Steven E. Lobell

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at University of Utah

Why do some near crises tip over into full-blown crisis and others do not? This paper considers existing scholarship and identifies four key barriers to using quantitative analysis for tipping-point analyses: strategic indeterminacy; the incentives for conflict parties to avoid inefficiencies; the paucity of cases; and the availability of quality d...

There is much debate about the impending collapse of the liberal international order. It is provoked by the shifts in material and military capabilities from emerging peer and near-peer competitors, some of whom were not part of the original grand bargain and others that are in a stronger position to renegotiate the bargain. As one critical element...

Differential rates of growth explanations for preventive war assume that power resources are highly fungible. That is, they assume that a state's power resources are easily and quickly 'moveable' into practical military capability. This 'unidimensional and undifferentiated' baseline obscures an important distinction in the motivations for preventiv...

In 1981, Israel launched a preventive military strike against a nuclear reactor that Iraq was constructing at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. The low fungibility of Iraq’s power resources, and especially its nuclear weapons program, shaped Israel’s decision-making process. First, it motivated Israel’s executives to disaggregate Iraq’s capabil...

Theories of balancing are under assault. On theoretical and historical grounds, realists and non-realists challenge the claim that states balance against shifts in aggregate material capabilities. In addressing these claims, this article presents a more granular and finely tuned theory of balancing. It contends that states do, in fact, balance effec...

Realist Cold War foreign policy approaches emphasize the importance of aggregate measures and metrics of material and military capabilities in the international system. Realists argue that shifts in capabilities and changes in the distribution of power are dangerous and that aggregate power is fungible. These approaches have been carried forward in...

An assumption runs through this symposium that peaceful change is desirable and ought to be encouraged. We do not believe it is that simple. The term “peaceful change” itself is not well defined. The article, therefore, narrowly defines peaceful change as a process whereby a hegemon voluntarily cedes its dominant geopolitical role to a challenger i...

As the world enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, far-reaching changes are likely to occur. China, Russia, India, and Brazil, and perhaps others, are likely to emerge as contenders for global leadership roles. War as a system-changing mechanism is unimaginable, given that it would escalate into nuclear conflict and the destruction o...

In The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking, scholars examine the efficacy of trade agreements, economic sanctions, and other strategies of economic statecraft for the promotion of peace both between rival states and across conflict-ridden regions more generally. In the introduction, Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman pose five central que...

In this article we examine when and why secondary and tertiary states select a strategy that does not entail following the lead of the rising states. To address these questions we outline a simple model that examines systemic and sub-systemic (regional) constraints on and opportunities for secondary and tertiary states: how engaged in the region is...

The articles in this special issue examine the responses to the rise of new and emerging powers including Brazil, China, India and South Africa across different regions. Rather than focus on great powers and hegemons, the contributors address the contestation between regional powers, and secondary and tertiary states. The contributors address three...

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's po...

"The years between the world wars represent an era of broken balances: the retreat of the United States from global geopolitics, the weakening of Great Britain and France, Russian isolation following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the resurgence of German power in Europe, and the rise of Japan in East Asia. All these factors complicated great-power...

The years between the World Wars represent an era of broken balances: the retreat of the United States from global geopolitics, the weakening of Great Britain and France, Russian isolation following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the resurgence of German power in Europe, and the rise of Japan in East Asia. All these factors complicated great-power...

The turbulent two decades between the end of World War I and the outbreak of World War II represent a period of broken balances, when the global and regional balances of power shattered by war never fully reconstructed. Indeed, the balance remained broken in several ways. The United States, the most powerful actor in the world, failed to play a bal...

We use offensive and defensive structural realism to shed light on a variety of questions related to the rise of China, including whether a Sino-Russian alliance will form and if it does, what kind of behavior the alliance will engage in, and the likelihood of war between great powers, notably the United States and China. We conclude that the Weste...

