Images, photography & war (2020)

Much has been written about the relationship between images, photography, reality and truth. Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes come to mind, as do semiotics and hermeneutics. Images are in many ways more powerful than words. They are often more suggestive and they allow for the projection of subliminal (or not-so-subliminal) messages. Think of the Two Minutes Hate that George Orwell’s Winston Smith is forced to undergo every day. Images often appeal to pathos and ethos rather than to logos. 

Images and photographs derive their meaning from context and from the person seeking to make sense of an image. Interpretation necessarily requires subjectivity and it involves contingency. That said, the best photographs (like the best art) seem to have a universalistic quality, much less subject to subjectivity and contingency. The signing of the surrender declaration aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in August 1945 may elicit different interpretations or at the very least different affective response in patriotic Americans and imperialistic Japanese (as well as in imperialistic Japanese and pacifist Japanese). Photos like Shell-Shocked US Marine or Bloody Saturday (see below) seem to possess a much more universalistic quality. Most people will see the common humanity and universalistic truths about war, brutality and pain in these images.

Disaster of War (Francisco Goya 1810-20)

Images and photographs often come to represent, symbolise and even stand in for complex events, including military conflicts. Before the advent of photography, the world had to rely on the artistic renderings of wars. Most people who think of the Peninsular War (1808-14), for example, will think of Goya’s Disasters of War sketches. To this day, Picasso’s Guernica remains a more powerful representation of “Guernica” than any black-and-white photograph of the aerial bombing of the Spanish village. This is all the more curious as a single abstract painting comes closer to the truth or essence of the bombing than any series of factual photographs. This is because the painting refers not just to “Guernica”, but to the brutality of all armed conflict. 

Interestingly, compared to WWII or the Vietnam War, there seem to be few (if any) truly iconic images of WWI. There is plenty of documentary photographic evidence, But few, if any photo has ingrained itself in the collective or even the national collective mind. In Britain, the work of the war poets is better known than any photograph. WWII, by contrast, produced next to no poetry, not in Britain, not anywhere (Hynes 2018); but many WWII photos reached iconic status. In France and Germany, WWI is more likely to evoke novels such as Im Westen Nichts Neues or Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, or, in both countries, films like La Grande Illusion, rather than war photographs. Again, a George Grosz painting is closer to the “truth” than a photograph, at least in the present collective mind. This is not to say that there are no photos that represent the meaning of WWI and may deserve iconic status. It just that it so happens that photographs of this conflict hold a less prominent role in the collective consciousness than other cultural artefacts.

The apparent documentary quality of photographs gives them the semblance of being more real and closer to the “truth”. Art is a lie that reveals the truth (Picasso). This is why some artistic renderings are so powerful, compared to photographs. The meaning of an event is not necessarily captured in the representativeness or even the mere the facticity of an image depicting that event. And curiously, the very first war photographer, Robert Fenton (1819-69), actually staged one his best-known photographs of the Crimean War (1853-56)c called In the Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855). 

Valley of the Shadow of Death (Roger Fenton 1855) 

Not only may a photograph not be representative, but the event it depicts may be partially or completely staged. John Ford famously happened to be present at the Battle at Midway (1942) and shot live footage, which became a famous film. But footage that has a similarly authentic feel, like John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro, was completely re-enacted. Same goes for ionic photographs. The famous Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) was at least once re-staged and the Raising of a flag over the Reichstag (1945) was completely staged. That said, actual, factual footage can also be presented in a completely misleading way (just pick about any German Wochenschau during WWII). Some of the most powerful representations of the brutality of war and genocide are Claude Lanzman’s Shoah (1985) and Alan Resnais’ Night and Fog (1956). Neither makes use of any footage depicting the events they explore, and yet the images (and, admittedly, words) do get to the essence in a way that nothing else ever has.

Many symbolic images are explicitly and self-consciously staged. That does not make them non-factual, but they often do feel less "real". A photograph may be both factual and staged. Implied spontaneity gives an image greater authenticity. General MacArthur wading onshore in the Philippines in 1944, from where Japanese forces had expelled him and the US army in 1941, had to be re-enacted several times, it is rumoured, until the photographers was able to get the "right" shot.  By comparison, a photo of 6’00’’ MacArthur towering over 5’5’’ Emperor Hirohito is factual and it is staged and it is symbolic. It is not any less accidental than MacArthur wading ashore (once you know that the latter had to be re-enacted), but it feels less "in-authentic". President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl standing hand-in-hand at Verdun to commemorate WWI is staged, not spontaneous, factual and highly symbolic. Photos can do many things.

