Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War
Author(s): Stephen Van Evera
Source: International Security , Winter, 1990-1991, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter, 1990-1991),
pp. 7-57
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538906
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ed for Peace Stephen Van Evera
Europe After the Cold War
One year has passed
since the Berlin Wall and the communist regimes of Eastern Europe came
crashing down in the revolutions of 1989. The euphoria first evoked by these
events has been replaced by a more sober contemplation of the realities and
challenges of the new Europe. For all its flaws, the postwar order that divided
Europe into two rival blocs kept the peace for 45 years, a new European
record. Now this order is rapidly crumbling. Soviet forces will be gone from
Germany by 1994, and Soviet leaders have declared their readiness to withdraw
all Soviet troops from Eastern Europe by 1995.1 U.S. forces, too, will
certainly be reduced in Central Europe. Germany has been reunified, the
Warsaw Pact has effectively dissolved, and the Soviet Union shows signs of
political fragmentation. These dramatic changes have sparked worried debate
on the opportunities and dangers facing the new Europe, and on the best
way to preserve peace.
This article explores two questions raised by these events. First, how will
the end of the Cold War affect the probability of war in Europe? In particular,
what risks will arise from the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe, and
from the possible further transformation or splintering of the Soviet Union?
Second, what U.S. and Western policies would best contribute to preserving
Europe's long peace?
Some observers warn that Europe may return to its historic warlike ways
once the superpowers are gone. One such view holds that bipolar state
systems are inherently more peaceful than multipolar systems; that the Cold
War peace was caused partly by the bipolar character of the Cold War
I wish to thank Beverly Crawford, Charles Glaser, Robert Jervis, Chaim Kaufmann, John Mearsheimer,
Jack Snyder, Marc Trachtenberg, Stephen Walt, and David Yanowski for their thoughtful
comments on drafts of this article. Research for this article was supported by the Ford
Foundation through the Consensus Project of the Olin Institute at Harvard University.
Stephen Van Evera is Assistant Professor in the political science department at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. He was managing editor of International Security from 1984 to 1987.
1. Thomas L. Friedman, "Pact on European Armies May Skip Troop Limits to Speed Accord,"
New York Times, September 12, 1990, p. A14; Michael Parks, "USSR talks of full European
pullout," Boston Globe, February 12, 1990, p. 20.
Iinterinational Security, Winter 1990/91 (Vol. 15, No. 3)
? 1990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7
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International Security 15:3 | 8
international order; and that the withdrawal of U.S. and Soviet forces will
now produce a less stable multipolar system like those that spawned Europe's
centuries of war, including the two great wars of this century.2
A second pessimistic perspective suggests that Germany may return to the
aggressive course that caused both World Wars, once it is united and free
from the police presence of the superpowers. Proponents of this view believe
that past German aggression was driven largely by flaws in German national
character; that Germany has behaved well since 1945 largely because it was
not free to behave badly; and that a united and more autonomous Germany
may return to its old ways.3 This fear is often thought, sometimes whispered,
but rarely stated baldly.4 It nonetheless is implicit in fears that Germany will
be the focus of instability in post-Cold War Europe.
Third, some worry that the promise of democracy in Eastern Europe, so
great in the heady days of late 1989 and early 1990, will go unfulfilled. Instead
of developing Western-style democracy, the post-communist regimes of the
region may evolve into "praetorian states"-flawed democracies that lack the
2. See John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,"
International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56. Mearsheimer is a qualified
pessimist: he does not forecast a complete return to the levels of danger of 1914 or 1939, and
he sees some possibility of dampening the dangers he outlines. He also recognizes the importance
of factors other than the polarity of the international system in causing war, although he
believes these factors are less important than the structure of the international system. However,
he does warn that the new European order will be substantially more dangerous than the Cold
War order, largely because the system will be multipolar.
3. A variant of this view suggests that Germany was aggressive in the past because it found
itself surrounded by strong neighbors, with borders that offered few physical barriers to invasion;
hence it expanded to bolster its security. In this view, these unchanging geographic facts
may stir renewed German aggression once Germany is reunified and unoccupied.
4. A crude example is Leopold Bellak, "Why I Fear the Germans" (op-ed), New York Times,
April 25, 1990, p. A29. Bellak argues that German children are abused more often than children
in other societies, and grow up to become aggressive adults "whom I don't trust to be peaceful,
democratic people." For replies, see letters to the editor by Werner M. Graf, Mark Tobak, and
Joseph Dolgin, New York Times, May 10, 1990, p. A30. See also Dominic Lawson, "Saying the
Unsayable About the Germans" (an interview with British then-Secretary of State for Industry
Nicholas Ridley), The Spectator (London), July 14, 1990, pp. 8-10, in which Ridley expressed
fears of Germany. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly shares Ridley's views: see
Anthony Bevins, "Bitter memories shape views on Germany," The Independent (London), July
13, 1990, p. 3. Likewise, former NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns warned that a united
Germany someday might seek to expand beyond its current borders, adding: "Ridley said out
loud what many Europeans think. We all know about the German character, don't we? Germans
naturally become a little arrogant when they are powerful." Robert Melcher and Roman Rollnick,
"Axis urged to counter Bonn," The European, July 27-29, 1990. The Economist reported that "Mr.
Ridley's words . . . reflect the visceral feelings of millions of fellow-Britons, thousands of Tory
party workers and scores, if not hundreds, of Tory MPs." "Nick and his mouth," July 14, 1990,
p. 33.
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Europe After the Cold War I 9
institutions required to channel growing popular participation. In such states,
governments are often captured by narrow interest groups. If this occurs,
these groups may pursue aggressive policies that benefit themselves, even
if these policies harm the larger society.5
A fourth school of thought suggests that Europe's virulent ethnic hatreds
and latent border conflicts will re-emerge, like plagues from Pandora's box,
if the superpowers lift the lid by withdrawing. These conflicts are most likely
between and within the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, and
among the nationalities inside the Soviet Union.6
I argue that all but the last of these pessimistic views rest on false fears,
and that the risk of a return to the warlike Europe of old is low. The European
wars of this century grew mainly from military factors and domestic conditions
that are largely gone, and will not return in force. The nuclear revolution
has dampened security motives for expansion, and the domestic orders of
most European states have changed in ways that make renewed aggression
unlikely. The most significant domestic changes include the waning of militarism
and hyper-nationalism. Secondary changes include the spread of democracy,
the leveling of highly stratified European societies, the resulting
evaporation of "social imperial" motives for war, and the disappearance of
states governed by revolutionary elites.
Europe's past multipolar systems would have been far more peaceful without
these conditions and factors. A return to multipolarity poses no special
risks in their absence. Germany has undergone a social transformation that
removed the roots of its past aggressiveness, and unified Germany can be
expected to remain a responsible member of the European community. The
risks of imperfect or stunted democratization are real, but these problems
are confined to a small number of Eastern European states. Even in that
5. See Jack Snyder, "Averting Anarchy in the New Europe," International Security, Vol. 14, No.
4 (Spring 1990), pp. 5-41; and for historical background on the problem of praetorianism, Jack
Snyder, Myths of Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming). Snyder is the main
exponent of the praetorian scenario, but others also fear the emergence of flawed democracies
in the East. See, for example, Timothy Garton Ash, "Eastern Europe: Apres Le D6luge, Nous,"
New York Review of Books, August 16, 1990, pp. 51-57; and Valerie Bunce, "Rising Above the
Past: The Struggle for Liberal Democracy in Eastern Europe," World Policy Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3
(Summer 1990), pp. 395-430.
6. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Post-Communist Nationalism," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 5
(Winter 1989/90), pp. 1-25; F. Stephen Larrabee, "Long Memories and Short Fuses: Change and
Instability in the Balkans," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 58-91; Paul
Kennedy, "The 'Powder Keg' Revisited," Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1989, p. B7; and Samuel
R. Williamson, "1914's Shadow on the Europe of Today," Newsday, July 27, 1989, p. 61.
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International Security 15:3 | 10
region, communism has removed much of the social and economic stratification
that gives rise to hyper-nationalism, militarism, and aggressive prae-
torianism.
The risks of renewed ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe are more serious,
however, and constitute the most important reason for concern in the new
Europe. The immediate dangers raised by the break-up of the Soviet Union
and by resurgent border and inter-ethnic conflicts in the Balkans would be
confined to that region, but a conflict arising there could spread westward,
giving the Western states a major stake in preserving peace in the East.
Overall, the risk of war in the new Europe may be greater than under the
Cold War order, but only slightly so. Western Europe seems very secure
from war, and any dangers that might arise in that region could be dampened
by appropriate American policies. The main dangers lie in the East, where
potential causes of war are more potent, and the West has less capacity to
promote peace.
To bolster Europe's peace, the West should seek a general Cold War peace
settlement with the Soviet Union, and should revamp NATO into a collective
security system. The United States should retain its membership in this new
NATO, and should maintain a significant military force on the European
continent to symbolize the continuing U.S. commitment to Europe. The
United States should also take active steps to dampen hyper-nationalism and
militarism in Western Europe, and the West should use economic leverage
to encourage Eastern European states to adopt democracy, protect the rights
of national minorities, accept current borders, and eschew the propagation
of hyper-nationalism.
The following discussion is necessarily speculative. Our knowledge of the
causes of war is incomplete; our stock of hypotheses is small, and many
plausible hypotheses have not been tested empirically. I believe the propositions
that underpin my analysis are deductively sound, but many are still
untested. The ongoing transformation of Europe will not wait for further
empirical studies to accumulate, however, and social science owes the world
what it knows about this transformation, however incomplete that knowledge
may be.
The next section reviews the many causes of past European conflicts that
have disappeared over the past few decades, or are now disappearing, and
offers reasons why these causes are unlikely to recur. In the section that
follows, I assess the specific dangers of multipolarity, German aggression,
and praetorianism, and indicates why they pose little danger. Causes of war
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Europe After the Cold War I 11
that may persist or reappear are noted in the subsequent section. The last
section offers prescriptions for American and Western policy.
Why Europe is Primed for Peace: Vanished and Vanishing Causes of War
The case for optimism about Europe's future rests chiefly on the diminution
or disappearance of many of the principal causes of wars of the past century.
Specifically, eight significant causes of past wars have markedly diminished,
or are now diminishing. Of these eight, the waning of the first threeoffense-dominance,
militarism, and hyper-nationalism-is most significant.
The following list also progresses from largely systemic causes (the first) to
unit-level domestic factors (the last seven).
OFFENSE-DOMINANCE
War is far more likely when offense appears easy and conquest seems feasible,
for five main reasons.7 First and most important, arguments for territorial
expansion are more persuasive: states want more territory because their
current borders appear less defensible, and the seizure of others' territory
seems more feasible. Second, the incentive to launch preemptive attack increases,
because a successful surprise attack provides larger rewards, and
averts greater dangers. When the offense is strong, smaller shifts in ratios of
forces between states create greater shifts in their relative capacity to conquer
and defend territory. As a result, a state has greater incentive to strike firstin
order to gain the advantage of striking the first blow, or to deny that
advantage to its opponent-if a first strike will shift the force ratio in its
favor. This increases the danger of pre-emptive war and makes crises more
explosive.
Third, arguments for preventive war are more powerful. Since smaller
shifts in force ratios have larger effects on relative capacity to conquer or
defend territory, smaller prospective shifts in force ratios cause greater hope
and alarm, bolstering arguments for shutting "windows of vulnerability" by
force. Fourth, states are quicker to use diplomatic tactics that risk war in
order to gain diplomatic victories. Since security is scarcer, more competitive
behavior seems justified when assets that provide security are disputed
7. These and other dangers are detailed in Robert Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security
Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 167-214; and Stephen Van Evera,
"Causes of War" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1984), pp. 77-123.
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International Security 15:3 | 12
between states. As a result, states use competitive tactics, like brinkmanship
and presenting opponents with faits accomplis, which raise the risk of war.
Fifth, states enforce tighter political and military secrecy, since national
security is threatened more directly if enemies win the contest for information.
Hence states try harder to gain the advantage and avoid the disadvantage
of disclosure, leading them to carefully conceal military plans and forces.
This can lead opponents to underestimate one another's capabilities and
blunder into a war of optimistic miscalculation.8 It also may ease surprise
attack, by concealing preparations from the opponent, and may prevent arms
control agreements, by making compliance more difficult to verify.
These dangers have been ubiquitous causes of past European wars, and
faith in the relative ease of conquest played a major role in the outbreak of
both World Wars, especially the First.9 However, three changes since 1945the
nuclear revolution, the evolution of industrial economies toward knowledge-based
forms of production, and the transformation of American foreign
policy interests and thinking-have powerfully strengthened the defense,
and largely erased the rationale for security competition among the European
powers.
THE NUCLEAR REVOLUTION. As many observers note, nuclear weapons have
bolstered peace by vastly raising the cost of war; states therefore behave far
more cautiously.10 If this were the sole effect of the nuclear revolution,
however, it would represent little net gain for peace, and would provide little
basis for optimism about Europe's future. Wars would be far fewer, but far
more destructive. Over the long run the number of war-deaths might be as
8. On wars of optimistic miscalculation, see Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York:
Free Press, 1973), pp. 35-56.
9. On World War I, see Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the
First World War," in Steven E. Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 58-107; and Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the
Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
The effect of offense-defense calculations on the outbreak of World War II is more complicated;
a "cult of the defensive" among the states opposing Hitler also played a role in setting the stage
for that war. See Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany
Between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 232; and Thomas Christensen
and Jack Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,"
International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 137-168, at 166. However, this
defensive cult was not shared by Hitler, who believed that offensive military action was feasible,
if not easy, and who exaggerated the ease of conquest overall by underestimating the political
forces that would gather against an aggressor.
10. See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, "The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar
International System," International Security, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Spring 1986), pp. 99-142, at 120-
123.
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Europe After the Cold War 1 13
large as always; the difference is merely that the dead would die in a smaller
number of more violent conflicts.
A second effect of nuclear weapons is far more important: they strengthen
defending states against aggressors. States with developed nuclear arsenals
can annihilate each other even after absorbing an all-out attack, giving rise
to a world of mutual assured destruction (MAD). In a MAD world, conquest
is far harder than before, because international conflicts shift from tests of
will and capability to purer tests of will-to be won by the side willing to
run greater risks and pay greater costs. This strengthens defenders, because
they nearly always value their freedom more than aggressors value new
conquests; hence they will have more resolve than aggressors, hence their
threats are more credible, hence they are bound to prevail in a confrontation.
For these reasons the nuclear revolution makes conquest among great
powers virtually impossible. A victor now must destroy almost all of an
opponent's nuclear arsenal-an enormous task requiring massive technical
and material superiority. As a result, even lesser powers can now stand alone
against states with far greater resources, as they never could before.