How do states perceive international threats? Which domestic actors are the most important in threat definition? What happens when domestic actors and interests disagree on the nature of threats? As we state in chapter 1, these are central questions to the neoclassical realist agenda and require a theory of the state to answer. In this chapter I wi...

Neoclassical realism is an important new approach to international relations. Focusing on the interaction of the international system and the internal dynamics of states, neoclassical realism seeks to explain the grand strategies of individual states as opposed to recurrent patterns of international outcomes. This book offers the first systematic s...

Great powers can pursue deliberate Trojan horse policies to transform rising and threatening states into followers and supporters rather than challengers by altering their domestic political and economic institutions. I contend that a great power can use trade concessions, rather than punishment, to enable a favorable foreign policy coalition in a...

Great powers can pursue deliberate “Trojan horse” policies to transform rising and geostrategic secondary states into followers and supporters, rather than challengers. I contend that a great power can use economic statecraft, and in particular trade agreements, to deliberately promote shifts in the societal distribution of power in a target countr...

How does war affect the structure of domestic interests in democratic capitalist states and how are these interests reflected in the conduct of the war? Developing a second image reversed `plus' argument (outside-in and then inside-out), I contend that war can alter the domestic balance of political power, and can thereby affect the orientation of...

In combining the domestic and international levels, I contend that the international environment can enable a domestic win-set and thereby guide the formation of a state's international security strategy. The trigger is the nature of and changes in the extant international setting. Based on findings from framing effects and prospect theory, I conte...

Most states have numerous paths to create security for themselves. Foreign policy-makers must recognize that their own security policy will initiate a process that structures the nature of the domestic competition over domestic and foreign policy in other countries. I contend that one state's security alternative can empower or weaken domestic acto...

Between 1889 and 1939 Britain created security for itself through alliances, rearmament, or appeasement (either alone or in some combination). The existing literature emphasizes the role of geopolitics, domestic characteristics, and individual idiosyncrasies to explain Britain's choices. I argue that within Britain, two broad and logrolled coalitio...

The United States has three blueprints from previous hegemons for how (and how not) to respond to challengers: The Spanish I (1621-40) response of punishment everywhere. Philip IV and his deputy, Olivares, engaged in total warfare against the Dutch, the French, and the English, as well as against the Ottomans and the Swedes, on several fronts and o...

The George W. Bush defense strategy asserts that the United States is more secure in a world were it is the lone superpower. To perpetuate American primacy, this strategy calls for “assuring” allies and friends, and “dissuading” adversaries. Spain under King Philip IV (1621–1665) and his Count-Duke of Olivares, Gaspar de Guzman (1622–1643) pursued...

In this book we offer an approach to understanding the internationalization of ethnic conflict in different regional contexts that integrates international relations and comparative analysis. We examine four core explanatory frameworks that contribute to the diffusion and the escalation of ethnic conflicts in divided states and societies. These exp...

The Challenge of Hegemony explains how international forces subtly influence foreign, economic, and security policies of declining world powers. Using detail-rich case studies, this sweeping study integrates domestic and systemic policy to explain these countries' grand strategies. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for the fu...

In 1903–1906, 1917–1923, and 1930–1932 British decision makers debated whether to adopt a system of imperial preferences. Preferences were rejected in 1906 and 1923, but adopted in 1932 at the Ottawa Conference. The existing political economy literature focuses primarily on the hegemon's position in the international system, state or society center...

In the three decades prior to World War I, Britain's paradox was whether to cooperate with or punish an emerging Germany, Japan, France, Russia, and the United States. Based on the need for economy, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer pressed for cooperating with the contenders. Members of the services and Conservatives pushed to punish these c...

Connective Phrase: In Author Role: eds.

How do political (rather than economic) elites think about power? In this paper I use a neoclassical realist model of the state to challenge the conventional wisdom that during the 1930s Chamberlain and the “appeasers” rejected the traditions of balance of power. I argue that Britain balanced against Germany, Japan, and Italy, though, Britain did n...