International Security Journal Highlights

Vol. 37 No. 2 Fall 2012

“Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition”

Brendan Rittenhouse Green

Contrary to conventional accounts, the United States did not immediately adopt a balancing strategy against the Soviet Union after World War II. Rather, the Eisenhower administration sought U.S. withdrawal from Western Europe by pursuing a buck-passing strategy. Only under the Kennedy administration did the United States begin to make permanent commitments to the defense of Europe. A new theory analyzes this shift in policy, defining those who sought to withdraw from Europe as “negative liberals” and those who sought firmer balancing commitments as “positive liberals.”

“Just War Moral Philosophy and the 2008–09 Israeli Campaign in Gaza”

Jerome Slater

The controversial 2008–09 Israeli campaign in Gaza violated just war principles on three main accounts: it did not discriminate in its targets, there was no just cause, and it did not exhaust nonviolent alternatives. Human rights organizations have criticized Israel for its methods during the campaign, but its claim that the attack was an act of self-defense and was therefore justifiable is still widely accepted. The campaign’s primary purpose, however, was to crush resistance to Israel’s repression of Gaza—an indefensible cause by just war standards. Moreover, Israel did not fully explore political alternatives before launching the attack.

“Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation”

Benjamin S. Lambeth

The United States and its allies have long sought to learn from major combat encounters and to assimilate their learning into military doctrine, force development, and operating procedures. Israel’s successful campaign in Gaza in 2008–09 is evidence that the Israel Defense Forces learned from their mistakes in the Lebanon War two years earlier and incorporated that learning into their combat repertoire. Israel’s achievement in this area should be studied as an exemplar of military lessons learned and assimilated.

“The Psychology of Threat in Intergroup Conflict: Emotions, Rationality, and Opportunity in the Rwandan Genocide”

Omar Shahabudin McDoom

Group emotions, fear in particular, play an important role in how security threats polarize social groups. The case of the Rwanadan genocide demonstrates that four psychosocial mechanisms—boundary activation, outgroup derogation, outgroup homogenization, and ingroup cohesion—play an important role in group polarization, and that fear is a crucial driver of these mechanisms. A more thorough understanding of how security threats activate group polarization could help policymakers to minimize intergroup conflict.

“China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example”

M.E. Sarotte

Obsession with the democratic changes sweeping Europe in the late 1980s and a concomitant desire to keep these changes from spreading to China may have played a critical role in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) decision to take violent action against the Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. New sources, released during the 2009 to 2011 anniversaries of the events that ended the Cold War, cite the CCP’s determination to prevent the spread of democracy as one of its primary motivating factors. These sources also suggest that the CCP did not fear reprisals by the United States, which it predicted would take “no real countermeasures.”