POLS2132: War and International Relations Comprehensive Glossary

A comprehensive 100-card vocabulary set covering the causes, theories, international law, domestic mechanisms, economics, alliances, civil conflicts, and technological dynamics of war and international relations.

War (Technical Definition)

A military engagement between organized forces resulting in at least $1{,}000$ battle deaths.

War (Clausewitzian Definition)

Carl von Clausewitz's conceptualization of war as "politics by other means," defined as the organized use of violent force to achieve political ends.

Obsolescence of War Thesis (Goldstein & Pinker)

The argument advanced by Joshua Goldstein and Steven Pinker that war is disappearing and becoming obsolete, evidenced by a steady decline in battle deaths since World War II, the lack of great power conflict since the Korean War in 1953, and the absence of European wars.

Braumoeller's Critique on War Frequency

Bear Braumoeller's empirical finding that recorded history averages $2$ major wars per century (with the 20th century right in line) and that the apparent "Long Peace" is not statistically unusual once controlling for the number of states and geographic opportunities for conflict.

Monadic Definition of War

The Just War Theory approach that defines and evaluates war through the choice of violence made by an individual actor or party to the conflict (eg. assessing whether Britain's war against Germany was justified, for instance) rather than treating war as a systemic interaction of all parties.

Pacifism

A normative philosophy grounded in nonviolence and religious principles (such as Christianity's "blessed are the peacemakers") that rejects war entirely as an acceptable means for obtaining peace, maintaining that the massive, systematic, deliberate killing of human beings can never be justified.

Realism (International Morality)

The theoretical position that morality does not exist under international anarchy; state leaders are solely responsible for constituent welfare, making any prudent means to advance domestic security "just" while warning that institutionalized legal structures like the ICC increase international disorder.

Deus Vult (1095)

The Latin declaration meaning "God wills it!" proclaimed by Pope Urban II in 1095 to launch the First Crusade, mobilizing European Christians to capture Jerusalem from Islamic control (achieved in 1099) under holy war ideology.

Marxist Theory of War (Engels / Kára)

As formulated by Friedrich Engels and examined by Karel Kára (1968), the doctrine that war encompasses armed struggles between global societies (clans, tribes, states), social classes (civil war), or subjected nations striving against states that impede their independent development.

Just War Theory (JWT)

A normative ethical tradition that attempts to define the objective conditions and ethical criteria under which the use of political violence and warfare is morally justified.

Jus ad Bellum

The branch of Just War Theory governing the legal and moral criteria that must be satisfied before a state or political entity enters into an armed conflict.

Jus in Bello

The branch of Just War Theory establishing the moral and legal rules of conduct and restraint required of combatants during the execution of warfare.

Jus post Bellum

The branch of Just War Theory (elaborated by May 2012) governing justice in the termination and aftermath of war, encompassing rebuilding, retribution, reconciliation, restitution, reparation, proportionality, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Just Cause (Jus ad Bellum)

A core jus ad bellum requirement stipulating that a war can only be initiated for a grave, legitimate reason, predominantly self-defense against armed aggression or the defense of other states facing imminent harm.

Legitimate Authority (Jus ad Bellum)

The jus ad bellum principle requiring that the decision to wage war be made and publicly declared by a recognized governmental entity possessing constitutional or legal legitimacy to order armed violence.

Principle of Discrimination

A central jus in bello rule requiring combatants to strictly distinguish between active combatants and non-combatant civilians, prohibiting direct attacks on civilians and protecting prisoners of war (POWs).

Principle of Proportionality (Jus in Bello)

The jus in bello constraint dictating that the expected physical harm, civilian casualties, and collateral damage of a military operation must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage sought.

Moral Equality of Combatants (McMahan Critique)

The traditional Just War assumption that soldiers on both sides of a war possess equal moral rights to fight and kill, an assumption critiqued by philosopher Jeff McMahan as illogical if one side fights in an explicitly unjust war.

Rationalist Assumptions

The theoretical premise that political actors possess well-defined preferences, process objective information accurately, and strategically choose the optimal course of action given external environmental constraints.