Common tropes characterise most of the best-known war photographs, photographs forming part of the collective consciousness of war. Here is a far from exhaustive list of tropes and photographs.

Soldiers Going Into Combat

Battle of the Somme (1916)

Taxis to Hell and Back (Robert Sargent 1944)

Destruction of Cities

'

St. Paul Survives (Herbert Manson 1940)

View From Dresden's Townhall (1945)

Fallen Soldiers

Falling Soldier (Robert Capa 1936)

Three Dead Americans Lie on the Beach at Buna (George Strock 1942)

War Refracted On Soldiers’ Faces

Marine Capt. Francis "Ike" Fenton (David Duncan Douglas 1950)

Shell-Shocked US Marine, Battle Of Hue (Don McCullin 1968)

The Brutality Of War

Execution of Soviet Partisans (1943)

Saigon Execution (Eddie Adams 1968)

Children As Victims Of War

Bloody Saturday (HS Wong 1937)

Warsaw Ghetto Boy (Roger Viollet 1943)

Flag Raising After Victory

Raising the Flag On Iwo Jima (Joe Rosenthal 1945)

Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag (Yevgeny Khaldei 1945)

Victory & Defeat vs Defeat & Victory

Occupation of Paris (1940)

Liberation of Paris (1944)

Victory

Soviet Planes Over Berlin (1945)

US Planes Over Tokyo (1945)

Peace At Last

Czech Mother Kisses Russian Soldier During Liberation of Prague (1945)

V-J Day in Times Square (Alfred Eisenstaedt 1945)

Vietnam, Afghanistan & Sicily - what went wrong? (2020)

Even superpowers suffer local military defeats. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 US marines landed at a beach near the Danang airbase in Vietnam. On December 25, 1979, the Soviet 40th army crossed the border into Afghanistan. Less than a decade later, the last US and Soviet combat troops pulled out of Vietnam and Afghanistan, having suffered 58,000 and 15,000 combat deaths, respectively. The Sicilian expedition, launched by Athens in 415 BC, ended with the total defeat of its deployed naval and land forces. Arguably none of these defeats was strategic in nature. The defeat on the battlefield was not decisive in determining the outcome of the broader systemic conflict underway. Undoubtedly, the war in Afghanistan (1979- 89) represented a tangible drain on Soviet resources and the US involvement in Vietnam (1955-75 or 1965-73) weakened the US economy. But neither military conflict decided the outcome of the Cold War. Similarly, Athens’ military defeat in Sicily (415-413 BC) did not prevent it from continuing the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) for almost a decade. 

Why did the superpowers of their day launch – in retrospect, disastrous – peripheral military campaigns? First of all, it is worth noting that all three powers had intervened abroad before, and relatively successfully so. The USSR intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the US intervention in Korea and the Athens’ brutal suppression of the revolt in Melos, for instance, were all successful in defending the status quo. Due to “imperial policing”, Hungary and Czechoslovakia remained in the Soviet sphere of influence and South Korea remained in the US sphere of influence and in fact became a US forward operating base at the end of the war. Athens prevented defections and strengthened alliance cohesion, while admittedly transforming itself from a primus inter pares into a hegemonic, quasi-imperial power within the Delian League.

All three interventions were underpinned by a defensible strategic rationale. Whether in fact decision-makers explicitly referred to this rationale is for historians and detailed historical research to answer. At the strategic level, Afghanistan was hard fought over during much of the 19th century. Seen as the gateway to India (the jewel of the British Empire), it was located at the fault line between the British and Russian spheres of influence. While it is far from certain that Russia had any designs on India, Britain wasn’t so sure and fought three wars in Afghanistan in less than a century, largely to pre-empt Russia from establishing a foothold there and as part of what Kipling called the “great game”, the Anglo-Russian antagonism in Central Asia. If Afghanistan was the gateway to India, so it was a gateway to the Soviet Union. The Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan was primarily motivated by worries that it might drift closer to the United States (NYT, January 29, 2019). Vietnam was historically less coveted, but the US position in Asia seemed to call for a robust defence in order to prevent other states in South-East Asia from realigning themselves with China or Russia (domino theory). Athens pursued what to modern eyes looks like “indirect approach”. The decision to invade Sicily was meant to strike Sparta in its rear and interdict food exports from Sicily to the Peloponnesian League. In this sense, Athens’s intervention was offensive, compared to the more defence-motivated actions taken by the USSR and the US. 

