ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT

Arms control and disarmament cannot be divorced from consideration of deter­rence. Leaders responsible for national security are unlikely to exhibit much interest in the limitation of weapons if the outcome may reduce their deterrent capabilities. Motives not directly related to national security, such as a desire to reduce the burden on national budgets of military spending, have only rarely proved to be a sufficient incentive to produce lasting and effective disarmament measures. The protracted arms races prior to 1914 and 1939 and since 1945, as well as the example of many developing states that spend a vast proportion of their meager resources on military forces, suggest that purely economic mo­tives will not arrest spiraling arms races. On the other hand, the fear of national, if not global, annihilation provides unprecedented incentives to stabilize deter­rence by measures to reduce the fear of surprise attack, arrest the diffusion of nuclear weapons, minimize the probabilities and effects of technological break­throughs, and diminish the likelihood of unintended war through accident or escalation.

Attempts to control or abolish the use of force are nearly as old as war itself, and they have taken the form of trying to limit both the ends sought through war and the instruments of violence. Included in the former category are the medieval concepts of the "just war," which implied that force could be used only for certain legitimate ends; the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, outlawing

301 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

the use of war; the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, in which the doctrine of "crimes against humanity" was used to punish top-ranking Nazi leaders; and the United Nations Charter, in which signatories renounced the use of force except in self-defense.

More modest attempts have been made to limit and control the instru­ments of violence. During the nineteenth century, a movement to "humanize" the conduct of war led to agreements at the Hague Conference of 1899 outlawing certain weapons, including expanding (dumdum) bullets. Delegates at the Wash­ington Conference of 1922 sought to prevent renewal of a naval arms race by limiting capital ships of the five major naval powers—England, the United States, France, Japan, and Italy—according to the ratio of 5-5-3-1.75-1.75, respectively. Subsequent efforts during the interwar years to limit either naval or land forces were unsuccessful, and even the Washington Naval Convention failed to survive the arms race of the 1930s.

Since World War II, considerable activity on questions of arms control and disarmament has produced a number of multilateral agreements—a treaty demilitarizing the Antarctic (entered into force in 1961, ratified by nineteen nations); the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963, 108 nations); prohibitions on the use of outer space (1967, seventy-four nations) and the sea bed (1972, sixty-two nations) for weapons of mass destruction; the Treaty of Tlatelolco, prohibit­ing nuclear weapons in Latin America (1967, twenty nations); the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970, 101 nations); and a convention prohibiting the devel­opment, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons (signed in 1972, seventy-three ratifications). In addition, since 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union have entered into several bilateral agreements on subjects ranging from the establishment of direct communications links (the "Hot Line" agree­ment of 1963) to limitations on ABM systems (1972) and ceilings on offensive strategic forces (1972 and 1974). Important as these achievements are, however, they have at best slowed down rather than reversed the global arms race. The 1974 Vladivostok interim agreement and the subsequent SALT II Treaty agree­ments between the United States and USSR actually permit a large increase in offensive delivery capabilities, and the fate of the latter treaty (as well as the entire SALT process) remains very much in doubt with the deterioration of detente in the later 1970s and early 1980s. Effectiveness of the Partial Test Ban Treaty is diminished by the boycott of two nuclear nations, China and France. Paris and Peking have also refused to ratify the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as have a number of important regional powers, including India, Israel, Pakistan, Spain, and South Africa.

The tendency to equate arms control with formal international agree­ments may, however, lead to overly pessimistic conclusions about the feasibility of placing limits on the procurement or deployment of arms. Self-imposed limits on violence are sometimes more enduring than those found in treaties and have even survived wars. Whether from fear of reprisal, military impracticality, or unwillingness to bear the onus for initiating its use, neither the Allies nor

302 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

the Axis powers used poison gas during World War II. During the Korean war, both qualitative and geographical limitations were imposed on American and United Nations armed forces; despite considerable domestic pressure to bomb Manchuria, to unleash Chinese forces on Taiwan, and to use tactical nuclear weapons, these plans were firmly rejected by President Truman. Al­though the USSR provided North Korean forces with vast quantities of military aid, Soviet land forces were withheld from the war and American supply bases in Japan were not attacked.

