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Review: Last Words about War?Author(s): Urs LuterbacherSource: The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 165-182Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/173720 .

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REVIEW SECTION

Last Words About War?

A REVIEW ARTICLE

URS LUTERBACHER

Graduate Institute of International Studies

and Department of Political Science

University of Geneva

RICHARD K. ASHLEY, The Political Economy of War and Peace. London:

Frances Pinter; and New York: Nichols; 1980.

FRANCIS BEER. Peace against War. San Francisco: Freeman, 1981.

BRUCE BUENO de MESQUITA. The War Trap. New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1982.

A.F.K. ORGANSKI and JACEK KUGLER. The War Ledger. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1980.

ARTHUR A. STEIN. The Nation at War. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1978, 1980.

PROBLEMS OF WAR AND PEACE

Problems of peace and war have always been considered central in the study

of international politics. Classical works by Machiavelli or Clausewitz deal

extensively with the subject. Major recent contributions are concerned with it.

In particular, some of the most prestigious and pioneering studies in scientific

and quantitative international politics have concentrated on the analysis of war

and peace. The works of, for instance, L. F. Richardson, Quincy Wright, and J.

David Singer attest to the importance of the topic. Over the last four years, a

number of new books have analyzed, in a more or less direct way, questionsconnected to war and peace. These range from studies of interactions in terms of

conflict, cooperation, resource allocations, and arms races possibly leading to

war (Ashley, Organski and Kugler) to broad explanations for the outbreaks of

JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 28 No. 1, March 1984 165-182

? 1984 Sage Publications, Inc.

165



166 JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

war (Organski and Kugler, Bueno de Mesquita) to investigations of the internal

consequences of war (Stein). One book, Beer's Peace against War, contains a

vast survey of theories and findings that spans almost all of the issues dealt with

by the other authors. To what extent do these recent works contribute

significantly to the classical approaches of Sorokin (1938), Richardson (1960a,

1960b), or Wright (1942), or to newer ones like that of Singer and Small (1972).

The best way to answer this question, I think, is to establish specific evaluation

criteria and then to assess each work in terms of its theoretical content and

methodological orientation.

Broadly speaking, two kinds of theoretical perspectives and two methodologi-

cal approaches are usually taken in studying problems of peace and war. At the

theoretical level, war, as well as conflict and cooperation, can be conceived onthe one hand as resulting mostly from nationai decision-making processes

within governments. For instance, the conception that wars are initiated because

rulers see a reasonable chance to win them or that war, in Clausewitzian fashion,

is the continuation of politics with other means, belongs to this general

framework. On the other hand, a large body of literature views the causes of

international political actions, and wars in particular, as broad sociopolitical

forces and movements that are beyond the control of any particular rulers.

According to this school of thought, decisions to start wars, for instance, even

though taken by individual political leaders, are merely the final expression of

such large scale forces. This distinction between "rational" and "sociological"

explanations is not always so clear-cut for particular authors. However, I believe

that it is possible to classify various approaches fairly well within it: every author

tends to favor one or the other conception in the end. Accordingly, among the

five works that will be discussed, Bueno de Mesquita clearly and explicitly sides

with the rational conception. In various degrees, Beer, Ashley, and Organski

and Kugler are closer to sociological explanations. Stein's perspective is more

difficult to determine since, as we will see, he addresses the issue of the

consequences of war within national societies rather than that of explaining

international political actions. However, his approach can also be considered as

dominated by a rational point of view since he sees governments as trying to use

internal movements that occur before or during wartime for their own benefit.

He also conceives individuals as acting during wars to maximize their personal

interests and refers to public goods theory to examine the consequences of their

behavior.

How much do the five books under discussion contribute to the debate

between the rational and sociological approaches? Does any one of them presentconclusive evidence that one or the other conception should be rejected? Or do

some of them show that these two seemingly mutually exclusive interpretations

can be linked together within a more general theoretical framework? Such

questions should be properly raised theoretically and then investigated empiri-



Luterbacher / LAST WORDS ABOUT WAR? 167

cally by the authors. The extent to which each explicitly examines these issues

should tell us something about the validity and general usefulness of his results.

In addition to the theoretical choices they must make, the authors are also

confronted by difficult methodological decisions. Two major ways of looking at

wars, conflict, and disputes have been used so far in the literature. The first is an

essentially cross-sectional approach in which populations of nations, dyads, or

international events are studied statistically to establish correlational knowledge

about the relations between some explanatory factors and war and peace. For

instance, L. F. Richardson's book, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, (1960a), is

characteristic of this modus operandi. The second approach is to adopt an

interactive and time-series type of analysis that tries to determine the connections

between the processes that lead to war and/ or peace over a certain period. L. F.Richardson's other famous book on arms races, Arms and Insecurity (1960b), is

an example of this second kind of research. Among our five authors, only Ashley

uses exclusively a dynamic and interactive method, and Bueno de Mesquita uses

uniquely a cross-sectional methodology. All of the other authors use both

procedures, usually for different sets of problems.

