WAR AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS POLS2132 Study Guide

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, theoretical mechanisms, and analytical distinctions from POLS2132 (Weeks 1 to 12).

Interstate war

Armed conflict between sovereign states, distinguished from civil or intrastate war.

War incidence

A measurement counting the number of new conflict onsets within a given period.

War prevalence

A measurement counting the total number of ongoing wars at a specific point in time.

Battle deaths

Direct conflict fatalities resulting from combat, distinguished from broader war deaths that encompass indirect mortality from disease and deprivation.

Long peace

The absence of direct great-power war after 1945, which coexisted with proxy conflicts rather than eliminating all forms of political violence.

Jus ad bellum

The ethical criteria governing the justified resort to armed force, including just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, proportionality, and reasonable prospects of success.

Jus in bello

Rules governing moral and legal conduct during war, regardless of whether a belligerent's resort to force is just.

Jus post bellum

Ethical and legal norms concerning justice after war, including post-conflict settlement, accountability, and reconstruction.

Discrimination

The just war principle requiring belligerents to distinguish legitimate military targets from noncombatants, prohibiting intentional attacks on civilians.

Proportionality

The just war principle requiring that the expected good of resorting to force outweighs the expected harm (ad bellum), and that anticipated incidental civilian harm is not excessive relative to direct military advantage (in bello).

Moral equality of combatants

The traditional just war view that opposing combatants share equivalent battlefield permissions and duties regardless of the justice of their causes.

Rationality

A theoretical assumption that actors choose strategies that best advance their preferences given their beliefs; it does not imply actors are moral or perfectly informed.

Bargaining range

The set of mutually preferable settlements that both disputing parties prefer to the expected outcome and destructive costs of fighting a war.

Incomplete information

Private information regarding relative military capabilities or resolve, paired with incentives to misrepresent them, that prevents states from reaching a peaceful agreement.

Commitment problem

A rationalist cause of war arising when an actor cannot credibly promise not to exploit changed power, strategic advantages, or future bargaining leverage.

Preventive war

A war initiated to avoid a worse strategic balance of power in the future, driven by anticipated future power transitions.

Preemptive war

A war initiated because an adversary's attack is believed to be imminent, driven by immediate mobilization rather than long-term power shifts.

Issue indivisibility

A situation where a disputed good cannot be readily divided or compensated for with side payments, shrinking the range of acceptable settlements.

Misperception

Systematic cognitive errors in interpreting an adversary's motives, intentions, military power, or resolve.

Overconfidence

Excessively optimistic estimates of military success or control that lead decision-makers to underestimate resistance and perceive fighting as cheaper.

Loss aversion

A cognitive tendency where losses relative to an established reference point are weighted more heavily than equivalent gains, often encouraging leaders to accept high risks.

Prospect theory

A psychological theory positing that actors' risk preferences depend on whether choices are framed relative to perceived gains or losses.

Sacred values

Core values, holy sites, or identity-linked territories treated as non-negotiable and resistant to material or monetary trade-offs.

Leader effects

The distinct influence of individual leaders' idiosyncratic beliefs, traits, risk tolerances, and personal experiences on foreign policy choices.

War termination

The bargaining process through which belligerents cease organized combat and settle, freeze, or resolve a conflict.

Learning through fighting

The mechanism whereby battlefield combat reveals previously uncertain information regarding each side's relative capabilities and resolve.

Credible settlement

An agreement that belligerents believe will remain preferable, durable, and enforceable after combat operations end.

War aims

The political objectives that actors seek to achieve through fighting, which can expand or contract based on battlefield success.

Stalemate

A condition in which neither belligerent can readily secure a decisive military victory at an acceptable cost.

Spoilers

Actors who believe they will lose out from peace and actively seek to undermine negotiated settlements and disarmament.

Civil war

Sustained, organized armed conflict within a sovereign state, typically fought between a government and non-state challengers.

Insurgency

A technology of rebellion practiced by relatively lightly armed forces utilizing mobility, local support, rough terrain, and guerrilla tactics.

State capacity

The government's administrative and coercive capability to effectively govern territory, collect revenues, and project military or police force.

Irregular warfare

Asymmetric combat characterized by guerrilla ambushes and hit-and-run tactics by insurgents against stronger conventional state forces.

Conventional civil war

Internal armed conflict in which state and rebel forces confront one another with regular armies, heavy weaponry, and defined front lines.

