{"id":1806,"date":"2025-05-18T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2025-05-18T08:05:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T08:05:24","slug":"war-and-international-politics-international-security%c2%b9-mit-press-may-01-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=1806","title":{"rendered":"War and International Politics | International Security\u00b9 | MIT Press, May 01 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u03a3\u03c4\u03bf geopoliticsamongstates.gr<\/a>, \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03c6\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03c3\u03b1\u03bc\u03b5 \u03bd\u03b1 \u00ab\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u03b2\u03ac\u03c3\u03bf\u03c5\u03bc\u03b5\u00bb \u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03bf\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf \u03ad\u03bd\u03b1 \u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf\u00b2 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8. Mearsheimer, \u03bc\u03b5 \u03c4\u03bf \u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c3\u03cd\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03bc\u03bf \u03c0\u03c1\u03cc\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03bf (\u03b2\u03bb. \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u039a\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac \u03c4\u03b7 \u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03bc\u03b7 \u03bc\u03b1\u03c2, \u03c4\u03bf \u03b5\u03bd \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03c9 \u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03af \u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03c4\u03bf\u03bc\u03ae \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03ba\u03c9\u03b4\u03b9\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03af\u03b7\u03c3\u03b7 \u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03c0\u03b9\u03bf \u03bb\u03b5\u03c0\u03c4\u03ce\u03bd \u03b6\u03b7\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03bc\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u0394\u03b9\u03b5\u03b8\u03bd\u03ce\u03bd \u03a3\u03c7\u03ad\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03bd<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u0395\u03bc\u03b2\u03b1\u03b8\u03cd\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9 \u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b5\u03b8\u03bd\u03bf\u03cd\u03c2) \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ae\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 (\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2) \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03ad\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5<\/strong> \u03c3\u03c4\u03bf (\u03ac\u03bd\u03b1\u03c1\u03c7\u03bf) \u0394\u03b9\u03b5\u03b8\u03bd\u03ad\u03c2 (\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1\u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc) \u03a3\u03cd\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1, \u03bc\u03b5 \u03b5\u03ba\u03c0\u03bb\u03b7\u03ba\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03ac \u03b1\u03c0\u03bb\u03cc \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03ba\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u03cc \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u038c\u03c0\u03c9\u03c2 \u03b3\u03c1\u03ac\u03c6\u03b5\u03b9 \u03bf \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03b7\u03b3\u03b7\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2: \u00abIt is the persistent possibility that a state might fall victim to a devastating war that explains in good part the intensity of great power relations. Of course, the horror of war also explains why so much time and effort has been devoted over the centuries to trying to abolish it. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make matters worse, it is not simply war’s destructiveness that alarms leaders; it is also the possibility that their state’s survival might be put at risk. In other words, an adversary might be an existential threat. And if not today, it could be tomorrow. After all, the balance of power invariably shifts over time, and other states’ intentions, certainly their future intentions, are difficult to discern with confidence.16 It is clear from the historical record that today’s ally can quickly become tomorrow’s adversary. In 1945, for example, the United States was allied with China against Japan. Within five years, the relationships had reversed. The same switch took place during those years regarding Germany and the Soviet Union, which was a U.S. ally in the fight against Germany in World War II but became the United States’ mortal foe a few years after that conflict ended. Meanwhile, West Germany became a close U.S. ally in the 1950s\u00bb  \u00abAs emphasized, politics is unremittingly competitive and intense, which means that the possibility of conflict and even killing are baked into the enterprise. In international anarchy, there is always a possibility that a political dispute might turn into a war. That danger leads to recurring security competition among the great powers, whose top goal is to ensure their survival. In other words, even in peacetime, states must prepare for war. Invariably, this involves building military capabilities to improve their security, which potential rivals will see as threatening to their own security. This phenomenon is called the \u201csecurity dilemma.\u201d17 Those rivals, of course, will respond in kind, leading to security competition among them\u00bb  \u00abThis is not to say that the great powers are in a constant state of war, because they obviously are not. But they do continually compete for power with potential rivals while the possibility of war always lurks in the background. This struggle for advantage explains why war is, has been, and always will be the central feature of international politics\u00bb  \u00abSurvival, in my lexicon, means that a state maintains its physical base and its ability to determine its own political fate, which includes managing both domestic and foreign policy. A state’s physical base includes all its territory and population, as well as the resources within its borders. To run its own policy at home and abroad, a state must control its domestic institutions, especially its executive, legislative, judicial, and administrative bodies. This more expansive definition of survival reflects how states think and act. All this is to say that great powers are primed to compete\u2014sometimes fiercely\u2014not just to avoid total military defeat. They also compete to ensure that they do not lose any territory to a rival, and that they maintain the autonomy of their domestic political order.36\u00bb <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00abMy understanding of the relationship between politics and war shows why it is impossible to institutionalize meaningful legal or moral barriers to initiating wars. The question of when it is permissible for one country to attack another has concerned scholars and policymakers for centuries and is highly relevant today because of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.41 Many in the West think that leaders should be guided by international law, just war theory, or some combination of the two, when contemplating whether to attack another state. This liberal perspective, which aims to sharply curtail when states can start wars, is unrealistic in international anarchy and thus of little use for curbing their behavior\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u00abThis is not how the world works, however. Preventive wars and wars of opportunity are recurring features of international politics, and nothing is going to change that reality in the foreseeable future. Whether states are democracies or nondemocracies, they will launch these two kinds of wars if they conclude that doing so is in their strategic interest. The reason is simple: There is no higher authority in the international system that can enforce the rules, which means states must do whatever is necessary to protect themselves\u00bb.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u00ab<\/strong>There is an enduring need to understand the nature of politics and its intimate connection to war. It is essential to recognize that conflict is endemic to politics, and political disputes have the potential to become deadly. In international politics, this means that war is a perennial danger that can put the survival of states at risk. That possibility causes great powers to fear one another and compete for power. In such a world, preventive wars and wars of opportunity can never be ruled out, and the threat of escalation in wartime is ever present. In the final analysis, political considerations will invariably trump economic, legal, and moral considerations whenever they are in conflict. This is hardly a rosy picture. But that is what politics looks like in the international realm\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u00abIt is essential that war remains under the control of responsible political leaders who understand these dangers\u00bb.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u03a3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03bb\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03b9 \u03b5\u03b9\u03c0\u03b5\u03af\u03bd,  \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b4\u03ad\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b5\u03c5\u03b8\u03ad\u03c9\u03c2 \u03bc\u03b5 \u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03c5\u03c8\u03b7\u03bb\u03cc\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03cc \u03b1\u03c5\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2 \u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03bc\u03b7\u03c2, \u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u03bd\u03c4\u03bf\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc (\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b8\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5\u03af\u03b1) \u03c4\u03c9\u03bd (\u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03c5\u03c1\u03b3\u03ce\u03bd\/ \u03c1\u03b9\u03b6\u03b9\u03ba\u03ce\u03bd) \u03b1\u03b9\u03c4\u03b9\u03ce\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03ad\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c9\u03c2 \u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd \u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ac\u03b3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b1\u03c0\u03cc \u03c4\u03b1 \u03ba\u03c1\u03ac\u03c4\u03b7 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b8\u03ce\u03c2 \u03c4\u03b1 \u03af\u03b4\u03b9\u03b1 \u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03ca\u03cc\u03bd \u03b2\u03af\u03b1\u03c2!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

