is imminent and preemptive attack would bring about some strategic advantage
at least in the short term. And we have to face a critical question: what choice is left when
deterrence fails? If deterrence works, then we can work on peace without talking about
international institutions or democracies or free market, because military capability is
sufficient. But we are left with no choice but war or surrender if deterrence does not work.
And that is the crude conclusion that comes along with the case of deterrence failure.
Deterrence might work and manage stability in international relations, but we always will
have to be aware that deterrence entails a possibility of failure. And if deterrence fails, then
the only option is war or surrender. That is the reason we have to think about other
alternatives as conditions for peace, aside from deterrence.
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4.4. Case I: Germany, Japan and the origins of Second World War
In the previous section we have discussed about the outbreak of the Second World War, the
Munich conference and its failure in stopping Germany's aggression in in Europe, and also
about the preemptive attack, or the sneak attack as it was called by the Americans, by the
Japanese on Pearl Harbor.
These are the questions that I'd like to think about here on the failures of deterrence. Let's
start from the European Theatre, from the Munich Conference in 1938 where Great Britain,
France, Italy, and Germany joined hands and tried to work on a peace settlement that was
supposed to bring peace to Europe. When Germany started its expansion, after the
Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich, Hitler argued that the German
people in Sudentenland, in Czechoslovakia, were slaughtered by the Czechs, and he claimed
the annexation of this region to Germany, so the Czechs immediately mobilized and closed
their borders.
The leaders of France and Great Britain, desperately striving to avoid war, flew to meet the
two Axis leaders at Munich in a last desperate effort to preserve peace. Great Britain, France,
Italy, and Germany signed a pact at Munich in which the Germans took control of the
Sudentenland, and agreed they had no further territorial claims to make in Czechoslovakia.
The Munich pact was greeted by riots of protest, but French leaders returned to France to be
greeted by cheers from a relieved French people, and in Great Britain a happy Prime Minister
Chamberlain came back declaring he had a key to peace in our time, one of the most public
and ironic scenes in all History.
After that, the Nazis hadn't merely got 3 million more souls under the German flag: by taking
the Sudentenland, they had made Czechoslovakia defenseless, because in this territory laid
the natural defenses, the mountain ranges, and a defensive line of forts considered even
stronger than the Maginot Line. Without these fortifications, Czechoslovakia was disarmed. A
ripe plum ready to fall into Hitler's lap: within six months of declaring that he wanted no
more territory anywhere he violated the Munich agreement, Germany marched in and took
the whole of the Czech state, though they had specifically promised not to do so.
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Hitler was getting his control of Eastern Europe, and Poland was next up. British and French
powers, by accepting Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia, believed that they could
stop the outbreak of a World War, but the Munich Conference is now remembered as a total
failure. The policy that was pursued by Prime Minister Chamberlain of the United Kingdom
has been called appeasement, appeasing the enemy, giving in to the enemy and, in the end,
allowing a strategic advantage to the enemy.
At the time, however, we should also be aware that Munich
Conference was taken to be a chance for peace building.
Chamberlain believed that he was not repeating the mistake
of British governments in First World War, where Great Britain
was engaged in a war against Germany and that destroyed so
many human lives. Very few people supported the war in First
War World in Great Britain, and the aim of Chamberlain was to
stop an escalation into a Second World War by compromising
with Germany. And there was not only Chamberlin, for when
Chamberlin came back to England, he was greeted by an
enthusiastic support, with crowds of British people arguing
that Chamberlin was a peacemaker. But of course that was not
the case.
Was the compromise in Munich the cause for Second World War? This has been a subject of
debate among historians. A.J.P. Taylor was one of the historians who took a very strong
viewpoint on this issue, and this led to a very well-known controversy about the origin of the
Second World War. But from recent findings, I think we can make a very strong argument
that no, that the compromise in Munich was not the cause of Second World War. Even if the
British government or the French government has stood firm against Hitler and the Nazi
regime in Germany, that will not have stopped the outbreak of war.
The reason is very simple. Nazi Germany was not a power that could be deterred by sending
strong signals of retaliation, because Hitler was already working on his war plan for
expanding influence in Europe. He was aiming to take the Slavic populations as slave labor
and to exterminate in a literal sense the entire Jewish population; all these schemes were
there before the Munich peace conference. So although Chamberlin's action in conceding
Czechoslovakia to Germany is a highly questionable act of foreign policy, I doubt if
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Chamberlin's compromise in Munich was the cause for Second World War, because there
was no way that they could have stop it.
And that leads to the second question: could Germany have been deterred from invading
Poland? The sad answer seems to be no. Germany was already focused on starting a military
campaign in Poland. Germany was well-prepared, with an overwhelming military superiority
over the Polish forces, and German operation in Poland was immensely successful and
destructive. And this was a period when the western powers, although having declared war
on Germany they could do very little, they simply watched at the invasion of Poland without
lending out many hands. It was only after the British and French forces were kicked out from
Dunkirk that the really major military actions started in the Second World War.
Although this is a crude observation, this is what aggressive power means. When a power is
committed to war fighting, there is no way that you can stop it. Let's turn our eyes to the
Asian situation. Could Japan have been deterred from invading China? This is quite different
from the German situation, because the Japanese were not ready to start a war against the
United States or any Western countries when Japan invaded China. As a matter of fact, when
Japan invaded China the aim was to expand its sphere of influence without major battles
against the Kuomintang or other forces active in China. But then, it is also questionable if
whether it was possible to deter Japan's action in China by international pressure, because
Japan was reacting to international pressure in an extremely negative way.
Japan's aggression to China after all did not start from 1937, it started from the settlement of
the Manchuguo, which was the puppet regime of the Japanese government that effectively
isolated Japan from the international community. But we have to remember that that action
was not enforced, but was in a way voluntary. Japan left the League of Nations, and the
League of Nations could do nothing about it. The limit of challenging Japan's decision in the
China theater was already shown to be futile in early 1930's. In 1937, I doubt if a promise of
major retaliation could have stopped Japan's major reaction in the Chinese theater. This was
taken to be a war of limited engagement, and it turned out to be a quagmire.
Then could Japan have been deterred from attack in Pearl Harbor? Could Japan have been
deterred from starting the Second World War? That again is dubious on several grounds. The
Minister of Foreign Affairs was so interested until the very last moment in the success of the
negotiation between Japan and the United States, but when such negotiation was being
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carried on, the Gumbu, the military junta in Japan, was scheming out plans to attack the
United States. And we have to remember that at this moment, it was the military and not the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs the responsible about the actions of the Japanese government.
Under this situation, deterrence would have brought about very little results in changing
Japan's behavior. So even if Japan was not an aggressive power committed to a large-scale
war from the very beginning, in effect the result is the same, that Japan was not easily
influence by oversea pressures in being engaged in a war. So it is highly dubious if Japan's
invasion of China and for that matter of United States could have been deterred by an
announcement, a signal, of massive retaliation.
The war brought out total destruction in China, Southeast Asia, and for that matter, Japan
homeland. But that war, and that's a sad finding here, may have been impossible to deter by
an announcement of retaliation. And if that is the case, then we have to see for other
conditions, aside from deterrence, in preventing an outbreak of major war.
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4.5. International institutions and the rule of law

