Conditions of War and Peace

Conditions of war and peace

Kiichi Fujiwara Professor, Graduate School for Law and Politics, Policy Alternative Research Institute The University of Tokyo

Conditions for War and Peace

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Index 1. When war becomes necessary 1.1. Can war be necessary? 1.2. Theories of just war 1.3. Deterrence or war-fighting? 1.4. Invasion and third power intervention 1.5. Civil war, human right and collective security 1.6. Case I: The Fall of Yugoslavia 1.7. Failed states and the responsibility to protect 1.8. Case II: The case of Libya 1.9. Limits of intervention 2. Power transition and war 2.1. Power transition in international politics 2.2. Theories of power transition and hegemonic wars 2.3. Who attacks first? 2.4. Case I: Spain and Great Britain 2.5. Alliance and power transition 2.6. Case II: Alliance and First World War 2.7. Military power and economic power 2.8. Case III: The rise of Japan, 1960s-1990s 2.9. Case IV: The rise of China, 1990s-2010s 2.10. Can hegemonic wars be avoided? 3. Democratic peace, democratic wars 3.1. Two forms of liberalism 3.2. Theories of democratic peace 3.3. Nationalist mobilization and war 3.4. Case I: The French Revolution 3.5. Militarism and civilian control 3.6. Case II: German militarism and First World War 3.7. Wars led by civilian government 3.8. Case III: The war on Iraq 3.9. Toward the age of democratic wars 4. Conditions for peace 4.1. Three arguments for peace 4.2. Deterrence as the condition for peace 4.3. Deterrence failures 4.4. Case I: Germany, Japan, and the origins of Second World War 4.5. International institutions and rule of law 4.6. Limits of international institutions 4.7. Security dilemma and arms control 4.8. Case II: Nuclear development in North Korea 4.9. Case III: Security dilemma in East Asia 4.10. Between power politics and the rule of law


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Kiichi Fujiwara Professor, Graduate School for Law and Politics, Policy Alternative Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Kiichi Fujiwara is professor of International Politics at the University of Tokyo. A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Professor Fujiwara studied as a Fulbright student at Yale University before he returned to Japan at the Institute of Social Science (ISS). He has held positions at the University of the Philippines, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Bristol, and was selected as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center at Washington D.C. Prof. Fujiwaras works on international affairs include Remembering the War, 2001; A Democratic Empire, 2002; Is There Really a Just War? 2003; Peace for Realists, 2004 (winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005; revised edition published in 2010); America in Film, 2006; International Politics, 2007; War Unleashed, 2007; Thats a Movie! 2012.

Sho Hayase Teaching Assistant Sho Hayase received his Bachelor of Arts in Occidental History from the Department of History, University of Tokyo. He also received his Masters degree in Public Policy from the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo in March 2013. He majored in International Public Policy, and completed his research thesis entitled The Use of Force by Democratic Countries toward Authoritarian Countries. He joined the Education Abroad Program and studied at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego between September 2012 and March 2013. He is interested in Power Transition in International Relations, Security Dilemma, Bargaining Theory, Triangular Relationship in East Asia and Pacific Region, and Complexity of States Action and Recognition.


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1. When war becomes necessary 1.1. Can war be necessary? In this course I would like to think with you about conditions for war and peace. This is a question that has plagued the thoughts of many thinkers in the past. War, of course, is a terrible destruction. So many people die, and so many peoples' living are uprooted. And therefore, it is only legitimate to think that wars of all kinds should be eliminated from the Earth. But when it comes to the measures for peace, what we need to prevent warfare, then suddenly the whole discussion becomes so complicated. For example, one way to avoid war would be to have a strong military and show force to ones neighbors, so that you would not be attacked so easily. The other extreme would be to eliminate all possession of arms, that weapons should disappear from the planet, so that people can enjoy peace. And as you can see, thinking about condition of war and peace is an extremely controversial manner, matter that does not allow easy answers. And that is exactly what I want to do in this course. Instead of providing you answers, I want to provoke your ideas, your reactions, and your internal difficulty in facing the problems. Let's start from the easiest and the most difficult question. Can war be necessary? That alone is an extremely controversial issue. For we would like to think that war is unnecessary, but that not may be the case, and there's a problem. As wars produce much disasters and calamities, it is easy to reach conclusions that wars are not desirable. But then what war is not desirable? What is not desirable is an invasion to your homeland. Even if it accompanies many victims of such aggression, it must be legitimate to fight against the invaders, and then you have the heroes who fight against the invaders and the victims who suffer because of the aggression from the invaders. In this light, the war is necessary here, its the invasion that is unnecessary and that must be fight back. This combination of hero and victim is almost ambiguous when we follow the tradition of war memories in every country. Starting from the from the First World War to the Second World War, you see many war memorials that are dedicated to those people who passed away and those people who fought gallantly against the enemies. But at the same time, we must start to think that war is something that cannot be avoided anyway. That war is like part of our human nature cannot be challenged. So this leads to this question, can wars be avoided? In many ways, wars were seen as something similar to natural disasters. Just like earthquakes or fires, war is something that just happened, and was the will of the God that dictated such calamities; God's ways are always so difficult to know for the mortals and that is something that is beyond our reach. At the same time, there were some ideas that emerged essentially in Europe in the 17th century, that war is not a natural disaster but something conducted by humans, and because it is conducted by humans we can change it; if its a human behavior then it can be controlled. I'm not arguing that those in 17th Europe argued about abolishing warfare, far from it, but they were arguing that war is actually a tool of a state's policy. A government has a right to use war as a rational tool of foreign policy, so if you follow that line, then the argument is quite different from the one that you might anticipate from taking wars as natural disasters.


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In many ways, it was this legacy of the Renaissance or the humanitarian views on war, not humanizing war but taking it as a human behavior, that formed the basis of international law. And of course, we can argue that wars of self-defense are an inherent right of individual nations, and also, so long as governments decide to go to war there is no reason that such action should be limited. But then, the argument should go even further than that. For example, take a case where a large of number of people are being massacred, something that happens all the time in many wars, but it can also happen without a war. Take for example a dictator who is killing people in his or her land, thousands of people are being slaughtered by the dictator. Should such situation be allowed to continue? Then you have a very different question here. This is not about war as a rational tool of foreign policy, this is a question about intervening into a humanitarian disaster and save people from tyranny and violence. We will discuss later about this question of responsibility to protect. So as you can see, this avoidance of war is closely related to another question that is if wars should be avoided. Under certain circumstances, might be the case that we should fight war to save people, and refusing to participate in a military action against a violent villain, would be taken not only cowardice, but as a conspiracy of silence that allows so many people to die. But then, if it is the case, there can be a necessary war, and we also have to pay attention to the fact that war brings out much casualties and destruction. We can argue that war is necessary when its killing a large number of people, but the destruction brought about by that war could be much larger than the war itself. And that leads to the final question here: when are wars necessary and when are wars unnecessary? Establishing a principle on this issue is not only important in observing wars, but also in proposing very concrete foreign policy. If we fight unnecessary wars, then we are simply allowing people to be involved in mass killings, and we are allowing people who do not have to die to pass away before their fate.


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1.2. Theories of just war Here I'd like to discuss with you about just war. The word itself might cause alarm among many of you who think that there cannot be a just war. And as a matter of fact, many people might assume that just war theories are justifications of war that glorify warfare, that praise war; but this is far from the truth.

The origin of just war theories dates back to the Roman Empire, even before Christianity. Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of the main philosophers of the Roman Empire, who competed for political power with Julius Caesar, focused on this very essential question: can we make distinctions between a just war and an unjust war? Wars involve so much destruction and calamity and loss of human lives, so they certainly seem unjust. But at the same time, wars were necessary to defend one's homeland, one's people and one's property.

