What Else Causes War?
Bruce Russett
Randall Forsberg's smart, perceptive diagnosis of the state of the international
system is about right, in my opinion. But her prescription, while good as
far as it goes, is in my view incomplete. At several points in her essay she
correctly attributes the decline in major war between countries to three great
changes: military technology, increasing wealth, and the democratization of
political values and institutions. Her prescription to extend this decline,
however, focuses overwhelmingly on measures of arms control and disarmament,
with scarce attention to enhancing the other beneficial changes.
It may well be that the great powers can and will reduce their own arsenals
of mass destruction, in a way that will reinforce one another's wish to do
so and serve as an example to lesser powers. Possibly they can even reach
collective agreements to reduce arms sales to lesser powers whose enhanced
military capabilities, Forsberg sagely notes, ultimately constitute the greatest
short- and medium-term threat to the great powers' interests. But the portents
for such restraint are not terribly good. It certainly would require an effective
pact among the great powers, one that could resist strong and ever-present
temptations to cheat. After all, the standard response to calls for restraint
in the arms trade is, "If we don't sell it the British (French, Germans, Russians,
whoever) will." And there is a lot of truth to that response. It carries special
bite if the great powers' own arms purchases, from their own industries, are
declining. Then the pressures of the military-industrial complex to keep the
arsenals open and the workers employed are especially hard to resist.
If the international circumstances of reduced security threats around most
of the globe seem propitious for such restraint, so too do economic conditions
in the industrialized world. For Europe (save Russia) and even Japan, economic
good times continue. If economic expansion has slowed, even to a near-halt
in some states, conditions are still far better than in worldwide recession
or depression, which we may yet see. Because these circumstances seem propitious,
the results in the United States are particularly disheartening. The American
economy remains on a roll. The military budget is not declining, and a decent
(or indecent) stream of new orders to US arms industries continues to come
in from the rest of the world. Yet at the same time the administration lifts
the embargo on the sale of advanced weapons to Latin America. If this is what
happens in prosperity, what will happen in recession, when unemployed arms
producers cannot readily find alternative activities? Or when, as Forsberg
and I hope, the US military really does shrink significantly.
It is essential, therefore, to broaden the prescription beyond the military
dimension. Like medical researchers, we can look at the "epidemiology" of
military conflicts in the world to understand their causes. Like epidemiologists,
we can study a very large number of cases of peace and conflict. For example,
we can look at all pairs of countries in the world over much of the post-World
War II period. We can ask whether any particular pair experienced a military
dispute (threat or low-level use of military force, not just a war) in any
particular year. We must look at low-level disputes as well as wars, because
most wars--rare events which are hard to generalize about--begin as escalated
disputes. All these cases--of peace as well as dispute--give us about 200,000
"cases" to consider. Analysis of this information, inspired by theory and
some intuition, shows this:
After one takes into account the role of deterrence and military balances,
two of the other influences that Forsberg mentions stand out as big restraints
on the likelihood that two countries will get into a situation whether they
threaten to shoot at each other, or actually do.
First, it makes a big difference if both are democratic. A very democratic
and a very autocratic country were more than two-and-a-half times more likely
to get into a militarized conflict than were two very democratic countries.
And in this period, there were no wars between full democracies. (Most of
the civil wars, and all the cases of genocide, also occurred in countries
with autocratic or totalitarian governments.)
Economics also made a great difference. If two countries were highly interdependent
(their mutual trade accounted for a substantial portion of their GNPs), they
were again about two-and-a-half times less likely to have a military dispute
than if they traded little or at all. This was an even greater disincentive
than simply being wealthy, and the reasons are pretty clear. If we bomb the
cities or factories of a close trading partner--where we also are likely to
have heavy private investments--we are bombing our own markets, suppliers,
and even the property of our own nationals.1
One additional influence is worth noting. International organizations reduce
conflict in many ways. A few of them can actually coerce law-breakers; all
can mediate conflicts of interest, convey information and assist problem-solving,
and socialize governments and peoples to common norms and mutual identities.
Countries that shared membership in many international organizations (a few
of them universal organizations, most of them regional organizations for trade,
security, development, or environmental protection) were also less likely
to fight each other or threaten to do so.
Together, when these three influences (shared democracy, interdependence,
and dense international organization networks) were strong, a pair of countries
was 80 percent less likely to have a military dispute than was the average
pair of countries in the world. These resultsrequire further analysis, but
they appear to compare favorably with what we know, for instance, about which
influences produce many cancers or heart disease. Further analysis also encourages
me to believe that these relations are in fact causal. For example, countries
are unlikely to fight because they trade, and not just vice-versa, and countries
do not join international organizations only with other countries that are
already their close friends.
Forsberg is probably right that the prospects for major conventional war
in the next decade or so are small. For the mid- or longer-term, however,
we need to think hard about supplementing the direct restraints on militarization.
By sometime in the second decade of the next century China may well have a
GNP (total, not per capita) equal to that of the United States. If China keeps
growing rapidly after that, the two could become involved in the kind of deadly
top-dog and second-dog rivalry that Forsberg identifies as a roughly every-50-
year phenomenon. It would be especially dangerous if, as Forsberg warns, China
continues to import high-level military technology from Russia and even forms
an alliance with Russia. The "epidemiological" results suggest a way to handle
that situation.
First, do our best to bring Russia firmly into the Western security system
as its democracy and free-market commitments become more secure. If NATO is
to expand, do not stop that expansion short of the border of a Russia that
is making reasonable political and economic progress--to do so will drive
it toward a tie with China. Second, do our best to bring China firmly into
the world network of economic interdependence and international organization--it
is in our interest as well as China's.
Because China is not likely to democratize soon or rapidly, it is all the
more important to strengthen the economic and institutional incentives that
discourage a turn to military expansion. (The Chinese leadership has been
far more willing to accept international pressures for economic than for political
liberalization.) This will not be easy, nor always comfortable. But it is
far wiser than relying primarily on a "preventive" military build-up to contain
China. The result of that strategy could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy
of conflict.
Some "rogue" countries will likely stay outside any system of pacific relationships
that can be built. But if they are few, deterrence can be achieved with the
lower levels of military capability that Forsberg advocates, and citizens
will more readily accept and insist on lowering the levels.
1 These results are reported in John Oneal and Bruce Russett,
"The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict,
1950-1985," International Studies Quarterly, June 1997. Others are
in the review and publication pipeline.
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