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Resource Wars

Resource scarcity is the most rational reason for conflictGartzke et. al 01Associate Professor, Political Science at University of California, San Diego(Eric, Investing in Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict,

International Organization, Spring 2001, Vol. 55, No. 2, pp.391-438,http://www.jstor.org/stable/3078636) //BZ

Explanations for war are legion. However, work by James Fearon and others shows that most purposive theories of war are

internally inconsistent in that they do not account for the behavior of interest.40 Fearon points out that theories of warcommonly conflate the motives for conflict with the choice of method for conflict resolution.

Costly contests involve at least two elements. First, there is zero-sum competition for anexcludable good.41 States differ over issues or territory that each cannot possess

simultaneously. Second, states choose a settlement method. The choice of method is non-zero-sum.Transaction costs deprive "winners" of benefits and increase the burden for "losers" so that allare better off selecting methods that minimize costs. Sincewar is expensive, fighting makes sense

only if equivalent settlements cannot be obtained using cheaper methods. A theory of war, then, explainswhy efficient settlements are at times unobtainable ex ante. Fearon follows Geoffrey Blainey in arguing that wars result fromuncertainty about conditions likely to influence eventual settlements as well as incentives states have to misrepresent these

conditions.42 States possess private information about strategic variables(capabilities, resolve, and so on). Ifstates could credibly share private information, efficient ex ante bargains could be identified. Instead, uncer-tainty provides weak or unresolved states an opportunity to conceal weakness even as

competition creates incentives to bluff. States "pool," claiming to be resolved and capableregardless of their true nature. Such "cheap talk" claims do not allow observers to differentiate resolved or capable

opponents from the weak or unresolved. Only by imposing costly contests-by fighting or similar acts-canstates distinguish resolute opponents from those seeking to bluff. States fight largely

because they cannot agree on bargains that each prefers to what each expects to

obtain from fighting.

Resource wars historically common and increasingly likelyProniska 5Assistant Professor Section of Strategic Studies of the Institute of International

Relations at the University of Warsaw (Kamila,ResourceWars in Contemporary International Relations,

The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, 2005, Issue 3, pp. 29-44)//BZ

As far as human existential needs are concerned there is nothing more fundamental than accessto clean water. So it is water, too, that was the first natural resource to be bitterly fought over.

But as civilization advanced new resources became so indispensable to societies and

economies that states were prepared to go to any lengths to assure themselves of

undisrupted supplies. Contemporary conflicts over resources are an increasingly frequent

and complicated and multidimensionalphenomenon. Three basic planes on which resourcesand conflicts interconnect can be distinguished. The first is when resources are the proximatecause of a conflict; the second, when developments in strategic thinking have made them a

means and instrument of war and successive revolutions in science and technology turned theminto an indispensable element of warfare; the third, when profits from sales of natural resources

can be used to finance armed conflicts.1 Based on these interconnection conflicts can besubdivided into those in which the resource factor predominates and those in which resources,

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though not central, are one of many catalysts. If we designate the first group as resourceconflicts in the strict sense we must also note a marked increase in the number of these in

contemporary international relations. There are several factors, economic, political andgeostrategic, driving this tendency. The first, and fundamental, factor contributing to the rise

and proliferation of resource conflicts is systematic growth of the global demand for naturalresources. Add two other factorsresource deficits in some countries and regions,

which could exert a powerful influence on states foreign policy and military

strategy, and a growing awareness of the finitude of supplies and incremental depletion ofmost of them worldwide, which is raising anxieties in the international community over global

resource security and sensitizing governments to these problemsand we have the makings ofnew conflicts. A basic role in creating conflict situations is also played by the fact that, on theone hand, a substantial proportion of the worlds resources and many transportation routes are

located in areas situated in some of its most politically and economically unstable regions and,on the other, that many countries are dependent on imports of these particular materials. It is

not unknown for abundance of resources to be deemed an engine of conflict in itself,3 thoughthe truth is that whether a country becomes a potential battleground depends on many factors ofan economic, political, social and military nature.4 Another frequent cause of conflicts is inter-

state rivalry over access to resources, which is particularly likely to arise when ownershiprights in the areas where deposits occur are unclear. Taking a dichotomous perspective, the

problem of the growing number of resource conflicts in the contemporary world can be reducedto two discrete but indirectly related issues: resource scarcity and resource abundance. Scarcity,

whether the result of natural depletion and exhaustion of resources or the artificial actions of

governments (boycotts, embargoes, cartel arrangements, etc.), but perceived as a threat tonational economic security cranks up rivalry in international commodity markets. 5 Abundance

generates additional sources of divisions and conflicts. States battle for spheres of influence,dispute borders and lay claim to resource-rich territories.

Resource wars escalateBillion 7 Professor at the University of British Columbia with the Department of Geographyand the Liu Institute for Global Issues (Philippe, Scales, Chains and Commodities: MappingOut Resource Wars, Geopolitics, 1/4/07, Vol. 12, No. 1, p.200-205)//BZ

0'Lear and Diehl make three claims: that scale matters in the analysis of resource and

environmental conflicts; that conflict analyses focusing on resources have failed to engaged withthat dimension and concept, while falling into the trap of only examining conflicts at the

empirically "available" scale; and that 'resource scale" (a measure of "the range of actors or thenumber of inter- connected places") could inform better theorization and more effective policiesdealing with these types of conflicts. They also present three hypotheses for (future) research:

that "the greater the resource scale of a conflict or the more interlocking resource

scales present in a conflict, the longer and more severe that conflict is likely to be";that "commodity chains that are long and involve high value resources exacerbate local conflict";and that "some actors jump conflict scales [or escalate and diffuse hostilities purposely for theirown [resource-related] benefit". In short, scale has been largely 'ignored' in studies of resource

conflicts and the 'more scales' involved the more severe and protracted a conflict would be.There is no doubt that the use of singular scale, and in particular national level scale, variables is

proving inadequate and sometimes plain wrong for the analysis of conflicts involving a greatvariety of actors over extended historical periods and diverse spatial scales, as suggested by the

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lack of consensus presented by much of the quantitative studies literature examined by O'I.earand Diehl (see in particular the special issue of the journal of Conflict Resolution, August 2005).

The paper, however, presents only limited evidence to back the more specific claims or discussthe hypotheses, mostly drawing on a selected range of studies (the Homer- Dixon and Collier

'schools') and the 'singular' empirical case of the Democratic Republic of Congo since the late1990s (which itself encompasses 'plural' cases of conflict). Starting with the understanding thatscale is both describing a 'physical reality' and a socially constructed concept taking part in a

number of processes such as hierarchisation, scale appears as largely 'unavoidable' in the studyof possible linkages between armed conflicts and natural resources or environmental factors.

Threatened resources cause countries to lash out Germany provesCopeland 96Associate Professor of International Relations Theory at the University of

Chicago (Dave, Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,

International Security, Spring 1996, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 5-41)//BZ

There is great continuity between German decision-making up to World War I and up to World

War I1 in terms of the causal role of economic fact0rs.6~ This derives from one overriding fact:Germany in the 1930s, as before World War I, was a state capable of great military power, but its

small territory possessed few natural resources compared with the great powers surrounding it.In consequence, Germany would always remain highly dependent on outsiders for the food and

raw materials vital to its economic health, unless it expanded. Moreover, since thesurrounding great powers were better able to fashion self-sustaining imperial realms, shouldthey ever move in this direction by closing their borders to trade-as they began to do in the early

1930s-long- term German economic viability and therefore security would be threatened. Thesetwo realities implied that Germanys potential military superiority might have to be used, as in

World War I, to generate the territorial mass needed for survival against what in 1914 werereferred to as the economic world empires. The strategic obsessions of Adolf Hitler and the

Nazi regime revolved around this dilemma which the First World War had failed to solve. InMein Kampf, Hitler foresaw that, because Germanys small size constrained its living space(Lebensraurn), its dependence on foreign states for food would only increase as the population

grew faster than the yields on arable land.70 By the mid-l930s, his anxiety shifted somewhat:Germanys problem was not simply the supply of food, but even more seriously, the supply ofraw materials needed for industrial strength. This dual problem could be overcome by one

strategy:war against the system, with the acquisition of Russian land west of the Urals as theprime territorial objective. By destroying Russia, in one stroke Germany could acquire the land

needed for vital food and raw materials, while preventing the rise of the state most likely tooverwhelm Germany in the future.71 Even if we question critical aspects of Hitlers worldview, itis important to note not only that his strategic objectives mirrored much of pre-1914 thinking,

but that without his mass appeal and the loyalty of subordinates, Hitler could not have initiated

world war. Would Hitlers arguments have made as much sense to his followers, if Germany hadpossessed the land mass of Russia or the British Empire, or if world trade had not beendisrupted by the Great Depression? Implicit in what follows is the argument that had Germany

been less dependent on vital goods, and had expectations for future trade not been so

pessimistic following U.S., British, and French efforts to create closed trading blocs, it wouldhave been much more difficult for Hitler to pull Germany into war: the expected value of the

trading option would have been much higher- or at least not as negative-thus dampening thenecessity for war.