Military power might be able to keep peace, and deterrence might work, but following the
previous discussion we have seen that military capability alone is insufficient in promoting a
sustainable peace. And one argument that has been put forward by those who have strong
faith in international community is a focus on International institution and organization, that
defense should not rest on the hand of single major power, but be based on international
institutions that can assure a more sustainable stability.
This is different from pacifism in the sense that there is a strong focus on the role of military
power in the world. Unlike pessimist, who totally disagree about the position of arms and
standing armies, the institutions argued that there is a need of military capability to stop
aggressive actions from certain powers, that might be an aggressive power like the Nazis or
terrorist organizations, but the whole action should not rest on the decision of individual
governments, it should be based on the rule of law in international society.
But then this is different from realists, in the sense that they do talk about the international
institutions and international society. Realists might argue that no, there is no such thing as a
world government and the reality is individual states. Institutionalists argue otherwise that
the decisions of individual governments to work together under certain rules would lead to a
world where rule of law, in spite of lack of local governors, can still promote more stable
situations.
And here we see a difference in the argument about international society. Is it really possible
to apply the rule of law in international societies? Realists will argue no, that there's no rule of
law in international society, it is a state of anarchy and therefore you can't really talk about
international law. But this is quite far away from the truth, for although different from the
way law works in domestic society, there is some certain function of international law and
international organization in the world that we live in. The power of function is limited, but
nevertheless, there is a collective form of behavior that is not based on the interest of major
powers alone. Moreover, if you consider the stability of minor nations that dont have major
military capability, a focus on international institution is essential as such nations cannot
defend themselves alone.
Here we have to define the difference between two concepts, collective defense and
collective security. Collective defense is an odd concept that is based on alliance politics: if
nation A is attacked by nation B, and if nation A is allied to nation C, nation C would react
against the invasion of nation B as if its own soil had been invaded, so its assumed that an
attack on an ally is the same as an attack on one's own soil. Collective defense is a useful
mechanism, if you consider disability of the balance of power system, and a careful
management of collective defense can actually reduce the possibility of warfare, by working
on a careful deterrence strategy against potential opponents. At the same time, however, we
have to be aware that collective defense can get out of control, as shown in the outbreak of
the First World War. There were two alliances, one between Germany and Austria, and the
other between France, Great Britain and Russia. And although there was balance of power
politics and quality defense at work, the result was escalation of hostilities and not the
prevention of war.
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Collective security is more institutional, it is not about alliance, it is a scheme where an
attack on one nation is assumed to be an attack on the international community. And the
world, through the action of international organization, would react against such invasion.
This was the original scheme, and it was a very useful scheme in expanding the role of
international institutions in keeping peace, for we have to remember that although the right
of survival, and the right of self-defense is inherently admitted as actions of individual states,
if you merely expand the idea of self-defense you are in essence justifying any kind of
warfare. Alliance is an important part of international stability, but alliance has limits. If you
want to mix such balance of power schemes with international institutions, the way is to
enhance the role of international institutions in a way that an attack on one country will be
taken as a challenge to stability, regardless of alliance or the absence of alliance.
This is a very important idea, but has been carried out quite poorly I should say, because the
power of the United Nations was severely limited by the Russo-American Cold War. And
when dissenting members of the Security Council, the Soviet Union and the United States,
cannot agree on the conduct of the collective security, the impact of the Security Council
itself was somehow reduced, and collective security which was supposed to be the
cornerstone of international peace after the Second World War did not act accordingly.
Then what is the actual role of the United Nations in the prevention of wars? Its actual role in
prevention of wars is quite different from the collective security as envisioned in the San
Francisco meeting that launched the United Nations. Take a look at a list of United Nations
peacekeeping operations.
One of the first major peacekeeping operations took place in Congo from 1960 to 1964.
There has been much more peacekeeping operation after the end of the Russia-American
Cold War: there was a peacekeeping operation in Cambodia from 1992 to 1993, another one
in former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995, there was a peacekeeping operation in Eritrea and
Ethiopia from year 2000 to 2008, in Sudan from 2005 to 2011, and there is still a
peacekeeping operation going on in the region Darfur, in Sudan. Take a look at all these and
you can see that these are peacekeeping operations about conflicts that have already taken
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place. This is about picking up possibility of peace out of the ashes. The United Nations did
not intervene to stop a war, but did intervene to bring war to a peaceful ending. The
peacekeeping in Cambodia took place way after the mass killings by Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia took place. Peacekeeping operation Yugoslavia was somehow different, in the
sense that it violated the neutrality principle and tried to work more robust in reducing the
possibility of expanding military operation by the Yugoslavian government over Bosnia and
other regions, but it failed and eventually the NATO somehow substituted the role that the
United Nations was supposed to play.
Peacekeeping operation in Sudan, whispers about a north-south civil war in that region, did
bring about some stability, but then after the independence of South Sudan we still see
much instability in the region. So the actual function of United Nations was quite far away
from collective security that was envisioned in the San Francisco Charter. So let's take a look
at why such limits of international institutions in peacekeeping had to take place.
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4.6. Limits of international institutions