The choice of the appropriate mode of analysis is indeed crucial because it

implicitly raises what anthropologists have long called Galton's problem. This

issue was first raised by the famous statistician and probability theorist Sir

Francis Galton (1961) in a comment made about cross-cultural studies that wasreported to the Royal Institute of Anthropology of Great Britain and Ireland in

1889 by the equally famous anthropologist Edward Tylor (1961). Galton asked

Tylor whether he knew if his observations, which were made in various primitive

societies, were indeed independent of each other, that is, whether they were

caused by the same factor acting independently on each one of them or if certain

cultural traits were simply transmitted by diffusion. If the occurrence of the trait

in several societies was a result of diffusion, then the researcher would merely

measure the same variable several times, thus biasing his results and leading to

spurious correlations. Curiously, outside of anthropology where controversies

about the question continue and where new "solutions" to Galton's problem are

proposed practically every year, the issue has not really surfaced in other

disciplines, particularly in political science. '

However, as I will try to show, Galton's problem must be considered when

establishing either cross-sectional or interactive research designs in war and

peace studies. Several diffusionlike processes characterize political relations.

First, war, like cultural traits, has a tendency to diffuse and to involve countries

that have no particular reason to fight. This occurs particularly when one

l. One exception might be the so-called bandwagon-effect problem in voting analysis

that affects and biases results in electoral surveys. This problem is discussed in Simon

(1957).




country is attacked by another one for purely strategic reasons, as Belgium was

in World Wars I and II and as the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway were

during World War II. A statistical analysis that would include such cases while

trying to establish general conditions and drawing nations into war would

certainly be biased. Thus, a particular event for one country might be due to

strong interactions with another country and not to a general causal relation.

Second, it frequently is also not clear whether phenomena that are analyzed

through interactive process models are really interactive. They might be caused

independently by very different factors that nevertheless give them the

appearance of resulting from interactions. The recent controversy about

internal and external determinants of arms races is a good illustration of this

basic question.2

Here again, the degree to which an author has implicitly evaluated Galton's

problem accurately and tried to introduce necessary correctives will indicate

how seriously his results should be taken. It constitutes an important aspect in

the critical assessment of his work.

In short, the following criteria to evaluate each author's contribution should

be considered: First, his work should contain the necessary elements for either

accepting or rejecting respectively, sociological and rational theoretical state-

ments about war and peace, or for combining them in a meaningful way.

Second, his empirical analyses should indicate, at least implicitly, how thequestion of interactions, diffusion, or the absence thereof should be solved. To

assess each of the above books along these lines, a separate examination of each

work is now at hand.

BEER'S PEA CE A GAINST WAR

Beer's work is primarily a vast survey of theories, empirical findings, and

possible trends concerning phenomena related to war and peace. His book is

divided into six main parts, labeled "Epidemiology,""Violence,""Aggregation,"

"Polarization," "Militarization," and (a chapter of conclusions) "Choice." The

first chapter, "Epidemiology," deals with the construction of what Beer calls an

ecological model of peace and war. The author tries here to establish an analogy

between war and disease because both can spread and pose threats to life during

specific cycles and stages of their occurance (p. 4). In addition, war and disease

often happen together (pp. 2-3), one making the other more likely. Beer is

interested, therefore, in outlining the epidemiology, that is, the background

conditions of war and peace. In his view, technology, and some aspects of

technological growth, in particular, have a significant impact on war and peace.

2. See Lambelet and Luterbacher (1979) for a review of the question and a possible

solution to it.




Technology constitutes for Beer more than just the production or invention of

material goods. It constitutes all "human conquest of nature," including

institutional arrangements and organizational structures (p. 9). Technology

manifests itself specifically through what Beer calls aggregation, which "is the

logic of technology that makes larger, relatively integrated units out of smaller

elements" (p. 11). Aggregation, the growth of communications, exchanges, and

institutions, has a positive impact on polarization since it facilitates the

emergence of opposing groups; polarization generates militarization that

eventually will make war more likely. On the other hand, aggregation also

influences militarization in a negative way and helps to promote peace since it

links people and integrates separate social systems. Beer thus conceives

technology as having contradictory effects; effects that are perverse but also

beneficial (pp. 9-10). It is not clear, however, that militarization necessarily leads

to war since armed conflicts allegedly can be prevented through deterrence and

through balance of power mechanisms. This issue raises the question of rational

decision-making about peace and war, a conception that appears to be

completely at odds with Beer's sociological approach. His intention of setting up

an epidemiology of war conceived as analogous to disease and his insistence on

environmental factors to understand and explain war illustrate clearly his

preferences in that matter. Beer does not dodge the issue of rational decision-

making, however. He acknowledges its importance in the classical and newerliterature. But he minimizes the importance of it. First, in his eyes, the fact that

wars are chosen does not eliminate the analogy with disease. In his view, diseases

can even be chosen to fight other diseases. Here Beer's reasoning is rather weak

since disease on a large scale is certainly not chosen in the same way that war is.

Another of Beer's arguments is equally dubious. He says that while decisions

to go to war are indeed made, they are not made in a very straightforward way.

He outlines the emotional factors and various forms of pressure that make

rational calculations difficult (pp. 13-14). However, the problem of making

correct evaluations under pressure is not in itself an argument against the

rational behavior of governments. Leaders or countries could be rational even

when they miscalculate.3 Also, influences from the environment can be

conceived as constraints that limit but do not prohibit rational decision-making.

