Stability in a Fragmenting World: Interstate Military Force, 1946-1988
| DOI | 10.1177/106591299805100111 |
| Date | 01 March 1998 |
| Published date | 01 March 1998 |
| Author | William R. Thompson,Jeffrey Pickering |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
241
Stability
in
a
Fragmenting
World:
Interstate
Military
Force,
1946-1988
JEFFREY
PICKERING,
KANSAS
STATE
UNIVERSITY
WILLIAM
R.
THOMPSON,
INDIANA
UNIVERSITY
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.
A
popular
perception
is
that
the
world
has
been
characterized
by
peace
among
states
in
the
center
of
the
international
system
and
continued,
if
not
increased,
disruption
and
conflict
in
the
outlying
areas
over
the
past
fifty
years.
Singer,
for
example,
asserts
that
the
level
of
combat
has
not
diminished
since
World
War
II:
&dquo;It
has
merely
taken
a
different
form
and
occurred
in
a
different
neighborhood&dquo;
(1991:
59).
Kegley
summarizes
this
commonly
held
view
of
segmented
international
conflict
well:
&dquo;The
disappearance
of
large-scale
war-
fare
concomitant
with
the
ascendance
of
small-scale
warfare
has
produced
NOTE:
The
authors
wish
to
thank
Robert
A.
Baumann,
Mark
Marone,
and
three
anony-
mous
reviewers
for
their
helpful
comments.
242
two
systems,
a
stable
’central
system’
and
an
unstable
’peripheral’
system&dquo;
( 1991:
8).
For
various
reasons,
such
as
the
destructiveness
of
nuclear
weapons,
changed
attitudes,
economic
interdependence,
and
pacific
relations
among
similar
types
of
governments,
many
observers
view
these
changes
as
permanent.
For
example,
Jervis
states
that,
&dquo;[Peaceful]
changes
in
the
developed
world
are
so
deep,
power-
ful
and
interlocked
that
they
cannot
readily
be
reversed
for
any
foreseeable
event.&dquo;
&dquo;
This,
he
asserts,
leads
the
future
of
international
force
into
&dquo;unmapped
territory&dquo;
(1991/1992:
47,
55).
Although
these
frequently
echoed
ideas
about
the
nature
of
international
conflict
surely
possess
some
claim
to
validity,
a
key
problem
stands
out.
Few
studies
have,
in
fact,
attempted
to
map
world
wide
patterns
in
the
use
of
force
for
the
post-World
War
II
era.
Even
fewer
studies
have
questioned
how
stable
these
patterns
really
are.
Thus
we
operate
with
vague
images
of
dichotomous
conflict
tendencies-
relatively
peaceful
at
the
center
and
relatively
brutal
in
the
hinterlands-without
really
knowing
much
about
the
degree
of
disparity,
either
spatially
or
temporally
This
article
will
contribute
to
the
filling
of
this
empirical
void
by
tracing
the
struc-
tural
shape
the
international
use
of
force
has
taken
in
the
post-World
War
II
pe-
riod.
Patterns
of
forceful
interaction
within
the
central
and
peripheral
systems,
as
well
as
between
them,
must
be
delineated
to
comprehend
fully
the
changes
that
have
occurred
in
recent
decades
and
to
establish
a
foundation
for
projecting
the
forms
that
the
use
of
armed
force
might
assume
in
the
years
ahead.
To
guide
our
empirical
mapping,
six
basic
and
frequently
contradictory
hypotheses
derived
from
the
literature
on
structural
change
will
be
tested.
The
empirical
outcome-
that
is,
the
hypotheses
that
survive-will
add
to
our
slowly
growing
familiarity
with
the
complex
web
of
political
interactions
within
the
international
system.
Before
we
present
our
empirical
outcomes,
we
first
need
to
describe
briefly
the
arguments
we
have
chosen
to
examine
and
the
respective
hypotheses
ex-
tracted
from
them.
Also,
we
need
to
justify
how
we
propose
to
measure
the
vari-
ables
that
are
important
to
these
hypotheses.
Once
our
indicator
system
is
clarified,
we
will
then
be
in
a
position
to
consider
the
degree
of
correspondence
between
the
hypotheses
and
the
patterns
of
force
observed
over
the
past
forty
years.
INTERPRETATIONS
OF
STRUCTURAL
CHANGE
In
the
study
of
the
use
of
force,
much
analytical
attention
is
bestowed
on
the
specific
states
that
dominate
the
annals
of
interstate
coercion.
In
this
study,
we
turn
to
structural
models
in
order
to
avoid
dwelling
on
the
particular
and
to
attempt
to
comprehend
general
trends.’
As
it
happens,
most
of
the
struc-
1
Of
course,
our
implication
is
not
that
structural
analysis
offers
the
only
useful
approach
to
understanding
interstate
patterns
of
armed
force.
But
it
is
impossible
to
assess
all
To continue reading
Request your trial