In the classical days, the power of Rome in wars was somehow balanced by the power of the opponents. And therefore, whatever Rome wished to do in war was somehow limited by the power of the opponent. But that was not the only story, because Rome became so strong that there was no military capability that could force Rome into concession. And when you have such a strong power, how can you stop that power from abusing its power

That was a question that Cicero faced when Rome became too strong, because Rome might be able to fight wars anyway and that alone might lead into a dictatorship. Cicero of course opposed the extension of the emperors power, and he thought that a certain legal restraint would be necessary to limit the power of the emperor. When Cicero talked about a just war, he was not justifying it; quite the opposite, he was somehow ruling out wars that are not just.


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So there for just war theory emerged as an argument that tried to establish what wars are just and what wars are not. And then Augustine of Hippo, another Roman philosopher in the Christian base, went further along with this argument and established several principles, some of which are written down here. For Augustine of Hippo the central question was how could Christians justify massive killing and massive warfare; there should be a line to be drawn between things that Christian could and could not do.

Centuries later Michael Walzer, an American philosopher, somehow established this study of a just war. Walzer was writing its questioning after the Vietnam War. The question was what the American's could, because the United States were so strong that they could fight wars of their choice, even if others might think that such wars were illegitimate. So Scilo, Augustine of Hippo and Michael Walzer, all shared this view that we should draw a line between what can be done and what should not be done in warfare.

One of the central issues here is about the cause of the war, what wars can be fought and what wars should not be fought. This is called the question of jus ad bellum, that essentially means what wars can be fought and which wars should not be fought. Something that is central is a just cause, that a war should be based on a cause that is just; in other words, wars that cannot be legitimized in the in the origin are unjust by itself. The actor must be a public authority, an authority that governs a certain tract of land under legitimate grounds, which also means that if this is an abusive dictator whose authority in his land is quite questionable, then that would not be an actor of a just war. Then we have the question of proportionality, the amount of destruction that might accompany that war should be more or less limited, and smaller than the gains that can be achieved by fighting that war. Lets say for example that you are trying to save 10.000 people in a conflict, but you estimate that if you start a war, then 100.000 people might die. In that case the proportionality principle is obviously violated. And such question leads to another question which is the other side of the just war theory: what wars should not be fought? So long as our argument holds water, I think this is quite clear. Lets suppose there is a war that does not have a just cause, for example a king that wants a territory of the neighbor; the only reason why he wants that territory is because he wants a larger tract of land. That is not a just cause. In a more extreme case, if there is a rather sadistic political leader, who takes interest in killing a large number of people, that is certainly not a just cause. One of the just causes that has been accepted is the right of self-defense; a war that is aimed at defending one's own land is almost automatically assumed to be a just war. Also, from the rule of public authority, we can argue that a power that lacks public authority, say for example a strong man who has a large number of armed guards but who was not recognized as a legitimate political leader, that is not the public authority and therefore he does not have the legitimate right to conduct warfare. The other case would be terrorism, where an armed group that is eager to use act of violence even including suicide and that has terrorist organization. That would most certainly not be a public authority because that group lacks the legitimate grounds or political rule.


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You might say, however, that all of this is merely academic, and in effect it is. Because wars are fought by governments or nations and there are very few international authorities that can impose international law on the behavior of individual states. And if that is so, this whole discussion about just war is a mere facade, is meaningless, because if there is no authority that can actually enforce their decision on the behavior of individual states, then all these things is simply talk, and strong powers may able to do whatever they wish. That is true, but we also have to pay attention to two things. One is that many nations share a third in commitment in the preservation of the status quo, the state of things as they are. When that is the case many governments may agree on certain principles of international relations, and the preservation of such principles even if there are not international authorities; and that of course is the origin of international law. Without a world government, nevertheless, there can be and there have been international bodies that do enforce certain decisions, with limits of course, but with some power. And also, we should also pay attention to the role of major powers, sometimes called empires: when a power is so strong that its decision cannot be deterred by other powers. Then again that power cannot be restrained by other powers. So therefore, just like in the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar or the United States in the present day, the role of justice and the argument about just war is in our hands. Among the many questions related to just war, the most important one is about legitimate means. What can be done in a war? What can be allowed in a war? Can a war be fought by all means? In a way, this is a very academic question. For a soldier fighting in the theater, the question's quite obvious: he wants to do everything so that he can beat the enemy and secure his own safety, and to that extent, using the maximum destructive weapon, weapons of mass destruction. There's no question that such means would be welcomed by the soldiers, who are willing to fight in the warfare. But this becomes a major issue when the amount of destruction that can take place from individual weapons develops so massively, and that is why the use of certain weapons becomes a major issue in the study of war. This issue about legitimate means in a just war is usually discussed in terms of jus in bello, that is the method allowed in warfare. Jus in bello is usually discussed as two principles or combination of two principles. The first one is the distinction principle, which origin is old but quickly developed in the 19th and 20th centuries: this is about making distinction between those who are fighting the war, the combatants, and those who are not fighting the war, the non-combatants. In more easier terms, it means that a soldier may attack a soldier, but not civilians, for the civilians are not fighting the war. Now this principle might sound quite self-evident to many of you, but if you accept this principle this certainly limits the kind of action you can take. For example, there might be an opportunity where you can fight against a large number of enemy population and you are not sure who is a combatant and who is a non-combatant. You can certainly not ask the enemy, so therefore it might be logical to kill them all, but that is against distinction principle. And this gives a very strong limitation to the kind of strategies that can be used in warfare. The second one is the proportionality principle: means that the causalities or injuries or destruction that accompanies warfare should not exceed the expected advantages that come out with warfare. If war is aimed towards a legitimate objective, it has a legitimate aim. Then the way you carry out that war should also be limited in a way that the destruction and the casualties and the injuries brought about by that war should always be kept to a minimum, so that the good that is produced by the war should never be less than the bad.


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But then again this is a very serious issue, which relates to the tools of war: what exact tools of war should be ruled out from warfare? This is a very difficult issue and very few governments are willing to pay attention to it. At least up until the 18th century, the limitation of the tools of war was essentially, an academic question. The war that changed the situation was the Crimean War. The Crimean War was not a war that started as a world war of any kind. This just was essentially a war that included the Russians, and the Turks, and the Brits, and the French. In many ways a traditional warfare, but even during the traditional warfare, so many soldiers died from sickness diseases, malnutrition, and it became very difficult to save them from the their injuries. Can such a situation where the wounded soldiers are dying in the battlefield, be allowed? This was a question that the British philosopher as well as a nurse Florence Nightingale faced. Observing the calamity of warfare in the Crimean War, where she worked as a nurse, she strongly argued that protecting the health of wounded soldiers should be recognized. And that such medical treatment should be done, irrespective of the side that that is fighting the war.


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Another person who is important in this context is Jean Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, an organization that provides health and medical treatment to those wounded soldiers in the battlefield, regardless of nationalities. The Red Cross would help the enemy as well as our side, and by providing medical treatment across national borders, they argued that the horror of warfare should be limited to a minimum. But then this is only about the site lines of warfare, it's not about limiting weapons as such, because it is very difficult to limit the use of weapons even if they are destructive. Or put it the other way around, it is difficult to limit

the use of weapons of mass destruction, precisely because of the fact that they can produce mass destruction. And how can weapons of mass destruction be kept out of use? We have a good case here, and that is the poison gas. Poison gas, or the mustard gas, was used quite extensively in the First World War. It produced many deaths, especially in those dugout benches where the soldiers were living. You throw poison gas into those trenches and a huge number of people would die almost immediately. The use of poison gas is not allowed, and when the Hussein government used gas one of the poisonous gasses in the repression over the Shiite's minorities, this became one of the very strong reasons to think about overthrowing the regime. There are some evident motives to ban the use of poison gas. It might move in one direction, but because of the wind direction it might move into the othe, meaning that it might attack the enemy, but then the fighting side might also be destroyed. That is one reason why the ban on poison gas was easier than others.