Beer here makes a common error, confusing rational and prudent behavior, two

notions that are far from equivalent.4 In other words, Beer is not very convincing

when he tries to dismiss rational decision-making as less important than

environmental factors. Moreover, the author does not design any crucial

experiment that would allow him to accept or reject either the environmental or

3. One should remember that rational means imply (1) having a consistent

(transitive) system of goals and (2) adjusting capabilities to specific ends.

4. This point is particularly well made in Allais's (1953) discussion on rationality. I

will address this issue again later.




rational hypotheses. In contrast, such an empirical analysis is explicitly set up by

Bueno de Mesquita (1981).

After his dismissal of rational decision-making, Beer proceeds according to

the scheme he outlines in his ecological model. He first reviews the empirical

findings and the theoretical considerations on violence, his dependent variable.

He then examines aggregation and its two possible effects, one of which is

favorable to cooperation and peace, while the other enhances polarization and

thus conflict and war. Polarization and militarization and their impact on peace

and war are investigated in a similar way. As already mentioned, Beer surveys a

considerable amount of literature in the process and passes in review many

important and sometimes contradictory findings, data analyses, and theoretical

propositions. From that point of view, his work, even though somewhat weakon theory, is certainly very useful, although his enumeration of the literature is

sometimes far from exhaustive. For instance, he ignores Lambelet's (1975)

important contribution on the pre-World War I arms race. More serious

reservations can be made however, about his last chapter, "Choice," where he

tries to extrapolate trends he seems to be able to discern from reading the various

works that he dicusses. Here, very dubious and sometimes contradictory

pronouncements are made, such as "Peaceful life will become more and more

the norm. Wars will become less frequent and, when they do occur, they will be

shorter than in the past" (p. 303), "Nation states will become increasing

centralized" (p. 307), or, a statement that is downright contradictory, "Centra-

lized national political systems may involve more popular participation in

collective decisions and expand formal political rights for minority groups and

individuals" (p. 307). One really wonders what this is all about. It certainly

creates more confusion than clarity for further research since none of these

sentences is really justified. Moreover, Beer than proceeds to give solutions to

the problems involved in trying to avoid wars. Here too, he offers only debatable

assertions or a collection of trivia such as "Wars are extremely expensive" (p.

324) and "War is unlikely to disappear" (p. 324). Is this then the purpose of the

whole book? One can only say that reading these passages is profoundly

dissatisfying.

Clearly, then, Beer's work does not offer convincing answers to our

theoretical and methodological questions. He neither excludes any theory nor

proposes one. Moreover, no empirical finding is really dismissed or adopted.

One cannot help but end here even more puzzled than one began.

ORGANSKI AND KUGLER'S WAR LEDGER

In contrast to Beer's all-inclusiveness, Organski and Kugler take some very

sharply outlined positions. Their book is divided into four main parts in




addition to an introduction and a conclusion: (1) their theory of war, the

so-called power transition hypothesis; (2) an attempt to predict outcomes of

wars based on differences of national power indices of participants, where

governments extraction capabilities play a major role; (3) an investigation of

how nations recover from war, focusing either on how losers are affected by

defeat or on how they eventually overcome winners; (4) an examination of the

impact of nuclear weapons on international conflict, with special emphasis on

deterrence and the nuclear East-West arms race.

At the center of Organski and Kugler's book is the contention that broad

patterns of economic and political evolution determine not only the outbreak of

wars, but also their outcome and the peacetime behavior of nation-states:

It is the central thesis of this book that growth and development in establishing and

especially in changing pools of resources available to nations that create conditions

in which international conflicts occur, determine the outcomes of wars, and further

still so rigorously determine the politico-economic future that nations driven to

fight in order to preserve an existing distribution of power do so to no avail and that

nations electing to fight in order to accelerate trends favorable to them, even if they

lose, will eventually enjoy the superiority they seek [pp. 12-13].

This main proposition of Organski and Kugler's book, which reflects asociological approach, is then analyzed in terms of four subtheses that

correspond to the four main parts of the book:

(1) Wars are a consequence of power transition processes. They result neither from

faulty mechanisms in the balance of power system nor from desires to guarantee

security. The power transition model implies that when one nation is about to be

taken over by another one, dissatisfaction and frictions arise that may lead to war.

(2) It is possible to predict the outcomes of wars on the basis of the differences in the

power base of each nation-the stronger should win. Each nation's capabilitiescan be adequately measured by its GNP and tax effort.

(3) There is a phoenix effect: Nations that are growing are little affected by wars. If

they lose, their expansion will only temporarily be halted.

(4) International politics have not changed much since the advent of nuclear

capabilities: Nuclear weapons are not required for deterrence purposes but as a

result of internal pressures and growth.

It is worth discussing each of these assertions separately in order to assess

how the authors analyze their validity. Then it will be possible to decide whetherthese four contentions can really be put together into a coherent system, given

the indicators and data analyses the authors have used in their investigation.

Is the power transition hypothesis both theoretically and empirically valid?

