Covered historical cases include World War I, World War II, Korea, Indochina, and the Peloponnesian, Crimean and Seven Years wars.
Requirements: Grades will be based on two short (4-6 page) analytical papers, one very short (1-2 doublespaced pages) response paper that reacts to reading and lectures, two short (15 minute) quizzes, a final exam, and contribution to section discussion. Quizzes will occur in class during the weeks of March 9, and April 27. The response paper will be due on March 5 The two 4-6 page papers will be due on Thursday, March 19, and Thursday, May 7. I will hand out study questions for the final later in the term.
Your 1-2 page response paper should advance an argument about the reading or lectures. Advance only one or two arguments, preferably one. Your argument can dispute argument(s) advanced in the reading or lectures; can assess or concur with argument(s) advanced in the reading or lecture; can assess or explain policies or historical events described in the reading and lectures; or can relate current events in the press today to ideas or events in the readings or lectures. Evaluation of policies or ideas covered in the reading or lecture is encouraged. Somewhere in your paper--preferably at the beginning--please offer a 1-2 sentence summary of your argument. It will not be graded but is mandatory and must be completed to receive full credit for class participation.
Before writing your papers, please familiarize yourself with the rules of citing sources (attached to the 17.423 course syllabus), and make sure you follow them. Failure to cite sources properly is plagiarism.
Course grades will be determined as follows: Final = 35%; Papers = 35% (17.5% each); Quizzes = 15% (7.5% each); Section attendance/contribution = 15%.
Student-led debates on responsibility for World War I and World War II will be organized in section when those wars are covered (in April.)
Assigned readings total 1637 pages, for a 14-week average of 117 pages per week, but they vary markedly in amount, so try to budget your time to be able to cover heavy weeks (e.g. the two World Wars, which together cover 770 pages in 4 weeks--i.e. nearly 200 pages per week.) Students are expected to do the readings before section meeting. This is important! (You may be called on in section from time to time.)
This is an undergraduate course, but is open to graduate students.
Students should buy these books at the MIT COOP:
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Harvard University Press, 1979)All other readings will be available as xeroxed course notes, and can be purchased from the Technology Copy Center, in the basement of building E52 (on Wadsworth Street). These are denoted with a "C"; readings in books available in the COOP bookstore are denoted with a "BK".
Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945 (Pantheon, 1979)
Fred Iklé, Every War Must End, rev. ed (Columbia U. Press, 1991)
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Penguin, 1972)
Steven E. Miller et al., eds., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 1991)
John Stoessinger, Nations at Dawn, 6th ed. (McGraw, 1994)
Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ed., The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace, expanded ed. (MIT Press: 1993)
Feb. 3: The causes of war in perspective. Does international politics follow regular "laws of motion"? If so, how can we discover them? Can we use methods parallel to those of the harder sciences?
II. 32 HYPOTHESES ON THE CAUSES OF WAR
Feb. 5, 10, 12: 8 Hypotheses on Military Factors as Causes of War (71 pp.)
(C) 1. David Ziegler, War, Peace and International Politics, 2nd ed., (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), chapter 15 ("Disarmament"), pp. 249-267. A basic discussion of a modest proposal: tossing the weapons in the ocean. A good idea?(C) 2. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale, 1966), pp. 221-251 ("The Dynamics of Mutual Alarm.") The classic statement on the problem of preemptive war.
(C) 3. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3rd ed. (NY: Free Press, 1988), chapter 3 ("Dreams and Delusions of a Coming War"), pp. 35-56. Miscalculation and false optimism as causes of war.
(BK) 4. Stephen Van Evera, "Primed for Peace: Europe After the Cold War," in Lynn Jones, Cold War and After, pp. 193-203. Note: these page are 20% of the article; much of the rest (pp. 204-236) is assigned below (Feb. 16-March 2). But please focus for now on pages 193-203, which discuss the crucial matter of offense, defense, and war.
I include this article partly for purposes of full disclosure. It suggests where I am coming from on the causes of war. Your skepticism is permitted.