After the Second World War, United Nations and international institutions in general were
supposed to play a major role in peace building and peace keeping. The high hopes that
were attached to collective security were supposed to be an institutional scheme that would
reduce the importance of alliance politics and balance of power politics, that predominated
in international politics before, but that was not the case. As we have seen, the peacekeeping
operations of the United Nations were limited to conflicts which had already taken place,
and the United Nations certainly did not have a power to deter major military aggression
and, moreover, the effect to which peacekeeping operations could be successful differed
widely.
The peacekeeping operation in Cambodia was more or less successful. It did leave a
dictatorship in Cambodia and a totally corrupt regime, but at the same time, we do not see
much possibility of an outbreak of civil war in Cambodia. In former Yugoslavia, though, the
United Nations operation turned out to be a failure, and it could not stop the massacre in
Srebrenica. The element that brought peace in former Yugoslavia was the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia and its military engagement, so although we do see peace in Yugoslavia, we
would not argue that it was because of United Nations operations.
So what are the limits of international institutions and international interventions? Why are
international interventions so limited, so weak? There is a reason for that. The reason is
essentially about the inherent contradiction in international politics, which is the division
between legitimacy and power. The United Nations might be legitimate, it is a legitimate
organ where all the voices from the world can be heard and said. The United Nations has a
General Assembly, and it also has a Security Council where major powers, not all major
powers but quite a few of major powers, will participate. But that also means that although
United Nations might be legitimate it may not have the power to enforce. The power is still
very much in the hands of major powers such as the United States, Great Britain, France,
Germany, Russia or China. All those nations have their own individual military capability, and
it stands to reason, unfortunately, that individual members of the United Nations would put
their own self-interest before the necessity of the international community.
If you take a look at the Cold War
period, there have been several wars
that took place during that period. But
if you take a look at the United Nations
interventions, you will find out that
very few of the cases where the United
Nations could participate had United
States or U.S.S.R. involved in the
conflict. A real exception would be the
Korean War where, essentially,
American forces, under the facade of
United Nations forces, were engaged
in a battle against North Korea. But
aside from that, during the Cold War
years the United Nations could play a
major role in peacekeeping only when
the United States or U.S.S.R. were not
interested in direct engagement.
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The end of the Cold War should have changed the whole situation and, in fact, there was a
period when there was a hope for a United Nations enforcement of peace as envisioned by
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But that didn't happen, because major powers such
as United States considered that a military engagement under United Nations leadership was
extremely costly, and also they wanted their own command for the power is in their hands.
The argument was that if they were providing the largest fire power, why did they have to
listen to international situations? One of the rare cases that put in effect United States forces
under a United Nations command was the peacekeeping activity in Somalia, but this
peacekeeping activity ended up with an assault from the rebels in that country against
American helicopters there. The famous Blackhawk Down event ended up with a large
number of casualties on the American forces, and the Americans effectively pulled out from
the operation. The United Nations somehow sustained its operation after the American
withdrawal, but without American firepower, they couldn't do that, and in about a year the
United Nations retreated from Somalia, leaving a total anarchy in that land.
So here we can see that there is a very strong influence from major powers in the conduct of
international peacekeeping which makes it difficult to conduct a successful intervention
under the United Nations umbrella. That also means that the resources of international
institution peacekeeping would be very limited to say to least. Major powers are far more
interested in engagements that are directly related to their survival, than to regions such as
Somalia or Congo or Rwanda, where the extent to which such conflicts endanger the security
of their homeland is an open question.
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But that's not the end of the story, for we have another category of international
intervention, which is not an allied behavior, which is not based on alliance, but which is not
a United Nations intervention either. Take for example the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia
that took place after the United Nations peacekeeping operations or, to be cruder, the failure
of United Nations peacekeeping operations. But it was not a Russian intervention or an
American intervention, it was a NATO intervention that included many powers in the
western alliance.
This was, in many ways, an allied behavior that you can envision from an alliance. But you
also have to remember that Yugoslavia was not in a position to attack France or Germany or
Italy, there was no imminent danger posed against the security of major NATO powers.
NATO, in fact, was working as if NATO is an institution that provides collective security, and
this is somewhere on the middle ground between traditional collective defense and United
Nations collective security, it is a collective security provided by what is essentially an
alliance.
You can see similar cases of intervention in Libya. In Libya, as you might recall, there was a
NATO intervention based on a United Nations resolution, but remember that the Security
Council did not form a peacekeeping operation in Libya at the time. The decision was made
by the NATO headquarters following United Nations resolutions, and again here NATO was
working as if NATO provided collective security to Libya. The Gaddafi regime in Libya was not
in a position to indenture the security of Italy, let alone Britain or France, but there was an
imminent danger of mass-scale killing that might take place in Benghazi. What we see here is
something in the middle of traditional alliance and collective security by a formal
international organization.
NATO was an alliance essentially formed against potential possible action from the Soviet
Union, so in many ways it is a traditional kind of allies, but the function that NATO has been
playing right now comes very close to international formal organization providing collective
security. And we cannot deny that NATO played a role in Yugoslavia and Libya, but this can
be a problem too. Take for example the multinational intervention that took place in Iraq.
The Gulf War as well as the war on Iraq in 2003 were not carried out by any international
institution at all, and they were not carried out by an alliance, too. They were carried out by a
coalition with multi-national forces organized around the United States, but did not have a
formal structure that commanded the use of weapons when they could be used or not.
This informal character in the use of military power can actually lead to the demise of the role
of former institutions in peacekeeping. Right now in the United States, as well as its allies, are
more interested in using NATO as a formal international institution to commit an
intervention, rather than relying on coalition of the willing, or a loose group that can only be
called multinational if a multinational intervention without any structure can prove to be
more useful in military engagement. That also leads the way to a fewer role played by formal
institutions. And that is a problem that we must face.
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4.7. Security dilemma and arms control