This depends largely on how power is defined and measured. Of course, wars




often start because one nation feels threatened by the actions of another nation

or because it sees an opportunity of gaining something out of war against a

weaker country. Both of these situations imply some evolution in the power

relations between international actors. Power, as has been emphasized many

times (Snyder and Diesing, 1977; Luterbacher, 1981; Allan, 1983) cannot be

evaluated only on the basis of tangible components such as military or economic

capabilities. It is also determined by particular strategic situations and interests

and the resolve of the parties involved in a conflict. If the notion of power takes

on this general meaning, the transition hypothesis does not say very much, since

wars are started in connection with threats and ultimata that always challenge a

particular position. If power is measured exclusively in terms of capabilities, the

transition idea becomes quite dubious because it is incapable of explaining largecategories of wars. To view the various Arab-Israeli wars only in terms of

narrowing differentials in economic resources, for example, would be to ignore

the very important contribution of the will of a new territorial entity to exist and

be recognized by its neighbors. Moreover, if the power transition notion were

correct, war could arise between the U.S or the CEE and Japan, a rather unlikely

possibility.

Organski and Kugler do measure power in terms of economic capabilities

(GNP), calculate growth rates, and test whether or not contending dyads, where

one country is threatened by a faster growing nation, are indeed war prone. The

statistical analysis of the power transition hypothesis gives some results, while

competing propositions about the relation between wars and the balance of

power mechanism or alliance structures do not. These results are, however,

seriously flawed, mostly because they derive from a blatant neglect of Galton's

problem. The population of dyads that the authors consider (the most powerful

actors in the system for the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Japanese War, and

World War I and II) is dominated by Germany,5 which is indeed in the process of

growing into a big power at the end of nineteenth century and the beginning of

the twentieth. But this is, in fact, only one simple case artificially expanded by

the authors into five different ones. One should also keep in mind the obvious

connections between three of the four above-mentioned wars. There are thus

two ways in which the author's example does not meet the criterion of

independence. The power transition hypothesis cannot, therefore, be accepted.

In order to try to predict the outcomes of wars, Organski and Kugler attempt

to measure power through a more refined indicator than the GNP. They devise a

new index that takes into account, in addition to the GNP, foreign aid and, most

importantly, what is called the tax effort, that is, the extractive power ofgovernments. According to Organski and Kugler, this indicator is able to

account for war outcomes and to measure political development within a nation.

Since no comprehensive anslysis of war outcomes is made using this index, it is

very difficult to assess its impact on war. Indeed, the extractive effort within a

country can vary considerably from peacetime to wartime and it is, therefore,

5. Thisfactappears eryclearlynTable 1.5.




difficult to make predictions based on it ex ante. Moreover, the extractive effort

might represent something very different from the effectiveness of a political

system except in the short run. A very extractive state might very well waste

valuable resources and use up capabilities that could be better channelled into

productive investments for the future. In fact, there is, to a large extent, a

trade-off here between the development of economic resources and extraction

that could weaken a state in the long run. Hence, predicting the outcomes of

wars on this basis alone may prove inaccurate.6

To analyze the hypothesis that war does not affect long-term growth patterns

and that losers thus tend to recover from their defeat, Organski and Kugler

examine rates of economic expansion for various countries over the periods

surrounding World Wars I and II. They indeed find that, especially in the case ofmajor powers, defeated nations, even when they suffer tremendous losses, tend

to catch up with winners in terms of total output 15 to 20 years after wars and to

resume their long-run development paths thereafter. I have no quarrel with this

proposition. Economists have given several explanations for this phenomenon:

Even though a defeated country experiences a tremendous amount of material

destruction and sometimes territorial loss, its human capital is only very

partially destroyed and can be used for recovery (Becker, 1964). Moreover,

given that a country's defeat usually means upheaval of its social structure

through changing elites or a destruction of traditional arrangements like cartels,pressure groups, or unions, its human capital can be put to use more efficiently

(Olson, 1982). However, recovery from loss is primarily an economic character-

istic, and one certainly cannot conclude, as do the authors, that "if the

distributions of international power . . . are shaped by differential rates of

growth ... and if such rates cannot be altered even by the most violent forms of

international interactions ... then what must be studied are the causes of such

alterations and not the interaction of countries (p. 198). The fact that, despite

tremendous hardships, East Germany has recovered remarkably since World

War II does not mean that this country is powerful and can act independently

from the Soviet Union. The equivalence posited by Organski and Kugler

between political power and per capita economic capabilities produces fallacious

conclusions. It can be argued that, on the contrary, international interactions,

alliances, and military capabilities have a great deal to do with power

configurations among nations.

Organski and Kugler pursue their demonstration that interactions do not

matter at the international level by questioning the workings of deterrence and

the existence of a nuclear arms race. The authors analyze various seriousdisputes, conflicts, and wars that have occurred since World War II. They find

that the existence of nuclear weapons neither prevents serious conflicts from

6. This difficulty is compounded when one compares centrally planned and market

economies. The effective extractive capacity of a socialist country is very difficult to assess

since the traditional concept of taxation is meaningless in that case.



174 JOURNAL OFCONFLICTRESOLUTION

occuring nor deters nations who do not possess such capabilities from

provoking or even attacking those who have them. However, the authors are not

able to disconfirm empirically that mutual deterrence works when both parties

have nuclear weapons. Organski and Kugler argue that if such deterrence

mechanisms exist, two opponents with nuclear capabilities should certainly

watch each other closely and respond to the increases in the opponent's nuclear

resources-that is, a nuclear arms race should take place.