For your optional delectation see also John Mueller's collection of predictions, "Various Shapes of Things to Come," appended to the course syllabus. Has our understanding of war made progress since the days of Henry Buckle, Randolph Bourne, and David Starr Jordan? And see also the appended data on war deaths from Ruth Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, pp. 28-31.
(C) 1. Robert Jervis, "Hypotheses on Misperception," in Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis, ed., International Politics: Anarchy, Force, Political Economy, and Decision Making, 2nd ed. (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1985), pp. 510-526. A classic discussion of the delusions to which states are prone. Is Jervis' list of myopias a good one? Do they arise from the psychological sources he stresses, or are other causes at work?Note: there is no class Tuesday Feb. 17 (President's Day).(C) 2. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1976), pp. 58-84. Some say conflict is best resolved by the carrot, while using the stick merely provokes; others would use the stick, warning that using the carrot ("appeasement") emboldens others to make more demands. Who's right? Probably both--but under what circumstances? and how can you tell which circumstances you are in?
(BK) 3. Van Evera, "Primed for Peace," pp. 204-211.
(C) 4. William Zimmerman, "Yugoslav Disintegration, Social and Economic Change, and Balkan Transformation, (unpublished manuscript, November 1991), Table 5: "National Identity and Perceptions of National Inequality in Croatia." The Croats and Serbs of Croatia inhabit the same country, but different realities. With what effect? (What if the gulf between their perceptions was narrowed?)
(C) 5. Chris Hedges, "In Bosnia's Schools, 3 Ways Never to Learn From History,"New York Times, November 25, 1997, p. A1. More about separate Balkan realities. It was once said that "war begins in the classroom." Is that such a silly notion? Do the Balkans' separate realities, and the Balkans' wars, stem from separate and divergent teaching of the past?
(C) 6. Roger Thurow and Tony Horwitz, "Paranoid and Vengeful, Serbs Claim Their War Is to Right Old Wrongs," Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 1992, p. 1; and Stephen Kinzer, "The Nightmare's Roots: The Dream World Called Serbia," New York Times, May 16, 1993, p. E1. More about separate realities. Some Serbs question whether there has even been a seige of Sarajevo; some see a Pan-Islamic threat to Serbia--a "green crescent from Turkey to Bosnia"; others expect a fleet of vampires to arise from the cemetaries to overwhelm Serbia's enemies. Does crazed behavior originate in crazed ideas? If so, what can be done?
(C) 7. Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Purpose of Political Science," in James C. Charlesworth, ed., A Design for Political Science: Scope, Objectives, and Methods (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1966), pp. 69-74. Are scholars part of the solution or part of the problem? An eminent professor of international relations says his colleagues are gutless wonders who won't tell the state or society when they are wrong.
(C) 8. David Pearson, "The Media and Government Deception," Propaganda Review, Spring 1989, pp. 6-11. Pearson thinks the American press is obedient to official views, and afraid to criticize. Anti-establishment paranoia or the real picture?
March 3, 5: 14 More Causes of War and Peace: Culture,
Gender, Language, Democracy, Social Equality &
Social Justice, Minority Rights & Human Rights,
Prosperity, Interdependence, Revolution, Capitalism,
Imperial decline and collapse, Cultural learning, Religion,
Polarity of the International System (62 pp.)
(C) 1. Leopold Bellak, "Why I Fear the Germans" (op-ed), New York Times, April 4, 1990, p. A29; and responses, NYT, May 10, 1990, p. A30. Germany has a flawed national character. Fair? If not, what explains past German conduct? If true, is this satisfying?(C) 2. Louis Harris, "The Gender Gulf," New York Times, December 7, 1990, p. A35. The problem is: men? (Women are more dovish.)
(C) 3. Joshua S. Goldstein, International Relations (NY: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 282-295 ("Feminism"). A good basic summary of feminist arguments on the causes of war.
(BK) 4. John Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," in Lynn-Jones, Cold War and After, pp. 147-155, 165-167, 176-187; five theories of war-causation are discussed there. Note: you might skim the rest of the Mearsheimer article as well, to get his whole drift.
