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| 1 |
ID:
080685
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2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the coming decades, the most powerful states in the international system will face a challenge unlike any experienced in the history of great power politics: significant aging of their populations. Global aging will be a potent force for the continuation of U.S. economic and military dominance. Aging populations are likely to produce a slowdown in states' economic growth at the same time that governments will face substantial pressure to pay for massive new expenditures for elderly care. This economic dilemma will create such an austere fiscal environment that the other great powers will lack the resources necessary to overtake the United States' huge power lead. Moreover, although the U.S. population is growing older, it is doing so to a lesser extent and less quickly than all of the other major actors in the system. Consequently, the economic and fiscal costs created by social aging-as well as their derivative effects on military spending-will be significantly lower for the United States than for potential competitors. Nevertheless, the United States will experience substantial new costs created by its own aging population. As a result, it will most likely be unable to maintain the scope of its current international position and will be less able to realize key international objectives, including preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, funding nation building, and engaging in military humanitarian interventions
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| 2 |
ID:
136455
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the international effects of a variable that has yet to be studied in a systematic manner in the international relations literature: the number of prominent, distinct ideological groups that are present in a particular system, which is a variable that I label “ideological polarity.” My basic argument is that systems in which the great powers are divided into one, two, or three or more ideological groups (or “ideological unipolarity,” “ideological bipolarity,” or “ideological multipolarity,” respectively) have very different dynamics, including major variations in overall threat perceptions among the great powers and the efficiency of the balancing process against perceived dangers. The effects of ideological polarity explain key outcomes that analyses based on power polarity cannot. I test the argument by examining great power relations in two cases: the decades after the Napoleonic Wars and the years leading up to the Second World War. Both periods were multipolar in terms of power but varied in terms of ideological polarity. The result was significant variations in states’ core security policies for reasons consistent with the argument.
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| 3 |
ID:
052159
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| 4 |
ID:
190368
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How should the United States respond to the China challenge? The Donald Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy predicted that “as China continues its economic and military ascendance … [it will seek] regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.”Footnote1 Subsequently, President Joe Biden asserted in an April 2021 address to Congress that the US rivalry with China is about who will “win the 21st century.”Footnote2 Many scholars and policymakers advocate active balancing policies, including the creation of a US-led Indo-Pacific coalition system. For years, John Mearsheimer, a leading international relations theorist, has urged US leaders “to form a balancing coalition with as many of China’s neighbors as possible.” “The ultimate aim,” he argues, “would be to build an alliance structure along the lines of NATO” against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.Footnote3 Another prominent scholar of international relations, Graham Allison, concurs: “When it comes to doing what it can [to balance China], Washington should focus above all on its alliances and partnerships … who together will constitute a correlation of forces to which China will have to adjust.”Footnote
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| 5 |
ID:
116180
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Numerous analysts have criticized George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies for their strong ideological content. This article agrees with a core premise of these critiques, but it does so for very different reasons from most analyses. Ideological rigidity on some issues, paradoxically, prevented the Bush administration from taking advantage of the full range of ways in which ideologies shape international relations. There were three major opportunities to advance US interests in the Middle East during Bush's presidency that were created by the effects of ideologies. First, liberalizing parties in otherwise illiberal regimes tended to be significantly more supportive of US interests than other ideological groups in the same country at the same time. Second, major ideological differences among different types of illiberal enemies of the United States enhanced America's ability to adopt "wedge" strategies toward various hostile coalitions. Finally, the existence of different types of ideological enemies in the Middle East created incentives for some illiberals to align with the United States because of mutual ideological enmity for a third ideological group. The Bush administration, however, failed at key times to take advantage of these openings. If Bush administration officials had been less ideologically dogmatic while, somewhat paradoxically, making better strategic use of ideologies' major international effects, America's security would have been significantly advanced in critical cases.
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| 6 |
ID:
077294
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2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the factors that led to the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the most important U.S. decision makers in both the Reagan and Bush presidencies. The centerpiece of the analysis is a longitudinal study that compares the timing of U.S. decision makers' assessments of the nature of the Soviet threat with changes in Soviet power, foreign policies, and domestic ideology and institutions. This research design allows one to determine if America's key leaders were basing their foreign policies primarily in response to reductions in Soviet power (as realists assert), to more cooperative international policies (as systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments claim), or to changes in Soviet domestic politics (as democratic peace theories argue). I find that American leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending corresponded most closely with Soviet domestic-ideological and institutional changes. As soon as America's most important leaders believed both that Gorbachev was dedicated to core tenets of liberal ideology, and that these values would likely be protected by liberal institutions, they believed the Cold War was ending. These findings help to both illustrate the key determinants of leaders' perceptions of international threats and explain why outstanding Cold War disputes were resolved so smoothly, with the Americans primarily attempting to reassure the Soviets rather than coercing them with America's power superiority
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| 7 |
ID:
179882
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Why is it that international ideological enemies—states governed by leaders engaged in deep disputes about preferred domestic institutions and values—are sometimes able to overcome their ideological differences and ally to counter shared threats, and sometimes they are not? Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe are unlike coalitions among ideologically similar states facing comparable threats. Members of these alliances are perpetually torn by two sets of powerful contending forces. Shared material threats push these states together, while the effects of ideological differences pull them apart. To predict when ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally in the pursuit of common interests, it is necessary to know which of these contending forces is likely to dominate at a particular time. The values of two ideological variables beyond that of ideological enmity play the key role in determining outcomes: (1) states’ susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes and (2) the nature of the ideological differences among countries. Similar levels of ideological enmity and material threats will have vastly different effects on leaders’ alliance policies as the values of these additional ideological variables alter.
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