by David Reilly*
INTRODUCTION
As anti-American protests build in Kabul and Baghdad, there is a growing debate about the extent to which the United States, the United Nations, and other international actors should intervene in the domestic affairs of weak and ineffective states. Non-aligned states have expressed fear that military intervention by major power states may become a growing facet of the post-11 September world. Relations between the world's most powerful states have become strained over the coercive actions of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. Critics have labeled recent US actions a return to Realpolitik and a brutal expression of imperialist aggression.1 US policy makers have countered that the use of military force as a preemptive measure is a necessity in a world where terrorist threats have overshadowed concerns of more traditional forms of state violence.2
This debate is a relatively new one, distinct in character from the discussions of intervention that took place during the Cold War. During that period, weak states were minor actors on the international scene. More often than not they were ignored, viewed as relatively benign, or treated as pawns on the international chessboard to manipulate and utilize for alliance-building purposes. On rare occasions they served as the peripheral locale for major powers to engage in limited skirmishes. For the most part, however, their role in the international system was minor. Major power states did not care about the domestic environment of weak states. Their objective was to influence the foreign affairs of these minor actors - to ensure that they would fall into line with larger interests, and that they would not compromise the stability of the system. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the emphasis was on realignment and the role that Russia, Germany, and other major powers would play in a multipolar world. But, following 11 September we see the revival of power politics emerging: one in which the most powerful countries of the world are not only attempting to influence weak countries, but to overtly, and if necessary violently, shape their domestic environments.3
An explicit goal of the current National Security Strategy of the United States is to reduce the threat that is posed by weak and failing states: "weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states . . . America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones."4 The recognition that it is necessary to manage the behavior of these states is coupled with the statement that all major power states have to share in this responsibility. As described in the same document, "we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power . . .. In building a balance of power that favors freedom, the United States is guided by the conviction that all nations have important responsibilities . . . no nation can build a safer, better world alone."5 In essence, not only do these statements indicate a change in thinking, but a demand that other major power states modify their policies to reflect a changing world.
Things have changed drastically in the post-11 September world. Currently, we are experiencing a new dynamic where countries that are not capable of managing their populations are more of a threat in today's world than strong states. With the proliferation of weaponry, and the destructiveness of weapons technology, small groups have the destructive capacity to demand international attention.6 As Robert Rotberg notes, "in a modern era when national states constitute the building blocks of legitimate world order the violent disintegration and palpable weakness of selected . . . states threaten the very foundation of that system."7 Accordingly, states that do not monopolize coercion within their borders are a substantial concern for every country. The threat posed by actors within and across these states has contributed to dramatic changes. Leading world powers have begun to redefine sovereignty and to reshape international order.
This is happening in large part because policy makers believe that terrorist networks are parasites that thrive in (and encourage) environments where an absence of effective governance, coupled with the protection of state sovereignty, allow them to base their operations, develop their infrastructure, and recruit members. Ray Takeyh and Nikolas Gvosdev describe the appeal of failing states in the following manner: "Today's terrorist does not need a strong state to provide funding and supplies. Rather, it seeks a weak state that cannot impede a group's freedom of action but has the veneer of state sovereignty that prevents other, stronger states from taking effective countermeasures."8 Failing states provide an ideal domestic environment - they tend to be repressive and corrupt, employing their limited resources to ensure their survival from domestic challengers.9 Accordingly, they are willing to strike Faustian bargains with groups, such as terrorist networks, that can add to their coercive capacity. From an international perspective, ruling regimes in failing states have - until recently - been unconcerned about international challenges. They have not had to fear the loss of their territory or legal status, a major departure from what occurred in the development of Western states where competition and threat spurred development and growth. Goodrich, Hambro, and Simons, in their commentary on the United Nations Charter, note that state sovereignty was to be afforded to each UN member and defined in the following manner: "1) that states are juridically equal, 2) that each state enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty, 3) that the personality of the state is respected, as well as its territorial integrity and political independence, and 4) that they should, under international order, comply faithfully with its international duties and obligations."10 Accordingly, in the modern world, states (both failing and established) are granted equal status and a country is virtually guaranteed survival.