(BK) 5. Van Evera, "Primed for Peace," pp. 211-236. On the democracy and polarity questions, who is more persuasive, Mearsheimer or this guy?
March 10: The Seven Years War (54 pp.)
(C) 1. R.R. Palmer & Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World 7th ed. (NY: Knopf, 1991), 273-285, ("The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century.") This is a standard textbook summary of events. Please focus on pp. 278-281, dealing with the outbreak of the Franco-British war.(C) 2. Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 195-236 ("The Seven Years War"). Smoke's chapter is a good historical synopses of this war. What general theories of war causes does his account support? How might this war have been prevented? By whom?
(C) 1. R.R. Palmer & Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World 7th ed. (NY: Knopf, 1991), pp. 544-546 ("The Crimean War"). A standard textbook summary.(C) 2. Smoke, War, pp. 147-194 ("The Crimean War"). A good synopsis of the strange events leading up to the outbreak of this war.
(C) 1. Ziegler, War, Peace & IR, Chapter 1, "The Wars for German Unification," (pp. 7-20), a (very) basic history.
(C) 1. Palmer & Colton, History of the Modern World, 7th ed., pp. 695-718 ("The First World War"). This is assigned to provide basic background for non-aficionados of WWI.Note: there is no class March 24, 26 (Spring break).(C) 2. Imanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 1871-1914 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. vii-ix, 75-83, 106-181; the key pages are pp. 121-127, 142-150--focus on these pages and read the rest more lightly. (Make sure not to miss the tale of the War Council of 8 December 1912). This book summarizes the views of the "Fischer School," which argues that German aggression was a prime cause of World War I. Others find Fisher and Geiss unpersuasive. Who's right?
(BK) 3. Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, pp. xi-xix, 20-108. A Europe-wide "Cult of the Offensive" caused the war; the militaries of Europe were responsible.
(C) 4. Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), Chapters 5 and 6, pp. 96-142 ("The Army and the Idea of Preventive War," and "The Army and the Civilians.") In Germany the army also purveyed the concept of preventive war, the notion that war was healthy and beneficial, and other exotic ideas; and within Germany it became a law unto itself--a "state within the state," in Gordon Craig's phrase.
(C) 5. Walter Consuelo Langsam, "Nationalism and History in the Prussian Elementary Schools Under William II," in Edward Mead Earle, ed., Nationalism and Internationalism (NY: Columbia U. Press 1950), pp. 241-260. German elementary and high schools were channels of nationalist propaganda.
(C) 6. James Joll, Origins of the First World War (NY: Longman, 1984), chapter 2, pp. 9-34. A summary of the events of the strange and amazing July crisis.
(BK) 1. Fred Iklé, Every War Must End, pp. 1-105. Can war be rationally conducted and controlled? This superb book makes you wonder.(C) 2. Ziegler, War, Peace and IR, pp. 221-234 ("The Balance of Terror"). A basic rundown of the issues.
(C) 3. Richard N. Haas, "It's Dangerous to Disarm," New York Times, December 11, 1996; letters of response tby Peter Weiss, Eugene Carroll and William Sloane Coffin, New York Times, December 16, 1996.
(C) 1. R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World 7th ed. (NY: Knopf, 1991), pp. 798-799, 822-849. This is a basic standard history of the events leading up to the war.Note: no class Tues. April 21 (Patriots' day).(BK) 2. Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler, pp. 3-165.
(BK) 3. Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany After the Great War," in Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, pp. 262-301. How Germans mis-remembered the origins and aftermath of the First World War.
(C) 4. Wolfram Wette, "From Kellog to Hitler (1928-1933). German Public Opinion Concerning the Rejection or Glorification of War," in Wilhelm Deist, ed., The German Military in the Age of Total War (Dover: Berg, 1985), pp. 71-99. How Germans came to love war again so soon after the Marne and Verdun. What explains the bizarre developments Wette describes?
(C) 5. Scott Sagan, "The Origins of the Pacific War," in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, ed., The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 323-352.
(BK) 6. Ienaga, The Pacific War 1931-1945, pp. vii-152, 247-256. Was the Japanese decision for war a rational response to circumstances, or in some sense "irrational"? Ienaga and Sagan disagree--who's right?
