The security dilemma: A conceptual analysis

Security Studies

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 587-623

  Tang, Shiping ^a  

^a FUDAN UNIVERSITY   (China)

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EID: 70449642717     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410903133050     Document Type: Article

References (172)

1. I differentiate the term "security dilemma" from "security dilemma theory." The security dilemma is a concept for labeling a particular situation in international politics. Security dilemma theory is the body of knowledge that seeks to understand the underlying causes, regulations, and implications of the security dilemma. I also differentiate the security dilemma from its close relative-spiral. Also, we should differentiate a spiral from the spiral model. See section "Toward A More Precise Understanding: Remedies" below for details.
2. Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951);
3. John Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theories and Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951);
4. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), chap. 3;
5. Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30, no. 2 (January 1978): 167-214.
6. Charles L. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," World Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997): 171-201, quotation on 172.
7. For more, see Shiping Tang, "Fear in International Politics: Two Positions," International Studies Review 10, no. 3 (September 2008): 451-70. This is also why Jervis's "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma" is the foundational work of defensive realism.
8. Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), chap. 2;
9. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, NY: Norton, 2001), 35-6.
10. Seth Weinberger, "Institutional Signaling and the Origin of the Cold War," Security Studies 12, no. 4 (2003): 80-115.
11. Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, nos. 3 and 4 (Summer and Autumn 1983): 205-35, 323-53.
12. Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Makes of It," International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391-425.
13. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3;
14. Jack Snyder, "Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914," in Psychology and Deterrence, eds., Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Stein (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1985), 153-79;
15. Copeland, Origins of Major War.
16. Robert Jervis, "Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?" Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 36-60;
17. Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005);
18. Alan R. Collins, "GRIT, Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War," Review of International Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 201-19.
19. Barry Posen, 'The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 27-47.
20. I address the problem of security dilemma and ethnic conflict in Shiping Tang, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict: Toward a Dynamic and Integrative Theory of Ethnic Conflict," Review of International Studies (forthcoming).
21. Charles Glaser, "When Are Arms Races Dangerous?" International Security 28, no. 4 (Spring 2004): 44-84.
22. Chaim D. Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security 20, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 139-75.
23. Thomas J. Christensen, "China, the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia," International Security 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 49-80;
24. Christensen, "The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict," Washington Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 7-21.
25. The presence of disagreements on the security dilemma among scholars is confirmed by a survey of prominent scholars that have either developed some aspects of the concept and theory or have utilized the concept as a major analytical tool. A summary of the results of the survey is available from the author upon request.
26. As will become clear below, I also critique earlier efforts to provide a full conceptualization, notably Charles Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited"; and Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
27. In addition to the extensions of the security dilemma examined below, there is also a sustained attempt to strip-down the concept in the literature on the security dilemma in ethnic conflict. See Tang, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict."
28. Butterfield, History and Human Relations, 19-22.
29. Butterfield's "Universal sin of humanity" can be reasonably linked with Machiavelli's ambizione, Reinhold Niebuhr's "will to power," and Hans Morgenthau's "lust for power."
30. Note, however, only by attributing fear, and thus the security dilemma, to the "universal sin of humanity" can Butterfield claim that the security dilemma drives all human conflicts.
31. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, 157.
32. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism 3-4.
33. John Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 241.
34. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism, 12;
35. Herz International Politics in the Atomic Age, 234n5.
36. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 66.
37. Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," 169-70.
38. See also, Jervis, "Realism, Game Theory, and Cooperation," World Politics 40, no. 4 (April 1988): 317;
39. "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate," International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 49;
40. "Security Regimes," International Organization 36, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 358;
41. "Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?" 39.
42. Jervis, Perception and Misperceptions, 62, 76;
43. Jervis, "Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?"
44. This uncertainty about each other's present and future intentions under anarchy is crucial to the formation and maintenance of the security dilemma. Yet, many authors tend to forget this point, resulting in misunderstandings.
45. Jervis, "Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?" 57.
46. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 75, 80;
47. Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation,"
48. Jervis, however, has not been consistent. For example, when discussing the Franco-German relationship before World War I, Jervis argued that "the security dilemma here operated not as the unintended consequence of policy but rather as its object." Jervis, "Security Regimes," 361.
49. "Material regulators" are a more fitting label than "structural modifiers." Jeffrey W. Taliaferro recognized that structural modifiers are "material factors." Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited," International Security 25, no. 3 (Winter 2000-2001): 137.
50. Elsewhere, I have proposed that we replace the loose and often ill-informed dichotomies of status quo state/security-seeker versus revisionist state/power-seeker with the more rigorous dichotomy of defensive realist state versus offensive realist state. Shiping Tang, Defensive Realism: Toward a Coherent Statement (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), chap. 1. Briefly, defensive realist states do not threaten each other intentionally, and offensive realist states do.
51. From the very beginning, weapons (as tools of the early humans) have always had dual purposes: to kill and to avoid being killed. Because our ancestors had to confront many powerful nonhuman predators before they came to confront each other, they had to accumulate some (offensive) power before the security dilemma between them was created.
52. In the context of ethnic conflicts, anarchy can be de facto anarchy (that is, collapse of central authority).
53. Although logically uncertainty over others' intentions must precede fear: They are ontologically separate and are so closely intertwined that I list them together in Figure 1. See also, Tang, "Fear in International Politics."
54. Because the complete causal link from anarchy to the security dilemma and then to war is rather lengthy, the thesis that anarchy automatically generates the security dilemma and then conflict is open to question for many. See Andrew Kydd, "Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Why Security Seekers Do Not Fight Each Other," Security Studies 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1997): 91-121, 191;
55. Marc Trachtenberg, "The Question of Realism: A Historian's View," Security Studies 13, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 174;
56. Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It."
57. I address the link between the security dilemma and war in Tang, Defensive Realism, chap. 3.
58. For instance, deterrence policies can and, often do, produce unintended and self-defeating consequences. See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 81, 90.
59. See the section "Toward a More Precise Understanding: Remedies" below for details.
60. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 75;
61. Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation," 49.
62. Andrew Kydd, "Game Theory and the Spiral Model," World Politics 49, no. 2 (April 1997), 371-400.
63. See also Glaser, "Political Consequences," 507-8;
64. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 62-67.
65. Alan R. Collins, The Security Dilemma of Southeast Asia (London: Macmillan, 2000), 24.
66. This, of course, immediately begs the question how to read others' intentions. This problem is beyond the scope of this paper, and I shall merely point out that there are essentially two ways for reading another state's intentions: (1) observing its behavior toward other states; and (2) reassurance, that is signaling one's benign intentions and then gauging the other state's intentions by reading into its reaction toward one's signals of benign intentions. I elaborate on reassurance in Tang Defensive Realism, chap. 5. For a brief discussion,
67. Shiping Tang, "Correspondence: Uncertainty and Reassurance in International Politics," International Security 32, no. 1 (Summer 2007): 193-97.
68. Kydd and Weinberger both showed that states do deploy reassurance as a means of gauging others' intentions in the real world. See,
69. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust;
70. Weinberger, "Institutional Signaling."
71. Jervis did briefly allude to this issue in two footnotes.
72. See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 76n36 and 37. Neither Butterfield nor Herz had said anything explicitly about the relationship.
73. Randall L. Schweller, "Neorealism's Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?" Security Studies 5, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 114-55, at 118-19.
74. Arnold Wolfers, "'," Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 4 (December 1952): 481-502.
75. This distinction is only superficially similar to Kenneth Boulding's dichotomy of real incompatibility and illusory incompatibility. In reality, my formulation is very different from and subsumes Boulding's dichotomy. Most fundamentally, Boulding's dichotomy is all subjective: How states define their security requirements determines whether their interests are compatible. As a result, Boulding's dichotomy does not allow the possibility that even if there is subjective incompatibility, there may be no objective, or real incompatibility. In contrast, my formulation allows many possible combinations of objective/subjective, real/illusory, and compatibility/incompatibility. Kenneth Boulding, "National Images and International Systems," Journal of Conflict Resolution 3, no. 2 (June 1959): 130.
76. For earlier criticism of Boulding's dichotomy, see Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 75-76.
77. The situation in which there is neither objective nor subjective conflict of interest between two states is of little interest to students of international politics: the world is in perfect harmony, and the challenge for states is how to coordinate for collective benefits. There will be few, if any, active security dilemma in this world.
78. For instance, although both sides are benign and willing to settle for a compromise, one or two sides try to drive a hard bargaining, and the other side may well end up in believing that the state is malign, thus significantly worsening the security dilemma. I thank an anonymous reviewer of Security Studies for this example.
