Abstract
International anarchy and the security dilemma make cooperation among sovereign states difficult. Indeed, when international politics is viewed from this perspective, the central question is not, “Why do wars occur?” but “Why do wars not occur more often?”2 We should therefore explore the conditions under which the major states try to gain security through joint efforts. What is important here is that these conditions can be derived from the theory of cooperation under the security dilemma.3
I am grateful for comments by Robert Art, Alexander George, Joanne Gowa, Deborah Larson, Paul Lauren, Glenn Snyder, Stephen Walt, Kenneth Waltz, and the contributors of Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986). This chapter was originally published as Robert Jervis, “From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation,” in Cooperation Under Anarchy, Kenneth A. Oye ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 58–79.
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Notes
I am grateful for comments by Robert Art, Alexander George, Joanne Gowa, Deborah Larson, Paul Lauren, Glenn Snyder, Stephen Walt, Kenneth Waltz, and the contributors of Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986).
This chapter was originally published as Robert Jervis, “From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation,” in Cooperation Under Anarchy, Kenneth A. Oye ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 58–79.
For the concept of the security dilemma, see John Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2 (January 1950), 157–80
Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951)
Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 83–90. In Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), Kenneth Waltz noted that using anarchy as the starting point implies that it is peace, not war, that needs to be explained.
For general discussions of the problems of cooperation in the absence of supernational sovereignty, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978): 167–214
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
For treatments of this problem from the perspective of international law, see Gerhard Niemeyer, Law Without Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941); Michael Barkun, Law Without Sanctions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)
Michael Barkun, Law Without Sanctions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)
Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)
and Friedrich Kratochwil, “Following Rules,” (Unpublished Paper, Columbia University, 1984).
Jervis, “Security Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982): 362–68
Richard B. Elrod, “The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System,” World Politics 28 (January 1976): 159–74
Paul Gordon Lauren, “Crisis Prevention in Nineteenth-Century Diplomacy,” in Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry, Alexander George, et al., (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), 31–64. Paul Schroeder argues that, contrary to the commonly held view, Metternich did not fit the description of a concert statesman.
See Schroeder, Metternich’s Diplomacy at its Zenith (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 251–66 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 Europe’s Balance of Power, 1815–1848, ed. Alan Sked (London: Macmillan, 1979), 82.
For a somewhat different list of criteria, see Inis Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), 90–91.
The frequent argument that the balance of power assumes that states seek to maximize their power is unnecessary and leads to confusion. See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 118, 126
and Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Ada Finifter (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), 514–15.
George Liska, Nations in Alliance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962).
Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” 186–214; George Quester, Of fense and Defense in the International System (New York: Wiley, 1977).
Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984): 58–107
Jack Snyder, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984): 108–46
Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision-making and the Disasters Of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)
Jack Levy, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (June 1984): 219–38
Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the Two World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984).
W. N. Medlicott, Bismarck, Gladstone, and the Concert of Europe (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 18.
Serious threats of war were made on several occasions. See, for example, the incidents and attitudes discussed in Roger Bullen, Palmerston, Guizot, and the Collapse of the Entente Cordiale (London: Athlone, 1974), 54
Harold Temperley, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827 (London: Cass, 1966), 81–83, 371
Gordon Craig, “The System of Alliances and the Balance of Power,” in New Cambridge Modern History, X, The Zenith of European Power, 1830–70, ed. J. T. P. Bury (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 254–57.
Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1973).
Quoted in F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 221.
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 Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), 268; 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 Europe’s Balance of Power, 1815–1848, ed. Alan Sked (London: Macmillan, 1979), 34–53.
For discussions of how American domestic constraints affected the chances of Soviet-American cooperation after World War II, see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)
John Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972)
Alexander George, “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Change in the International System, eds. Ole Holsti, Randolph Siverson, and Alexander George (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 233–62.
Ibid., 125–26; Stephen Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9 (Spring 1985): 3–43
Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
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: Arnold Wolfers, Britain and France Between Two Wars (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940).
Quoted in Rene Albrecht-Carrie, ed., The Concert of Europe (New York: Walker, 1968), 32.
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 noncooperative approach and a desire to inflict a settlement that others would find objectionable. See John Keiger, France and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1984), 153.
For a discussion of the relationship between cooperative processes and cooperative outcomes, see Morton Deutsch, “Fifty Years of Conflict,” in Retrospection on Social Psychology, ed. Leon Festinger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Paul Schroeder, “Alliances, 1815–1914: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,” in Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, ed. Klaus Knorr (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 227–62.
R. V. Jones, Most Secret War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 23–26.
Robert Buchheim and Dan Caldwell, The US-USSR Standing Consultative Commission: Description and Appraisal(Providence: Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University, May 1983), Working Paper No. 2.
George W. Downs, David M. Rocke, and Randolph M. Siverson, “Arms Races and Cooperation,” in Cooperation Under Anarchy, ed. Kenneth A. Oye, pp. 118–46; Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 67–83, 354–55.
Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 30.
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© 2000 Bernard I. Finel and Kristin M. Lord
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Jervis, R. (2000). From Balance to Concert. In: Finel, B.I., Lord, K.M. (eds) Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107397_3
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