The authors proceed to examine if this is the case by constructing two

regression equations that relate U.S. and Soviet expenditures for nuclear

strategic weapons in the current year to the procurements of their opponent in

either the same year or the year before and to their own previous outlays. Since

only each country's own past expenditures are positively related to the currentone, while the procurements of the opponent are either insignificantly or nega-

tively connected with them, the authors conclude that no arms race is taking

place. Both nations are simply driven by internal forces. Such a conclusion is, to

say the least, premature. Military expenditures, which the authors use as indica-

tors, distort real processes and are notoriously unreliable for the Soviet Union,

especially when it comes to the estimation of the costs of specific items such as

strategic weapons.7 Moreover, expenditure data, if used alone, do not adequately

reflect stock flow adjustments. A strategic program is usually developed over

several years; yearly budgetary figures are often influenced by current financial

problems that are totally unrelated to defense. In addition, net investments are

difficult to disentangle from replacement costs.8 Not surprisingly, empirical

analyses based on real weapon stock indicators (Luterbacher and Allan, 1982)

or on accumulated expenditures (Ward, 1982) give very different results than the

ones presented here. Thus the nuclear arms race cannot simply be dismissed or

the mutual deterrence principle easily eliminated. After all, no major war has

occurred since World War II.

Itseems, therefore,

on thebasis of

thisreview,

that most of thefindingspresented by Organski and Kugler are questionable. In my opinion, this is

mostly due to the varying indicators of power used throughout the book in the

absence of a clear theoretical analysis of what the concept means. Is power

equivalent to the economic, extractive, or military capabilities of a state?

Economic, extractive, and military resources certainly have something to do

with the concept, but their interactions are complex and based on trade-off

relations. A nation can be strong militarily but weak economically. A strong

economy does not mean that the taxing ability of the state will be great and so

on. Taken individually, these indicators can lead the researcher to incoherent

7. A very amusing criticism of the CIA estimates that the authors take at face value is

made by Cockle (1978).

8. Curiously enough, the authors calculate such a depreciation percentage factor but

do not use it to reevaluate the figures in their regression equations.




and questionable results. Organski and Kugler, despite the interesting issues

they raise, tend to tall into various conceptual and methodological traps. Not

only is their theoretical framework not thought through, but their empirical

analyses are constructed in such a way that they are unable to confirm or

disconfirm meaningful propositions about war and peace. Neither sociological

nor rational approaches can be dismissed or accepted. Here, also, much more

needs to be done.

ASHLEY'S POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR AND PEACE

In a way similar to Organski and Kugler, who want to explain most

international behavior in terms of economic development, Ashley tries to

interpret interactions among nations as caused by the single factor of lateral

pressure. What is lateral pressure? This concept was originally used by Nazli

Choucri and Robert North (1975) in their analysis of the international dynamics

leading to World War I. It refers to the notion that as national entities expand

over time, they will be competing more and more for territories and resources.

Conflict and war will eventually result from this process. To demonstrate the

theoretical contribution and empirical validity of the lateral pressure conception,Ashley proceeds in three stages. He first sets up the foundations of a model based

on the lateral pressure hypothesis. He then specifies this model by defining the

relevant variables and their operational measurements, and analyzes their

relationships statistically. He finally discusses the theoretical implications of his

findings.

Is the lateral pressure hypothesis a fruitful idea that is able to either include or

exclude other theoretical approaches? Again, as in Organski and Kugler's case,

it depends entirely on the kinds of specific propositions and empirical indicators

that the author uses to define such a conception. In a way, conflict is always

about resources in the broadest sense of this term. However, the researcher must

determine what kind of resource competition will lead to conflict. Some

competitive processes, such as international trade, lead only occasionally to

confrontations. On the other hand, hostile and violent interactions are often

generated, at least, on the surface, by competition for nonmaterial goods such as

cultural and religious values or control of political positions. Thus the lateral

pressure idea can only lead to valid results if it is given more precise content.

Otherwise,this contention is entirely tautological.

According to Ashley, the lateral pressure hypothesis can be defined in terms

of the interactions between six variables for each nation involved: expansion,

intersection, and provocation (all lateral pressure indicators), and military

capability, normal conflict and cooperation, and threshold of violence (all




conflict indices). Ashley measures expansion, intersection, and provocation for

two nations in terms of indices of trade dispersion, mutual trade in given regions

and mutual trade weighted by the number of local wars in given regions.

Military capabilities are evaluated in terms of expenditures, normal conflict and

cooperation and threshold of violence through events data. So, if one follows

Ashley, economic expansion best represents lateral pressure. The author then

proceeds to construct a complex interactive model based on the six above-

mentioned variables and some basic economic growth indicators for the U.S.,

the USSR, and China. He analyzes it statistically with time-series data.

Without discussing the intricacies of this model or of the statisticalinvestigation,9 one can say that if Ashley is correct about the importance of the

lateral pressure hypothesis, the following should obtain: Expansion, intersection,

provocation, and economic growth variables should be positively correlated

with the conflict indicators, military expenditures, normal conflict and coopera-

tion, and threshold of violence. However, a look at the results shows that the

estimated relations between these two groups of variables are mostly either

insignificant or negative. In the rare cases where positive associations obtain,

they are quite weak. Thus Ashley's contention that lateral pressure generates

conflict is far from established according to his own data analyses. '0 This is notsurprising, since, on an intuitive basis, the (economic) lateral pressure conception

is not evident: Germany and Japan's aggressive behavior in the 1930s

corresponds to very low growth rates, and colonial expansion at the end of the

nineteenth century also is accompanied by a slower economic expansion.