Britain, France and Soviet Union are Europe's only nuclear powers today,
but a number of others could develop powerful deterrents if they ever faced
serious threats to their security. This potential greatly diminishes the risk of
war. Before 1945, states sought to redress insecurity by territorial expansion
and preventive war. The nuclear revolution has given states the option of
achieving security without resort to war, by peacefully acquiring superior
defensive weapons. As a result of this increased security, competition for
security will be muted in the new Europe; arguments for preemptive and
preventive war will be less common; diplomacy will be conducted with less
reckless search for unilateral advantage; and foreign and security policies
will be relatively open.1"
11. The Cold War "reconnaissance revolution"-embodied in the deployment of reconnaissance
satellites by both superpowers-reflects this last effect. As John Gaddis notes, this revolution
helped stabilize the Cold War, by preventing optimistic miscalculation, inhibiting surprise attack,
and facilitating arms control. Gaddis, "Long Peace," pp. 123-125. See also John Lewis Gaddis,
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987), pp. 195-214. The reconnaissance revolution, in turn, was largely a product of the nuclear
revolution. It required the development of ballistic missiles that could loft satellites into space,
but it also required tacit acceptance by both superpowers, who otherwise could have developed
and used anti-satellite weapons to prevent satellite overflights. Nuclear weapons made the
superpowers better able to agree tacitly to allow mutual surveillance, even if one side gained
more information than the other from such surveillance. Such unilateral gains made little
difference in a world of redundant, secure nuclear arsenals, since even a large advantage to one
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International Security 15:3 j 14
The possibility of nuclear proliferation should thus be seen as a net benefit
to peace in Europe. Proliferation would entail obvious dangers. For example,
new nuclear states might develop frail deterrents that are not secure from
terrorism, accident, or surprise attack, raising the risk of terrorist use, and
of accidental or preemptive war; and surrounding states might be tempted
to launch preventive wars against emerging nuclear powers. However, these
dangers can be managed by the existing nuclear powers. These powers can
limit proliferation to states capable of maintaining secure deterrents, by guaranteeing
the security of other non-nuclear states, thereby reducing their need
for nuclear weapons. They also can manage any proliferation that does occur
by deterring preventive attack on emerging nuclear states when proliferation
is deemed acceptable, and by giving them the technical help required to build
secure arsenals. If proliferation is constrained and managed in this fashion,
it can bolster Europe's peace by making conquest infeasible.12 Things would
be safest if all European states that might someday desire nuclear deterrents
already possessed them; the dangers of the proliferation process would then
be avoided. Overall, however, the possibility of proliferation makes Europe
far safer than it would be if that possibility did not exist.
ECONOMIC CHANGE: THE END OF THE AGE OF EXTRACTION. The shift toward
knowledge-based forms of production in advanced industrial economies
since 1945 has reduced the ability of conquerors to extract resources from
conquered territories. This change, too, diminishes the risk of war in Europe
by making conquest more difficult and less rewarding.
Today's high-technology post-industrial economies depend increasingly on
free access to technical and social information. This access requires a free
domestic press, and access to foreign publications, foreign travel, personal
computers, and photocopiers. But the police measures needed to subdue a
conquered society require that these technologies and practices be forbidden,
because they also carry subversive ideas. Thus critical elements of the ecoside
would not give it a strategic first-strike capability. Hence both sides felt that the danger of
allowing the other side to gain a unilateral information advantage was outweighed by the
mutual gain provided by an open information regime.
12. Some pessimists expect that if nuclear proliferation occurs, it is likely to be mismanaged,
and argue that the possibility of proliferation therefore poses a net danger. See, for example,
Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," pp. 37-40. However, if the United States remains in Europe,
it seems implausible that the Americans will stand idly by while a botched proliferation process
unfolds. Hence proliferation poses a danger only if the United States withdraws fully from
Europe-which seems unlikely, as I note below. Moreover, even if the United States does
withdraw, the European nuclear powers also have the wherewithal to manage any proliferation
that might occur, and have every interest in doing so.
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Europe After the Cold War | 15
nomic fabric now must be ripped out to maintain control over conquered
polities.
As a result of these changes, states can afford to compete less aggressively
for control of industrial areas, since control adds little to national power, and
control by others would give them little power-gain. Hence it poses little
threat. This change undercuts the geopolitical motives that produced past
European balance-of-power wars. It is now far harder to conquer Europe
piecemeal, using each conquest to gain strength for the next, since incremental
conquests would provide little gain in power, and might even produce
a net loss. Hence would-be aggressors have less motive to expand, and
defenders less reason to compete fiercely to prevent others' gain.13
This is a marked change from the smokestack-economy era, when societies
could be conquered and policed with far less collateral economic harm. The
Nazis sustained fairly high levels of production in France and Czechoslovakia,
even while they subjugated the conquered populations. Likewise, the
Soviet regime was able until recently to squeeze high production from a
society that was also subject to tight police controls, including severe limits
on information technology, foreign publications, and travel. The slowdown
of Soviet economic growth after 1970, and the stall in Soviet economic growth
during the 1980s, reflect the new economic reality. The Soviet economy hit
the wall partly because Soviet means of political control now collide with the
imperatives of post-industrial economic productivity. The Soviet Union had
to institute glasnost and other democratic reforms if it hoped to re-start its
economy, because the police measures required to sustain the Bolshevik
dictatorship would also stifle Soviet efforts to escape the smokestack age.
Any expansionist European state would confront the same dilemma. It
would have to adopt harsh police measures to control its newly-acquired
empire, but these measures would wreck productivity. Industrial economies
could once be domesticated and milked; now they would wither in captivity.
Hence any future European state that pursued successful military expansion
would then face only two options: liberalize and lose control politically, or
maintain tight political control and impoverish the empire. This change
13. Carl Kaysen notes further reasons why conquest now pays smaller strategic and economic
rewards than in the past. See Carl Kaysen, "Is War Obsolete? A Review Essay," International
Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Spring 1990), pp. 42-64, at 48-58. However, most of the factors he
identifies have evolved over several centuries, and thus provide little reason to hope that the
world is significantly safer now than it was in 1914 or 1939.
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International Security 15:3 1 16
dampens the balance-of-power concerns, and the attendant competition for
control of industrial regions, that helped cause both world wars.14
AMERICA AS BALANCER: THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
INTERESTS AND IDEAS. When diplomatic coalitions fail to form against aggressors,
aggression becomes easier, making war more likely. Such failure represents
a diplomatic variety of offense-dominance, and has the same effects
as the military variety. Thus the two world wars were caused partly by
American and British failure to balance firmly against German aggression in
both 1914 and 1939, and Soviet failure to balance in 1939. This left Germany's
neighbors less secure, and allowed Germany to hope that hegemony was
possible. Peace has been preserved since 1945 partly because the United
States and Britain reversed course after 1945, playing an active role in counterbalancing
Soviet power on the European Continent.
American foreign policy interests and thinking have changed dramatically
since the 1930s. The United States is therefore likely to continue playing an
active balancing role, at least in Western Europe, even after the Soviet withdrawal
from Eastern Europe.15 As a result, the danger of inadequate diplomatic
balancing is unlikely to recur in the new Europe.
The nuclear revolution reduces the threat posed by a hegemonic European
state to American sovereignty, since a nuclear-armed America could defend
itself against such a hegemon far more easily than it could in the pre-nuclear
era. This lowers America's geopolitical interest in balancing actively against
a potential European hegemon. However, the nuclear revolution also heightens
America's interest in avoiding war in Europe, since such a war would
now inflict far more harm on America if it spread to engulf the United States.
America could well be drawn into such a war, because it has deep cultural
and ethnic ties to Europe, and would find it difficult to stand aside while
14. This change does have a downside: by slackening the impulse to balance against aggression,
it could weaken the resistance that aggressors face, weakening deterrence. However, the new
economics would cause net damage to peace through this effect only if aggressors' motives to
commit aggression are not reduced by the new economics, while defenders' will to defend is
weakened. This asymmetry might develop, but there is no clear reason why it should be
expected.
15. A continued American military commitment to Europe will not diminish the risk of war in
Eastern Europe unless the United States guarantees the security of the Eastern European states
against attack by one another-a policy I do not expect or recommend-but it will inhibit
aggression in Western Europe, and dampen the spread of war from Eastern to Western Europe.
Moreover, the United States can use measures short of military commitment, such as economic
incentives, to punish aggressors and reward good conduct in Eastern Europe, as I note below.
This would constitute a balancing policy implemented by non-military means.
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Europe After the Cold War 1 17
the homelands of American ethnic groups were conquered or destroyed. A
future European war could also harm American commercial or other interests,
drawing in the United States by a process parallel to that which pulled
it into the French Revolutionary Wars and the First World War. Thus while
one argument for balancing has diminished, another has become more persuasive.
As a result, the United States is unlikely to return to its pre-World
War II policy of isolation.16
The experience of the two world wars has also changed American foreign
policy thinking in ways that will probably not be reversed. Before both wars,
the United States remained aloof from Europe in the belief that it could stand
aside from Europe's wars, but this proved impossible both times. National
historical learning is often ephemeral, but this experience forms a large part
of American historical consciousness, and its main lesson-that the United
States could be drawn into any future European conflagration-is relatively
unambiguous. As a result, it is difficult to imagine a return to the simple
isolationism of the 1930s. The disastrous results of that policy are too difficult
to explain away. Moreover, during the Cold War the United States developed
a large military establishment whose main reason for existence lies in the
American commitment to Europe. This establishment has an institutional
interest in reminding Americans of the history of 1914-45, if they begin to
forget it.
The post-Cold War world has yet to emerge, but early signs indicate that
those who forecast a complete American withdrawal from Europe will be
proven wrong.17 During the 1980s some Americans called for such a withdrawal,18
but these voices have now largely faded away. The current American
administration seems committed to staying in Europe even after the
Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe,19 and there is little dissent from this
policy in the United States.
16. For further discussion of America's post-Cold War interest in Europe, see Stephen Van
Evera, "Why Europe Matters, Why the Third World Doesn't: American Grand Strategy After
the Cold War," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1990), pp. 1-51, at 2-12.
17. Mearsheimer suggests that the dissolution of NATO and the complete withdrawal of American
and British forces from the European continent are likely if the Soviet Union withdraws
fully from Eastern Europe. "Back to the Future," pp. 5-6.
18. For examples, see Van Evera, "Why Europe Matters, Why the Third World Doesn't," pp. 1,
34-35n.
19. President Bush has declared that American forces are needed to provide a "stabilizing
presence" in Europe even if the Soviet Union withdraws fully from Eastern Europe, and in early
1990 he successfully pressed Moscow to agree that American forces in Western Europe would
be reduced more slowly than Soviet forces in the East. See Michael Gordon, "American Troops
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International Security 15:3 1 18
MILITARISM
World War I and the Pacific War of 1941-45 were caused in part by the
domination of civilian discourse by military propaganda that primed the
world for war. This domination has now disappeared in Europe.
As a general matter, professional military officers are nearly as cautious as
civilians in recommending decisions for war.20 However, militaries do sometimes
cause war as a side-effect of their efforts to protect their organizational
interests. They infuse the surrounding society with organizationally selfserving
myths; these myths then have the unintended effect of persuading
the rest of society that war is necessary or desirable. Militaries purvey these
myths to convince society to grant them the size, wealth, autonomy, and
prestige that all bureaucracies seek-not to provoke war. Yet these myths
also support arguments for war; hence societies infused with military propaganda
will be warlike, even if their militaries want peace.21 Wilhelmine
Germany and Imperial Japan are prime examples of societies that were infused
with such myths, and waged war because of them.22 Other European
powers also fell under the sway of militarist mythology before 1914, although
to a lesser extent than Germany.23
Needed in Europe, President Asserts," New York Times, February 13, 1990, p. 1; and Thomas
Friedman, "Soviets, Ending Objections, Agree to U.S. Edge on Soldiers in Europe," New York
Times, February 14, 1990, p. 1.
20. The only empirical study on this question is Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold
War Crises (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). Betts found that America's Cold War
military leaders were as cautious as American civilian leaders in recommending war, although
military leaders were notably more hawkish than civilians when the escalation of warfare was
considered.
21. I develop this argument in Van Evera, "Causes of War," pp. 206-398.
22. Thus Hans-Ulrich Wehler notes "the spread of military values throughout German society"
before 1914, and argues that "this 'social militarism' not only placed the military highest on the
scale of social prestige, but permeated the whole of society with its ways of thinking, patterns
of behavior, and its values and notions of honor." Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918, trans.
Kim Traynor (Leamington Spa/Dover, N.H.: Berg Publishers, 1985), p. 156. German Admiral
George von Muller later explained German pre-war bellicosity by noting that "a great part of
the German people . .. had been whipped into a high-grade chauvinism by Navalists and PanGermans";
quoted in Fritz Stern, 7he Failure of Liberalism (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1972), p. 94. For more on the role of the military in Wilhelmine Germany see Gordon Craig,
The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); and
Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). On Japan
see Saburo lenaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 13-54. A survey
on the problem of militarism is Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an International
Debate, 1861-1979 (New York: St. Martin's, 1982).
23. I summarize the beliefs purveyed by European militaries before 1914 in Stephen Van Evera,
"Why Cooperation Failed in 1914," World Politics, Vol. 37, No. 1 (October 1985), pp. 80-117, at
83-99.
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Europe After the Cold War 19
Five principal myths have been prominent in past military arguments and
propaganda. First, militaries exaggerate the power of the offense relative to
the defense, and the ease of conquest among states. Before World War I the
German army's chief propagandist, General Friedrich von Bernhardi, expressed
the common militar-y prejudice when he wrongly asserted that "the
offensive mode of action is by far superior to the defensive mode," and that
new technology favored the attacker.24 Such illusions bolster arguments that
larger forces are needed to defend against aggression, and support arguments
for the offensive military doctrines that militaries strongly prefer.25 However,
they also cause war, by conjuring up the many dangers (noted above) that
arise when national leaders believe that security is scarce and conquest is
easy. 26
Second, military propaganda exaggerates the hostility of other states, painting
neighbors as malevolent and aggressive. This bolsters the military's case
for large budgets by exaggerating the likelihood of war, but also causes war
by bolstering arguments that enemies should be forestalled by launching
preemptive or preventive war.27
24. Friedrich von Bernhardi, How Germany Makes War (New York: Doran, 1914), p. 155. Before
1914, British generals likewise declared that "the defensive is never an acceptable role to the
Briton, and he makes little or no study of it," and that the offensive "will win as sure as there
is a sun in the heavens." Generals W.G. Knox and R.C.B. Haking, quoted in T.H.E. Travers,
"Technology, Tactics, and Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory,
1900-1914," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51 (June 1979), pp. 264-286, at 275. For more details
on British thought and practice see Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western
Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900-1918 (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987). On
offensive thinking in Germany, France, and Russia before 1914, see Snyder, Ideology of the
Offensive, pp. 41-198; on France, see also Basil Liddell Hart, "French Military Ideas before the
First World War," in Martin Gilbert, ed., A Century of Conflict, 1850-1950 (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1966), pp. 135-148; and for further examples see Van Evera, "Causes of War," pp.