If failing states do not need to provide for their own national security, or engage in a self-help strategy of prudent fiscal and military spending to ensure growth and protection, their primary concern turns to maintaining domestic control. Recent research suggests that the survival of political leaders and whether they retain control depends on their ability to secure and maintain winning coalitions within a selectorate.11 The minimal level of support needed to maintain that coalition may not require much, and is in all probability less costly than engaging in substantial state building. Repressing those who might challenge the persistence of a winning coalition and rewarding those who support the ruling regime are important strategies for survival. Terrorist organizations have the potential, because of their resources, to be pivotal actors in a leader's attempt to secure control over policy-making. If global terrorist networks can enhance security and order in exchange for autonomy within the state's borders, this may be a small price for an embattled leader to pay.
Failing state leaders do not need to satisfy the population at large. They also do not need to be concerned about external threats and challenges. Instead, in an international environment where juridical sovereignty protects the state and makes state weakness relatively unimportant, the state need only concern itself with repressing domestic opposition that could challenge its survival and maintaining its winning coalition - which may or may not include terrorist networks.
This is exactly why the groundwork is being laid for power politics to define foreign affairs - a situation that has not existed since World War II. A strategy of Realpolitik, defined as "foreign policy calculations of power and the national interest,"12 centers on the notion of relative power. States improve their security by increasing the gap between their military might and the military might of other states. Niccolo Machiavelli has been viewed as the founding father of Realpolitik for his view that might makes right independent of moral or ethical considerations.13 According to traditional power politics models, military coercion is the primary tool of advancing state interest. For this reason, power politics is often referred to as the "law of the jungle," where brute force determines outcomes and major power states slug it out for control and dominance.
In this new world, failing and failed states will command attention in the international arena. They will become the focal point of foreign policy for two reasons. First, their inability to effectively self-govern will result in repression, dissident and protest activity, and international terrorism that threaten the security of the developed world. Second, powerful states will use this potential threat as a justification for overt military intervention. Intervention in the domestic affairs of failing and failed states has the potential to lead to new conquests, the elimination of rogue regimes, and even the possibility of a new form of colonialism.
This article establishes the changing nature of international politics in the following manner. It provides an account of how realists have attempted to explain the empirical regularities that exist in the world, and where these theorists have failed. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of threats within states to the dynamics of international violence, and it addresses the role that norms of nonintervention have played in shaping state behavior. It then examines the extent to which the "Bush Doctrine," which emphasizes unilateral and preemptive military action against failing states, will lead to a transformation of the notion of sovereignty in the international system. The article also addresses the notion of power politics: its limited explanatory power regarding international affairs during the post-World War II world, and its relevance in the period since 11 September.
The Changing International System
The irony of this return to power politics is that analysts are just beginning to understand how poorly the power politics model of international relations actually represented the dynamics of real world conflict in recent years. In a world dominated by Realpolitik, military might should determine which states exist, which thrive, and which perish. Proponents of power politics view domestic capabilities as important for "self-help," the ability of the state to ward off external challenges and improve its position of security. Given that the anarchic nature of the international system requires that states ensure their own security, power politics become the primary tool of diplomacy. A state's capabilities14, therefore, are related to its aggressiveness with its neighbors and its vulnerability to attack from the outside world. Historically, this expectation has been supported by the fact that weak states have often been conquered, destroyed, or colonized.
From World War II onward, however, there are empirical regularities to domestic and international conflict behavior that cannot be explained by power politics. First, the "democratic peace," which has been described as the closest thing to a law in international relations15, runs counter to the assumption that states behave as unitary actors - united in efforts to secure the state from external threats - and therefore domestic politics are irrelevant for international conflict behavior. Many investigators of the democratic peace and the democratic proposition - which expects that democratic states use force against their own populations less frequently and with less violence - argue that a democratic state is a capable state. Its structures constrain the reactionary policies of leaders and generate deliberate, thoughtful action. Its culture, which is tied to domestic and foreign policy through a system of participatory governance, encourages nonviolent responses to disputes. Some have gone so far as to argue that democratic governance represents the highest form of political development and marks an "end of history" to the evolution of state capacity and control.16
Second, there is a growing recognition that internal strife is related to external violence. Whereas structural realists assume that key state actors work collectively for the security of the country as a whole, it is argued in the conflict nexus, shatterbelt, Third World security, and ethnopolitical violence literatures that fragmentation within the state stimulates domestic and international conflict.17 Cultural divides, socioeconomic classes, and disputes about the political "rules of the game" serve a central role in explaining repression and interstate violence. This challenges conventional wisdom that conflict is stimulated by external conditions, and that state capacity only indicates how well a state can respond to threats from the external environment.
