Search

Is climate change a valid national security issue for the United States? Even taking a narrow definition of national security issues-threats to a state's core values for which it would be willing to go to war or use force, one can identify a number of ways in which climate change already constitutes a national security issue to which security specialists in the United States should pay attention. In part 1, I explore the definitional terrain of "environmental security" by offering an account of "national security" and "grand strategy" that accords with traditional conceptions of security. I also identify criteria by which climate change could constitute a threat to national security and the U.S. in particular. In parts 2-4, I assess whether the potential effects of climate change constitute national security threats for the United States. In part 2, I examine the directs effects of climate change on the territorial United States, including abrupt climate change and extreme weather events. In part 3, I discuss the effects of climate change on the extraterritorial interests of the U.S. including the links between extreme weather events and violent conflict, natural disasters and humanitarian intervention, and, finally, climate change and soft power. The final section explores the security externalities of energy and climate change, looking at the links between oil dependence, terrorism, and climate change as well as the proliferation problems associated nuclear power as a remedy for climate change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article develops a Theory of Moral Credibility under Unipolarity, addressing the literature on reputation and how it relates to the behavior of secondary states in a world dominated by a single superpower. It also discusses case selection and identifies hard cases for this ideational reputation theory.

In 2002 and 2003 in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the U.S. and Europe experienced the most jarring deterioration in the transatlantic partnership since the Suez crisis of 1956. When attempting to diagnose the causes for the recent spate of ill will, the temptation is to look to the current inhabitants of elective office. For those who followed disputes over landmines, climate change, the International Criminal Court and other issues, it is clear problems go beyond George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder. The first section of the paper, through illustrative counter-factuals (What if Al Gore won the election? What if Europe had been bombed on September 11th?), examines the extent to which present difficulties are a product of contingent developments. The second section examines the deeper reasons for the divide. A number of authors have identified deeper sources by looking to differences in underlying material conditions and cultural values. However, these explanations typically are far too deterministic. Neither the end of the Cold War nor material differences in military capabilities determine a country?s choice of foreign policy approaches. Similarly, while values differences between the U.S. and Europe may be real, these should not obscure the commonalities of culture and interest that remain strong, particularly in light of vast differences between the democratic West and the authoritarian rest of the world. Section three makes the case that materialist and cultural arguments miss or minimize the the ways in which political distance itself may be the main cause of difficulties in the post-Cold War era. Political distance between governing elites is ultimately derived from differences in ?domestic? decision-making processes shape which interests and values exercise influence in political life. These internal institutions establish constraints on European and American decision-makers in international fora that may exacerbate differences between the two. The paper concludes by emphasizing that recent difficulties are as much a product of choice as they are driven by structural constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-Cold War era, climate change, landmines, debt relief and a number of other issues emerged to re-shape the agenda of decision-makers in the advanced industrialized world. The primary advocates of these normative issues are motivated not by their own material self-interests but broader notions of right and wrong. What is the primary logic that contributes to the domestic acceptance of these moral commitments? International relations scholars identify persuasion as the primary way in which states are ‘convinced’ that a norm-based policy is worth accepting. How should we characterize this process of persuasion? Is this the right term to describe the actions of transnational protest movements? Through a case study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign for developing country debt relief, I offer an account of persuasion based on strategic framing by advocates to get the attention of decision-makers. This paper emphasizes the rhetorical and framing strategies that are used to try to tip the political balance in support of normative agendas but ultimately ascribes these a different character than either coercion or Habermasian communicative action. Such strategic but not narrowly self-interested activity allows weak actors to leverage existing value traditions to build broader coalitions of political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks answers to the puzzle, "How is that, in the face of an overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is real, the advanced industrialized countries cannot agree on measures to deal with the problem?" The paper is guided by two intuitions: (1) national-level decision-making processes may foreclose mutually acceptable bargains between countries and (2) the ways international norms get framed may make getting on the agenda more likely but success at the decision stage less likely and The study concludes that the international arena’s early commitments froze in preferences that were too distant from those of important players in U.S domestic politics, both Congressional and larger societal (i.e. corporate interests). At the same time, as depicted by a simple spatial model, the preferences of European polities restricted the range of acceptable compromises that could be made, thus leaving the U.S. and its European allies at odds. Through the example of global warming, the paper also seeks to ascertain the gravity and significance of the foreign policy differences between the U.S. and its allies. Here, the argument emphasized the proxy nature of global warming as part of a larger European concern about U.S. unilateralism and diffidence. Implicitly, the paper favored the notion that the character of American hegemony matters for cooperation, and that the conflict with Europe over global warming and other issues may significantly undermine the capacity for Europe to cooperate with the U.S. on issues of interest to the Americans. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, and under what conditions, can weak actors influence the behavior of the strong? Traditional IR theory avers that capabilities dictate outcomes. Yet, despite the hypothesized, inevitable consequences of such power asymmetries, sometimes, to paraphrase Thucydides, the weak succeed in doing what they can, not simply suffering what they must (e.g., Mack 1978; Arreguin-Toft 2001, 2005; Greenhill 2002, forthcoming). One method whereby weak actors effectively exercise influence is by harnessing the power of norms (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Under certain conditions, weak actors can turn the virtues of the powerful against them, by exposing the distance between what they say and what they do and thereby imposing on them what one scholar has termed "hypocrisy costs" (Greenhill 2002, 2004, forthcoming). However, strong actors vary in the degree to which they make themselves vulnerable to rhetorical entrapment. Moreover, different constellations of interest group mobilization can make strong actors more or less susceptible to weak actor influence. One of our central claims is that strong actors are especially vulnerable to weak actor influence when the strong actor has made many statements in support of a norm ("high rhetorical entrapment") and both pro-norm and anti-norm advocates are mobilized to impose high political costs. In this paper, we use comparative case study analysis to demonstrate that different combinations of rhetorical entrapment and interest group mobilization can explain when weak actors have influence over the strong. The cases we study include NGO campaigns for the International Criminal Court, focusing on the policies of two hard cases, France and the United States. We also study two migration cases where weak actors (Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti and Erich Honecker of East Germany) successfully used pro-human rights norms and the strategic threat of migration to coerce stronger powers (the United States and West Germany, respectively). In the conclusion, we outline the further implications of the argument, including what it has to say about outcomes in additional norms-charged issue areas, such as funding of anti-retroviral drugs and the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]