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Sicily are often regarded as military disasters and strategic setbacks. While all three interventions proved military failures or, in the case of Athens, outright disasters, it is less obvious that they should be considered strategic defeats. The United States lost militarily and it failed to achieve its immediate political objective, that is, prevent South Vietnam from being wrested from the US sphere of influence. However, the strategic rationale for the Vietnam intervention had been to prevent South-East Asia from turning “communist” and re-aligning itself with the USSR or China. The other (major) dominoes did not fall. Similarly, the USSR suffered defeat on the battlefield, but it prevented Afghanistan from realigning itself with the United States. Only Athens failed to achieve its strategic objective, for it suffered total defeat and it failed in its strategic objective to weaken the Peloponnesian League by knocking Sicily out of the geopolitical picture. Of the three, only Athens can be said to have failed to achieve its original strategic objectives, even though all three suffered military defeats.

This leaves unaddressed the question whether the (undoubtedly higher than anticipated) loss of life, treasure and reputation was worth it in light of the underlying rationale. Athens did fight on for another decade. But the Sicilian disaster had not only imposed heavy material losses, but it had also weakened its international prestige. The wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam sapped Soviet and US economic, financial and material power as well as morale and, arguably, their international reputation. While the military defeats were not strategic in nature, the interventions were costly, even if they did not weaken the three powers irretrievably. The USSR did collapse and the Afghan was not helpful in this respect, but it probably was not the main cause. Ultimately, of course, any assessment of whether the strategic rationale for intervention and whether the price paid in the end was commensurate with the objective depends on one’s counterfactuals, that is, what would have happened absent military intervention. Difficult to say, even in retrospect. The point is that the interventions should not be written off as strategic defeats (only because they ended military defeat) or as unaffordable adventures.

Any evaluation of the decisions to intervene is highly dependent on the assumed the risk-reward trade-off. Surely, none of the three anticipated military defeat when deciding to intervene. All of three of them suffered defeats. Any military venture and especially overseas interventions are inherently risky. The latter give local and global adversaries an opportunity to tie down the intervening power and make intervention costly and ultimately unsuccessful (Coll 2005). Foreign interventions often involve substantial logistical challenges that limit battlefield effectiveness. Setbacks may quickly affect morale given the relatively greater difficulty to justify the loss of life and treasure in overseas “adventures”. Foreign policy decisions, including decisions to intervene in far-flung places or the “near abroad” are necessarily made on the basis of incomplete information and epistemic uncertainty. They face additional challenges due to unintended consequences and, most crucially, the challenge of anticipating the strategic behaviour of actual or potential adversaries. Such risk-reward calculations necessarily involve subjective judgments and probabilistic calculations. In the case of Sicily, Afghanistan and Vietnam, historians will need to sort out what the biggest miscalculations were with respect to misjudging the probability of military defeat.

While perhaps not hyper-consequential, non-material losses may have been more problematic than the direct material losses and financial costs incurred by the failed interventions. In case a major power suffers a limited military defeat, allies may start to have second thoughts about its ability and willingness to maintain its alliance commitments and adversaries may spot an opportunity to exploit a tactical setback strategically by ramping up the pressure. The locally defeated hegemon may be less willing to shoulder costs and it may be (slightly) more resource constrained. This may alter the way both allies and adversaries perceive it and its ability and willingness to engage in future conflict. Non-strategic defeats often affect the attitudes of allies and adversaries alike. In Greece, for instance, the defeat in Sicily encouraged Athens’ enemies in Persia to move more forcefully against Athens and fostered rebellion in the Aegean. Similarly, the Soviet quagmire in Afghanistan may have encouraged some of the USSR’s allies and satellites (Hungary, Poland) to assert greater independence. Last but not least: following the US withdrawal from Vietnam, there was increased concern about how committed to its Asian treaty allies the United States was going to be in light of the Nixon doctrine. None of these reputational losses was likely decisive, but they further weakened the three powers’ geopolitical position.