Third, the international system provides protection for weak states. Juridical sovereignty and norms of nonintervention dictate that all states be treated as equal and autonomous.18 The result is that states are not required to undertake "self-help" as their only recourse to security and independence. Although there is no guarantee of protection per se, since the liberation of colonies following World War II the configuration of states, in terms of territorial boundaries, has not undergone drastic changes. Such a circumstance suggests that power politics is not the only explanation for international conflict and cooperation.
The implication of these three challenges to the traditional view of power politics is that the domestic conditions of a state - beyond its military might relative to neighbors - play a central role in conflict behavior. If democratic states do not fight each other, and if they are more pacific toward their own populations than are other types of states, then it is problematic to assume that all states behave in the same manner. If domestic circumstances stimulate conflict, it is incorrect to treat states as unitary. Leaders may engage in violent activities to ensure their regime's security rather than national security, or the broader well being of the country. The protections afforded by the international system - and the near guarantees of independence and survival - are suggestive of the fact that external threats may not be the primary cause of conflict in the modern world. Of these three empirical regularities, only the democratic peace has been investigated in detail. Most of the findings are supportive of the fact that democratic states are more pacific, internally and externally, than other types of states. However, there are also indications that these pacifying effects do not exist in partial democracies, transplanted democracies where societies remain destabilized or fragmented, or where the process of democratization is incomplete. These findings indicate that other aspects of state capacity may be important in conjunction with, or independent of, democracy. Given that the democratic peace research has spawned an enormous literature, I do not revisit this aspect of the changing world in this article. Instead, I focus on the second and third challenges in the form of failing state violence and the insecurity dilemma.19
The Relevance of State Capacity
Traditional scholarship in international relations has been dominated by the realist paradigm. Hans Morgenthau's writings on the "limitless lust for power" established a perspective that aggressive human nature drives international behavior.20 Kenneth Waltz's alternative explanation of structural or defensive realism emphasizes the desire to survive as a motivation for action and inaction in the world.21 John J. Mearsheimer's offensive realism counters that the main goal of states is to dominate the system.22 For both Morgenthau and Mearsheimer, the pursuit of power is the central objective of states. However, while Morgenthau argues that human nature is the cause of aggression, Mearsheimer agrees with Waltz in citing the anarchy of the international system as the stimulus for state behavior.
Although the realist school of thought contains many variants, there are a number of core beliefs. First, states are the central actors in the international system. Second, the external environment is the main source of threats to state security; internal divisions and factions that exist are relatively unimportant to international behavior. Third, military might is a critical tool of world politics, and it is most usefully evaluated in relative terms. States can be distinguished on the basis of their military power and their ability to employ force.
These core assumptions lead many to conclude that states must engage in self-help. There are no guarantees that others will respect a state's autonomy because the international system lacks a central authority that can protect the rights of individual states. Within this anarchy, states must take a self-interested approach to international affairs. They must play to their advantages and attempt to bolster their condition of security relative to others. This includes, when necessary, compromising the supposed rights of others. As Alexander Murphy notes, "there have been times of considerable de facto state autonomy, when sovereignty has been understood as a principle that permits state rulers to do anything in their own self-interest, including attacking the territory of a neighboring state."23
Historically, military capability has been very important for understanding the survival of states. "Weak" states are destroyed, conquered, and colonized. Offensive and defensive realism tend not to make the distinction between juridical sovereignty and empirical statehood, in so far as it is assumed that a state's external conflict is related to its internal abilities. Survival is ensured through military preparation; juridical sovereignty, in other words, does not really exist. Norms of nonintervention are irrelevant to state behavior, because ultimately states will act in their own interest of security, not on the basis of international agreements or expectations. There are no guarantees of independent statehood; a state's power is its only means of security, and the threats to its survival come from the external environment.
