Smith
given realism’s reliance on systemic conditioning of state behavior, I am only concerned
here with the post World War II era. It was during World War II that the system moved
away from being a Euro-centric to international system. The proliferation of states and
technology as well as the rise of truly global powers heightened the intensity of the
international system to where it can more reliably be considered to have a conditioning
effect on state behavior.
Wars and Expansion or Restraint?: A Brief Look at the Data
First, it seems prudent to simply look at whether other states generally pursue expansive
aims at the expense of one or all warring rivals. That is, once war erupts, do capable
others typically join the conflict, presumably seeking their own advantage? To test this,
I use Kristian Gleditsch’s revised and updated Correlates of War (COW) data on
interstate and intrastate wars.
Broadly speaking, conflict can refer to any dispute
between two or more actors. However, war is generally used to refer to a particularly
severe militarized dispute. The COW project has proposed an operational definition of
war that includes such events that involve more than 1,000 battle deaths over the duration
This definition of war has been widely accepted, providing a threshold for
distinguishing between wars and lower level conflicts. However, many have argued that
greater precision and consistency should be applied to identify differing levels of conflict
overtime, with wars involving 1,000 battle deaths annually.
Indeed, for our purposes, it
42
Berry Buzan and Ole Weaver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 14-25.
43
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Revised List of War between and within Independent States, 1816-2002”,
International Interactions Vol. 30 (2004), pp. 231-262.
44
Singer, J. David, and Melvin Small, “Correlates of War Project: International and Civil
War Data, 1816–1992” (ICPSR 9905). Codebook (Ann Arbor, MI: Interuniversity Consortium
of Political Social Research, 1994).
45
With lesser annual battle deaths given such terms as “intermediate conflict” for a particular year. See,
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Revised List of War between and within Independent States, 1816-2002”; and,
Nils Petter Gleditsch, et. al., “Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research
Vol. 39 (2003), pp. 615–637. Indeed, COW reportedly made similar such coding changes during the
1990s.
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Convention