great powers

“The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.”
  – Henry Kissinger

In this episode we update a classic article written by Andrew Mack back in 1975.  As I feel strongly enough that a 50-year-old article is worth re-investigating and much of this analysis is based on Mack’s original conclusions, I highly recommend you read the original which is easily available in digital format.  Its full title is “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict” and it appeared in the journal World Politics, Volume 27. 

How do massively outnumbered, outgunned, out-trained, and out-supplied guerillas sustain themselves in the field indefinitely?  What explains the paradox that even though the big nations win the key battles, such as the US with the Tet Offensive and the French in Algiers, they nevertheless find themselves in a weaker strategic position?   Would the outcomes have been different if the civilian leaderships did not tie the hands of their militaries?  These are rabbit holes that have some unsettling implications.

Part I of my two-part conversation with Jonathan Kirshner about his new book, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics. Kirshner explains why classical realism is a misunderstood intellectual tradition. We get into: Why realism recruits dead people into their intellectual tradition; what we can learn from Thucydides, and why an armchair understanding of the Peloponnesian War does more harm than good; why realist pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy; why international relations has somewhat lost its way; how we should think about the “national interest"; and distinctions between realist and progressive political economy.

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What is multipolarity?  Is the unipolar moment totally over? What is a great power?How do nukes fit into these questions? And how do the left, the right, and the restrainers metabolise these questions? Dr. Benjamin Zala and Dr. Van Jackson talk about all this and more in Part II of their conversation.

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Third Nuclear Age article by Andrew Futter and Ben Zala: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-international-security/article/strategic-nonnuclear-weapons-and-the-onset-of-a-third-nuclear-age/91EEB3B77D348252815F9F7B59DB8A32

Thinking clearly about China's nuclear expansion: https://www.duckofminerva.com/2021/11/whos-afraid-of-chinas-nukes.html

The limits of strategy under multipolarity: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/what-happens-when-you-do-primacy

Third Nuclear Age project site: https://thethirdnuclearage.com

Ben Zala's book, National Perspectives on a Multipolar Order: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526159373/

During World War II, there were six significant naval powers: the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. However,  compared to the other powers, the economic and shipbuilding might of the United States was far superior and proved to be a decisive factor in securing an Allied victory. The end of the war reset the global balance of power and left the United States as the unquestionable superpower. 

Paul Kennedy, the J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and founding director of International Security Studies at Yale University, joins Doug to unpack his latest book, Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II, and the lessons drawn for today’s great power competition on the high seas.

Follow Doug on Twitter @DouglasLFarrar.

You can order a copy of Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II, here.

Guests:

Galen Jackson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Williams College.

Aaron David Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process.

International Security Article:

This podcast is based on Galen Jackson, “Who Killed Détente? The Superpowers and the Cold War in the Middle East, 1969–1977,” International Security, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Winter 2019/20), pp. 129–162.

Additional Related Readings:

• Charles Glass, “Syrian Archives Add New Details to Henry Kissinger’s Disastrous Middle East Record,” Intercept, June 18, 2017.
• Missy Ryan, “After ISIS, U.S. Military Confronts Challenge from Russia, China in Middle East,” Washington Post, February 27, 2018.
• Olga Oliker, “Russia Has Been Playing a Canny Game in the Middle East, but Can It Continue?” Guardian, October 23, 2019.
• Galen Jackson, “The United States, the 1967 Lines, and the Future of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” War on the Rocks, May 26, 2020.
• Aaron David Miller, “Netanyahu Has (Almost) Nothing to Fear from a President Biden,” Haaretz, July 20, 2020.