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Resource wars highly likely empirical and future predictiveStalley 3Assistant Professor of Political Science at the George Washington University (Phillip,

Environmental Scarcity and International Conflict, Conflict Management and Peace, 2003,Vol. 20, No. 1, http://cmp.sagepub.com/content/20/2/33 )//BZ

A combination of expanding population and declining renewable resources is a feature of the

early twenty-first century. By the year 2025, the world population is expected to total eightbillion people, an increase of one-third in just a quarter of a century. Ninety percent of thisgrowth will occur in the developing world where many governments are already strapped in

their capacity to provide basic goods and services to their population. At the same time, manyvital environmental resources are increasingly in short supply. The World Wildlife Federationestimates that the world is currently consuming 20 percent more natural resources per year

than can be regenerated (Williams 2002). The World Bank has declared some twenty countries

to be chronically water scarce (Butts 1997. I). Already today, around 20 percent of the world, orL2 billion people, lack access to safe drinking water and over the next twenty-five years

worldwide per capita supply of water is anticipated to decline by approximately 33 percent

(Myers I993. 54; Butts I997. 9). Along with water shortages, many countries face the dilemma ofsoil degradation and the loss of cropland due to pollution, desertification, and erosion. Grain

area per person. a standard measure of available cropland, has been cut in half since 1950,while grain productivity declined 9 percent in the fourteen years from its historic high in I984until 1998 (Brown. Gardnerand Halweil I999. 33. 62). China, already near the bottom of the

developing world in terms of cropland availability, loses 1.5 percent of its cropland per year toerosion, salinization, and urban expansion (Homer-Dixon I999. 23). In short, there is an

abundance of evidence that demonstrates the world faces a mounting environmental challenge. Not surprisingly, facts such of these have helped to spur an increased concern about the politicalramifications of environmental pressures and a burgeoning literature on environmental

security. Since the early 1990:, it has become common for scholars to proffer dire predictions

about impending "water wars" or "resource wars" mid to call for placing environmental issuesdirectly on the national security agenda (Kaplan 1994: Klare 2001: Mathews 1939: Myers 1993;Rcrtner 1996). In one of more famous articles of the 19905. Robert Kaplan (1994. 58) states. "Itis time to understand the Environment for what it is: the national-security issue of

the early twenty-first century." Traveling through West Africa, Kaplan paints a picture ofdemographic, environmental, and societal stress, which he argues is symbolic of the future of

the world, particularly the developing world where "the question is not whether there will be war(there will be a lot of it), but what kind of war" (Kaplan 1994. 73). Norman Myers (1994. 12), afounder of the World Watch Institute, expresses a similar sentiment as he states: "If the oil wars

have begun, the water wars are on the horizon, to be followed by resource wars over keyenvironmental supports for economics around the world." Ecological arguments such as these

are often bolstered by statements attributed to politicians such as inflammatory statements byTurkish officials about their ability to control Iraq and Syria via Turkeys upstream position onthe Euphrates (Matthew I999. 166). Even scholars who make less sweeping claims argue that

human-induced environmental pressures are a gnawing source of tension and

conflict . Thomas Homer-Dixon (I999, 2), head of the University of Toronto's environmental

security project, concludes that in "the coming decades the world will probably see a steadyincrease in the incidence of violent conflict that is caused, at least in part, by environmentalscarcity."

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Resource wars are hype flawed methodology overlooks other issues that makeresources a drop in the bucket

Stalley 3Assistant Professor of Political Science at the George Washington University (Phillip,Environmental Scarcity and International Conflict, Conflict Management and Peace, 2003,

Vol. 20, No. 1, http://cmp.sagepub.com/content/20/2/33 )//BZ

Many scholars are skeptical about the empirical validity of the purported link betweenenvironmental pressures and conflict. These skeptics attack the environmentalists' assertionsalong a number of fronts, but the brunt of the critique is aimed at the evidence used by the

environmentalists. Gleditsch (200l), for instance, disparages the environmentalists for "usingthe future as evidence" and points out that environmentalist literature is replete withdire predictions that never came to pass. Gledistch notes that Paul Ehrlichs highly

influential 1968 work, The Population Bomb, predicted hundreds of millions would starve to

death in the immediate future. Others have pointed out that the evidence of

environmentalists is largely anecdotal and that their methodology is suspect . Mare

Levy (I995) declares that the work of Homer-Dixon and the Toronto Group offers moreanecdotes, but not more understanding." ln pan, this inability to move beyond anecdote is afunction of methodology. As Levy and others point out. by choosing case studies in which there

is both a large degree of environmental degradation and a high level of conflict, scholars such asHomer-Dixon are not choosing their cases randomly and are biasing their results. A morescientific strategy, argues Levy, would be to choose countries in which there were similar levels

of degradation and varying levels of conflict.' An additional shortcoming of the environmentalliterature is its omission in explaining precisely how environmental variables interact with othersocial, political, and economic variables commonly related to conflict. Few environmentalists

claim that depletion of renewable resources alone causes conflict. Rather, they tend to arguealong the lines of Peter Gleick ( l99l . 9) who states. "Environmental problems cannot be

isolated from underlying social, economic, and political causes." However. Levy

(1995) argues that the environmentalists case studies reveal so many intervening variables thatit is difficult to see the independent contribution of the environmental variables, while Gleditschargues the numerous intervening variables make for untestable models. At the same time,Gleditsch also accuses the environmental literature of overlooking important variables, such as

regime type. Finally. Goldstone (2001) points out the impact of environmental variables,while perhaps statistically significant, is minor when compared to other factors.

Incomplete data skews studies on resource conflicts

Stalley 3Assistant Professor of Political Science at the George Washington University (Phillip,Environmental Scarcity and International Conflict, Conflict Management and Peace, 2003,

Vol. 20, No. 1, http://cmp.sagepub.com/content/20/2/33 )//BZ

Complete data on the environment is difficult to obtain. The fact that data on environmentalvariables is missing for many years makes it harder to test the assertion that increases inscarcity, or growing degradation, is a cause of conflict. Of course, pooling countries together

gives greater variance in the environmental variables, but it would still be better if we had amore accurate view of changes in the condition of the environment in individual countries over

time. In addition, the missing data tends to be from developing countries , which means

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that a greater proportion of the data used in the models is from developed countries. Again, thismeans that one should be cautious in inferring too much from the models presented above.

However, the data for the developing world has improved steadily throughout the 1990s, whichshould allow for enhanced tests of the hypotheses of the environmental security literature. This

may become possible now that the new Correlates of War data has been released. A final reasonfor caution is the roughness of the measures of environmental variables. The environmentalscarcity scone presented here is simply a first attempt to model environmental scarcity as a

single phenomenon. Almost certainly, future efforts can generate a more nuanced method ofgrading and ranking countries in terms of overall environmental scarcity. Finally, as indicated in

the previous discussion, it may be that some environmental variables are only important in tiredyadic context." Just as regime type did not appear significant in this study but typically does so

when the dyad is the unit of analysis, environmental variables may only be important in terms of

dyads. Some of the interaction terms tested here attempted to capture this relationship, but at

the moment there is insufficient data to build a complete dyadic model.

