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Security Dilemma
In international relations, the security dilemma (also referred to as the spiral model) is when the increase in one state's security (such as increasing its military strength) leads other states to fear for their own security (because they do not know if the security-increasing state intends to use its growing military for offensive purposes). Consequently, security-increasing measures can lead to tensions, escalation or conflict with one or more other parties, producing an outcome which no party truly desires; a political instance of the prisoner's dilemma. The security dilemma is particularly intense in situations when (1) it is hard to distinguish offensive weapons from defensive weapons, and (2) offense has the advantage in any conflict over defense. Military technology and geography strongly affect the offense-defense balance. The term was first coined by the German scholar John H. Herz in a 1950 study. At the same time British historian Herbert Butterfield described the same ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—as well as relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs). There are several schools of thought within IR, of which the most prominent are realism, liberalism, and constructivism. International relations is widely classified as a major subdiscipline of political science, along with comparative politics and political theory. However, it often draws heavily from other fields, including anthropology, economics, geography, law, philosophy, sociology, and history. While international politics has been analyzed since antiquit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preventive War
A preventive war is a war or a military action which is initiated in order to prevent a belligerent or a neutral party from acquiring a capability for attacking. The party which is being attacked has a latent threat capability or it has shown that it intends to attack in the future, based on its past actions and posturing. A preventive war aims to forestall a shift in the balance of powerTaming American Power, Stephen M. Walt, pp 224 by strategically attacking before the balance of power has had a chance to shift in the favor of the targeted party. Preventive war is distinct from preemptive strike, which is the first strike when an attack is imminent. Most experts hold that a preventive war undertaken without the approval of the United Nations is illegal under the modern framework of international law. Criticism There is a consensus that preventive war "goes beyond what is acceptable in international law" and lacks legal basis. The UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Wendt
Alexander Wendt (born 12 June 1958) is an American political scientist who is one of the core social constructivist researchers in the field of international relations, and a key contributor to quantum social science. Wendt and academics such as Nicholas Onuf, Peter J. Katzenstein, Emanuel Adler, Michael Barnett, Kathryn Sikkink, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, and others have, within a relatively short period, established constructivism as one of the major schools of thought in the field. A 2006 survey of US and Canadian international relations scholars ranks Wendt as first among scholars who have "been doing the most interesting work in international relations in recent years. A 2011 survey of international relations scholars worldwide ranked Wendt first in terms of having "produced the best work in the field of IR in the past 20 years". Biography Alexander Wendt was born in 1958 in Mainz in West Germany, attended high school in St. Paul, Minnesota and studied political scienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhineland
The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands refers (physically speaking) to a loosely defined region embracing the land on the banks of the Rhine in Central Europe, which were settled by Ripuarian and Salian Franks and became part of Frankish Austrasia. In the High Middle Ages, numerous Imperial States along the river emerged from the former stem duchy of Lotharingia, without developing any common political or cultural identity. A "Rhineland" conceptualization can be traced to the period of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth until the eighteenth centuries when the Empire's Imperial Estates (territories) were grouped into regional districts in charge of defence and judicial execution, known as Imperial Circles. Three of the ten circles through which the Rhine flowed referr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polarity In International Relations
Polarity in international relations is any of the various ways in which power is distributed within the international system. It describes the nature of the international system at any given period of time. One generally distinguishes three types of systems: unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity for three or more centers of power. The type of system is completely dependent on the distribution of power and influence of states in a region or globally. Scholars differ as to whether bipolarity or unipolarity is likely to produce the most stable and peaceful outcomes. Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer are among those who argue that bipolarity tends to generate relatively more stability, whereas John Ikenberry and William Wohlforth are among those arguing for the stabilizing impact of unipolarity. Some scholars, such as Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer, argued that multipolarity was the most stable structure. Unipolarity Unipolarity is a condition in which one state under the co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buck Passing
Buck passing, or passing the buck, or sometimes (playing) the blame game, is the act of attributing to another person or group one's own responsibility. It is often used to refer to a strategy in power politics whereby a state tries to get another state to deter or fight an aggressor state while it remains on the sidelines. Etymology The expression is said to have originated from poker in which a marker or counter (such as a knife with a buckhorn handle during the American Frontier era) was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal, the responsibility could be passed by the passing of the "buck," as the counter came to be called, to the next player. In international relations Passing the buck in international relations theory involves the tendency of nation-states to refuse to confront a growing threat in the hopes that another state will. The most notable example was the refusal of the United Kingdom, United States, France, and/or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chain Ganging
Chain ganging is a term in the field of international relations describing the elevated probability for interstate conflict or conflagration due to several states having joined in alliances or coalitions. The agreed principles of such alliances typically include mutual defence clauses requiring that, in the case of one member state suffering military attack from another power, all members must declare hostilities against that offending power. The result of such an arrangement is an elevated probability for an international conflagration, since the case of an actor attacking another power would almost certainly trigger, whether intentionally or not, a multinational conflict potentially involving many more actors than the original two states which had attacked and been attacked, respectively. According to sworn agreements or treaties no member state has the option to refuse to participate in this involvement: once the states have agreed to the alliance, they are bound by obligation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Snyder (political Scientist)
Jack Lewis Snyder (born February 6, 1951) is an American political scientist who is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia University, specializing in theories of international relations. Snyder's research centers around the relationship between violence and government. He is known for introducing the distinction between offensive and defensive realism into the international relations literature in his 1991 book ''Myths of Empire''. Early life and education Snyder was born in February 1951 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, receiving a B.A. in government in 1973. From 1973 to 1975 he was on the research staff of the Wednesday Group (a grouping of liberal Republicans), and later the foreign policy staff of Illinois senator Charles H. Percy. He pursued graduate studies at Columbia University, first receiving a certificate from the Harriman Institute (then known as the Russian Institute) in 1978 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas J
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court and its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but was frustrated over the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman to attend the College of the Holy Cross and, later, Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, notably Thomas Sowell, who dramatically shifted his worldview from progressive to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glenn H
Glenn may refer to: Name or surname * Glenn (name) * John Glenn, U.S. astronaut Cultivars * Glenn (mango) * a 6-row barley variety Places In the United States: * Glenn, California * Glenn County, California * Glenn, Georgia, a settlement in Heard County * Glenn, Illinois * Glenn, Michigan * Glenn, Missouri * University, Orange County, North Carolina, formerly called Glenn * Glenn Highway in Alaska Organizations *Glenn Research Center, a NASA center in Cleveland, Ohio See also * New Glenn New Glenn is a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle in development by Blue Origin. Named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, design work on the vehicle began in 2012. Illustrations of the vehicle, and the high-level specifications, were initial ..., a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle * * * Glen, a valley * Glen (other) {{disambiguation, geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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