Bargaining Range

The set of negotiated divisions or policy compromises that both opposing states strictly prefer to fighting, which exists because warfare is intrinsically destructive and costly.

Issue Indivisibility

A potential cause of bargaining failure occurring when a disputed good or asset cannot be divided without destroying its essential value, though pure indivisibility is rare due to the availability of side payments.

Incomplete Information

A rationalist cause of war where opposing states lack accurate knowledge about each other's military capabilities or resolve, leading both sides to overestimate their likelihood of winning and make incompatible bargaining demands.

Incentive to Misrepresent

The strategic motivation for states to conceal true weaknesses, exaggerate their fighting power, or bluff regarding their resolve to extract a superior negotiated settlement from an adversary.

Commitment Problem

A rationalist mechanism of war where states are unable to credibly promise that they will abide by an agreement in the future, particularly when anticipation of shifting power gives a rising state future incentives to renege.

Power Shift (Commitment Problem)

A dynamic where an impending shift in relative military strength eliminates the overlap between current and future bargaining ranges, causing the declining state's value for war today to exceed any bargain the rising state will offer tomorrow.

Preventive War

A war initiated by a declining state against a rising adversary while the declining state retains relative military advantage, designed to prevent the adversary from becoming powerful enough to dictate future terms.

Stag Hunt (Game Theory)

A game theoretic model illustrating coordination on shared interests, where mutual cooperation produces the highest joint payoff (hunting the stag, yielding $(4, 4)$), but uncertainty over the partner's choice incentivizes settling for a rabbit ($(2, 2)$).

Prisoner's Dilemma

A game theoretic interaction where individual rational incentives strictly favor unilateral defection over cooperation, resulting in a suboptimal equilibrium ($(2, 2)$) even though mutual cooperation ($(3, 3)$) yields superior welfare for all players.

Security Dilemma (SD)

The structural condition under international anarchy wherein defensive actions taken by one state to increase its own security inadvertently provoke fear and counter-mobilization in others, leaving all states less secure.

Offense-Defense Balance

A structural factor dictating whether military technology, tactics, and geography confer an advantage to the attacker or the defender, with defense dominance rendering the Security Dilemma far less severe.

Costly Signaling (Security Dilemma)

The communication of intentions via observable actions or concessions (such as arms control or unilateral restraint) that are prohibitively costly for a hostile state to adopt, enabling benign states to build mutual trust.

Optimism Bias

A systematic psychological tendency of decision-makers to exaggerate their own military capabilities, resolve, and chances of winning relative to an opponent.

Wishful Thinking

The cognitive error of inflating the perceived likelihood of a desired policy or military outcome simply because that outcome is desirable to the actor.

Cognitive Dissonance / Closure

A psychological bias in favor of maintaining preexisting beliefs, leading leaders to discount, dismiss, or misinterpret incoming information that challenges established assessments (e.g., Spain failing to anticipate US intervention in 1898).

Confirmation Bias

The cognitive tendency of policymakers to selectively register and overvalue evidence that supports their preexisting hypotheses while ignoring contradictory evidence.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The psychological misperception where decision-makers view an adversary's actions as products of intrinsic malice or aggression, while attributing their own actions entirely to situational, defensive constraints.

Out-Group Bias

The psychological inclination to project hostile motives, untrustworthiness, and malign intent onto actors or groups outside of one's own identity group.

Extrapolation of Trends (Domino Theory)

The cognitive fallacy assuming that small, localized political or military losses will trigger an uncontrollable, cascading chain reaction of failure across an entire theater, as applied by US planners during the Vietnam War.

Prospect Theory

A behavioral decision theory positing that actors evaluate potential outcomes relative to a reference point rather than in absolute terms, displaying risk-averse behavior toward potential gains but risk-acceptant behavior toward potential losses.

Loss Aversion

A core tenet of prospect theory where decision-makers experience losses far more acutely than equivalent gains, driving states confronting perceived losses or decline to take disproportionately dangerous, risky gambles.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The psychological irrationality of committing additional resources and human casualties to a failing war policy ("throwing good money after bad") in a futile bid to justify past, unrecoverable losses.