When it comes to nuclear weapons, or chemical weapons, biological weapons or nuclear weapons, the ban is a bit more complicated. Nuclear weapons are most certainly one of the weapons of mass destruction. The foremost weapons of mass destruction, it might also achieve certain stability in international relations, by providing a very strong power of deterrence. If you have nuclear weapons, then it becomes very difficult to attack your country, so long as you can use that nuclear capability against your enemy. And if nuclear weapon is one guarantee for your survival, then it follows, that even if this is a weapon of mass destruction, it should be kept in use. This has been a matter of debate, but we have to remember that nuclear weapons have not been used since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and regardless of all the discussion about nuclear proliferation, the number of nations that still hold nuclear weapons is not that large. The speed of nuclear proliferation has been much less than accepted, which might show that show that the inhuman nature of nuclear weapons is recognized by the practitioner themselves. And although we are far away from illegalizing nuclear weapons, the youth or even the position of weapons of mass destruction is no longer guaranteed.


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1.3. Deterrence or war-fighting Up to now we've been discussing about the question of war and justice. But then there is a legitimate line of argument that denies applying the question of justice in warfare. For warfare is an area where morals and law play very little role, and the only way of preventing warfare, these people argue, is that we should be better armed, and strong enough so that the enemy cannot attack us. The argument that a certain major military power can force other nations not to attack is called deterrence: when you have a large military capability, so that when other powers attack you can retaliate with very strong power, there is a likelihood that the other power may not attack you. The argument of deterrence is an interesting, because while it rules out any role of law or justice or morals in international relations, at the same time it is not a military argument at all. The focus here is on defense of ones land: the use of military power here is not about winning a war, but preventing a war. So deterrence theory is an interesting combination of realist arguments that rule out legal or moralistic understanding of international relations, but also refrains from more offensive interpretation of international relations about maximizing power. This is about defense, survival and prevention of warfare, they will argue, and then the central question here is whether war can be deterred. If deterrence is strong enough, then position of arms and military would prevent the occurrence of war. So therefore, we really don't have to talk about justice, or human rights or anything, but simply build up a strong military, and make sure that the other side will not attack you. This is nice as long as it works. But then there are certain questions that come along with a successful deterrence. The question here is when deterrence works, and when it doesnt work. Take for example a terrorist who is about to start a suicide bombing of his or her enemy. That terrorist is eager to risk his or her life for this military action. Can you deter this act of terrorism? I'm afraid not, because telling him or her that we're going to kill him or her will not prevent the action, because that person is ready for death already. A power that is ready to take the risk of massive warfare can never be deterred. This is a question we usually call the question of aggressive power, which means that a power that is willing to take the risk of massive warfare cant almost, by definition, be deterred; we cannot deter an aggressive power. And this is the question that comes along with Nazi Germany where Hitler was willing to start a war in Europe regardless of the military cost. The nice thing about reality is that there are very few aggressive powers. There might be many terrorists, but there are very few aggressive powers that are eager to start a war, risking a major war. One of the key cases of successful deterrence took place in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In 1962, a major missile base in Cuba, which was built obviously by the Soviet Union, was detected by the United States. And this started a few days that brought the world very close to nuclear combat. If the Soviets were ready to risk warfare, then they could have used nuclear weapons against American soil. And if the Americans, who are far more superior in military capability, were willing to take the risk, they could have attacked the Soviet Union here. But both sides, actually during this crisis tried to stay away from the use of nuclear weapons. The naval blockade that was imposed on the Soviet Union and Cuba was of a very limited degree, and the Soviets were eager to negotiate. After all, they agreed to pull out nuclear missiles from Cuba, and moreover, out of this crisis the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on several measures that would prevent accidental warfare, including installing a hotline, a telephone line between the United States and the U.S.S.R. so that an accidental warfare may not take place. And also they started to agree on a regime and that is now a part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty scheme.


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Here we can see a case where war was deterred. But then, the final question here again, comes back to our mind. Can an aggressive power be deterred? No. And if that is the case, then deterrent strategy will not be able to prevent warfare between a power and an aggressive power. If there is a power that is eager or willing to accept the risk of warfare, deterrence will not work. So deterrence as such does not automatically guarantee peace at all. It is a useful strategy for national defense, but there are several loopholes that might lead to new round of international instability. And we can take several cases where a new nation with nuclear capabilities emerged in the globe and that produced instability. Like for example in 1964, Peoples Republic of China tested their nuclear weapons. Now I doubt if China was willing to invade any country at this moment and I'm pretty sure along with many specialists, that China was more interested in defending their own soil in their development of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, China was taken to be a much less trustworthy power than the Soviet Union and this was after the Cuban Missile Crisis I described. And Soviet Union was taken to be a more reliable partner in diplomatic negotiations, while China was taken to be a much more aggressive power. So although I doubt if China was actually an aggressive power, there was a suspicion and anxiety that China might one, and that alone was sufficient in making the relationship between the United States and China a very tense one.

Another case would be the nuclear development of North Korea. Again I do not think North Korea's intention in developing nuclear capability was offensive. North Korea's policy was far more offensive in the 1970's than in the late 1980's or 1990's, for the obvious reason being that North Korea was far outnumbered in terms of major capability compared to her neighbors. But nevertheless, here we are talking about the nation that started the Korean War, which was not deterred by American presence and crossed the 38th parallel. So even if North Korea may not be an aggressive power, there was an anxiety that Pyongyang may be working on an aggressive design, even if that a possibility is a limited one. That limited possibility could not be ruled out and therefore, the nuclear development of North Korea invited a series of international crisis for obvious reasons. So deterrence is one way to reduce the possibility of warfare. And then it does come with hidden costs, for after all deterrence implies that each nation should develop a major military capability, a large arsenal and large number of major troops. It's very costly and also very disruptive to the life of many, but even more than that deterrence is not sacrosanct, deterrence can break down. And even if there are no aggressive powers, the very possibility that a certain power might be aggressive, the perception itself would make the terrorist extremely unstable as seen in the case of China in 1960s or North Korea since the mid 1990s.


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1.4. Invasion and third power intervention We've been talking about major powers. When we talked about just war, we discussed about the Roman Empire and the United States, and when we talked about deterrence, we talked about the United States or the Soviet Union. All of them are countries with quite large military power. But then what happens to minor powers? What happens to countries that dont have large military? How can they defend themselves? For it is one thing to argue that the right of self defense is accepted in international society, but it is quite another to argue that self defense can work for any nation when you don't have a large military. It might be very difficult to defend your line. What happens then? One possibility is that weak powers would depend on the protection provided from major powers. Alliances are not necessarily made among equal powers; as a matter of fact, the number of alliances in history has been alliances that involved smaller powers and large powers. Small powers would rely on a large power for her defense in case other countries might invade. And in return, of course the small power would provide several conditions that are favorable to the major power. But that can be extremely vulnerable in certain situations. Say, for example, a power that is so proud that power is not eager to enter into any alliance. How can the power survive? It's a weak power, and it wants to survive but not enter into any alliance. One case would be for example Switzerland, which has a very small tract of land. Each citizen now own and owes the responsibility to become of fighter, and there is conscription established for each male in Switzerland. With the mountainous landscape, it becomes very difficult to invade the country. But Switzerland might be an exceptional case, and when you form an alliance with a power that might be eager to take over your land you're in trouble. What do you do? In many ways, third power intervention can actually mean intervention for certain secular gain. The developing of the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire, for example, was supported by Great Britain; without British support, I doubt that Greek could win independence. But then, why did Great Britain support the independence of Greece? The reason's quite simple. United Kingdom was interested in weakening the Ottoman Empire, so the intervention from Great Britain was certainly not for humanitarian reasons at all. Great Britain intervened because wanted to have a geopolitical advantage visa vie Turkey, and it had little to do with the human rights of people living in Greece. And if that is the case then we cannot expect third power to behave as a guardian of peace and liberty, or stability. Third powers intervene basically based on their self interest, and not necessarily for the defense of the smaller nations. There have been cases where an invasion toward a power that is if not defenseless, weak, caused a reason for a large warfare. Take for example the Second World War, or the First World War, when Germany attacked France. Germany attacked France, but it did not cross the German-French border. Instead, Germany attacked France passing Belgium, and of course that meant Belgium became a battleground. And that alone, this victimization over the Belgian people provided a very good reason for Great Britain to be engaged in a war against Germany. So intervention might actually cause a reason for another intervention in this light, and in this case, the neglect of independence of Belgium produced a large warfare.