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Diversionary Theory

War stimulates nationalism and generates a rally-around-the-flag effectKaysen 90 Economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, member ofMIT's program in Defense and Arms Control Studies, and co-chair of the American Academy of

Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies (Carl, Is War Obsolete?,International Security, Spring 1990, Vol. 14, No. 4) //BZ

Wars still mobilize national sentiments, and create a heightened emotional state

with an intensified sense of community and sharing. Even the threat of war or thedisplay of force brings out such feelings.The nationalization and integration of modern societiessketched above reinforces and amplifies these sentiments,and their instant dissemination and

multiple reflection in the media does so even more.26A short, small war, ending invictory at little cost in blood or treasure, by mobilizing just these sentiments, can stdl produce

political gains for the leaders who initiate it. The recent FalklandsMalvinas War produced a substantial gain forPrime Minister Thatcher, and the United States intervention in Grenada-hardly a war-a similar one for President Reagan. But

such wars may be hard to choose successfully.

State failure makes diversionary wars highly likelyOakes 6 B.A. in Political Science from Davidson and Ph.D. in Political Science from Ohio State

University (Amy, Diversionary War and Argentina's Invasion of the Falkland Islands,SecurityStudies,July-September 2006, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.431-463,

http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410601028354)//BZDomestic unrest is necessary for a diversionary conflict.4 Such unrest can represent afundamental challenge to the continued legitimacy, capacity, and even the existence of a state, as

European communist leaders discovered at the end of the 1980s. In the face of such a threat,leaders caninstigate an international conflict out of a desire to(1) distract the

attention of the publicfrom social, political, or economic issues; (2) rally the populacebehind the government by whipping up nationalist sentiment; (3) shift blamefor domesticpolitical, economic, or social problems to an external scapegoat; or(4) demonstrate the

governments competencein foreign policy after a series of domestic public policy failures.5Diversionary conflicts, therefore, are defined by the nature of the leaders motivation to use

force, not by whether they do in fact successfully divert public attention from domestic problemsor increase popular support for the imperiled government. In fact, like the debtor who heads tothe casino, diversionary conflicts often serve only to make the governments problems worse.

Although diversionary wars often fail, in the right circumstances, they can represent a

reasonable policy response. The logic of diversionary conflict is straightforward: when the

domestic situation becomes unstable, leaders have less to lose from choosing a

risky military policy. In such a situation, doing nothing looks certain to produce losses for

the regime, while gambling through war at least offers the hope of turning things around.

Leaders know that defeat in war will probably signal the end of the regime, but the disgruntledcrowds outside the presidential palace look likely to signal the end of the regime also. As ArnoMaver contends, beleaguered governments are particularly inclined to advocate external war

for the purpose of domestic crisis management even if the chances for victory are doubtful [and]in spite of the high risks involved.

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Resource scarcity and economic stress makes war the only possible scapegoatOakes 6B.A. in Political Science from Davidson and Ph.D. in Political Science from Ohio State

University (Amy, Diversionary War and Argentina's Invasion of the Falkland Islands, SecurityStudies, July-September 2006, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.431-463,

http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410601028354)//BZ

It is right to be skeptical about the reasoning behind the launch of diversionary conflictsbut ifmost of the options on the policy menu are unavailable then it might be perfectlyrational. For this reason, the risky gamble of diversionary war is more likely to be undertaken

by impoverished governments that are running out of solutions to their mounting domesticproblems. While leaders may prefer simply quashing their opposition to diverting attention,states with access to few resources often do not possess the capability to engage in repressive

internal policing.21 Similarly, while leaders may prefer trying to resolve internal troubles by

enacting reforms to the smoke and mirrors of foreign adventure, low extractive capacity statesmay be unable to pay for sufficient political and especially economic changes tosatisfy domestic opponents. Thus, through a process of policy elimination, governments

with low extractive capacity are more likely to be tempted to initiate a diversionary conflict.

Diversionary theory likely AND trumps interdependence WWII provesCopeland 96Associate Professor of International Relations Theory at the University of

Chicago (Dave, Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,International Security, Spring 1996, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 5-41)//BZ

Rosecrance is reluctant to acknowledge realist concerns, perhaps because to do so would imply

that dependent states might be more willing to go to war, as realists maintain, while Rosecranceis arguing that they are less willing to do. This points to a critical distinction between liberalism

and realism that illuminates the liberal understanding of why wars ultimately occur. Forliberals, interdependence does not have a downside that might push states into war, as realistscontend. Rather, interdependence is seen to operate as a restraint on aggressive

tendenciesarising from the domestic or individual levels. If interdependence becomes low,this restraint is taken away, allowing the aggressive tendencies to dominate. To borrow ametaphor from Plato: for liberals, interdependence operates like the reins on the dark horse of

inner passions; it provides a material incentive to stay at peace, even when there are internal

predispositions towards aggression. Remove the reins, however, and these passions are

free to roam as they will." This point becomes clearer as one examines Rosecrance's

explanations for the two World Wars. World War 11, for Rosecrance, was ultimatelydomestically driven. The main aggressors saw war as a means to cope with the upheavals

flowing from "social discontent and chaos" and the "danger of left-wing revolutions"; given theseupheavals, it is "not surprising that the territorial and military-political system[i.e.,

warl emerged as an acceptable alternative to more than one state." Connecting theSecond World War to causes arising from the unit level in the First World War, he continues: "IfGermany, Italy, and Japan did not fulfill their territorial ambitions at the end of World War I,

they might develop even more nationalistic and solidaristic regimes and try again."" With tradeand therefore interdependence at low levels in the 1930s, "economics offered no alternative

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possibility"; it failed to provide what he later refers to as a "mitigat[ingI" or "restraining"influence on unit-level motives for war?'

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Accidents/Miscalc

Accidental launch is highly likely malfunctions, accidents, deteriorating systemsHelfand et. al 98 Co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear

War and a past president of the organization's U.S. affiliate,Physicians for Social Responsibility

(Ira, Accidental Nuclear War A PostCold War Assessment, The New England Journal ofMedicine, 1998, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199804303381824#t=article)

//BZ

Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the endof the Cold War, there is considerable evidence to the contrary.10 The United States and Russiano longer confront the daily danger of a deliberate, massive nuclear attack, but both nations continue to operate nuclear

forces as thoughthis danger still existed. Each side routinely maintains thousands ofnuclear warheads on high alert. Furthermore, to compensate for its weakened conventional armed forces,

Russia has abandoned its no first use policy.11 Even though both countries declared in 1994 that they would notaim strategic missiles at each other, not even one second has been added to the time required to launch a nuclear attack: providing

actual targeting (or retargeting) instructions is simply a component of normal launch procedures.12-14 The default targets ofU.S. land-based missiles are now the oceans, but Russian missiles launched without specific targeting commands

automatically revert to previously programmed military targets.13 There have been numerous broken arrows (majornuclear-weapons accidents) in the past, including at least five instances of U.S. missiles that arecapable of carrying nuclear devices flying over or crashing in or near the territories of other

nations.15,16 From 1975 to 1990, 66,000 military personnel involved in the operational aspects of U.S. nuclear forces wereremoved from their positions. Of these 66,000, 41 percent were removed because of alcohol or other drug abuse and 20 percentbecause of psychiatric problems.17,18 General George Lee Butler, who as commander of the U.S. Strategic Command from 1991 to