Sex-Based Security Dilemma

An evolutionary gender perspective arguing that male physical traits and reproductive competition historically created pervasive threats among men, incentivizing the formation of patriarchal alliances for mutual defense and dominance.

Male Kin Group (MKG)

A historical social organization characterized by cooperation among biologically related males to protect against external male rivals, developing internal dominance hierarchies that subordinated women and competed with rival groups.

Militarized Masculinity

Sociocultural norms and gender expectations that glorify martial prowess, physical aggression, and dominance, thereby lowering a society's perceived net costs of waging war.

War as Information-Revealing

The dynamic process whereby physical fighting and battlefield outcomes demonstrate actual military capability and resolve, directly eliminating incomplete information and incentives to misrepresent.

Wars of Incomplete Information (Termination)

Conflicts triggered by misjudgments of capabilities or resolve that tend to be relatively brief, terminating as soon as combat outcomes clarify relative power and compel the weaker party to concede.

Wars of Commitment Problems (Termination)

Conflicts driven by power transitions that routinely become "fights to the finish," ending primarily through decisive conquest, destruction of military capability, or regime change because signed agreements cannot be credibly enforced.

Civil War Postwar Disarmament Dilemma

The acute commitment problem in civil wars wherein opposing domestic factions must share geographic space and governmental institutions post-conflict, meaning that laying down arms leaves combatants entirely vulnerable to extermination if the rival cheats.

Third-Party Enforcement (Civil Wars)

An external intervention by a credible outside actor or state that guarantees security, monitors disarmament, and enforces settlements, serving as the most effective mechanism to overcome commitment problems in civil wars.

"Failing on the Installment Plan" (Biddle 2013)

Stephen Biddle's critique of the US campaign in Afghanistan, where the inability to militarily defeat the Taliban combined with the Afghan military's lack of independent capability resulted in prolonged, incremental failure and rapid collapse upon US withdrawal in 2021.

Civil War (Cunningham Definition)

Armed conflicts involving the central government that occur within an existing country's territory, featuring organized opposition groups and sustained, high levels of violent conflict.

Anocracy

A regime type exhibiting an institutional mixture of democratic and autocratic practices, characterized by high internal fragility and the highest statistical vulnerability to civil conflict.

Insurgency (Fearon & Laitin Definition)

A technology of military conflict characterized by small, lightly armed insurgent bands practicing guerrilla warfare from rural base areas against state forces.

State Weakness Hypothesis (Fearon & Laitin 2003)

The empirical finding from 161 countries (1945–1999) that conditions favoring insurgency—specifically financially, organizationally, and militarily weak central states marked by poverty, instability, and large populations—predict civil war far better than ethnic/religious fractionalization or political grievances.

Burhan and Hemedti

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (Sudanese Armed Forces) and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo [Hemedti] (Rapid Support Forces), the two generals whose struggle for state control triggered the Sudan civil war in April 2023.

Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu

The military governor of Eastern Nigeria who led the attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra (1967–1970) citing the Nigerian federal government's inability to protect the Igbo population from genocide.

March 23 Movement (M23)

A Rwanda-backed rebel movement operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo that captured Goma and Bukavu in early 2025 in an ongoing conflict fueled by regional tensions and mineral wealth.

Civil War Recurrence Rates (Victory vs. Negotiation)

The empirical finding (1940–2007) that outright military victory reduces the likelihood of civil war recurrence by $24\%$ relative to other settlements, whereas negotiated settlements increase recurrence risk by $27\%$.

Public International Law

The collective system of rules, customary norms, and binding treaties that govern formal interactions and legal duties among sovereign states and recognized international bodies.

Treaty

A formal, legally binding written agreement concluded between sovereign states (or their representatives) and governed by the rules of international law.

Pacta Sunt Servanda

The foundational bedrock doctrine of international treaty law establishing that agreements must be kept and honored by signatory states in good faith.

