POS 304404: Great Power Politics 03292006

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics03/29/2006

• Course Agenda.
• Research tool ISA Annual Convention Paper
  Archive.
  
• Paper assignment 3 distributed due 04/19/2006.
• Expanded descriptions due/weeklies due.
• Midterm exams returned at end of class.
• 03/22 weeklies returned via e-mail tomorrow
  (Thursday).
  
• Lecture.
• Presentations. Cuban Missile Crisis and WMD.
• Great Powers in Action.
• Offshore Balancers.
• United States as test of offensive realism and
  its limits.
  
• Haas.
• Sino-Soviet Split. End of the Cold War.
• Video Cases
• McNamara on Cuban Missile Crisis Dec. 1989
  Gorbachev signals collapse of ideological
  distance 1990 Collapse of Soviet State.
  

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• Presentations.
• Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction.
• Video McNamara. The Fog of War. 2004 documentary
  - Oscar Winner.
  
• Chapters 3 - 7 - 12minutes.
• Who does Robert McNamara sound like, Mearsheimer,
  Haas, or a unique perspective re Cold War great
  power politics and effect of the nuclear
  revolution?
• Discussion question.
• Discussion Question 03/22/06
• In your opinion which of the two scholars has a
  better theoretical and empirical explanation for
  the "end of the Cold War"?
  

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• Great Powers in Action.
• Mearsheimer marshals evidence to support
  theoretical offensive realist argument.
  
• History of great power politics is clash of
  revisionists.
  
• Status quo powers are regional hegemons.
• Regional hegemony is pinnacle.
• Global hegemony impossible.
• Cases
• Japan.
• Germany.
• Soviet Union.
• United Kingdom.
• United States.
• Italy (least of the Great Powers).

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• Great Powers in Action.
• Cases
• Self Defeating Behavior.
• Japan and Germany.
• Nuclear Arms Race/Revolution.
• US and Soviet Nuclear Policy.
• Each sought superiority.

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• United States.
• Offshore balancer, would intervene in other
  regions when regional hegemons began to emerge.
  
• Preferred to buck-pass.
• United States - Internal elements of national
  power.
  
• Aggressive expansion to the west.
• Manifest Destiny and Monroe Doctrine.
• Power maximization and influence of domestic
  political structures and ideology.
  
• America begins as revolutionary state founded in
  anti-colonial struggle - what role does this
  play?
  
• Manifest Destiny.
• Monroe Doctrine.
• Genocide and Slavery as elements of national
  power.
  
• Indigenous population as External Threat.

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• Indian Wars.
• 10,000,000 North of Rio Grande pre-contact.
• Disease, war, relocation - 300,000 by 1930.
• Revolutionary War period.
• Both sides have alliances with indigenous.
• War of 1812.
• Removal/Ethnic Cleansing.
• Removal Treaties.
• 1818, 1820, 1821.
• Indian Removal Act 1830.
• Indigenous removed West of Mississippi.
• 1850 reservation system established.
• 1860s-1870s - Large scale resistance and conflict
  between military, settlers, and indigenous.
  
• Conclusion - December 1890 Battle of Wounded
  Knee.
  
• Sioux warriors, women and children killed.

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• Indian Wars.
• Major campaigns/wars.
• Miami - 1790-95.
• Tippecanoe 1811.
• Creeks - 1813-14, 1836-37.
• Black Hawk - 1832.
• Comanches - 1867-75.
• Apaches - 1873, 1885-86.
• Little Big Horn 1876-77.
• Nez Perces - 1877.
• Bannocks 1878.
• Cheyennes - 1878-79.
• Utes - 1879-80.
• Pine Ridge - 1890-91.

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• Ideology and Race.
• Mearsheimer omission.
• Howe addresses - More totally than anywhere else
  since first Spanish invasions of the Americas,
  native peoples were physically destroyed or
  marginalized p. 59.
• Racial hierarchies and ideology.
• Legitimization for military action.
• Perception of enemies and threat.
• Ideology and Race Indian Wars.
• 400 year low intensity conflict.
• Indigenous population viewed as impediment to
  American expansion.
  
• Savages - treaties merely expedient.
• treaties were expedients by which ignorant,
  intractable, and savage people were induced
  without bloodshed to yield what civilized peoples
  had the right to possess.... 1830 Governor of
  Georgia
• Contradictory Impulses.
• Assimilation vs. Elimination.