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But will intervention produce stability? This leads to a rather difficult question. It might be the case that intervention will produce stability at the risk of liberalism or democracy. In 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. Hungary, however, was not posing any threat to the Soviet Union, far from it: Hungary was only moving away from Soviet dominance by producing a more liberal government. But that was taken as a move threatening the integrity of Soviet influence, and the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. Now this case was a clear invasion, but then if you aid Hungary you'll be entering into a total combat with the Soviet Union. In this particular case, the Soviet intervention into Hungary did produce stability, which was also an authoritarian regime imposed against the will of the Hungarian people. In this case the western nations were facing a very cruel choice: would you trade your liberty, or would you trade your peace?

If you trade your liberty then the Western nations should have intervened in Hungary and push away the Sovites from Hungarian soil. But this should have produced a massacre, a major war between the USSR and the western nations. And in this particular case, the west decided not to choose liberty: they chose stability which, in essence, meant that Hungary belonged to the Soviet Bloc, and the will of the Hungarian people was denied. The other case would be the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, United States intervened in South Vietnam. At this point, the United States was not invading South Vietnam, but protecting South Vietnam from domestic Communist movement. That move proved to be unsuccessful as the number of Communist rebellion inside South Vietnam became so strong, aided by North Vietnam, and the United States started a war against North Vietnam. In this case, some people might argue that the United States was fighting for the sake of freedom. But that fight actually developed into a major war between North Vietnam and the United States, and potentially involving the relationship between China, Soviet Union and the United States. Here the choice of liberty, from the American viewpoint, actually meant much instability in the region.


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So we have a dilemma here. International interventions are certainly not limited to the ones directed to the defense of a smaller country. An alliance might provide a guarantee for peace, but as long as major powers follow their own set of interest, we cannot expect such universalized kind of intervention. There is always a choice between stability and intervention, and if you intervene you might be able to bring out some results that are desirable. But the destruction that comes along with it could be large when natural intervention includes an escalation into major warfare. In Hungary there was no major action, and the Hungarian people suffered from dictatorship for such a long time. In Vietnam, the United States intervened, and the whole theater was full of massive killings. Which one do you decide to choose?


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1.6. Civil war, human right and collective security When we talk about war, we usually talk about international wars, conflicts that are fought between governments like the Second World War or the First World War. But when you take a look at the history of warfare, the larger number of wars is actually civil wars, wars that are fought not between governments, but inside a certain country. However civil wars, because they are not international wars, are not necessarily the concern of international society. As a matter of fact there is a nagging question here. Why should we be concerned about civil wars? Civil wars can become threats to the survival of other nations as instability in a certain land might escalate into other regions as well. But take for example the American Civil War, that was fought between the North and the South. I do not think there was much possibility that the civil war in the United States would escalate into a war between United States and the United Kingdom, or between the United States and France. It was a war with very little possibility of expanding into an interstate war.

And so long as civil wars do not suppose a threat to the survival of other nations, you might rightfully argue that civil wars are not and should not be the concern of other nations. In traditional international relations, there is this principle of non intervention into domestic affairs that is only related to the authority of a certain government: they should not be invaded or intervened by outside powers. And from this rule you might argue that an intervention into a civil war is almost by definition a violation of the principle of sovereignty and non-intervention. But having said that, this is not exactly the case, in many cases we can see, especially after the end of the Cold War, there has been a number of civil wars that have attracted much attention from overseas. Take for example the breakdown of the Yugoslavian Federation. Yugoslavia was a nation composed of several districts, republics that had each certain amount of autonomy, but were still part of the Federation. And many republics such as Slovenia or Croatia, and eventually Bosnia, decided to move away from that Federation, which caused a major war. If you do agree with Slovenia or Croatia as independent nations, it is an interstate war, and if you disagree about their sovereignty, then it's a civil war. But the question here is not academic, the question here is that the possibility of the war in Yugoslavia expanding into other regions was relatively limited. But nevertheless, a large number of people being killed in Yugoslavia invited much attention. A case where a civil war expanded into international warfare would be the series of warfare including the civil war in Rwanda, the civil war in Congo, and the Congo wars. In this particular case, the Rwanda civil war ended up with the evacuation of a large number of Hutu rebels into the Congo. The Tutsis, who became the ruling group in Rwanda, were very much concerned about the Hutu rebels in the Congo, and therefore Rwanda was eager to expand military operations across the border to Congo. In this particular case the Congo


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regime could not sustain itself, and this whole intervention led into a war of liberation against the Mobutu regime. But afterwards, after the fall of Mobutu, Rwandans were taken as uninvited guests, and this led to a war between Rwanda and Congo, and that developed into an all scale warfare, including several surrounding countries, like Zimbabwe or Angola. So you can see that there are several cases of civil wars: civil wars that may not involve, may not develop into threats to other nations, while there are civil wars that may develop into major military escalation. But here we have a question, should intervention to civil wars be allowed? For, like I said, the civil wars are by definition military conflicts within a certain border, and an intervention into civil war does need some certain justification. But then there can be justifications, because if a large number of people are dying in a certain land, it is extremely difficult for us to accept it as a fact of life. Yes, wars do happen, and yes, it is very difficult to put a limit on civil wars as opposed to international wars. But it was very difficult for people living in Europe to observe the killings in Yugoslavia. And eventually, there was a mass scale NATO intervention into Yugoslavia. In the case of Rwanda and Congo, the international involvement was very much limited, and the slaughters that took place in Rwanda, essentially conducted by the Hutus against the Tutsis, were taken to be examples of a double standard of international society where mass killings in the western world is not accepted, but mass killings n the non-western world is more or less accepted. We should always pay attention to the fact, however, that intervention into a civil war itself can bring about an escalation of warfare. An in that particular case, the intervention and the war that followed would become a cause of concern. And after all, intervention into civil wars may not be done from humanitarian purposes. When the Khmer Rouge was occupying Cambodia and killing a large number of people, Vietnam intervened into Cambodia. This was a clear violation of the sovereignty principle, but then at the same time this had a character. The Vietnamese invasion had shared a character with other humanitarian interventions, simply because the Khmer Rouge was slaughtering so many people of their own. In this case, I doubt if the intention of the Vietnamese in invading Cambodia was humanitarian, but at the same time the Vietnamese invasion, which was denounced by the international community, actually brought an end to the large scale killings committed by the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodians. So we are left with this question: should intervention to civil wars be allowed or not? The answer to this question would be very different. On the one hand, we do see cases where international intervention to civil wars did produce positive results, by putting an end to mass scale killings, such as the case of Yugoslavia. We also see cases where interventions to civil wars actually accelerated the amount of killings by an escalating warfare. And we see ambiguous cases such as Libya, where the international intervention was made to stop the mass scale killings. But the intervention itself brought about a large scale, a large scale killing, and also a production of a failed state, a state that cannot govern its land. So here we are left with a dilemma. Civil wars should not be left alone, if a large number of people are dying. But at the same time, if you intervene, that intervention itself might be making a source, an origin of calamity, might be starting a large scale killing. And this, of course, is the case of just war extended into the case of civil war.


