War and International Politics

Abstract With the end of unipolarity, security competition among the great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—is back with a vengeance. Given the possibility of war between rival great powers, the purpose of this article is to analyze great power war. My central claim is that war is the dominant feature of life in the international system, mainly because of the nature of politics. In particular, politics is a fundamentally conflictual enterprise with the ever-present possibility of violence in the background. This argument, which differs from Carl von Clausewitz's famous claim that war is an extension of politics by other means, is rarely made in the international relations literature. I examine how the interplay between politics and war affects how states both initiate and conduct armed conflict. What are the limits on states starting wars, and how do political and military factors contribute to their escalation? I argue that it is almost impossible to put meaningful limits on when states can start wars, and that there is a powerful tendency for wars to escape political control and escalate.