1994 was responsible for all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, recently reported that he had investigated a dismaying array of accidents

and incidents involving strategic weapons and forces.19Any nuclear arsenal is susceptible to

accidental, inadvertent, or unauthorized use .20,21 This is true both in countries declared

to possess nuclear weapons(the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and China) and in other

countries widely believed to possess nuclear weapons(Israel, India, and Pakistan). The combination of themassive size of the Russian nuclear arsenal (almost 6000 strategic warheads) and growing problems in Russian control systemsmakes Russia the focus of greatest current concern. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia's nuclear

command system has steadily deteriorated. Aging nuclear communications andcomputer networks are malfunctioning more frequently, and deficient early-warning satellitesand ground radar are more prone to reporting false alarms .10,22-24 The saga of the Mir space station bearswitness to the problems of aging Russian technical systems. In addition, budget cuts have reduced the training of nuclear

commanders and thus their proficiency in operating nuclear weapons safely. Elite nuclear units suffer pay arrearsand housing and food shortages, which contribute to low morale and disaffection.New offices haverecently been established at Strategic Rocket Forces bases to address the problem of suicide25 (and unpublished data). Safeguardsagainst a nuclear attack will be further degraded if the Russian government implements its current plan to distribute both the unlockcodes and conditional launch authority down the chain of command. Indeed, a recent report by the Central Intelligence Agency,which was leaked to the press, warned that some Russian submarine crews may already be capable of authorizing a launch.26 As

then Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov warned last year, No one today can guarantee the reliability of our control systems. . .. Russia might soon reach the threshold beyond which its rockets and nuclear systems cannot be controlled.24A particular dangerstems from the reliance by both Russia and the United States on the strategy of launch on warning the launching of strategic

missiles after a missile attack by the enemy has been detected but before the missiles actually arrive. Each country's

procedures allow a total response time of only 15 minutes: a few minutes for detecting an enemyattack, another several minutes for top-level decision making, and a couple of minutes to disseminatethe authorization to launch a response.27,28 Possible scenarios of an accidental or otherwise unauthorized nuclearattack range from the launch of a single missile due to a technical malfunction to the launch of a massive salvo due to a falsewarning. A strictly mechanical or electrical event as the cause of an accidental launch, such as a stray spark during missile

maintenance, ranks low on the scale of plausibility.29 Analysts also worry about whether computer defects in the year 2000 may
http://www.ippnw.org/http://www.ippnw.org/http://www.psr.org/http://www.psr.org/http://www.ippnw.org/http://www.ippnw.org/

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compromise the control of strategic missiles in Russia, but the extent of this danger is not known. Several authoritiesconsider a launch based on a false warning to be the most plausible scenario of an accidental

attack.20,29 This danger is not merely theoretical. Serious false alarms occurred in the U.S.system in 1979 and 1980,when human error and computer-chip failures resulted in indications

of a massive Soviet missile strike.10,30 On January 25, 1995, a warning related to a U.S. scientificrocket launched from Norway led to the activation, for the first time in the nuclear era, of the nuclearsuitcases carried by the top Russian leaders and initiated an emergency nuclear-decision-

making conferenceinvolving the leaders and their top nuclear advisors. It took about eight minutes to conclude that thelaunch was not part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western submarines less than four minutes before the deadline for ordering a

nuclear response under standard Russian launch-on-warning protocols.10,24,27A missile launch activated by

false warning is thus possible in both U.S. and Russian arsenals.For the reasons noted above,

an accidental Russian launch is currently considered the greater risk.

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AT: Treaties/International law

Nuclear proliferation and failures of international treaties destroy effectivenessGorbachev 7Leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 (Mikhail, The Nuclear Threat,The Wall Street Journal, 1/31/07,

http://www.nuclearsecurityproject.org/uploads/File/TheNuclearThreat-Gorbachev-WSJ-013107.pdf)//BZ

As someone who signed the first treaties on real reductions in nuclear weapons, I feel it is my

duty to support their call for urgent action. The road to this goal began in November 1985 whenRonald Reagan and I met in Geneva. We declared that "a nuclear war cannot be won and mustnever be fought." This was said at a time when many people in the military and among the

political establishment regarded a war involving weapons of mass destruction as conceivableand even acceptable, and were developing various scenarios of nuclear escalation. It took

political will to transcend the old thinking and attain a new vision. For if a nuclear war isinconceivable, then military doctrines, armed forces development plans and negotiating

positions at arms-control talks must change accordingly. This began to happen, particularlyafter Reagan and I agreed in Reykjavik in October 1986 on the need ultimately to eliminatenuclear weapons. Concurrently, major positive changes were occurring in world affairs: A

number of international conflicts were defused and democratic processes in many parts of theworld gained momentum, leading to the end of the Cold War. As U.S.-Soviet arms negotiationsgot off the ground, a breakthrough was achieved -- the treaty on the elimination of medium- and

shorter-range missiles, followed by agreement on 50% reduction in strategic offensive weapons.If the negotiations had continued in the same vein and at the same pace, the world would have

been rid of the greater part of the arsenals of deadly weapons. But this did not happen, andhopes for a new, more democratic world order were not fulfilled. In fact, we have seen a failureof political leadership, which proved incapable of seizing the opportunities opened by the end of

the Cold War. This glaring failure has allowed nuclear weapons and theirproliferation to pose a continuing, growing threat to mankind.The ABM Treaty has

been abrogated; the requirements for effective verification and irreversibility of nuclear-armsreductions have been weakened; the treaty on comprehensive cessation of nuclear-weaponstests has not been ratified by all nuclear powers. The goal of the eventual elimination of nuclear

weapons has been essentially forgotten. What is more, the military doctrines of major powers,first the U.S. and then, to some extent, Russia, have re-emphasized nuclear weapons as an

acceptable means of war fighting, to be used in a first or even in a "pre-emptive" strike. Allthis is a blatant violation of the nuclear powers commitments under the Non-ProliferationTreaty. Its Article V is clear and unambiguous: Nations that are capable of making nuclear

weapons shall forgo that possibility in exchange for the promise by the members of the nuclearclub to reduce and eventually abolish their nuclear arsenals. If this reciprocity is not observed,

then the entire structure of the treaty will collapse. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is alreadyunder considerable stress. The emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear-weapon states, theNorth Korean nuclear program and the issue of Iran are just the harbingers of even more

dangerous problems that we will have to face unless we overcome the present situation. A newthreat, nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, is a challenge to our ability to work

together internationally and to our technological ingenuity. But we should not delude ourselves:In the final analysis, this problem can only be solved through the abolition of nuclear weapons.So long as they continue to exist, the danger will be with us, like the famous "rifle on the wall"

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that will fire sooner or later. Last November the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting inRome, issued a special statement on this issue. The late Nobel laureate and world-renowned

scientist, Joseph Rotblat, initiated a global awareness campaign on the nuclear danger, in whichI participated. Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative provides important support for specific

measures to reduce weapons of mass destruction. With all of them we are united by a commonunderstanding of the need to save the Non-Proliferation Treaty and of the primary responsibilityof the members of the nuclear club. We must put the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons back

on the agenda, not in a distant future but as soon as possible. It links the moral imperative -- therejection of such weapons from an ethical standpoint -- with the imperative of assuring security.

It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact,with every passing year they make our security more precarious. The irony -- and a reproach tothe current generation of world leaders -- is that two decades after the end of the Cold War the

world is still burdened with vast arsenals of nuclear weapons of which even afraction would be enough to destroy civilization.

International law cant solve conflict no need to comply, no special authority,

and power gapsGoldsmith and Posner 5 Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Law Professor at

University of Chicago Law School (Jack and Eric, The Limits of International Law, AmericanEnterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, April 2005,

http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/sugimoto/law.pdf)//BZ

The Limits of International Law intends to fill that gap. The book begins with the premise thatall states, nearly all the time, make foreign policy decisions, including the decisions whether to

enter treaties and comply with international law, based on an assessment of their nationalinterest. Using a simple game-theoretical framework, Goldsmith and Posner argue thatinternational law is intrinsically weak and unstable, because states will comply with

international law only when they fear that noncompliance will result in retaliation

or other reputational injuries. This framework helps us understand the errors of theinternational law advocates and their critics. On the one hand, large multilateral treaties thattreat all states as equal are unattractive to powerful states, which either refuse to enter thetreaties, enter them subject to numerous reservations that undermine the treaties obligations,

or refuse to comply with them. The problem with these treaties is that they treat states as

equals when in fact they are not , and they implicitly rely on collective sanctions when

states prefer to free ride. Thus, many human rights treaties are generally not enforced, and sothey have little effect on states behavior. And the international trade system is mainly aframework in which bilateral enforcement occurs, so powerful states may cooperate with other

powerful states but not with weaker states, whose remedies for trade violations are valueless.International law has no life of its own, has no special normative authority; it is just

the working out of relations among states, as they deal with relatively discrete problems ofinternational cooperation.