One of the most important aspects of offensive and defensive realism is the unitary actor assumption, which involves dismissing the domestic conditions and factions of the state as irrelevant to its behavior in the realm of "high politics." Security takes precedence over all else, and it is assumed that, although actors within the state may disagree over issues of lesser importance, there is uniformity with regard to the understanding that state security comes first. The effect of this assumption is that many scholars disregard variants in state composition (except military capability) as unimportant for understanding conflict behavior, war, and peace.24
Although the study of security issues has been a central focus of international relations from its inception, the particulars of weak state security are only recently receiving mainstream attention. Certainly there were early exemplars of this field of research,25 but for the most part, discussions of failing and failed states were limited to peripheral areas of policy and research involving humanitarian intervention, arms proliferation, and the diffusion of conflict. And, it is only recently that scholars have called for a reexamination of the two-level game of conflict, often referred to as the conflict nexus, as it applies to domestic circumstances such as those in weak states. Paul Huth and Ellen Lust-Okar, for example, have demonstrated the interaction between repression and international escalation. Their research suggests that domestic repression and international escalation are interrelated, and they contend that the benefits of diversionary international conflicts are greatest for ruling regimes experiencing domestic turmoil. This finding is then examined in the context of important domestic and international circumstances.26
Although it has taken time for the role of weak states to take center stage, those who have addressed the topic are not ambivalent about the importance of this issue. As Mohammed Ayoob states, "a paradigm that does not make security its centerpiece will lack adequate power to explain the domestic or international behavior of Third World states. Simultaneously . . . just as it is essential to make security the central focus of any paradigm that attempts to explain Third World state behavior, it is also necessary to adopt the notion of state making as the point of departure for the study of Third World security."27
Offensive and defensive realists argue that in order to understand conflict one must examine the power relations between countries. States are assumed to be sovereign and effective in controlling the populations and territories over which they rule. Power politics, therefore, emphasizes interstate rather than intrastate relations; it is based on the belief that security is only improved when a country increases its capabilities relative to the countries around it. This is a result of the anarchy and uncertainty that exists in the international system. Realists believe that this anarchy cannot be mitigated, and therefore leaders must be attentive to the global distribution of military might and the strength of their neighbors.
Conflicts in the world today, however, are less a result of anarchy within the system than anarchy within countries. A survey of recent conflicts - the cross-border violence centered in the Congo, rebel violence in Colombia that threatens the surrounding states, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Russia's crackdown on the independence movement in Chechnya - are indicative of the weakness of governments leading to chaos within a region. It may be fair to say, in other words, that the most likely source of conflict in the modern world is weak states. And, not surprisingly, a number of recent studies have confirmed that since World War II the primary catalysts of global violence are such weak state issues as political disintegration, domestic crises, and ethnopolitical differences.28 Furthermore, the character of weak states is such that crises spread among them like viruses; the manner in which violence has consumed the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and Asia in the last decade has led to worries that conflict is contagious.29 Accordingly, we need to be attentive to some of the increasingly important characteristics of states, especially weak and failing ones.
A state's capacity to control its population and territory has a substantial effect on its propensity for aggression. The earlier examples of recent conflict are illustrative of the linkages between domestic failure and conflict behavior. Widespread starvation and the inability of the state to address basic public needs in North Korea have led the state to lash out at its surrounding environment. Attempts to consolidate authority in the former Yugoslavia have included highly publicized purges and assaults on minority groups that precipitated an international military response. The security and resource interests of the Russian Federation dictated a swift and brutal military assault on the independence movement in Chechnya - one that continues to this day. These events exemplify how weak states externalize their own domestic crises, employ violence to reduce threats, and respond aggressively to international pressures. In other words, power politics alone is insufficient for explaining contemporary conflict.