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1.7. Case I: the fall of Yugoslavia Let's examine more closely about the fall of Yugoslavia. This was the largest case of military action that took place in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Why did it start? What kind of intervention took place? And which were the consequences? Those are the subjects that I'd like to discuss in this section. The first question, of course, is what caused the breakdown of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian Federation took the form of federation, in the sense that each republic had a certain autonomy within the Federation. If you add up the number population, the Serb population was much larger in all of Yugoslavia; but if you take individual republics, the Serb population tended to be a minority. The Serbs were a minority in Croatia, minority in in Slovenia, a minority in anywhere outside the Serb Republic. Maintaining this situation in a stable manner was an extremely difficult thing to do. Tito, the leader who led Yugoslavia in the Second World War post-war years, was a very careful administrator. He was a Croatian, and somehow downplayed the simple fact that the Serbs composed the majority of Yugoslavia. And somehow expanded the autonomy of individual republics, and this was the right thing to do, but at the same time this strengthened the claims that were made from the republics to the Yugoslavian government.

After Tito, Slobodan Milosevic became the political leader. And Milosevic, unlike Tito, was not shy away from putting forward the Serb first, he was much more overt Serbian nationalist, although his nationalism was opportunistic in many ways, which caused the alarm from the other republics aside from the Serb Republic. In June 25th 1991, Croatia and Serbia declared independence. And Croatia becoming independent along with Slovenia was a severe blow to the integrity of Yugoslavia, as two major parts of Yugoslavia would become independent. How to face the situation itself was a major issue for the European community which was turning into the European Union. But because of a strong initiative from Foreign Minister Genscher of Germany, the European community did accept Croatia and Slovenian independence.

After the outbreak of Ten-Day War, the Slovenian eventually won their independence, along with the Croatians. Now if you have Slovenia and Croatia independent, then that leads to a very difficult situation in Bosnia, which is close to both Slovenia and Croatia, in the sense that the majority are the Muslims and not the Serbs. But the situation was much more difficult because the population distribution in Bosnia was much more even compared to Croatia, which had the strong Croatian majority, and Slovenia which had an even stronger Slovenian majority. And after the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, vigilantes, independent citizens' groups composed of Serbs, started to arm themselves in Bosnia and Herzegovina, aware that their position would be endangered by the Muslims who wished who wished to win independence. If Croatia and Slovenia could win independence, why not them? And as the situation became much tenser, on March 3rd 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, and that followed a major period of warfare, especially in the town of Sarajevo.


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One of the most important events that took place during this war in Bosnia was the Srebrenica massacre. In June 11th 1995, a large number of Serbian forces, along with United States Air Forces, started to surround Srebrenica, a place with a large population of Muslims, and a major military assault was imminent. The Commander of United Nations Forces stationed there and asked New York for permission to be engaged, to protect the Muslims from major assault by the Serbs. United Nations declined this request, and just like the Commander was afraid about, a major massacre against the Muslims took place. The Srebrenica massacre is one event that is remembered up to this day, showing the inability of international community to protect people. At the same time this ignited the anger against the inhuman atrocities committed by the Serbs and the Yugoslavian government, and this lead to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, starting from March to August, 1995; and after this bombing, the Dayton Agreement was reached in November 1995. There was another sideshow where Kosovo tried to win independence from Yugoslavia. And although major powers were reluctant to be engaged, as the crisis became imminent, this time they engaged at an early stage, and NATO started bombing on 1999.


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Let's take our time and think about the consequences of United Nations intervention in Yugoslavia. I think we can make a strong statement that we are no longer afraid about an outbreak or civil war in the regions that used to be part of Yugoslavia. Serbia, Croatia Slovenia Macedonia, and all those republics have become more or less peaceful. So to that extent, the United Nations intervention in Yugoslavia was successful. But that's not the whole story, because the United Nations was unsuccessful in bringing the end to the civil war, it were the NATO forces that brought about success. Remember that in Srebrenica, the United Nations did essentially nothing in preventing people to be killed, and it was NATO that provided the force to end the civil war in Yugoslavia. So the case of Yugoslavia shows the lack of international support in providing safety to people living in Yugoslavia, and it also shows the use of military force in protecting people from the development of a major civil war. This is one case where we may wish to talk about a necessary war. In Srebrencia it might be the case that the United Nations should have engaged and protected people from Serbian assaults. It may have been the case that NATO should have intervened much earlier before so many people in Bosnia were killed. In fact, if you see such a large scale civil war developing in the region, producing miseries to a huge number of people living there, you can make a very strong case that there is a case where you should fight a war and not shy away from it. And just like the rest of Europe watched the the discrimination of Jewish population in Germany without doing anything, just like so many people including not only those in Europe but elsewhere or the United States, with Washington's silence over the deportations, the violence, the killings against the Jewish population in Germany. You may make a very strong case that the international community was watching Yugoslavia without doing nothing. This is what we call the conspiracy of silence, when we decide to do nothing, we decide not to see what's going on. And this is a case of a necessary war.


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1.8. Failed states and the responsibility to protect Here I'd like to discuss about the failed states and the responsibility to protect. Both are very ambiguous terms, so let's go back to a very simple question. Who is responsible for the protection of the people living in a certain nation? We usually assume that the security of the nation of the people relies in the hands of the governments that rule. Now as a matter of fact, people would demand protection to the government. And if that government does not provide protection, then that government, maybe may lose the coming election, if you have democratic governors. But what happens when we don't have democracies? What happens when the government is poor? What happens when the government is weak, or doesn't have the resources to provide security or safety to the people? What happens when the government does not have the will, the intention to protect the people? If the state cannot offer security for the people, and moreover, if the state becomes the enemy in taking away safety from the people, where would the people go for safety? This is the basis of the argument about the responsibility to protect. When there is a situation where the security of the population cannot be expected to be provided by the government in that region, the argument goes that international communities share the responsibility to protect the safety of the people. This was one argument that developed in the United Nations in phase of such serious mistakes, as committed in Srebrenica, that when the government cannot be expected to provide security we have the responsibility to protect these people. This is a very nice argument, but it's a very difficult one to carry out, as the will and the power of the international community in providing safety to the number of people living in such far way places when there is no immediate threat to the major powers. There's really no reason, except for moral grounds, to actively support security for the people living there. Moreover, we have another question about the lack of governance. Now, it is one thing to talk about the government that is eager to repress the population there. It is quite another to argue when the government does not have the capacity to provide, when the government is poor or it is weak, or when the government does not have the military capability to protect the people from other calamities. This is called a failed state which does not have the capacity to govern its own territory. There have been cases of failed states such as the Sudan. Sudan had been involved in a very lengthy civil war between North Sudan and South Sudan and also the Darfur region in the western part of the territory. There have been many dictatorships in Sudan. So it is not only a question of the strength of the authority, but you have to remember that the power of the state itself was extremely weak and could not control the territory. Take Afghanistan after the Soviet pull out. Now it's true that Taliban became the ruling party ruling group on, in Afghanistan. But we very much doubt if Taliban had the capacity to govern the whole of Afghanistan. Many regions in Afghanistan had their own autonomy, away from the government which essentially means militant groups, terrorist groups, and religious extremists on their own; and the length on the strength of Taliban in ruling Afghanistan was very limited. Now the trouble is that it is easy to talk about the rogue state that is eager to use military force around the territory, but talking about a failed state is something totally different. We're talking about the lack of governance, lack of capacity, the weakness of government. What would you do in a situation like this?