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AT: Interdependence

Interdependence doesnt solve non-military conflicts and short-term trade causeswarGartzke et. al 01Associate Professor, Political Science at University of California, San Diego

(Eric, Investing in Peace: Economic Interdependence and International Conflict,International Organization, Spring 2001, Vol. 55, No. 2, pp.391-438,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3078636) //BZ

However, "theoretically, liberalism does not specify what types of conflict are most likely to decrease inthe presence of high levels of interdependence."'6 Gartzke and Dong-Joon Jo find thatwhile liberaldyadsare less likely to engage in militarized conflict, they have more nonmilitarized

conflicts.'7 Mark J. Gasiorowski finds that short-term capital flows increase conflictwhile tradereduces conflict.'8 Gasiorowski and Mary Ann Tetreault emphasize that the quantitative literature measures not

interdependence but interconnectedness.'9 Trade flows alone may not be an optimal measure of

interdependence . Other recent work directly challenges the validity of research on the trade-conflict nexus. Using a

measure of interdependence based on the salience of trade, Katherine protect their interests, these states are more easilyconstrained from balancing against revisionist states with which they share economic relations. Ifconfrontations arise, revisionist states may threaten to disrupt economic relations, increasing

opportunity costs for status quo states.

Interdependence cantprevent conflicts over strategic state interests and increasesthe risk that potential conflicts are realized

Maoz 9Professor at UC Davis and former Head/Professor of Graduate Shool of Governmentand Policy at Tel Aviv University (Zeev, The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependenceon International Conflict across Levels of Analysis,American Journal of Political Science,

January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 223-240, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193877 ) //BZ

Alliances represent arguably the single most important expression of interdependence inpolitical realism. Realists view alliances as a necessary evil, a means of safeguarding one's security that

comes at a price of reduced autonomy(Mearsheimer 1994/5,13; Morrow 1991; Walt 1987). Machiavelli argues that "aprince must beware never to associate himself with someone more powerful than himself so as to attack [offend] others, except when

necessity presses ... For when you win, you are left his prisoner, and princes should avoid as much as they can being at the discretion

of others" ([1541] 1985, 90; italics added). For Rousseau, strategic interdependence implies that even "the most frail man

has more force for his own preservation than the most robust State has for its" ([1754] 2005, 68).

Interdependence is the source of security dilemmas(Hoffmann 1965, 62-63; Knutsen 1994, 250-53),

and thus a key cause of conflict.World peace can exist only under "the ideal world of small,self-sufficient, self-centered states governed by the general will" (Hoff mann 1965, 80), that is, only in a

world composed of self-contained units avoiding contact with each other. Neorealists (e.g., Mearsheimer2001; Waltz 1979) concur. In an anarchic world where contact is unavoidable, the greater the level

of strategic interdependence, the more likely is the potential of conflict to be

converted into an actual reality of conflict .What does this logic imply for the behavior of individual states?

Strategic interdependence of a state is typically a function of its alliance commitments.Alliancesincrease security through the pooling of resources. Butthey render members' choices contingent

on their allies' choices or the actions of the allies' enemies(Maoz 2000, 113; Morrow 2000, 65; Snyder 1997).Two seemingly contradictory mechanisms suggest that strategic interdependence has a positive

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effect on war(Christensen and Snyder 1990). Buck-passing failure of states to deter an aggressor in the hope that their alliancemembers would do so tends to encourage aggression. Chain ganging induces escalation because states are drawn into conflict by

their allies. Empirical studies support this argument(Colaresi and Thompson 2005; Siverson and King 1979).Realists argue that strategic interdependence increases the likelihood of conflict at both the monadic and systemic levels of analysis.Yet they also suggest that strategic interdependence reduces the likelihood of dyadic conflict. States form alliances because they havecommon enemies (Farber and Gowa 1995, 1997; Maoz et al. 2006, 2007; Mearsheimer 1994/5, 13). This reduces pressure for conflict

between allies. Empirical findings on this proposition are mixed.5 Realists dismiss liberal notions about the trade-peace linkages.

As long as strategic interests demand, states would clash with each other even at

the price of disrupting trade . England and France traded with Germany, yet this did not

prevent them from fighting two world wars. Nor did Japanese trade dependence on the UnitedStates deter it from attacking it.6

Strategic dependence is highly polarizing and causes war with 3rdpartiesMaoz 9Professor at UC Davis and former Head/Professor of Graduate Shool of Government

and Policy at Tel Aviv University (Zeev, The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependenceon International Conflict across Levels of Analysis,American Journal of Political Science,January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 223-240, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25193877 )//BZ

The realist paradigm posits a complex cross level relationship between interdependence andconflict. Strategic interdependenceis expected to reduce the likelihood of dyadic conflict, yet it challengesthird parties, thereby raising the likelihood of conflict between dyad members and third

parties(Maoz 2000). Increased strategic interdependence in the system is associatedwith high polarization, and thus with interbloc conflict.Economic interdependence has little

effect on international conflictacross levels of analysis (Barbieri 2002, 37-38). The liberal paradigm expects bothstrategic and economic interdependence to reduce the frequency of monadic, dyadic, and systemic conflict. Thus, integrated

interdependence a combination of strategic and economic ties is also expected to dampen down conflict. Realists, on the other hand,

do not expect such integrative interdependence to have a significant effect on conflict behavior. This discussion suggests that the

relationship between interdependence and conflict is more nuanced than we have been led tobelieve.

Markets cant solve war expectations of reduced trade makes war viable

Copeland 96Associate Professor of International Relations Theory at the University ofChicago (Dave, Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations,


Separating levels of interdependence from expectations of future trade indicates that states

may be pushed into war even if current trade levels are high , if leaders have good

reason to suspect that others will cut them off in the future. In such a situation, the expected

value of trade will likely be negative, and hence the value of continued peace is also

negative, making war an attractive alternative. This insight helps resolve the liberal problemwith World War I: despite high trade levels in 1913-14, declining expectations for future tradepushed German leaders to attack, to ensure long-term access to markets and raw materials.Even when current trade is low or non-existent, positive expectations for future trade will

produce a positive expected value for trade, and therefore an incentive for continued peace. Thishelps explain the two main periods of dktente between the Cold War superpowers, from 1971 to

1973 and in the late 1980s: positive signs from U.S. leaders that trade would soon besignificantly increased coaxed the Soviets into a more cooperative relationship, reducing the

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probability of war. But in situations of low trade where there is no prospect that high trade levelswill be restored in the future, highly dependent states may be pushed into conflict . This

was the German and Japanese dilemma before World War II.

High costs dont deter war irrationality and expansionism are historicalexceptions



The core liberal position is straightforward. Trade provides valuable benefits, or gains fromtrade, to any particular state.A dependent state should therefore seek to avoid war, sincepeaceful trading gives it all the benefits of close ties without any of the costs and risks of war.

Trade pays more than war, so dependent states should prefer to trade not invade. This argumentis often supported by the auxiliary proposition that modern technology greatly increases the

costs and risks of aggression, making the trading option even more rational. The argument was

first made popular in the 1850sby Richard Cobden, who asserted that free trade unites states,making each equally anxious for the prosperity and happiness of both.3 This view was restated

in The Great Illusion by Norman Angell just prior to World War I and again in 1933. Angell sawstates having to choose between new ways of thinking, namely peaceful trade, and the old

method of power politics. Even if war was once profitable, modernization now makes itimpossible to enrich oneself through force; indeed, by destroying trading bonds, war iscommercially suicidal.~Why do wars nevertheless occur? While the start of World War I

just after The Great Illusions initial publication might seem to refute his thesis, Angell in the1933 edition argued that the debacle simply confirmed the unprofitability of modern wars. He

thus upheld the common liberal view that wars, especially major wars, result from themisperceptions of leaders caught up in the outmoded belief that war still pays. Accordingly, his

is not aplea for the impossibility of war . . . but for its futility, since our ignorance on thismatter makes war not only possible, but extremely likely.5 In short, if leaders fail

to see how unprofitable war is compared to the benefits of trade, they may still

erroneously choose the former. Richard Rosecrance provides the most extensive update of

the Cobden- Angel1 thesis to the nuclear era. States must choose between being trading states,concerned with promoting wealth through commerce, and territorial states, obsessed

with military expansion.

Interdependence doesnt prevent war and attempts to break off dependence causes

conflict



Realists turn the liberal argument on its head, arguing that economic interdependence notonly fails to promote peace, but in fact heightens the likelihood of war .8 Statesconcerned about security will dislike dependence, since it means that crucial imported goods

could be cut off during a crisis. This problem is particularly acute for imports like oil and rawmaterials; while they may be only a small percentage of the total import bill, without them most

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modern economies would collapse. Consequently, states dependent on others for vital goodshave an increased incentive to go to war to assure themselves of continued access of supply.