79. An example of the first possibility is that both sides want to use a water supply, but mistakenly believe there is not enough water for both of them even though the supply could meet both sides' needs through a cooperative water sharing and management scheme. An example of the second possibility is that under de facto anarchy, two ethnic groups that previously lived together peacefully end up believing that their security depends on excluding or subjugating each other, due to the fear of being dominated by the other group.
80. An example of this scenario will be that a chauvinistic (majority) group demands that other (minority) groups be subjugated (for example, the Croats versus the Serbs in Croatia after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia).
81. This scenario is likely to be rare and unlikely to last long; it is difficult for a true aggressor to conceal its true intention well and for long. See, Kydd, "Sheep in Sheep's Clothing," 153-54.
82. A situation in which both sides are already malign yet both sides also believe that their interests are compatible would be even rarer.
83. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 75;
84. Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation,"
85. Trachtenberg "The Question of Realism," 171.
86. Taliaferro, "Security Seeking Under Anarchy," 131, 136.
87. See also Glaser, "Security Dilemma Revisited";
88. Wheeler and Booth, "The Security Dilemma," 30.
89. This raises the empirical question, "How common are the security dilemmas?" I argue elsewhere that this question can only be resolved via a social evolutionary reading into the history of international politics. Briefly, security dilemmas were rare in the pre-1945 world, but have become far more prevalent in the post-1945 world. Shiping Tang, "Social Evolution of International Politics: From Mearsheimer to Jervis," European Journal of International Relations (forthcoming).
90. Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Makes of It," 401-2, 407;
91. Collins, Security Dilemma of Southeast Asia, 174.
92. I specifically argue that competitive self-help anarchy allows for the rise of the security dilemma because there have been other types of anarchies. By arguing that defensive realism does rely on structure to drive conflicts, I do not necessarily agree that structure alone can drive international conflicts. Human psychology is indispensable.
93. Schweller, "Neorealism's Status Quo Bias," 117-19.
94. Glenn H. Snyder, "The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics," World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984): 462n2.
95. Booth and Wheeler, Security Dilemma, 4-5;
96. Wheeler and Booth, "The Security Dilemma."
97. Boulding, "National Images and International Systems," 130;
98. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 76, 80.
99. Jervis recognized some of the potential drawbacks of this dichotomy, but did not elaborate.
100. Collins, Security Dilemma in Southeast Asia, 18-19, 22-25, 175-76, quotation on 22.
101. Of course, if the illusory incompatibility is due to one or both sides' misperception that their security interests are incompatible, yet neither side harbors malign intentions toward each other, the situation is a security dilemma.
102. Indeed, if the security dilemma cannot drive states to severe illusory incompatibility, it will have little role in driving states to actual conflict.
103. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategies"; Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy"; and Paul Roe, "Actors' Responsibility in Tight, Regular, or Loose Security Dilemmas," Security Dialogue 32, no. 1 (March 2001): 103-16.
104. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategies," 499-500, 502.
105. Of course, such a stand means that security-seeking motives do not necessarily equate to benign intention. Glaser, however, is not so sure of this "independence" of motive and intention because he also noted that "they may share a single source." See Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 502n6. I partly agree with Glaser that motive (that is, goals) and intention are somewhat independent of each other.
106. Indeed, this is the position Glaser took more recently, emphasizing that even if a state is greedy, as long as the motive for their behavior is security-seeking, the security dilemma still operates, although in a somewhat weaker fashion. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," 174, 190-91, 199-200.
107. This, of course, contradicts Glaser's initial position that motive and intention are independent of each other.
108. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists," 67;
109. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited";
110. Glaser, "When Are Arms Races Dangerous."
111. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner' Sons, 1960 [1932]), 42
112. Indeed, some offensive realists argue explicitly that their theory starts with the assumption that states seek security, and it just happens that their theory leads to the conclusion that maximizing relative power, which mandates offensive or intentionally threatening behavior, is the best and the only sure means toward security. See Eric Labs, "Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims," Security Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer 1997): 4-5, 11;
113. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 29, 34.
114. Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy," 147-49.
115. I discuss these cases and Taliaferro's errors in greater detail in Tang, Defensive Realism, chap. 3.
116. Wolfers, "National Security," 485-89.
117. Jervis, "Realism, Game Theory, and Cooperation," 318.
118. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," 172.
119. Snyder, "Perceptions of the Security Dilemma."
120. Snyder's "deadlock" captures the situation between two offensive realist states, and Snyder was correct in not labeling it as a sort of (security) dilemma.
121. This misconception informs Stuart Kaufman's problematic application of the security dilemma to ethnic conflict. See Tang, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict."
122. Snyder, "Perceptions of the Security Dilemma," 155-56, 165-66.
123. Wheeler and Booth, "The Security Dilemma," 10.
