Kenneth N. Waltz

Globalization and Governance

n 1979 I described the interdependence of states as low but increasing. It has increased, but only to about the 1910 level if measured by trade or capital flows as a percentage of GNP; lower if measured by the mobility of labor, and lower still if measured by the mutual military dependence of states. Yet one feels that the world has become a smaller one. International travel has become faster, easier, and cheaper; music, art, cuisines, and cinema have all become cosmopolitan in the worlds major centers and beyond. The Peony Pavilion was produced in its entirety for the first time in 400 years, and it was presented not in Shanghai or Beijing, but in New York. Communication is

Nuclear Myths and Political Realities

Two pervasive beliefs have given nuclear weapons a bad name: that nuclear deterrence is highly problematic, and that a breakdown in deterrence would mean Armageddon. Both beliefs are misguided and suggest that nearly half a century after Hiroshima, scholars and policy makers have yet to grasp the full strategic implications of nuclear weaponry. I contrast the logic of conventional and nuclear weaponry to show how nuclear weapons are in fact a tremendous force for peace and afford nations that possess them the possibility of security at reasonable cost.

Kant, Liberalism, and War.

Many liberals of the nineteenth century, and their predecessors of the middle eighteenth, thought the natural condition of men to be one of harmony. Dissension and strife do not inhere in man and society; they arise instead from mistaken belief, inadequate knowledge, and defective governance. With the evils defined, the remedies become clear: educate men and their governors, strip away political abuses. This is one theme in the history of liberal thought. Urged by humane philosophers and supported by pacifistic economists, its appeal in Western society is immense and enduring.There is in liberal thought another theme as well, which is often obscured though it goes back to the earliest philosophers who can fairly be called liberal. Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and Kant made no easy assumptions about the rationality and goodness of man. Among men in nature and states in a world of states, they found not harmony and peace but hostility and war to be the natural condition.

America as a Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective

I. How the Placement of States Affects Their Policies Because throughout most of the years since the second World War the United States and the Soviet Union were similarly placed by their power, their external behaviors should have shown striking similarities. Did they? Yes, more than has usually been realized. The behavior of states can be compared on many counts. Their armament policies and their interventions abroad are two of the most revealing. On the former count, the United States in the early 1960s undertook the largest strategic and conventional peace-time military build-up the world has yet seen. We did so even as Khrushchev was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence, and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States. As one should have expected, the Soviet Union soon followed in Americas footsteps, thus restoring the symmetry of great-power behavior. And so it was through most of the years of the Cold War. Advances made by one were quickly followed by the other, with the United States almost always leading the way. Allowing for geographic differences, the overall similarity of their forces was apparent. The ground forces of the Soviet Union were stronger than those of the United States, but in naval forces the balance of advantage was reversed. The Soviet Unions largely coastal navy gradually became more of a blue-water fleet, but one of limited reach. Its navy never had more than half the tonnage of ours.

A Strategy for the Rapid Deployment Force

A l t h o u g h it is widely believed that the United States needs a Rapid Deployment Force, no one has defined the purposes that an RDF can be expected to serve. Much has been written about the design of the Force: the speed with which it should be able to move, and the troops and equipment it should be able to deploy. Little has been written, however, about the problem of devising a strategy for its use. Design considerations will dictate strategy unless a promising strategy is first devised. If design dictates strategy, Americans may find themselves with a Rapid Deployment Force both over-built and ill-suited to its tasks. As a new U.S. presidential administration takes over the task of developing such capability, it should ask itself two questions. What ends does the United States want an RDF to serve? What, then, is the best strategy for its use?

NATO expansion: A realist's view

(2000). NATO expansion: A realists view. Contemporary Security Policy: Vol. 21, Explaining Nato Enlargement, pp. 23-38.

Intimations of Multipolarity

The twentieth century has been unique in modern history; for three centuries the structure of international politics remained multipolar, in the twentieth century it has changed three times. Multipolar at the outset, it became bipolar after the Second World War, unipolar with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and as the new millennium dawns it is gradually becoming multipolar once more.

The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better: Introduction

(1981). The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better: Introduction. The Adelphi Papers: Vol. 21, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, pp. 1-1.

Fair Fights or Pointless Wars

In the debate between Michael Desch and his critics in a recent issue of International Security, a big point is overlooked.1 The “fair aght” criterion, the critics say, is misplaced because their theories predict that democracies are good at choosing victims they know they can defeat. But why, when countries are mismatched, need a war be fought? The weaker can hardly threaten the stronger, yet democratic countries go to war against them. If this is true, it tells us something frightening about the behavior of democratic countries: namely, that they excel at aghting and winning unnecessary wars.

The Neorealist and His Critic

In his characteristically forceful essay “Structural Realism after the Cold War,”1 Kenneth Waltz argues that institutional theory misses the key point about institutions: that they are based on treaties made by states (p. 20). But he later acknowledges that institutional theory rests on a modiaed version of structural realism: That is, it begins with power and interests (pp. 24–25). So institutional theory does not miss the point after all! Correspondence