Neorealist Kenneth Waltz puts the argument as follows: actors within a domestic polity havelittle reason to fear the dependence that goes with specialization. The anarchic structure of

international politics, however, makes states worry about their vulnerability, thus compellingthem "to control what they depend on or to lessen the extent of their dependency." For Waltz, itis this "simple thought" that explains, among other things, "their imperial thrusts to widen the

scope of their control."' For John Mearsheimer, nations that "depend on others for criticaleconomic supplies will fear cutoff or blackmail in time of crisis or war." Consequently, "they may

try to extend political control to the source of supply, giving rise to conflict with

the source or with its other customers." Interdependence, therefore, "will

probably lead to greater security competition .'"' This modern realist understanding of

economic interdependence and war finds its roots in mercantilist writings dating from theseventeenth century. Mercantilists saw states as locked in a competition for relative power and

for the wealth that underpins that power. For mercantilists, imperial expansion- the acquisitionof colonies-is driven by the states need to secure greater control over sources of supplyandmarkets for its goods, and to build relative power in the process. By allowing the metropolis and

the colonies to specialize in production and trade of complementary products (particularlymanufactured goods for raw materials), while ensuring political control over the process,

colonies opened up the possibility of providing a system of supply within a self-containedempire.12 In this, we see the underpinning for the neorealist view that interdependence leadsto war. Mercantilist imperialism represents a reaction to a states dependence; states reduce

their fears of external specialization by increasing internal specialization within a now largerpolitical realm. The imperial state as it expands thus acquires more and more of the

characteristics of Waltzs domestic polity, with its hierarchy of specialized functions secure fromthe unpredictable policies of others. In sum, realists seek to emphasize one main point: politicalconcerns driven by anarchy must be injected into the liberal calculus. Since states must be

primarily concerned with security and therefore with control over resources and markets, one

must discount the liberal optimism that great trading partners will always continue to be greattrading partners simply because both states benefit absolutely. Accordingly, a state vulnerable toanothers policies because of dependence will tend to use force to overcome that vulnerability.

Trade cant solve conflict opens up new outlets for conflict and military concerns

outweighPevehouse 4 Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin (Jon,Interdependence Theory and the Measurement of International Conflict, The Journal of

Politics, February 2004, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp.247-266, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3449781 )//BZ

Rather, increasing trade can serve as a potent source of stress and conflict betweenstates. Hirschman ([1945] 1980) has argued that the gains from trade may not be proportional

across all states and that this disparity in relative gains can be a source of leverage of one stateover another. If one partner depends on a trading relationship much more heavily than anotherpartner, the latter state faces fewer costs associated with severing the relationship (see also

Gilpin 1977). Under these circumstances, trade may not be a deterrent to conflict, but rather asource of tension.

Furthermore, as commerce rises, so do the range of economic issues over which disputes canemerge. Waltz (1970, 205), for example, argues that close interdependence means closeness of

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contact and raises the prospect of at least "occasional conflict." For Waltz, this is the foremostimplication of increasing trade relations, noting that "the [liberal] myth of interdependence...,

asserts a false belief about the conditions that may promote peace" (1970, 205). As such,heightened trade could actually stimulate belligerence. In the words of Stein, "Just as

actors who do not interact cannot cooperate, so they cannot fight" (1993, 252). These logicsprovide another causal pathway to reach Hypothesis 3. H3: Higher levels of trade dependence

between states will lead to a greater probability of conflicts between those states. Finally, some

realists hold out the argument that trade levels have little to do with political-military conflict.For these scholars, "there is a very compelling case for factors other than economic ones being

prime movers in the decline in the use of force" (Buzan 1984, 607). Issues such as the balance

of military forces, nuclear deterrence, the distribution of power, even advances in

military technology far outweigh the economic arguments surrounding the use of

force (Gilpin 1987).

Modern interdependence isnt a silver bullet for conflicts conclusive of both

perspectivesPevehouse 4 Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin (Jon,Interdependence Theory and the Measurement of International Conflict, The Journal of

Politics, February 2004, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp.247-266, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3449781 )//BZ

Although the results presented here are certainly not the final answer to the question of trade'sinfluence on political relations, the evidence does suggest that a complex relationship exists

between these two concepts. These complexities are suggested by the finding that trade may

both increase the probability of conflict, yet restrain the frequency of that conflict. Thisobservation is consistent with both realist and liberal theories concerning the political effects of

interdependence. Unfortunately, each side of this debate has centered on only part of theempirical story. The evidence garnered here also suggests that trade may not have a strong

influence on the prospects for cooperative political relations-an argument championed by somecommercial liberals. All of these findings were made possible by reconsidering the nature of thecompeting claims of interdependence theory as well as reconsidering the measurement of the

dependent variable of international conflict. Moving away from the MIDS data allows one tomore accurately test some observable implications of interdependence theory. Obviously, themove away from the MIDS data is certainly not without drawbacks. Both events data sets are far

more limited in their temporal coverage than the MIDS, and some have criticized the overallquality of the events data. Nonetheless, events data do appear to be useful in testing the impact

of trade on political relations. From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that whileincreasing global trade can be a mechanism for lessening conflict, this is only part of the picture.Trade can create hostilities between states and while these tensions may not flower into

widespread and violent military conflict, they can be a source of concern. These hostilities,however, should be viewed in their proper context--on the whole, higher trade dependence does

lower conflict. It is not a panacea for the vagaries of nor is it a blight on interstate

relations.

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Global integration generates greater justification for warMandlebaum 98 Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of

Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University and director of the Project on East-West Relations for the Council on Foreign Relations (Michael, Is Major War Obsolete?,

Survival, Winter 1998-99, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 20-38)//BZ

The unusually brutal way in which the Russian Anny waged that war stemmed from its aversionto fighting it. The armed forces levelled the cities of Chechnya, especially its capital, Grozny,

with artillery barrages and aerial bombardment, killing thousands of civilians, many of them

ethnic Russians. They employed those tactics because, after an initial attack was repulsed,Russian troops were not willing to put their own lives in jeopardy by entering the cities in order

to capture and hold them. Urban warfare is particularly dangerous for soldiers and civilians. ButRussian troops had established themselves as its masters during the Second World War. They

had fought bravely and taken many casualties in capturing cities from Stalingrad to Berlin. Fortyyears later, their successors were unwilling to follow suit, even on a far smaller scale, on their

own territory."When the world is integrated, powerful countries can justify fighting

weak adversaries, or waging war far from their borders, or both, on the grounds

of self-defence . When the world is disaggregated, this rationale loses its force. One of themost vivid examples of the workings of an integrated international system was the scramble for

Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, when the European powers rushed to stake outpositions and control territory simply to pre-empt their rivals. The opposite dynamic was

recently on display in the Balkans. The collapse of authority in Europe's poorest and mostbackward country in 1997 set off a scramble from Albania. The countries of Western Europemaneuvered to avoid taking any responsibility for its fate. The Italians, handicapped by

geographic proximity, were the losers. In fact, the post-Cold War disconnection from theinternational system's powerful centers is one of the causes of the rampant disorder on its

periphery. In the days of geopolitical integration, the great powers often aggravated ,but also frequently stifled or contained, local conflicts. So it was in the Balkans at the end of

the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, where intervention by outsidersresulting in international conferences to address the causes of conflict there brought local warsat least to a temporary end three times before 1914. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet

Union would not have allowed Yugoslavia to disintegrate for fear of being dragged into theresulting turmoil against each other. The end of the Cold War made Europe safe for war in theBalkans.