Lateral pressure in its economic interpretation is thus a rather questionable

proposition. Moreover, Ashley certainly cannot claim that other contending

theories of conflict can be rejected and that his sociological conception should be

accepted.

It is unfortunate that the whole lateral pressure idea masks some of Ashley's

more interesting findings, such as the instability that is present in the U.S.-

Soviet-PCR triangle in terms of military interactions. His idea that nations are

forced into arms races and balance of power behaviors by the "logic" of the

international system is also quite interesting. His whole work would have gained

had he concentrated on these issues. Otherwise, the reader is again left with more

questions than answers.

BUENO de MESQUITA'S WAR TRAP

Bueno de Mesquita is the only one among the five authors reviewed here who

uses an explicitly rational decision-making approach to explain international

9. Sometimes the same variables appear in Ashley's analyses in the different lateral

pressure indices on the left and righthand sides of his equations. It is not clear from his

presentation if the two-stage least squares methods he uses are sufficient to eliminate the

biases that are produced in this way.

10. It is curious that Ashley never attempts to postulate what the signs of hisparameters should be. He also does not give a theoretical interpretation of them.




behavior. Mesquita views decisions to go to war or to initiate conflicts as arising

from expected utility calculations by various nations. If the expected value of

winning is greater than that of losing, nations will initiate armed conflicts and

attack particular opponents.

Bueno de Mesquita's conception is thus designed to predict who will initiate

threats, conflicts, and wars. Like the basic hypotheses of Organski and Kugler

and Ashley, the expected value approach is relatively trivial unless particular

indicators for the utilities, probabilities, and risks associated with a decision to

go to war or not are specified. Indeed, one can always rationalize in some way a

nation's willingness to initiate conflict. However, the basic assumptions have to

be made: (1) Nation-states must be interpreted as unitary actors and (2) decision-

makers must show the kind of coherent and calculating behavior that goes with

utility maximization. Bueno de Mesquita does not avoid these issues. He

justifies the second assumption by stating that in most wars fought over the last

160 years, initiators were winners. This could not have occured by chance alone,

so the initiator must have had a decisive advantage and must have been willing to

use it. Hence, wars are purposeful and not arbitrary (p. 9). The first assumption

is supported by the author in the following way: Since wars are purposeful, they

imply the existence within societies of structures that impose a particularpreference order. In Bueno de Mesquita's view this preference ordering can only

be attributed to a strong leader who manages to impose his views on a country

(pp. 11-12).

Even though these arguments are attractive, they are entirely unconvincing.

First, no relation necessarily exists between a systematic advantage and

purposefulness. This is evident from the following thought experiment. Let's

assume that two players are tossing a loaded die. No matter who the players are,

rational adults, children, or monkeys, one of them will always have a systematic

advantage, not because he plays rationally but because the die is loaded. If

initiating a war is favorable for technical reasons, the attacker will always have a

higher probability of winning regardless of his intentions. Second, the ability of

leaders to impose their preferences in times of conflict depends on circumstances.

Crisis situations can weaken just as much as they can strengthen the leadership of

a country and thus render its policies entirely incoherent. This being said, the

rational actor model can nevertheless be very plausible, but it has to be justified

on the basis of more elaborate arguments.

Bueno de Mesquita defines expected utility in a classical Bernoullian" Iway as

the utility of an outcome multiplied by its probability of occurrence. This

definition raises the problem of correct risk assessment, an issue that caused a

considerable controversy in the early 1950s. The French statistician Maurice

Allais (1953) argued that the Bernoullian formulation cannot represent

satisfactorily various attitudes toward risks. This question is, of course, very

important in the framework of international political decisions and is acknow-

ledged by Bueno de Mesquita. He outlines specific corrections to the expected

11. After the Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, who first defined this concept inthe eighteenth century.




utility formulation in order to account for risk-prone and risk-averse behavior.

However, these adjustments are only made within multilateral situations, where

the attitudes of third parties, of allies, of allies of one's opponent, or of neutrals

play a role. In other words, risk is considered by Bueno de Mesquita as

uncertainty about the behavior of third parties. This is a relatively arbitrary

limitation. There is no reason why risks should not be taken into account in

bilateral frameworks.

As mentioned above, the true significance of Bueno de Mesquita's expected

utility conception can only be assessed through its effective content, in other

words, by the way he measures probabilities and utilities. While the probabilitiesof winning a war or a conflict situation are assessed in terms of capability

differences between nations,'2 utilities are measured by how close two nations

are in their alliance commitments. The difference between positions within an

international alliance configuration expresses the gains or losses that can be

achieved through conflicts and wars. Hence, utility is conceived here as a purely

relative concept in which increases for one nation can only be compensated by

decreases for another. In the bilateral case, utility is thus strictly zero-sum:

"Thus the theory treats bilateral wars as situations involving pure competition. i

believes it can gain as much from a bilateral conflict as i believes j must lose" (p.

19). This zero-sum perspective is mitigated in multilateral situations by the

inclusion of the utilities of the allies on both sides and of the neutrals and also by

the influence of risk-accepting or risk-averse behavior. Nevertheless, quite

clearly, a zero-sum bias is introduced into the measurements, as exemplified by

the expected utility scores for war and conflict participants contained in tables

A, B, and C (pp. 59-62). The author should have justified this particular

consequence of this evaluation of utility more thoroughly since the game

theoretical literature has always characterized international conflict situations

as being nonzero-sum (e.g., see Snyder and Diesing, 1977).