324, 571-607.
25. The reasons for this preference are detailed in Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, pp. 47-51,
58, 67-74; and Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, pp. 24-25.
26. See pp. 11-12, above.
27. Thus German officers in the Wilhelmine era depicted a Germany encircled by envious
neighbors about to attack, and naval officers in imperial Japan warned of an aggressive encirclement
of Japan by America, Britain, China, and the Netherlands in the 1930s. Such warnings
created a general belief that war was inevitable, which strengthened the arguments of German
and Japanese advocates of preventive war. For an example from Germany see Imanuel Geiss,
German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914 (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. 121-122, quoting
General Alfred von Schlieffen; for other pre-1914 examples from Germany, Britain, and Russia,
see Van Evera, "Why Cooperation Failed," p. 85. On Japan see Asada Sadao, "The Japanese
Navy and the United States," in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto with Dale K.A. Finlayson,
eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-Amnerican Relations 1931-1941 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1973), pp. 225-260, at 243-244, 251.
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International Security 15:3 | 20
Third, militaries exaggerate the tendency of other states to give in to
threats-to "bandwagon" with the threat instead of "balancing" against it.28
Such myths bolster the military's arguments for larger forces by reinforcing
claims that a bigger force can be used to make diplomatic gains, but also
cause war by feeding confidence that belligerent behavior will bring political
rewards.29
Fourth, militaries commonly overstate the strategic and economic value of
empire.30 These exaggerations strengthen arguments for forces required to
gain or defend imperial conquests, but also feed arguments for waging
imperial wars.
Finally, militaries often understate the costs of warfare, sometimes even
portraying it as healthy or beneficial.31 This raises the prestige of the military
by increasing the apparent utility of the instrument it wields, but it causes
war by encouraging states to behave recklessly. The bizarre pre-1914 popular
belief that a European war would "cleanse" and "rejuvenate" society largely
sprang from such military propaganda, and helped set the stage for war.
The scourge of militarism kept the world in turmoil until 1945, but has
now almost vanished in Europe. European militarism diminished sharply
28. On bandwagoning and balancing, and the prevalence of the latter over the former, see
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 17-33, 147-
180, 263-266, 274-280.
29. Thus the Wilhelmine German Navy justified its big fleet with its famous "risk theory,"
which proposed that a large German fleet could be used to cow Britain into neutrality while
Germany moved aggressively. See Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World, rev. ed. (New York:
Collier, 1962), pp. 212-213; Paul Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870-1945 (London: Fontana,
1984), pp. 127-162, and specifically on the intimidation of Britain, pp. 133, 135, 139. Germany's
General Schlieffen similarly contended that even if Britain fought to contain Germany, it would
abandon the war in discouragement once the German army had defeated France. Gerhard Ritter,
The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, trans. Andrew and Eva Wilson (London: Oswald Wolff,
1958; reprint ed., Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972), p. 163. These notions strengthened the
arguments of German war-hawks in 1914.
30. For example, before 1914 the German Admiral George von Mtiller saw Germany locked in
a "great battle for economic survival"; without new territories "the artificial [German] economic
edifice would start to crumble and existence therein would become very unpleasant indeed."
Muller memorandum to the Kaiser's brother, quoted in J.C.G. Rohl, ed., From Bismarck to Hitler:
The Problem of Continuity in German History (London: Longman, 1970), pp. 56-57, 59. General
Bernhardi likewise declared that "flourishing nations . . . require a continual expansion of their
frontiers; they require new territory for the accommodation of their surplus population." Friedrich
von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, trans. Allen H. Powles (New York: Longmans,
Green, 1914), p. 21, and see also pp. 82-83. In France Marshall Ferdinand Foch spoke in similar
terms; see Foch, The Principles of War, trans. de Morinni (New York: Fly, 1918), pp. 36-37. For
more examples see Van Evera, "Causes of War," pp. 339-347.
31. For examples see Van Evera, "Causes of War," pp. 348-360; and Van Evera, "Why Cooperation
Failed," pp. 90-92.
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Europe After the Cold War | 21
after World War I, when Europe's militaries were widely blamed both for
causing the war and for waging it foolishly. This reduced the military's ability
to shape public opinion by lowering its prestige.
Since World War II the potential for militarism has diminished further,
with the end of the deep social barriers between the military establishment
and civilian society. Before 1914 European militaries stood apart from society
in two ways. First, military officers were socially segregated and isolated.
This allowed them to develop a separate culture, including an arrogant sense
of a right to command civilian ideas on foreign and military policy. Second,
the military officer corps were preserves of the upper class, especially in
Germany and France, and were seen by that class as pillars of its social
dominance.32 Hence militaries had a double motive to sow propaganda that
enhanced their prestige: to advance the interests of military institutions, at
the expense of wider societies with which they felt little identification; and
to advance the interests of the upper class as a whole.33 Three changes,
which began after World War I and gathered momentum after World War II,
have now diminished these motives: European officers are more integrated
into civilian society; the officer corps are no longer an upper-class preserve,
instead representing a wider cross-section of society; and European societies
have undergone a process of social leveling, which has sharply reduced class
conflict.
In addition, new barriers have been built against a militarist revival. These
barriers are embodied in the spread of democracy in Europe, the development
in the West of governmental institutions for the civilian evaluation and
control of defense policy, the growth in Western Europe of university-based
civilian expertise in military affairs-which is weaker than in the United
States but is nevertheless significant-and the awareness of European military
officers that their institutions did great harm in the past. The growth of
official and unofficial civilian defense analysis, combined with democracy
and norms of free speech, guarantees that military propaganda would face
greater public criticism than before 1914. The greater historical awareness of
European military officers-a product of their greater social integration,
32. On Germany see Wehler, The German Empire, pp. 125-127, 145-146, 155-170; on France see
Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, chap. 3.
33. In France the military also believed that its social purity could best be preserved by an
offensive doctrine that would require a fully professional army, untainted by masses of middleclass
reserves, and for this reason as well it purveyed offensive ideas. See Snyder, Ideology of
the Offensive, chap. 3.
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International Security 15:3 | 22
which brings them into greater contact with common historical discoursecauses
militaries to use more self-restraint than before in defending their
institutional interests.
The permanent disappearance of European militarism is not guaranteed,
however, and logic suggests that militarism could make a modest comeback
in the future. This danger lies in the same dynamic that makes great powers
more vulnerable to militarism than medium powers. Great powers must
provide for their own security, which causes them to maintain larger militaries,
which then have larger effects on the discourse of surrounding society.
More importantly, great power militaries stand to gain more from the propagation
of militarist myths than do medium-power militaries, because great
powers address the foreign threats that these myths depict by counterbuildup,
while medium powers more often respond by seeking support from
allies. Hence great power militaries gain a greater budgetary payoff from
propagating such myths, giving them greater incentive to do so.
This dynamic helps explain the marked confinement of past militarism to
great powers, or to isolated medium powers that lacked allies to provide
security. It also suggests that Europe will become more prone to militarism
as the superpowers reduce their European presence. European states will
then be forced to provide more of their own security; hence their security
policies will come to more closely resemble those of great powers, restoring
one condition for militarism.
The risk of militarism will also increase in the Soviet Union, due to glasnost
(in the short run) and the end of the Bolshevik dictatorship (in the longer
run). Some argue that these changes will reduce the influence of the military,
by allowing greater public criticism of military policies.34 However, glasnost
also gives the military new freedom to purvey propaganda, and the end of
the Bolshevik monopoly on power will lift the longstanding Communist Party
monopoly on political ideas, giving the military an even greater opportunity.
There is still no sign that the Soviet military has begun to exploit these
opportunities, but it may not remain quiescent forever. Moreover, unlike the
West, the Soviet Union lacks established academic or governmental civilian
institutions with military expertise, so civilians are poorly prepared to use
their new freedom.35 Hence it seems possible that the Soviet military will
34. David Holloway, "State, Society, and the Military under Gorbachev," International Security,
Vol. 14, No. 3 (Winter 1989/90), pp. 5-24.
35. See Stephen M. Meyer, "Civilian and Military Influence in Managing the Arms Race in the
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Europe After the Cold War 23
gain more power than it loses from Soviet liberalization, at least until strong
civilian analytic institutions are developed.
However, a resurgence of European militarism to the levels seen during
1900-14 seems unlikely, because pre-1914 militarism arose partly from social
conditions unique to those times, and because European societies are at least
partly immunized against a repetition by the memory of its results.
HYPER-NATIONALISM AND ITS MYTHS AND MISPERCEPTIONS
During the period 1871-1939, a great wave of hyper-nationalism swept over
Europe. Each state taught itself a mythical history of its own and others'
national past, and glorified its own national character while denigrating that
of others.36 The schools, the universities, the press, and the politicians all
joined in this orgy of mythmaking and self-glorification. Boyd Shafer summarized
the common tenor of European education:
Text and teacher alike, with a few notable exceptions, taught the student
that his own country was high-minded, great, and glorious. If his nation
went to war, it was for defense, while the foe was the aggressor. If his nation
won its wars, that was because his countrymen were braver and God was
on their side. If his nation was defeated, that was due only to the enemy's
overwhelmingly superior forces and treachery. If his country lost territory,
as the French lost Alsace-Lorraine in 1870, that was a crime; whatever it
gained was for the good of humanity and but its rightful due. The enemy
was "harsh," "cruel," "backward." His own people "kind," "civilized," "pro-
gressive."37
This chauvinist mythmaking poisoned international relations by convincing
each state of the legitimacy of its own claims, the rightness of its own
U.S.S.R.," in Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis, and Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Reorganizing America's
Defense: Leadership in War and Peace (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985), pp. 37-
61. The danger presented by enlarged military influence is seen in the sharp difference between
Soviet military and civilian views on foreign and military policy; this difference is described in
Celeste A. Wallander, "Third World Conflict in Soviet Military Thought: Does the 'New Thinking'
Grow Prematurely Grey?" World Politics, Vol. 42, No. 1 (October 1989), pp. 31-63; and R. Hyland
Phillips and Jeffrey I. Sands, "Reasonable Sufficiency and Soviet Conventional Defense: A
Research Note," International Security, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 164-178.
36. For examples from before 1914 see Van Evera, "Why Cooperation Failed," pp. 93-95. On
the doctoring of history in Germany during the interwar years and its consequences, see Holger
H. Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany After the Great War," International
Security, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1987), pp. 5-44. A general survey on nationalism is Boyd
C. Shafer, Faces of Nationalism: New Realities and Old Myths (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1972).
37. Boyd Shafer, Nationalism: Myth and Reality (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), p. 185.
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International Security 15:3 | 24
cause, and the wrongfulness and maliciousness of the grievances of others.
Oblivious that its own past conduct had often provoked others' hostility,
each country ascribed hostility to others' innate and boundless aggressiveness.
This led each to assume that others could not be appeased, and should
be dealt with harshly.38 Countries also approached war with a reckless confidence
engendered by a sense of innate superiority. Such ideas fed the
climate that fostered both world wars.39
The stability of postwar Europe has been partly due to the remarkable
decline of nationalist propaganda, especially in European schools.40 As I note
below, this decline resulted in part from the social and economic leveling of
European societies after the 1930s, and the less competitive relations that
developed among Western European states after 1945. It also grew from the
Allied occupation of Germany, which destroyed the Nazi textbooks and
imposed a more honest history curriculum in German schools;41 and from
the concerted efforts of international agencies and educational institutions,
most notably the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), and the Brunswick International Schoolbook Institute in Germany.42
These institutions oversaw textbook exchanges whose purpose was
to force the educators of each country to answer foreign complaints about
their curricula, with the aim of causing Europe to converge on a single shared
version of European history. Their efforts were a dramatic success, largely
ridding Western Europe of hyper-nationalism. Nothing suggests that this
achievement will soon be undone. Moreover, the social leveling of Eastern
38. I suspect that such nationalist mythmaking is the main cause of the "spiral model" pattern
of conflict described by Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 58-113. Jervis emphasizes psychological causes;
empirical research comparing these explanations would be useful.
39. During World War I an American historian reflected on the responsibility of chauvinist
historical writing for causing the European war: "Woe unto us! professional historians, professional
historical students, professional teachers of history, if we cannot see written in blood, in
the dying civilization of Europe, the dreadful result of exaggerated nationalism as set forth in
the patriotic histories of some of the most eloquent historians of the nineteenth century." H.
Morse Stephens, "Nationality and History," American Historical Review, Vol. 21 (January 1916),
pp. 225-236, at 236.
40. See Paul M. Kennedy, "The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900-1970," Journal
of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 1973), pp. 77-100.
41. A survey of this often-mismanaged but ultimately successful endeavor is Nicholas Pronay
and Keith Wilson, eds., The Political Re-education of German and Her Allies After World War II
(Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1985).
42. An account is E.H. Dance, History the Betrayer (London: Hutchinson, 1960), pp. 126-150.
The Brunswick Institute has since been renamed the Georg Eckert Institute for International
Schoolbook Research, after its founder, Dr. Georg Eckert.
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Europe After the Cold War | 25
Europe makes the emergence of hyper-nationalism unlikely in that region as
well, as I note below.
SOCIAL IMPERIALISM
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries European elites
sometimes sought to bolster their domestic position by distracting publics
with foreign confrontations, or by seeking successful foreign wars.43 Russian
bellicosity toward Japan before the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 has been
ascribed partly to such motives.44 Hans-Ulrich Wehler argues that the Prussian
government launched the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870 partly "to legitimize
the prevailing political system against the striving for social and political
emancipation of the middle classes."45 Before 1914 some Germans
feared the domestic effects of war,46 but others favored bellicose policies
because they thought a victorious war would strengthen the monarchy.47
This cause of war has been removed from Europe by the democratization
of European politics, and the leveling of European societies. The coming of
democracy has legitimized Europe's regimes, and social leveling has reduced
popular discontent with the existing social order. Both changes have reduced
the elites' need to use foreign policy to bolster their legitimacy. Today's
43. On social imperialism in Germany see Wehler, The German Empire, pp. 24-28, 103-104, 171-
179, 200; Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1973),
pp. 81-82, 93-94, 97, 185; Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans.
Marian Jackson (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), pp. 253-254; and Arno Mayer, "Domestic
Causes of the First World War," in Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern, eds., The Responsibility of
Power (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 286-300. Some have ascribed Soviet Cold War expansionism
to similar causes; a discussion is Gaddis, "Long Peace," pp. 118-119. A criticism of the
social imperial explanation for German conduct is Marc Trachtenberg, "The Social Interpretation
of Foreign Policy," Review of Politics, Vol. 40, No. 3 (July 1978), pp. 328-350, at 341-344. A more
general discussion of social imperialism and other scapegoat theories of war is Jack S. Levy,
"The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique," in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War
Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 259-288; a criticism of these theories is Blainey, Causes
of War, pp. 72-86.
44. The Russian minister of the interior, Viascheslav Plehve, stated at the time: "What this
country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution." Quoted in Levy,
"Diversionary Theory of War," p. 264.