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AT: Democracy

Democracy doesnt prevent war popular support and military policies minimizeobstructions

Valentino et. al 10Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College (Benjamin,

Bear Any Burden? How Democracies Minimize the Costs of War, The Journal of Politics, April2010, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp.528-544, www.jstor.org/stable/40784674) //BZ

Arough consensus has emerged in the literature on the "democratic peace" that, contrary to the

expectations of early theoristslike Immanuel Kant, democracies are not generally more pacific

than nondemocracies . As modern scholars have recognized, the fact that elected leaders are more

accountable to the citizens who must bear the costs of wars does not imply that these

leaders will avoid wars in general- only that they will oppose highly unpopular wars thatthreaten their tenure in office. Recognizing this, recent studies of democratic war involvement have

focused on war outcomes(defined in terms of victory and defeat) as a central concern of democratic leaders in times ofwar. We argue, however, that democracies should be highly attentive to the costs of war as well as its

outcome; they do not seek victory at any price. Moreover, becausevictory is sometimes won only through aheavy price in blood and treasure, a war's outcome is not a reliable proxy for its costs. Thus, morethan two centuries after it was articulated, one of the key implications of Kant's theory - that democracies should strive to minimize

the costs borne by their citizens - has not been adequately tested. With this in mind, in this article we develop a refined theory ofdemocratic war behavior and utilize a newly constructed dataset on war fatalities to conduct the most rigorous test of this theory todate. We find that highly democratic states suffer fewer military and civilian casualties in their wars than do other states. Moreimportantly, however, we also shed new light on precisely how democracies reduce the costs of the wars they fight, a critical

theoretical question largely ignored by the existing literature on the democratic peace. We argue that democracies limittheir lossesby adopting four key foreign and military policies that help them minimizeboth mili-

tary and civilian fatalities- mobilizing superior military forces in times of war, utilizing casualty-

reducing military strategies on the battlefield, fighting battles on distant territories and fightingwith powerful coalitions of states.

Democracies still go to war if they perceive it as being popular or necessaryValentino et. al 10Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College (Benjamin,Bear Any Burden? How Democracies Minimize the Costs of War, The Journal of Politics, April

2010, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp.528-544, www.jstor.org/stable/40784674)//BZWe believe that thedebate about regime type and war involvement has frequently misconstrued the

logical relationship between the sensitivity of democracies to war losses and the frequency ofwar. If democratic leaders are highly sensitive to costs, there is no reason to expect them toengage in fewer wars, per se. Ratherwe should only expect democracies to be less likely to

engage in highly costly wars.The historical record provides ample evidence that wars vary widely in the costs theyinflict on combatants. The United States, for example, has waged seven major interstate wars since 1900,

making it one of the most frequent participants in major wars over the last century. America'scombined military and civilian losses in these seven conflicts, however, totaled approximately 620,000 dead, roughly the same num-ber that Iran suffered in its war with Iraq (between 450,000 and 730,000), the only interstate war Iran fought in this entire period

(Clodfelter 2002; Cordes- man and Wagner 1990, 3). Unfortunately, the lack of reliable data on fatalities in wars,especially for civilian populations, has made a direct test of the proposition that democracies are betterthan nondemocracies at limiting their wartime costs extremely difficult.1 Since the Correlates of Wardataset does not include a separate measure of civilian fatalities in interstate wars, it often seriously understates the true costs ofwar.2 Using our estimates, interstate wars in the twentieth century accounted for more civilian deaths (approximately 45 million)than military (approximately 37 million). The inability to account for civilian deaths is an especially significant limitation for studies

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of sensitivity to war costs since it seems likely that many leaders - and perhaps democratic leaders in particular - should care more

deeply about civilian loss of life in war than they do about military deaths. Citizens may be more willing to accept

military deaths since soldiers are generally considered legit- imate targets in war and havefrequently volunteered to put their lives at risk.A number of recent studies on democratic war involvement have

recognized that the accountability of democratic elites leads only to the expectation that

democracies will avoid unpopular wars, not necessarily all wars. To test this proposition,most scholars have focused on war outcomes as the principle pre- occupation of democratic elites concerned with main- tainingoffice in times of war (Bueno De Mesquita et al. 2003; Lake 1992; Reiter and Stam 2002). These theories, and the empirical findings

that scholars have marshaled to support them, point to important differences between the military performance of democracies andnondemocracies. But studies focusing on war outcomes do not fully capture the effect of democratic institutions on war behavior.

We argue that democratic leaders must be concerned with their countries' military and civilian fatalities as well as whether they

ultimately win or lose (Filson and Werner 2007). Compared to leaders of other states, democratic leaders should face

greater pressures to reduce their losses regardless of the war's outcome. Indeed, Scott Bennett and AllanStam (1998) find that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to settle for draws or losses in longer wars, presumably inan effort to cut their own losses (although Bennett and Stam do not measure these losses directly).

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AT: Ideology

War is still likely lagging cultures and military glamorizationKaysen 90 Economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, member ofMIT's program in Defense and Arms Control Studies, and co-chair of the American Academy of

Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies (Carl, Is War Obsolete?,International Security, Spring 1990, Vol. 14, No. 4) //BZ

If wars among modern nations truly serve no possible rational purpose, why is there not wide,

even universal, recognition of this proposition, especially by the political leadership of thesenations? What leads them to persist in supporting large military forces, and building their relations to other nations aroundmilitary alliances and the threat, if not actual use, of force? These questions can be answered at both a general and

a quite specific level. The general answer is that cultures change much more slowly than

technologies and institutions . As Keynes said, most living politicians are slaves of some dead

scribbler. Despite Mueller's assertion,war has not yet become "subrationally unthinkable,"even though conscious attitudes toward war have indeed changed. For most

governmental and political elites in modern states, the old ideas of military power and "defense"as the core of national sovereignty still carry great weight. Accordingly, providing the capability for war,and being in some sense prepared to use it, still command a large share of the resources and

energies of governments. This has been true over a wide range of the political spectrum, wide enough to cover most of theactual and potentially eligible ruling groups. Disarmers and pacifists in opposition have changed their views

when they led or joined governments. Those who have maintained these views have remained

outsiders and critics, because most of the publics share their governors' views of these questions. Ona more concrete level, the powerful grip of ideology on governments and publics on both sides of the great postwar East-West divide

has diverted attention from the changes sketched in the preceding pages. The West has combined abhorrence ofcommunism as a mode of social organization with belief in its inherent expansionism and its

goal of conquest. These beliefs, and a reading of the lessons of the 1930s that focused on the failure of will in France,Great Britain, and the United States, have justified the place of military power and the threat of

war in the center of our international picture. On the other side of the divide, ideologicalcommitment to the idea that capitalists must and will resist the inevitable triumph ofcommunism, and the fear of capitalist encirclement, together with a reading of history since 1917 that justifies

that fear, have produced a complementary world picture. It is just the revolutionary change in militarytechnology, especially in the last twenty-five years, that has loosened the grip of ideology on both sides of the

divide. The self-confessed failure of communist ideology as a blueprint for successful social organization is helping to complete theprocess, and opening the way to new thinking in the West as well as the East.Assuming that the foregoing analysis iscorrect, and assuming further that it can be made widely persuasive (which may be two independent assumptions), does not

imply that the world is on the threshold of universal and perpetual peace. Fully modern industrialnations are still in the minority in the world in both number and population. Civil wars, and forms of violent international

conflict falling short of war, are widespread and will continue to be so in the foreseeable

future. Nonetheless, this analysis reinforces Muellers to offer a real basis for hope. The international system thatrelies on the national use of military force as the ultimate guarantor of security, and the threat ofits use as the basis of order, is not the only possible one. To seek a different system with a more secure and amore humane basis for order is no longer the pursuit of an illusion, but a necessary effort toward a necessary goal. The

industrialized nations, which are also the most heavily and dangerously armed, must lead the way to thistransformation by their own example of changed behavior.That may not be enough to persuade the others,but it is certainly the indispensable first step.

