Search results for "balance of power"

Intervention and peace*

2018

Abstract Intervention often does not lead to peace, but rather to prolonged conflict. Indeed, we document that it is an important source of prolonged conflicts. We introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyse how peace can be achieved: either a hot peace between hostile neighbours or the peace of the strong dominating the weak. Non-intervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak. Hot peace can be achieved with sufficiently strong outside intervention. The latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak.

The beginning of the Cold War as a phenomenon of realpolitik : U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes in the field of power politics 1945 - 1947

2012

Survival of the Weakest: Why the West Rules

2022

We study a model of institutions that evolve through conflict. We find that one of three configurations can emerge: an extractive hegemony, a balance of power between extrac-tive societies or a balance of power between inclusive societies -the latter being most conducive to innovation. As extractive societies are assumed to have an advantage in head to head confrontations we refer to this latter possibility as the survival of the weakest. Our contention is that the reason that the West "rules" can be traced back to two events both taking place in China: the invention of the cannon, which made possible the survival of the weakest in Europe; and the arrival of Genghis Khan, which led to the s…

Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman : from historical sociology to balance of power

2020

This article examines Nicholas J. Spykman’s scholarship beyond geopolitics and International Relations (IR). Because his works have mainly been studied through these prisms, I argue that we have overlooked the most important underlying current of his work: historical sociology. As a result, the prevailing view of him is overtly narrow. When Spykman’s scholarly output is examined from the 1920s to 1940s, an entirely different view of Spykman emerges. Essentially, his fundamental understanding of world affairs derived from the German sociologist Georg Simmel’s theories. In the 1920s and 1930s, Spykman transmuted these underpinnings into IR that later in the 1940s guided his two major works: A…