       \u038c\u03c0\u03c9\u03c2 \u03b5\u03c0\u03b5\u03be\u03b7\u03b3\u03b5\u03af \u03bf \u03c3\u03c5\u03b3\u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03c6\u03ad\u03b1\u03c2, \u03b5\u03bd\u03ce \u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03ad\u03bd\u03b1 \u03b1\u03ba\u03b1\u03b4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03ca\u03ba\u03cc \u03ac\u03c1\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf, \u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b3\u03c1\u03b1\u03bc\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf \u03bc\u03b5 \u03c4\u03ad\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9\u03bf \u03c4\u03c1\u03cc\u03c0\u03bf \u03ce\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bd\u03b1 \u03bc\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03b5\u03af \u03bd\u03b1 \u03b3\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u03b7\u03c4\u03cc \u03b1\u03ba\u03cc\u03bc\u03b7 \u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b1\u03c0\u03cc \u03bc\u03b7 \u03b1\u03ba\u03b1\u03b4\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03ca\u03ba\u03bf\u03cd\u03c2<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u039a\u03b1\u03bb\u03ae \u03b1\u03bd\u03ac\u03b3\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b7\/ \u03bc\u03b5\u03bb\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. International Security (2025) 49 (4): 7\u201336.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Prof. John Mearsheimer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I recently [May 01 2025], published a lengthy article on \u201cWar and International Politics\u201d in International Security. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It was originally the Richard K. Betts inaugural lecture at Columbia University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Although it is a scholarly piece, I intended it to be an easy read for non-scholars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Below is a link for the piece<\/strong>, which allows easy access to a PDF for those who might be interested.https:\/\/direct.mit.edu\/isec\/article\/49\/4\/7\/130810\/War-and-International-Politics?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the end of unipolarity, security competition among the great powers\u2014China, Russia, and the United States\u2014is back with a vengeance. Given the possibility of war between rival great powers, the purpose of this article is to analyze great power war. My central claim is that war is the dominant feature of life in the international system, mainly because of the nature of politics. In particular, politics is a fundamentally conflictual enterprise with the ever-present possibility of violence in the background. This argument, which differs from Carl von Clausewitz’s famous claim that war is an extension of politics by other means, is rarely made in the international relations literature. I examine how the interplay between politics and war affects how states both initiate and conduct armed conflict. What are the limits on states starting wars, and how do political and military factors contribute to their escalation? I argue that it is almost impossible to put meaningful limits on when states can start wars, and that there is a powerful tendency for wars to escape political control and escalate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is commonplace to hear that the world is witnessing the return of great power politics, which were taken off the table during the unipolar moment (1991\u20132017). After all, it is impossible to have security competition or war between great powers when there is only one great power on the planet. This is not to deny that the United States\u2014the sole great power\u2014fought wars during unipolarity, but they were unfair fights against minor powers. Yet we are now in a multipolar world. Great power war is once again a possibility and security competition among the great powers\u2014China, Russia, and the United States\u2014is intensifying.1 Thus, the time is ripe to examine the fundamentals of great power politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason this task is so important is that many policymakers as well as students of international politics came of age during unipolarity and have not thought deeply about great power politics. This is unsurprising, because the subject was largely irrelevant for understanding what was going on in the world during that period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This problem is compounded by the fact that thinking about international politics more generally was dominated by a body of liberal theories, which either ignore or misconstrue the military variables that are so important for understanding relations among the great powers. In fact, some prominent thinkers maintained during unipolarity’s early years that the world was fast reaching the point when war would be relegated to the dustbin of history. Francis Fukuyama famously argued that with liberalism’s triumph over communism in the Cold War, the world had reached the \u201cend of history,\u201d and great power wars would no longer trouble it.2 Others argued either that war was no longer cost-effective or that because of humanity’s moral progress, inter-state war was going the way of dueling and slavery.3 In short, the liberal thinking that dominated the unipolar ecosystem\u2014and that is still influential today\u2014is not especially helpful for understanding the current international system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article seeks to help rectify this problem by explaining the realities of great power politics. Specifically, it focuses on the all-important relationship between international politics and war\u2014especially war between the great powers. The story I tell is essentially a realist one that focuses on military factors and the role of war in the international system.4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many first-rate articles and books deal with different aspects of great power war. Carl von Clausewitz’s On War is probably the most important work on the subject.5 Yet there is an important gap in the literature on how war relates to great power politics. To be sure, Clausewitz famously maintains that war is an extension of politics by other means. While this brilliant insight informs my analysis, he says little about the fundamental nature of politics and how it relates to war. In fact, hardly anyone does.6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, many scholars focus on how domestic political factors like interest groups, ideologies, and social classes, just to name a few, affect the prospects of great power war and international politics more generally. But such perspectives are not quite the same as focusing directly on the concept of politics and exploring its essence. My aim is to do just that and then explain how my understanding of the political is connected to war. I then examine how the interplay between politics and war affects how states both initiate and conduct armed conflict. Specifically, I examine how states decide when to start a war, and how political and military considerations interact to foster escalation during wartime.7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I offer three related arguments. For starters, politics\u2014be it domestic or international\u2014is a fundamentally competitive enterprise that has the potential to turn deadly. This basic fact of life means that war is always a danger in the international system, which has no higher authority that can protect states from one another. Given that war is a brutal and violent enterprise that invariably involves massive suffering, and especially because it can threaten a state’s survival, it is the dominating feature of international politics. It shapes how policymakers think about the world and how states interact with one another in profound ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, it is difficult to erect meaningful legal or moral barriers that can limit when great powers start wars, mainly because survival is their principal concern. Yet they operate in a world where the potential for war is ever present and there is no night watchman that they can turn to for help if their survival is threatened. Thus, leaders are inclined to opt for war in this self-help world if they think it is necessary to enhance their state’s security\u2014even if doing so violates international law or just war theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, limited wars have a propensity to escalate into absolute wars. One might think that political leaders can prevent unwanted escalation, given the political nature of war and fear of its sheer destructiveness. This is sometimes but not always true. Periodically, the combative nature of politics propels violence to its extreme, rather than limiting it. Furthermore, the inclinations of military commanders\u2014who do not like limited wars or politicians interfering in how they conduct a war\u2014as well as the dynamics underpinning war make it difficult to keep wars limited and under political leaders’ firm control. Yet, it is essential in the nuclear age to make sure that if a great power war occurs, it does not escalate into a total war and indeed ends as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics Is a Contact Sport<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One must comprehend politics’ essence to appreciate war’s role in the international system. There is little doubt that war is ultimately a political act, as Clausewitz famously argued. War, in his well-known words, is \u201ca continuation of political activity by other means.\u201d In other words, political logic is dominant when states go to war, even though military logic also matters. Again, Clausewitz put the point well, \u201cThe political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it.