State security as a concept, accordingly, emphasizes a broader range of threats than simply those that exist outside a state's borders. The processes of state building and consolidating authority are intricately tied to state security. As Ayoob argues, weak states are concerned with "vulnerabilities - both internal and external - that threaten or have the potential to bring down or weaken state structures, both territorial and institutional, and governing regimes."30 A state's security depends on a combination of factors. The interaction environment, in terms of neighbors and influential states, can pose threats or provide protection to a state. The internal capabilities of the state can affect to what extent the ruling regime is threatened by domestic and international challenges. National unity, political stability, economic resources, and military might are influential in determining how vulnerable a state is.
The greatest problem for the developing world may be that there is no opportunity to centralize authority and monopolize coercion before addressing the problems of mass politics. The conundrum of the Third World state is that it must do all of these simultaneously while conforming to international norms of democracy and human rights, and under the watchful eye of the international media.31 The result is a state that is required to distribute power before it has consolidated authority, which leads to anarchy within the state and ultimately violence.32
Internal strife in the form of ethnopolitical conflict is related to external conflict in a way that is overlooked by many policy makers. Historically the case can be made that intrastate conflict is more common than inter-state conflict. Others have suggested that intra-state conflict is burgeoning in recent years, and threatens to disrupt international processes and peace.33 This expectation counters traditional explanations of international conflict, because it assumes that the catalyst for conflict is anarchy within states rather than within the larger system.
The ability to understand what leads to violent state action has been limited by the assumption that decision makers within all states, first, share common goals, fears, and expectations, and second, that their actions are constrained equally. Through an examination of what constitutes state power, and how state power affects the functions of the state, I have argued that these are unrealistic assumptions. Opportunity and willingness differs among state types. Leaders within weak states should perceive threats differently, expect different consequences from their actions, and should employ military force with different objectives and expectations regarding its usefulness.
Power Politics Revisited?
If the first error of realists is to have underestimated the importance of intrastate conflict to world politics, the second is overestimating the extent to which "might makes right." Power politics simply does not appear to have dominated the post-World War II period. Failed states, such as Angola, Burundi, the Congo, Liberia, and the Sudan, continue to exist on maps. States that have experienced collapse, such as Bosnia, Lebanon, Somalia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, continue to be recognized by the international community as independent entities. The international system appears to have offered these states some protection and has insulated them from the threat of extinction. Although there are still no guarantees of state autonomy (see Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq), the importance of state capacity for survival has declined and states that lack basic self-help can persist.
Some have challenged that the new norms of international behavior preclude traditional power politics. The survival of the fittest, or "law of the jungle" mentality no longer exists in international relations, and states, therefore, do not need to fear their counterparts. Robert Jackson argues that the system is no longer anarchic because we have "the existence of an international society that has presided over the birth of numerous marginal entities, guarantees their survival, and seeks at least to compensate them for underdevelopment if not to develop them into substantial independent countries."34 A. F. Mullins echoes this sentiment:
The development of modern new states is proceeding differently from the course the European experience would predict because differences in the international system have altered the relationship between military power and the development process. The relatively benign international environment has reduced the external threats that drove earlier European elites to undertake development, and the existence of developed-state suppliers of military aid has often made the client-patron relationship a more important determinant of security than indigenous military preparations enabled by progress in development.35
In short, guarantees of equality and persistence afforded through juridical sovereignty negate the threats that stimulated the growth of the state in Western Europe, and render the idea of a "self-help system" irrelevant.