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Here we are in a serious problem. Simply sending troops to defend people is insufficient, you might be able to win a war but that's not the point. The point is that the government itself is so weak and so fragile, that without external support it cannot provide safety to the population. In that case, the only way is for the external powers to work as governments for the people, as if the international community is providing government to a certain region. Such situation has taken place in a number of cases. In Afghanistan, the Karzai administration was extremely fragile, and could only support its rule by support from the multinational forces. You can also take cases like Sudan, where a failed state was left alone for a lengthy period and the people just kept on suffering from the lack of governments, and here the lack of credible governance itself was as bad as having a dictatorship that is eager to repress people. And then, this leads to another basic problem here. Can the international community protect people overseas? By international community, we're talking about a large number of governments, including major powers. They might be rich enough and they may have the military capability, so in terms of resources they might have the resources to protect people overseas. The question here is the will. Are the major powers willing to use their own resources, military power, and economic resources to protect people overseas? The history is not very convincing here. Many peace keeping operations conducted by the United Nations, operated with a shoe string budget, a very small budget, and the reluctance of major powers to send a large number of troops. The question is and even more serious when you consider that an intervention against a rogue state might end up introducing a failed state. There's a dictatorship repressing and even killing a large number of people, there's a humanitarian disaster. So there's every good reason for a major military intervention. Now, with that military intervention you crush that dictatorship, stop that repression, but unless you build up a credible government in the land, then instead of a dictatorship you're producing a failed state, and that failed state can produce many calamities to the people living there. What happened after the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Saddam Hussein administration was certainly not a democracy, extremely violent against their own people as on their neighbors, but it was also a pretty strong government. And after that invasion, over throwing Saddam Hussein only produced anarchy in Iraq, where political authority was so fragile and they could not cope with the even simplest request of personal safety for the population. In this particular case intervention produced a failed state. I can happily report that the Iraqi situation has improved, but we have almost an immediate case of the intervention into Libya, with all the just causes this also produced a possibility of a failed state.


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1.9. Case II: the case of Lybia

Let's take a look more closely at Libya. You must be aware that Colonel Gaddafi was the ruler of that land. And Gaddafi, although he changed his foreign policy toward the western world in the last years of his reign, was a clear dictator who did not allow any expression of human rights for the people living in Libya. This was an authoritarian regime, a regime that took away human liberty from the people living in that land. And you might also be aware that there was a pretty large intervention by NATO forces to Libya, which overthrew the Gaddafi regime. But let's go back to the origin of what happened. When Colonel Gaddafi was ruling Libya, and when there was no major uprisings against the Gaddafi regime, the interest of the Western society toward Libya was very much limited. When Gaddafi changed his policy toward the West, and

started to normalize ties with the Western nations, this move was welcomed. And major European nations, including United Kingdom, appreciated the change in Gaddafi's policy. But even when Gaddafi was changing his policy toward western powers, he certainly did not change his policy towards his own people, and the regime was extremely repressive. It all started to change in the year 2011. At the end of year 2010, a street merchant in Tunisia killed himself, burned himself in protest against the abuse of a petty bureaucrat. And that suicide led to a massive uprising in Tunisia that overthrew the regime. And that further led to another revolution in Egypt, where massive uprisings against the government rolled down the reign of President Mubarak. This chain of events is usually called the Arab Spring, when suddenly people living in North Africa and the Arab world started to oppose their own, the tyranny that has been ruling in their land and this spread out to Libya as well. More on the eastern side of Libya, including the major city Benghazi, but also even in Tripoli, which is the capital of the state.

In February 16th 2011, protest in Eastern Libya escalated, clashes with security forces took place at a massive scale, and many civilians were killed. The response from the Gaddafi regime was extremely violent: his forces suppressed uprising Tripolli and Misrata. And we believe a large number of civilians were slaughtered in Misrata, in spite of the fact that the


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civilians were unarmed. The repression against those movements not only included gunfire, but also gunships, airplanes and some major battleships, just crushing by fist against the people who stood up against Colonel Gaddafi. Misrata is in the middle of the way between Tripoli and Benghazi: Gaddafi's forces advanced from Tripoli, Misrata and came very close to the second major city of Libya that is Benghazi. There was a very large possibility that Gaddafi's force entered Benghazi, so that a large number of people would be killed. Facing this situation, the United Nations were very much alarmed, and with a strong initiative from the French and British governments, and with a strong initiative from United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice of the United States, this organism adopted resolution 1973: the resolution allowed for a no-fly zone against the rule, against the forces of Gaddafi. This resolution was supported by the Arab League, as well as the Western Powers: for those major powers, in the Middle East, and Europe, and the United States, the situation surrounding Benghazi was beginning to become a humanitarian disaster, and if a large number of people are were about to be killed, the United Nations should do something. We can see here the difference between the United Nations reaction to Srebrenica and the reaction to the Libyan situation. The United Nations did so little, almost nothing, in face of the crisis in Srebrenica and the last massacre followed; after that this argument about responsibility to protect became so popular and widely accepted. And in many ways Libya became a test case, a test a test case for the United Nations, whether their commitment to responsibility to protect can really be translated into actual foreign policy. To go back to the principles, I think it is clear that before the NATO intervention there was an imminent danger of humanitarian disaster. Without a military intervention many people, including myself, are convinced that a large scale killing would have taken place in Benghazi. But that's not the whole story. A military intervention to Libya could produce two results, both of which are quite undesirable. One consequence would be a power vacuum: crushing the Gaddafi regime might be legitimate in the sense that Gaddafi was ruling his country in a most authoritarian manner, but if you crush the regime, can you really provide a credible government in Libya? This was the case why the Americans and the multinational forces got burned a bit in Afghanistan and Iraq. Intervention in those countries may have been legitimate, for afterward, Talibans were authoritarian; and the Hussein regime was running an authoritarian regime as well. But having said that, after the invasion in Afghanistan and Iraq, in both nations a relatively weak state emerged, a weak state close to a failed state situation. An intervention to Libya could very well produce a failed state instead of a rogue state. And secondly, the intervention itself with all the gun power and the military capability might kill people too. It did kill people and here we have the question proportionality. Many people were about to be killed in Benghazi, so you should intervene, to protect the people there; but at the same time, if you intervene and if your intervention includes the killing of many civilians, not only combatants but non-combatants, then can the intervention be justified? The answer is not clear at the moment. We have reasons to believe that after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, there is no credible government that rules Libya altogether, that the central authority is very much weak in government. But at the same time we do not hear cases of major civil war breaking out in Libya as a consequence of the breakdown of the Gaddafi regime. What we can say is that some of the troops that were under the command of Colonel Gaddafi moved to Mali, and actually accelerated the civil war in Mali but not in Libya. But there is a possibility that Libya might end up as a failed state.


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Here you have a dilemma. This is not a clear case, such as Yugoslavia, where international intervention prevented a humanitarian disaster, and also provided a liberal credible government to the people. We do not see such result yet. It is possible that the intervention produced a failed state in Libya, the situation is not that bad as to be depicted as a failure, but there is a possibility. Responsibility to protect is not only a noble principle; it is a principle that should be carried into actual foreign policy. But there is also always a possibility that the intervention that follows this idea of the responsibility to protect can actually open a can of worms, and make the situation much more undesirable than before.