(C) 7. Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War With Japan 1937-1941 (Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 1985), pp. 151-156.
(C) 8. Waldo Heinrichs, The Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 141-142, 177, 246-247 (note 68). Was the crucial American decision to cut off oil exports to Japan taken by a bureaucracy out of control? Utley and Heinrichs disagree. How can this mystery be unravelled?
(C) 9. Letter to the editor by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, New York Review of Books, February 6, 1997, p. 40. A summary of Goldhagen's famous argument that Germany committted the holocaust because most Germans embraced an eliminationist anti-semitism. How could we test Goldhagen's argument?
April 28, 30: The Cold War, Korea and Indochina
(162 pp.)
(C) 1. Thomas G. Paterson, J. Gary Clifford, and Kenneth Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History Since 1900 (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1983), pp. 471-480, 519-539, 546-563.(BK) 2. John Stoessinger, Nations in Darkness, pp. xi-114. Paterson et al. is a standard history; Stoessinger is interpretive.
(BK) 1. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, pp. 35-108, 118-164, 212-223, 400-429, 483-488, 516-538. A famous history by a great strategist that many later readers, across many centuries, felt evoked their own times and tragedies.
(BK) 1. Carl Kaysen, "Is War Obsolete?" in Lynn-Jones, Cold War and After, pp. 81-103. Kaysen says past causes of war are already gone. But if he's right, why does war continue?(C) 2. Ziegler, War, Peace and IR, chapters 8, 11 ("World Government," "Collective Security,") pp. 127-45, 179-203. Many people have offered these answers. Do you think they would work? (Why haven't they been implemented yet?)
(C) 3. Review again Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," pp. 167-176, 187-192 (assigned above.)
I: THE CAUSES OF WAR
The causes of war, general & theoretical works:
Jack Levy, "The Causes of War: A Review of Theories," in Philip E. Tetlock, Jo L. Husbands, Robert Jervis, Paul C. Stern, and Charles Tilly, eds., Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, Vol. 1 (NY: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 209-333.
Greg Cashman, What Causes War? An Introduction to Theories of International Conflict (NY: Lexington Books, 1993)
Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (NY: Columbia University Press, 1954)
Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (NY: Free Press, 1973)
Richard A. Falk and Samuel S. Kim, The War System: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Boulder: Westview, 1980)
Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)
Leon Bramson and George W. Goethals, eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1968)
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (NY: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 276-340 ("Some Theories on the Causes of War")
Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (NY: Doubleday, 1994)
James E. Dougherty and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), parts.
Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1966), parts.
Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control NY: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), parts.
Robert Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," World Politics, January, 1978, pp. 167-214.
Sean M. Lynn-Jones, "Offense-Defense Theory and its Critics," Security Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 660-694.
Marlies Ter Borg, "Reducing Offensive Capabilities--the Attempt of 1932," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1992), pp. 145-160.
Jack S. Levy, "Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War," World Politics, Vol. 40, No. 1 (October 1987), pp. 82-107.
Robert Jervis, "War and Misperception," in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 101-126
Robert Jervis, "Hypotheses on Misperception," World Politics Vol. 20, No. 3 (April, 1968), pp. 454-479, also reprinted in George H. Quester, ed., Power, Action and Interaction (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 104-132.
Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972)
Ernest R. May, "Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (NY: Oxford University Press, 1973).
Aaron Wildavsky, "The Self-Evaluating Organization," Public Administration Review, Sept./Oct. 1972, pp. 509-520.
Anne E. Huneter, ed., On Peace, War and Gender: A Challenge to Genetic Explanations (New York: The Feminist Press, 1991)
Virginia Held, "Gender as an Influence on Cultural Norms Relating to War and the Environment," in Arthur H. Westing, ed., Cultural Norms, War and the Environment (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 44-51.
Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," (Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, 1987), pp. 1-33.
Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995)
Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an International Debate 1861-1979 (NY: St. Martins, 1982)
Francis E. Rourke, Bureaucracy and Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1972), pp. 18-40.
Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy (NY: Kings Crown, 1956), pp. 263-377, 477-490.