It is of course possible to argue that all three powers committed an avoidable mistake. The simplest explanation attributes failed strategic choices to outright but avoidable (as opposed to unavoidable due to uncertainty) miscalculation or to domestic politics (e.g. Alcibiades vs Nicias). Cognitive biases may be to blame (esp. status quo bias and sunk cost effect). For the US, the loss of North Vietnam and for the USSR the loss of Afghanistan would have represented a change to the status quo. There is a tendency to take outsized risks in defence of the status quo. All three had intervened to maintain the status quo and alliance cohesion before (e.g. US in Chile, Indonesia, the USSR in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Athens in Melos). Subsequently, as the American and Soviet (and Athenian) interventions began to go badly, the so-called sunk cost effect led all three to double down, leading to an unnecessary prolongation of the conflicts. These biases may have distorted the strategic cost-benefit analysis. 

Decision-makers may also have felt - justifiably or not - that they had little or no choice but to intervene. This is less applicable in the case of Athens, which really launched a war of choice. At the systemic level, classic power politics, balance-of-power considerations and concerns about sphere of influence maintenance offer plausible explanations of state motivation and a readiness to accept outsized risks. The security dilemma postulates that one side trying to enhance its power (and security) under conditions of anarchy diminishes the other side’s power (and security). Under condition of bipolarity, this dilemma is exacerbated, as one state’s loss exactly matches the other state’s gain, without gains/ losses being diluted/ diverted to third parties (Gilpin 1981, Deutsche & Singer 1964). Competition is also fiercer under bipolarity, as “passing the buck” is not an option. Incidentally, this is why multipolarity is generally seen as more prone to causing armed conflict than bipolarity (Waltz 1964, Mearsheimer 2001).

Another intriguing rationalisation of the interventions is to understand them as signalling devices. International politics is not solely based on material factors and brute force alone. At the very least, states need to mobilise resources to gain material power and they have to be willing to use it. The perceived willingness of a state to use its power is closely tied to non-material factors like credibility, prestige and reputation. Foreign interventions can therefore also be regarded as costly ways to signal commitment and willingness to incur costs in the defence of interest and/ or allies. Being prepared to incur net losses may in fact enhance a state’s reputation and prestige. Naturally, this is only a practical approach if the adversary also incurs significant costs, Otherwise present or future adversaries would simply exploit the intervening power indefinitely and repeatedly. Given that the cost of US support for the Afghan resistance and Sino-Soviet support for North Vietnam represented a substantially lesser cost than to the USSR and the US, respectively, signalling might work. Inevitable defeat may also only provide at best limited assurance to present allies. Relatedly, In spite of their immense power and undoubted status in the international hierarchy, states may intend interventions to set an example (pour encourager les autres), thus potentially reducing future enforcement costs (e.g. Melos, Iraq 2003?).

In other words, non-intervention may be systemically difficult and reputationally problematic. Systemically, states worry about what the local loss may do to the global balance of power. Reputationally, states are concerned about being perceived as weak and worry about further exploitation by present or future adversaries, while dodging a fight might undermine alliance cohesion and morale. States also have an incentive to send what are in fact "costly" signals in the hope of convincing the adversary that they are willing to “pay any price, bear any burden”. As suggested above, this can be a risky and ultimately self-defeating strategy. But it can work. Defending a costly geostrategic position may be rational, as rational as the gazelle that that leaps straight up in the air to signal the tiger that it is not concerned about its presence. Such a decision risks lacking credibility, but cost-benefit calculus on either side is intrinsically subjective and ambiguity may lead state to adopt such a risky strategy. Point being, it is possible – how plausible can be debated – that the decision in favour of potentially risky interventions were made with concerns about credibility, reputation and prestige in mind.