Many have cited the progress states have achieved in developing cooperative arrangements and in reducing the threat of interstate war. A recent report of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict announces that interstate war appears to be on the decline: "we hardly see it in evidence today. Indeed, as the Cold War recedes, war between or among the great powers appears unlikely in the near future."36 World leaders have also suggested that states are no longer the predatory, self-serving entities of the past. Kofi Annan reported in 2000 that international threats, in the form of nuclear weapons, had been reduced: "while much remains to be done, I believe there has been genuine progress . . . the number of nuclear weapons has continued to drop since the end of the Cold War."37
Given the course of recent events, including evidence that before it took office the Bush administration was planning an invasion of Iraq,38 the sense of optimism may soon change. US President George Bush's assertion that the United States "will no longer distinguish between terrorists and those who harbor them" has the potential to evolve into a new doctrine, one that would challenge international sovereignty as we know it. His statement seems to suggest that if states cannot manage their domestic environments (if they have no empirical sovereignty), the United States will not recognize that state's juridical sovereignty. The weak, in other words, will not survive - not in their ineffective form. To this end, Bush has commented that, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long . . .. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge . . . And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."39
CONCLUSION
The proclamation that the US will engage in preemptive action against potential threats is one facet of what has become known as the "Bush Doctrine."40 The second involves the willingness of the US to go it alone. Although much of the early rhetoric of the Bush administration called for coalition building and multilateral action, officials have stated repeatedly that they are prepared to engage threats unilaterally. A "Coalition of the Willing" was assembled prior to the most recent Iraq invasion, however this was done after efforts to work within the United Nations framework failed and US plans received stiff opposition from a number of states and non-governmental organizations.
This reorientation of policy to address the threat of weak states will have strong repercussions for two reasons. First, it will create new dividing lines among those with global reach and those without. As Michael Handel notes, "The global perception of great powers is partly a function of their ability to act on a worldwide scale to defend their interests. It would also be advantageous for any weak state to defend and secure its survival and interests well beyond its own borders, but it does not have the strength to do so."41 As power capabilities vary across states, their ability to adapt to this new power politics varies as well.
Second, there will be an inevitable adjustment period as states attempt to determine the limits of preemption and unilateralism. In this regard, there are already signs of strain between historical allies. Josef Joffe, in a highly-cited article on the ability of the US to maintain the role of hegemon without challenging other major power states, asks the questions of why NATO has endured, and why states refrain from ganging up on the US as a global power. He states, "The simplest answer is because it is not necessary. The United States is a hegemon different from all its predecessors. America annoys and antagonizes, but it does not conquer. Indeed, the last time the United States actually grabbed territory was a hundred years ago . . .."42 However, shortly after the initial phases of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan, one policy analyst questioned, "Who would now deny that America is an imperial power?"43 Much of the fallout from the recent US-led occupation of Iraq has involved critiques of the US as being motivated by imperial objectives.44 These criticisms certainly call into question Joffe's conclusions.
In this sense we may be moving toward a new practice of power politics. The old form of Realpolitik - characterized by attempts to balance power and to generate short-term alliances to offset the threats of stronger adversaries - may not be the vision of the future. We should not expect to see the states of Western Europe aligning against the United States in order to create an effective deterrent to coercion or aggression.45 But the notion that "might makes right," or at least that the strong will determine the path of the weak through the use of military force, appears likely. It also appears that states without the power to secure their borders and their populations should fear repercussions and should engage in self-help strategies to ensure their independence, if not their survival.46
The post-World War II world has been characterized by an international system where ruling regimes were insulated from external intervention in their domestic politics, which allowed them, in some cases, to become repressive, and in others to become inept. Both led to frustration, dissident activity, and ultimately international terrorism in cases where these dissidents believed that the Western world contributed to their dismal circumstances. The post-11 September world may very well be characterized by a situation where major power states are claiming the right to intervene in other states' domestic environments in order to ensure their own security. The result is presently unclear, but almost certainly will focus the anger of organized dissident groups on the West - hardly a reassuring result for anyone who believes that international terrorism is motivated by a desire for revenge.47 Then again, many argue that the power politics approaches of the past have facilitated terrorism insofar as external military intervention has created power vacuums, a supply of inexpensive arms, and a sense of injustice in parts of the world that we now refer to as failing and failed states.
David Reilly is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Studies program at Niagara University.
Endnotes
This article was originally submitted for publication in July 2002. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts.
1. The levelling of this sort of claim is a regularity from gadflies such as Noam Chomsky (See "The Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy," Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/chomsky11142003.html), but more moderate - and even conservative - critics are claiming imperialist motives for US action in Iraq. For an example, see Paul W. Schroeder's "Iraq: The Case against Preemptive War," American Conservative 1, no. 2, (21 October 2002), pp. 8-20.