Other types of self-imposed arms-control measures that have been prac­ticed by the United States and the Soviet Union, in the absence of any formal agreement to do so, include (1) efforts, even prior to the 1970 treaty, to prevent the diffusion of nuclear weapons, although the cost has been high in alienating such important allies as Fiance and China; (2) moratoria on nuclear tests for limited periods of time; (3) occasional reductions in military budgets;³⁶ and (4) restraint in deployment of certain types of weapons, such as orbiting thermo­nuclear bombs. Although such limitations pale in comparison to existing stock­piles, they nevertheless illustrate the point that not all efforts to control arma­ments require formal agreements.

Finally, informal and tacit cooperation on arms-control measures may take place. After an especially harrowing near-accident involving nuclear weap­ons in early 1961, American scientists developed a sophisticated safety system, the so-called permissive action links, which prevents nuclear weapons from being armed without a release from a responsible command center. The Kennedy administration deliberately alerted the Soviets to the concept and importance of the system at an academic arms-control symposium in late 1962, and the information necessary to build the safety devices was passed to Soviet scientists at the 1963 Pugwash Conference.³⁷

Given the unquestionable importance of controlling international vio­lence, why have efforts to control arms not yielded much more substantial results? Not the least of the reasons is the lack of agreement even on the roots of the problem: Are armaments the causes or the symptoms of international tensions? The answer is elusive, and the relationships of arms races to war can be debated. The arms race during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries probably contributed to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, but more vigilant French and British defense policies during the 1930s might have enabled them to deter the aggressive ambitions of German and Italian leaders. Moreover, arms have been and are among the most comprehensible instruments for making threats. In situations where objectives are incompatible and where the two sides are

³⁶ For example, in the fall of 1963, American officials announced a 4 percent reduction in defense spending; within weeks, Premier Khrushchev made a similar announcement with respect to the Soviet defense budget. Roswell Gilpatrick, "Our Defense Needs: The Long View," Foreign Affairs, 42 (1964), 370.

³⁷ Edward Klein and Robert Littell, "Shh! Let's Tell the Russians," Newsweek. May 5, 1969, pp. 46-47

303 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

strongly committed to their objectives, they may not be able to influence each other's behavior through diplomatic persuasion or by offering rewards. In the absence of some central authority that can legislate peaceful change, states will always have to contemplate those situations in which intolerable demands are made or actions taken against them, and the only possibility of successful resis­tance lies in deterrence through the threat to retaliate. If arms are viewed not merely as instruments of destruction but as bargaining capabilities, manipulated in various ways to influence other states' behavior, we can better understand why Litvinov's admonition, "The only way to disarm is to disarm," appears deceptively simple. Thus, solution of tension-creating political issues might at least create an atmosphere in which weapons are seen as less necessary. But it is usually assumed that one can negotiate tension-reducing agreements only from a position of strength—that, to use Winston Churchill's words, one must "arm to parley." In this sense, arms can be viewed as symptoms of deeper tensions.

Even though arms can be used for creating bargaining positions, they can also contribute to international tensions, thereby reducing the probabilities of settling outstanding political issues. Decision makers tend to perceive the intent behind their own weapons programs as purely defensive but to infer aggressive intent from those of the adversary. Doubts about the purpose of the enemy's weapons are apt to be resolved on the "safe" side—that is, by assuming the worst ("Why else would they maintain such large arsenals?"). Thus, in high-tension situations, decision makers are unlikely to settle for mere parity in armaments. We cannot, however, assess the probable consequences of arms races merely by examining gross figures for defense spending. Competi­tion to develop weapons of increasingly greater accuracy and capable of destabi­lizing deterrence is much more likely to raise international tensions, especially in times of crisis. But arms races that add to the invulnerability of one's own deterrent without threatening those of adversaries will be much less likely to do so.³⁸

Decisions about levels of armaments are based on estimates of the adver­sary's current and expected future capabilities. These estimates may or may not be accurate; to the degree that they are incorrect, the error is likely to be in the direction of overestimating the capabilities of potential adversaries. Such misperceptions provide substantial fuel for arms races. One study revealed that military leaders invariably overestimated the military capabilities of potential enemies. In 1914, for example, although the French and Germans accurately calculated the capabilities of third powers, the Germans judged the French army to be larger than their own, whereas the French believed that their army was

³⁸ For this reason, mathematical studies of arms races based solely on gross expenditures (sometimes called "Richardson processes," after the British meteorologist who pioneered such analyses), however valid they may have been for earlier arms races such as that preceding World War I, may not be especially relevant for explaining or predicting the outbreak of war in the contem­porary international system.