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1.10. Limits of intervention Weve had some discussion about the way we should think about war and peace, and in the beginning we have been talking about major wars like First World War and Second World War, which involved a large number of military troops, fought by major powers, and very possibly produced mass casualties. And in spite of the large number of casualties, some wars may have been necessary, like for example in face of the expansion of Nazi Germany, where you can make a very strong argument that you have a situation where war is necessary. But in essence, when we talk about international relations between major neighboring powers, we do not necessarily need to talk about justice. For this is essentially a matter of military capability; this is about the success of deterrence strategy, or the failure of the deterrence strategy. However, after the end of the Cold War, we have entered into a very new world where the balance or imbalance of the metro capability of each power is not the important issue. In a phase of a large number of civil wars taking place: in Yugoslavia, Rwanda Congo, Sri Lanka. There's really no need to talk about balancing, but we do need to talk about whether we should intervene or whether we should not. In this kind of situation, when it comes to major capability, the power of those who may intervene it's much larger than the ones of those who are fighting. In case of Yugoslavia there's no question that the fire power of the Milosevic regime was much smaller than the aggregate power of the NATO nations. In case of Iraq, in case of Afghanistan, in case of Libya, the fire power of those countries was almost nothing compared to the aggregate power of the major powers. And in many ways, the international work relations we face right now are quite different from the past, in the sense that we have a choice whether to intervene or not. It may be true that we should not intervene. We should not have intervened into Libya and we should not have intervened into Yugoslavia, because they did not pose any major threat toward the survival of us. But at the same time, it is very difficult to live with a large number of people being killed in Yugoslavia or Libya, and accept that as a fact of life. And this is how our current situation relates to the just war theory, whether we can really make a discrimination between compote-nets and non-compote-nets, whether we can refrain from using weapons of mass destruction in caring out our objective. When we are conquering such major challenges to human survival in Libya or in Yugoslavia, you also have to pay attention to another fact. This is really not international war, in the classical sense we're talking about, we are talking about a question of intervening into a society that may have different values, different history, different cultural backgrounds, and change it. Now we can always work on the principal that everybody is aspiring for liberty, that everybody is aspiring for democracy; everybody aspires to live in a western style political system. But we always have to remember that this universalist view may be taken in very different lights, that an intervention that aims for the liberation of people might also be taken as a naked military power invasion, which destroys the traditional life in certain societies. And here we face a very different difficult question. What are the differences between invasion and liberalization? It might be worth to remember that some of the arguments or Western Colonialism accompany ideas about liberalization. When there was a scramble for Africa, when major European nations invaded on Africa and made colonies out of it, the justification was that the Arabs were taking Africans away for slavery and we should liberate Africa from Muslim dominated slavery system. But of course, what actually happened was a beginning of ruthless rule by the colonialists. On the other hand, we should not rule out such intervention as an intervention against different cultures for there are actually a living people suffering from dictatorships, and it is very difficult to accept repression and slaughter in


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terms of cultural varieties and multiculturalism. We certainly cannot argue that some nations are eager to accept mass killings than others: it may be true that there may be little reaction or resistance against such killings, but this could be more circumstantial than as a product of culture. This leads to a more concrete question about the condition of legitimate intervention. When intervention cannot be ruled out by the military firepower of the adversary, then we can make our own decisions about what interventions that should take place, and what interventions we should not follow. In other words, we have to set our own principles about legitimate intervention in major conflict. And if we push this issue even further, this relates to a dilemma about values. Which values should be our priority, peace, liberty, or justice? Now it is easy to argue that all these are necessary. Peace is better than war, liberty is better than autocratic rule, and justice is better than injustice; but sometimes we do face situations where we have to make a choice. Say for example, a society is governed under an extremely authoritarian regime, where human rights of the inhabitants are totally neglected, and there's no liberty allowed for the people living there. This situation is certainly not the one that can be called liberal, but it can also be peaceful in the sense that the government is strong enough to repress any kind of opposition from the society. In such a situation, should it be our objective to intervene and liberate the people away from authoritarianism? In a way, destroy the stability of the society, to promote a democratic revolution. On the other hand, when we treasure peace to liberty, can it be justified if we simply neglect the inhuman suffering of people, because an intervention would produce large scale instability. In Yugoslavia, there was no real major threat towards surrounding nations, but NATO decided to intervene, and this certainly was not done to preserve peace in the region. This intervention was necessary to restore liberty and safety of the populace. The Yugoslavian case was successful, but we're not sure if the intervention in Libya has produced similar results, because in this particular case the safety of a large number of people was endangered. So intervention may have been just, but a just cause is insufficient to legitimize a military operation when it destroys the integrity of governance in that society, if intervention simply means a move from a dictatorship to a failed estate. Then we must call it a failure, and this brings us back to the question about the conditions of peace and war. It is so very easy to denounce warfare of such, and talk about the evolution of arms. That's one view, but by doing so, we might be turning blind eyes against the tyranny of authoritarian regimes, and the people suffering. We might be turning our eyes against violent conflicts surrounding us, and simply trying to keep our own peace. On the other hand, if we try to justify a major intervention, along with noble ideas, we might end up justifying interventions based on the promotion of very narrow interests disguised under such noble ideas as liberty or justice. And these are the questions that you have to answer when studying about the conditions of war and peace.


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2. Power transition and war 2.1. Power transition in international politics I would like to talk about power transition in international politics. Power transition is a concept that focuses on the rise of certain powers and the decline of other powers. When a major power appears in international relations, there is a possibility of a large instability, and that is what power transition theory is focused about. This is related to the two models of international system. One the one hand we have the more traditional arguments about the balance of power in international relations. The other argument is one that focuses on hegemony, the role of a major power in international relations.

Let's first take a look at the balance of power. The balance of power is an equilibrium theory, in the sense that the system essentially would maintain stability overtime. When a certain power tries to expand, then other powers would somehow exert influence so that that rising power would return to the original position. In that sense, the distribution of power in international relations would essentially be the same. That argument applies for example

to the balance of power after the Congress of Vienna in early 19th century, or the Cold War system, where the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States was a cornerstone of international politics.

But there is another way of looking at things. This is an argument that focuses on hegemony, where there is one power that surpasses the power of others. And unlike balance of power theory, which argues that the equilibrium or the mutual restraint given by individual power adds to the stability of the system, the hegemonic order focuses on the strength of certain hegemonic power over other nations. Now we can also see such situations, for example

Pax Romana, where the Roman Empire exerted extensive influence over the European area. Or for that matter the Pax Britanica, where Great Britain exerted a certain influence in the globe. And of course, some people talk about Pax Americana, where the United States exerted hegemony in the world.

Power transition takes place when there is a challenger against a position of the hegemonic power, the hegemon. Imagine that one power, which used to be subject to the great influence of the hegemon, starts to expand its power and by that challenges the influence of the major power. When such rising power takes place, there is a certain instability in the international system. George Modelski has argued that there is a long cycle of hegemony in international relations. He argues that in the 16th century,

Portugal and then Spain were the major hegemonic power in international relations, and then starting from the 17th century, and on to the 18th century, there was the rise of Netherlands, followed by the rise of Great Britain, which took over the role of Portugal and Spain.


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Some might argue that there was hegemonic change here, that the hegemonic power changed from Portugal Spain to Netherlands and Great Britain. In the 19th century, we observed the rise of Great Britain, and then British rule in international relations come to be challenged by the rise of Germany. In the latter half of the 19th century Germany was already larger economic power than the United Kingdom. The focus here is about the past, of course, and we don't really talk about power transition in the 20th century, or for that matter the 21st century. The discussion about power transition was essentially in the realm of historians who argued about the changes in international political history before the rise of Great Britain.