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2. Richard Perle, an architect of US foreign policy under the Bush administration, has acknowledged that US strategies in Iraq circumvented international norms and conventions, stating that "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." The solution of military intervention was a moral necessity, given that "international law . . . would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone." From a 20 November 2003 speech reported by Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger, "War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal," The Guardian.
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3. Paul Hoyt notes a similar change in importance of the rogue state: "its centrality to modern international relations has escalated in the post-Cold War world as the behavior, motivation and security of these states can no longer be simply ascribed to superpower patronage and influence." See Paul D. Hoyt, "'Rogue States' and International Relations Theory," Journal of Conflict Studies 20, no. 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 68-79.
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4. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2002, pp. iv, 1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
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5. Ibid.
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6. Martin van Creveld, On Future War (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1991).
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7. Robert I. Rotberg, "Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators," in Robert I. Rotberg, ed., State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2003) p. 1.
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8. Ray Takeyh and Nikolas Gvosdev, "Do Terrorist Networks Need a Home?" Washington Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2002), pp. 97-108.
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9. Ken Menkhaus argues that states that have completely collapsed are inhospitable to all - even terrorists. He cites a number of examples in support of this line of argument, but ignores the fact that much of the growth of the al-Qaeda's network occurred in and around the failed state of Afghanistan. What is threatening about failed, failing, and weak states alike is their inability to monopolize the tools of coercion within their borders and as a result non-state entities can engage in violence across borders. Ken Menkhaus, "Quasi-States, Nation-Building, and Terrorist Safe Havens," Journal of Conflict Studies 22, no. 2 (Fall 2003), pp. 7-23.
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10. L.M. Goodrich, E. Hambro, and A.P. Simons, Charter of the United Nations, Commentary and Documents, 3rd ed. (New York: UNCIO, 1969), p. 457.
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11. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Randolph M. Siverson, "War and the Survival of Political Leaders: A Comparative Study of Regime Types and Political Accountability" American Political Science Review 89 (1995), pp. 841-55; Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, "Peace Through War? Evolutionary Consequences of Democratic War Behavior," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL (1998).
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12. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 137.
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13. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985 [1513]).
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14. As Geller and Singer recognize, power and capabilities are not the same thing. Power includes more than material resources, "comprising the ability to exercise influence and resist the influence attempts of others." Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer, Nations at War: A Scientific Study of International Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 57.
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15. Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Geography, Democracy, and Peace," International Interactions 20 (1995), pp. 297-323.
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16. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
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17. For a summary of the conflict nexus literature, see Jack Levy's "The Diversionary Theory of War," in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies. (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Examples of the shatterbelt literature include Saul Cohen's "Global Geopolitical Change in the Post-Cold War Era," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81 (1991), pp. 551-80; and Paul R. Hensel and Paul F. Diehl's "Testing Empirical Propositions about Shatterbelts, 1945-76," Political Geography 13 (1994), pp. 33-51. For examples of the Third World Security literature, see Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); and Brian L. Job, ed., The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). A summary of the literature on ethnopolitical violence as a security issue is provided in Geller and Singer's Nations at War.
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18. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
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19. This term was originally coined by Brian Job in "The Insecurity Dilemma: National, Regime, and State Securities in the Third World," in Job, ed., The Insecurity Dilemma.
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20. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed., rev. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978). Morgenthau's work is considered by many to represent neo-classical realism. Predecessors include Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Their common beliefs involve the insecurity and inherent conflict of the human condition, and the expectation that these are permanent features of human existence.
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21. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
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22. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
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23. Alexander B. Murphy, "The Sovereign State System as Political-Territorial Ideal," in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, eds., State Sovereignty as a Social Construct (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 87. Mearsheimer, in Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 364, suggests that we should not expect that international organizations or norms will provide the solution to anarchy: "the most powerful states in the system create and shape institutions so that they can maintain, if not increase, their own share of world power."
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24. As an example, note John Mearsheimer's comments on the likely effect of transformations involving China: "Whether China is democratic and deeply enmeshed in the global economy or autocratic and autarkic will have little effect on its behavior, because democracies care about security as much as non-democracies do, and hegemony is the best way for any state to guarantee its own survival." Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 4.
