Abstract: American critics of the Barack Obama administration's 2011 “pivot to Asia” policy claim that, despite the lofty rhetoric, the United States has pursued an anemic strategy in Asia. Chinese critics of the pivot to Asia assert that it is a bellicose strategy aimed at containing China's rise. These two conflicting criticisms are addressed in a detailed historical narrative that traces the development and implementation of U.S. strategy, based on declassified documents, some of which have never before been made public, and extensive in-depth interviews with senior policymakers. Neither American nor Chinese critics of the pivot to Asia are correct. If this policy is properly dated and measured, the United States undertook a substantive military, diplomatic, and later economic reorientation toward Asia. That reorientation started in the mid-2000s, well before the pivot announcement. The aim of the reorientation was not to contain China's rise. Rather, the United States sought to manage China's growth through a b...

Abstract: Did the United States promise the Soviet Union during the 1990 negotiations on German reunification that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe? Since the end of the Cold War, an array of Soviet/Russian policymakers have charged that NATO expansion violates a U.S. pledge advanced in 1990; in contrast, Western scholars and political leaders dispute that the United States made any such commitment. Recently declassified U.S. government documents provide evidence supporting the Soviet/Russian position. Although no non-expansion pledge was ever codified, U.S. policymakers presented their Soviet counterparts with implicit and informal assurances in 1990 strongly suggesting that NATO would not expand in post–Cold War Europe if the Soviet Union consented to German reunification. The documents also show, however, that the United States used the reunification negotiations to exploit Soviet weaknesses by depicting a mutually acceptable post–Cold War security environment, while actually seeking a system dominated ...

Abstract: In the midst of civil war, rebel groups often expend significant resources opening offices in foreign capitals, meeting with heads of state, expanding their overseas networks, appealing to international organizations, and contacting foreign media. Existing scholarship has generally neglected international diplomacy as an aspect of violent rebellion, focusing instead on rebel efforts at domestic organization. A systematic documentation of rebel diplomacy in post–1950 civil wars using new quantitative and qualitative data shows that rebel diplomacy is commonplace and that many groups demonstrate as much concern for overseas political campaigns as they do for domestic and local mobilization. Diplomacy, furthermore, is not a weapon of the militarily weak, but a tactical choice for rebel groups seeking political capital within an international system that places formidable barriers to entry on nonstate entities. An original analysis of the diplomacy of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola in the Angolan civil war using archival sources further demonstrates why rebels may become active diplomats in one phase of a conflict but eschew diplomacy in another. More broadly, the international relations of rebel groups promise to be an important new research agenda in understanding violent politics.

Abstract: How do great powers decide whether to provide arms to or form alliances with client states? This “patron's dilemma” revolves around a decision about how to best provide security to clients without becoming entrapped in unwanted conflicts. Strong commitments worsen the risk of entrapment, whereas weak commitments intensify fears of abandonment. This traditional alliance dilemma can be addressed through the provision of arms and alliances. Great power patrons primarily make such decisions on the basis of two factors: first, the extent to which the patron believes it and its client have common security interests; and second, whether the patron believes that its client has sufficient military capabilities to deter its main adversary without the patron's assistance. Patrons assess the degree of shared threat and the local balances of capabilities in determining whether to support their clients with arms, alliances, or both. As demonstrated in the U.S. provision of security goods to Taiwan and Israel during the...

Abstract: What are the consequences of drone proliferation for international security? Despite extensive discussions in the policy world concerning drone strikes for counterterrorism purposes, myths about the capabilities and implications of current-generation drones often outstrip reality. Understanding the impact of drones requires separating fact from fiction by examining their effects in six different contexts—counterterrorism, interstate conflict, crisis onset and deterrence, coercive diplomacy, domestic control and repression, and use by nonstate actors for the purposes of terrorism. Although current-generation drones introduce some unique capabilities into conflicts, they are unlikely to produce the dire consequences that some analysts fear. In particular, drone proliferation carries potentially significant consequences for counterterrorism operations and domestic control in authoritarian regimes. Drones could also enhance monitoring in disputed territories, potentially leading to greater stability. Given th...