Last but not least, one should not underestimate the sense of vulnerability that tends to drive even very powerful states into risky overseas military (ad)ventures. Even superpowers feel vulnerable due to systemic competition, especially so under condition of bipolarity. Cognitively, decision-makers are also more likely to be concerned about the downside than the upside in view of a prospective loss (prospect theory). This will lead them to take riskier decisions defending the status quo than what would have been warranted after a more careful, balanced analysis. This is less applicable to Athens's decision to launch the Sicilian expedition. It does apply in the case of Vietnam and Afghanistan. (Worth remembering that the US had already "lost" China.) It may at first seem counter-intuitive that superpowers are driven to risky foreign military intervention  out of a sense of weakness and vulnerability rather than strength and insatiable territorial expansion. But this is what happens, at least occasionally (Vietnam, Afghanistan vs Sicily). States should carefully consider the risks of foreign intervention and not let a sense vulnerability dictate decisions. States seeking to counter an adversary's foreign intervention should seek to understand what motivates a state's foreign intervention. Whether a state intervenes overseas out of a sense of vulnerability or out of a sense of strength should inform decisions how to respond the intervention.

Domestic distributional conflict & international strategic adjustment (2020)

Confronted with a growing mismatch between international commitments and available resources, states can reduce their commitments or mobilise additional resources, or both. Hegemonic powers are particularly prone to facing such a trade-off sooner or later due to what has been termed imperial (or strategic) overstretch (Kennedy 1987). It is in fact the central factor underpinning hegemonic decline (Gilpin 1981). A failure to bring commitments in line with available resources, or to bring resources up to the level required to sustain commitments, will invariably lead to gradual or, in the event of war, precipitous strategic decline. While a timely reduction of international commitments (retrenchment) may fail to prevent strategic decline in the long-term, it may help a state retreat to a position that is at least temporarily more defensible and it may help buy time, giving the state time to “regroup”. If the necessary resources cannot be mobilised, the choice is between almost certain secular strategic decline and the uncertain strategic outcome of retrenchment. An unenviable choice. 

Imbalances of power in the international system and concomitant commitment-resource mismatches faced by individual states used to get resolved through hegemonic war, less often through strategic retrenchment (Gilpin 1981, Organski 1958). The existence of nuclear weapons may have made hegemonic war less likely. But this does not mean that imbalances and mismatches have ceased to be important and that great powers can simply dodge the strategic choice between retrenchment and status quo defence. It also does not let them off the hook in terms of either mobilising additional resources to defend the status quo or implementing a strategic retrenchment if they cannot or do not want to mobilise the additional resources necessary to maintain commitments. After all, even powers with substantial nuclear arsenals can suffer strategic defeat (e.g. USSR).

The link between resource mobilisation and international strategic choice is of crucial theoretical and practical concern. Traditional IR theory postulates that a coalition of lesser states will balance against the most powerful state (or coalition of states) in the international system (Waltz 1979). This leaves largely unexplained the sources of the underlying shift in the balance of power and the change in individual states’ relative ad absolute power. Not only is the concept of power complex and multidimensional. Even if one settles on a definition, power remains often difficult to measure. Things like technology, ideology, organisational skills, quality of leadership, military assets, economic resources, geographic position all impact the power of a state. To the extent that power is relational, any measure of comprehensive national power would need to be set against the comprehensive national power of others states. This difficult notwithstanding, it is clear that state power in the long-term requires a solid economic foundation. While short-term mobilisation may give economically weak-ish states a military edge, long-term a state’s international power is based on economic strength. 

What accounts for the relative economic decline of the dominant state and the widening gap between resources and commitments? Robert Gilpin (1981) suggests that a country’s economic growth is characterised by diminishing returns. [Economists would say that generating rapid economic growth near the technological frontier is more difficult than generating growth as a so-called “late developer” (Gerschenkron 1962).] A hegemonic state is also bound to have significant defence commitments (and related outlays) at the same time as technology diffusion benefits potential challengers. Actual and potential adversaries are often able to acquire key technologies, whether through theft or reverse engineering, without having to spend resources on research and development. Moreover, consumption tends to increase as a state becomes wealthier, leaving – all other things equal – fewer resources to sustain international commitments, while the corrupting influence of wealth may make states less inclined to make the material sacrifices required to fend off peer competitors. A combination of slower growth, increasing (non-productive) defence spending, higher consumption and loss (or diminution) of technological leadership ultimately weakens a state’s hegemonic position and leads to “imperial” overstretch. 