\u201d8 Nevertheless, that seminal argument is not saying that war casts a giant shadow over international politics, which is the argument I am advancing. To understand war’s profound importance requires a firm grasp of the political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, it is difficult to erect meaningful legal or moral barriers that can limit when great powers start wars, mainly because survival is their principal concern. Yet they operate in a world where the potential for war is ever present and there is no night watchman that they can turn to for help if their survival is threatened. Thus, leaders are inclined to opt for war in this self-help world if they think it is necessary to enhance their state’s security\u2014even if doing so violates international law or just war theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, limited wars have a propensity to escalate into absolute wars. One might think that political leaders can prevent unwanted escalation, given the political nature of war and fear of its sheer destructiveness. This is sometimes but not always true. Periodically, the combative nature of politics propels violence to its extreme, rather than limiting it. Furthermore, the inclinations of military commanders\u2014who do not like limited wars or politicians interfering in how they conduct a war\u2014as well as the dynamics underpinning war make it difficult to keep wars limited and under political leaders’ firm control. Yet, it is essential in the nuclear age to make sure that if a great power war occurs, it does not escalate into a total war and indeed ends as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics is a deeply competitive and potentially violent enterprise<\/strong>. Individuals, groups of all sorts, and states invariably have differences with one another and sometimes those disagreements concern issues that matter greatly to them.9 They may have clashing belief systems or clashing interests, which create unresolvable conflicts. Those differences might involve first principles, to include salient moral issues and questions about the good life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people believe that reason can lead people\u2014and ultimately states, which are run by individuals\u2014to compromise and reach agreement, or at least manage their differences, when they are at loggerheads. That is what politics is all about, so the argument goes. As Russian President Vladimir Putin put it, \u201cPolitics is the art of compromise.\u201d10 Certainly, that often happens, but not always. Sometimes reason leads people\u2014and this obviously includes the leaders of states\u2014to reach fundamentally different conclusions, where there is little to no room for compromise. Just look at the fervor with which conservatives and liberals in the United States fight over Supreme Court appointments. As Newt Gingrich put it, politics can be \u201ca really nasty, vicious, negative business.\u201d11<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, politics is all about getting one’s way in bitter disputes that involve key issues. Winning matters greatly in such circumstances, which is why politics, to quote both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, is a \u201ccontact sport\u201d that not only produces winners and losers but also does not guarantee that the outcome is permanent.12<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics inside the state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times, those political disagreements become so profound that the opposing sides try to harm each other and sometimes even kill each other. This lurking possibility of political violence explains why individuals living together in a society need a state, which is effectively a political order with coercive power that is designed to keep people in line. It also explains why liberal states place a high premium on tolerance. A higher authority that has a monopoly on violence keeps people from harming or killing one another over their differences. In essence, individuals need some person or body responsible for organizing and administering daily life to ensure that no member endangers the survival of other members. But even that solution has its limits, as the history of civil wars makes clear. In short, the intensity and enmity that often attends politics should not be underestimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some readers might think\u2014owing to their own experiences\u2014that politics is surely a rough and tumble business, but that I exaggerate the potential for violence and its effects. Two points are in order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First<\/strong>, that perspective is largely a consequence of the fact that almost all those readers were born and raised inside a state where the police and other institutions keep order and keep them safe for the most part. Take away the state\u2014or just take away the police and any equivalent organization\u2014and political life would quickly become far more dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second<\/strong>, the likelihood of violence does not have to be especially high for people to worry incessantly about that danger. The reason is simple: The consequences are so horrible, even if it is a low-probability event. In other words, even if there is only a small chance someone is going to fall victim to political violence, which might include death, that person will be deeply concerned about their survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside a state<\/strong>, where the threat of violence is greatly reduced and there is much cooperation and compromise, politics is mainly concerned with determining who controls the governing institutions, and thus who gets to write the laws or rules. After all, those rules reflect a particular set of first principles and invariably favor the interests of some individuals or factions more than others. Therefore, it matters greatly who writes, interprets, and enforces the laws, because whoever does these things can shape daily life in ways that reflect their interests and views about the good life. In short, there will almost always be fierce competition within any large social group to determine who controls its political institutions.13 Unsurprisingly, power matters greatly in determining which faction wins that competition. The more resources an individual or faction possesses, the more likely it is to control or influence the actions of the governing institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics in international anarchy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics naturally remains a contact sport in the international system, but it manifests itself in different ways than it does within a state for two principal reasons<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there is no world government to provide order and protect states if another state threatens or attacks them. As Kenneth Waltz famously argues, the system’s architecture is anarchic, not hierarchical<\/strong>, which means that states operate in a world where the potential for war is always present<\/strong>, and there is no higher authority they can turn to for protection in dangerous times.14<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, war is a destructive and dangerous enterprise. One can understand why Thomas Jefferson referred to war \u201cas the greatest scourge of mankind.<\/strong>\u201d15 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But its horribleness is what makes international politics such a deadly serious business. It is the persistent possibility that a state might fall victim to a devastating war that explains in good part the intensity of great power relations. Of course, the horror of war also explains why so much time and effort has been devoted over the centuries to trying to abolish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make matters worse, it is not simply war’s destructiveness that alarms leaders; it is also the possibility that their state’s survival might be put at risk. In other words, an adversary might be an existential threat. And if not today, it could be tomorrow. After all, the balance of power invariably shifts over time, and other states’ intentions, certainly their future intentions, are difficult to discern with confidence.16 It is clear from the historical record that today’s ally can quickly become tomorrow’s adversary. In 1945, for example, the United States was allied with China against Japan. Within five years, the relationships had reversed. The same switch took place during those years regarding Germany and the Soviet Union, which was a U.S. ally in the fight against Germany in World War II but became the United States’ mortal foe a few years after that conflict ended. Meanwhile, West Germany became a close U.S. ally in the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As emphasized, politics is unremittingly competitive and intense, which means that the possibility of conflict and even killing are baked into the enterprise. In international anarchy, there is always a possibility that a political dispute might turn into a war. That danger leads to recurring security competition among the great powers, whose top goal is to ensure their survival. In other words, even in peacetime, states must prepare for war. Invariably, this involves building military capabilities to improve their security, which potential rivals will see as threatening to their own security. This phenomenon is called the \u201csecurity dilemma.\u201d17 Those rivals, of course, will respond in kind, leading to security competition among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that the great powers are in a constant state of war, because they obviously are not. But they do continually compete for power with potential rivals while the possibility of war always lurks in the background. This struggle for advantage explains why war is, has been, and always will be the central feature of international politics.