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Stability–instability Paradox
The stability–instability paradox is an international relations theory regarding the effect of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction. It states that when two countries each have nuclear weapons, the probability of a direct war between them greatly decreases, but the probability of minor or indirect conflicts between them increases. This occurs because rational actors want to avoid nuclear wars, and thus they neither start major conflicts nor allow minor conflicts to escalate into major conflicts—thus making it safe to engage in minor conflicts. For instance, during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union never engaged each other in warfare, but fought proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, the Middle East, Nicaragua and Afghanistan and spent substantial amounts of money and manpower on gaining relative influence over the third world. A study published in the ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' in 2009 quantitatively evaluated the nuclear peace hypothesis, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Relations Theory
International relations theory is the study of international relations (IR) from a theoretical perspective. It seeks to explain causal and constitutive effects in international politics. Ole Holsti describes international relations theories as acting like pairs of coloured sunglasses that allow the wearer to see only salient events relevant to the theory; e.g., an adherent of realism may completely disregard an event that a constructivist might pounce upon as crucial, and vice versa. The three most prominent schools of thought are realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The modern study of international relations, as theory, has sometimes been traced to realist works such as E. H. Carr's ''The Twenty Years' Crisis'' (1939) and Hans Morgenthau's ''Politics Among Nations'' (1948).Burchill, Scott and Andrew Linklater (2005). "Introduction," in ''Theories of International Relations'', ed. by Scott Burchill et al., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p.7. The most influential IR theo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Soviet Maoists) after the former militarily intervened in, or launched an invasion of, Afghanistan to support the local pro-Soviet government that had been installed during Operation Storm-333. Most combat operations against the mujahideen took place in the Afghan countryside, as the country's urbanized areas were entirely under Soviet control. While the mujahideen were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of their support came from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Iran; the American pro-mujahideen stance coincided with a sharp increase in bilateral hostilities with the Soviets during the Cold War. The conflict led to the deaths of between 562,000 and 2,000,000 Afghans, while milli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deterrence Theory
Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats or limited force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and is related to but distinct from the concept of mutual assured destruction, which models the preventative nature of full-scale nuclear attack that would devastate both parties in a nuclear war. The central problem of deterrence revolves around how to credibly threaten military action or nuclear punishment on the adversary despite its costs to the deterrer. Deterrence is widely defined as any use of threats (implicit or explicit) or limited force intended to dissuade an actor from taking an action (i.e. maintain the status quo). Deterrence is unlike compellence, which is the attempt to get an actor (such as a state) to take an action (i.e. alter the status quo). Both are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimal Deterrence
In nuclear strategy, minimal deterrence, also known as minimum deterrence and finite deterrence, is an application of deterrence theory in which a state possesses no more nuclear weapons than is necessary to deter an adversary from attacking.Kristensen, Norris and Oelrich 2009, 21 Pure minimal deterrence is a doctrine of no first use, holding that the only mission of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear adversary by making the cost of a first strike unacceptably high. To present a credible deterrent, there must be the assurance that any attack would trigger a retaliatory strike. In other words, minimal deterrence requires rejecting a counterforce strategy in favor of pursuing survivable force that can be used in a countervalue second strike. While the United States and the Soviet Union each developed robust first- and second-strike capabilities during the Cold War, the People's Republic of China pursued a doctrine of minimal nuclear deterrence. Assuming that decision-makers ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Peace
Nuclear peace is a theory of international relations which argues that the presence of nuclear weapons may in some circumstances decrease the risk of crisis escalation, since parties will seek to avoid situations that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Proponents of nuclear peace theory therefore believe that controlled nuclear proliferation may be beneficial for global stability. Critics argue that nuclear proliferation increases the chance of nuclear war through either deliberate or in-deliberate use of nuclear weapons, as well as the likelihood of nuclear material falling into the hands of violent non-state actors. The major debate on the issue has been between Kenneth Waltz, the founder of neorealist theory in international relations, and Scott Sagan, a leading proponent of organizational theories in international politics. Waltz generally argues that "more may be better" and contends that new nuclear states will use their acquired nuclear capabilities as nuclear deter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs. Etymology The word theocracy originates from the el, θεοκρατία () meaning "the rule of God". This, in turn, derives from θεός (theos), meaning "god", and κρατέω (''krateo''), meaning "to rule". Thus the meaning of the word in Greek was "rule by god(s)" or human incarnation(s) of god(s). The term was initially coined by Flavius Josephus in the first century AD to describe the characteristic government of the Jews. Josephus argued that while mankind had developed many forms of rule, most could be subsumed under the following three types: monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. However, according to Josephus, the government of the Jews was unique. Josephus offered the term "theocracy" to describe this polity in which God was sovereign and His word was law. Josephu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russia–NATO Relations
Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and through the early-2010s NATO and Russia signed several additional agreements on cooperation. Russia has engaged in hostile threats or actions against several countries since the end of the Cold War, including Moldova (1992–2016); Georgia (2004–2012); Estonia (2006–2007), Ukraine (2014–present); Syria (2015–present), and Turkey (2015–2016), amongst others.RAND, ''Russia's Hostile Measures: Combating Russian Gray Zone Aggression Against NATO in the Contact, Blunt, and Surge Layers of Competition'' (2020online/ref> The Russia–NATO relations started to deteriorate, following the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004–05. In October 2021, following an incident in which NATO expelled eight Russian officials from its Brussels headquarters, Russia suspende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
India–Pakistan Relations
India–Pakistan relations are the bilateral ties between the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The two countries have a complex and largely hostile relationship that is rooted in a multitude of historical and political events, most notably the partition of British India in August 1947; the India–Pakistan border is one of the most militarised international boundaries in the world. Northern India and most of modern-day Pakistan overlap with each other in terms of their common Indo-Aryan demographic, natively speaking a variety of Indo-Aryan languages (mainly Punjabi, Sindhi, and Hindi–Urdu). Two years after World War II, the United Kingdom formally dissolved British India, dividing it into two new sovereign nations: the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The partitioning of the former British colony resulted in the displacement of up to 15 million people, with the death toll estimated to have reached between several hundred thousand and on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategic Stability
Strategic stability is a concept in the international relations indicating a lack of incentives for any party to initiate the nuclear first strike; the term is also used in a broader sense of the state of the international environment helping to avoid a war. Strategic stability characterizes the degree of the deterrence provided by the mutual assured destruction and depends on the survivability of the strategic forces after the first strike. Definition The meaning of the term depends on the context. Edward Warner, a U.S. Secretary of Defense's representative at the New START talks, has observed that the strategic stability can be defined at multiple levels, from the narrowest to the broadest: # The most narrow sense, described in the rest of this article – making the first strike less tempting in the event of a crisis (also known as crisis stability) and absence of incentives to build up the nuclear arsenals (avoiding the arms race instability) – is used by the nuclear-weapon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Journal Of Conflict Resolution
The ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on international conflict and conflict resolution. It was established in 1957 and is published by Sage Publications. The editor-in-chief is Paul Huth (University of Maryland, College Park). History The journal was established in 1957. In 1959, the journal was run by the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. When the Center closed in 1971 due to lack of funding, the journal was run by a team at Yale University. Since 2009, the journal has been run by a team at the University of Maryland. Bruce Russett was a long-time editor-in-chief of the journal prior to Paul Huth's appointment as editor-in-chief in 2009. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus, RePEc, and the Social Sciences Citation Index. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal has a 2017 impact factor The impact facto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First World", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and their allies represented the " Second World". This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political divisions. Strictly speaking, "Third World" was a political, rather than an economic, grouping. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term ''Third World'' has decreased in use. It is being replaced with terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or the Global South. The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world and as historically poor countries have transited different income stag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicaraguan Revolution
The Nicaraguan Revolution ( es, Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista, link=no) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to oust the dictatorship in 1978–79, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, and the Contra War, which was waged between the FSLN-led government of Nicaragua and the United States–backed Contras from 1981 to 1990. The revolution marked a significant period in the history of Nicaragua and revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War, attracting much international attention. The initial overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1978–79 was a dirty affair, and the Contra War of the 1980s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. Because of the political turmoil failing economy, and decreasing government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