45. Wehler, German Empire, p. 26.
46. For examples see Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War, pp. 82, 97, 185; and Wehler,
German Empire, p. 200.
47. Thus shortly before the war, former Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow wrote that an expansionist
policy was the "true antidote against social democracy," and Chancellor Bethmann
Hollweg noted in June 1914 that belligerent German agrarian interests "'expected a war to turn
domestic politics in a conservative direction." Quoted in Wehler, German Empire, pp. 177-178;
and Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War, p. 185.
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International Security 15:3 | 26
European elites face less pressure from below, and hence have less motive
to divert that pressure by foreign adventurism.
UNDEMOCRATIC POLITIES
European societies are more democratic than before 1914 or 1939, and democracy
is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe. This trend is bound to
continue, because key pre-conditions for democracy-high levels of literacy
and industrial development, and a relatively equal distribution of land,
wealth, and income-are now far more widespread in Europe than they were
80 years ago.48 This change bolsters peace.
Empirical evidence suggests that democracies are not generally more peaceful
than other states, but that relations among democracies are more peaceful
than relations among non-democratic states, or between democracies and
non-democracies.49 Logic suggests two related reasons why relations among
democracies should be peaceful.50 First, the ideologies of democracies do not
incorporate a claim to rule other democracies, so they have no ideological
motives for expansion against one another. The democratic presumption of
the right of peoples to choose their own political path precludes the idea that
world democracy should be run from a single center, or that any democracy
has a claim to rule another. The communist world has long been rent with
conflict over who would be the leader, most clearly manifest in the SinoSoviet
and Yugoslav-Soviet conflicts.51 The Arab states have likewise clashed
over leadership of the Arab world.52 The democratic world has suffered no
parallel conflict, because democratic ideology preempts the question "who
should lead?" with the answer that "no one should lead."53 This dampens
expansionism among democratic states, and eases their fears of one another.
48. The prerequisites for democracy are discussed in Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and
Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 48-188; and Seymour Martin Lipset,
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, expanded ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1981), pp. 27-63.
49. For empirical studies see Steve Chan, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ... Are the Freer Countries
More Pacific?" Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 28, No. 4 (December 1984), pp. 617-648; and
Erich Weede, "Democracy and War Involvement," in ibid., pp. 649-664.
50. Developing these arguments is Michael Doyle: "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,"
Parts 1 and 2, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3, No. 4 (Summer, Fall 1983), pp. 205-
235, and 325-353; and Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science
Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December, 1986), pp. 1151-1169.
51. A general account through the early 1960s is Richard Lowenthal, World Communism: The
Disintegration of a Secular Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964).
52. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, pp. 206-212.
53. Making this point is Walt, Origins of Alliances, pp. 35-37, 211-214.
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Europe After the Cold War | 27
Second, democratic elites would have more difficulty legitimating a war
against another democracy. They could not claim that they fought to free the
people of the opposing state, since these people would already be free. The
elite would also face arguments that warring to overthrow another democratic
regime is anti-democratic, since such a war would seek to undo the popular
will of the other society. Thus democracies have less motive to attack each
other, and would face greater domestic opposition if they chose to do so.
Deduction suggests two additional reasons why democracies should be
more peaceful. First, war-causing national misperceptions-militarist myths,
hyper-nationalist myths, or elite arguments for "social imperial" wars, for
example-should be dampened by norms of free speech, which permit the
development of evaluative institutions that can challenge errant ideas. Even
in democracies the evaluation of public policy is seldom very good, and
fatuous ideas can often influence state action; but this danger is smallest in
societies that permit free debate, as all democracies must to some degree.
Second, democracy tends to limit social stratification. This limits the elite's
motive to purvey nationalist myths or to pursue war for social-imperial
reasons, and removes a past cause of militarism.54
These last two deductions suggest that democracies should have more
peaceful relations with both democracies and non-democracies; hence they
are contradicted by empirical studies showing that democracies have in fact
not been more pacific in their relations with non-democratic states.55 However,
these studies have not controlled for perturbing variables that may
explain the discrepancy, hence they do not definitively disprove these deductions.56
Moreover, this question need not be resolved to establish the
effect of the spread of democracy in Europe. It has created a homogeneously
democratic Western Europe, and most Eastern states are likely to become
democracies also. If so, nearly all international relations in Europe will be
54. Thus democracy and social leveling are reciprocally related; each bolsters the other.
55. See Chan, "Mirror, Mirror"; and Weede, "Democracy and War Involvement."
56. For example, these studies did not control for the strength of states. This omission may
make democracies appear more warlike, because democracy tends to develop in industrialized
states; industrial states tend to be strong states; and strong states tend to be involved in more
wars. See Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965)
pp. 220-222, who notes that European great powers have averaged twice as many wars as lesser
states since 1700. Moreover, case studies of the origins of wars indicate that hyper-nationalism,
unchallenged official propaganda, and social imperialism have sometimes played a role in their
outbreak; this supports the argument that democracies are more peaceful overall, since democracy
should dampen these diseases. Thus the total body of empirical evidence points both ways.
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International Security 15:3 | 28
intra-democratic, and most scholars agree that intra-democratic relations are
more peaceful.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STRATIFICATION
European societies are now far less socially and economically stratified than
they were before 1914 or 1939.57 In Western Europe, stratification was ended
by democracy and the political mobilization of the working class. In Eastern
Europe it was ended by communism. This transformation has operated as a
remote cause of peace by contributing to the four changes just discussedthe
growth of democracy, and the decline of militarism, hyper-nationalism,
and social imperialism.
These four effects of social leveling vary in importance. The demilitarization
and democratization of Europe have removed important causes of war, but
social leveling was not the sole cause, nor perhaps even the main cause, of
these changes. It played a large role in eliminating social-imperial motives
for war, but this cause of war, while significant, probably mattered less than
others. The most significant effect of leveling has been the reduction of hypernationalism;
leveling removed the taproot of the great wave of hyper-nationalism
that swept Europe during 1870-1939.
This wave of hyper-nationalism was a largely artificial phenomenon, engineered
by elites who resorted to nationalism to persuade publics to tolerate
the steep stratification of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century
European societies. As the nineteenth century progressed, Europe's elites
faced increasing challenge because industrialization weakened previous
57. For data on the evolution of income inequality in Europe, see Peter Flora, Franz Kraus, and
Winfried Pfenning, State, Economy, and Society in Western Europe, 1815-1975: A Data Handbook in
Two Volumes, Vol. 1: The Growth of Industrial Societies and Capitalist Economies (Chicago: St. James,
1987), pp. 611-674. They report inequality diminishing over the past several decades in eight of
nine countries covered. For example, the share of national income received by the top 10 percent
of the British population fell from 38.8 percent to 25.8 percent between 1938 and 1976 (p. 672);
in Germany the share received by the top 10 percent fell from 40.5 to 31.7 percent between 1913
and 1974 (p. 652). Inequality in the distribution of wealth in Europe has diminished even more
markedly. For example, in England and Wales the share of total wealth controlled by the richest
1 percent of the population fell from 61 percent to 32 percent between 1923 and 1972; in Sweden
the share of total taxed net worth controlled by the richest 1 percent fell from 50 percent to 17
percent from 1920 to 1975. See A.B. Atkinson and A.J. Harrison, "Trends in the Distribution of
Wealth in Britain," in A.B. Atkinson, ed., Wealth, Income and Inequality, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980), pp. 214-229, at 218; and Roland Spant, "Wealth Distribution in Sweden,
1920-1983," in Edward N. Wolf, ed., International Comparisons of the Distribution of Household
Wealth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 51-71. On the United States see H.P. Miller, "Income
Distribution in the United States," in A.B. Atkinson, ed., Wealth, Income and Inequality (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1973), pp. 111-135, at 113, 125-126.
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Europe After the Cold War | 29
methods of social control. The spread of mass literacy and the rural migration
to the cities broke the elites' monopoly of information and caused the spread
of egalitarian ideas. The development of mass armies, caused partly by the
invention of mass production methods to make small arms, forced each state
to arm its citizenry to avoid defeat by mass foreign armies; this broke the
elites' monopoly of force. These changes impelled elites to seek new instruments
of social control-so they switched from coercion to persuasion. Hyper-nationalism,
purveyed chiefly through public education, was their prime
weapon. This hyper-nationalism was crafted to persuade publics to continue
to serve and obey the state loyally.58
The profound leveling of European societies, however, now allows European
elites to command public loyalty without resort to hyper-nationalism.
Hence this motive for the propagation of nationalism has largely disappeared,
which suggests that hyper-nationalism will not return in force.
Social stratification was not the sole cause of European hypernationalism:
a secondary cause lay in the felt need to mobilize publics to support the
costly defense efforts required by the competitive international politics of the
era.59 This cause may reappear as the European states begin providing more
of their own security, and their elites may be motivated to propagate somewhat
more nationalism in order to persuade publics to back enlarged defense
programs. The elites of seceding Soviet republics will also fan nationalism to
mobilize popular support if they face long liberation struggles. However, the
United States can dampen security motives for the propagation of nationalism
in Western Europe by continuing its military presence in Europe. And any
nationalism fanned by liberation struggles in the Soviet republics will be
weakened by the absence of the social inequities that nourished hypernationalism
in the past.
58. Overall, as Hans-Ulrich Wehler notes, the German "teaching of history was used as an antirevolutionary
mind-drug for the inculcation of a patriotic mentality." German Empire, p. 121.
However, see also Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change
After Bismarck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). Eley argues that nationalist propaganda
had its main effect on the German middle class, while leaving the working class relatively
unaffected. And for a different view on the causes of nationalism, see Ernest Gellner, Nations
and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983). Gellner explains nationalism without
reference to social stratification.
59. Thus the Kaiser's government instructed German teachers to produce "self-denying subjects
. . . who will be glad to pay the supreme sacrifice for king and country," by teaching "the power
and greatness of our people in the past and in the present." Quoted in Walter Consuelo
Langsam, "Nationalism and History in the Prussian Elementary Schools Under William II," in
Edward Mead Earle, ed., Nationalism and Internationalism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1950), pp. 243-245.
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International Security 15:3 | 30
AGGRESSIVE REVOLUTIONARY STATES
War spawned by revolution is another danger absent from the new Europe.
States led by movements that seized power through mass revolution are
more war-prone for a number of reasons. Once in power, revolutionary elites
fear counter-revolution, leading them to defensive wars of expansion to
remove threatening counter-revolutionaries from their borders. They' infuse
themselves with self-glorifying myths to motivate supporters during the
revolution; these myths live on after the revolution, fueling chauvinism
toward other countries. They frequently adopt universalist aims and rhetoric
to inspire supporters to sacrifice for the revolution, but these universalist
aims often become dogma that outlives the revolutionary struggle, fueling
messianic expansion later on. They demand a monopoly of ideas and suppress
dissent during the revolution itself; this habit later leads to the suppression
of free speech and public debate, allowing misperceptions and illusions
to govern state conduct. Neighboring regimes with different social systems
may fear the contagious impact of a revolutionary'example on their own
publics-especially if these regimes lack domestic legitimacy-and may foment
the counter-revolution that the revolution fears, or even attack it directly.
Neighbors may also be influenced to attack by emigres who flee the
revolution and then work to persuade neighboring states to restore them to
power. Thus revolutionary states are more prone to attack others, and more
likely to be attacked.60 Revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Khomeini's
Iran, and Castro's Cuba all suffered these syndromes and sparked these
reactions, leading them into international confrontation.61
This cause of war will not arise in the new Europe, because Europe is
devoid of revolutionary states, and of illegitimate regimes that might be
threatened by them. The revolutionary cycle has burned itself out in the
Soviet Union. The new regimes of Eastern Europe gained power in popular
upheavals, but these were not mass revolutions; they involved no long
insurgencies of the sort that nurture battle-hardened, myth-ridden revolutionary
organizations. Revolutionary regimes might arise in republics seced-
60. Advancing these hypotheses is Stephen Walt, "The Foreign Policy of Revolutionary States:
Hypotheses and Illustrations," paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Chicago, 1987; and Stephen Walt, "Revolution and War," paper prepared
for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1990.
61. See T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (New York: Longman,
1986); Marvin Zonis and Daniel Brumberg, Khomeini, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Arab
World (Cambridge: Harvard Center for Middle East Studies, 1987); Jorge I. Dominguez, To Make
a Word Safe for Revolution: Cuba's Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
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Europe After the Cold War | 31
ing from the Soviet Union if they are forced to gain freedom by lengthy wars,
but this scenario, while plausible, now seems unlikely. Moreover, the older
regimes of Europe would feel less threatened by revolution, and would
respond more temperately if a revolutionary regime did appear, because they
are now democratic, socially leveled, and legitimate.
AGGRESSIVE CAPITALIST STATES
Some scholars, mostly Marxist, have blamed distempers of capitalism for
past troubles in Europe. Such arguments have been overblown, but they also
contain a grain of truth. During the 1890s many Europeans and Americans
came to believe that the conquest of colonies could avert or cure economic
depression by providing a market for unsold goods. Such ideas played a
major role in American imperial expansion during 1898-1902.62 They soon
lost fashion, with the worldwide recovery from the great depression of the
1890s, and with the failure of markets to appear in conquered colonies.
However, after-echoes of these ideas continued in Germany, where arguments
that Germany should seize territory to create markets for unsold goods
played a minor part in the expansionist propaganda that fueled German
chauvinism and set the stage for war in 1914.63 After-echoes also continued
in the United States; after World War II American policymakers feared a new
depression, and America's early Cold War belligerence was given an extra
push by arguments that the United States should acquire or protect overseas
markets to avert it.64
62. See David Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1970), pp. 42-46, 159-177.
63. Thus German journalist Arthur Dix explained in 1901 that a world power requires "extensive
territory ... as a market for [its] manufactures," and General Bernhardi in 1911 saw a Germany
"compelled to obtain space for our increasing population and markets for our growing industries."
Wallace Notestein and Elmer E. Stoll, Conquest and Kultur: Aims of the Germans in Their
Own Words (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1917), p. 51; Germany and the
Next War, p. 103. See also ibid., pp. 82-83. France's Marshall Foch explained that modern states
needed "commercial outlets to an industrial system which produces more than it can sell, and
therefore is constantly smothered by competition," and argued that "new markets are opened
by force of arms." Foch, Principles of War, p. 37.
64. For examples see Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-1980, 4th ed. (New
York: Wiley, 1980), pp. 10-11, 18, 27, 45, 52, 55, 59-61, 110-111, 179-180, 235. It may not follow
that these ideas helped cause the Cold War, however: perhaps they fueled American belligerence,
but this belligerence may have deterred the Soviets from further aggression, thus dampening
the Cold War, as much or more than it provoked them. Making this argument is Vojtech
Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941-
1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). A good survey of the debate on Cold War
origins is John Lewis Gaddis, "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the
Cold War," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer 1983), pp. 171-204.