Symmetric nonconventional warfare

A form of internal conflict in which both state and rebel forces consist of relatively low-capability militias rather than modern regular armies.

International humanitarian law

The legal regime regulating how hostilities are conducted, including legal protections for civilians, prisoners of war, and medical personnel.

International criminal law

A body of law establishing individual legal accountability for core international atrocities, including war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Reciprocity

A principle where a state's compliance with wartime rules depends partly on expectations that its adversary will observe the same restraints.

Self-enforcing institution

A rule or norm that persists because participating actors maintain continuous strategic incentives to comply without a central global authority forcing them to do so.

ICC selectivity

The uneven jurisdiction, referral pattern, and prosecutorial attention of the International Criminal Court across different international situations.

Justice–peace tension

The dilemma where pursuing legal accountability advances deterrence but complicates negotiated settlements by making leaders fear prosecution if they relinquish power.

Economic interdependence

Mutual economic reliance between states established through cross-border trade, financial flows, and integrated production networks.

Opportunity cost of war

The economic benefits, investments, and profitable trade relationships that are disrupted or forfeited when states enter into armed conflict.

Trade expectations

A state's beliefs regarding whether it will maintain secure future access to critical external trade partners, inputs, and markets.

Economic hold-up

A vulnerability where a dominant state constrains a weaker rival's access to vital inputs or markets, threatening its future economic growth.

Guns–butter tradeoff

The domestic allocation of scarce national resources between military spending and civilian consumption or investment.

Wartime commercial policy

The strategic regulation of commerce determining which goods may continue to be traded with an adversary during an active war.

Alliance

A formal written treaty committing signatory states to specific security obligations under defined international circumstances.

Alignment

A shared strategic orientation and informal security cooperation between states that exists without formalized treaty commitments.

Balancing

An alliance strategy where states build military capability or join coalitions to counter and resist a threatening or dominant power.

Bandwagoning

An alliance strategy where a state allies with a stronger or threatening power rather than organizing resistance against it.

Abandonment

The fear among allied states that a partner will fail to deliver promised military assistance during a strategic crisis.

Entrapment

The fear that an ally's reckless or aggressive behavior will pull a state into an unwanted, costly conflict.

Deterrence

The strategy of discouraging an adversary from initiating an unwanted hostile action by raising the expected costs or reducing expected gains.

Audience costs

The domestic or international political and reputational costs imposed on leaders for making public threats and subsequently backing down.

Democratic peace

The empirical finding that established democracies rarely fight one another in interstate wars, despite participating in wars against nondemocracies.

Normative explanation (Democratic peace)

The argument that democracies externalize their domestic norms of compromise and peaceful political competition into interactions with other democracies.

Structural explanation (Democratic peace)

The argument that domestic institutional checks, legislative scrutiny, and public mobilization hurdles constrain democratic leaders from easily initiating war.

Diversionary war

The use or threat of international conflict by political leaders to distract the public from domestic difficulties and shore up domestic support.

Second-strike capability

The ability of a state to absorb a surprise nuclear first strike and retain enough survivable weapons to launch an unacceptable retaliatory strike.

Mutually assured destruction

A strategic condition in which both opposing nuclear powers possess survivable second-strike capabilities, ensuring mutual annihilation upon attack.

Counterforce

A nuclear targeting strategy directed at an adversary's military assets, strategic command centers, and nuclear delivery systems.

Countervalue

A nuclear targeting strategy directed at civilian and societal assets, such as major population centers and industrial infrastructure.

Nuclear coercion

The explicit or implicit threat of nuclear escalation to compel an adversary to change its behavior or withdraw from a position.

Stability–instability paradox

A strategic condition where nuclear deterrence discourages all-out major war while paradoxically creating space for lower-level conventional and proxy conflicts.

Military innovation

Substantive transformations in weaponry, doctrine, or military organization that alter operational fighting capabilities.

Dual-use technology

Technology that has significant applications in both civilian commercial domains and military systems.

Cyber operations

Strategic operations directed against digital systems and computer networks for espionage, disruption, sabotage, or coercion.

Information operations

Efforts to manipulate perceptions, political choices, and popular morale through coordinated narratives, communications, and disinformation.

Competitive adaptation

The reciprocal, strategic process through which governments, insurgents, and competing actors continuously alter their methods in response to each other's technologies.