Slower economic growth makes the guns or butter trade-off more acute in political-economy terms. As sluggish growth combines with an increased need for (unproductive) military expenditure and increased political demands for increased consumption, fewer resources are available to for investment in growth-enhancing infrastructure, education and new technologies. Less rapid growth in turn leads to fiercer domestic distributional conflict, while the emergence of vested rentier interests makes it harder to pursue growth-enhancing economic policies (Olson 1982, Phlippon 2019). By contrast, the rising power with a rapidly growing economy experiences very little or no domestic distributional conflict given rapidly increasing incomes and expanding resources. 

Militarily, the hegemonic power typically finds itself in a position where it has to maintain global defense commitments. The challenger can focus its rapidly expanding resources on a narrower geography. China, for example, can focus its security efforts on its “near abroad”, while the US needs to maintain a more extensive and expensive global military posture. Moreover, asymmetric defence capabilities can also make it easier to upset to the military balance (e.g. inexpensive Chinese anti-ship missiles vs expensive US aircraft carriers). The benefits of being a military as opposed to an economic latecomer has not been written enough about.

A rising power whose existing commitments are relatively limited and whose available economic resources are expanding rapidly is a very different position than the hegemonic power. A rising power has generally more flexibility whether or not to expand its international commitments, even if expanding interests do create significant incentives to do so (e.g. trade/ protection of sea lanes). A declining state that faces overstretch is forced to take action, for if the trend continues, it will suffer strategic decline and perhaps even defeat at the hands of the rising power. By contrast, the rising state, given the reverse commitment-resource mismatch, can decide where, when and how to deploy its rapidly increasing resources. The declining hegemonic power facing overstretch needs to mobilise additional resources to sustain its position or else is forced into strategic retrenchment. Mobilising additional resources is rarely easy, as it is bound to provoke provoke and exacerbate domestic distributional conflict.

Domestic distributional conflict is closely related to what economists call the “production-possibility frontier”. That is, the total productive capacity of an economy is assumed to be fixed so that producing more guns necessarily means producing less butter, and vice versa. Analytically, it makes more sense to break down the problem into a short-term (guns-versus-butter) trade-off and a longer-term (consumption-versus-investment) trade-off. In the short run, the productive capacity is fixed. Over the longer term, the production possibility frontier can be pushed out through increased investment and other productivity-enhancing policies. The short and the long term are nonetheless linked. In order to increase the productive capacity of the economy tomorrow, resources need to be shifted from consumption to savings and investment today. The problem faced by economically advanced hegemons is that its international commitments limit the resources available to produce even more guns or to increase investment today. Distributional conflict arises primarily because both the short- and long-term trade-off require an absolute (or relative) decline in domestic consumption and economic well-being.

International strategic choice and domestic economic wealth are closely linked. Mercantilists have long held that wealth and power are complementary. By contrast, economists have generally taken the view that the quest for power tends to erode economic wealth, mainly due to the need to increase economically unproductive military spending. Extensive international commitments reduce a country’s economic growth potential. Miles Kahler (1988) has suggested that the relationship between external ambition and economic performance varies depending on whether a state is a leading or a middle-ranking power. In the latter case, external ambition and economic performance may be complementary; in the former, they are not. More sensibly, however, the relevant distinction is to be drawn between states whose economy operates near the technological frontier and economically less advanced states who benefit from a greater catch-up growth potential. Moreover, if per Kahler Japan is to be an example of the compatibility of rising economic wealth and increasing military power, then such a claim needs to control for the fact that the economic performance of Imperial Japan (and Nazi Germany) benefitted hugely from predatory policies that exploited the economic resources of occupied countries (Klemann 2019) as well as military Keynesianism, at least during the thirties. The consumption-investment trade-off postulated by economists remains pertinent and relevant.

In principle, a state can mobilise greater resources domestically as well as procure them externally. Daniel Drezner (2013) has raised the issue to what extent military primacy allows states to recover their military outlays through (1) geo-economic favouritism (attracting foreign private capital), (2) direct geo-political favouritism (voluntary transfers from official financial resources) or (3) public goods benefits (roughly: efficiency gains through free trade). Economically, this is not a straightforward calculation. No doubt, hegemonic states have often imposed a form of taxation or tribute on their allies. The Delian League under Athens’s leadership required members to contribute ships or treasure to collective defence. In practice, Athens ended up fielding a navy supported by the financial contributions of its allies. Disputes between the United States and Germany over so-called offset payments during the sixties and, more recently, between the United States and other NATO members over defence expenditure suggest how difficult it can be to "monetise" military primacy (Zimmermann 2002). 