124. To their credit, Booth and Wheeler have dropped this misleading label in their new book. Because their new definition of the concept does not contain the lack of malign intentions, however, their new definition still allows the possibility of "deliberate security dilemma." See the discussion above.
125. Collins, The Security Dilemma of Southeast Asia, 10-13.
126. Collins, The Security Dilemma of Southeast Asia, 12.
127. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 499-508.
128. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 501n4.
129. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 502.
130. Glaser appears to recognize this elsewhere, as he repeatedly emphasizes that uncertainty is critical for security dilemma and that insecurity is predicted by the structure of international politics. See Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategies," 507;
131. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," 189-93, 195.
132. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3. Indeed, Jervis never defined the spiral and the spiral model, nor did he define the security dilemma rigorously.
133. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisted," 171.
134. See also Copeland, Origins of Major War, 52;
135. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 499;
136. Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation," 49;
137. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust, 50;
138. Schweller, "Neorealism's Status Quo Bias," 117;
139. Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy," 147-50.
140. American Heritage Dictionary (New York: Dell Publishing, 1983), 638;
141. Concise Oxford Dictionary, 10th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1,384;
142. McMillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (London: McMillan, 2002), 1, 377.
143. Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," 185-86. One may argue that these imperialist states only threatened each other on interests beyond survival and security (that is, colonies). Yet, exactly because they were willing to risk war on nonsecurity interests, they were offensive realist states.
144. Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," 185;
145. Snyder, "Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914." Jervis thus actually alluded to Snyder's ill-informed labels of "imperialist security dilemma" and "deadlock" without labeling them.
146. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy," 499.
147. Snyder, "Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914," 154-55.
148. Thus, there is a gray area between a "deep" security dilemma and a spiral, and this may make it difficult to differentiate the two in practice. This difficulty we cannot escape.
149. I address the nature of the Cold War through the lens of the security dilemma and spiral in detail in Tang, Defensive Realism.
150. Tang, "Social Evolution of International Politics."
151. Making policy makers realize the danger of inadvertent war driven by the vicious dynamics of the security dilemma and showing them the way out may well reduce the unlikelihood of such wars. Hence, our educational exercise will actually act as a self-denying prophecy. But this is a small scientific price worth paying.
152. Because regulators do not require a lack of malign intentions to operate, I do not differentiate the security dilemma and the spiral in this part of the discussion.
153. Monica Duffy Toft singled out the concentration of minority groups as another material regulator of the ethnic spiral or security dilemma. Because concentration of minority groups is essentially an un-mixing of minority groups, concentration and mixing are two sides of the same coin. I thus group the two as one variable. Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and Territory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
154. Snyder, "Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics."
155. Stuart J. Kaufman, "Spiralling to Ethnic War," International Security 21, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 108-38.
156. Posen, 'The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict."
157. Only one psychological regulator of the security dilemma-the perceived (that is, subjective) offense-defense balance-has received sustained attention from IR scholars.
158. Kaufman, "Spiralling to Ethnic War"; and Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict." See also, Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 5-39.
159. Jonathan Mercer, Reputation in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Daryl Press,
160. Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threat During Crisis (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005);
161. Shiping Tang, "Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict," Security Studies 24, no. 4 (October 2005): 34-62. One can certainly argue that concern for reputation among U.S. leaders during the Cold War has played an important role in driving the spiral between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
162. Robert McMahon, "Credibility and World Power: Exploring the Psychological Dimension in Postwar American Diplomacy," Diplomatic History 15, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 455-71.
163. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
164. See Tang, "Fear in International Politics," and references cited there.
165. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 372-78.
166. For a good review on prospect theory, see Jack S. Levy, "Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations," International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (March 1997): 87-112.
167. The Dniestr region in Moldova may be one such case. See Kaufman, "Spiralling to Ethnic War."
168. Wheeler and Booth, "The Security Dilemma," 40.
169. Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789-1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), chap. 5. I thank Li Mingjiang for bringing this case to my attention.
170. Gideon Rose, "Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy," World Politics 51, no. 1 (October 1998): 144-72.
171. Kydd, "Sheep in Sheep's Clothing," 129-39.
172. James D. Fearon, "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes," American Political Science Review 88, no. 3 (September 1994): 577-92.