Richard Cobden, "The Three Panics," in Richard Cobden, Political Writings of Richard Cobden (London: 1887)
Juergen Arthur Heise, Minimum Disclosure: How the Pentagon Manipulates the News (NY: W.W. Norton, 1979)
Derek Shearer, "The Pentagon Propaganda Machine," in Leonard Rodberg and Derek Shearer, eds., The Pentagon Watchers (NY: Anchor, 1970), pp. 99-142.
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (NY: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 479-496.See also representative writings on war and international affairs by military officers, e.g., Friedrich von Bernhardi, Ferdinand Foch, Giulio Douhet, Nathan Twining, Thomas Powers, and Curtis LeMay.
Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism (NY: Paragon House, 1990)
Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1983).
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)
Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991)
Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992)
Stephen Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 5-39.
Barry R. Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 80-124.
Paul M. Kennedy, "The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900-1970," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 1973), pp. 77-100.
Boyd C. Shafer, Faces of Nationalism (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972)
Carlton J.H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (NY: Macmillan, 1926) pp. 61-92 ("The Propagation of Nationalism").
E.H. Dance, History the Betrayer: A Study in Bias (London: Hutchinson, 1960)
Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)
Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1975)
Howard Zinn, The Politics of History (Boston: Beacon, 1970), pp. 5-34, 288-319.
Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Democracy and Peace," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1992), pp. 369-376.
Bruce Russett with William Anholis, Carol R. Ember, Melvin Ember, and Zeev Maoz, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49.
Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and the Danger of War," International Security, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 5-38; also Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and War," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 3 (May/June 1995), pp. 79-97.
Stanislav Andreski, "On the Peaceful Disposition of Military Dictatorships," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (December, 1980), pp. 3-10.
Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, Contending Theories of International Relations pp. 274-288.
Waltz, Man, the State, and War, pp. 16-79.
Brown, Causes and Prevention of War, pp. 9-15.
Samuel S. Kim, "The Lorenzian Theory of Aggression and Peace Research: A Critique," in Falk and Kim, The War System, pp. 82-115.
Albert Somit, "Humans, Chimps, and Bonobos: The Biological Bases of Aggression, War, and Peacemaking," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 34, No. 3 (September 1990), pp. 553-582.
William James, "The Moral Equivalent of War," in Bramson and Goethals, War, pp. 21-31; William McDougall, "The Instinct of Pugnacity," in ibid, p. 33-43; Sigmund Freud, "Why War?" in ibid, pp. 71-80; and Margaret Mead, "Warfare is Only an Invention, Not a Biological Necessity," in ibid, pp. 269-274.
Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1996)
Joseph V. Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (NY: Lexington Books, 1991)
Radha Kumar, "The Troubled History of Partition," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1 (January/February 1997), pp. 22-34.
Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981)
Roger Fisher, International Conflict for Beginners (New York: Harper & Row, 1969)
Fred Charles Iklé, How Nations Negotiate (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1982, first pub. 1964)
Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1991).
Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Oxford U. Press, 1964)
Raymond Cohen, "The Rules of the Game in International Politics," International Studies Quarterly vol. 24, no. 1 (March 1980) pp. 129-50.
Jacob Bercovitch and David Wells, "Evaluating Mediation Strategies: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," Peace and Change, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 1993), pp. 3-25, and works cited therein.
Thomas Princen, Intermediaries in International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977)
Thomas Etzold, "Clausewitzian Lessons for Modern Strategists," Air University Review, May/June 1980.For more references, see Smoke's bibliography.
Cashman, What Causes War?, pp. 172-184.
Samuel P. Huntington, "Arms Races: Prerequisites and Results," in Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds., The Use of Force, 3rd ed. (NY: University Press of America, 1988), pp. 637-670.
General surveys of global international history include:
Robert R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, 7th ed. (NY: Knopf, 1991)General surveys of European international history:
Peter Gay and R.K. Webb, Modern Europe (NY: Harper & Row, 1973)
Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World (NY: Collier, 1962)For more sources see the bibibliography in Palmer and Colton. Another excellent bibliographic source is Jürgen Förster, David French, David Stevenson and Russel Van Wyk, eds., War and Society Newsletter: A Bibliographical Survey (Munich: Militärgeschlichtliches Forschungsamt, annual since 1973); it lists articles and book chapters relevant to international relations and war.