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooperation and survival<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help ensure the clarity of my arguments about the competitive nature of international politics and how that phenomenon turns war into such a significant concern for states, four additional points are in order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I am not arguing that great powers hardly ever cooperate with one another, because they do, mainly when they have similar interests and when cooperation does not undermine their security. The Soviet Union and the United States, for example, cooperated during the Cold War to curb nuclear proliferation, which was in the interest of both superpowers.18 Likewise, China and the United States both have a vested interest in cooperating to address climate change, which they are now doing, albeit in limited ways.19 States also form military alliances when they are confronted with an especially dangerous opponent, as the Soviet Union and the United States did during World War II. Rivals can also rely on diplomacy to resolve differences or to prevent a dangerous crisis from leading to a war that neither side wants, as Moscow and Washington did during the Cuban missile crisis and the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key point, however, is that this cooperation always takes place in the shadow of security competition, as the possibility of war is ever present. The Americans and the Soviets, for example, relentlessly competed for power despite cooperating on proliferation during the latter half of the Cold War. Alliances are an important feature of international politics. In most cases, they are temporary marriages of convenience, although the longevity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) shows that they sometimes last a long time.20 To paraphrase Lord Palmerston, states have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, just permanent interests, as the Soviet Union and the United States demonstrated after 1945, when those wartime allies became bitter rivals.21<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My point about the relationship between competition and cooperation highlights important differences between theories of international economics and realist theories of international politics.22 Most mainstream economists maintain that the best way for states to maximize their prosperity is to create an overarching cooperative framework that allows them to compete economically. In particular, the aim is to create international institutions that can write and enforce rules that will facilitate free trade and govern economic intercourse among the member states. In a 2012 survey of some of the world’s leading economists, 85 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that \u201cfreer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment.\u201d23 In another 2012 survey involving many of the same economists, 85 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that \u201ctrade with China makes most Americans better off because, among other advantages, they can buy goods that are made or assembled more cheaply in China.\u201d24 In a 2018 survey involving a different set of leading economists, 80 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that \u201ctrade with China makes most Europeans better off because, among other advantages, they can buy goods that are made or assembled more cheaply in China.\u201d25 Of course, globalization represents this kind of economic cooperation on a planetary scale. According to Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at the Financial Times, globalization is \u201cthe integration of economic activity across borders,\u201d which can lead to \u201can unparalleled era of peace, partnership and prosperity\u201d if done right.26<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mainstream economists can focus on facilitating economic competition within a fundamentally cooperative worldwide system because they pay hardly any attention to how states think about survival in international anarchy, in which war is always a possibility. Thus, concepts like security competition and the balance of power, which are fundamentally important for studying international politics, have no place in conventional economics. In that realm, fostering prosperity, not maximizing a state’s prospects for survival, is the principal concern. Moreover, economists tend to privilege a state’s absolute gains, not its relative gains, which is to say they largely ignore the balance of power.27<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, survival concerns almost always trump prosperity concerns when those goals are in conflict since you cannot prosper if you do not survive. That simple fact of life once again points up that great power relations are competitive at their core, which is another way of saying that international politics dominates international economics when those two perspectives offer different policy prescriptions.28<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, I am not arguing that great power wars are likely. In fact, they are unlikely because industrialization and nationalism make modern warfare much more deadly; the more costly conflict becomes, the less likely it is to occur. Of course, states have launched wars that they expect to be highly costly and extremely risky\u2014Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War\u2014but such instances are rare.29<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationalism allows states to produce huge armies that are willing to fight for long periods. It also infuses the wider society with animosity, if not hatred, toward the other side.30 Industrialization, on the other hand, puts a vast array of lethal weaponry in the hands of militaries, turning them into giant killing machines.31 The same logic obviously applies to nuclear weapons, which are called weapons of mass destruction for good reason. War is especially unlikely between rival great powers that have nuclear arsenals that can survive\u2014at least in part\u2014a first-strike by the other side. This is a world where no matter who strikes first, the likely result is mutual assured destruction (MAD). But even in a MAD world, it is possible for rival great powers to fight a conventional war against each other or use nuclear weapons in a limited way to gain bargaining advantage over their rival.32 In short, war remains a serious possibility in the modern world, and that fact, coupled with its deadliness, causes states to pay great attention to that danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, the small group of leaders who formulate and execute a great power’s foreign policy invariably understand the centrality of war in international politics.33 After all, they are directly responsible for ensuring their country’s survival in a system that places a premium on self-help, since there is no higher authority that can rescue their state if trouble comes knocking. Those decision-makers are in charge in an extreme emergency.34 That responsibility focuses the mind like few others. Of course, the perennial possibility of war also influences many members of the public and certainly members of a country’s foreign policy community\u2014but not as deeply as their leaders, simply because the first two groups are not the ultimate deciders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, how one defines survival influences our understanding of how the possibility of great power war affects life in the international system. Survival obviously means not being destroyed as a functioning state, which is to say not ending up like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany in 1945. But defining survival by that outcome alone is too narrow to be useful for explaining how states behave, a point that is widely recognized in the international relations literature.35<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Survival, in my lexicon, means that a state maintains its physical base and its ability to determine its own political fate, which includes managing both domestic and foreign policy. A state’s physical base includes all its territory and population, as well as the resources within its borders. To run its own policy at home and abroad, a state must control its domestic institutions, especially its executive, legislative, judicial, and administrative bodies. This more expansive definition of survival reflects how states think and act. All this is to say that great powers are primed to compete\u2014sometimes fiercely\u2014not just to avoid total military defeat. They also compete to ensure that they do not lose any territory to a rival, and that they maintain the autonomy of their domestic political order.36<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people in the West find it difficult to accept the notion that the threat of great power war and associated concepts like survival have a marked effect on how policymakers think about the world. This perspective is unsurprising, given that many of them came of age during the unipolar period, when there was no great power security competition, and the sole pole in the system was a Western country. At that time, it was possible for people living in the West to think that prosperity, not survival, was a state’s main goal. Yes, the United States and its allies fought wars during unipolarity, but those were unfair fights against minor powers like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia, not fights against major powers, much less another great power. Of course, countries outside the West like China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, just to name a few, worried greatly about their survival and balanced against the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also rather easy for the United States to disregard or downplay concerns about survival even when other great powers are in the system, because it is the most secure great power in world history.37 No country in the Western Hemisphere is a serious military threat, and giant oceans separate the U.S. homeland from the world’s other great powers in Asia and Europe. This basic fact of life helps explain why the United States pursued an isolationist foreign policy for part of its history and why that approach still attracts adherents today.38 Europe, especially Western Europe, has long sat underneath the U.S. security umbrella, which effectively guarantees peace in Europe, thus allowing many Europeans to think that they too have reached the end of history.39<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the ongoing fighting in the Middle East and Ukraine, coupled with the possibility of a war between China and the United States, has cast doubt on that optimistic view of international politics. According to Paul Poast, \u201cThe Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which has been tracking wars globally since 1945, identified 2022 and 2023 as the most conflictual years in the world since the end of the Cold War.