That military power might be an instrument in keeping peace, but we have also argued that
deterrence does not work in the face of an aggressive power or suicide terrorism. But then,
lets assume that all powers are rational and defensive. They may have little expectation for
international institutions, but they are not eager to invade into other territories. If all powers
are interested, essentially, in keeping the status quo, and are not interested in offensive
actions, then can we assume that peace will prevail.
And that's the question about security dilemma. We can assume that both sides are
defensive, not offensive, and each side is not interested in expanding, so their main interest
is in defending their own territory. But assume also that the intention of the adversary is not
known, you don't know what the other side is thinking. The other side might be offensive, or
perhaps may be defensive. What would you do? If you wish to minimize the risk of defeat,
then the rational choice would be to work under the assumption that the adversary has
offensive intentions. You don't know what the other side would do, so let's assume that the
other side might have offensive and might be interested in invading your country, so you
decide to prepare for that and you expand your imagery. But then the other side might also
be placed in a similar situation: they don't know what we are thinking and they don't know
whether we are defensive or offensive, so they assume that we have offensive intentions.
If both sides start to work on such assumptions, then the result is that both sides would
intensify instability and not stability, because both sides are working on the assumption that
the other side might invade. And that assumption is proven by the more aggressive
expansion of military capability on both sides. It's a mirror image. This was an argument that
was put forward quite strongly during the Cold War period, especially after the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962. Both United States and the Soviet Union were not eager to be engaged in a
battle, they were interested in expanding the sphere event influence. They were interested in
Afghanistan, they were interested in Vietnam, but they were not interested in fighting each
other. But nevertheless, an arms race between United States and U.S.S.R. continued.
The outcome of the security dilemma is essentially tension and instability. Even if both sides
might be defensive powers, they fail to achieve sustainable stability. The evidence to which
instability manifests itself is the arms race. There are two cases of famous arms race in
History.
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One is the arms race between Britain and Germany before