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International Security 15:3 | 32
This problem, never large, has now disappeared completely. Fears of economic
depression have abated throughout the West, with the development
of fiscal and monetary tools for managing the business cycle. The European
and American colonial experience has delegitimated the concept of colonialism
in general, and with it the concept of regulating the business cycle by
imperial expansion. Reflection has brought the realization that any attempt
to relieve depression by one-way colonial trade could last only until the
colony's currency reserves were exhausted, which would happen quickly.
These changes remove the main causes of any past capitalist belligerence.
SUMMARY: ABSENT AGGRESSOR STATES
If all states accept the status quo and none wish to change it, wars are far
fewer. Indeed, if no aggressor state is on the scene, war can only occur by
accident or misunderstanding.65 The causes of war discussed above all operate
primarily by fueling expansionism, thereby creating aggressor states
that reject the status quo. Aggressor states will be rare in the new Europe,
because both domestic and systemic factors will provide little stimulus to
aggression, and powerful dissuasion. This is a vast change from 1914, 1939,
and 1945.
This auspicious condition is likely to persist. Today's Western European
states are far less bellicose in their general approach to foreign relations than
the European states of 1914 and 1939. In part this reflects their status as
smaller powers, which are generally less bellicose than great powers, reflecting
their smaller, tamer militaries. This could fade as they assume their own
security burdens, if both superpowers withdraw from Europe completely.
But it also reflects the nuclear revolution, the knowledge revolution in economics,
and the transformation of European domestic societies, which are
far more healthy than those of the European states of 1914 or 1939. The
emerging societies of Eastern Europe are likely to develop eventually along
similar lines.66
65. I use the term "aggressor state" to refer to states that seek to expand for any reason. Others
often use the term to refer only to states that seek to expand for reasons other than security,
while classifying expansionist states that are driven mainly by security concerns as status quo
powers. See, for example, Charles Glaser, "International Political Consequences of Military
Doctrine" (manuscript, July 1990), p. 4.
66. Some observers have suggested that two additional changes since 1945 may prevent renewed
conflict in Europe. John Mueller has argued that the great horrors of past conventional wars
have delegitimated even conventional war, and that warfare is therefore now largely obsolete.
See John Mueller, Retreat From Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books,
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Europe After the Cold War | 33
False Fears: Illusory New Causes of European War
Pessimists about the future peace of Europe have said little about these
propitious changes, focusing instead on four dangers: the multipolar character
of the emerging Europe, the possibility of renewed German aggression,
the risk of praetorian states emerging in the East, and the problem of national
and border conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. However, the
first three dangers (discussed next) are largely illusory; only the fourth poses
large risks, as I explain in the subsequent section.
A MULTIPOLAR EUROPE
Prominent scholars have argued that bipolar systems are more peaceful than
multipolar systems. John Mearsheimer recently used this theory to predict
that the emergence of multipolarity in Europe will raise the risk of war.67
1989). Others point to the spread of free economic exchange in Europe since 1945, the greater
prosperity and economic interdependence that this change produces, and the development of
international institutions, including the European Economic Community (EC) and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to foster and protect these changes. They argue that
prosperity and interdependence promote peace, by dampening economic motives for war, and
by raising the economic cost of war. Some also argue that international economic institutions
could grow stronger, developing into a kind of super-state that could bolster peace by playing
a police role. I find both views largely unpersuasive. Even the horrors of World War I failed to
delegitimate war, and if World War I cannot do the job, nothing can. (Germany developed a
large war-celebrating literature only a decade after World War I ended: see Wolfram Wette,
"From Kellogg to Hitler [1928-1933]: German Public Opinion Concerning the Rejection or Glorification
of War," in Wilhelm Deist, ed., The German Military in the Age of Total War [Dover, N.H.:
Berg, 1985], pp. 71-99. For a general criticism of Mueller's argument see Kaysen, "Is War
Obsolete?")
The prosperity promoted by economic liberalism probably promotes peace indirectly, by
bolstering democracy, and by pushing economies further toward knowledge-based forms of
production. However, there is little reason to believe that prosperity reduces economic motives
for war. Economic interdependence is more likely to cause war than peace, by inducing states
toward aggressive policies to relieve dependence on other states they feel they cannot trust.
Such motives drove Germany and Japan to seek economic autarky through expansion in World
War II, and arguments that America depends on Third World raw materials have often been
advanced by American advocates of U.S. Third World intervention. Finally, the European liberal
economic order is likely to dissolve if other causes of war appear to produce conflict in the new
Europe; instead of dampening these causes, the European economic order will succumb to
them. Mearsheimer convincingly criticizes both theories on these and other grounds: see "Back
to the Future," pp. 29-31, 40-48; and Mearsheimer, "Correspondence: Back to the Future, Part
II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe," International Security, Vol. 15,
No. 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 194-199. On interdependence see also Gaddis, "Long Peace," pp. 110-
114; and, for examples of arguments for American intervention premised on American rawmaterials
dependence, Van Evera, "Why Europe Matters, Why the Third World Doesn't," pp. 19,
43n.
67. Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Summer
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International Security 15:3 134
The European system is indeed losing its bipolar Cold War character with
the decline of Soviet power and the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe.
It will become fully multipolar if the United States also withdraws from the
West. However, those who fear this development rest their case on weak
theory. Some aspects of bipolarity favor peace, but others favor war. Still
other aspects of bipolarity have indeterminate effects. Overall, the two types
of systems seem about equally prone to war.68
FACTORS FAVORING BIPOLARITY. Four aspects of bipolarity favor peace. First,
the two poles of a bipolar system comprise larger states whose size makes
them more difficult to conquer; hence states are more secure, and aggression
is better deterred.69 This argument assumes that the size of states is not held
constant in our analysis, and that we instead compare the effects of bipolar
or multipolar arrangements in a given region; if so, the poles of a multipolar
system must be smaller than those in a bipolar system, since multipolarity
subdivides the same territory into more poles. This assumption seems appropriate
in an analysis of the future of Europe, however, since the evolution
of Europe toward multipolarity entails the subdivision of two vast blocs led
by very large states into a system of smaller states that can be more easily
overrun. 70
Second, bipolarity facilitates cooperation on arms control and other matters,
and makes it easier to establish and maintain "rules of the game" and
agreed spheres of influence.71 Cooperation is easiest among the few;72 a
1964), pp. 881-909; Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley,
1979), pp. 161-176; Gaddis, "Long Peace," pp. 105-110; Mearsheimer, "Back to the
Future," pp. 13-19, 21-29.
68. My thinking on the effects of multipolarity has profited greatly from conversations with
Chaim Kaufmann.
69. Chaim Kaufmann suggests this argument. I find it the strongest element of the case for
bipolarity; yet it has not been advanced by bipolarity advocates, although Waltz comes close.
Waltz clearly assumes that bipolar poles are larger than multipolar poles; see Waltz, Theory of
International Politics, pp. 146-160. However, Waltz does not suggest that this size differential
makes conquest harder under bipolarity.
70. As Kaufmann notes, however, a case could be made for holding size constant even when
analyzing the effects of multipolarity in Europe, because the nuclear revolution largely eliminates
the effects of small size. If the size of states is held constant, the case for bipolarity is substantially
weakened.
71. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 174; Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," pp. 16-
17. Waltz stresses the greater ease of cooperation under bipolarity; Mearsheimer stresses the
greater ease of establishing and maintaining rules of the game and spheres of influence.
72. On the effects of the number of players on the feasibility of cooperation see Kenneth A.
Oye, "Explaining Cooperation Under Anarchy: Hypotheses and Strategies," in Kenneth A. Oye,
ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 1-24, at
18-20.
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Europe After the Cold War | 35
bipolar order has the fewest players. An agreed order is most easily created
and maintained in an unchanging world; a bipolar world changes least.
Under multipolarity, by contrast, cooperation faces the difficulties of complex
diplomacy among many states, and an agreed international order is harder
to maintain because the whirl of shifting coalitions sweeps away the facts on
which the old order was premised. Consequently, arms control and other
forms of cooperation are more difficult, rules of the game are harder to
establish, and agreed spheres of influence are harder to maintain.
Third, misunderstandings and miscalculations are less likely under bipolarity,
because great powers face a simpler world. States face only one opponent,
and have many years to study that opponent. Hence they are less
likely to misconstrue its interests, or to underestimate its strength or resolve.
This lowers the risk of wars arising from misunderstanding or optimistic
miscalculation. A multipolar world is more complex, creating greater room
for error.73 It forces states to diffuse their focus of attention toward a number
of states, causing them to know less about each. As a result, states can more
easily stumble into conflict by misconstruing another state's interests. States
also must do more complex calculations to predict the results of war-they
must estimate the strength and resolve of their opponent's potential allies,
in addition to those of their opponent. This uncertainty magnifies the likelihood
of war-causing optimistic miscalculation.74
Fourth, the greater complexity of multipolarity increases the possibility
that defending states will underestimate how much effort is necessary to
balance against aggressors, and will therefore do too little or act too late.
This can happen if defending states exaggerate the willingness of other
defenders to balance, and fail to make military preparations of their own
adequate to compensate for this unwillingness. If so, balancing will be too
weak, and opportunities for aggression will appear. With bipolarity, in contrast,
defenders know that they can secure themselves only by their own
efforts. They are therefore less likely to place fruitless reliance on others.75
73. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 168, 170, 172-173.
74. The greater uncertainty produced by multipolarity may also prevent some wars, by fostering
pessimistic miscalculation that leads states to avoid wars that they would otherwise fight.
However, it seems likely that overall, wars would be fewer if all states always accurately foresaw
their outcome. Losers would then fight only if they thought a losing contest was still worthwhile
to preserve their honor and credibility.
75. This possibility is partly offset by its converse: defending states in a multipolar system may
underestimate others' willingness to balance, and may therefore make extra efforts to balance
internally, producing a stronger defending coalition than would otherwise develop. However,
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International Security 15:3 136
FACTORS FAVORING MULTIPOLARITY. These factors are counter-balanced by
two others that operate to make multipolarity more peaceful. First, the coalition
politics of a multipolar world usually produce defensive coalitions that
overmatch aggressors by a greater margin than is possible under bipolarity.
This effect makes conquest more difficult, and offsets the offense-strengthening
effect produced by the smaller size of states under multipolarity, and
by the possibility that defenders will not balance adequately because they
exaggerate others' willingness to balance.
In a bipolar system, the ratio of defending to aggressing states never falls
below 1:1, but also never exceeds 1:1. Under multipolarity, an aggressor can
gain advantages of more than 1:1 against a defender if other states bandwagon
with the aggressor. If others coalesce against the aggressor, however,
it can face overwhelming superiority. Since balancing behavior is the prevalent
tendency of states, the latter pattern prevails over the former-large
defensive coalitions usually form against aggressors, confronting them with
stronger opposition than they would face under bipolarity. If so, a successful
defense is more certain, and the penalty for aggression is higher. The aggressor
will certainly be thwarted, and may also be smashed-a penalty that
is unlikely under bipolarity. Hence aggressors are better deterred, and all
states are more secure.
Balancing can break down if appropriate conditions are absent.76 Thus
effective defending coalitions failed to form against ancient Rome, against
Chi'n in ancient China, and against American expansion in North America
during the nineteenth century. However, history indicates that such cases
are the exception, not the rule.77 This has been true in Europe, where over
the past 500 years every hegemonic aggressor eventually faced a coalition
that outgunned it. Moreover, even if balancing fails, multipolarity is no worse
than bipolarity on this count. International conflict then reduces to duels that
this often bolsters a balance that is already adequate, and thus merely makes less likely wars
that are already unlikely; hence it does not fully offset the risks raised by the possibility of
failures to balance due to exaggerated expectations of balancing by others.
76. Specifically, balancing is inhibited if geography prevents states from coming to the aid of
the victim, for example, if states are arranged in a geographically linear fashion, leaving some
remote from others; if geography allows the aggressor to sever communications between the
victim and others; if diplomacy is hobbled by poor communication among states (as occurred
in ancient times); or if the system is composed of small states whose size makes them less prone
to balance.
77. A survey concluding that balancing has prevailed over bandwagoning in both the Middle
East and worldwide during the Cold War is Walt, Origins of Alliances, pp. 147-180, 263-266,
274-280.
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Europe After the Cold War | 37
assume a bipolar character, in which conquest is no easier than it would be
under bipolarity. Alliance dynamics make conquest easier under multipolarity
than bipolarity only in the rare event that states bandwagon-or if, as
noted above, states fail to balance adequately because they exaggerate others'
willingness to do So.78
Under bipolarity, as Kenneth Waltz notes, competition extends widely and
hard as the two poles quickly move to contest each other everywhere, because
if each does not check the other, no one else will. This ensures that
aggressors will not get a free ride, which is good; but it also reflects the
greater insecurity produced by the absence of potential allies under bipolarity,
and highlights the dangers that this insecurity creates. States compete widely
and hard precisely because they know they have no one to fall back on if
the balance of power turns against them. This knowledge persuades them
to balance, but it may also lead them to adopt exceedingly competitive or
aggressive policies that may trigger crises and war. By contrast, desperate
states in multipolarity can call on allies for help. Such recourse to allies is
often a safer solution than early and belligerent confrontation.79
Second, militarism is a greater danger under bipolarity than multipolarity.
With bipolarity, the military captures the full benefit of the myths it sows,
while under multipolarity this benefit is dissipated as the government re-
78. Bipolarity advocates claim that the balancing mechanism is more efficient under bipolarity;
each side will be quick to resist the other's aggressive moves, and will counter-balance the
other's military effort with its own. Balancing by such internal methods (direct action to thwart
aggression, or arms buildup) is more certain and effective than the external methods (seeking
allies) that are possible with multipolarity. Thus under bipolarity, they argue, a fairly defensedominant
world results, in which each side cannot easily commit aggression because the other
prevents it. In contrast, states often "pass the buck" under multipolarity, leaving the burden of
balancing to their allies; but if all states buck-pass, they will fail to counter-balance the aggressor.
See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 164-165, 168; and Mearsheimer, "Back to the
Future," pp. 15-16. (Waltz wrote before discussion of the effects of the offense-defense balance
became common currency, and I embellish his concepts by using offense-defense terminology,
but this terminology is consistent with his meaning.) The logic of this argument for the greater
peacefulness of bipolarity is flawed, however. If states balance at all under multipolarity, aggressors
will face greater opposition than under bipolarity, even if states buck-pass quite a lot.
Even if states buck-pass all the time, multipolarity is no worse than bipolarity. States then must
fully provide for their own security; hence they should exhibit the same rapid and forceful
internal balancing behavior that Waltz predicts for bipolarity.
79. Waltz's argument that bipolarity forces states to behave prudently implicitly concedes the
same point. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 176. As I note below, he suggests that
states must be prudent because there is no one to save them from disaster. However, prudence
that is forced by insecurity, while beneficial in itself, arises from a cause that has other, dangerous
effects.
