268 CHAPTER EigHT ■ War and Strife
explanation embedded in the notion of a security community that combines thinking
drawn from the best insights of realism (for example, NATO) and liberalism (for exam-
ple, the UN, IMF, and GATT). In the security community composed of the United
States, Western Eu rope, and Japan, Jervis argues, war is unthinkable.^4
Realists explain the security community as arising from American economic, and
especially military, hegemony. Since the end of World War II, the United States has had
the world’s largest economy, and in part because of that status, U.S. military spending
on average has exceeded the combined spending of the next seven countries. Militarily,
then, the United States has had no peer. That military dominance is magnified by
the effect of nuclear weapons and by the continued recognition that an all- out, general
war would be unwinnable and hence irrational, just as Mueller posits. In short, there was
no World War III because the United States, in combination with support from its
allies, was both willing and able to use its economic and military power to prevent it.
The liberal explanation has two parts. First, liberals argue that had it not been for
the misguided economic policies of the 1920s, the economic depression that spread
across the globe in the 1930s— and created fertile ground for extreme ideas and leaders
such as Benito Mussolini— would never have happened. War would have either been
entirely prevented, or at least contained. This notion explains the postwar liberal
emphasis on trade openness and transparency, as represented by the IMF and GATT
(now the WTO). Second, liberals argue that the steady proliferation of demo cratic
states has expanded the Eu ro pean zone of peace globally. Not only are democracies
unlikely to go to war with each other, but that effect also becomes magnified if they
are eco nom ically interdependent and if they share membership in international organ-
izations, as Chapter 5 explains.
Constructivists level an equally power ful set of propositions to explain the decline
of interstate and total war since World War II. They posit that it is not change in the
material conditions (American hegemony or economic interde pen dency) that matters,
but rather change in the attitudes of individuals who are increasingly “socialized into
attitudes, beliefs, and values that are conducive to peace.”^5 As Robert Jervis— a self-
identified realist who has made increasing use of constructivist arguments in his own
theory— explains, “The destructiveness of war, the benefits of peace, and the changes
in values interact and reinforce each other.”^6 This explanation is effectively psycholo-
gist Steven Pinker’s argument in The Better Angels of Our Nature (see Chapter 1). He argues
that mutually reinforcing trends (the disciplinary power of states, the demo cratic
peace, the empowerment of women) have led to a condition in which not just war but
all interhuman vio lence has declined. Jervis and Pinker thus share the constructivist
view that norms— such as the nature of security and the range of means permissible to
pursue it— shift over time, creating new hazards and new opportunities.^7
In contrast to total war, limited wars are often initiated or fought over less- than-
critical issues (at least for one belligerent), and as such, tend to involve less- than- total