the First World War. Both United Kingdom and Germany
tried to expand their naval capabilities by expansion. The
dreadnoughts battleships were the symbol of their
military strength, and thus they could never be sure about
what the other side was doing, they kept on expanding
their naval fleet, much to the damage inflicted upon their
own economy.
The other case would be the Russo-American nuclear arms race. Although the political
relationship between the Soviet Union, and the United States was somehow stabilized after
the Cuban missile crisis, nevertheless, both sides kept on building up major nuclear
capabilities. And the arms race itself had an impact in reproducing the instability between
the two sides. Take for example the development
for anti-ballistic missiles, or ABMs as they were
called. It was already clear from the very beginning
that ABM would somehow destroy the stability of
deterrence. As the basis of nuclear deterrence was
the inability to protect yourself, you can never
protect yourself from the attack from the other side.
So therefore, each side blocked each other. If you
can defend your soil by missiles that can block
offensive attacks, then such missiles that can attack
an incoming missile will destroy the stability of
deterrence.
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That much was clear in 1960s. Technologically speaking, ABM was within the reach of both
United States and U.S.S.R. They were also aware that the development of ABM would
somehow harm the stability between the two as shaking the grounds of deterrence. But
nevertheless, both sides kept on developing their own ABM capabilities, and without other
reasons, in the end of the 1960s, the relationship between the two major powers became
immensely unstable because of the ABM development in both countries.
And here is where arms control comes in. Arms control is not disarmament, it is not
throwing away the military capability. Arms control in essence is an agreement that puts a
limit on the growth of offensive capabilities. In case of the Russo-American Cold War, after
the production of ABM on both sides, both countries came to be aware of the dangers that
the ABM development could jeopardize the world stability, so they started the negotiation
that would put a limit on the deployment of anti-ballistic missiles. And this was the origin of
the SALT talk, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which led to the SALT treaty, the Strategic
Arms Limitation Treaty. This was a typical arms control treaty, which did not end the Cold
War at all: both sides kept on expanding their nuclear capabilities, especially the kind of
weapons that were not covered by the previous treaty. But nevertheless, this arms control
mechanism in the SALT ABM Treaty did have an effect in controlling the expansion of the
security dilemma.
Both United States and U.S.S.R. were aware that they were not eager to fight each other. But
nevertheless, there was an arms race, an expansion security dilemma. With the AB infiltrated,
this put a limit, not a total limit but a limit on the expansion of that situation. From this we
can learn that arms control can build confidence between the two adversaries through arms
control negotiation. With the intensification of a new Cold War after the Carter
administration, there was an immense instability between the two powers, but you also have
to remember that the confidence built between U.S.S.R. and United States was critical in
bringing out the end to the Cold War.
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There was a period where there was an expanding tension between the two countries,
especially in the 1980s, but then eventually, with the change of Russian leadership to Mikhail
Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, both countries engaged in
a new round of arms control negotiation. This time a disarmament negotiation and the
confidence that was built from this sort ABM negotiation were critical. This led to a decrease
in usual suspicions concerning potential offensive action, and increased possibility of
institution building. And right now there is a less likelihood of nuclear combat between the
United States and Russia, and moreover, the number of warheads has been limited.
Now we might argue that arms control is something that is only limited to the relationship
between the Soviet Union and the United States, that arms control belongs to the days of
the Cold War. I totally disagree with that, for there is a region where we need arms control at
this very moment, or otherwise we might end up in an expansion with security dilemma, and
that region is East Asia.
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4.8. Case II: Nuclear development in North Korea

