276 CHAPTER EigHT ■ War and Strife
all struggling over conflicting claims to offshore islands such as the Spratly Islands.
According to the international- system- level explanation, these disputes tend to escalate
to vio lence because there are no authoritative and legitimized arbiters of claims. John
Mearsheimer calls this the “911 prob lem— absence of central authority, to which a
threatened state can turn for help.”^11
Neither is there an effective arbiter of competing claims to self- determination.
Who decides whether Tibetan, Chechen, Catalonians, or Quebecois claims for self-
determination are legitimate? Who decides whether Kurdish claims against Turkey
and Iraq are worthy of consideration? Without an internationally legitimized arbiter,
authority is relegated to the states themselves, with the most power ful ones often becom-
ing the decisive, interested arbiters.
In addition, several realist variants attribute war to other facets of the anarchic nature
of the international system. One system- level explanation for war, advanced in the work
of Kenneth Organski, is power transition theory. To Organski and his intellectual heirs,
it is not only mismatched material power that tempts states to war, but also anticipa-
tion of shifts in the relative balance of power. War occurs because more power leads to
expectations of more influence, wealth, and security. Thus, a power transition can cause
war in one of two patterns. In one pattern, a challenger might launch a war to solidify
its position: according to some power transition theorists, the Franco- Prussian War
(1870–71), the Russo- Japanese War (1904–1905), and the two world wars (1914–
18 and 1939–45, respectively) all share this pattern.^12 In a second pattern, the hegemon
might launch a preventive war to keep a rising challenger down. Some have argued that
current international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear development fits this pattern.
Either way, according to the theory, power transitions increase the likelihood of war.
A variant derived from power transition theory is that uneven rates of economic
development cause war. George Modelski and William R. Thompson find regular
cycles of power transition starting in 1494. They observe 100- year cycles between
hegemonic wars— wars that fundamentally alter the structure of the international
system. A hegemonic war creates a new hegemonic power; its power waxes and
wanes, a strug gle follows, and a new hegemon assumes dominance. The cycle begins
again.^13
Radicals also believe the international system structure is responsible for war. Dom-
inant cap i tal ist states within the international system need to expand eco nom ically,
waging war with developing regions over control of natu ral resources and labor mar-
kets, or with other cap i tal ist states over control of developing regions. According to
radicals, the dynamic of expansion inherent in the international cap i tal ist system is
the major cause of wars.
Realist and radical reliance on one level of explanation may be overly simplistic,
however. Because the international system framework exists all the time, to explain
why wars occur at some times but not others, we also need to consider the other levels