Stability in a Fragmenting World: Interstate Military Force,1946-1988

Abstract

Six hypotheses, developed from arguments about the fragmentation of the international system, are applied to a data set encompassing 667 interstate uses of armed force between 1946 and 1988. Particular attention is paid to center-periphery and intra-peripheral interventions. The data suggest sup port for one perspective on fragmentation, imperial disintegration, but not for a model based upon eroding polarization. While center interventionary activity has declined over the 1946-1988 period, peripheral states, focusing much of their activities within regional subsystems, have become more interventionary, at least in terms of absolute numbers. Yet, despite the rela tively dramatic alteration of center and periphery intervention patterns, the overall portrait of interstate force supported by our findings is one of stability. When normalized for the increasing number of states in the international system, global levels of interstate military force have remained constant. And, in contrast to our collective perception of an increasingly violent periphery, the use of military force across state borders may not have become markedly more severe in that part of the world.