Russett on the future structure of the international system

        What Else Causes War? 

        Bruce Russett

        Randall Forsberg's smart, perceptive diagnosis of the state of the
international system is about right, in my opinion. But her prescription,
while good as far as it goes, is in my view incomplete. At several points in
her essay she correctly attributes the decline in major war between
countries to three great changes: military technology, increasing wealth,
and the democratization of political values and institutions. Her
prescription to extend this decline, however, focuses overwhelmingly on
measures of arms control and disarmament, with scarce attention to enhancing
the other beneficial changes. 
        It may well be that the great powers can and will reduce their own
arsenals of mass destruction, in a way that will reinforce one another's
wish to do so and serve as an example to lesser powers. Possibly they can
even reach collective agreements to reduce arms sales to lesser powers whose
enhanced military capabilities, Forsberg sagely notes, ultimately constitute
the greatest short- and medium-term threat to the great powers' interests.
But the portents for such restraint are not terribly good. It certainly
would require an effective pact among the great powers, one that could
resist strong and ever-present temptations to cheat. After all, the standard
response to calls for restraint in the arms trade is, "If we don't sell it
the British (French, Germans, Russians, whoever) will." And there is a lot
of truth to that response. It carries special bite if the great powers' own
arms purchases, from their own industries, are declining. Then the pressures
of the military-industrial complex to keep the arsenals open and the workers
employed are especially hard to resist.
        If the international circumstances of reduced security threats
around most of the globe seem propitious for such restraint, so too do
economic conditions in the industrialized world. For Europe (save Russia)
and even Japan, economic good times continue. If economic expansion has
slowed, even to a near-halt in some states, conditions are still far better
than in worldwide recession or depression, which we may yet see. Because
these circumstances seem propitious, the results in the United States are
particularly disheartening. The American economy remains on a roll. The
military budget is not declining, and a decent (or indecent) stream of new
orders to US arms industries continues to come in from the rest of the
world. Yet at the same time the administration lifts the embargo on the sale
of advanced weapons to Latin America. If this is what happens in prosperity,
what will happen in recession, when unemployed arms producers cannot readily
find alternative activities? Or when, as Forsberg and I hope, the US
military really does shrink significantly. 
        It is essential, therefore, to broaden the prescription beyond the
military dimension. Like medical researchers, we can look at the
"epidemiology" of military conflicts in the world to understand their
causes. Like epidemiologists, we can study a very large number of cases of
peace and conflict. For example, we can look at all pairs of countries in
the world over much of the post-World War II period. We can ask whether any
particular pair experienced a military dispute (threat or low-level use of
military force, not just a war) in any particular year. We must look at
low-level disputes as well as wars, because most wars--rare events which are
hard to generalize about--begin as escalated disputes. All these cases--of
peace as well as dispute--give us about 200,000 "cases" to consider.
Analysis of this information, inspired by theory and some intuition, shows
this: 
        After one takes into account the role of deterrence and military
balances, two of the other influences that Forsberg mentions stand out as
big restraints on the likelihood that two countries will get into a
situation whether they threaten to shoot at each other, or actually do. 
        First, it makes a big difference if both are democratic. A very
democratic and a very autocratic country were more than two-and-a-half times
more likely to get into a militarized conflict than were two very democratic
countries. And in this period, there were no wars between full democracies.
(Most of the civil wars, and all the cases of genocide, also occurred in
countries with autocratic or totalitarian governments.) 
        Economics also made a great difference. If two countries were highly
interdependent (their mutual trade accounted for a substantial portion of
their GNPs), they were again about two-and-a-half times less likely to have
a military dispute than if they traded little or at all. This was an even
greater disincentive than simply being wealthy, and the reasons are pretty
clear. If we bomb the cities or factories of a close trading partner--where
we also are likely to have heavy private investments--we are bombing our own
markets, suppliers, and even the property of our own nationals. 
        One additional influence is worth noting. International
organizations reduce conflict in many ways. A few of them can actually
coerce law-breakers; all can mediate conflicts of interest, convey
information and assist problem-solving, and socialize governments and
peoples to common norms and mutual identities. Countries that shared
membership in many international organizations (a few of them universal
organizations, most of them regional organizations for trade, security,
development, or environmental protection) were also less likely to fight
each other or threaten to do so. 
        Together, when these three influences (shared democracy,
interdependence, and dense international organization networks) were strong,
a pair of countries was 80 percent less likely to have a military dispute
than was the average pair of countries in the world. These resultsrequire
further analysis, but they appear to compare favorably with what we know,
for instance, about which influences produce many cancers or heart disease.
Further analysis also encourages me to believe that these relations are in
fact causal. For example, countries are unlikely to fight because they
trade, and not just vice-versa, and countries do not join international
organizations only with other countries that are already their close
friends. 
        Forsberg is probably right that the prospects for major conventional
war in the next decade or so are small. For the mid- or longer-term,
however, we need to think hard about supplementing the direct restraints on
militarization. By sometime in the second decade of the next century China
may well have a GNP (total, not per capita) equal to that of the United
States. If China keeps growing rapidly after that, the two could become
involved in the kind of deadly top-dog and second-dog rivalry that Forsberg
identifies as a roughly every-50- year phenomenon. It would be especially
dangerous if, as Forsberg warns, China continues to import high-level
military technology from Russia and even forms an alliance with Russia. The
"epidemiological" results suggest a way to handle that situation. 
        First, do our best to bring Russia firmly into the Western security
system as its democracy and free-market commitments become more secure. If
NATO is to expand, do not stop that expansion short of the border of a
Russia that is making reasonable political and economic progress--to do so
will drive it toward a tie with China. Second, do our best to bring China
firmly into the world network of economic interdependence and international
organization--it is in our interest as well as China's. 
        Because China is not likely to democratize soon or rapidly, it is
all the more important to strengthen the economic and institutional
incentives that discourage a turn to military expansion. (The Chinese
leadership has been far more willing to accept international pressures for
economic than for political liberalization.) This will not be easy, nor
always comfortable. But it is far wiser than relying primarily on a
"preventive" military build-up to contain China. The result of that strategy
could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy of conflict. 
        Some "rogue" countries will likely stay outside any system of
pacific relationships that can be built. But if they are few, deterrence can
be achieved with the lower levels of military capability that Forsberg
advocates, and citizens will more readily accept and insist on lowering the
levels. 

        1 These results are reported in John Oneal and Bruce Russett, "The
Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict,
1950-1985," International Studies Quarterly, June 1997. Others are in the
review and publication pipeline.