I argued that East Asia cannot be a possible candidate for geopolitical attention on the globe
right now. It is true that we see instability in the Middle East and Northern Africa, we see
failed states that do not have critical governance over their territories in Africa. But we also
see a confrontation with major military capabilities developing in the East Asian region. The
first case would be North Korea and the development of nuclear capabilities alongside with
missile technologies in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The second case would
be the rise of China and the tension that the rise has brought about in the region.
Lets first talk about North Korea. Why does North Korea develop nuclear weapons? We do
not know the exact date when the North Koreans started to develop their own nuclear
capabilities, but what we do know is that North Korea is one of the powers whose security
was endangered with the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War days, there were a
number of countries that were dependent on possible military assistance from the Soviet
Union. You can count countries such as Vietnam after the Vietnam War, Cuba or North Korea.
I doubt if the Soviet Union made an explicit agreement of mutual defense to each countries,
because I doubt if the Soviet Union was interested in being engaged in possible warfare that
involved North Korea, Cuba or Vietnam; but having said that, it was clear that these nations
were very much dependent on military capabilities of the Soviet Union, especially on its
nuclear capabilities.
But with the end of the cold war, the Soviet Union started to change its foreign policy.
Instead of diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the Soviet Union established a
diplomatic relationship with South Korea. South Korea, as an emerging economy, was far
more beneficial to the Soviet economy once U.S.S.R. opened up its market, and North Korea
was not in a position to offer such advantages. China also started to develop strong ties with
South Korea, and again North Korea was not in a position to offer business opportunities to
China, compared to the ones offered by South Korea.
One way to react against this difficulty where major powers might abandon the defense of
North Korea was to go along in developing nuclear capabilities. I'm not arguing that the
North Korean decision was a wise one or an inevitable one, for they are other powers as
Vietnam who reacted very differently. Vietnam was in a similar position, it was dependent on
Soviet power and also was affected by the change of Soviet policy. But in the case of
Vietnam, the country started to open up to the west, and even withdrew troops from
Cambodia, where they were occupying. Unlike Vietnam, North Korea went on a more
bellicose course and developed nuclear capabilities, and the sad finding is that although the
international community tried to stop the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea,
it failed miserably.
Take a look at the timeline. In 1993, North Korea declared its withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty, a treaty framework that tries to keep proliferation of nuclear capability to
expand. And after that, North Korea tried its first missile test, a Nodong missile, a short range
missile that might reach Japan but it will not go further on. But nevertheless, the show of
force by this missile capability alarmed the Western countries, and from 1993 to 1994 this led
to a process that could end in a real possibility of war. As North Korea was getting more
bellicose and aggressive, and the West, including the United States and South Korea, was
getting ready for military operation, it was only with the visit of former president Carter to
North Korea that this escalation came to an end.
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From June 9th to June 15th 1994 President Jimmy Carter
visited North Korea and tried to form an agreement
between the United States and this Asian country. It took
some time, but in October both the United States and North
Korea agreed on freezing nuclear power plant program. The
nuclear power plant program was suspected to be a plan
that would lead to nuclear capability, so the West agreed to
provide nuclear energy plants to North Korea, and this took
form on the Korean Peninsula Energy Development
Organization (KEDO) in 1995. It seemed as if the aggressive
action from North Korea was kept to a minimum 1995, but it
didn't go that way. The KEDO program did not really work out, there were sabotages on both
sides in developing the program, there was much mutual suspicion, and finally in 1998 North
Korea tested the Taepodong missile, which has a much wider range than Nodong, and this
somehow alarmed the West in the sense that North Korea might be returning back to
nuclear programs.
In September 17th 2002, with a visit of Prime Minister Koizumi, Japan and Democratic
People's Republic of Korea made the Pyongyang Declaration. This was one of the rare cases
when North Korea accepted its crimes of abduction from Japan. But along this same time,
United States opened their own intelligence that North Korea seemed to be restarting their
nuclear program, with the setup of a Uranium enrichment program. So 2002 did not end
with peacemaking, it went just the other way around, and the year ended with North Korea
expelling on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, and tension between
East and West arose again.
There were some efforts for diplomatic negotiation in year 2003, the Six Party Talks that
reunited North Korea, South Korea, United States, China, Russia and Japan. There was some
hope for a lid on the nuclear situation and the instability in the Korean peninsula. The
lengthy rounds of talks did not produce much results, and then North Korea launched what
they called a satellite, which was believed to be a missile, and that led to the discontinuation
of Six Party Talks in 2009, so after all the international efforts could not stop North Korea
going nuclear.
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In the year 2006 North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, then a second one in 2009, and
the third one in 2013. In between, in year 2010 North Korea sunk the Korean Navy ship
Cheonan, and also in December of the same year, North Korea attacked the Korean Island of
Yeonpyeondo.
What we can learn from the past experience of nuclear development in North Korea is that
we must face a very sad finding: any attempts in reducing the possibility of North Korea
going nuclear did not work. North Korea is now a nuclear power, although not accepted by
the international community. There has already been cases, like India or Pakistan, where
new nuclear powers were accepted in the world, but at this moment the nuclear weapon of
North Korea has not been approved by major powers. So this is a case in which the
international community was in effect powerless in the development of another nuclear
nation.
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4.9. Case III: Security dilemma in East Asia