304 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

smaller than that of the Germans.³⁹ On the other hand, during the 1960s Secre­tary of Defense McNamara predicted that the USSR had "opted out" of the strategic arms race, settling for a position second to the United States, an assess­ment not borne out by events of the 1970s.

Further complicating the problem of arms control is the fact that the impetus for acquiring weapons may arise not only from external sources, such as the policies of adversaries or general international tensions. Technological developments may also create pressures for acquiring new weapons—for exam­ple, any scientific breakthrough that opens up possibilities for new applications or even for a change of strategic doctrine that is then used to justify acquisition and deployment of the weapons. And if there is no immediately obvious mission for the new weapons, there is always the clinching argument, "If we don't do it, they [the enemy] may." Thus, threats of a technological breakthrough by potential adversaries is a potent inhibitor of agreements that curtail weapons research and development activities. This fear, particularly important as time between generations of weapons has become shorter, was cited more often than any other by those opposing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

In addition, decisions about defense policies are often as heavily influ­enced by bureaucratic and other internal political considerations as by the state of international politics. Competition between departments and services for a share of the defense budget may be almost as intense as the international rivalries attending an arms race. This point is illustrated by the removal from office of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964. His refusal to give the armed forces— or as Khrushchev called them, the "metal-eaters"—all the resources they de­manded was, according to many informed observers, the main reason for his ouster. In 1967, President Johnson faced various pressures from pro- and anti-ABM forces, as well as the prospect of being vulnerable to charges of permitting an "ABM gap" if he chose to run for reelection the following year. Johnson's decision to deploy a partial ABM system reflected a compromise that was more sensitive to domestic political realities than to the international strategic situation.⁴⁰ Consider also the Anglo-German naval rivalry during the early years of the twentieth century. This was a classic example of an arms race, because each nation was responding directly to the other's naval strength. But specific budget decisions did not reflect merely the increasing military capabilities of the opponent. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, recalled one instance of bureaucratic disagreement: "In the end a curious and characteristic solution was reached. The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight."⁴¹ No doubt similar episodes

³⁹S.F. Huntington, "Arms Races." in Public Policy, Yearbook of the Graduate School of Public Administration. 1958, eds. Carl Fnedrich and Seymour Harris (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).

⁴⁰ Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1974), Chaps. 1 and 16.

«Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: 1911-1914 (New York: Scribner's, 1928). p. 33. Italics added.

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occur with regularity in defense ministries everywhere, irrespective of the nation's social, political, or economic system.

Nations may also acquire sophisticated weapons for other reasons, such as "prestige" or to maintain a regime in power. These motives do not, however, preclude the possibility that neighboring countries will then feel the need to follow suit, setting off a regional or local arms race. Nor are leaders of nations that arm themselves for these reasons necessarily more apt to show enthusiasm for arms-control agreements. It is scarcely conceivable that ruling groups in Libya, Ethiopia, Chile, Cuba, East Germany, Paraguay, Albania, and a great many other countries would welcome the prospect of governing without a power­ful military.

Earlier we cited fears of surprise attack, technological breakthroughs, and diffusion of nuclear weapons as the primary incentives for stabilizing deter­rence through arms control. Paradoxically, these fears are also among the most formidable barriers to arms-control agreements. Unlike the case with trade agree­ments—which are self-executing and in which violations are immediately appar­ent and are not likely to endanger national survival—doubts that the other parties are actually carrying out the agreements in good faith are hard to allay. Expecially in a cold-war situation, with a historical background of distrust and tensions, the tendency to expect the worst of others becomes deeply ingrained in the habits and expectations of decision makers. Even gestures that, if taken at face value, would be regarded as conciliatory tend to evoke suspicions of deceit. "Inherent bad-faith models" of the adversary are hard to erode; and although the threats may well be taken at face value, attempts to communicate reassurance, even through unilateral arms reduction, may be discounted. When Secretary of State Dulles was questioned in 1957 about the value for reducing world tensions of a Soviet plan to decrease unilaterally their armed forces by 1,200,000 men, he quickly invoked the theme of the bad faith of the Soviet leadership. He was asked, "Isn't it a fair conclusion from what you have said this morning that you would prefer to have the Soviet Union keep these men in their armed forces?" He replied, "Well, it's a fair conclusion that I would rather have them standing around doing guard duty than making atomic bombs."⁴² Similarly, there is little indication that unilateral decisions of the Carter administration to cancel several major weapons programs—for example, the B-l bomber and the "neutron bomb"—had any influence on Soviet defense policies. Suspicions of bad faith are by no means always unjustified, and each proven violation would not only add to the difficulties of achieving further arms-control agreements; it would also strengthen the hands of those in each nation who resist any limita­tions on weapons.

If a desire to arrest nuclear proliferation is an incentive for significant arms-control agreements, fear of nonsignatory nations may serve as a counter-

⁴²John Foster Dulles, "Transcript of News Conference, May 15, 1956," U.S. Department of State, Bulletin 34 (1956), pp. 884-85.

306 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

vailing force. While the United States and the Soviet Union shared a nuclear monopoly, agreements between them would have been influenced and con­strained only to a limited extent by the demands and military capabilities of other nations. But the day that the United States and the USSR could impose arms limitations on the rest of the world has long since passed—if, indeed, it ever existed. As China, France, India, and other nations develop increasingly powerful conventional and nuclear capabilities, potential Soviet-American agree­ments are likely to be inhibited unless other nations can be induced to accept the same limitations. Moreover, as the diffusion of nuclear weapons accelerates, the problems of arms-control negotiations will become more complex. Identify­ing areas of mutual interest and converting these into acceptable arms-control formulas—difficult even in bilateral negotiations—is not apt to become easier as the number of nations directly involved increases and as the ability of alliance leaders to impose their wishes on junior members declines. China and France have already indicated an unwillingness to follow the lead of the Soviet Union and the United States on many issues involving weapons, and others may choose to follow their example. Indeed, it may be excessively optimistic to believe that the problem of nuclear proliferation is limited to nation-states. Even if security arrangements for every existing nuclear weapon were absolutely foolproof— and there are reports that this is far from the case—the possibility cannot be written off as wholly implausible that criminal gangs, terrorist groups, self-ap­pointed "liberation movements," and other subnational groups could gain access to fissionable materials and the knowledge to assemble a bomb of some kind for purposes of blackmail.

A traditional obstacle to substantial arms-control agreements is the prob­lem of verification. As weapons become more powerful and as the perceived ability of adversaries to alter the existing military balance in a short span of time increases, the need for verification by inspection or other methods also increases. Available evidence indicates that atmospheric and underwater tests can be detected without on-site inspection, but control of production creates more difficult problems, which, despite some ingenious proposals, are still likely to require the presence of inspection teams. Owing to orbiting satellites and other advances in the technology of surveillance, the problem of monitoring has tended to become a less potent obstacle in recent arms-control negotiations. Ironically, should future agreement result in significantly lower levels of arma­ments, concern over violations could be expected to increase; the smaller the arsenals, the greater the potential premium for cheating, and therefore the greater the fear that adversaries may be doing so.

A further obstacle to arms-control agreements is that of devising formu­las that will not work to the disadvantage of any nation. Against a background of different perceived security requirements, qualitatively different weapons sys­tems present a problem of comparability. How many bombers are equivalent to a battleship? How many infantry divisions are worth a missile-launching sub­marine or a squadron of jet aircraft? What is the deterrent value of an intermedi-

307 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

ate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) compared to that of an ICBM capable of reach­ing any spot on the globe? A piecemeal approach to disarmament—for example, starting first with nuclear weapons, then moving to conventional land forces— does not wholly resolve the problem. A substantial reduction of foreign bases, in which the Western powers presently enjoy a superiority, would strongly favor the Soviet Union. On the other hand, significant reduction in armored and infantry divisions, in most other conventional forces, or in missiles with the greatest "throw weight" (payload capacity) would favor the West.

Even a purely quantitative formula for reduction of a single type of weapon is likely to create controversy. Consider the case of nations A and B, which have stockpiles of 10,000 and 5,000 nuclear weapons respectively. An across-the-board reduction of 50 percent, although requiring nation A to scrap twice as many weapons, might be considered by nation B's leaders a method of perpet­uating their inferiority. This may have been a factor in the Soviet rejection of the American "Baruch Plan," introduced in 1946, to create an international monopoly on atomic energy. The Soviets probably viewed the plan as a method to preclude any future Soviet nuclear program, while ensuring an American monopoly of atomic power through its domination of the United Nations and its agencies. To assert that even nation B's smaller stockpiles may be enough to destroy any adversary's society several times over—in short, that when nuclear stockpiles become large enough, "superiority" ceases to have much signifi­cance—may not be persuasive to those responsible for national security. These two stockpiles might also be reduced to the same absolute level. Again, whatever its "mathematical equity," such a formula is unlikely to gain enthusiastic support from nation A. A proposal to limit Soviet and American conventional ground forces to the same ceiling might be welcomed by Americans, but the Soviets— unwilling to withdraw their armies from Eastern Europe and faced with perceived requirements for troops deployed along the long frontier with China—would be likely to reject the plan. Although the SALT II Treaty failed to reduce existing arsenals, it did achieve a breakthrough in the problem of defining equivalents between strategic weapons. The formula treats all long-range bombers and ICBMs as equal. Because it avoids complexities, this formula may enhance the prospects for future agreements.