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International Security 15:3 138
sponds by forging alliances rather than building forces.80 Bipolarity therefore
gives the military greater incentive to propagate militarist myths, raising the
risk of militarism.
At first glance history seems to disprove this hypothesis: militarism flourished
in the multipolar Europe of 1890-1914, but was far less evident in the
United States and the Soviet Union during the bipolar Cold War. However,
this merely demonstrates that militarism has a number of causes, and other
causes that matter were abundant before World War I, but absent during the
Cold War. Most important, the domestic political systems and culture of both
superpowers were notably unconducive to militarism: the Soviet Union's
Communist Party insisted on a strict civilian monopoly of all political ideas,
and America's democratic free-speech culture demanded civil control of the
military, and guaranteed some public challenge to military propaganda. Even
so, a case could be made that the United States, and perhaps both superpowers,
were mildly infected by the militarism virus.
Finally, another test provides opposite results. History shows that militarism
is a disease confined to great powers or isolated states,81 and is never
found in medium powers allied to others. If we extrapolate from this pattern,
a system whose powers reach the top limit of power and isolation-bipolarity-should
see militarism most often. In any case, scattered instances do
not provide a persuasive test of a theory, so at this stage the verdict on the
hypothesis that multipolarity lessens militarism should rest chiefly on its
deductive soundness.
INDETERMINATE FACTORS. Bipolarity advocates argue that two additional
aspects of bipolarity favor peace, but deduction suggests that these factors
are in fact indeterminate.
80. Bipolarity also may foster militarism by causing states to maintain larger military establishments.
This occurs because states cannot "free-ride" on allies, and must instead rely wholly on
their own efforts for security. See Mancur Olson, Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser, "An Economic
Theory of Alliances," The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 48, No. 3 (August 1966), pp. 266-
279. Some increase in militarism may result, as larger size gives militaries greater domestic
influence. However, this effect is at least partly offset by the greater security afforded by the
greater size of states under bipolarity, which should reduce their military requirements.
81. Wilhelmine Germany and imperial Japan are prime cases of militarized great powers. Both
also saw themselves as largely isolated, and thus also illustrate the militarizing effects of
isolation. Lesser states largely isolated from great-power allies that have suffered at least some
militarization include South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. On the latter three, see Jack
Child, Geopolitics and Conflict in South America: Quarrels Among Neighbors (New York: Praeger,
1985), pp. 19-85, 98-105. On South Africa see Kenneth W. Grundy, The Militarization of South
African Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 58-67.
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Europe After the Cold War | 39
First, some assert that bipolarity bolsters peace by removing the possibility
that benign great powers will be dragged into wars begun by more reckless
powers. Multipolarity raises the risk of the "chain gang" phenomenon-a
circumstance in which the whole system is led to war by its most bellicose
states, who drag in their allies. Bipolarity eliminates this risk; the system
only goes to war if one of the two poles are themselves bellicose.82
However, this argument cuts both ways. The alliances that form under
multipolarity can pull states back from war as well as pulling them in. The
"chain gang" phenomenon is a danger, especially when elites believe they
live in an offense-dominant world (as in 1914), because states then must join
wars that their allies provoke, since they cannot afford to see the ally defeated.83
However, the opposite can also happen, especially when the defense
is believed to be dominant. An alliance then functions like a "drunk tank,"
containing and calming its most aggressive members.84 The aggressive state
must explain its policies to its allies, and listen to their counter-arguments.
These allies can afford to stay out of the aggressor's reckless adventures, and
can further threaten to cancel their ties of alliance if it moves aggressively,
leaving it without protection against aggression by others. Knowing this, it
may not move at all. Thus American membership in NATO helped restrain
the United States in the 1950s: the cases for preventive war against the Soviet
Union, for escalating the Korean War, for intervening in Indochina in 1954,
and for using nuclear weapons against China during the 1954-55 Taiwan
Straits crisis were all dampened by arguments that European NATO states
would not help, or would actively disapprove.85
82. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 167; and on the chain gang metaphor, Christensen
and Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks." Mearsheimer makes a similar argument using
different logic; see "Back to the Future," pp. 14-15. He notes that multipolarity creates more
dyadic relationships than bipolarity, creating more relationships that could flare into war. He
further notes that war has a general propensity to spread, hence each dyadic war could bear
the seed of a system-wide war, creating more possibilities for general war under multipolarity
than bipolarity. Thus Waltz focuses on the chain gang phenomenon, Mearsheimer on the general
tendency of war to spread, as the mechanism by which one bellicose state can trigger systemwide
war.
83. See Christensen and Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks."
84. Suggesting that alliances often served to restrain alliance members in Europe during 1815-
1945 is Paul W. Schroeder, "Alliances, 1815-1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,"
in Klaus Knorr, ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1976), pp. 227-262.
85. On American consideration of preventive war in the 1950s see Marc Trachtenberg, "A
'Wasting Asset': American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949-1954," International
Security, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Winter 1988/89), pp. 5-49; and Russell D. Buhite and William Christopher
Hamel, "War for Peace: The Question of an American Preventive War against the Soviet Union,"
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International Security 15:3 140
The allies of a bellicose state can also go further by moving to balance
actively against it if it moves aggressively.86 If so, multipolarity operates to
prevent or shorten local wars by facing the aggressor with overwhelming
opposition. Thus, overall, a multipolar system creates the possibility that
other states in the system can be drawn into local wars, but it can also
operate to dampen or prevent such wars-by threatening adventurous states
with the loss of its allies, or by facing them with an overwhelming coalition.
Second, some suggest that bipolarity creates greater incentives to behave
cautiously, and to choose wise national leadership. Under multipolarity states
can hope to rely on each other, but with bipolarity they must rely on themselves,
and hence on their leaders. This leads societies to behave carefully,
and to choose prudent leaders.87
However, this argument clashes with other elements of the case for bipolarity.
Some favor bipolarity because states in bipolarity compete widely and
hard, hence aggressors face strong opposition; however this competitive
conduct can cross the line to become reckless conduct. Bipolarity advocates
also argue that multipolarity is more complex and confusing, raising greater
risks of war-but if so, states in multipolarity should try harder to find wise
leaders who can cope with these complexities. Overall, it is not clear which
system best fosters cautious conduct and wise leadership.
The total case for each system is hard to assess, since we have no way to
measure the power of the factors favoring each system. Overall, the case for
each seems equally persuasive. Moreover, even if bipolarity is somewhat
safer, the difference between the two systems is not dramatic, and forms a
frail basis upon which to argue that the risk of war will rise sharply in the
new Europe.
Diplomatic History, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 1990), pp. 367-384. Trachtenberg mentions (but does
not elaborate) Dulles's view that the likelihood that American allies would refuse to support
such a policy was an important consideration against it (pp. 42-43). On Korea, see Rosemary
Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953 (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 127, 145-146, 200-201, 217-219; and Robert Divine, Eisenhower
and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 28-29. On Indochina see
George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975 (New York:
Wiley, 1979), pp. 31-36. On the Taiwan Straits crisis see Buhite and Hamel, "War for Peace,"
p. 382. These examples are especially noteworthy because they show lesser powers restraining
a superpower in a bipolar system; in a multi-polar system, allies should be better able to restrain
each other, since power is distributed more equally among them.
86. The Soviet decision to balance against expansion by its Iraqi ally during the 1990 Persian
Gulf crisis provides a recent example.
87. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 176.
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Europe After the Cold War | 41
GERMAN AGGRESSION?
The argument that a free and united Germany will return to its past aggressiveness
is refuted by the dramatic transformation of German society since
1945. Five changes have erased the roots of past German aggressiveness.
First, German society, like the rest of Europe, has undergone a dramatic
social leveling process.88 The Junkers and big industrial barons are history.
Their departure removed the arrogant elite whose stubborn defense of its
class privilege helped provoke World War I and, less directly, World War II.
Second, Germany is an established democracy. German society contains
all the preconditions for democracy in abundance, so we can be confident
that this democracy is robust and durable.
Third, flowing in part from the first and second changes, German hypernationalism
has dissipated, and a powerful barrier against its return has been
erected by a strong movement in Germany for the honest discussion of
German history. German secondary schools and the German media generally
provide accurate coverage of Germany's past crimes.89 German academic
historians have largely abandoned the nationalist habits of their Wilhelmine
predecessors, often taking a more critical view of German conduct than
foreign historians do. For example, Fritz Fischer and his students have assigned
more of the blame for the First World War to Germany than many
British and American historians do.90 A few German historians have tried to
justify Germany's conduct in the Second World War, but many others have
beaten them down.91
88. See World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),
p. 237. The distribution of income in Germany is more equal than in most other major industrialized
states, including the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Finland,
Denmark, Australia, and New Zealand; it is less equal than in Sweden, Japan, the Netherlands,
and Belgium; and is roughly comparable to the distribution in Norway and Spain.
89. See Anne P. Young, "Germans, History, and the Nazi Past," Social Education, Vol. 4, No. 2
(February 1981), pp. 86-98; and Hildegund M. Calvert, "Germany's Nazi Past: A Critical Analysis
of the Period in West German High School History Textbooks" (Ph.D. dissertation, Ball State
University, 1987). Calvert notes some objectionable omissions, but concludes that German
textbooks "satisfactorily covered the majority of the topics examined" (p. ii).
90. The Fischer school's views are summarized in Geiss, German Foreign Policy; and Fischer, War
of Illusions. A good survey of the controversy stirred by the Fischer school is John A. Moses,
The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (London: George Prior,
1975). As Moses notes, most German historians now accept Fischer's argument that Germany
deliberately unleashed the First World War in June-July 1914, disputing only Fisher's contention
that the war was planned long in advance (p. 73). An example of a non-German interpretation
far more sympathetic to Germany than the Fischer school is L.C.F. Turner, Origins of the First
World War (London: Edward Arnold, 1970).
91. On this dramatic debate see Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and
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International Security 15:3 1 42
If historical mythmaking did make a comeback in Germany, an acute
danger would arise. Germany was badly mutilated by the two world wars,
losing 34 percent of its pre-1914 territory,92 and suffering the expulsion of
13.8 million Germans from the lost territories.93 Germans who forget that
German conduct was the main cause of this mutilation would begin blaming
others, and could develop an extreme sense of grievance. The potential
danger is even larger than in 1914 and 1939, since Germany was whole in
1914, and had less "lost" territory in 1939 than it has now. Hence German
behavior is highly dependent upon German historical memory, and benign
German behavior depends on sound memory. However, the commitment to
honest history now seems stronger in Germany than anywhere else in Europe,
and the main causes of past historical mythmaking have disappeared
with the leveling of German society and the growth of German democracy.
Fourth, German civil-military relations have been transformed since the
1930s. The German military is no longer an upper-class preserve, and is
integrated into German society. As a result, German officers understand the
civilian viewpoint, and largely accept the civilian right to determine foreign
and defense policy. German military officers learn the history of the German
military's past misdeeds, which creates a barrier against their repetition.94
German mass media contain no echoes of past military propaganda.
Fifth, the nuclear revolution has made available weapons of absolute security,
should Germany ever need them. If Germany again faces a serious
threat from without, it will not need to reach for more defensible borders or
the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Pantheon, 1989); and Peter Baldwin, "The
Historikerstreit in Context," in Peter Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and
the Historian's Debate (Boston: Beacon, 1990), pp. 3-37. Noting the defeat of the German apologists
in this debate are Baldwin, ibid., p. 29; and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, "Unburdening the German
Past? A Preliminary Assessment," in Baldwin, Reworking the Past, pp. 214-223, at 214-215.
Noting the absence of chauvinism in Germany today is Hans Mommsen, who concludes that
"Germany today is ahead of its neighbors in its wariness of patriotic appeals and violent solutions
to domestic conflicts." Hans Mommsen, "Reappraisal and Repression: The Third Reich in West
German Historical Consciousness," in ibid, pp. 173-184, at 183.
92. World Almanac and Book of Facts 1990 (New York: World Almanac, 1989), pp. 712-713.
93. At the end of World War II a total of 13,841,000 Germans were expelled from formerly
German territories annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, and from other East European
countries; of these, 2,111,000 died during the expulsion, leaving 11,730,000 expellees alive during
1945-50. Most settled in West Germany, some in East Germany, and small fraction in Austria
and other western countries. Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans
From the East, 3rd rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. xxv.
94. I am indebted to Dr. Roland E. Foerster, Director of the Department of Education, Information,
and Special Studies at the Military Historical Research Institute at Freiburg, and to
Professor David Large of Montana State University, for sharing information on this question.
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Europe After the Cold War | 43
for wider territories to provide economic autarky, as it once did; now it can
secure itself by building a nuclear deterrent. Germany's transition to nuclear
power would not be without danger, in the form of possible preventive
attack by outsiders. However, outside powers, most notably the United
States, have the power to deter such an attack. Moreover, they would have
every reason to do so, since a secure Germany is a more benign Germany,
and is thus in the common interest.
In short, the new Germany is very unlikely to launch a new campaign of
aggression. Its benign behavior since 1945 was due less to its divided and
occupied condition than to the postwar transformation of German society,
which removed the causes of its past belligerence. It is time for the rest of
the world to stop viewing Germany with suspicion, and begin treating it
with the respect that its responsible conduct deserves. The world should ask
that Germans remember their past, if they ever need reminding. It should
also ask that Germans accept a continuing obligation to reassure Germany's
victims that Germany's past crimes will not be repeated. But the world should
not ask for penance from a German generation that was not yet born in 1945,
and should not make them pariahs for crimes committed by Germans who
are long gone.
PRAETORIAN STATES IN THE EAST?
Jack Snyder has suggested that the tide of democracy in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union may produce flawed praetorian polities, reminiscent
of Wilhelmine Germany, rather than the civic-democratic or corporatedemocratic
states now found in the West.95 Fledgling democratic institutions
may be inadequate to channel growing popular political participation. This
could leave control in the hands of narrow elites. These elites might then
pursue aggressive foreign policies that would profit these elites, even if they
produced net harm for the whole society.
However, this danger has been sharply reduced by the social leveling
imposed by Soviet communist rule. Praetorianism is largely a disease of
stratified societies; in praetorian states political institutions are inadequate to
channel rising participation chiefly because elites want to exclude the public
from politics, not because democratic channels for participation would be
hard to establish if elites wished to create them. Communism has done great
95. Snyder, "Averting Anarchy in the New Europe," pp. 18-38.
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International Security 15:3 | 44
harm throughout the East, but its egalitarian policies have ended steep class
stratification, and thereby reduced the elites' motive to constrict democracy
and create praetorianism.
The possibility of praetorianism is not gone altogether, because some social
stratification persists in the East. The upper-class elites are gone, but the
communist party bureaucracies and military establishments form elites of a
different sort. Their power has not been broken in the Soviet Union, Romania,
and Bulgaria, where this old guard still clings to its privileges, and
seeks to choke off democratic reforms. In the Soviet Union it also recommends
belligerent foreign policies, and criticizes President Gorbachev's withdrawal
from Eastern Europe.96 Nevertheless, praetorianism will probably be
muted, because the net stratification of Eastern European societies seems
substantially smaller than in past states where praetorianism flourished.