Bueno de Mesquita's procedure reveals another difficulty. According to his

view, conflict situations tend to be zero-sum, and a positive expected utility

should predict war initiation. The determination of which side has such a

positive expected utility thus becomes crucial. In bilateral situations, positive

and negative values result mostly from differences in power capabilities (p. 17).

The procedure thus in some instances eliminates the very notion on which it is

constructed, expected utility. Moreover, in cases of very close or equal power

capabilities, it can produce quite arbitrary results.Bueno de Mesquita proceeds to make a statistical analysis of his expected

utility conception, generally with the help of contingency tables. He is able to

predict quite accurately who the initiatory of a given war, threat, or conflict will

be. It is, however, somewhat dissatisfying that Bueno de Mesquita does not

attempt to predict which actor is more likely to initiate a threat, a war, or a

conflict ex ante, without accounting for the fact that the event actually occurred.

12. Using the correlates of war national capability scores (Singer et al., 1972).

13. It is not always very clear who the initiator is. It often depends on arbitrary codingrules. In addition, there is no reason why two nations should not prefer to start wars

simultaneously. In this case, the question of who fires the first shot is immaterial.




Only if such a forecasting exercise is undertaken will his theoretical notions

show their real predictive power.

One has to remember, though, that Bueno de Mesquita's theory of war

constitutes in some ways what I would call a heroic attempt to apply rational

decision-making theory on a grand scale to problems of war and peace. Thus,

despite the serious difficulties engendered by his conception, his work constitutes

a useful exercise because it initiates an interesting discussion on a variety of

issues connected to rational behavior. However, in order to produce more

significant results, his theory needs to be considerably rethought and com-

pleted. 14

STEIN'S NATION AT WAR

In a review, as in gastronomy, the best things should always be keptuntil last.

Stein's book constitutes a very interesting attempt to test hypotheses about what

happens within a nation during wartime. Stein's research is structured around

four propositions:

(1) There is a positive relationship between war involvement and internal cohesion ifthe population believes that it is threatened and that a cooperative effort will bring

success.

(2) This cohesion decreases, however, as levels of wartime mobilization increase.

(3) When the mobilization process associated with war exceeds a critical threshold,

concentration of production increases.

(4) Inequality within society decreases with wartime mobilization as more individuals

are drawn into the labor market and as more progressive taxation and increases in

government expenditures for social services are enacted.

Stein uses these four hypotheses to empirically investigate the American

system during the four twentieth-century wars it was involved in: World Wars I

and II, Korea, and Vietnam. He finds that his hypotheses are generally

confirmed: It seems possible to mobilize the citizenry only when a credible threat

is present and chances for success exist, hence the cooperative and popular effort

during World War II. However, as the mobilization progresses, people become

dissatisfied even during wars that are well supported by the public (World War

II is also an example of this proposition). Moreover, concentration of

production tends to increase and social inequalities to decrease, although thereare exceptions to these processes. In particular, the ultimate effects of inflation

on social inequalities are taken by Stein to be always positive. This is not

necessarily so since inflation tends to benefit the big debtors within society and

these are usually, along with the state, the big corporations. Nevertheless, Stein's

analyses generally are quite thorough and convincing.

Especially interesting for students of war and conflict are some of the

conclusions Stein draws from his hypotheses, which lead to some remarkable

political paradoxes. A limited war is relatively difficult to wage if it is not rapidly

14. Bueno de Mesquita's 1981 article already shows considerable improvement over

his book.



180 JOURNAL OFCONFLICTRESOLUTION

successful since the perception of threat necessary to generate cohesion within

the population is by definition very low in this case (p. 99). Also, paradoxically, a

smaller nation attacked by a larger one will be more cohesive and more willing to

resist, which explains "why big nations lose small wars" (p. 96). Moreover, as

Stein states, "The circumstances of war initiation are thus potentially central to

the outcome" (p. 97). The way in which a war starts affects threat perceptions

decisively and provokes strong reactions and increased cohesion. Thus, one can

understand "why aggressors in wars between two major powers may lose the

very wars they begin" (p. 97).

Clearly, Stein shows that he has thought through the consequences of his

hypotheses. His approach can thus be used to construct the elements of a theory

of war conceived as a dynamic and complex phenomenon involving trade-offsbetween populations and elites and asymmetric reactions in big and small

nations. If war is to be understood in the framework of rational decision-

making, processes that entail clashes between collective and individual rational-

ities have to be better studied and analyzed. Stein gives some valuable clues to

that effect. His work outlines the way in which national conceptions can usefully

integrate largescale sociological processes. One only regrets that his work was

confined to the U.S. system and that he has not taken a larger comparative

framework.

CONCLUSIONS

It is quite clear, in my opinion, that three or even four out of the five books

reviewed in this essay cannot be considered satisfactory contributions to the

study of peace and war. Thus, these are not the last words about wars. One could

ask why so many blind alleys were taken, why the research did not explore more

significant theoretical and methodological constructs. My relatively harsh

comments nevertheless require some explanation about how and where the

difficulties arise. Two kinds of problems should be particularly stressed in this

context. First, scholars of international politics are used to working with

aggregate indicators that supposedly represent some underlying attribute.