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• Post-Revolutionary Consolidation.
• Civil War decides dominant/hegemonic
  faction/network of elites.
  
• Displacement/genocide of indigenous population.
• Lebensraum American style.
• Ethnic cleansing - racialist ideologies.
• Example of limited conception of human rights
  19th/20th centuries.
  
• Massive immigration and settlement of conquered
  territory.
  
• Rapid industrialization and economic expansion.
• Monroe Doctrine and attempt at isolating Western
  Hemisphere from penetration by other great
  powers.
  
• France attempted Mexico.
• Germany - World War I and World War II - Mexico
  and Latin America.
  
• Soviet Union - Cuba and interaction with and
  support for other Marxist and national liberation
  movements.
  

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• United States Strategic Imperative.
• Realist motivations only?
• Realism and ideological infrastructure for
  revolutionary/anti-colonial, national liberation
  movements.
  
• American Revolution.
• France and United Kingdom rivalry.
• Analogies to US and Soviet rivalry.
• War of 1812.
• United Kingdom partially motivated to prevent US
  from becoming even more powerful through
  acquisition of Canada.
  
• England and Spain provide military assistance to
  indigenous.
  

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• United States Military Interventions.
• Europe.
• Period One 1900-1917.
• US buck-passing relying on Triple Entente.
• Period 2 1917-1923.
• World War I, post-War occupation, containment of
  Soviet Union.
  
• Period 3 1923-1940.
• Buck-passing/isolation.
• Period 4 1940-1945.
• World War II - Germany.
• Period 5 1940-1990.
• Cold War - Soviet Union.
• Period 6 1991-2001.
• Enlargement of NATO, Humanitarian Intervention.
• Period 7 2001-?
• War on Terror - Anti-Proliferation.

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• United States Interventions.
• Asia.
• Period 1 1900-early 1930s.
• Minor deployments of troops.
• No systematic intervention - no potential
  regional hegemon.
  
• Period 2 1930s-1940.
• Japan ascendant but balanced by UK and China.
• Period 3 1940-1945.
• Japan potential hegemon.
• US flows troop to region before Pearl Harbor.
• Period 4 1945-1990.
• Cold War.
• Period 5 1991-2001.
• PRC as potential hegemon.
• Period 6 2001-?
• War on Terror, WMD, PRC.

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• United Kingdom.
• Offshore balancer to Continental Europe.
• Period 1 1792-1815 Containment of France.
• Period 2 1816-1904 - Splendid Isolation.
• Period 3 1905-1930 - Containment of Germany.
• Period 4 1930-1939 - Limited Liability.
• Period 5 1939-1945 - World War II.
• Period 6 1945-1990 - Cold War containment.
• Period 7 1991-2001 - NATO/EU enlargement,
  humanitarian intervention.
  
• Period 8 2001-? - War on Terror, EU, cooperation
  with US.
  

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• Haas - Sino-Soviet Split.
• Why the split?
• Haas admits that case is most obvious (apparent)
  exception to books core claims (146).
  
• Conflict over competing interpretations of
  Marxism-Leninism.
  
• Maos radicalization amplified split.
• Realist explanations of formation to a certain
  extent correct.
  
• PRC ideological distance from SU and US.
• Period 1 1953-1958.
• Split power differential (no-too rapid split).
• Hundred Flowers (56) and the Great Leap Forward
  (58).
  
• Mao increasingly suspicious.

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• Haas - End of the Cold War.
• Diminishment of ideological distance explains
  pacific (relatively) end of the Cold War.
  
• Competing Explanations
• Collapse of Soviet economy and regime
  legitimacy.
  
• Declining relative power leads to retrenchment.
• Ideologies of domestic change key.
• Soviet Union Old and New Thinkers.
• Ideology drove threat perception by hardliners
  and reformers.
  
• Ideology drove foreign policy decisions.
• United States.
• Ideological beliefs remained constant.
• Reagan and Bush I foreign/natsec/intel. Adapted
  to domestic changes in Soviet Union, not changes
  in power.
  
• Video Cases 1989 (signaling ideological shifts)
  1990 reformists survive coup, collapse of SU.
  

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• Discussion Question for 04/04/2006.
• Posted in course website, under announcements,
  tomorrow (Thursday).