Actors' Responsibility in `Tight',`Regular' or `Loose' Security Dilemmas

1 Barry Posen, `The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict', Survival, vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 1993, pp. 27-47, on p. 28.

2 Charles Glaser, `The Security Dilemma Revisited', World Politics, vol. 50, no. 1, October 1997, pp. 171-201, on p. 171. Emphasis added.

3 See, for example, Kenneth W. Thompson, Cold War Theories, Volume I: World Polarization, 1943-1953 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1981).

4 See, for example, Jack Snyder, `Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914', in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow & Janice Gross Stein, eds, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 153-179.

5 See, for example, Posen (note 1 above); Stuart J. Kaufman, `An “International” Theory of Inter-Ethnic War', Review of International Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 149-172; David A. Lake & Donald Rothchild, `Containing Fear: The Origin and Management of Ethnic Conflict', International Security, vol. 21, no. 2, Fall 1996, pp. 41-75; Alan Collins, `The Ethnic Security Dilemma: Evidence From Malaysia', Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 20, no. 3, December 1998, pp. 261-278.

6 See Barbara F. Walter & Jack Snyder, eds, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

7 Nick Wheeler & Ken Booth, `The Security Dilemma', in John Baylis & Nick Rengger, eds, Dilemmas of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 29.

8 See, for example, Alexander Wendt, `Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics', International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 391-425; Yosef Lapid & Friedrich Kratochwil, `Revisiting the “National”: Toward an Identity Agenda in Neorealism', in Lapid & Kratochwil, eds, The Return of Culture in IR Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), pp. 105-126.

9 In problematizing the a priori realist/neorealist notion of agency, constructivists indeed raise some pertinent questions in terms of the security dilemma: who/what constitutes the state, ethnic and national groups, and so forth. If actors' identities are seen as fluid and contested, rather than fixed and given, this implies that any formulation of the security dilemma must take fully into account the dynamics of identity construction.

10 Wheeler & Booth (note 7 above), p. 17.

11 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 64.

12 Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), p. 21.

13 See, for example, Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

14 Glaser discusses the role of analytical institutions within the state (units within the government, think-tanks and so on) charged with evaluating others' policies. Perceptions, he notes, can be affected not only by the quality of the information these institutions provide but also by the strong influence that particular organizations have. In other words, states might misinterpret others' behaviour because: one, evaluative capabilities are poor; and/or two, certain institutions which are dominant in the policymaking process provide misleading information. See Charles Glaser, `The Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models', World Politics, vol. 44, no. 1, July 1992, pp. 514-518.

15 Jervis (note 11 above), pp. 64-65.

16 I am grateful to Robert Jervis for pointing this out.

17 Robert Jervis, `Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma', in Richard K. Betts, ed., Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1994), p. 315.

18 Erik Melander, Anarchy Within: The Security Dilemma Between Ethnic Groups in an Emerging Anarchy (Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Report no. 52, 1999), p. 21.

19 Robert Lieber, No Common Power: Understanding International Relations (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 5-6.

20 Robert Jervis, `Realism, Game Theory and Cooperation', World Politics, vol. 40, no. 3, April 1988, pp. 317-349, on p. 317.

21 The term `illusory incompatibility' is borrowed from Kenneth Boulding, `National Images and International Systems', in James N. Rosenau, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research Theory (New York: Free Press, 1969).

22 Butterfield (note 12 above), pp. 19-20.

23 Jervis (note 11 above), p. 80.

24 Ibid., p. 74.

25 Randall L. Schweller, `Neorealism's Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?', Security Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, Spring 1996, pp. 90-121, on p. 117.

26 Jervis (note 11 above), p. 75.

27 Glaser (note 14 above), p. 501.

28 Ibid., pp. 503-505.

29 Ibid., p. 504.

30 Jervis (note 17 above), p. 315.

31 Ibid., p. 316. To a certain degree, Jervis's position rests on a particular definition of what a `status quo power' is. The implication of his argument is that some acts of aggression do not constitute a change in the status quo and, therefore, the states engaged in them are not really revisionist. In terms of an actual shift in the overall balance of power, this may well be so. But for the security dilemma, I would argue, this does not matter that much: whether driven by power or security, an aggressor is an aggressor.

32 Collins, however, differentiates between those states whose security requires the acquisition of territory from another (expansionism) and those who merely wish to dominate others (gaining hegemony). See Alan Collins, The Security Dilemmas of Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 2000).

33 Ibid.

34 Glaser (note 2 above), p. 190.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., p. 191.

37 Jack Snyder & Robert Jervis, `Civil War and the Security Dilemma', in Walter & Snyder (note 6 above), p. 19.

38 Ibid., p. 20.

39 Quoted in Thompson (note 3 above), p. 12.

40 Ibid.

41 Robert Jervis, `Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?', Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, Winter 2001.

42 Paul Roe, `The Intrastate Security Dilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a “Tragedy”?', Journal of Peace Research, vol. 36, no. 2, March 1999, pp. 183-202; `Former Yugoslavia: The Security Dilemma That Never Was?', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 6, no. 3, September 2000, pp. 373-393.

43 For the war in Croatia, see Posen (note 1 above). For the war in Bosnia, see Melander (note 18 above).

44 See Paul Roe, The Societal Security Dilemma: Ethnic Violence in Krajina and Transylvania (London: Frank Cass, forthcoming). Here I argue that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's policies towards the republic's Serb minority were, to begin with at least, motivated more by security than power considerations; and that the incompatibility between the security requirements of the two parties was essentially down to a miscalculation on Tudjman's part concerning their immediate consequences.

45 Kaufman (note 5 above), p. 160.

46 Snyder & Jervis (note 37 above), p. 20.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.