\u201d40 Still, that hopeful outlook is so deeply ingrained in Western thinking at this point, especially inside universities, that it will take more time for most Americans and Europeans to understand that security competition and possible war among the great powers profoundly shape their world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Decision for War<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My understanding of the relationship between politics and war shows why it is impossible to institutionalize meaningful legal or moral barriers to initiating wars. The question of when it is permissible for one country to attack another has concerned scholars and policymakers for centuries and is highly relevant today because of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.41 Many in the West think that leaders should be guided by international law, just war theory, or some combination of the two, when contemplating whether to attack another state. This liberal perspective, which aims to sharply curtail when states can start wars, is unrealistic in international anarchy and thus of little use for curbing their behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to international law and contemporary just war theory, starting a war is only acceptable under a few circumstances: (1) if a country has good evidence that it is about to be attacked by an adversary and it launches a preemptive strike to get in the first blow; (2) if a state secures permission from the UN Security Council to invade another state; or (3) if one country intervenes in another to prevent mass murder or genocide. There is significant overlap between the core tenets of just war theory and the international laws of war, which, for this article, allows me to treat them as one and the same. According to one scholar of just war theory: \u201cJust war thinking and the law of war constitute intersecting, interwoven conversations that often reflect each other like mimes in a mirror: just war thinkers cite legal arguments to defend ethical intuitions while lawyers turn to ethics and philosophy to work around the strictures of the law. This extensive overlap is not surprising, given the histories of these two traditions.\u201d42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this perspective, both preventive wars and wars of opportunity are forbidden. Preventive wars aim to avert an adverse shift in the balance of power; for wars of opportunity, the balance of power is not shifting against the initiator, but it sees a chance to gain more power and enhance its security or perhaps achieve some other political objective such as spreading its ideology. Thus, whether you see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a preventive war\u2014as former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg do\u2014or you see it as an unprovoked war of opportunity, as most people in the West do, it is both illegal and unjust and should be condemned.43<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In essence, many contemporary Western thinkers reject Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is an extension of politics by other means. In his view, war is simply a tool that states use when it makes good military and political sense. This obviously includes preventive wars and wars of opportunity. Naturally, there is no room for moral or legal considerations in Clausewitz’s understanding of war, which is realist to the core and at odds with how most people in the West think about war initiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is going on between the two sides in this dispute represents a fundamental disagreement about the workings of the international system. The aim of just war theorists and champions of international law is to subordinate the conduct of international politics to a moral or legal order that dictates when states may start a war as well as how they should wage it. Simply put, they want to create a world where initiating a war is permissible only in narrowly bounded circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not how the world works, however. Preventive wars and wars of opportunity are recurring features of international politics, and nothing is going to change that reality in the foreseeable future. Whether states are democracies or nondemocracies, they will launch these two kinds of wars if they conclude that doing so is in their strategic interest. The reason is simple: There is no higher authority in the international system that can enforce the rules, which means states must do whatever is necessary to protect themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 For sure, states need laws and norms to help them interact efficiently with one another, and there is no question that the great powers mainly write the rules\u2014for their own benefit. But powerful states will ignore those rules if they think that following them is at odds with their vital interests, which means such rules are not a meaningful check on war.44 Of course, when states go down this road, they will be quick to deny that they are violating international law, even when it is obvious that they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was in large part a preventive war, which is impermissible according to both just war theory and international law.45 Putin, however, made the case that invading Ukraine was in accordance with international rules three days before doing so. He said on February 21, 2022:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one \u201cbut.\u201d International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 This is stated in the 1999 OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Charter for European Security adopted in Istanbul and the 2010 OSCE Astana Declaration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.46<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael walzer\u2014the realist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to grasp why efforts to delegitimize wars of opportunity and preventive wars are bound to fail is to consider a crucial qualification in Michael Walzer’s important work, Just and Unjust Wars. He opens the book by criticizing realist thinking about war; indeed, the first chapter is titled: \u201cAgainst \u2018Realism.\u2019\u201d He then takes aim at Clausewitz in the subsequent chapter for failing to recognize that war is a crime.47 Walzer is not simply concerned with stipulating meaningful limits on when states can initiate wars; he also wants to place significant limits on how states wage war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After making a comprehensive and sophisticated case for his version of just war theory, he allows that in a \u201csupreme emergency\u201d\u2014when a country is on \u201cthe brink of national disaster\u201d\u2014it can ignore the rules that he lays out and \u201cdo what is necessary\u201d to survive. In other words, it can act according to the dictates of realism.48<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walzer recognizes that bringing survival into his story runs the risk of playing into the realists’ hands, a dangerous game from his perspective. Accordingly, he writes, \u201cI want to set radical limits to the notion of necessity.\u201d49 Specifically, he tries to protect his case by strictly bounding both the imminence and the nature of the threat that a state must face before it can abandon just war theory and embrace realism. Before a country can act unjustly, Walzer maintains that \u201cthe danger must be of an unusual and horrifying kind\u201d and that the threatened country must wait until it is \u201cface-to-face not merely with defeat but with a defeat likely to bring disaster to a political community.\u201d50<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walzer’s advice makes little sense. Why would a state facing an existential threat wait until the last moment, when it is on the verge of destruction, to act like a realist? Would it not make more sense for that state to deal with a rival before it became a mortal threat? Obviously, it would, but that logic pushes states to act according to realist dictates from the beginning and ignore just war theory unless this moral approach to war is in sync with balance of power logic. In essence, the survival imperative, coupled with the difficulty of discerning other states’ future intentions, leaves states with little choice but to pursue preventive wars and wars of opportunity when circumstances warrant doing so. Indeed, if a state strictly adheres to just war theory or international law, sooner or later it is likely to put its survival at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective has a rich pedigree, which is reflected in the writings of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Thucydides. To quote Rousseau:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is quite true that it would be much better for all men to remain always at peace. But so long as there is no security for this, everyone, having no guarantee that he can avoid war, is anxious to begin it at the moment which suits his own interest and so forestall a neighbour, who would not fail to forestall the attack in his turn at any moment favourable to himself, so that many wars, even offensive wars, are rather in the nature of unjust precautions for the protection of the assailant’s own possessions than a device for seizing those of others. However salutary it may be in theory to obey the dictates of public spirit, it is certain that, politically and even morally, those dictates are liable to prove fatal to the man who persists in observing them with all the world when no one thinks of observing them towards him.51<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottom line is that in a world shaped by great power politics, realist logic best explains when states go to war, not international law or just war theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role of morality in international politics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might surmise from this discussion about the limits of just war theory that there is no room for moral considerations when it comes to relations among states. That would be wrong, however. For starters, we are all moral beings. Everyone has a moral compass that helps inform how they think about the world. And that includes hard-nosed realists.52 In practice, this means that most policymakers use both a moral and a realist compass to help them comprehend