Relying on external resources to maintain international commitments is an option, but it tends to be of limited usefulness, at least for great powers and hegemonic states. External support helps. If the United States runs a current account deficit of 4% of GDP, it is able to generate additional resources worth, well, 4% of GDP. This is not trivial, but even if it can be sustained over the long term, it represents only 1/25 of national output. Moreover, relying on external resources involves greater uncertainty. Capital inflows may diminish forcing the current account deficit to shrink. Official financial support is typically more difficult to extract and is often tied to specific issues (e.g. status-of-forces agreements). The United States, for example, found it extremely difficult to mobilise alliance support for the Vietnam War. External support rarely offers a substitute for increased resource mobilisation. The hegemonic power is typically significantly larger than its allies and the resources transfer that these allies are able to provide is generally small compared to the hegemon’s actual and potential resource base. Last but not least, given that the support from allies represents an intra-alliance resource transfer, it does nothing to strengthen the overall position of the hegemon vis-a-vis its potential or actual challenger.

Regardless of whether a state decides to mobilise additional resources or to retrench, decision-makers need to be able to overcome a variety of potential domestic obstacles. This may explain why strategic retrenchment is quite rare and rarely takes places in a timely manner (Parent & MacDonald 2018). Strategic retrenchment is made difficult by (1) cognitive biases (e.g. sunk cost effect, status quo bias), (2) domestic hawks finding easier to rally support than doves, (3) inaction being considered less risky than action from a bureaucratic and political point of view, (4) domestic institutions or coalitions favouring the status quo and a reluctance or even inability to adapt to the changing strategic reality (Snyder 1993). Neither the Bank of England nor the Imperial War Staff, for example, were prepared, institutionally and culturally, to adjust to the new strategic reality Britain faced after WWI (Brawley 1999). 

Finding domestic support in favour of increased resource mobilisation and strategic competition can be equally difficult. Increased domestic resource mobilisation is bound to encounter opposition, as it necessarily lowers domestic consumption, regardless of whether resource mobilisation is geared towards more guns or more investment. Not surprisingly, states typically impose these losses in a surreptitious manner (Tooze 2006). The German Reichstag, for example, refused to increase taxes to finance the navy and instead forced the government into additional borrowing, thus indirectly curtailing the resources that otherwise could have been raised to fund the army (Rosencrance 1993). 

A failure to retrench may of course also be due to good, old-fashioned strategic reasons. Like what? (1) States are concerned about being perceived as weak and fear further exploitation by the direct adversary or by third states, (2) retrenchment often confers greater power to the adversary, (3) retrenchment risks having a adverse consequences if allies come to doubt the retrenching state's commitment to their security, (4) relatedly, states may use a policy of no-retrenchment as a way to send "costly" signals in the hope of convincing the adversary that they are willing to “bear any burden, any cost”. (Whether this can be done credibly is another matter.), (5) credibility, reputation and prestige may be at stake in case of retrenchment (see (1)). The failure of the Stresa Front to confront Germany over the re-militarisation of the Rhineland shows how detrimental not upholding one's commitments can be. On the other hand, the US war in Vietnam serves as an example of the nefarious consequences of not retrenching can have. No wonder that states, if they believe they can mobilise resources to maintain their commitments, will tend to avoid retrenchment. .

A mismatch between international commitments and available resources offers states, and especially great powers and hegemonic powers, an unpalatable choice: increase resources or retrench. Increasing the resources to sustain international commitments requires states to resolve domestic distributional conflict. This conflict is bound to be particularly acute in the economically advanced hegemon (and there is no guarantee that the government will prevail). Decreasing commitments to bring them in line with available resources, while allowing states to sidestep domestic distributional conflict, is a similarly unpalatable choice from a strategic point of view, not least because it rarely offers a guarantee that strategic decline or defeat will in the end be avoided. Not to make a choice, however, is not a viable option, either, for it is likely to invite almost certain strategic decline, if not outright defeat. Maybe this is the real tragedy of international politics.