Abstract: Many analysts worry that improvements in Chinese missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies will enable China to deny the U.S. military access to parts of the Western Pacific that the United States has long controlled. Although these “antiaccess, area denial” (A2/AD) capabilities are real, they are a geographically limited long-term threat. As both the United States and China deploy A2/AD capabilities, a new era will emerge in which the U.S. military no longer enjoys today's command of the global commons, but is still able to deny China military hegemony in the Western Pacific. In this new era, the United States will possess a sphere of influence around allied landmasses; China will maintain a sphere of influence over its own mainland; and a contested battlespace will cover much of the South and East China Seas wherein neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air movement. This in turn suggests that the Chinese A2/AD threat to U.S. allies is real but more limited than often supposed. With...

Abstract: Despite their catastrophic proportions, the Congo Wars have received little attention from international relations scholars. At the heart of these conflicts were alliances between rebel groups and neighboring rulers. What are the origins of such transnational alliances, which have been a major feature of nearly all civil wars in post–Cold War Africa? Recent scholarship on external support for rebel groups does not offer a clear answer, either providing long lists of the goals that state sponsors may have or avoiding the question of motives altogether. A focus on political survival reveals that African rulers form alliances with rebels in nearby states to reduce the threats of rebellions and military coups that the rulers themselves face at home. Transnational alliances serve either to weaken a ruler's domestic enemies by undermining their foreign sponsors or to ensure the continued allegiance of key domestic supporters by providing them with opportunities for enrichment. Case studies of the alliance decis...

Abstract: Preventing the recurrence of civil war has become a critical problem for both scholarship and policy. Conventional wisdom urges the creation of capable, legitimate, and inclusive postwar states to reduce the risk of relapse into civil war, and international peacebuilders have often encouraged the formation of a new national army that would include members of the war's opposing sides. However, both the theoretical logics and the empirical record identifying military integration as a significant contributor to durable post–civil war peace are weak. An analysis of eleven cases finds little evidence that military integration played a substantial causal role in preventing the return to civil war. Military integration does not usually send a costly signal of the parties’ commitment to peace, provide communal security, employ many possible spoilers, or act as a powerful symbol of a unified nation. It is therefore both unwise and unethical for the international community to press military integration on reluctant...

Abstract: After decades of tension, relations between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan have improved dramatically in recent years. How durable is this detente? To what degree is armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait a continued possibility? Answering these questions requires grappling with the impact of several different trends in cross–Taiwan Strait relations, including a rapidly shifting balance of military power, deepening China-Taiwan economic integration, and changing Taiwanese views on sovereignty and identity issues. Taken together, these trends help to stabilize the cross-strait relationship. Nevertheless, this relationship has not been fundamentally transformed, and future trends could evolve in a way that again increases the danger of military conflict. In particular, a changing balance of military power in the Taiwan Strait has the potential to be highly destabilizing if it overtakes other trends such as economic integration.

Abstract: Most traditional accounts identify the Linebacker I and Linebacker II campaigns as the most effective and consequential uses of U.S. air power in the Vietnam War. They argue that deep interdiction in North Vietnam played a central role in the defeat of the Easter Offensive and that subsequent strategic attacks on Hanoi forced the North Vietnamese to accept the Paris accords. These conclusions are false. The Linebacker campaigns were rather ineffective in either stopping the Communist offensive or compelling concessions. The most effective and consequential use of U.S. air power came in the form of close air support and battlefield air interdiction directly attacking the North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam. The success of these air strikes hinged on the presence of a U.S.-operated tactical air control system that incorporated small numbers of ground advisers, air liaison officers, and forward air controllers. This system, combined with abundant U.S. aircraft and a reasonably effective allied army, was the key to breaking the Easter Offensive and compelling Hanoi to agree to the Paris accords. The effectiveness of close air support and battlefield air interdiction and the failure of deep interdiction and strategic attack in the Vietnam War have important implications for the use of air power and advisers in contemporary conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Abstract: This article expands the study of the politics of international criminal justice, restoring the crucial but overlooked case of Bangladesh, today the largest population confronting the aftermath of genocide. Bangladesh is one of the most important cases where the prosecution of war criminals was foiled, resulting in a disturbing impunity for one of the bloodiest incidents of the Cold War. Using unexplored declassified Indian government documents from archives in Delhi, this article uses detailed process-tracing to reveal for the first time why India and Bangladesh abandoned their plans to put accused Pakistani war criminals on trial after the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. In the face of Pakistani defiance, the Indian and Bangladeshi governments reluctantly bargained away justice in order to pursue their national security, with peacemaking with Pakistan proving more important than war crimes trials. This episode furthers the general understanding of both the causes and results of impunity for mass at...