The states in the East might also suffer from other maladies of new democracies.
Most notably, they lack developed non-governmental institutions
for the evaluation and criticism of public policy-free universities, a skilled
free press, and free research institutions. This raises the risk of the debasement
of public discourse, political demagoguery, and the domination of
dishonest propaganda purveyed by the government or private special interests.
As a result, these states are likely to elect more than a few crackpot
politicians of the Theodore Bilbo-Joe McCarthy-Jesse Helms-Gus Savage
variety, and find their public debates polluted by European Al Sharptons.
However, this is a short-term problem: these societies have the resources to
develop evaluative institutions, and should be able to build them fairly
quickly.
Why Peace Isn't Assured: Persisting and Emerging Causes of War
Two major dangers will emerge in the new Europe: the breakdown of established
international and domestic order in Eastern Europe, and the reappearance
of nationality conflicts and border disputes in the East. These two
96. Yegor Ligachev, a spokesman for the Communists Party old guard, has warned of the
dangers of German reunification, and criticized acquiescence to this reunion as a "new Munich."
"Excerpts From Speech By Ligachev to Party," New York Times, February 7, 1990, p. A12. Army
General Albert Makashov has complained that "because of the so-called victories of our diplomacy
the Soviet army is being driven without combat out of the countries which our fathers
liberated from fascism." "Loyal to Lenin, Soviet general blasts Gorbachev," Boston Globe, June
20, 1990, p. 17. See also Helen Womack, "Kremlin under fire from generals," The Independent,
July 6, 1990, p. 9.
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Europe After the Cold War | 45
dangers feed and magnify one another: the breakdown of order allows latent
border and national conflicts to resurface, while these conflicts magnify the
dangers created by the breakdown of order.
THE BREAKDOWN OF INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC ORDER
Peace among states is most durable when spheres of influence, the "rules of
the game," and the rights and responsibilities of all parties are clear. Dangers
rise when these are ambiguous; each state then tends to define its own rights
broadly and others' narrowly, and to dispute the others' definitions. Crises
erupt as states issue threats and stage faits accomplis to force others to accept
their own definition of their rights. The breakdown of established order could
take two forms, both of which are now appearing in Europe.
INTERNATIONAL BREAKDOWN. Agreements on spheres of influence and regimes
governing international behavior can dissolve if new events make them
obsolete, or new issues arise. Thus the Cold War erupted partly because
World War II demolished the old European order, leaving the Soviet Union
and United States facing each other in Central Europe with only the sketchy
rules of the wartime agreements to define their rights. Both then jockeyed
hard to stake their claims, and collided on questions where rights and rules
were ambiguous-most notably, over Western access rights to Berlin, and
the Soviet Union's right to deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba. The later Cold
War saw fewer crises largely because the rules of the game and the boundaries
of the two superpowers' spheres of influence were more clearly worked
out after 1962.97
The Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe creates a situation that resembles
the early Cold War. The Soviets have blundered by withdrawing without
first demanding an accord on the new status of Eastern Europe. Now a huge
zone of Europe has re-entered the international system, but no agreement
defines the rights of outside powers in Eastern Europe, or the responsibilities
97. The outbreak of the Seven Years War illustrates the same dynamics. The origins of that war
lay partly in the lack of clarity over ownership of the Ohio Valley, which allowed Britain and
France each to convince itself that it owned the valley and the other was encroaching. See, e.g.,
Patrice L.R. Higonnet, "The Origins of the Seven Years War," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40
(1968), pp. 57-90; and Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1977), pp. 195-236. Likewise, each of the many European "wars of succession" in the
eighteenth century grew from the breakdown of agreed international spheres of influence upon
the death of a monarch; states then struggled to establish successions that would favor their
own states or dynasties, or to avert such gains by others.
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International Security 15:3 1 46
of the East European states to one another.98 This ambiguity raises the risk
of misunderstandings and collisions, as states inside and outside the region
struggle to establish their rights.
DOMESTIC BREAKDOWN. Order can also unravel with the domestic collapse
of imperial states, and the secession of outlying provinces. As imperial control
wanes, outer territories spin off from the center; but absent prior agreements,
there will be no rules to delineate others' rights in these territories,
or to define their inhabitants' responsibilities to one another. This can spark
an unregulated competition for control among outsiders, and fighting among
the newly-free peoples. These dangers are magnified if the borders of the
newly-emerging states are poorly defined, as they often are. Imperial collapse
can also cause collisions between outside powers and the imperial metropole,
as that metropole struggles to retain or regain control of areas that it still
defines as its own, but others have come to define as free states.99
Collisions of the last sort are made more intense by the insecurity felt by
the declining metropole, and its resulting willingness to take extreme measures
to sustain itself. The domestic weakness of the metropole creates a
domestic-political version of offense-dominance: the metropole is insecure
not because military or diplomatic factors favor the offense, but because its
own domestic weakness enables an "offensive" against it in the form of
outside subversion or support for secessionist movements. Thus the domestic
weakness of Austria-Hungary before 1914 caused it to fear Serbian subversion
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This spurred Austria to counter-attack against Serbia,
sparking World War I.
The Soviet Union is Europe's last colonial empire. It is now riddled with
secessionist movements among the many non-Russian peoples that Russia
98. For example, there is no explicit East-West understanding on whether the East European
states can join NATO, whether NATO states can base forces in Eastern Europe, or whether
Soviet forces can return to Eastern Europe, either to police civil or inter-state wars or for some
other reason.
99. The crises surrounding the slow collapse of the Ottoman empire after the Napoleonic Wars
illustrate these dangers. This collapse spawned three great crises, in 1832-33, 1839-40, and
1875-78, and two great wars-the Crimean War and World War I-plus the Balkan wars of
1912-13. The territories escaping Turkish control were of relatively little strategic value, but the
undefined nature of other states' rights in these territories caused outsiders to collide over their
possession. Thus Britain and France clashed over Egypt and Syria in the crisis of 1839-40, and
Austria and Russia collided over the Balkans in 1914. The collapse of Ottoman authority also
produced violent conflicts among the newly independent Balkan states. A general account is
M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question 1774-1923 (New York: Macmillan, 1966). A summary is
Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (New York:
Harper and Row, 1958), pp. 40-55, 84-92, 167-177, 280-286, 321-334.
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Europe After the Cold War | 47
conquered under the Tsars. It seems inevitable that this empire will eventually
go the way of the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires. Its
demise will raise greater dangers than the dismantling of the other colonial
empires, however, for three main reasons. First, its seceding provinces lie
closer to its imperial core, making that core more nervous about their possible
alignment with hostile powers.100 Second, the boundaries between metropole
and colony are relatively unclear; for example, are the Ukraine and Byelorussia
colonial provinces, or in some sense part "Russian"? And third (as I
discuss below), the populations of the Soviet Union have intermingled, leaving
millions of Russians living outside the metropole, and millions of other
nationalities living outside their home republics. This situation creates immense
potential for conflict over each group's rights and status, and gives
the metropole a potent reason to refuse them independence. Some voices in
the United States have already begun to call for treating the seceding nationalities
as independent states, and for lending them support; this could cause
a Soviet-Western confrontation if the Soviet leadership decides not to permit
their unilateral secession.101
BORDER DISPUTES AND INTERMINGLED OR DIVIDED NATIONALITIES
The Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe uncovers border disputes and
revanchist claims that were previously suppressed by the Soviet imperium,
and similar conflicts will doubtless emerge among the Soviet republics as
they gain independence from the Soviet Union. These conflicts arise partly
from border shifts produced by past wars that have not been accepted by
the loser. They also arise from the intermingling of nationalities in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union, which sparks claims for territories inhabited
by nationals living outside the home territory. Finally, the intermingling of
nationalities also raises the risk of confrontations even across settled borders,
as one state is aroused against the oppression of its nationals in another.102
100. On the other hand, the nuclear revolution should dampen fears in the Russian metropole
that the secession of nearby republics will leave it insecure. However, this logic does not always
prevail, as shown by the great nervousness that the United States has displayed in the past
over the appearance of Soviet-aligned states and movements in the Caribbean and Central
America.
101. For example, see Richard L. Berke, "Nine GOP Senators Attack Bush on Lithuania," New
York Times, April 28, 1990, p. 4; and Richard L. Berke, "On Right, Signs of Discontent With
Bush," New York Times, May 1, 1990, p. A18.
102. Such nationality conflicts should be distinguished from those arising from the hypernationalism
discussed above (pp. 23-25, 28-29.) Hyper-nationalism is artificially generated or
magnified by chauvinist myths. Conflicts arising from hyper-nationalism thus derive from the
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International Security 15:3 | 48
These conflicts heighten the dangers posed by the absence of an agreed
international order for Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet internal
empire, by providing concrete cause for the unregulated competition that
these conditions permit.
These dangers have diminished since World War II. Eastern Europe's
borders are more widely accepted now than fifty years ago, and Eastern
Europe's nationalities are less intermingled because in the cataclysm of World
War II millions of Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe, and the
Nazis mass-murdered East European Jews and Gypsies. Nevertheless, a tour
of the map of Eastern Europe reveals at least nine potential border disputes,
and at least thirteen significant ethnic pockets that may either seek independence
or be claimed by other countries.103 If Yugoslavia breaks up, as now
seems possible, additional border disputes would arise among its successor
states, and ethnic pockets would exist within them.
In the Soviet Union, nationalities are even more intermingled than in
Eastern Europe. The Soviet population totals some 262 million people, comprising
104 nationalities living in 15 Soviet republics. Of these, a total of 64
million (24 percent) either live outside their home republic, or are among the
89 small nationalities with no republic of their own, and thus would be
minorities in the successor states to a dismantled Soviet Union (assuming
that all 14 non-Russian republics secede but are not further sub-divided).104
Of these 64 million, some 39 million (15 percent of total Soviet population)
are members of nationalities that have their own republic, but live outside
it; these include 24 million Russians (17 percent of all Russians) and 15 million
beliefs of nations. The national conflicts discussed here arise from the circumstances of nationsfrom
their intermingling or their division by international borders. Such conflicts can be magnified
by nationalist myths, but do not require them. Even nations that are not imbued with
false self-glorifying history will tend to fall into conflict if they are intermingled or divided.
103. Frontiers that may be disputed include the Romanian-Soviet, Romanian-Hungarian, PolishSoviet,
Polish-German, Polish-Czechoslovakian, Hungarian-Czechoslovakian, Yugoslav-Albanian,
Greek-Albanian, Greek-Turkish, and Greek-Yugoslav-Bulgarian. Ethnic pockets include
Romanians in Soviet Bessarabia; Hungarians in Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union;
Poles in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia; Germans in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania;
Macedonians in Bulgaria and Greece; Turks in Bulgaria; Greeks in Albania; and Albanians in
Yugoslavia. Summaries include Larrabee, "Long Memories and Short Fuses"; Istvan Deak,
"Uncovering Eastern Europe's Dark History," Orbis, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 51-65;
and Barry James, "Central Europe Tinderboxes: Old Border Disputes," International Herald Tribune,
January 1, 1990, p. 5.
104. All demographic figures .are for 1979, the most recent Soviet census, and are calculated
from John L. Scherer, ed., USSR Facts and Figures Annual, Vol. 5 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic
International Press, 1981), pp. 49-51.
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Europe After the Cold War | 49
members of other nationalities (15 percent of all such nationalities). Another
25 million people (9 percent of the total Soviet population) are members of
smaller nationalities without home republics, who would be minorities wherever
they live.105
A dismantled Soviet Union would thus be riddled with national conflicts.106
These could arise from a nationality's demand to annex territory in another
republic inhabited by its own members; from complaints against the oppression
of national brethren who live across accepted borders;107 and from
demands by the small, stateless nationalities for autonomy or secession from
the republics where they reside. Border disputes could also arise because
some nationalities may claim larger borders dating from the days of their
independent pre-colonial greatness. Armenian nationalists have already laid
claim to Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, and radical Georgian nationalists
claim parts of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, and Russia. Other claims will
doubtless be lodged by nationalists in other republics.
These ethnic conflicts and territorial disputes will pose significant dangers
in the years ahead to both Eastern and Western Europe. Western Europe
itself is largely free of such problems; its borders are well-settled,108 and its
populations are not significantly intermingled. However, war anywhere in
Europe could spread to engulf others; hence the whole continent has an
interest in dampening conflict in the East. The risk that an Eastern conflict
could spread westward is smaller than in the past, because the nuclear
revolution has made conquest harder, and the high-technology revolution
has reduced the strategic value of empire; these changes reduce the security
implications of affairs in the East for other European states, which lowers
their impulse to intervene in Eastern wars. Nevertheless, some risk of spread
105. This excludes the Kazakh residents of Kazakhstan, but a literal accounting would include
them, because the Russians outnumber them in Kazakhstan, 41 percent to 36 percent. In all
other Russian republics the nationality after whom the republic is named are the majority or (in
Kirgizia) a plurality.
106. A survey of relations among Soviet nationalities is Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the
U.S.S.R. (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986).
107. The Soviet Union already has over 600,000 internal refugees who have fled from such
oppression, and hundreds have died in communal violence. Francis X. Clines, "40 Reported
Dead in Soviet Clashes," New York Times, June 9, 1990, p. 1.
108. The Polish-German boundary is the only Western frontier that might be disputed. Before
unification the East and West German governments both agreed to guarantee the current
German-Polish border; if the united German government adheres to this agreement, this border
dispute is settled. See Serge Schmemann, "Two Germanys Adopt Unity Treaty and Guarantee
Poland.'s Borders," New York Times, June 22, 1990, p. 1; and Thomas L. Friedman, "Two Germanys
Vow to Accept Border With The Poles," New York Times, July 18, 1990, P. 1.
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International Security 15:3 | 50
remains; hence the Western countries should take active measures to dampen
conflicts in the East, and be prepared to prevent the spread of any wars they
might ignite.
Policy Prescriptions
The United States has a large interest in preserving peace in Europe. Accordingly,
the United States should be active to keep the risk of war as low
as possible. Four specific policies are recommended.
PURSUE A GENERAL EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
The world sails dangerously if it allows momentous changes without moving
early to agree on the rights and responsibilities of all in the new world.
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union will be a magnet for outside interference,
and a possible wellspring of general conflict, unless the main NATO
powers and the Soviet Union promptly agree on the rights of all powers in
the Eastern region. This need is made more urgent by the Eastern conflicts
over borders and among nationalities. Without prior understandings, outside
powers might be drawn into these conflicts, perhaps in response to pleas
from states in the region, who can be expected to exert themselves to find
outside allies.