Lieber Code (1863)

General Orders No. 100 drafted by Francis Lieber during the American Civil War, setting an early legal precedent for codified laws of war by detailing military necessity, civilian protections, and the ethical treatment of POWs.

Henri Dunant

The Swiss humanitarian who, after witnessing the Battle of Solferino (1859), co-founded the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 and prompted the drafting of the original Geneva Convention (1864).

1925 Geneva Protocol

An international humanitarian treaty signed in 1925 prohibiting the wartime battlefield use of chemical weapons, asphyxiating gases, and bacteriological methods of warfare.

Morrow's Law of War Findings (Reciprocity)

James Morrow's finding that international laws of war function through reciprocal state enforcement, with joint treaty ratification producing the largest compliance increases, while compliance remains highest for chemical/biological weapons and armistices and lowest for POWs and civilians.

International Criminal Court (ICC)

A permanent international judicial body established under the Rome Statute (entered into force in 2002) with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crimes of aggression.

Rome Statute Jurisdiction

The legal scope empowering the ICC over crimes committed post-2002 that either occurred on member territory, were committed by a member state's national, or were referred by the UN Security Council.

Guns vs. Butter Trade-Off

The fundamental economic dilemma between state allocations for military readiness ("guns"), which provide immediate security, and domestic investments in education, health, and infrastructure ("butter"), which expand long-term productive capacity.

Latent Military Power

A sovereign state's underlying demographic, economic, and industrial capacity that serves as the essential material foundation for developing active armed forces.

Commercial Peace Theory

The liberal argument that extensive international trade and cross-border economic interdependence reduce the risk of armed conflict by generating substantial opportunity costs that make war economically irrational.

Capitalist Peace

The proposition that advanced industrial capitalism promotes international peace by maximizing the gains of open trade, generating convergent preferences over global economic order, and creating institutions that clarify the costs of war.

Autarkic vs. Interdependent Subsystems (1914)

The historical analysis of World War I positing that Europe contained an interdependent subsystem (UK, France, Germany, Russia) that resolved crises peacefully, and an autarkic subsystem (Austria-Hungary and Serbia) that initiated war and entrapped the interdependent states.

Wartime Belligerent Trade (Grinberg)

The historical phenomenon identified by Grinberg where belligerents maintain direct or indirect trade during active military conflict to minimize domestic economic strain while acquiring goods unavailable from other sources.

Alliance (Formal Definition)

A formal, legally binding international treaty between two or more sovereign states committing them to coordinate military force under specified strategic conditions, typically to deter or coerce a third party.

Balance of Threat Theory (Walt)

Stephen Walt's realist modification stating that states align against perceived threats rather than raw power alone, with threat defined by aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive military capability, and perceived aggressive intentions.

Alliance Reliability vs. Alliance Credibility

The strategic divergence between an ally's actual intention and willingness to fulfill its defensive pledge (reliability) and the adversary's subjective assessment of whether that commitment will be honored in a crisis (credibility).

Interoperability (Alliances)

The operational harmonization of military equipment, doctrines, joint exercises, and command structures among alliance partners, which increases joint combat efficacy but entails significant autonomy costs.

Chain-Ganging

An alliance pathology wherein an unconditional security commitment unconditionally chains a state to an aggressive or reckless partner, pulling it involuntarily into an unwanted war (moral hazard).

Buck-Passing

A strategic behavior in multipolar systems where a threatened state avoids balancing costs against a rising aggressor, attempting instead to let a third-party ally bear the financial and military burdens of defense.

Balancing

The realist strategy where weaker states coalesce and form an alliance against the dominant or most dangerous power to deter aggression and protect their sovereign survival.

Bandwagoning

The alignment strategy where a threatened or opportunistic state allies directly with the stronger, aggressive power to share in wartime spoils or avoid being attacked, which realists note increases systemic vulnerability.

Pre-Alliance Reassurance (Bargaining with Third Parties)

The strategic process where a state signals its reliability to a prospective ally by taking a hard-line stance in negotiations with that ally's rivals or offering significant concessions to that ally's existing clients.