the world and navigate their country through it. In some cases, the two needles will point in the same direction, in which case there will be little disagreement over the appropriate policy. For example, it was morally and strategically wise for the United States to fight against Nazi Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other cases, strategic considerations will be largely absent, thus making it relatively easy to pursue a morally correct policy. The United States, for example, should have intervened to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994, as doing so would have had hardly any consequences for the balance of power, and it was certainly the morally correct thing to do.53 The most important and vexing cases, however, occur when the moral and strategic compasses point in different directions. In those instances, strategic logic wins almost every time. This is truly tragic, but it is to be expected in an anarchic system in which concerns about survival are paramount. A case in point is the U.S. decision to ally with the Soviet Union during World War II, which helped make it the most powerful state on the European continent until it collapsed in late 1991. Joseph Stalin’s regime was one of the most murderous in modern times, but the United States needed the Red Army to win the war against the Third Reich, which was a greater threat than the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the moral and strategic logics are in sync, the foreign policy elites will invariably emphasize the moral case for war in their public pronouncements, even though the strategic considerations will be of foremost importance. When those two logics do not line up, the leaders will act according to strategic dictates and work to cover up their behavior with moral rhetoric.54 This behavior of course resembles how states use shrewd lawyers to explain why they are not violating international law when in fact they are doing just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an alternative way to look at the relationship between moral and strategic calculations that bears mentioning. One might argue that there is no meaningful clash between them. In this view, a country’s leaders have a moral obligation to protect their people from foreign threats\u2014indeed, it is their most important responsibility. Thus, if they have no choice but to pursue policies that violate just war theory\u2014or international law\u2014to secure their state’s survival, their behavior will ultimately be moral or just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that almost every world leader as well as their publics would think that a preventive war aimed at eliminating a mortal threat is a morally correct decision, even if just war theory says it is not. For example, if diplomacy had failed to resolve the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and President John F. Kennedy had used military force to remove the Soviet missiles and nuclear weapons from Cuba, few people in the West would have condemned him for launching an unjust war. Surely, most Americans would have considered it a just decision even if it was a preventive war that violated just war theory. Furthermore, Russian leaders surely believe that launching a preventive war against Ukraine was just or at least justifiable because they are convinced that Ukraine joining NATO is an existential threat that must be prevented.55<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this alternative approach might seem attractive at first glance, it is ultimately unconvincing. It implies that virtually every military measure that a state takes to enhance its security\u2014including purposely murdering huge numbers of civilians\u2014can be justified as morally correct. This rationale denies that there is any meaningful conflict between moral and strategic considerations in foreign policy, and in effect, takes moral considerations off the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two fundamental problems with this argument. First, allowing strategic considerations to define what is morally right or wrong mistakenly diminishes politics’ central role in determining how individuals and states think and act in the international arena. After all, most people care a lot about morality, but sometimes they disagree in fundamental ways about what is the morally correct thing to do. This is one reason why disputes about first principles are at the heart of politics. That concern for acting in a just fashion also explains why states invariably attempt to justify their foreign policy decisions as morally correct and their adversaries’ behavior as unjust, to both their own people and audiences abroad. In reality, moral and strategic calculations sometimes clash in foreign policy; it is important to acknowledge such deep political tension rather than pretend that it does not exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, there is little doubt that states prioritize strategy over morality when the two conflict. States sometimes act in profoundly unjust ways because they think that their survival leaves them no choice. This grim reality points up what a brutal business international politics can be. But better to recognize that awful fact of life than try to claim that any measure taken to enhance a state’s security is moral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much is enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might surmise that basic realist logic, which privileges strategic considerations over moral ones, justifies wars of extermination against rival great powers. The best way to survive in the cutthroat world of international politics\u2014so the argument goes\u2014is to eliminate any potential threats once and for all, as Rome did to Carthage in 146 BC. In that instance, the Romans enslaved or killed most of the Carthaginian population, destroyed Carthage’s towns and cities, and eliminated it as an independent political and territorial entity. Athens had earlier imposed a similar solution on Melos in 416 BC.56<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no question that such a policy would be morally depraved, which further illustrates why it is important to avoid claiming that any policy that aims to enhance a state’s security is just. An eliminationist policy, however, is not only morally bankrupt but also strategically unnecessary according to realist logic. Indeed, it is likely to backfire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Survival in international anarchy simply requires a state to be much more powerful than all the other states in the system. This logic explains why states seek regional hegemony and why being the sole pole in a unipolar world is the ideal situation for a great power. In such circumstances, there are no serious threats to the dominant country’s security, much less existential threats. Thus, once a dangerous rival is knocked out of the great power ranks, there is no reason to erase it from the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, a Carthaginian strategy is likely to be counterproductive. For starters, it would eliminate countries that might be useful allies for balancing against another threat. Germany and Japan, for example, played that role for the United States after their devastating defeats in World War II. Each helped contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and they were an integral part of the Western order that Washington established after 1945. In addition, an annihilation strategy would be especially difficult to execute. Great powers are hard to destroy, especially if they have a powerful incentive to fight to the last person. Not to mention that doing so would cause almost every other state in the system to come together and fiercely oppose the aggressor.57 After all, one of them might be the next victim, so best to deliver it a devastating defeat. Relatedly, a state that pursued an eliminationist policy would have great difficulty finding allies should it need them. In short, an eliminationist strategy is both strategically myopic and morally wrong.58<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politics and Escalation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this section, I consider how political and military considerations interact to affect the conduct of war itself. The key issue is escalation, one of the least understood but most important wartime phenomena. My argument is two-fold. First, limited wars\u2014especially among great powers\u2014tend to escalate into absolute or total wars, where the aim is to win a decisive victory. Second, given that war is an extension of politics by other means, one might think that political leaders can manage escalation with relative ease. But powerful political and military forces make it difficult\u2014sometimes impossible\u2014for those leaders to control escalation and keep wars limited. Wars, in other words, have a propensity to escalate in ways that can be at odds with policymakers’ preferences.59<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the driving forces behind escalation is the intensity and enmity that is integral to politics. Paradoxically, politics can undermine political control over the prosecution of a war. Moreover, the military’s preference for winning decisive victories, and its inclination to resent political leaders interfering in the conduct of a war, both work to undermine political control over the course a war takes. Indeed, military thinking about how best to wage war threatens to turn Clausewitz’s dictum about the relationship between politics and war on its head. Finally, the dynamics of war can cause limited conflicts to escalate in a variety of ways. Escalation is a particularly dangerous phenomenon in the nuclear age, given the catastrophic consequences of full-scale nuclear war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political passions and escalation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that war is ultimately a political struggle<\/strong>, the passions and animosity that are integral to politics are always present in wartime and can easily turn into profound hatred of the enemy, which pushes both sides up the escalation ladder toward total war. In particular, the large-scale killing that takes place in most wars is likely to cause the rival sides to loathe each other. Moreover, to motivate their own people to fight, rival leaders have a powerful incentive to portray their