Following our discussion about North Korea, I'd like to call your attention to the security
situation developing right now in East Asia. In East Asia we have a rising power that is
People's Republic of China. And in our discussion about power transition, I have already
discussed that a hegemonic war between China and the United States, or for that matter
between China and Japan, is not inevitable at all. I do not think that China is now getting
ready for starting to take over the role of the hegemonic power in the world, and I have also
argued that China's rise is essentially in the economic sphere, although it has also become a
major military power. And the growth of trade interdependence, economic interdependence
between China and the rest of the world would work as one condition limiting the scope of
aggressive military behavior.
But having said that, there's no question at all that we have a very serious geopolitical
tension developing in the East Asian region, especially after the Senkaku-Diaoyutai dispute,
that blow way out of hand and developed into an extremely tense situation between China
and Japan, especially after the nationalization of Senkaku by the Japanese government. We
really might have to think about a possible war between China and Japan over several rocks
in the ocean.
How can we understand such an almost ridiculous situation? Why did it take place? Let's go
back to the basics, to the origins of territorial conflicts in East Asia. Some of the direct reason
can be addressed to ambiguous international agreements, as there has been no formal
agreement between China and Japan concerning the ownership of the Senkaku-Diaoyutai.
But that alone is not a weakness actually, for there are many territorial disputes that have
been shelved. That was the case between China and Japan for some time, and both sides are
blaming the other side in breaking that gentleman's agreement, but that's not the point. The
point is that the ambiguity in the agreement over the ownership of Senkaku-Diaoyutai has
become a source of international tension here. And along with that, there is this question
about fishing rights, as the conflict started from the activities not of Chinese patrol boats, but
of Chinese fishing boats and Japanese patrol boats in areas that are claimed under Japanese
rule. Some people do argue that it is the quest for natural resources that defines the
Senkaku-Diaoyutai conflict, but I really doubt if that is the case. There is a possibility that the
natural resources in the area is immense, but having said that, that alone is a very weak
explanation for expanding the issue into a possible contestation of two major powers.
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There are two other reasons which might be a bit more convincing, and which might be a bit
more troublesome. We discussed about the security dilemma where both sides, although
defensive in nature, are suspicious about the action of the other side and taking caution.
They try to be more offensive than they intend to be, just to preserve their own territorial
rule, their vested interests, their natural resources, so actions that are intended to be
defensive can have offensive characters, so we believe that there is a security dilemma
situation developing in the East Asian region.
And we have also to add to this a naval arms race. China essentially was a continental power
with very little naval capability, it's only in the recent decades that China developed a naval
capability to speak of. But this, of course, endangers the position of navies surrounding
China, and its naval expansion certainly alarmed Japan and Korea, and even lesser powers
like the Philippines or Vietnam. And combined with territorial disputes, the naval arms race
has somehow destabilized the region.
But then I'd like to ask you a question. Is China defensive or aggressive? The answer might
differ depending on your nationality. If you're Chinese your answer might be straight
forwardly defensive: China has always been defensive and has suffered from aggressive
surrounding powers. That is the traditional argument put forward by the Chinese
government and is an argument that has been shared by the Chinese public. But if you take a
look at the Japanese you will see a dramatically different case, because for the majority of the
Japanese population believes that China is the aggressive power, and not Japan. China, with
the expansion of its blue waters naval capabilities has somehow challenged the status quo of
the region. Moreover, China's neglect of international borderlines has arisen a fear that China
might be eager to change borderlines through the use of force.
This is not an argument limited to Japan, this is an argument shared by the United States, for
example, when secretary Clinton stated in the post mid Syria conference of 2010 that the
Chinas use of force that endangers the safety of waters cannot be accepted by the United
States. So I am not agreeing with our Chinese colleagues in saying that China is not
intentionally aggressive. I certainly can understand that the Chinese think that their actions
are defensive, but the problem is that these actions that are perceived to be defensive in
China, precisely the same actions can be perceived to be aggressive by other countries.
And that's where the security dilemma. Is Japan defensive or aggressive? If you ask a
Japanese whether Japan is defensive or aggressive concerning the Senkaku-Diaoyutai
dispute the answer would be clear: Japan is defensive. In fact, some people might say that
Japan should be more aggressive against China. If you ask the same question to China, the
answer of course, as you can anticipate, is that it is Japan that is being aggressive on this
issue. Tokyo Major Ishihara Shintaro proposal to bring Senkaku under the control of the
government of Tokyo met a strong resistance from China, and the proposal to nationalize
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the ownership of Senkaku was taken to be an action to take away Senkaku away from China,
although Senkaku is already under effective control of the Japanese government. Again
here, actions that considered defensive from the Japanese viewpoint, are taken to be
aggressive from the Chinese people point of view. What happens here is that both powers
who take their action to be defensive are perceived to be taking aggressive actions, and this
is the worst that can come out from a security dilemma.
Another question here is arms control is possible in East Asia. Would the Chinese agree to
any kind of arms control? The Japanese will probably say that youre a crazy dreamer. Ask the
same question in China, and you might also argue that it's a crazy dream because the
Japanese will never agree to reduce its military capabilities. The mutual suspicion is so strong
that we simply kick out the possibility of arms control, and in fact there are two major
challenges.
The first one is that there is a power disparity. China, although a major military power, is
much smaller than the United States, and because of that, any attempt toward arms control
would be perceived as weakening China, and this would not be taken as a measure to
enhance China's security, but to destroy China's security. So therefore there's every good
reason to assume that the Chinese would not accept announced control proposal here. The
second challenge is the behavior of the alliance allies: one possibility is that the allies of the
United States would act negatively against any proposal of arms control in East Asia, under
the suspicion that the United States is about to abandon the East Asian region. The
Americans could be pulling out, so they were not taking care of those countries, and if they
are not taking care of them they will have to go alone.
That might be the consequence, so there is a real possibility that announcement for a
proposal might actually enhance individual actions of America's allies in the region, which
might further complicate the situation. There is also the fear of containment, for China has
always been aware that her weakness lies in the lack of allies, and that China is surrounded
by major powers that form an alliance with the United States. The arms control proposal
might be taken as another proposal to stop Chinese action by containment, that world
powers are ganging up together to reduce China's capability.
So I'm not saying that this is easy, but I'd like to put this on the table, because unless we start
an active discussion about arms control in East Asia, I fear that the security dilemma
developing right now in front of us could accelerate into an unnecessary confrontation.
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4.10. Between power politics and the rule of law