Collective Security Organization (CSO)

A universal or broadly inclusive international institution (e.g., the United Nations) established to preserve peace among all members under the core doctrine that an act of aggression against one member constitutes an attack on all.

Collective Action Problem in CSOs

The structural failure in collective security arising because peace is a non-excludable public good, incentivizing self-interested states to shirk and free-ride on the troop and monetary contributions of others.

Peace Enforcement vs. Peacekeeping

The operational distinction between UN Chapter VII peace enforcement (heavily armed, non-neutral interventions deployed against an aggressor) and traditional peacekeeping (lightly armed, impartial deployments monitoring an agreed ceasefire with host-nation consent).

Institutional Solutions to the Prisoner's Dilemma

Mechanisms provided by international institutions to overcome defection equilibria: providing transparency, routinizing procedures to lower transaction costs, enabling tit-for-tat reciprocity, and extending the shadow of the future through indefinite iteration.

Democratic Peace Theory (Dyadic)

The empirical finding in international relations that mature democratic states almost never fight wars against one another, even though they frequently engage in military conflict with non-democratic states.

Regime Type and War Costs

The structural relationship where democracies possess the widest bargaining range because leaders are accountable to cost-sensitive voters, whereas personalist dictators are insulated from costs and bear minimal penalties, narrowing the bargaining range and raising war risk.

Median Voter Selection in Foreign Policy

The democratic institutional mechanism whereby open electoral competition drives candidates toward the center of voter preferences, systematically selecting leaders with moderate foreign policy postures who are sensitive to public war costs.

Domestic Audience Costs

The political and electoral penalties imposed by domestic voters or elites on an executive leader who publicly escalates an international crisis or makes overt military threats and subsequently backs down.

Coup-Proofing (Personalist Regimes)

Survival strategies employed by personalist dictators—including appointing officers based on personal loyalty over competence, dividing commands, and intentionally restricting operational capabilities—which weaken national military effectiveness.

Bureaucratic Politics Model ("Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit")

The foreign policy framework positing that governmental departments and military branches advocate for policies that maximize their own organizational budgets, prestige, and autonomy rather than the objective national interest.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Pre-established, routinized bureaucratic rules utilized by agencies to manage complex tasks, which can generate catastrophic miscalculations when applied rigidly during unprecedented diplomatic or military crises.

Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) vs. Nuclear Destruction

The theoretical debate between John Mueller (who argues nuclear weapons are non-revolutionary because conventional weapons like the Massive Ordnance Air Blast yield comparable devastation) and Robert Jervis (who maintains nuclear weapons are qualitatively revolutionary due to instantaneous, assured destruction).

Counterforce vs. Countervalue Targeting

The strategic targeting distinction in nuclear doctrine between aiming weapons directly at an adversary's military assets, nuclear silos, and command networks (counterforce) versus striking cities, populations, and industrial bases (countervalue).

Stability-Instability Paradox

The nuclear dynamic where the presence of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) eliminates the risk of total nuclear war, which perversely makes limited conventional and proxy wars safer to initiate without fear of catastrophic escalation.

Brinkmanship (Schelling)

Thomas Schelling's crisis bargaining tactic of deliberately creating a shared, uncontrollable risk of accidental escalation ("the threat that leaves something to chance") to coerce concessions from an opponent.

Extended Nuclear Deterrence

A security commitment where a nuclear-armed power pledges to retaliate with nuclear weapons against an adversary that attacks non-nuclear allies, often referred to as extending a "nuclear umbrella."

Nuclear Latency

The technical capacity of a non-nuclear state possessing the scientific, enrichment, and industrial infrastructure required to rapidly manufacture nuclear warheads on short notice without maintaining an assembled stockpile.

Cult of the Offensive (Schlieffen Plan)

The doctrinal dogma dominant among European military elites before World War I—typified by Germany's Schlieffen Plan—that erroneously presumed offensive rail mobility gave attackers a decisive advantage, failing to recognize that machine guns favored entrenched defense.