adversary as the devil incarnate. This creates a paradox. Because war is a political act, it is essential that it be subject to political control, so it can be limited when that makes strategic sense. But politics sometimes makes it extremely difficult to put meaningful limits on war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate the power of the political to fuel escalation, consider the relationship between nationalism and war. Nationalism is the world’s most powerful political ideology, and it pushes states toward absolute war. Indeed, this is an important theme in Clausewitz’s On War and perhaps the main reason that he places so much emphasis on the need for political leaders to be in charge during wartime\u2014so they can limit a war’s scope if necessary.60<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationalism is built on the twin assumptions that nations are the highest-level social group of significance for most people in the world, and that nations want their own state, or what is commonly called a nation-state.61 Naturally, people distinguish between their nation and other nations as well as their nation-state (if they have one) and other nation-states. Otherness lies at the core of nationalism. That particularistic ideology also tends to foster an innate sense of superiority that can lead to deeply antagonistic relations among nation-states. Consider Madeleine Albright’s condescending claim\u2014which former President Joe Biden repeated on more than one occasion\u2014that the United States is \u201cthe indispensable nation,\u201d as \u201cwe see further than other countries into the future.\u201d62<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When nation-states go to war with each other, their nationalism usually morphs into hypernationalism: the belief that the other nation is not just inferior but dangerous and must be dealt with harshly if not brutally. In such cases, contempt for and hatred of the \u201cOther\u201d suffuses the nation and creates powerful incentives to eliminate that threat, which is not helpful for limiting wars. The abundant killing that attends war fuels this hateful sentiment, as does the fact that leaders understand that hypernationalism has a rally around the flag effect. During World War II in the Pacific, for example, Japan and the United States progressively demonized each other’s society, depicting the opponent as near subhuman by the end of the conflict.63<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are additional political ideologies besides nationalism that can help push states up the escalation ladder. This is certainly true when states with rival ideologies clash, as happened from 1941 to 1945 when fascist Germany collided with the communist Soviet Union.64 The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are another example.65 Putting aside conflicts between rival ideologies, some ideologies\u2014like liberalism\u2014have a crusader impulse built into them, which often leads to pursuing policies aimed at ridding the world of evil\u2014a mission that mandates winning decisive victories.66 Other ideologies such as Nazism contain an eliminationist impulse, which obviously leads to total war of the worst sort.67<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is worth noting that wars have become increasingly destructive over the past two centuries. A state’s capability to severely punish an opponent’s civilian population during a conflict is likely to inflame ideological passions, thus frustrating efforts to keep the fighting limited. Robert Osgood succinctly makes this point: \u201cThe scale of war and the passions of war, interacting, will create a purely military phenomenon beyond effective political guidance.\u201d68<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The military’s preferences<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The propensity for great power wars to escalate also stems from the military’s dislike of limited wars and resistance to civilians interfering in the conduct of the fighting. Taken to its logical extreme, the military’s thinking effectively subordinates political considerations to military considerations once the shooting starts. Of course, that outcome would make it extremely difficult for political leaders to put limits on a war, which is usually the military’s preference anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military commanders favor decisive victories. As Richard Betts argues in Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, leaders in uniform are not trigger-happy, but when they go to war, they \u201cprefer using force quickly, massively, and decisively.\u201d69 Their basic attitude is that war is a deadly enterprise that involves not only the security of the state but also the lives of airmen, sailors, and soldiers. Thus, everything should be done to defeat the enemy quickly and decisively. Limited wars, military leaders tend to think, do not serve the national interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective is reflected in General Mark Clark’s comments to a Senate subcommittee during the Korean War: \u201cOnce our leaders, our authorized leaders, the President, and Congress, decide that fight we must, in my opinion we should fight without any holds barred whatsoever. We should fight to win, and we should not go in for a limited war where we put our limited manpower against the unlimited hordes of Communist manpower\u2026. If fight we must, let’s go in there and shoot the works for victory with everything at our disposal.\u201d70 David Rees writes in his book on the Korean War: \u201cApart from Generals Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor it appears that every single senior American commander involved in the Korean War disagreed with the policy of limited hostilities.\u201d71<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To compound the problem of keeping wars limited, military leaders are inclined to believe that political leaders are not equipped to manage a complicated endeavor like war. Only the admirals and generals are, as they have the necessary professional expertise. Therefore, once a nation commits its forces to fight, the military tends to favor separating politics from military strategy, which would allow the military to conduct the war without civilian interference. Writing in 2001, U.S. Naval Officer Charles R. Blair articulates thi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The propensity for great power wars to escalate also stems from the military’s dislike of limited wars and resistance to civilians interfering in the conduct of the fighting. Taken to its logical extreme, the military’s thinking effectively subordinates political considerations to military considerations once the shooting starts. Of course, that outcome would make it extremely difficult for political leaders to put limits on a war, which is usually the military’s preference anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military commanders favor decisive victories. As Richard Betts argues in Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, leaders in uniform are not trigger-happy, but when they go to war, they \u201cprefer using force quickly, massively, and decisively.\u201d69 Their basic attitude is that war is a deadly enterprise that involves not only the security of the state but also the lives of airmen, sailors, and soldiers. Thus, everything should be done to defeat the enemy quickly and decisively. Limited wars, military leaders tend to think, do not serve the national interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective is reflected in General Mark Clark’s comments to a Senate subcommittee during the Korean War: \u201cOnce our leaders, our authorized leaders, the President, and Congress, decide that fight we must, in my opinion we should fight without any holds barred whatsoever. We should fight to win, and we should not go in for a limited war where we put our limited manpower against the unlimited hordes of Communist manpower\u2026. If fight we must, let’s go in there and shoot the works for victory with everything at our disposal.\u201d70 David Rees writes in his book on the Korean War: \u201cApart from Generals Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor it appears that every single senior American commander involved in the Korean War disagreed with the policy of limited hostilities.\u201d71<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To compound the problem of keeping wars limited, military leaders are inclined to believe that political leaders are not equipped to manage a complicated endeavor like war. Only the admirals and generals are, as they have the necessary professional expertise. Therefore, once a nation commits its forces to fight, the military tends to favor separating politics from military strategy, which would allow the military to conduct the war without civilian interference. Writing in 2001, U.S. Naval Officer Charles R. Blair articulates thi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The propensity for great power wars to escalate also stems from the military’s dislike of limited wars and resistance to civilians interfering in the conduct of the fighting. Taken to its logical extreme, the military’s thinking effectively subordinates political considerations to military considerations once the shooting starts. Of course, that outcome would make it extremely difficult for political leaders to put limits on a war, which is usually the military’s preference anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military commanders favor decisive victories. As Richard Betts argues in Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, leaders in uniform are not trigger-happy, but when they go to war, they \u201cprefer using force quickly, massively, and decisively.\u201d69 Their basic attitude is that war is a deadly enterprise that involves not only the security of the state but also the lives of airmen, sailors, and soldiers. Thus, everything should be done to defeat the enemy quickly and decisively. Limited wars, military leaders tend to think, do not serve the national interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective is reflected in General Mark Clark’s comments to a Senate subcommittee during the Korean War: \u201cOnce our leaders, our authorized leaders, the President, and Congress, decide that fight we must, in my opinion we should fight without any holds barred whatsoever. We should fight to win, and we should not go in for a limited war where we put our limited manpower against the unlimited hordes of Communist manpower\u2026. If fight we must, let’s go in there and shoot the works for victory with everything at our disposal.