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Leaders are irrational war can generate personal benefit that doesnt affect thepopulation

Chiozza and Goemans 4Assistant Professor Vanderbilt University and Associate Professor atUniversity of Rochester (Giacomo and Hein, International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders:

Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?,American Journal of Political Science, July 2004, Vol. 48.No. 3, pp. 604-619,http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/pdfplus/1519919.pdf?&acceptTC=true&jpdCo

nfirm=true)In an important article, Fearon (1995) sought to provide answers for what he called the

fundamental puzzle of war: the occurrence of war in spite of its costliness. Central to hisargument is the claim that" [a]s long as both sides suffer some costs for fighting, then war isalways inefficient ex post" for rational unitary-actors (383). War is inefficient ex post because

the pie to be divided between the opponents will be smaller after the war than it was before thewar. He proposed three mechanisms to explain why, when war is negative-sum, rational

unitary-actors may be un-able to reach agreements that avoid war. Specifically: (1) privateinformation and incentives to misrepresent one's capabilities, resolve, or anticipated costs of

war, (2) commitment problems, and (3) issue indivisibilities. Nevertheless, Fearon explicitly

acknowledged that his focus on "rational unitary-actor explanations" addressed only one ofthree types of arguments that could explain the occurrence of costly wars. The first of these two

alternative types of arguments claims that leaders are sometimes, or even always,irrational. Such arguments currently are poor candidates for systematic examination. Thesecond alternative, however, is not. As Fearon noted, "war may be rational for... leaders if

they will enjoy various benefits of war without suffering costs imposed on thepopulation." It deserves emphasis to note that he continued "I believe that 'second-image'

mechanisms of this sort are very important empirically..." (379, fn. 1). If leaders enjoy "variousbenefits of war" which more than offset their costs, then war is obviously no longer ex postinefficient for the opposing leaders, and Fearon's three mechanisms are no longer sufficient to

explain war. In- stead, new mechanisms could come to the fore, perhaps explaining why, when,

and which leaders enjoy "various benefits of war" that more than offset its costs.

War is irrational and emotional interdependence and institutions are the effectto peace, not the cause and cant prevent warMiller 12 Students Editor at E-International and Relations Research Assistant at Pacific

Resolutions (Sarah, The Transformation of War, E-International Relations Students, 8/16/12,http://www.e-ir.info/2012/08/16/the-transformation-of-war/)//BZ

While these arguments make sense for why war should cease to exist as a policy instrument of

states, they fail to make a convincing case for a number of reasons. First, they are mostly notnew arguments: 5 years prior to WWI Norman Angell made the case for why war does not

make economic sense, and various technologies were said to spell the end of war when theywere invented, such as dynamite, the submarine, artillery, the machine gun, and poison gas(Ray, 1989). Furthermore, it can be argued that economic interdependence and

institutional cooperation are a consequence, rather than a cause, of mutual trust and a

desire for peace (Mueller, 2004). Most importantly, conditions that make war irrational

as a policy instrument are not enough to deter war. War is not only a policy instrument,

or politics by other means (Clausewitz, 1976); it is also an emotional and not fully rationalpractice. An analysis of the place of war in human society must go beyond looking at it in

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rational terms as an instrument to achieve political or economic ends, which overlooks the fact

thatwar is not, fundamentally, a rational activity. It would not have survived this long if

it had only instrumental value, because it relies on people being willing to sacrifice their ownlives (Coker, 2008) to be able to demand this of people it must appeal strongly to their

emotions. Coker argues that war exists not only on an instrumental level, to which the above

arguments apply, but also on existential and metaphysical levels (2008) war is imbued withthe meaning of sacrifice. Van Creveld sees war as an activity that offers men complete freedom,

and an ultimate test of their worth (1991), while Freud sees it as the expression of a dark part ofthe human psyche, which wants to kill and destroy (in Ehrenreich, 1997), and Ehrenreich likens

the feelings invoked by war to those of religion, saying it fulfils deep psychological needs(Ehrenreich, 1997).

Revolts increase the risk of conflict

Colgan 13Assistant professor of international relations at the School of International Service ofAmerican University Jeff, Domestic Revolutionary Leaders and International Conflict, WorldPolitics, October 2013, Vol. 65, No. 4)//BZ

Revolutionary leaders are highly conflict prone, principally because they act aggressively to

instigate militarized interstate disputes. This phenomenon is observed statistically even whencountry fixed-effects are used to control for unobserved time-invariant properties of the states,

and even when the analysis distinguishes between the effect of leader attributes and post-revolutionary regime structures. Moreover, the magnitude of these effects is large: for instance,a state led by a revolutionary leader is almost three times as likely to instigate a mid

as is a state with a nonrevolutionary leader. The large magnitude of the impact underscores theimportance of including revolutionary leaders in research on international conflict, especially in

quantitative analyses, and this article illustrates how that can be done relatively easily using anew data set. New light is also shed on some long-standing theoretical debates about the impact

of revolutionary governments. For instance, scholars have debated whether revolutionary statesare conflict prone primarily because they are aggressive or because they are attacked byneighboring states. This article [End Page 686] offers evidence that revolutionary states are

more aggressive than has been emphasized previously. Opportunities for further research existacross the subfields of political science into the causes and consequences of domesticrevolutions. For scholars of international relations, one pressing question is how revolutions

affect other pertinent variables affecting international conflict, such as incompletedemocratization, the size of the selectorate, the duration of conflict, or authoritarian regime

types.88 It is possible that some existing analyses suffer from omitted variable bias bynot considering the impact of revolutionary leaders. A second question is how differenttypes of postrevolutionary governments (for example, juntas versus personalist dictatorships)

affect the states propensity to engage in conflict.89 For students of American foreign policy,these findings invite further inquiry into how the US government can best react to foreign

revolutions and mitigate their impact on international peace and security.90 For comparativists,this article reinforces the demand for insight into the causes of revolutions and the character ofdifferent types of revolutions. Additional research might investigate how the impact of

revolutions on international conflict varies by the type of revolution or its goals. In sum, thesignificant international impact of revolutionary leaders has been understudied for far too long.

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Belief that the modern age spells an end for war follows a historical trend of failedpredictions trade, institutions, and ideology fail

Kagan 99Professor of Classics & History at Yale University (Donald, History is Full ofSurprises,Survival, Summer 1999, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 139-152)//BZ

I agree that the present moment in history provides a better chance than ever for achieving a

long period of peace, that the deterrent offered by nuclear weapons works towards that end, andthat the growth of trade, democracy and economic interdependence assists that prospect. I donot, however, believe that war is obsolete - not yet, anyway. Nor do I believe that the present

situation is unique in history any more than any moment is. As always, the chances for peace inthe future depend on the decisions and the actions taken by people and these, as always,

provide no guarantee against war- even 'major' war as Michael Mandelbaum has definedit. This is not the first time in history that people have thought that they had arrived at such a

moment, such an extraordinary turning point. In 29BC, when Augustus closed the doors of theTemple of Janus in Rome for only the third time in the 500 years of Rome's history, as ademonstration, a propaganda move, but also as a statement of a real expectation that new

conditions had arrived that made peace appear to be a lasting peace. He turned out to be wrong.

A more interesting year, perhaps, is 1792: a wonderful year for people to be stunninglyoptimistic about the prospects for the future. William Pitt the Younger, then Prime Minister of

England, predicted that there were going to be at least 15 years of peace; never had the horizonlooked clearer. And in the same year, two intellectuals of different sorts, Joseph Priestley and

Tom Paine, had expectations of the same kind. In fact, they were less limited and more like the

optimistic views that Michael Mandelbaum puts forward in his article. They based their

future on a major change of conditions in the world . Priestley said:1 The present

commercial treaties between England and France and between other nations, formerly hostile toeach other, seem to show that mankind begin to be sensible to the folly of war and promise a

new and important era in the state of the world in general at least in Europe. Paine said: 'Ifcommerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the

system of war'. And of course, to this view were added the views of Kant and Montesquieu, whothought that the establishment of the political institution of the republic was going to have thesame pacifying effect. Monarchies were really what war was about. Now that they were gone,

there would be no more war. As Paine put it? The instant the form or' government was changedin France. The republican principles of peace and domestic prosperity and economy arose withthe new government, and the same consequences would follow in the case of other nations Of

course, within a year, France and England were at war, and 20 years or so of terrible, dreadfulconflict followed. In 1848, John Stuart Mill also sang the praises of commerce? Commerce,

which is rapidly rendering war obsolete. by strengthening and multiplying the personal interestswhich act in natural opposition to it ...The great extent and rapid increase of international trade

... [is] the principal guarantee of the peace on' the world. And then, of course, at the end of the

nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century, two people of note wrote importantstatements of this thesis. One had a great impact; the other was not much noticed but was

perhaps the more perceptive. The former was Norman Ange11's famous work, The GreatIllusion. Basically, his message was that war had become so devastating from an economic pointof view that nobody would ever fight. The only problem in Angell's view was to teach people

enough to know war was a disaster. Ivan Bloch was the other one, who sa

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