Challenges to Substantive Demilitarisation in the Antarctic Treaty Area

The demilitarisation provisions of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty are limited and contingent. Critically, a functional gap is enabled within the key Article I, which both prohibits ‘measures of a military nature’ and sanctions the use of military personnel and equipment in pursuit of ‘peaceful purposes’. None of the key terms and concepts are defined. With increasing focus on and in the Antarctic Treaty Area on interstate competition around resource access and regime control, and in particular the rapidly increasing geopolitical struggle between ‘the West’ and China both globally and within the Antarctic, and the transformation of what military activity actually entails, the existing demilitarisation principles are now inadequate. The failure to update these in the 60 years since the Antarctic Treaty was adopted, the lack of confidence that the historic Antarctic Treaty model of regional governance can itself manage the struggle, and indications over recent years that some states are even increasing the level of military entanglement with their Antarctic programmes, suggest it is now timely to reassess and respond to the case for substantive demilitarisation in the Antarctic Treaty Area.

The Transformative Effects of Military Intervention on Grand Strategy

This chapter develops the first systematic theory—the informational theory of strategic adjustment—to explain why military interventions can be crucibles of grand strategy. It argues that, by prosecuting a military intervention, states glean rich and rare information about adversaries’ capabilities and intentions, as well as their own military power and cost tolerance. The uniquely costly nature of warfighting renders this data particularly credible. Amidst background conditions of intense interstate competition and pervasive uncertainty, states face strong incentives to reassess their grand strategies in light of this new information. This process of grand strategic updating begins with a reassessment of the strategic assumptions directly tested on the battlefield, but it doesn’t end there. Indeed, the grand strategic effects of military interventions are far-reaching because information conveyed via warfighting is widely extrapolated to related strategic assessments.

Economic Interests and Grand Strategy

Grand strategy and economic interests are tightly interconnected: a state’s economy affects its choice of strategy, and its choice of strategy affects its economy. A full account of this relationship must distinguish among three perspectives on state and societal preferences. Under most varieties of realism, the state is autonomous from society and motivated by survival. Wealth is a vital source of military power, and military power is necessary for survival; thus, the state seeks to increase its wealth relative to its rivals. This paradigm provides much insight into the dynamics of interstate competition, but its assumption that grand strategy is insulated from domestic politics sharply limits its analytic utility. Liberals, Marxists, and neoclassical realists go deeper. They do not ignore the survival motive, but they also consider how the state might be biased in favor of a particularist set of economic interests. When this bias is consistent, persisting across changes in government, it constitutes a national preference; when it varies across governments, it is a subnational preference. Research into the latter shows great promise for the development of new insights into the root causes of grand strategy.

Conclusion

This chapter discusses political fragmentation that is often identified as the feature that differentiated Europe from other regions of the globe, from the fall of Rome to the twenty-first century. Researchers have not fully thought through the nature and consequences of stable diversity. It focuses on the Darwinian mechanisms of interstate competition and have been less sensitive to the capacity of fragmented but stable societies to form dynamic learning communities. The most important feature of a fragmented Europe, from this perspective, was not the spur to innovation of interstate competition that forms the focus of the research on the fiscal military state or its variant, the development state. The incentives to cooperation incubated in local, provincial contexts where individuals and groups were in constant contact were, if anything, even more important in explaining successful adaptation to change. The provinces of Europe, in a best-case scenario, could create stable contexts for cooperation and innovation.

Proxy War

This book provides a more comprehensive, definitive, and rigorous treatment of proxy war. This book argues that proxy war can and should remain a useful and effective tool of foreign policy, but that such an endeavor demands better understanding and deliberation. Proxy war serves as a means of indirect intervention when conditions eclipse policies using direct or non-intervention. Indirect intervention, however, is not synonymous with proxy war. Rather, proxy war falls on the spectrum of indirect intervention and includes other options such as simply donating assistance to politically-motivated, local fighters or offering support to mercenary forces from outside the country. Building on this knowledge, policy makers and strategists can better judge how fixed and unchangeable conditions such as the presence of interstate competition, domestic politics, geography, and the characteristics of the international system influence proxy war. More importantly, this book explains the role of conditions that a state can alter or change to improve the utility and efficacy of proxy war—more or less, it provides a “how to” manual for conducting proxy war, should the policy be chosen. The ability to maintain a coherent policy (both internally and externally) and cultivate/maintain control over a proxy’s activities increase the chances that a proxy war policy contributes to the pursuit and attainment of national interests. The book provides a new look at proxy war using uncommon and unused cases to test the concepts presented.

Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the argument and assesses potential for future cultural conflicts in world politics. Cultural and political divides come from different sources, but in times of acute interstate competition culture and politics tend to reinforce each other, exacerbating international tensions. Future competition for values is not likely to take the form of a new Cold War yet the intense rivalry for power and rules means a continuous culture wars in world politics. Russia is not doomed to be the United States’ Dark Double. US-Russia relations may gradually become less dependent on presenting each other as potential ideological threats if the two nations learn to reframe bilateral relations in value-free terms.

Regional Influence or Institutional Constraints? Impact of Interstate Competition and Fiscal Rules on User Charge Reliance across U.S States

Few studies have been conducted to analyze influential factors of state user charge reliance. This study empirically examines the impact of interstate competition and fiscal rules on state user charge reliance between 1991 and 2014 by applying panel data analysis. Also, this study aims to investigate mechanisms of state user charge reliance and various variables related to user charge reliance, which enhances and broadens understanding of factors that affect state user charge reliance. According to this analysis, overall state user charge reliance is mainly explained by interstate competition, fiscal rules, state tax effort, ideological standpoint and income level. Practically, states need to attend to their taxable resources and consider the actual effect of TELs and balanced budget rules in limiting the growth of government. Future research is recommended to examine mechanisms of state specific user charge sources and expand the variables related to user charge reliance.