Understanding International Conflicts
...rmed by and among the states themselves, with war being the dominant theme. Liberals, on the other hand, stress the fact that there are various other factors, such as international institutions (the United Nations, and Non-Government Organizations, for example), that influence relations between countries. The important point that Nye makes here and throughout the book is that neither position is completely accurate; the actual situation that exists encompasses aspects of both realist and liberal world views. After starting with that fundamental bit of theory, Nye begins analyzing historical conflicts by examining the Peloponnesian War, a conflict between the city-states of fifth-century Greece. Nye tries to use this as a jumping-off point to more recent conflicts and furthermore refers back to the situation throughout the book. The situation itself, despite Nye’s "short version of a long story" (9), is a bit complicated, so I didn’t read it closely enough to be able to give a summary. I found that the details can be ignored without anything being lost from the majority of Understanding International Conflicts. In analyzing international conflicts, the concept of morality inevitably comes up. Nye explains three major views concerning ethics in international relations. Skeptics say that what we normally consider "morals" on an individual basis has no meaning at the state level. In other words, "might makes right" as the hackneyed expression has it. This outlook seems quite bleak; in fact, Nye dismisses it completely in its pure form. He presents other options: state moralists believe that the actions of a state represent the composite morals of that state’s population, and cosmopolitans tend to give less attention to the state overall and instead look at world policies as being justified or not by whether the actions fit individual moralities - in other words, individual moralities are elevated directly to international actions (19-24). Nye here sometimes reverts to such terms as "realist" and "liberal" which, although they do not refer to views on morality specifically, realists tend to be more on the skeptic side of the scale, while liberals lean towards the other. Having covered these basic terms and concepts (and attempted to set the tone with a specific albeit remote event in history), Nye turns towards the twentieth century. Before analyzing any events, however, he sets forth three levels on which an event can be analyzed: Kenneth Waltz’s the individual, the state, and the international system (29). I personally found these levels of analysis one of the most interesting and potentially the most useful parts of the book; these concepts are later used to examine World War I, World War II, and several other conflicts. Starting from the top, the international system level looks at causation based upon the situations of different countries (geographic location, foreign alliances) as a whole. The state (or domestic) level, on the other hand, analyzes events by looking inside countries on a state-by-state basis: whether a certain country’s economic was doing well, for example. Lastly, the individual level takes into consideration the effects of the actual people involved, including the personalities of rulers. In discussing the international system level, Nye brings up the difference between structure and process (30). Structure refers to the distribution of power (e.g. the structure of the Cold War was bipolar, with two superpowers existing). Process refers to how these units interact (e.g. nuclear threats between superpowers during the Cold War). These two concepts are not discussed as such at length in the book, but their use in analysis is implied and important during the discussions. Having dispensed with a potpourri of theoretical terms, Nye applies them to three major events in recent history: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. In general, Nye does not assume you have an extensive knowledge of history - as long as you can put those three events in order, and know more or less when they occurred, you shouldn’t get lost during his recounting. Nye does an excellent job of explaining the actions and conditions that led to each of these major events, interspersing them with appropriate dates (but not too many), all the while applying the theoretical concepts already covered. Even thought the first two chapters are mostly theory, while the rest of the book is mostly history, Nye stays true to his commitment of weaving a mixture of the two. In discussing World War I, Nye explains the concept of balance of power (50), which can confusingly be used to mean the status quo, the action of keeping other countries from gaining power over others, or especially when referring to the Cold War, a multipolar system in which two or more superpowers take actions and positions that those of the other(s). Of course, power itself can be ambiguous. In short, power is the ability to do things and to control others" or, according to Robert Dahl, the ability to get others to do what they otherwise would not do (51). Since knowing exactly what the other would do without your "power" is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, countries may measure their power in technology, resources, or military. Getting to the thick of historical analysis, Nye uses the three levels of analysis to determine the causes of World War I. At the system structural level, Nye sees World War I resulting from the rise of German power and the increased rigidity in the alliances between European countries. The processes he recognizes includes rising nationalistic tendencies that overrode normal international interactions. At the domestic level, Nye analyzes events occurring inside countries. It is at this level which Lenin’s argument (which Nye rejects, with sound reasoning) that the war was caused by financial capitalists. Nye prefers instead to look at social problems in German society. At the individual level, many of the leaders were incompetent. Both of these latter levels of analysis, the individual and the domestic levels, seem much less useful for World War I than they do for World War II. In the most recent World War, it is quite easy to see the influence of one individual, Adolf Hitler, the cause of many calling World War II, "Hitler’s War" (83). It is also to read domestic-level economic collapses and internal US i...