A final factor tending to inhibit arms-control agreements is that arms races and arms control may appear to involve different types of risk. Probably few foreign-policy leaders are unaware that protracted arms races entail a danger of war, but this is at least a familiar risk. On the other hand, dangers associated with disarmament measures are much less familiar and may therefore appear more threatening. Thus, the acquisition of stable deterrent forces is probably ' a necessary, if not a sufficient, condition for significant reduction of arms. Only when finite deterrent forces are perceived capable of providing adequate security and when arms races and the proliferation of nuclear weapons are perceived to be a greater threat to security than the reduction of arms, are significant steps toward disarmament likely. But even at that point, disarmament efforts

308 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

must proceed within the context of deterrence. Only arms control or disarma-_ ment measures that contribute to heightened confidence in deterrence are likely to gain much support among most nations. Conversely, only under conditions of stable deterrence are there likely to be genuine advances in reversing the global arms race. Unfortunately, recent technological developments that are increasing the accuracy of missile guidance systems, as well as weapon procure­ment policies of the major powers, do not offer much cause for optimism on this score.

SUMMARY

Weapons have traditionally been used by independent political units to help defend their interests and values when threatened from abroad or to achieve expansionist goals. By their conspicuous deployment or display, they are also used to make diplomatic threats credible in bargaining situations. Unlike conven­tional military forces, however, nuclear weapons are of no utility in achieving such objectives as defeating a guerrilla movement, controlling strategic water­ways, occupying territory, intervening to save a foreign government from internal rebellion, or ensuring supplies of foreign oil. Their main value lies in deterrence, or the capacity to prevent major provocations or massive attack by enemies. Even in this limited area of influence between nations, weapons policies and deployment must be carefully planned, because effective deterrence depends upon credibility. Piling up weapons will not by itself establish credibility if the forces are vulnerable to destruction in a first strike. Various measures such as dispersal, concealment, or protection have been used to lower vulnerability, but none has been totally successful. Defense policy leaders must also consider the consequences of their actions on the policies of their adversaries. Actions that seemingly increase security may, in fact, appear provocative to potential enemies and lead to greater instability or uncontrolled arms races. Arms control, civil defense, and active defense policies also have implications for the complex equations that create both stability and credibility.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Little, Brown, 1971. Aron, Raymond, The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy. Garden City, N.Y.:

Doubleday, 1965. Barringer, Richard E., War: Patterns of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

1972. Brodie, Bernard, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order. New

York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946.

309 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1959.

---------, War and Politics. New York: Macmillian, 1973.

Buchan, Alastair F., War in Modern Society. London: Watts, 1966.

Diesing, Paul and Glenn H. Snyder, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision

Making and System Structure in International Crises. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1977. George, Alexander L., David K. Hall, and William E. Simons, The Limits of

Coercive Diplomacy: Laos, Cuba, Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. George, Alexander L., and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy:

Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974. Green, Philip, Deadly Logic. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Hoffmann, Stanley, The State of War. New York: Praeger, 1965. Holsti, Ole R., Crisis, Escalation, War. Montreal and London: McGill-Queens'

University Press, 1972. Howard, Michael, War and the Liberal Conscience. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers

University Press, 1978. Ниск, Arthur, The Security of China: Chinese Approaches to Problems of War. New

York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Huntington, Samuel, The Common Defense. New York: Columbia University Press,

1961.

International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Papers. London: I.I.S.S. Bi­monthly.

---------, The Military Balance. London: I.I.S.S. Annual.

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International Security. Quarterly.

Kahan, Jerome, Security in the Nuclear Age. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings

Institution, 1975. Kahn, Herman, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. New York: Praeger, 1965.

---------, On Thermonuclear War. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960.