Miscellaneous (2020)

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a “word” as “a single unit of a language that has meaning and can be spoken or written”, an “Idea” as “an understanding, thought or picture in your mind” and a “concept” as “a principle or idea”.

Balance-of-power --- Frequently used and frequently insufficiently defined concept central to IR theory. Amongst other things, it can refer to (1) an equal distribution of power, (2) an action by a state to prevent other states from becoming too strong, (3) a mechanism that brings about (1), and (4) an actual, whether equal or not, distribution of power (Sheehan 1996).

Cauchemar des coalitions --- The kind of thing one is worried about as a child, in the playground. Everybody ganging up against you. Bismarck lost sleep over it.

Domino effect --- An analogy or metaphor. Led to the costly US involvement in Vietnam. Should be used judiciously and cautiously by foreign policy makers.

L’état, c’est moi – Quote attributed to Louis XVI. Useful reminder that analysts often imbue states with person-like qualities. Again, anthropomorphising the state should only be done in a very judicious and self-conscious manner.

Guns or butter – Given a fixed production possibility frontier, governments face a choice between producing consumer goods or military equipment. History suggests that the constraint on producing more military goods is primarily political, not economic.

Festlandsdegen --- German historiography feeling cross about Prussia being employed as Britain’s ‘continental dagger’. Off-shore balancers like Britain find it easier to switch alliances (see also cauchemar des coalitions); related to “perfidious Albion” = hegemonic powers are typically disliked.

Fog of war --- Of Clausewitzian origin. War is the realm of passions, chance and reason. The chance and uncertainty aspect requires sensitive and discriminating judgment and skilled intelligence to scent the truth, according to Clausewitz. Arguably, these are useful cognitive skills to have in all areas of life. Also: A 2007 documentary about Robert MacNamara (worth watching).

Great power, superpower, hyperpower --- Closely mirror to multi-, bi- and unipolarity

Grossraumwirtschaft --- Concept of a German-dominated European-wide autarkic economic sphere. Some have argued the after two failed attempts in the 20th century, Germany finally succeeded in establishing it (Berghahn 1996). Margaret Thatcher would agree.

Hegemony --- Leadership or dominance. Central concept in IR. To be distinguished from Latin auctoritas, potestas and imperium.

Level of analysis --- Level at which the explanation of international political events is to be found. Waltz (1959) remains obligatory reading for graduate students. So is, or should be, Giddens (1986) and the concept of structuration.

“Life is nasty, brutish and short” --- In Hobbes’ Leviathan, it actually reads as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Shows that people prefer triads. Similarly, Churchill did not actually say “blood, sweat and tears”, but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Also: Point of intellectual departure for (classical) Realists like Morgenthau (1948).

Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana, Pax Sinica --- It probably didn’t feel like much pax to some of the states/ people living under it.

Power --- Central to thinking about international politics; very multi-dimensional concept. Distinction between relational and structural power is epistemically very valuable (Strange 1987).

Renversement des alliances --- Related to cauchemar des coalitions

Rise and fall --- Often just refers to something that has a beginning, a middle and an end with a however defined peak somewhere near the middle. In an IR context, it often refers to hegemony or empires. The doomsday argument can be useful to estimate how far the end is off.

Rule the waves --- British maritime dominance during the 19th century. Dominant powers also tend to “waive the rules” (James 2006)

Soft power versus hard power --- How many divisions does the pope have? (Stalin’s response to his foreign minister suggesting that a recent Kremlin decision had stoked opposition from the Vatican)

Splendid isolation --- British policy towards continental Europe; forced to abandon it in 1914 in order to prevent the emergence of German hegemony; why did Britain not intervene in continental affairs in 1864, 1866 or 1871?

State --- Various meanings depending on whether one is a scholar of international law, a sociologist, a Marxist, a Liberal, an International Relations theorist or a Hegelian (Cooper 2000).

Strategy --- Derived from Greek strategos or military general; or elected general in ancient Athens; process by which political purpose is translated into military action; differs from grand strategy

Theory --- Intellectual framework consisting of interlinked concepts that helps generate explanations and/ or predictions. At a minimum, theories must be logically consistent. They should be rich in their implications. Ideally, they are empirically valid.

War & Peace --- Title of famous Russian novel; wars should only be pursued to bring about a better peace (Liddell Hart 1954); cold war = hot peace?