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| No agency exists above the states with the power and authority to make laws and settle disputes; force is the ultimate arbitor of disputes between states |
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| Situation in which the military capabilities of two states or groups are roughly equal; no clear military advantage exists |
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| Balancing and Bandwagoning |
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| The former refers to alliances formed by weaker states to even out the balance of power; the latter refers to weaker states joining with stronger states to share in the spoils |
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| Set of deals that both parties in a bargaining interaction prefer to the reversion outcome; in cases when the reversion outcome is war, the range refers to the set of deals that both sides prefer to war |
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| Strategy in which adversaries take actions that increase the risk of accidental war, with the hopes that the other will lose its nerve, or 'blink,' first, and make concessions |
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| Some measure of a state's military power |
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| An effort to change the status quo through the use of force |
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| Believability; a credible threat is a threat that the recipient believes will be carried out. A credible commitment is a commitment or promise that the recipient believes will be honored. |
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| Classic example of brinkmanship; Soviet Union and America bargained "with their fingers on the button" over the presence of Soviet nuclear capabilities in Cuba, and US nuclear capabilities; they eventually reached an agreement in which both sides conceded to get rid of some nuclear armaments |
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| A country's military ability to protect itself in the event of an attack |
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| Use of/ threat of force to preserve the status quo |
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| Some nuclear or otherwise advanced weapon, typically understood to be capable of destroying the earth's population, effectively leading to doomsday |
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| Situation in which one side gains a significant military advantage and has a much greater chance of success by attacking first |
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| Defense, deterrence, compellence, and swaggering |
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| Mutual substitution of a good or commodity; for example, one orange can be exchanged for one orange, or one $10 bill exchanged for another |
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| Actions taken by the leaders of a state to commit, especially in the eyes of the public, to a certain action or stance, with the goal of increasing your resolve in the eyes of others, or making a divisible good seem indivisble |
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| Political philosopher who believed states were created to lift humans out of an inferior way of life; theorized that states provide a measure of social order and protection against other individuals |
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| Degree to which an issue/place/something of value can be divided without diminishing its value; ex., indivisibility of Jerusalem would be determined by the level of compromise between Muslims and Jews |
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| July Crisis (World War I) |
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| A series of events that led to the start of WWI, in which Austria-Hungary used coercive measures designed to weaken the Kingdom of Serbia, ultimately resulting in a declaration of war on Serbia |
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| War that lasted several weeks when Pakistan crossed the border into the disputed Kashmir region, ended when Pakistan agreed to withdraw its soldiers; war took place between two countries with democratically elected governments |
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| Doctrine in law that states that the party who had the last chance to avert the incident but didn't is responsible for the tort, or crime |
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| Tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains |
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| Primary characteristic of Nixon's foreign policy; focused on making countries believe that Nixon was an irrational, angry leader, and would conduct foreign policy in a volatile manner |
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| Defensive fortification, built up of tank obstacles, machine gun posts, and other fortifications, along the border shared between France, Germany, and Italy; constructed after WWI, designed to allow the French army time to mobilize and protect the country from invasion |
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| Or multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle; designed as an intercontinental or submarine-launched ballistic missile; a single launched missile can carry nuclear weapons to multiple targets |
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1. Political realism holds the view that politics is governed by objective laws that are rooted in human nature
2. Interest is defined as power
3. Interest defined as power is an objective concept
4. Awareness of the moral significance of political action
5. Political realism refuses to identify moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe
6. Political realism is based on a pluralistic conception of man, recognizing fully that a solely political man would be a beast, unaware of morality |
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| Ratio of offensive forces required to take territory to defensive forces required to defend it |
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| Offense-defense differentiation |
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| Concept that offensive and defensive weapons differ, and certain weapons are used for each; states can learn much about the status quo and states' motives by differentiating weapons |
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| Series of peace treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War; often said to have created the modern state system because it included a general recognition of the principles of sovereignty and nonrecognition; called for external governments not to interfere with affairs internal to other states |
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| War in which one party engages in, even with the anticipation of a loss, to prevent the other party from growing stronger |
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| War commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived offensive or invasion, or to gain advantage in a conflict, perceived as inevitable, before the threat commences |
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| Paradoxical situation in which states increase their military and defense capabilities to assure safety, simultaneously appearing as a threat to other states |
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| Military, technological, or otherwise strategic information that states keep private in order to increase their leverage, and gain an advantage |
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| Motivated Bias/ Bolstering |
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| People become much more receptive or open to an idea after they have made a decision; tendency to interpret information to reflect accurate decision-making |
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| 3 Rationalist Pathways to War |
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| Private Information; Issue Indivisibility; Commitment Problems |
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| False idea that the knowledge that one possesses is also possessed by the rest of the world |
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Compensation for an unequal compromise; money or other form of capital used to compensate one side in exchange for a concession
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| How to measure a variable in the real world so that it can be expressed quantitatively; ex., Russett operationalized dozens of conflicts to back up his Dem Peace Theory |
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| Something that is simple, without lots of intervening steps and independent variables |
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