A.J.P. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1914 (London: Oxford, 1971)
James Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International History, 4th ed. (London: Penguin, 1990)
Carlton J.H. Hayes, Contemporary Europe Since 1870 (NY: Macmillan, 1962)
Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna, rev. ed. (NY: Harper & Row, 1973)Also pertinent are the relevant books in four series of general histories:
1: The "Langer" series, published by Harper Torchbooks, 15-odd volumes covering western history since 1200, under the general editorship of William Langer (e.g. Raymond Sontag, A Broken World, 1919-1939.)
2: The Longman's "General History of Europe" series, covering western history since Roman times, published by Longman, under the general editorship of Denys Hays (e.g. J.M. Roberts, Europe 1880-1945).
3: The Fontana "History of Europe" series, published by Fontana/Collins, covering history since the middle ages, under the general editorship of J.H. Plumb (e.g. J.A.S. Grenville, Europe Reshaped, 1848-78);
4: The "New Cambridge Modern History" and "Cambridge Ancient History" series, covering western history from the beginning.
On the Franco-British conflict in the Seven Years War is:
Patrice Higonnet, "The Origins of the Seven Years War," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40 (1968), pp. 57-90On the Prussian-Austrian-Russian-French war of 1756:
Jeremy Black, The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1987)
Ludwig Reiners, Frederick the Great (NY: Putnam, 1960), pp. 89-121, 147-164. Gerhard Ritter, Frederick the Great (Berkeley: U. of California, 1974), pp. 73-148.
Pierre Gaxotte, Frederick the Great (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1942), pp. 175-229, 303-342.
David M. Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War (NY: Longman, 1994)
Norman Rich, Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1985)
Alan Palmer, The Banner of Battle: The Story of the Crimean War (NY: St. Martin's, 1987)
Frank J. Coppa, The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence (NY: Longman, 1992)
William Carr, The Origins of the Wars of German Reunification (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1991)
Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 80-146.
Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford U. Press, 1964), pp. 180-216.
James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (NY: Longman, 1984)Suveys of debates about the war's origins are:
V.R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1973)
D.C.B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin's, 1983)
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (NY: Dell, 1962)
L.C.F. Turner, Origins of the First World War (London: Arnold, 1970)
Imanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy 1871-1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976)
John W. Langdon, July 1914: The Long Debate, 1918-1990 (NY: St. Martin's, 1991)Other sources on the origins of the war include:
John A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy In German Historiography (London: George Prior, 1975)
Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions (NY: Norton, 1975)Contemporary descriptions of the political climate in Germany are:
Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914 3 Vols. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980 reprint of 1952-1957 edition.) Albertini is chaotic, but essential reading for those researching World War I.
Bernadotte E. Schmitt, The Coming of the War: 1914 2 Vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930)
Imanuel Geiss, ed., July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War: Selected Documents (NY: W.W. Norton, 1967)
Konrad H. Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven: Yale, 1973)
Holger H. Herwig, ed., The Outbreak of World War I: Causes and Responsibilities, 5th ed., rev. (Lexington: DC Heath, 1991)
William Roscoe Thayer, ed., Out Of Their Own Mouths (NY: Appleton, 1917)Other works on themes pertinent to this course include:
Wallace Notestein, ed. Conquest and Kultur: Aims of Germans in Their Own Words (Washington: Committee on Public Information, 1917)
J.P. Bang, Hurrah and Hallelujah: The Teaching of Germany's Prophets, Professors and Preachers (NY: Doran, 1917)
William Archer, ed. 501 Gems of German Thought (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1916)
Louis L. Snyder, German Nationalism: Tragedy of a People (Port Washington NY: Kennikat, 1969), esp. chapters 6 ("Historiography") and 10 ("Militarism").A readable account of the war itself is:
Louis L. Snyder, From Bismarck to Hitler (Williamsport: Bayard, 1935)
Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (NY: Scribner's, 1960). pp. 251-305.
