Lecture 4 - Anarchy, Uncertainty, and the Security Dilemma

What do governments do?

• Enforce contracts

• Uphold the law, especially against violence

• imperfect enforcement

Two dangers of anarchy

• at risk of being attacked or cheated (If you want peace, prepare for war)

  • Self-preservation due to self-help logic

• Uncertainty: can’t know who you can trust (who is trustworthy can change overtime)

Security Dilemma

Steps I take to protect myself make me look aggressive to you (and vice versa). We thus can end up in conflict even though neither of us has hostile intentions.

Spiral Model

Thinks of security dilemma in individual terms and steps (I take steps to build an army for protection, you can’t know my intentions, so you build army, then I think you look hostile and might attack me, now we are engaged in an almost war due to not knowing intentions). Even though neither side wanted to fight, they engaged in things in the moment that were designed to protect themselves, but ended up appearing like each wanted to go to war, thus the event spiraled.

The Deterioration in Sino-American Relations

shows the spiral model in real-life and the security dilemma

Realist perspective

Core concepts: anarchy and power

International system is anarchic

Consequently, states fear violence or exploitation

The fundamental problem is uncertainty about intentions

But because of the security dilemma leaders always must worry that others are hostile

Consequently, the only path to security is to amass as much power as possible

• War is always possible

• Cooperation is both difficult and, when it occurs, transient

• International politics sucks – get used to it