In conclusion, what can we argue about credible conditions that can bring about sustainable
peace in the future? In our discussion we argued about liberalism, realism, or even pacifism.
Now let's focus on realism and liberalism and ask ourselves if they offer credible solutions to
the issues regarding international security today.
I believe they do, but at the same time I believe that the answers provided are insufficient.
International society, as we see, is placed somewhere between power politics and the rule of
law. It is most certainly a state of anarchy, in the sense that there is no world government
that can enforce its own decision to individual members of the community. In domestic
politics you can somehow expect the police to intervene into criminal actions. You are not
afraid that the police is stronger than the criminal because you are sure that the police will
follow the rule of law that the civil society has enacted.
In international relations you don't have that security, the laws of the jungle reign in this
state of anarchy, and each government might be eager to defend its own soil by its own
military. That is the rule in many ways. But at the same time, that's not the whole story,
because we have international institutions, such as United Nations or NATO alliances, where
there is a more institutional framework that works on specific and clearly-stated regulations
or law. It is not a society as in a domestic society that is governed by law, but still there is a
limit to a limited extent, a rule of law as operating in the world. So we live in a world that is
somewhere between the aspiration of liberals and the realistic understanding of the realist.
And this poses a challenge to all prescriptions that come out from the basic arguments in
First, allow me to ask about the limit of realism and what we can do about it. Realism is,
almost by definition, realistic. It is a very careful understanding of the impact of power in
sustaining order in international agents, and it is true that military power plays a large role in
not only aggression, but also in peace keeping. And neglecting the rule of military power in
international relations is simply foolish, and at worst, dangerous. But having said that, we
cannot really work on wishful thinking about the rationality that goes along with realism. We
have already discussed about the limit of deterrence. If deterrence works we may be able to
stop a war, but we have seen that it is very difficult to show the origin of the Second World
War as a failure of deterrence, it does not apply to Germany or Japan. So power alone is still
very much insufficient to bring about peace, and if we only focus on power and exclude
other elements at work in international relations, we are actually getting near to the
possibility of facing a possibility of war or surrender when deterrence fails, and that is not
what we need. We have also discussed about the security dilemma, where powers that are
defensive in nature still end up in expanding tension. And here again power alone does not
provide security.
The second line of argument, which we did not discuss so much, was pacifism. What is the
limit of pacifism? I don't think I want to pay much attention to this argument right now,
although I do agree with many of the aspirations. Pacifism is an agreement argument at very
extreme times, when there was a total annihilation that took place after major world wars, so
there was a good reason for people to think about the world without warfare. And there's
nothing wrong about that. But kicking out the use of weapons and power in peacekeeping
itself does make the world dangerous in some ways, as banning the use of weapons does
open opportunity for militant behavior. However, we can learn something about the history
of pacifism as well, for pacifism talks about total elimination weapons, but with much work
111 | P a g e

focused on the elimination of particular kind of weapons. Pacifism was at work in antinuclear demonstrations in the days of the Cold War; although they were against any
weapons, they were focused on nuclear weapons. I wouldn't say that we're getting close
there, but the amount of nuclear warheads in the world has been reduced quite
considerably. And also when it comes to land mines, which are terrible weapons that destroy
the life of many people, if not killing by maiming, their us has been severely restricted right
now. The argument here is based on mutual consent that all powers agree not to use this or
that, and there is a limit to those international agreements, but this is something that we can
pick out of the pacifists arguments.
Liberalism has the main argument that a transition to democracy or an expansion of free
trade in the world would automatically bring out peace in the world. But I think that we
would be gravely mistaken by assuming that. Emergence of democracies, at least in the
initial period before they become stable, actually bring out all sorts of ethnic religious
tension that can jeopardize stability that may have existed. If there is democratic peace,
there is autocratic peace. The Congress of Vienna was an extremely conservative scheme
that rested upon rested upon the agreement of kings and nobles, it was openly antirevolutionary in the sense that they wanted avoid a major recurrence of the French
Revolution. But nevertheless, it did play a role in peace keeping. So we should never really
neglect this kind of conservative agreement of powers, even if it's conservative in keeping
peace, and only focused on democratic peace.
We can take a look at the expansion of international trade and ask ourselves if it really bring
about peace. It might, in the long run, but at the same time we have to remember that
before the outbreak of the First World War, there was a very impressive expansion of
international trade in Europe. There was international trade, there was an expansion of
interdependence, but that did not deter each nation from going to war. But at the same time
I would not be so skeptical about democracy or free market, I don't think these two are
irrelevant, they have some effect in the long run. Democracy, with shared values as
embodied in shared ideas about public rules of a society, can lead to a situation where more
powers can agree to international rules in peace keeping. Free trade may not deter military
action, but if we take a look at the situation in East Asia, without any arms control
negotiation or international institutions as such to deter war, the expansion of
interdependence between China and the rest of the world is, by far, the only factor that we
can expect to have some impact in the decision making of China, Korea or Japan.
So democracy and free market may have last role in the peace of the future. But we always
have to remember that all these mean something when it's embodied in international
negotiation and international institutions. Democracy or free market alone cannot provide
peace, but if these form a basis for a more robust implementation of international
agreements under formal international institutions, then we can expect a more stable peace
than the one that has been provided by a balance of power or deterrence. This may be in the
future, but I believe that it is right now in the making.
112 | P a g e

Conditions of War and Peace

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Conditions of War and Peace

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Conditions of

war and peace

Professor, Graduate School for Law and Politics,

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1. When war becomes necessary

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.2. Theories of just war

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

When it comes to nuclear weapons, or chemical weapons, biological weapons or nuclear

Conditions for War and Peace

1.3. Deterrence or war-fighting

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.4. Invasion and third power intervention

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.6. Civil war, human right and collective security

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.7. Case I: the fall of Yugoslavia

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.8. Failed states and the responsibility to protect

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.9. Case II: the case of Lybia

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

1.10. Limits of intervention

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Power transition and war

2.1. Power transition in international politics

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.2. Theories of power transition and hegemonic wars

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.3. Who attacks first?

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.4. Case I: Spain and Great Britain

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.5. Alliance and power transition

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.6. Case II: Alliance and First World War

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

Conditions for War and Peace

2.7. Military power and economic power

Conditions for War and Peace