\u201d70 David Rees writes in his book on the Korean War: \u201cApart from Generals Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor it appears that every single senior American commander involved in the Korean War disagreed with the policy of limited hostilities.\u201d71<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To compound the problem of keeping wars limited, military leaders are inclined to believe that political leaders are not equipped to manage a complicated endeavor like war. Only the admirals and generals are, as they have the necessary professional expertise. Therefore, once a nation commits its forces to fight, the military tends to favor separating politics from military strategy, which would allow the military to conduct the war without civilian interference. Writing in 2001, U.S. Naval Officer Charles R. Blair articulates this view:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the military, it is a widely regarded belief that beyond the determination of the political objective, politics and the military do not mix. Recently, some senior military leaders have expressed consternation with civilian leadership involvement at what appears, to them at least, to be inappropriate levels within the military organization. They have expressed concern that this increased involvement has resulted in a less efficient and effective use of military forces in accomplishing the political objective they have been tasked to achieve. This fear of unwanted political \u201cinterference\u201d has even led to questioning of the political objective itself and the role of the military in achieving it\u2026. Naturally, senior military leaders are reluctant to express their concerns about political interference openly, lest they become the next MacArthur in Truman vs. MacArthur. Consequently \u2026 it exists in the background as an ethos and feeling that most in the military acknowledge, but that few articulate publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In effect, many generals reject Clausewitz’s view of what the relationship between war and politics should be once the shooting starts. On this point, Clausewitz remarked that \u201csubordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy that creates war.\u201d73 Clausewitz’s perspective is clearly reflected in Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, which is arguably the most influential book ever written on civil-military relations. He writes: \u201cWhen the military man receives a legal order from an authorized superior, he does not argue, he does not hesitate, he does not substitute his own views; he obeys instantly. He is not judged by the policies he implements, but rather by the promptness and efficiency with which he carries them out. His goal is to perfect an instrument of obedience; the uses to which that instrument is put are beyond his responsibility.\u201d74<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This argument for separating responsibilities in wartime is articulated in an oft-quoted comment by Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the German General Staff under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: \u201cAt the moment of mobilization the political adviser should fall silent, and should take the lead again only when the Strategist has informed the King, after the complete defeat of the enemy, that his task has been fulfilled.\u201d75 Similarly, General Erich Ludendorff, who effectively commanded the German Army in the later years of World War I, argued that in wartime, \u201cpolitics must \u2026 be subservient to the conduct of war.\u201d76 Once that happens, however, there is little chance that political leaders can manage escalation and keep wars limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ludendorff’s and Moltke’s views notwithstanding, civilian control of the military has generally been the rule in democracies and nondemocracies during the past century, especially for the great powers. Nevertheless, military leaders usually have significant influence in decision-making during wartime. Thus, their views on limited war and civilian involvement in nitty-gritty military matters invariably influence how a state prosecutes a war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dynamics of war<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the dynamics of war itself push states to escalate. Four logics are at play here. First, if a state launches a limited war and achieves success, at least some of its military or political leaders are likely to conclude that it can achieve even greater success if it widens the conflict. A limited success, in other words, might whet the attacking state’s appetite. For example, the United States initially intervened in the Korean War in June 1950 to defeat the North Korean invasion and drive the attacking forces back to the 38th parallel, which would restore the status quo ante. But after U.S. troops successfully landed at Inchon in September 1950, U.S. leaders expanded the United States’ war aims and invaded North Korea, thinking that escalating the war would eliminate future threats to South Korea and that neither China nor the Soviet Union would intervene in the fighting.77 This phenomenon, which is sometimes called the \u201cvictory disease,\u201d will be most pronounced in situations in which ideological fervor abounds.78<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, even when a limited attack is unsuccessful, the potential for escalation is ever present.79 In such cases, military commanders are likely to argue that if they are allowed to escalate the conflict, they can deliver success. Political leaders will be incentivized to believe them, given that losing a war is hardly an attractive outcome for any politician or policymaker. For example, the Vietnam War was not going well when Richard Nixon entered the White House in January 1969. The military had long been arguing that escalation was necessary to rescue the situation. Nixon began a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia in March 1969 and then sent U.S. ground forces into Cambodia in May 1970.80 Of course, the steady growth of the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1968 reflected this same logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, as Alexander Downes shows, when states get involved in protracted and costly wars, both their political and military leaders will be strongly inclined to escalate the conflict by attacking the other side’s civilian population\u2014even if the prospects for success are low. He writes: \u201cWarfare, particularly in the age of nationalism follows an inexorable logic of escalation that sets in if victory does not come quickly.\u201d81 This logic, as Downes shows, was evident in the Allies’ starvation blockade against Germany in World War I and in the strategic bombing campaigns that Britain, Germany, and the United States waged in World War II. In short, if you are winning, go for more; if you are losing, double down; if you are facing a long war, target civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, there is a danger of inadvertent escalation\u2014not purposeful escalation\u2014which is when a state’s desire to strike an expansive list of enemy targets unintentionally triggers escalation.82 To be more specific, policymakers in the attacking state either fail to realize that the target state will view their actions as highly threatening, or they exaggerate the threat that the other side and its ostensibly limited military actions pose. The result is a spiral of escalation. This danger is exacerbated by the fact that states cannot be certain of other states’ intentions, especially in wartime, when both sides are heavily engaged in trying to deceive the other. In addition, political control over the military, which is otherwise a good thing, may not prevent this kind of escalation, as civilians usually do not know much about the nitty-gritty of warfare and thus might order a move that produces a cycle of escalation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My bottom line is that great power wars tend to escalate, sometimes in ways that are at odds with policymakers’ preferences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Given the destructiveness of modern war, especially regarding nuclear weapons, it is imperative that political leaders understand escalation dynamics and be able to control them.83 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it is essential that war remains under the control of responsible political leaders who understand these dangers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an enduring need to understand the nature of politics and its intimate connection to war. It is essential to recognize that conflict is endemic to politics, and political disputes have the potential to become deadly. In international politics, this means that war is a perennial danger that can put the survival of states at risk. That possibility causes great powers to fear one another and compete for power. In such a world, preventive wars and wars of opportunity can never be ruled out, and the threat of escalation in wartime is ever present. In the final analysis, political considerations will invariably trump economic, legal, and moral considerations whenever they are in conflict. This is hardly a rosy picture. But that is what politics looks like in the international realm.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is a revised version of the inaugural Richard K. Betts Lecture, which the author delivered at Columbia University on November 16, 2023. The author also gave talks based on that lecture at the University of Notre Dame on January 30, 2024, and West Point on April 10, 2024. For their excellent comments, the author thanks Richard Betts, Joshua Byun, Dale Copeland, Michael Desch, Eliza Gheorghe, Addis Goldman, Mariya Grinberg, Christian Hacke, Burak Kadercan, Sean Lynn-Jones, Lindsey O’Rourke, Sebastian Rosato, Jazmin Sierra, Burak Tan, Stephen Van Evera, and Stephen Walt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/direct.mit.edu\/isec\/article\/49\/4\/7\/130810\/War-and-International-Politics?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n