Power is a particular case in point. However, the selection of such indicators is

often made in a hasty and problematic way. One has to remember that the GNP,

for instance, is an economic aggregate constructed by economists on the basis of

numerous theoretical considerations. This concept cannot simply be taken tomeasure power, a political construct. The GNP is one dimension of the power

potential of a nation but certainly not the only one. Interpretations of power

based solely on this indicator can be completely misleading. The same can be

said about other economic indices. In addition, scholars of international politics




should always remember that there are other disciplines in the social sciences,

such as economics or psychology, that have defined specific theoretical relations

between the variables they are using. One has to take into account, for instance,

that GNP, trade, and military expenditures are related through national

accounting identities. Since so many activities connected with conflict impinge

directly on economic processes, these relationships have to be accounted for. In

other words, political scientists should not always reinvent their own wheels.

The works of Organski and Kugler and of Ashley could have benefited from

inputs derived from economic theory; Bueno de Mesquita's expected utility

conception could have been improved by the use of concepts discussed by the

game theoretical literature.

My second point concerns the phenomenon to be studied. War and conflict,

like cancer, might be a relatively complex process that cannot be explored across

the board with similar methods or theoretical constructs. What I would call

hyper wars (such as World Wars I and II and the Napoleonic Wars) might be

quite different from limited or regionalized armed conflicts, a point implicitly

made by Stein. Then the problem would be-to explain how such conflicts can

possibly escalate from one form to the other. I think that unless such differences

are taken into account and unless passages from disputes to limited to major

wars are seriously explored, no significant progress will be made.

My review has included some strong criticisms of the works that wereconsidered here. Without these books, however, issues and questions that I have

raised could not have been addressed. This, in my eyes, constitutes a sufficient

justification for these works, one that transcends all the critical assessments that

can be made about them.

REFERENCES

ALLAIS, M. (1953) "Le comportement de 1'homme rationnel devant le risque: critique des

axiomes et postulats de 1'6cole am6ricaine." Econometrica 21, 4: 503-546.

ALLAN, P (1983) Crisis Bargaining and the Arms Race. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

BECKER, G. (1964) Human Capital. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

BUENO de MESQUITA, B. (1981) "Risk, power distributions, and the likelihood of

war." Int. Studies Q. 25, 4: 541-568.

COCKLE, P. (1978) "Analysing Soviet defence spending: the debate in perspective."

Survival 20, 5: 209-219.

GALTON, F. (1961) "On a method of investigating the development of institutions:applied to laws of marriage and descent, discussion," pp. 1-25 in F. W. Moore (ed.)

Readings in Cross-Cultural Methodology. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.

LAMBELET, J. C. (1975) "A numerical model of the Anglo-German dreadnought race."

The Papers of the Peace Science Society (International).




---and U. LUTERBACHER (1979) "Dynamics of arms races: mutual stimulation vs.

self-stimulation." J. of Peace Science, 4, 1: 49-66.

LUTERBACHER, U. (1981) "Negociations et coalitions," in S. Friedlander et al. (eds.)

L'historien et les relations internationales, Recueil d'6tudes en hommage a Jacques

Freymond. Geneva: IUHEI Publications.

----and P. ALLAN (1982) "Modeling politico-economic interactions within and

between nations." Int. Pol. Sci. Rev. 3, 4: 404-433.

OLSON, M. (1982) The Rise and Decline of Nations. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

RICHARDSON, L. F. (1960a) Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. Pittsburgh, PA: The

Boxwood Press.

---(1960b) Arms and Insecurity. Pittsburgh, PA: The Boxwood Press.

SIMON, H. (1957) Models of Man: Social and Rational. New York: John Wiley.SINGER, J. D. and M. SMALL (1972) The Wages of War. New York: John Wiley.

SINGER, J. D., S. BREMER, and J. STUCKEY (1972) "Capability distribution,

uncertainty and major power war: 1816-1965," in B. Russett (ed.) Peace, War and

Numbers. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

SNYDER, G. and P. DIESING 1977) Conflict among Nations: Bargaining, Decision-

Making and System Structure in International Crises. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ.

Press.

SOROKIN, P. (1938) Social and Cultural Dynamics, Volume III. (abridged edition, 1970,

Boston: Porter Sargent).

TYLOR, E. (1961) "On a method of investigating the development of institutions: applied

to laws of marriage and descent," pp. 1-25 in F. W. Moore (ed.) Readings in Cross-

Cultural Methodology. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.

WARD, M. (1982) Differential Paths to Parity: A Study of the Contemporary Arms

Race. Berlin: Science Center Berlin.

WRIGHT, Q. (1942) A Study of War. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press.

Call for Paperson

Communication & Simulation

In 1986, the International Simulation and Gaming Association

(ISAGA) will be holding its 17th international conference at the

University of Toulon, France, on the theme of COMMUNI-CATION.

The organizers will be editing a volume entitled: Communica-

tion & Simulation, to appear in late 1985. Its scope is to be as large

and as interdisciplinary as possible.

Potential contributors to this volume should write either to:

David Crookall, University of Toulon, 83130 LA GARDE,

France; or to: Danny Saunders, The Polytechnic of Wales,

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