Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:41:37.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Robert Jervis
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access

Abstract

International anarchy and the security dilemma make cooperation among sovereign states difficult. Transformations of balance-of-power systems into concerts tend to occur after large antihegemonic wars. Such wars undermine the assumptions supporting a balance-ofpower system and alter the actors' payoffs in ways that encourage cooperation. The logic developed in “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma” holds: largely because of the increased costs that will be incurred if the grand coalition breaks up, states have greater incentives to cooperate with each other, fewer reasons to fear the consequences of others' defections, and fewer reasons to defect themselves. Cooperation is further facilitated by mechanisms that increase each state's ability to see what others are doing, and to gain “timely warning” of the possibility that the others will defect.

Type
Part II: Applications to Security Affairs
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For the concept of the security dilemma, see Herz, John, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2 (January 1950), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar–80; Butterfield, Herbert, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951Google Scholar); Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 8390Google Scholar. In Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959Google Scholar), Kenneth Waltz noted that using anarchy as the starting point implies that it is peace, not war, that needs to be explained.

2 For general discussions of the problems of cooperation in the absence of supernational sovereignty, see Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978), 167214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984Google Scholar); Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984Google Scholar). For treatments of this problem from the perspective of international law, see Niemeyer, Gerhard, Law, Without Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941Google Scholar); Michael Barkun, Law Without Sanctions (New Haven: Yale University Press); Nardin, Terry, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984Google Scholar); and Kratochwil, Friedrich, “Following Rules,” unpub. (Columbia University, 1984Google Scholar).

3 Jervis, , “Security Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), 362CrossRefGoogle Scholar–68; Elrod, Richard B., “The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System,” World Politics 28 (January 1976), 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar–74; Lauren, Gordon, “Crisis Prevention in Nineteenth-Century Diplomacy,” in George, Alexander, with others, Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), 3164Google Scholar. Paul Schroeder argues that, contrary to the commonly held view, Metternich did not fit the description of a concert statesman. See Schroeder, , Mettemich's Diplomacy at its Zenith (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 251Google Scholar–66 and throughout. Matthew Anderson argues that Alexander I is the best model of such a statesman who had “a real sense of European responsibilities and a willingness to make sacrifices to meet them.” See Anderson, , “Russia and the Eastern Question, 1821–41,” in Sked, Alan, ed., Europe's Balance of Power, 1815–1848 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 82Google Scholar.

4 For a somewhat different list of criteria, see Claude, Inis, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), 9091Google Scholar.

5 The frequent argument that the balance of power assumes that states seek to maximize their power is unnecessary and leads to confusion. See Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 118Google Scholar, 126, and Keohane, Robert O., “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Finifter, Ada, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1983), 514Google Scholar–15.

6 Liska, George, Nations in Alliance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962Google Scholar).

7 Jervis (fn. 2), 186–214; Quester, George, Offense and Defense in the International System (New York: Wiley, 1977Google Scholar).

8 Van Evera, Stephen, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 58107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snyder, Jack, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar–46; , Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision-making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984Google Scholar); Levy, Jack, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (June 1984), 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar–38; Posen, Barry, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the Two World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984Google Scholar).

9 Jervis (fn. 2), 167–86. Note that this is not the same as saying that the chances for cooperation increase as the payoffs for cooperation increase and those for defection decrease. It is equally important that payoffs for outcomes in which one side defects and the other cooperates be moderate—that the former not gain too much or the latter suffer too greatly.

10 Medlicott, W. N., Bismarck, Gladstone, and the Concert of Europe (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 18Google Scholar.

11 Serious threats of war were made on several occasions. See, for example, the incidents and attitudes discussed in Bullen, Roger, Palmerston, Guizot, and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London: Athlone, 1974), 54Google Scholar; Temperley, Harold, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827 (London: Cass, 1966), 8183Google Scholar, 371 Craig, Gordon, “The System of Alliances and the Balance of Power,” in Bury, J. T. P., ed., New Cambridge Modern History, X, The Zenith of European Power, 1830–70 (New York: Cambridge Universit y Press, 1960), 254Google Scholar–57.

12 Blainey, Geoffrey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

13 Quoted in Hinsley, F. H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 221Google Scholar.

14 Temperley (fn. 11), 383–84.

15 As early as May 1946 the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, understood this. He noted that one cost of keeping Germany divided was that “we should have lost the one factor which might hold us and the Russians together, viz. the existence of a single Germany which would be in the interest of us both to hold down.” Quoted in Bullock, Alan, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), 268Google Scholar; emphasis in original. French strength after 1815 as a source of cohesion of the concert is discussed in Roy Bridge, “Allied Diplomacy in Peacetime: The Failure of the Congress 'System,' 1815–23,” in Sked (fn. 3), 34–53.

16 For discussions of how American domestic constraints affected the chances of Soviet-American cooperation after World War II, see Dallek, Robert, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979Google Scholar); Gaddis, John, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, igqi-iyqj (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972Google Scholar); and George, Alexander, “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Holsti, Ole, Siverson, Randolph, and George, Alexander, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 233Google Scholar–62.

17 Waltz, Kenneth, “The Stability of a Bipolar W'odd,” Daedalus 93 (Summer 1964Google Scholar), and Waltz (fn. 5).

18 Ibid., 125–26; Walt, Stephen, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9 (Spring 1985), 343CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

19 Factors beyond our structural model have to be taken into account for a complete explanation of the difference between the British and French positions. On this topic, one of the earliest discussions still remains unsurpassed: Wolfers, Arnold, Britain and France Between Two Wars (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940Google Scholar). For a discussion of the extent to which France was a revisionist state after 1815, see Roger Bullen, “France and Europe, 1815–48: The Problem of Defeat and Recovery,” in Sked (fn. 3), 112–44.

20 Quoted in Albrecht-Carrie, Rene, ed., The Concert of Europe (New York: Walker, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar), 32.

21 Quoted in Temperley (fn. 11), 135.

22 Thus, in late July 1914, French statesmen were disturbed to learn that Austria and Germany rejected a role for the other European powers in the dispute between Austria and Serbia; this indicated a non-cooperative approach and a desire to inflict a settlement that others would find objectionable. See Keiger, John, France and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1984), 153Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relationship between cooperative processes and cooperative outcomes, see Deutsch, Morton, “Fifty Years of Conflict,” in Festinger, Leon, ed., Retrospection on Social Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985Google Scholar)

23 Schroeder, “Alliances, 1815–1914: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,” in Knorr, Klaus, ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 227Google Scholar–62.

24 This is not to deny Hinsley's argument that the British realized that their Continental partners' habit of demanding too extensive collaboration would make the concert impractical. Only a somewhat looser arrangement, the British felt, would allow the concert to succeed. See Hinsley (fn. 13), 202–12.

25 Quoted in Albrecht-Carrie (fn. 20), 109.

26 Ibid, 69.

27 Jones, R. V., Most Secret War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 2326Google Scholar.

28 Buchheim, Robert and Caldwell, Dan, The US-USSR Standing Consultative Commission: Description and Appraisal (Providence, RI: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, May 1983Google Scholar), Working Paper No. 2.

29 For instances of deception, especially on Metternich's part, see Schroeder (fn. 3), 46, 82–83, 207, 212, 219.

30 Van Evera (fn. 8).

31 See Downs and others, “Arms Races and Cooperation,” pp. 118–46 of this collection; Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 67Google Scholar–83, 354–55.

32 Bullen (fn. 11), 81, 93; also see Craig (fn. 11), 257.

33 Kagan, Donald, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 30Google Scholar.