Suchergebnisse

"A multi-author undergraduate textbook on conflict studies in international politics. Chapters by leading scholars cover topics like gender, peacekeeping, terrorism, civil wars, nuclear weapons, environmental stresses and conflict, and public opinion. It takes quantitative and qualitative approaches, including case studies on the Ukraine conflict"--

Written for undergraduate students studying the politics of conflict and cooperation, Understanding War and Peace considers the roots of global conflicts and the various means used to resolve them. Edited by Dan Reiter with contributing authors who are all leading scholars in the field, it balances approachable, engaging writing with a conceptually rigorous overview of the most important ideas in conflict studies. Focusing on concepts, policy, and historical applications, the text minimizes literature reviews and technical jargon to engagingly present all major topics in international conflict, including nuclear weapons, peacekeeping, terrorism, gender, alliances, nuclear weapons, environment and conflict, civil wars, public opinion. Enriching the textbook pedagogy, each chapter concludes with a summary of a published quantitative study to introduce students with no prior quantitative training to quantitative analysis. Online resources for instructors include an instructor manual, a test bank and contemporary case studies for each chapter topic regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

This case describes an effort to improve quantitative data on interstate wars. Specifically, the effort arose from three concerns about the very widely used Correlates of War data set on interstate wars. First, there are factual errors in the Correlates of War data set. Second, there are inconsistent applications of coding rules within the Correlates of War data. Third, the structure of the Correlates of War data set aggregated information in a manner that concealed important information and in some cases led to inappropriate empirical inferences. These factors led my coauthors and I to create a new data set on interstate wars, the Interstate War Data. That data set attempted to replicate the Correlates of War data, in the sense of using essentially the same coding rules as Correlates of War, albeit with more extensive historical research, more consistent applications of coding rules, and with slightly different structure to provide more information to users. The results of our efforts were quite surprising. We found an error (from flawed historical research or inconsistent application of coding rules) in the coding of at least one consequential variable (whether the conflict qualified as a war, who started the war, who participated in the war, and who won the war) in more than one third of Correlates of War interstate wars. We also found that the structure of how Correlates of War treated some wars, namely, aggregating very complicated multilateral conflicts such as World War II, omitted a tremendous amount of important information about war participation and outcomes. This project demonstrated the critical importance of investing time and energy in maximizing the quality of data.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Learning in International Politics -- 3. Realism, Balance of Threat, and Alliances -- 4. Cases, Hypotheses, and Variables -- 5. Quantitative Results -- 6. Case Studies: Lessons Heeded -- 7. Case Studies: Lessons Not Learned? -- 8. Political Structure and Learning -- 9. Conclusion -- Select Bibliography -- Index

This book is the first work to build a conceptual framework describing how the pursuit of military effectiveness can present military and political tradeoffs, such as undermining political support for the war, creating new security threats, and that seeking to improve effectiveness in one aspect can reduce effectiveness in other aspects. Here are new ideas about military effectiveness, covering topics such as military robotics, nuclear weapons, insurgency, war finance, public opinion, and others. The study applies these ideas to World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the 1973 October War, as well as ongoing conflicts and public policy debates, such as the War on Terror, drone strikes, ISIS, Russian aggression against Ukraine, US-Chinese-Russian nuclear competitions, and the Philippines insurgency, among others. Both scholarly and policy-oriented readers will gather new insights into the political dimensions of military power, and the complexities of trying to grow military power

"Why do some countries choose to end wars short of total victory while others fight on, sometimes in the face of appalling odds? How Wars End argues that two central factors shape war-termination decision making: information about the balance of power and the resolve of one's enemy, and fears that the other side's commitment to abide by a war-ending peace settlement may not be credible. Dan Reiter explains how information about combat outcomes and other factors may persuade a warring nation to demand more or less in peace negotiations, and why a country might refuse to negotiate limited terms and instead tenaciously pursue absolute victory if it fears that its enemy might renege on a peace deal. He fully lays out the theory and then tests it on more than twenty cases of war-termination behavior, including decisions during the American Civil War, the two world wars, and the Korean War. Reiter helps solve some of the most enduring puzzles in military history, such as why Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, why Germany in 1918 renewed its attack in the West after securing peace with Russia in the East, and why Britain refused to seek peace terms with Germany after France fell in 1940. How Wars End concludes with a timely discussion of twentieth-century American foreign policy, framing the Bush Doctrine's emphasis on preventive war in the context of the theory."--GoogleBooks

Why do democracies win wars? This is a critical question in the study of international relations, as a traditional view--expressed most famously by Alexis de Tocqueville--has been that democracies are inferior in crafting foreign policy and fighting wars. In Democracies at War, the first major study of its kind, Dan Reiter and Allan Stam come to a very different conclusion. Democracies tend to win the wars they fight--specifically, about eighty percent of the time. Complementing their wide-ranging case-study analysis, the authors apply innovative statistical tests and new hypot

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: The Impact of Culture, Society, Institutions, and International Forces on Military Effectiveness -- 2. Nationalism and Military Effectiveness: Post-Meiji Japan -- 3. Social Structure, Ethnicity, and Military Effectiveness: Iraq, 1980–2004 -- 4. Political Institutions and Military Effectiveness: Contemporary United States and United Kingdom -- 5. Civil-Military Relations and Military Effectiveness: Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 Wars -- 6. Global Norms and Military Effectiveness: The Army in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland -- 7. International Competition and Military Effectiveness: Naval Air Power, 1919–1945 -- 8. International Alliances and Military Effectiveness: Fighting Alongside Allies and Partners -- 9. Explaining Military Outcomes -- 10. Conclusion -- Index