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Definition
- “strategic interaction,” or how states make choices when the consequences depend on choices by other states
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Term
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Definition
- the consequences for all states of each state’s efforts to assure its own survival
- developed to understand states’ choices about peace and war
- explains why wars are possible, not why they happen
- States have two choices
– They can arm
– They can disarm
• If they disarm, they have no weapons and war cannot occur
• A necessary condition for war is that states have previously chosen to arm
• Why states choose to arm: What if one state disarms when another state
arms?
• States that disarm when others arm become vulnerable to conquest
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Definition
- developed To classify the variety of influences on
states’ choices - influences that pertain to phenomena within,
of, or beyond the state
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Term
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Definition
- German Jewish refugee from the Nazis
- Central figure in creating the subdiscipline of International Relations
- He posed a positive task, but his goal was normative: to devise ways to secure peace
– “Positive”: to describe the world
– “Normative”: to improve the world
– Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it.”
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Term
| Si vis pacem, para bellum. |
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Definition
- "If you want peace, prepare for war"
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Term
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Definition
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Term
| 2 (Broad) Reasons for War |
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Definition
- Structural imbalance, disequilibrium, or instability: some state that arms may be unable to arm sufficiently to prevent another state from attempting to conquer it
- Preferences: facing the choice between armed standoff and war, one or more states may prefer war
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Term
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Definition
- For states with preferences of either kind, the security dilemma is an instance of what game theorists call “prisoner’s dilemma”
- story about a district attorney who separately offers a deal to each of two prisoners who have conspired to commit a crime
– The district attorney’s deal is designed to force each prisoner to testify against the other one
- World politics features no counterpart to a district attorney who can define the choices for the states
- a game defined by a particular order of values attached to each outcome by two (or more) agents
- if both agents try to achieve the outcome
they prefer, each receives a worse outcome than it could achieve by a different choice
– Thus in world politics, states trying to achieve peace get the possibility of war
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Term
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Definition
- derive their name from their concern with the
res, or “matter,” of world politics, which they see as power - view on security dilemma:
- States face a continuing security dilemma
- Therefore each state must always choose to arm
- The theoretical problem is to explain why mutual choices to arm only result in war at certain times and at other times result in armed standoff
- Peace, as opposed to armed standoff, is unattainable
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