And then we have a question here. Has there been any power transition in the past century? In the 20th century, there was a transition from Great Britain to the United States, but it should be clear enough that there was no hegemonic war fought between Great Britain and the United States. As a matter of fact, both in First World War and Second World War, Great Britain and the United States fought on the same side. There were challenges, of course. Germany, at least so long as Europe was concerned, was a major power in Europe, and there was a contestation between Great Britain and Germany. But we have to remember that in the war between Great Britain and Germany, fought twice, Great Britain was the victor, and Germany lost in this war. There was another challenger after the end of the Second World War: U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union, was certainly a major military power, and most certainly was at odds in geopolitical interest with the United States. Although this was a period of Pax Americana, or the American hegemony, the USSR did not somehow give in to American interest. But then we also know the result, here again there are no hegemonic wars. There was much geopolitical tension between United States and USSR that led to the arms race, especially about nuclear weapons, but that did not lead to a major catastrophic war. And moreover, with the end of the Russo-American Cold War, it was Russia that broke down and became a capitalist democracy. And ever since the end of the Cold War, very few people doubt if Russia has become a challenger against American position. So to this extent we have not seen any hegemonic wars in the past century. If there was a hegemonic war, then the hegemon won the war, and not the challenger. But we have a very new development in international relations today. The People's Republic of China is possibly the first case where we observe expansion in both economic and military power, unlike West Germany and Japan, which were economically major powers. Germany and Japan did not pose geopolitical threat towards the United States, but China could very possible be a potential threat to the United States or the western world. So the question here is whether the rise of China poses a challenge to international society, and whether the rise of China would lead to a major power transition and the period of political instability in international relations. That is why, with the rise of China, the theory of power transition, once again, started to attract much academic attention.


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2.2. Theories of power transition and hegemonic wars Let us now focus on the particular relationship between power transition and hegemonic wars. What is the relationship between the rise of a certain power and the possibility of warfare? How does a change in the distribution of power in international relations affect the possibility of war? We have to think about two dimensions here. The first dimension is what happens when a nation develops into a major power. Now remember that when power was limited at a certain stage, the extent to which that power could carry out foreign policy would be limited by the size of the power that the country possesses. And to that extent, for example, if your naval capacity is limited then there is no chance that you could fight against a major naval power; once you have a stronger navy, then there is a possibility that you can compete with the major naval power that used to be. Or take for example a large army: when your military capability on land is limited you cannot face to fight a war against a major military power neighboring your borders, but if you have a larger military, there might be a chance that if you start a war then you can win. The point here is that expansion of power opens opportunities in geopolitics. And when that rising power is lured, attracted by the opportunity that the expansion of power provides, then there is a likelihood, not a certainty, that that power might try to use that force against its neighbors. You can see this from another dimension. What happens when a major power declines in its influence? Why decline takes place has been explained in several ways. For example smaller powers take advantage of the certain provision of public goods from the major power, that's one of the favorite arguments, but that's not the point I'd like to discuss here. The question is the consequence, what happens when a power starts to decline? This means that what used to be possible before would become impossible afterwards. When you have a larger military power, you could hold your political position vis--vis with your neighboring countries without much effort. But with a relative decline of your power, maintaining the stability will become much more difficult. If the rising power grasps opportunity by rising, then a declining power loses on opportunity in international relations for the sake of securing power. This only talks about opportunity, and it certainly does not talk about inevitability. The question here is, does power transition really invite major wars? It was Professor Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organsk who coined out the concept of hegemonic wars. In discussing about changes in international relations, Organski argued that the change from one major power to another accompanies hegemonic wars, wars fought for the sake of securing hegemony or acquiring new hegemony. He discussed about the rise of Spain that had become the larger military empire in Europe, and then the rise of Great Britain that succeeded the rise of Spain, and of course about the war fought between them. And then there was the rise of Germany, that certainly arose after the humiliating defeat in face of the Napoleonic France. After reunification Germany became the major power in 19th century in Europe, and then went on to fight a war against Great Britain. If you take a look here, you can see some difficulty in forming a theoretical argument, because in the hegemonic war between Spain and Great Britain, Great Britain won, and there was a new hegemonic power in international relations. In the hegemonic war between Great Britain and Germany, it was Great Britain that won the war again, not Germany; Germany did not win a hegemonic position.


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Out of this alone you might argue that the result of hegemonic wars is unpredictable: one power might lose, but one power might win, and there's no telling about it. Moreover, we have another problem, because although the war between Great Britain and Germany ended with the victory of Great Britain, it was United States that arose as the hegemonic power after the two World Wars, which indicates a rather troubling finding that the major power that comes out from the hegemonic war, may not be the power that competed to the old empire. So to this extent, we can argue that hegemonic wars may take place, and have taken place, but we still do not find a consistent pattern that describes the possibility of warfare in terms of power transition.


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2.3. Who attacks first? Let's take an even closer look about the outbreak of war. One of the key questions in discussing about warfare is which side starts the war, if is it the rising power that attacks first or the declining power that breaks hostilities. Let's take a look at this question, because it's a highly abstract question but I'd like you to think about the results without any prior knowledge. Nation A has been a hegemonic power during the past century, but nation B has arose in power challenging A's hegemony; to repeat, A is the hegemonic power that is relatively declining, and B is a rising power that is rising. Under this situation, which nation is more likely to attack first, A or B? Would a rising power attack first or declining power attack first? Let's start from the first question: why would a rising power challenge major powers? This was something that was almost assumed in Organski's works. And Modelski did not doubt about the possibility of a rising power challenging major powers. But we have to make sure that a challenge is different from war. A rising power, of course, by its military expansion is challenging the position of a major power. But there is a possibility that the old power may not try to fight against the new power. Imagine further a possibility that the old power somehow accepts the military expansion over lesser power. If that is the case then a rising power can somehow expand military capability without risking the possibility of warfare. You also have to remember that the rising power is still rising, and there is a gap of capability between the rising power and the old hegemonic power. And of course if you want to win a war, then it is much easier to win a war with a larger capability that surpasses the power of your opponent, than fighting a war with limited capabilities, less than the power of your opponent. So if there is a possibility that a major power will somehow accept your expanding role. Then it would be rational to expect that the rising power would not try to fight a war against a major power unless it is provoked. This may sound rather foolish, but this was exactly the case, for example, if you take the relationship between Great Britain and Germany in the 19th century. Germany was a rising power, there's no question about that; this country, which was Prussia originally, expanded its territory through a series of warfare, for example a war against Denmark or Austria. Both wars somehow ended successfully for the Germans, and Prussia expanded her territory considerably. The final war was the one between France and Prussia. The war was started by French assault, but that French attack was somehow part of the scheme laid out by the German government. And this laid the cornerstone of the unification of Germany, with the coronation taking places in all France. So you see a major power developing in the continent and you might want to think that Great Britain would do everything to stop the expansion of Germany. But the opposite was actually the case: Great Britain tried to accommodate the rise of Germany into stable international affairs in Europe. And quite far away from isolating Germany, Great Britain reached hands to Germany so that the Anglo-German agreement would provide a cornerstone of European stability. One of the reasons for doing so was that a unified Germany, following British thinking, would be much more stable than a fragmented Germany in the center of the European continent. So therefore you have the Berlin Congress, a conference that led to what was called the new balance of power in Europe. The key here was the British accommodation of German expansion.


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There is no question that Great Britain was the old major power and Germany the rising power. But in this particular instance, Germany kept on fighting wars against smaller powers and Great Britain kept on accepting that position, in a way Germany could expand influence without waging a war against United Kingdom. Let's now take a look at another line of argument here. What would a declining power do? Why would a declining power challenge rising powers? Now this is actually more logical than a war waged by the rising power. Imagine a situation where a major power is being challenged by a lesser power. There is still enough gap in capability, so the rising power is much weaker than the old power. But if the rising power is expanding rapidly, then as time goes by the gap would narrow and it would become more difficult to fight a war in the future against that rising power than now. If that is the case, then it is only logical to start a war at an early phase, and crush the development of military capability of a lesser power. This argument is almost identical to the argument put forward by the balance of power people. Balance of power being a cornerstone of reali

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Conditions of War and Peace