Abstract
This chapter will discuss state behavior as driven by the individual. States are locked into a structure of psychopathy which results in war. War is ultimately a form of mass murder which is of course justified by the psychopathic actor: the state. The environment of kill or be killed also expedites prestige seeking which is a form of narcissism. This chapter connects great power war making activity with the analysis of motivations to understand state behavior.
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Notes
- 1.
This is similar to Alexander Wendt’s understanding of the state and the social construction of state behavior (Wendt 1992).
- 2.
I will not be doing this exercise in this chapter due to lack of space, but I will be illustrating particular categories given particular state behavior.
- 3.
Of all the evil that man has done, nothing compares to the invention of the nuclear weapon and the theory of deterrence. According to scholars and policymakers, deterrence must be established to ensure international stability through Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) (Schelling 1960, 207). Deterrence then illustrates that peace can exist if the costs of conflict can be kept higher than its benefits. Weapons and battle tactics that make defense cheaper and offense more expensive is essential to achieve stability. As a result, it is believed that the Cold War never went hot because nuclear weapons helped achieve some uneasy equilibrium. Due to a state’s second strike capability, one state can successfully deter the other from launching first (Waltz 1989, 626). Any action then becomes irrational as it would be suicide. Thus, once all parties understand that the costs of war far outweighs any potential benefit, then state action would thus be successfully constrained. As human beings, we have nothing better to offer ourselves than deterrence theory. It is the peace we deserve due to our evil nature.
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Kassab, H.S. (2018). States As Psychopaths; Theorists As Psychoanalysts: The Reason for War. In: Grand Strategies of Weak States and Great Powers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70404-3_7
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