These dangers could be reduced by a comprehensive Cold War peace
settlement. Such a settlement should attempt to balance the secudrity interests
of all states against human rights concerns. Two questions are foremost: the
status of Eastern Europe, and the status of seceding Soviet republics.109
Eastern Europe's status should be settled by "Finlandizing" the region: the
West would promise not to incorporate East European states into Western
military alliances or to base forces on their territory, while the Soviet Union
would guarantee their complete domestic freedom. Such a settlement would
seem to strike the best balance between Soviet security interests and Western
human rights concerns.
The West should also seek an accord with the Soviet Union on the rights
of all peoples in the Soviet republics. The Soviet nationalities conflicts, and
the international effects of a breakdown of the Soviet empire, are best dampened
by reaching an understanding before these crises are manifest.
109. A third major issue, the status of Germany, has recently been settled by agreement that a
united Germany will be incorporated into NATO.
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Europe After the Cold War | 51
Specifically, the West should agree not to support or encourage the unilateral
secession of Soviet republics. In exchange, the West should ask that
the Soviet Union establish a fair and expeditious procedure for legal secession,
if its current procedure is deemed too unwieldy. Western agreement to
refrain from support for unilateral secessions makes sense for three reasons.
First, an unregulated breakup of the Soviet Union could produce a human
rights disaster, by risking communal violence against the 64 million Soviet
citizens who are now minorities in the republics where they live. In a worst
case, a chain of non-negotiated secessions could trigger violence like the
slaughter in India after the British withdrawal that killed 800,000 people and
created millions of refugees during 1946-48, and killed many more in later
years.110 Bloody post-independence communal conflicts in Uganda, Rwanda,
Burundi, Nigeria, Sudan, Zaire, Angola, Mozambique, Iraq, and Lebanon
further illustrate this danger. It can best be averted if the republics negotiate
their departure from the Soviet Union, and are not allowed to leave until
they provide robust guarantees of the political and economic rights of their
minorities. The West should favor their continued membership in the Soviet
Union until they accept these obligations.
Second, non-negotiated secessions from the Soviet Union would also raise
the risk of inter-state warfare among republics after they gain independence.
Peace will be most robust if seceding republics first settle their borders and
their post-independence economic and political relations with Russia and the
other republics by negotiation. Otherwise these issues will later brew conflicts.
Third, American support for unilateral secessions could spark a SovietAmerican
collision. States facing breakup seldom accept it gracefully, and
outside interference in such situations can spark war, just as Serbian support
for secessionists in Bosnia-Herzegovina sparked the Austrian counter-attack
that triggered World War I. Western support for separatist groups in the
Soviet Union might have similar results.
As a general matter, the West should seek a moderate settlement with the
Soviet Union, and should not seek to exploit current Soviet weakness to
press home every advantage. Perhaps the West could now impose a harsh
peace, but this would fuel Soviet revisionism once the Soviet Union recovers
from its current malaise. Just as Germany overthrew the Versailles peace
once it recovered its strength, a later Soviet or Russian regime would some-
110. Casualty data are from Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1989
(Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1989), p. 22.
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International Security 15:3 j 52
day move to overthrow today's harsh settlement, and might disturb the
peace of Europe in the process. Instead, the West should seek a settlement
that will stand the test of time. A settlement that does not last is worse than
none at all, since it provides no benefits and its breakdown will sow bitterness
and suspicion, just as the breakdown of the wartime accords added bitterness
to East-West relations early in the Cold War.
DAMPEN HYPER-NATIONALISM, MILITARISM, AND CONFLICT AMONG
NATIONALITIES; PROMOTE DEMOCRACY
The experience of both world wars warns that hyper-nationalism and militarism
can be potent causes of conflict. Accordingly, the United States should
take active measures to combat these syndromes in the new Europe. Both
are at low ebb in Europe today, and are unlikely to return to their former
levels, for reasons noted above. However, their permanent disappearance is
not guaranteed; hence the United States should act to prevent their resurgence.
Otherwise we waste lessons that the world paid dearly to learn.
To dampen nationalism, the United States should monitor historical education
in Europe, and should object when it finds omissions or distortions.1"'
American relations with NATO states should be conditioned on their willingness
to teach honest history in the schools, and the West's economic
relations with the East should be likewise conditioned on the East's willingness
to teach truthful history. The United States should also be willing to
examine its own treatment of history, and to meet the same standard it sets
for others.112
Some argue that the United States lacks the means to influence education
in other. countries. However, education is largely controlled by the state; and
since historical education affects foreign policy conduct, and thereby affects
the interests of other states, it is a legitimate subject of international negotiation.
The United States has negotiated details of strategic nuclear force
111. This prescription has even more relevance in Japan, where the government has been slowly
moving to re-patriotize education. See Tracy Dahlby, "Japan's Texts Revise WWII: 'Invasion'
Becomes 'Advance'; Asians Become Irate," Washington Post, July 28, 1982, p. Al; Urban C.
Lehner, "More Japanese Deny Nation Was Aggressor During World War II," Wall Street Journal,
September 8, 1988, p. 1; Colin Nickerson, "In Japan, war and forgetfulness," Boston Globe,
August 15, 1988, p. 1; and Patrick L. Smith, "A Textbook Warrior in Japan," International Herald
Tribune, November 1, 1989, p. 18. Ominously, these moves have met little domestic resistance
in Japan, and no objection from the United States government.
112. American historical education is not above criticism; see, for example, Frances Fitzgerald,
America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); and
William L. Griffin and John Marciano, Teaching the Vietnam War (Montclair, N.J.: Allenheld,
Osmun, 1979).
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Europe After the Cold War | 53
posture with the Soviet Union, and intimate aspects of domestic economic
policy with Japan;113 historical education policy surely can be negotiated as
well. The content of historical education is public, hence compliance with
understandings on education would be easy to verify. Arms control diplomacy
has overcome more difficult verification problems.114
The problem of militarism seems even more distant in today's Europe,
with its level-headed professional militaries and pacific publics, but this
situation could deteriorate. This possibility can best be averted by promoting
public understanding of security affairs, especially by fostering the scholarly
study of security affairs in European universities; and by ensuring that the
education of military officers includes discussion of the past disasters that
militarism produced in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. Again, such education
could be monitored and negotiated among states.
The United States and other governments -will hesitate to move against
hyper-nationalism and militarism, because these problems are now largely
invisible. However, these governments should recognize that both nationalism
and militarism are best contained by early action, and may be uncontrollable
if the world waits until they are manifest. After a society develops
full-blown symptoms it is very difficult to bring it back to sanity, because its
regime closes it off to outside influence. The best medicine is prevention.
Finally, the West should also act to dampen nationality conflicts and promote
democracy in the East. Specifically, the Western countries should ask
that the East European countries protect the rights of their national minorities,
accept current boundaries, and adopt democratic reforms. Western economic
relations with the East should be conditional on Eastern compliance
113. In 1990 the United States and Japan reached a trade accord that undertook to change
fundamental characteristics of both economies that inhibit commerce between them. For example,
Japan undertook to increase public works spending, reduce its protection of small retail
shops, and enforce laws against bid-rigging and price-fixing. The United States undertook to
cut its budget deficit, provide greater education for the American workforce, and increase
spending on scientific and commercial research. See David E. Sanger, "U.S. and Japan Set
Accord to Rectify Trade Imbalances," New York Times, June 29, 1990, p. 1. International accord
on the content of national historical education seems far less difficult to reach and verify than
these accords.
114. Such negotiation would be complicated by the fact that education is controlled by local
governments in many countries (as in the United States and West Germany), and that in a few
(such as Britain), standard textbooks are seldom used in history teaching. See Volker R. Berghahn
and Hanna Schissler, "Introduction: History Textbooks and Perceptions of the Past," in Volker
R. Berghahn and Hanna Schissler, eds., Perceptions of History: An Analysis of School Textbooks
(New York: Berg Publishers, 1982) pp. 1-16, at 5-7, 13. However, even states whose school
curricula are locally controlled could agree to provide incentives to local school districts to
eliminate mythical and distorted history, and such incentives could be negotiated between
countries.
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International Security 15:3 | 54
with these requests. Full membership in the Western economy, and in Western
economic institutions, should be offered as carrots; trade and investment
embargoes should be held in reserve as sticks.115 These incentives should be
effective tools, since the states of the East will be eager to draw on Western
resources to rebuild their economies.
BOUND AND MANAGE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
The proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe would be a traumatic event,
and is best deferred as long as Europe's non-nuclear states are content with
their existing security arrangements. However, one or more European powers
may eventually decide that its national security requires a nuclear deterrent.
If so, the United States should not seek to prevent any proliferation.
Rather, it should seek to bound and manage the process. If Germany decides
to become a nuclear power, the United States should not resist: Germany
has proven its responsibility, and it has the resources needed to develop an
invulnerable deterrent secure from accident or terrorism. However, Europe
is more dangerous with 20 or 25 fingers on the nuclear trigger than with a
handful, because the additional states might be unable to secure any nuclear
forces that they build.116 Hence the United States should seek to confine
proliferation sharply-ideally, to Germany alone.117 It should also actively
manage any proliferation that might occur, by deterring preventive attack on
emerging nuclear powers, and by giving new nuclear states technical help
to secure their deterrents.
CONTINUE AMERICA S MILITARY PRESENCE IN EUROPE
The Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe will allow large American troop
withdrawals from Western Europe, but the United States should leave a
sizable residual force in Europe. Such a presence will allow the United States
to deter aggression and play the balancing role that it failed to play in 1914
and 1939. It will also strengthen America's hand if America hopes to build
115. A full discussion of this idea is Snyder, "Averting Anarchy in the New Europe," pp. 31-
36.
116. Explaining this danger is Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," pp. 37-40.
117. America's ability to dampen proliferation in Eastern Europe will be hampered if the United
States follows my recommendation that Eastern Europe be "Finlandized," since the United
States would thereby forswear the right to extend the alliance protection to East European states
that might be required to persuade them not to acquire nuclear weapons. However, the main
stimulus to proliferation in the East would probably lie in German acquisition of nuclear weapons;
the United States can unilaterally guarantee the East European states against German
aggression without forming broader alliances with those states or putting forces in Eastern
Europe.
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Europe After the Cold War | 55
barriers against hyper-nationalism and militarism, to exert leverage over East
European states, and to bound and manage proliferation. The American force
should be small enough to forestall taxpayer demands for further cuts, but
large enough to provide some military capability, to serve as a visible token
of America's commitment to Europe, and to remind Americans and Europeans
of that commitment. A force of roughly 50,000-100,000 troops, backed
by large additional forces in the United States, would seem to fit this require-
ment.
Such a deployment requires an institutional framework to define its purpose,
and to bolster its legitimacy in the eyes of the American and European
publics. The current NATO framework seems unsatisfactory. A continued
American deployment would have the purpose of deterring aggression from
any quarter, while NATO exists only to address the now-fading Soviet military
threat; hence NATO's aim and the aim of the American deployment no
longer match.
One solution would be to revamp NATO into an explicit collective security
system, whose members guarantee each other against attack by any state,
including other member states.118 Collective security systems have a dismal
history; the hapless League of Nations is the main exemplar. However, a
NATO collective security system need not work like a Swiss watch. Its main
purpose would simply be to provide a public rationale for a continued American
presence in Europe, and to legitimate American action if action is ever
needed. This task is far less demanding than the tasks faced by the League.
Moreover, the League of Nations failed because it lacked strong leaders, but
if the United States decides to continue playing a peacekeeping role in
Europe, NATO already has the strong leader it needs.
Some instead propose constructing a single Europe-wide collective security
system, perhaps based on the 35-country Conference on Security and Cooperation
in Europe (CSCE).119 Such a system would have the merit of
118. This would require a new NATO Charter. The current Charter obliges NATO members to
defend one another from attack from any quarter, but it uses language implying that it does
not contemplate attack by NATO members on one another. See "The North Atlantic Treaty,
April 4, 1949," in Ernest R. May, ed., Anxiety and Affluence: 1945-1965 (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1966), pp. 85-89, at 87. Nor does it define a process for triggering and operating the alliance
against aggression by its own members, and the alliance has refused pleas from member states
for guarantees against other NATO members. See, for example, Athanassios Platias, "High
Politics in Small Countries: An Inquiry into the Security Policies of Greece, Israel, and Sweden"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1986), pp. 165-166, recounting Greek requests for NATO
guarantees against Turkey, and NATO refusal on grounds that NATO's purpose does not include
the defense of NATO members against each other.
119. Discussing this possibility are Jane M.O. Sharp and Gerhard Wachter, Looking Beyond the
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International Security 15:3 j 56
providing security for all the states of Europe; no one is left out. However,
a smaller system based on NATO would have two advantages over a single
pan-European system. First, it would operate more smoothly, for several
reasons: the internal politics of a smaller system would be less unwieldy; it
would build on a developed alliance (NATO) which already has a shared
sense of culture and interest, whereas a single system would build on a
thinner institutional base, and would encompass a more diverse membership;
and the residue of the Soviet threat would tend to hold it together. Second,
a large system is incompatible with a "Finlandization" agreement for Eastern
Europe. Under Finlandization, the West agrees to keep its forces out of the
East, but a comprehensive Europe-wide collective security system would
draw Western forces into the East for peacekeeping if war broke out there.
Thus the Western-Soviet disengagement achieved by Finlandization is undone
by a CSCE security order.
The main disadvantage of a small NATO system lies in its inability to
address conflict in the East. This is a serious shortcoming, since war in the
East is the main danger facing Europe. However, the Western countries could
still use economic incentives to induce peaceful conduct-to include truthtelling
in historical education, the protection of national minorities, the adoption
of democratic reforms, and the acceptance of national boundaries-from
Eastern countries.
Finally, however, Americans should not blithely assume that American
power in Europe will automatically be wisely applied for peaceful purposes.
If the United States pursues fickle or short-sighted policies, the American
presence in Europe could cause more problems than it solves.
A peaceful American policy therefore requires conscious effort to maintain
national self-control. In the past the United States has often allowed its
policies to be shaped by foreign governments or ethnic special interests. A
recurrence would shake the steady hand that the United States must apply
if it is to act as peacekeeper in Europe. This danger is a special threat to
America's European policy, because many Americans have ethnic ties to
Europe. Hence American policy should be actively protected against manipBlocs:
European Security in 2020, Paper No. 16, Peace Paper/Common Security Series (Cambridge,
Mass.: Institute for Peace and International Security, December 1989), pp. 71-81; and Malcolm
Chalmers, "Beyond the Alliance System: The Case for a European Security Organization," World
Policy Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 215-250.
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Europe After the Cold War j 57
ulation by foreign governments, or capture by domestic special interests.
This can be achieved by reminding the American public and foreign policymakers
of the damage that such manipulation and capture have done in the
past.120 Domestic interests and foreign governments should make their case,
but all Americans must understand that America's European policy affects
the general welfare, and should insist that it reflect the general will.
120. Scholarship on both subjects is thin, and more is needed. Existing studies include Ross Y.
Koen, The China Lobby in American Politics (New York: Harper and Row, 1974); and Horace
Cornelius Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality, 1914-1917
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939).
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