Abstract
This chapter concentrates on the relationships among nations. In the absence of an effective supranational power, and given the frequent appetite for aggrandizement of neighbors, arguably the most prominent theme in modern history has been the attempt to maintain an international balance of power. Technically, then, every nation comprises a system in itself existing in the larger system of the geopolitical world. Though that larger system exerts little direct control over its elemental nations, some kind of equilibrium is necessary, typically through balance-of-power treaties. To be sure, these treaties often fail to prevent war and its ensuing chaos, but it is equally true that once war breaks out, the nations affected usually join forces to bring that war to an end and restore a balance of power.
Nations are changed by time; they flourish and decay; by turns command and obey.
—Ovid
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in the management of all human affairs.
—Emerson
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Notes
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 86–89.
Hans Morgenthau, “Alliances and National Security,” Perspectives in Defense Management, Autumn 1973, p. 20.
Alfred T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1890), pp. 28–88.
Frederick H. Hartmann, The Relations of Nations, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 43–64.
Maurice Matloff, “The 90-Division Gamble,” in Kent Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), pp. 365–382.
For example, see Desmond Flower and James Reeves, eds., The Taste of Courage (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 705–778.
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, p. 397. The actual statement was: “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow” (Parliament, March 1, 1848).
C. de Montesquieu,The Spirit of Laws, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 37, p. 60 [2nd ed., 1990, vol. 35].
Kennedy, pp. 347–356.
The ratio varies with terrain and other circumstances, but 3:1 is generally regarded as a minimum by the military profession because the attacker is much more vulnerable to fire than are defenders.
Alan S. Milward, Economy and Society,1939–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 74.
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations p. 438.
Downs, pp. 107–117.
This categorization of threats was derived from Donald E. Neu-chterlein, “National Interest and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Service Journal, vol. 54, July 1977, pp. 6–8, 27.
Winston S. Churchill,Memoirs of the Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), p. 5.
Captain King did this while commanding the aircraft carrier Lexington (1932). In the second instance (1938), Rear Admiral King was in command of a carrier task force. Apparently the Japanese studied the results more thoroughly than did U.S. observers.
Churchill, Memoirs of the Second World War, p. 12. He said he wrote his memoirs “to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented.”
Barbara Tuchman,The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962), pp. 1–15.
Clausewitz, On War, pp. 105, 139.
B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed. (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 372.
The annualNational Travel Report is a widely used source because most terrorist crimes are inflicted on victims in transit. The annual total rarely exceeds 2000. Another valid source is the annual State Department report of the subject, which for the year 1993 indicated that worldwide terrorist attacks resulted in 109 deaths and 1393 nonfatal injuries.
David Dickson, “Concern grows over China’s plans to reduce number of inferior births,” Nature, January 6, 1994, p. 3.
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© 1997 George M. Hall
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Hall, G.M. (1997). International Relations and War. In: The Ingenious Mind of Nature. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6020-7_18
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