Abstract: Whether economic interdependence is a cause of war or peace constitutes a central debate in international politics. Two major approaches advance diametrically opposed claims: liberal theory holds that interdependence between states promotes peace by increasing the costs of war; realist theory argues that interdependence is just another word for vulnerability, a condition that states may try to escape by seizing the resources and markets they need for self-sufficiency. Considerable evidence supports both of these claims. In Economic Interdependence and War, Dale Copeland proposes to resolve this stalemate by showing that interdependence promotes peace when states expect mutually beneficial trade to continue, but creates incentives for war when at least one of the states expects that trade trends will leave it dangerously vulnerable. Notwithstanding this book's major theoretical contributions and its impressive historical research, it leaves open several important questions about how to move forward with it...

Abstract: Over the past four decades, scholars and policymakers have learned a great deal about the conditions under which states can assess others’ intentions and the implications for states’ foreign and security policies.1 In “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” however, Sebastian Rosato argues that there has never been much to learn, because states cannot acquire useful information about others’ intentions and therefore pay them little attention.2 In this letter, we argue that Rosato’s argument is deeply oawed, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, and should not be used as a guide for policy. Owing to space limitations, we restrict our response to three points—the mismatch between Rosato’s argument and the real world, the analytically misleading benchmark on which he rests his entire analysis, and his overstated claims about states’ inability to learn about intentions from others’ actions.

Abstract: In “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint,” Gene Gerzhoy argues that the Lyndon Johnson administration used brute, coercive threats to obtain West Germany’s signature to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).1 In particular, Gerzhoy asserts that in February 1968 the Johnson administration threatened to abandon West Germany militarily if it did not sign the NPT and, moreover, that these threats were instrumental in prodding German leaders toward accepting the treaty. Three pieces of evidence, however, show that this interpretation is inconsistent with the historical record. First, contrary to Gerzhoy’s claim, President Johnson’s national security adviser, Walt Rostow, did not threaten West Germany’s abandonment absent NPT accession in a conversation with Rainer Barzel, a senior lawmaker who had traveled to Washington as a personal envoy of Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger to discuss the NPT. As evidence for a threat of abandonment Gerzhoy quotes Rostow as saying, “If you [i.e., Germany] would not sign [the NPT] and decided to defend yourself with your own nuclear weapons, you would a) tear apart the Alliance [and] b) face a very difacult period during which you might well be destroyed” (p. 123).2 Importantly, this statement refers to a hypothetical scenario in which Bonn not only rejects NPT membership, but also undertakes to build a national nuclear force. Yet in 1968, the idea of a national West German nuclear force had been dropped for several years even by the aercest German critics of the NPT. In terms of possible nuclear futures for Germany, the NPT debate in Bonn centered solely on whether West Germany could take part in a future multilateral European nuclear force. Even in this scenario, Germany would not have manufactured nuclear weapons, but would have only had a say in French decisions to employ nuclear weapons.3 Notably, Rostow was fully aware of these more limited nuclear goals. As he