Kolkowicz, Roman, et al., The Soviet Union and Arms Control: A Superpower Dilemma.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970. Legault, Albert, and George Lindsey, The Dynamics of the Nuclear Balance,

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974. Long, Franklin A., and George W. Rathjens, eds., Arms, Defense Policy, and

Arms Control. New York: Norton, 1976.

Morgan, Patrick, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977. Morgenthau, Hans J., "The Four Paradoxes of Nuclear Strategy," American

Political Science Review, 58 (1964), 123-35. Northedge, Fred S., The Use of Force in International Relations. New York: Free

Press, 1974.

Osgood, Robert E., Limited War Revisited. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1979. Osgood, Robert E. and Robert W. Tucker, Force, Order and Justice. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins Press, 1967.

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Pfaltzgraff, Robert L.,jr., Contrasting Approaches to Strategic Arms Control. Lex­ington, Mass.: Heath, 1975.

Quester, George H., Deterrence before Hiroshima. New York: John Wiley, 1966.

---------, Nuclear Diplomacy: The First Twenty-Five Years. New York: The Dunellen

Company, Inc., 1970.

The Politics of Nuclear Proliferation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973.

Ropp, Theodore, War in the Modern World. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1959.

Schelling, Thomas C, Arms and Influence. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966.

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Singer, J. David and Melvin Small, The Wages of War, 1816-1965. New York: John Wiley, 1972.

Smoke, Richard, War: Controlling Escalation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer­sity Press, 1977.

Sokolovskii, V.D., Soviet Military Strategy, trans. Herbert S. Dinerstein, Leon Goure, and Thomas W. Wolfe. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook of World Arma­ments and Disarmament. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, annual.

Waltz, Kenneth, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Colum­bia University Press, 1959.

Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust War. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

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Young, Oran, The Politics of Force. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Explanations

of

Foreign-Policy

Outputs

The previous sections have been primarily descriptive. They have elaborated on the various types of international systems that political units have operated in, on sources of change in those systems, and on the various types of foreign-policy outputs of modern states, ranging from general orientations to specific actions undertaken through diplomacy, propaganda, subversion, and the like. Occasionally we have used a type of explanation to show under what conditions certain actions would probably succeed or fail. Part IV of the book attempts more formal explanation; the question is not so much how governments and policy makers act, but why they act in certain ways. The focus is on foreign policy, particularly on isolating the factors that go into the making of foreign-policy decisions. State actions, such as those discussed in the preceding Part, refer primarily to the execution or implementation of policy. This Part looks at the antecedent condition, the decisions and commands that initiate actions. We will be concerned with the manner in and the conditions under which psycho­logical, bureaucratic, social, systemic, ethical, and legal factors are relevant to policy making.

Efforts to explain foreign policies in all their modes have never been very satisfactory, in part because analyses seldom spell out precisely which aspects of foreign policy need explanation. In the older forms of theoretical determin­ism—for example, that authoritarian states are militaristic or that democracies are pacific—we are told what the independent variable is (authoritarian or demo­cratic states) but seldom informed about the type of behavior that is to be

314 Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

explained. What does it mean, in terms of the concepts used in this study, that a democratic state is "pacific"? Does the term suggest that such a state avoids forming alliances? Or that its national role conceptions tend toward the passive? Or that in its objectives, it merely seeks security? Or that in its actions, it always avoids threats? In brief, what sorts of foreign-policy outputs should be explained? The meaning of the term "foreign policy" is itself by no means self-evident; hence, we distinguish here orientations from roles, and objectives from decisions and actions.

A second problem in the more traditional studies of foreign policy was their emphasis on single-factor explanations. Thus, for example, it was often claimed that geographic location determined a nation's foreign policy. In recent years, however, scholars have come to appreciate that explanations of foreign policy (no matter how that term is defined) must take into consideration many independent variables. Because there are so many kinds of states, with such diverse socioeconomic characteristics, geographic locations, and types of leader­ship, it is very difficult to make any firm generalizations about the sources of foreign conduct. Nevertheless, both case studies and explorations using data from many countries over periods of time have appeared with greater frequency, so that today we are in a position to advance at least some tentative generaliza­tions. These, however, refer more to the specific aspects of foreign policy, such as decisions and actions, than to broader types of outputs, such as orientations and roles. Consequently, we will first explore briefly some hypothesized sources or causes of orientations and national roles and then provide a more extensive analysis of the factors that have been used in recent research to explain decisions and actions in foreign policy.

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