International Security Journal Highlights

International Security
Summer 2005
Vol. 30, No. 1

International Security is America's leading journal of security affairs. It provides sophisticated analyses of contemporary security issues and discusses their conceptual and historical foundations. The journal is edited at BCSIA and published quarterly by the MIT Press. Questions may be directed to: www.ksg.harvard.edu/IS.

Soft Balancing against the United States
"The George W. Bush administration'snational security strategy," writes Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, "is one ofthe most aggressively unilateral U.S. posturesever taken." In response, major powers areengaging in soft-balancing measures that donot directly challenge U.S. military preponderancebut that delay, frustrate, and undermineU.S. policies. If the Bush administration continuesto pursue this strategy, increased soft balancingcould evolve into hard balancing.

Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy
T.V. Paul of McGill University agrees thatmajor powers (such as China, France, andRussia) and emerging powers (including Germanyand India) have not yet engaged in hardbalancing against the United States eitherthrough the formation of alliances or armsbuildups. They have, however, pursued soft balancingstrategies to constrain the powerand perceived threatening behavior of theUnited States. Examples include the formationof temporary coalitions and institutional bargaining, mainly within the United Nations.

Hard Times for Soft Balancing
There are two fundamental flaws in current treatments of soft balancing argue StephenG. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth of Dartmouth College: the failure to consider alternative explanations for state actions that have the effect of constraining the United States, and the absence of empirical analysis of the phenomenon. Their comparison of soft balancing with four alternative explanations in the main cases highlighted by proponents of the concept reveals no empirical support for the soft balancing explanation.

Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back
Keir A. Lieber of the University of Notre Dame and Gerard Alexander of the University of Virginia attribute the absence of hard balancing against the United States to the lack of underlying motivation to compete strategically with it under current conditions. In addition, the concept of soft balancing is difficult to define or operationalize; the behavior in question seems identical to traditional diplomatic friction; and regardless, specific predictions of soft balancing are not supported by the evidence.

Victory Has Many Friends: U.S. Public Opinion and the Use of Military Force, 1981-2005
Based on his analysis of U.S. public support for the use of military force in twenty-two historical episodes from the early 1980s through the Iraq war and occupation from 2003 to 2005, RichardC. Eichenberg of Tufts University concludes that the objective for which military force is used is an important determinant of the base level of its support. His results suggest that support for U.S. military involvement in Iraq is unlikely to increase.

Diamond in the Rough: Is There a Genuine Environmental Threat to Security?J.R. McNeill of Georgetown University reviews Jared Diamond's Collapse: How SocietiesChoose to Fail or Succeed which claims that several societies in times past collapsed in part for environmental reasons and that these cases bear lessons for today. While praising Diamond for "[getting] his history right," McNeill suggests that his application of lessons derived from these historical cases to today's environmental problems will leave many readers unconvinced.

International Security Ranks First
The Belfer Center's International Security journal ranked first in the 2004 Impact Factorrankings calculated by the Institute forScientific Information (ISI).

The Institute covers more than 50 of the world's most cited international relations journals, evaluating their impact and influence on the global research community through quantifiable data.

Impact Factor evaluates a journal's academic significance relative to others in its field. IS has the distinguished honor of having ranked first four times in the last nine years, an achievement unmatched by any other journal.