Abstract: In his article “Is the Taiwan Strait Still a Flash Point? Rethinking the Prospects for Armed Conoict between China and Taiwan,” Scott Kastner concludes that “although the relationship will continue to be characterized by periodic tensions, the risk of armed conoict has been declining and is likely to continue to decline in the years ahead.”1 Indeed, the chances for armed conoict between China and Taiwan have been decreasing since Ma Ying-jeou became president of Taiwan in 2008 and began to prioritize cross-strait engagement and integration. However, by focusing on the accomplishments of the Ma administration without assessing what is probable under Taiwan’s current pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president, Tsai Ing-wen, Kastner gives readers a false impression of the coming cross-strait dynamic. Rather than “periodic tensions,” we are far more likely to see prolonged tensions—even possibly amounting to a cross-strait cold peace—if Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Tsai cannot reach basic agreement on Taiwan’s sovereignty. The most important question regarding cross-strait relations is whether Xi and Tsai can and common ground on the “1992 Consensus,” an agreement between China and Taiwan on the “one China” principle that Beijing states is a precondition for peace and cooperation. Although Ma agreed to the 1992 Consensus, he suggested that Taipei’s interpretation is different from Beijing’s. Chinese leaders lived with this difference in interpretation because they generally trusted Ma’s intentions. Tsai is another story altogether. She rejected outright the 1992 Consensus the last time she ran for president in 2012. Chinese leaders believe that Tsai was behind former DPP President Chen Shuibian’s decision to reject the 1992 Consensus. And in the late 1990s, she served as senior adviser to former President Lee Teng-hui and helped craft his “special state-to-state” formulation of cross-strait relations. Beijing has routinely labeled Tsai a “splittist” and “true believer” in Taiwan independence. Tsai has attempted to mend fences with Beijing. Shortly after her election victory in January 2016, for example, Tsai gave an interview in which she referred to the “existing

Abstract: In "Pakistan's Battlefield Nuclear Policy," Jaganath Sankaran argues that Pakistan's threat to employ tactical nuclear weapons in a war with India is not credible because the use of such weapons would cause the immediate deaths of hundreds of thousands of Pakistani civilians while achieving negligible military effects.1 Sankaran, however, misunderstands how Pakistan is likely to employ nuclear weapons during wartime; he overstates the likely number of Pakistani civilian casualties from the initial use of tactical nuclear weapons; and he understates the potential negative battlefield consequences for the Indian army. Why would any rational Pakistani leader pull the trigger if it inevitably meant the death of so many Pakistani innocents and only a few Indian military personnel? If Sankaran's analysis is to be believed, no leader would. Thus, Pakistan's threat to use tactical nuclear weapons to deter Indian conventional operations has been a bluff. That conclusion is dangerous, because if Indian policymakers believe it, they might discount the likelihood of Pakistani nuclear use in the event of conventional military operations, potentially risking calamity. Language: en

Abstract: Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth argue that despite China’s impressive growth in material power, the United States will remain the international system’s hegemonic leader for the foreseeable future.1 Implicit in this assertion is the assumption that China is not in a position to undermine U.S. hegemony until it overtakes the United States in overall material power. This view, however, overlooks two issues critical to scholars’ understanding of the power dynamics between China and the United States. The arst critical issue concerns the nonmaterial aspects of Chinese power, an issue that Brooks and Wohlforth assume away. Nonmaterial power, by deanition, involves a state’s capacity to govern a society from which it can mobilize potential military and economic strength to cope with geopolitical challenges.2 In recent decades, China’s spectacular economic growth has produced sweeping societal changes that now challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s capacity to rule.3 The Party’s acute sense of regime vulnerability may lead Chinese leaders to pursue a strategy of international assertiveness designed to challenge the United States’ hegemonic leadership. There are two reasons why they may do so sooner rather than later. First, they may believe that increased international assertiveness could help boost their domestic legitimacy. To challenge U.S. hegemonic leadership is to claim equal standing with the United States in the international arena. Thus, the greater the challenge China can pose, the more credible its leaders’ claim to enhancing China’s international status appears to domestic audiences.4 Second, fearing that regime vulnerability could produce a signiacant de-

Abstract: In “Beyond Emboldenment,” Mark Bell develops a typology of six foreign policies— aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise—that nuclear weapons might induce and speciaes observable implications for each.1 Bell’s article is an important contribution but suffers from two problems. First, these policies are not conceptually distinct and are very hard to empirically disentangle from aggression, the traditional focus of the nuclear emboldenment debate. Second, while the documentation of British bolstering is important, the evidence Bell presents in his case study suggests that aggression—at least of limited aims and over the short term—is precisely what nuclear weapons caused Britain to authorize. Bell’s theory and evidence make a weak case for looking beyond emboldenment deaned as aggression in assessing the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy. In his theory section, Bell differentiates expansion—deaned as the development of new declared interests, alliances with states or nonstate groups, power projection capabilities, and dispute participants—from aggression—deaned as new or greater coercion, conventional forces, tactics, doctrines, and risk-taking behavior in an existing dispute (pp. 94–95). Bell needs to explain whether “new” adversaries are those not previously fought by a leader, political party, or state in the last decade, century, or millennium. Expansion would be distinct from aggression only if it is not designed to support preexisting objectives with a long-time adversary. Bell needs to specify the extent to which the new interests must be unrelated to prior ones for them to be coded as expansion. He also needs to deane expansion in a way that is distinct from the use of new tactics, forces, and military doctrines, because he deaned such activity as aggression (ibid.). The only example of expansion that Bell offers is U.S. strategy after 1945, but the United States adopted this policy to deal with its arguably extant adversary the Soviet Union. The concept of expansion as currently speciaed does not add much to the debate about nuclear proliferation and foreign policy. Bolstering is deaned by Bell as one state’s offer of armer defense commitments, forces/weapons systems, and resources to another (p. 98). Much of this, however, looks

Abstract: This article reviews several recent books on the Islamic State in order to understand its goals, motivations, strategy, and vulnerabilities. It argues that the Islamic State's ideology is powerful but also highly instrumental, offering the group legitimacy and recruiting appeal. Raison d'etat often dominates its decisionmaking. The Islamic State's strength is largely a consequence of the policies and weaknesses of its state adversaries. In addition, the group has many weaknesses of its own, notably its brutality, reliance on foreign fighters, and investment in a state as well as its tendency to seek out new enemies. The threat the Islamic State poses is most severe at the local and regional levels. The danger of terrorism to the West is real but mitigated by the Islamic State's continued prioritization of the Muslim world and the heightened focus of Western security forces on the terrorist threat. A high-quality military force could easily defeat Islamic State fighters, but there is no desire to deploy la...

Abstract: Abstract Many analysts worry that improvements in Chinese missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies will enable China to deny the U.S. military access to parts of the Western Pacific that the United States has long controlled. Although these “antiaccess, area denial” (A2/AD) capabilities are real, they are a geographically limited long-term threat. As both the United States and China deploy A2/AD capabilities, a new era will emerge in which the U.S. military no longer enjoys today's command of the global commons, but is still able to deny China military hegemony in the Western Pacific. In this new era, the United States will possess a sphere of influence around allied landmasses; China will maintain a sphere of influence over its own mainland; and a contested battlespace will cover much of the South and East China Seas wherein neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air movement. This in turn suggests that the Chinese A2/AD threat to U.S. allies is real but more limited than often supposed. With astute U.S. choices, most U.S. allies in this new system will be imperfectly, but substantially, secure.

Abstract: After a decade and a half of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers want to change their approach to COIN by providing aid and advice to local governments rather than directly intervening with U.S. forces. Both this strategy and U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in general, however, do not acknowledge the difficulty of convincing clients to follow U.S. COIN prescriptions. The historical record suggests that, despite a shared aim of defeating an insurgency, the United States and its local partners have had significantly different goals, priorities, and interests with respect to the conduct of their counterinsurgency campaigns. Consequently, a key focus of attention in any future counterinsurgency assistance effort should be on shaping the client state's strategy and behavior. Although it is tempting to think that providing significant amounts of aid will generate the leverage necessary to affect a client's behavior and policies, the U.S. experience in assisting the government...

Abstract: States frequently employ overt and covert foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) to pursue their foreign policy interests. Yet there is little scholarship on the question of whether FIRCs improve rel...

Abstract: As China invests in its nuclear forces and U.S.-China relations become increasingly strained, questions of U.S. nuclear doctrine require greater attention. The key strategic nuclear question facing...