Charles McClelland, The German Historians and England (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1971), pp. 168-235.
Antoine Guilland, Germany and Her Historians (NY: McBride, Nast, 1915)
John A. Moses, "Pan-Germanism and the German Professors 1914-1918," Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (December, 1969), pp. 45-60.
I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War (London: Oxford, 1966)
Carleton J.H. Hayes, France: A Nation of Patriots (NY: Octagon, 1974).
Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)
Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford U. Press, 1964), pp. 217-341.
Marilyn Shevin Coetzee, The German Army League: Popular Nationalism in Wilhelmine Germany (NY: Oxford University Press, 1990)
Isabel Hull, The Military Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II 1888-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
Emilio Willems, A Way of Life and Death: Three Centuries of Prussian-German Militarism: An Anthropological Approach (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1986)
Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, The Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900-1918 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987)
T.H.E. Travers, "Technology, Tactics and Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory, 1900-1914," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51 (June 1979), pp. 264-286.
Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), Chapter 6, pp. 115-142 ("The Army and the Civilians".)
Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (London: Wolff, 1958)
Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany (4 vols: Coral Gables, Fla.: 1969-73).
Marc Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 120-150.
Scott Sagan, "1914 Revisited: Allies, Offense, and Instability," International Security, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1986), pp. 151-176.
A.J.P. Taylor, War By Time-Table (London: 1969)
Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1959)
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (NY: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 1-28.
Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (NY: Quadrangle, 1975), pp. 80-112 (on wartime press coverage,)
A.J.P. Taylor, The First World War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966)On Versailles an introduction is:
Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919 (NY: St. Martin's, 1991)
P.M.H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (NY: Longman, 1986)
Raymond J. Sontag, A Broken World 1919-1939 (NY: Harper & Row, 1973)
E.H. Carr, International Relations Between the Two World Wars (NY: Macmillan, 1947)
William L. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1960)
Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler's Worldview: A Blueprint for Power, trans. Herbert Arnold (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)
Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler in History (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1984)
Norman Rich, Hitler's War Aims (NY: Norton, 1973)
Gary D. Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890-1933 (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1980)
Max Weinreich, Hitler's Professors (NY: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946)
Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (NY: Scribner's, 1960).
B. H. Liddell-Hart, "Aggression and the Problem of Weapons," English Review, July 1932, pp. 71-78.
Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and the War in the Third Reich (NY: Oxford University Press, 1991)
Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Pantheon, 1989)
Peter Baldwin, "The Historikerstreit in Context," in Peter Baldwin, ed., Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historian's Debate (Boston: Beacon, 1990), pp. 3-37.
Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini's Roman Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977)
Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedurftig, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, trans. Amy Hackett (NY: Macmillan, 1991)
Hershel Edelheit and Abraham J. Edelheit, A World In Turmoil: An Integrated Chronology of the Holocaust and World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1991)
Robert J.C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1960)
William L. Neumann, America Encounters Japan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1963), pp. 184-289.
Paul W. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958)
Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945 (NY: Pantheon, 1978)
Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974)
Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987)
F.C. Jones, "The Military Domination of Japanese Policy, 1931-1945," in Michael Howard, ed. Soldiers and Governments (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), pp. 117-131.
Asada Sadao, "The Japanese Navy and the United States," in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History (NY: Columbia U. Press, 1973), pp. 225-259.
A.J.P. Taylor, The Second World War (London: Hamilton Hamish, 1975)
John Lewis Gaddis, Russia, The Soviet Union and the United States (NY: John Wiley, 1978), pp. 175-206.
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941-1947 (NY: Columbia U. Press, 1972)
John Lewis Gaddis, "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer 1983), pp. 171-190.
Peter Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War (NY: Longman, 1986)
James A. Nathan and James K. Oliver, United States Foreign Policy and World Order, 3rd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), pp. 113-156.
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, (NY: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 57-112.
Morton H. Halperin, "The Korean War", in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, 3rd. ed., pp. 220-237.
Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)
Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1960)
Jian Chen, China's Road to the Korean War: the Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (NY: Columbia University Press, 1994)
Michael Schaller, Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (NY: Oxford University Press, 1989)
John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War (NY: W.W. Norton, 1965)
Martin Lichterman, "To the Yalu and Back," in Harold Stein, ed., American Civil-Military Relations: A Book of Case Studies (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, for the Twentieth Century Fund, 1963), pp. 569-642.
Burton I. Kaufmann, The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986)
David Rees, Korea: The Limited War (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970)
Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision, June 24-30 1950 (NY: Free Press, 1968)
Robert R. Simmons, The Strained Alliance (NY: Free Press, 1975)
Frank Baldwin, ed., Without Parallel: The American-Korean Relationship Since 1945 (NY: Pantheon, 1974).
William W. Stueck, Jr., Road to Confrontation: American Policy Toward China and Korea, 1947-1950 (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 1981).
Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)
Robert Jervis, "The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War," Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 24, no. 4 (Dec. 1980), pp. 563-92.
Keith D. McFarland, The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography (NY: Garland, 1986)
George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (NY: Knopf, 1986)
Anthony Short, The Origins of the Vietnam War (NY: Longman, 1989)
George McT. Kahin and John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam (NY: Dell, 1969)
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, pp. 113-222.
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Greenwich: Fawcett, 1972)
Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington DC: Brookings, 1979)
George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (NY: Wiley, 1979)
Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1972)
William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (NY: Pocket Books, 1979)
Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (NY: Holt, Rinehard & Winston, 1977) is a vivid personal account by an American soldier.
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1972)
Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1989)
Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968)
Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)
Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, "Controlling the Risks in Cuba", in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, 3rd. ed., pp. 238-273.
Robert A. Divine, ed. The Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971)
Benjamin Lambeth, "How To Think About Soviet Military Doctrine," in John Baylis & Gerald Segal, eds. Soviet Strategy (Montclair, N.J.: Allenheld, Osmun, 1981), pp. 105-123.Translated Soviet writings on this subject include:
Thomas Wolfe, Soviet Strategy at the Crossroads (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1964)
Thomas Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 1945-1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1970)
Raymond Garthoff, Soviet Military Policy (NY: Praeger, 1966)
Raymond Garthoff, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age (NY: Praeger, 1958)
Raymond Garthoff, The Soviet Image of Future War (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1959)
Herbert Dinerstein, War and the Soviet Union (NY: Praeger, 1962)
Leon Goure, Foy Kohler and Mose L. Harvey, The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy (Miami: University of Miami, 1974)
Joseph Douglass and Amoretta Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979)
V.D. Sokolovskiy, Soviet Military Strategy (NY: Crane Russak, 1968).On Soviet civil-military relations standard sources are:
A.A. Sidorenko, The Offensive (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970)
N.A. Lomov, The Revolution in Military Affairs (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973)
Marxism Leninism on War and Army (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972) (no author)
Edward L. Warner III, The Military in Contemporary Soviet Politics (NY: Praeger, 1977)On Soviet perceptions:
Roman Kolkowicz, The Soviet Military and the Communist Party (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1967)
Timothy Colton, Commissars, Commanders, and Civilian Authority: The Structure of Soviet Military Politics (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1979)
Dale R. Herspring & Ivan Volgyes, eds., Civil-Military Relations in Communist Systems (Boulder, Colo: Westview, 1978), essays by Kolkowicz, Odom.
Stephen P. Gibert, Soviet Images of America (NY: Crane Russak, 1977)
Gregg Guroff, "Soviet Perceptions of the U.S.", mimeo published by the U.S. International Communications Agency, 1980.
John Keep and Liliana Brisby, eds, Contemporary History in a Soviet Mirror (NY: Praeger, 1964)
Hedrick Smith, The Russians (NY: Ballantine, 1976) pp. 402-434, 459-501.
Robert G. Kaiser, Russia (NY: Pocket, 1976), pp. 231-286.
William Potter, "Perception and Misperception in US-Soviet Relations," Problems of Communism vol. 29, no 2 (March-April 1980), pp. 68-71.
John Lenczowski, Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).