Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:14:38.921Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

War Is in the Error Term

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2003

Erik Gartzke
Get access

Extract

At least since Thucydides, students of international relations have sought rational explanations for the advent of war. Rationalist explanations assume purposive action; states are said to make reasoned decisions about the use of force. Although rationalist explanations have proven persuasive, durable, and offer the basis for cumulative theorizing, they also imply substantial limits on what we can know about war. I show that the most general rationalist explanation for war also dictates that the onset of war is theoretically indeterminate. We cannot predict in individual cases whether states will go to war, because war is typically the consequence of variables that are unobservable ex ante, both to us as researchers and to the participants. Thinking probabilistically continues to offer the opportunity to assess international conflict empirically. However, the realization that uncertainty is necessary theoretically to motivate war is much different from recognizing that the empirical world contains a stochastic element. Accepting uncertainty as a necessary condition of war implies that all other variables—however detailed the explanation—serve to eliminate gradations of irrelevant alternatives. We can progressively refine our ability to distinguish states that may use force from those that are likely to remain at peace, but anticipating wars from a pool of states that appear willing to fight will remain problematic. For example, we may achieve considerable success in anticipating crises, but our ability to predict which crises will become wars will probably prove little better than the naive predictions of random chance. The need for uncertainty to account for war means that the same conditions thought to account for war must also exist among states not destined to fight. Otherwise, states themselves will differentiate between opponents in a way that either removes the motives for war or restores uncertainty. It has long been accepted that social processes possess an element of uncertainty, but the centrality of uncertainty to rationalist explanations for war means that the advent of war is itself stochastic. War is literally in the “error term.”

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Summer 1999 , pp. 567 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blainey, Geoffrey. 1973. The Causes of War. New York: The Free Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brecher, Michael, and Jonathan, Wilkenfeld. 1997. A Study of Crisis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1981. The War Trap. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and David, Lalman. 1992. War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives. New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, Edward Hallett. 1946. The Twenty YearsCrisis, 1919–1939:An Introductionto the Study of International Relations. New York: St.Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Clausewitz, Carl von. 1976. On War. Edited and translated by Michael, Howard and Peter, Paret. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fama, Eugene F. 1965. The Behavior of Stock-Market Prices. Journal of Business 38:34–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. 1970. Efficient CapitalMarkets:A Review of Theory and Empirical Work. Journal of Finance 25 (2):383–417.Google Scholar
. 1991. Efficient Capital Markets II. Journal of Finance 46 (5):1575–1617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1991. Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science. World Politics 43 (2):169–95.Google Scholar
. 1992. Threats to Use Force: Costly Signals and Bargaining in International Crises. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
. 1994. Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes. American Political Science Review 88 (3):577–92.Google Scholar
. 1995. Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization 49 (3):379–414.Google Scholar
. 1997. Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs. Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1):68–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James D., and David D.|Laitin. 1996. Explaining Interethnic Cooperation. American Political Science Review 90 (4):715–35.Google Scholar
Gartzke, Erik. 1997. Burning Bridges or Building Bon. res: A Costly Signaling Model of the Democratic Peace. Unpublished manuscript, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Penn.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Richard, Smoke. 1974. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
. 1989. Deterrence and Foreign Policy. World Politics 41 (2):170–82.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert, Richard Ned, Lebow, and Janice Gross, Stein. 1985.Psychology and Deterrence. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Robert O., Keohane, and Sidney, Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scienti.c Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kugler, Jacek, and Douglas, Lemke, eds. 1996. Parity and War: Evaluations and Extensions of the War Ledger. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1981. Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned, and Janice, Gross Stein. 1989. Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter. World Politics 41 (2):208–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkiel, Burton Gordon. 1985. A RandomWalk Down Wall Street. 4th ed. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Maoz, Zeev, and Bruce, Russett. 1993. Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986. American Political Science Review 87 (3): 624–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1954. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. 2d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Nachmias, David, and Chava, Nachmias. 1987. Research Methods in the Social Sciences. 3d ed. New York: St.Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Oneal, John R., and Bruce, Russett. 1997. The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950–85. International Studies Quarterly 41 (2):267–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organski, A. F. K. 1968. World Politics. 2d ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Organski, A. F. K., and Jacek, Kugler. 1980. The War Ledger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1996. Stability and the Distribution of Power. World Politics 48 (2):239–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russett, Bruce, John R., Oneal, and David R., Davis. 1998. The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–1985. International Organization 52 (3): 441–67.Google Scholar
Smith, Alastair. 1996. Diversionary Foreign Policy in Democratic Systems. International Studies Quarterly 40 (1):133–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A. J. P. 1954. The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Walter, Barbara F. 1997. The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement. International Organization 51 (3):335–64.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1959. Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
. 1979. Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar