Capability, Types of War, Peace

Bibliographic Data

ID3492500
AuthorsJohn A Vasquez (0000-0001-8728-3688, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author)
Year1986
Volume39
Issue2
Pages313-327
Publication date1986-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Western Political Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-4078 • E-ISSN: 2325-8675
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/106591298603900209
OpenAlexW2139731420
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited19

IN THE last fifteen years there has been tremendous growth in the statistical findings on war. However, their meaning and significance are hardly self-evident, because of inconsistencies in findings, certain anomalies, and differences in research design. Rather, they exist as a set of clues or pieces of a puzzle that need to be put together. This article will focus on one set of findings the role of capability in the onset of war and the promotion of peace. Despite long-held realist beliefs to the contrary, the thrust of empirical analysis to date suggests that capability or differences of power are unrelated to the onset of war in any significant causal sense. Instead, it appears that capability and differences in power are related to the type of war that is fought and not to whether there will be peace or war. This means that attempts to balance power and other types of power-politics behavior are not effective measures for promoting peace, and they may even be steps toward war. Since important foreign policy decisions, like the recent military build-up by the Reagan administration in the U.S. in the 1980s, are justified by such power-politics arguments, it is critical that the quantitative evidence on this question be assessed (see Siverson and Sullivan 1983). The first part of this article will review the evidence that differences in capability are unrelated to the absence of war and piece together clues that suggest that differences in power are related to types of wars. The second part will develop a preliminary typology of wars based on these insights, and the final part will examine the importance of the typology for building a cumulative body of knowledge about war

Economics · Epistemology · Meaning (existential) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Power (physics) · Promotion (chess) · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Computer Science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

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