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25. Early examples of weak state security studies include Buzan, People, States, and Fear; Ted R. Gurr, "War, Revolution, and the Growth of the Coercive State," Comparative Political Studies 21 (1988), pp. 45-65; Joel Migdal, Strong States and Weak Societies: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Marshall R. Singer, Weak States in a World of Power: The Dynamics of International Relationships (New York: Free Press, 1972); and Caroline Thomas, In Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987).
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26. See Paul Huth and Ellen Lust-Okar, "Foreign Policy Choices and Domestic Politics," in Frank Harvey and Ben Mor, eds., Conflict in World Politics (New York: St. Martins, 1998), p. 91. They suggest that the decision to repress is a function of demand type, demand intensity, opposition popular support, opposition level of violence, opposition middle class support, societal homogeneity, regime legitimacy, government cohesion, and international expected utility of escalation. The decision regarding foreign policy escalation is shaped by military balance, challenger and rival dispute involvement, prior military defeats, stalemate in negotiations, rival challenge to status quo, and domestic response.
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27. Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), p. xiii.
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28. Mohammed Ayoob, "State Making, State Breaking, and State Failure," in Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson, eds., Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1996); K.J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Ted R. Gurr, "Why Minorities Rebel: A Global Analysis of Communal Mobilization and Conflict Since 1945," International Political Science Review 14 (1993), pp. 161-201.
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29. David A. Lake and Donald Rothschild, The International Spread Of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
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30. Ayoob, Third World Security Predicament, p. 9.
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31. Ayoob, "State Making, State Breaking, and State Failure;" Michael Massing, "In Failed States, Can Democracy Come Too Soon?," New York Times, 23 February 2002.
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32. Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35 (1993), pp. 27-47.
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33. See, for example, Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (New York: Random House, 2000); Michael T. Klare, "Redefining Security: The New Global Schisms," in Patrick O'Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, and Matthew Krain, eds., Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000); and Stanley Hoffmann, "Too Proud," The New Republic 222 (2000), p. 6.
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34. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 24.
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35. A.F. Mullins Jr., Born Arming: Development and Military Power in New States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 12.
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36. Jane E. Holl, Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict: Second Progress Report (1996), http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/rept2/rept2.htm.
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37. Kofi Annan, "Address to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Committee," (New York, April 2000).
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38. According to reports stemming from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, "the President took office in January 2001 fully intending to invade Iraq and desperate to find an excuse for pre-emptive war against Saddam Hussein." See Neil Mackay, "Former Bush Aide: US Plotted Iraq Invasion Long Before 9/11," Sunday Herald, 11 January 2004.
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39. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President at the 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy," June 2002, West Point, New York.
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40. See, for example, Jonathan Steele, "The Bush Doctrine makes nonsense of the UN charter," The Guardian, 7 June 2002; Jamie Glazov, "The Bush Doctrine," Front Page Magazine.com, 7 October 2002; "The Bush Doctrine: What it Means," Socialist Worker Online, 4 October 2002.
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41. Michael Handel, Weak States in the International System (Totawa, NJ: Frank Cass, 1981), p. 21.
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42. Josef Joffe, "Who's Afraid of Mr. Big?" The National Interest (Summer 2001).
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43. James Chace, "Imperial America and the Common Interest," World Policy Journal (Spring 2002).
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44. See endnote 2.
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45. Many will interpret the anti-war efforts of European states and their publics as balance of power politics. It is important to note that the US has advocated balance of power politics in the 2002 National Security Strategy: "America will implement its strategies by organizing coalitions - as broad as practicable - of states able and willing to promote a balance of power that favors freedom." http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf, p. 25.
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46. Although North Korea has been viewed as a rogue state in recent years, it may be setting an example of how to establish immunity from US military pressure and to force diplomatic concessions. In spite of characterizing them as an "Axis of Evil," the US has been reluctant to challenge their formidable military might and has sought a non-violent solution to heightened tensions in the region.
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47. A recently leaked CIA report estimated that the size of the resistance movement in Iraq has grown to 50,000, and that "resistance is broad, strong, and getting stronger." See Democracy Now!, 13 November 2003 (http://www.democracynow.org/).
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