Malanya Voetter 5-1-2023
Essentials of International Relations
NINTH EDITION
Karen Mingst, Heather McKibben
International Relations Summary: ESSENTIALS OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
CHAPTER 6: WAR AND SECURITY
Security attacks:
- War
- Terrorism
- Cyber attacks
Classical threat: war
classical way of states to protect themselves: military. Today, the definition of national security
covers a variety of factors, including economic and environmental threats as well as nonphysical
threats arising in cyberspace.
How has the nature of national security changed over time?
- What constitutes war and what does not?
- What are the appropriate types of responses to different types of threats to national
security?
- How might war and other threats to national security be prevented?
national security: the ability of a state to protect its interests, secrets, and citizens from external and
internal threats that endanger it
→Focus on threat, security, capability
Human security: threats on individuals themselves.
Following the world wars and the Korean War (1950–53), both the frequency and intensity of
interstate war began a slow decline. This trend, however, is not the same for internal conflicts.
IR scholars debate on how to define war.
1. a war involves organized, deliberate violence by an identifiable political authority
2. wars are relatively more lethal than other forms of organized violence
3. for an event to count as a war, both sides must have some real capacity to harm each other
(not as in genocides)
→In sum, war is an organized and deliberate political act by an established political authority that
causes 1,000 or more deaths in a 12-month period and involves at least two actors capable of
harming each other
,→ definition is important in practice, as in the case of the Rwanda case, for example
we distinguish between wars that take place between sovereign states (interstate war) and wars that
take place within states (intrastate war).
Scholars also distinguish between conventional and unconventional warfare, terrorism, and
cyberwarfare.
Interstate war: wars between states
- militaries, and the state’s capacity to marshal resources in support of them, make states
formidable adversaries.
→States make good subjects for analysis and comparison
- Examples: WW1/ 2
- With the increased destructiveness of modern warfare, adopting more limited actions has
become states’ most common option when contemplating violence against other states.
Intrastate wars: civil wars, take place within a state
- Characteristics: take a long time, the stakes are high, substantial human costs
- Example: African states
→(DRC 1996 →rebellies, groepen die de overheid willen overnemen; also involvement of
Rwanda)
→(Arab spring 2011: government forces harshly repressed peaceful protests, which then led
to an escalation of protests and international condemnation. That escalation led to a harsher
government response, with protests becoming more widespread and more violent. After
evidence of government murders, rapes, torture, and massacres, there were calls for
international intervention.
→(Syria: As if the war was not complicated enough, the terrorist group the Islamic State (IS)
began making territorial gains in eastern Syria. This prompted the United States and several
Middle Eastern states to begin to attack the IS in Syria. In 2015, Russia began conducting air
strikes throughout Syria—not only against the IS but also against the rebel groups, bringing it
directly into the civil war on the side of the government. Beyond fighting the IS, the United
States also became involved, but on the side of the rebel groups.)
- civil wars can become internationalized
,conventional wars: regular armies openly engaged in combat with the objective to win control of the
state by defeating the enemy’s military force on the battlefield (no use of weapons of mass
destruction; combat actions are restricted to conventional targets (i.e. military targets)
unconventional wars: wars distinguished by willingness to flout restrictions on legitimate targets of
violence or refuse to accept the traditional battles of an indicator of victory or defeat (use of guerilla
tactics)
- wars are often a mix of these two categories: World War I and World War II, while fought for
the most part conventionally, had some unconventional aspects in terms of weapons and
targets.
- How do you define a noncombatant supporting the military in some way?
Guerilla warfare: the use of irregular armed forces to undermine the will of an incumbent
government (or its foreign support) by selectively attacking the government’s vulnerable points or
personnel over a prolonged period of time; often used by weaker power (in an asymmetrical
conflict)
- More prominent in the last 75 years
- Guerilla groups hide among civilians and use strategies including hit-and-run tactics and
ambushes;
- Effectively reverses the conventional relationship between soldiers and civilians: in
conventional war, soldiers risk their lives to protect civilians. In guerilla warfare, civilians risk
their lives to protect the guerillas, who hide among them and who cannot easily be
distinguished from ordinary civilians when not actually fighting. Unconventional, guerilla
tactics are therefore designed to win control of the state, not by defeating enemy forces
outright on the battlefield, but by first winning control over the civilian population.
→another way to overcome a more material powerful opponent: nonviolent resistance (Gandhi).
Terrorism: a threat to national security, and asymmetric conflict
No particular definition, but three main components:
1. Terrorism is political in nature or intent
2. Perpetrators of terrorism are nonstate actors
3. Targets of terrorism are noncombatants, such as ordinary citizens, political figures or
bureaucrats
→there are a lot of politics behind official labels
- The essence of terrorism is psychological, not physical. Killing is a by product of terrorism as a
strategy.
- The real aim of terrorism is to call attention to a cause, while at the same time calling into
question the legitimacy of a target government by highlighting its inability to protect its
citizens.
- Terrorists hope to harness the power of ideas (debate: is power only the material ability to
kill, or can it reside in the power of ideas?)
- Much recent terrorist activity has roots in the Middle East – also outside ME; zie table 6.1
- Also about the roots of IS
- There are significant splits within these groups
- Since the turn of the century: terrorist attacks have become more lethal, groups have
become more dispersed
- The international community has taken action against terrorist attack by creating an
international framework of rules dealing with terrorism. (punishing hijackers and those who
protect them, for example, sanctions)
, Cyberwarfare: state actions taken to penetrate another state’s computers or networks for het
purpose of causing disruption
Cyberspace: the entire space of networked information and communication systems and devices
- New threat; critical form of infrastructure
- Examples of cyber attacks (2017 Russia on Ukraine, 2003 China on the west)
- Mostly securing this in unilateral relations; there has been some cooperation; no worldwide
cooperation.
- All attacks on cyberspace have a transnational component, as these attacks take place all
over the world
THE CAUSES OF WAR
Realists:
- War is a natural, inevitable feature of interstate politics due to:
- Cause of war: anarchy in the system - there is no authority to prevent:
→disputes over contested territory
→competing claims to self-determination made by groups within states. Authority rests
within the states themselves; the groups seeking self-determination thus often resort to
force against the state
- War can help a state acquire resources that it can use to increase its power
- Offensive realists should keep in mind that, while demonstrating a willingness to engage in
war may be costly in the short run, it can pay huge dividends in terms of reputation later. The
credible threat of conquest can frequently act as a motivator to change the interests of other
states by making them believe that they, too, could be the targets of conquest. To avoid a
war, states that might have opposed the threatening state instead choose to ally with it
(bandwagoning).
- Focuses on the international system
- Another cause of war: the distribution of power.
→War occurs because states believe that more power leads to expectations of more
influence, wealth, and security:
1. A rising power might launch a war to solidify its position
2. The currently most powerful state(s) might launch a preventive war to keep a
rising challenger down
Liberalists:
- Focuses on the characteristics of the state and institutions (both domestic and international).
- Societal explanations of war
- Kant argued that three factors help to foster peace: democracy, economic interdependence,
and international institutions.
- Central factors in liberal theories:
→democracy
→economic interdependence
→institutions
→population (cohesiveness, wealth)
- Democratic peace theory: holds that democracies rarely go to war with other democracies:
1. They share norms of compromise and cooperation
→domestic level: citizens can deal with complaints by nonviolent means
