Political Science 972: International Conflict
Optional Final Exam
Spring 2000
Administrative Details
1. This exam is optional: if you take the exam, it will count 15% towards your final grade. If not, that 15% will be distributed equally among the other three components (discussion, lit review, research paper) that determine your grade.
2. If you choose to take the exam, it is due in my mailbox by 4:30 on Tuesday, 16 May. Note that this is an earlier time than originally indicated in the syllabus; this change is due to my teaching in the exchange program KU has with the University of St. Louis in Senegal.
3. The modified deadline also applies to your research papers, as announced in class several weeks ago. I will email the grades back to the department and return the graded papers after I get back on 10 June. If you will not be around Lawrence during the summer, please give me an address where I can mail the paper to you.
Instructions for this exam
You should answer only two questions on the exam. All of these questions are comparable to qualifying exam questions on the topic of international conflict; in fact some of these are actually qualifying exam questions. Your answers should be approximately six pages in length (double-spaced, not including the bibliography) [This is somewhat shorter than qualifying exam answers, which are designed to be answered in about ten pages.]
The following instructions are a standard part of qualifying exams in international relations and also apply to this exam
Advice to the students: A good exam is characterized by coherent and forceful arguments based on existing work and evidence in the filed. A weak exam in one where the argument is made in isolation from the literature and/or where no argument is made. Almost all of the questions are designed to allow you to take a position on an issue. Do so, and don’t simply produce an annotated bibliography. In other words, use the questions to show that you both know the material and can present an argument as a scholar.
Examinations should demonstrate knowledge of the history and development of the filed. Relevant real world examples should be integrated and important recent published literature should be cited. [Note: in this exam, I am not expecting you to go beyond the required readings in this course, though you should feel free to include other material. In an actual qualifying exam, you are expected to also know the relevant recent literature not included in any syllabus.]
Questions: Answer only two
1 . Studies of international conflict usually sample from a broad span of history–typically the post-Napoleonic period (e.g., the Correlates of War project), and some times even the post-medieval period (e.g., the "long cycle" studies). Implicit in such designs is the assumption that the phenomenon of "war" is sufficiently consistent over a long period of time as to make generalizations about war valid even when they span centuries. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of that proposition: you should feel free to argue that some aspects of the phenomenon are consistent across time and that others are not.
2. "If states were truly rational, war would never occur." Discuss.
3. Agree or disagree: the Correlates of War project is essentially a good-faith effort to test the theory of realism as realism was understood by Morgenthau. Are there other theories of international conflict that could be tested using the CoW variables but have received only limited attention (you can assume that Midlarksky’s book is a good survey of the major CoW work)? Are there other theories that could be tested by collecting somewhat different variables?
4. "Some people have argued that the on-going evaluation of the ‘democratic peace’ hypothesis is one of the most important contributions that has been made by international relations theory in the past fifty years. Others feel that if they see one more paper on democratic peace, they’ll puke. Take a position on one side or the other of this issue." [The particular phrasing of this question is courtesy of one of my colleagues but the characterization of the debate is decidedly accurate…]
5. What are the possible linkages between war and large-scale organized political activity found in civilized societies. In particular, what are the arguments for and against these two extreme positions:
• The institution of war was fundamental to the development and maintenance of civilization;
• War is a relic of pre-civilized times and is a major threat to civilization;
More generally, to what extent does organized violence (both the preparations for and implementations of) determine the political and social structures of a society in general? To what extent do the economic structures and technology determine the organization of violence? Have there been key turning points in history where the answers to these questions changed; what has caused those? Be sure to discuss this in the context of the academic literature and arguments; don’t just give your own opinion.
6. To what extent is modern realism–the version that arose in the 1940s as a response to the failures of idealism–actually based in the earlier literature (Thucydides, etc), and to what extent is it at actually a new theory tuned to 20th century circumstances that, like any adept aspirant to a throne, claimed nonetheless to have an ancient pedigree? More generally, why does almost 2000 years pass between the earliest realist writers (Sun-Tzu and Thucydides) to where it was picked up by Machiavelli and Hobbes. What does this say about realism as a universal description of human behavior? Or did we just happen to have 2000 years of idiots?
7. Assess the proposition of whether low intensity conflict (LIC) is or is not significantly different from the conventional conflicts between states that I call "Clausewitzian.". By "significantly different", I mean that a theory or model developed on a set of cases of Clausewitzian conflict would be misleading if applied to LIC. Consider specifically the following possible sources of difference:
• The scale of the conflict in terms of the number of combatants and the length of time the conflict continues. Also the asymmetry of the two or more "sides."
• The absence of sovereign political authority on at least one side
• The causes of the conflict and, usually closely related, the objectives of the antagonists
• The inter-mixing of military and civilians
• The strategies and tactics typically employed by the antagonists
(Note that the various authors we have read have quite different opinions on this issue. Also note that the LIC category itself may be incorrectly lumping together several different types of behavior.)
8. Assess the various arguments by Mueller, Kaysen and others on the issue of the obsolescence of war. Pay particular attention to the following dimensions:
a. The extent to which the utility of war has changed due to social factors (both domestic and international) versus material factors (e.g. changes in technology and changes in the economic rewards of warfare.)
b. The extent to which this applies to major powers versus smaller powers, and also the definition of "power." For example, major economic powers might not find war effective, but states with less economic power (e.g. Iraq) might.
c. The role of non-state actors and the blurring of the lines between international and domestic conflict (as in Zaire/Congo or Chechnya, which occurred after most of these articles were written). Also the linkage between this and "democratization" in the general sense (i.e. the legitimation of democratic norms in most of the world.)
d. The role, if any, of nuclear weapons. The role, if any, of international organizations.
9. How does one intelligently and systematically assess the following key questions about which we have no empirical cases–your answer should focus on only one or two of these questions:
• The "long peace" in Europe during 1945-1989 was primarily due to the presence of nuclear weapons;
• There is a "nuclear threshold": any first-use of nuclear weapons to counter a conventional military disadvantage during a conflict between two antagonists armed with nuclear weapons will necessarily escalate to a full-scale use of those weapons ("full scale" being constrained only by the availability of weapons and appropriate delivery systems.)
• A "triad" system of multiple delivery systems, despite its expense, is significantly more stable than relying on a single mode of delivery systems.
• An effective system of civil defense and/or a significant (but not 100% effective) ABM system will significantly increase the likelihood of a political crisis escalating to the point of a nuclear conflict. In addition, per the usual argument, that escalation would take the form of a first strike by the state with the less-effective civil defense or ABM system.
10. Agree or disagree that the fundamental "deal" that virtually every society makes with its military is that acts of violence between members of the military are considered legitimate (i.e. those acts are not murder), but in exchange the military must abide by restrictions on how they can use violence. How effective is this when it is extended to individual responsibility to international law, which has been the trend since 1945? Pay particular attention to Christopher’s discussion of the potential conflict between the obligation to obey orders and the obligation to obey international law.
11. What is the linkage between human conflict on the individual level (as expressed in biological and psychological theories) or the group level (as expressed in anthropological theories) and the highly organized, pre-meditated political activitiy of war as expressed in bureaucratic and state-centered theories? Same question for lethal violence (as distinct from conflict) at those sub-political levels? To what extent is war a cooperative rather than a conflictual activity?