Contending Perspectives on Managing Insecurity 305strike because of improvements in U.S. nuclear capacity (including the ability to track
submarines and mobile missiles) the declining capability of the Rus sian military, and
the still slow pace of China’s modernization. In fact, China has no long- range bombers
and no advance- warning system. If true, U.S. nuclear primacy would deter other states
from attacking the United States, but might tempt the United States to a preemptive
nuclear strike against its enemies.
Realist approaches to managing insecurity rely mainly on fear, but as we have seen,
they also imagine power in almost purely material terms. To the extent that changing
norms, or a rise in the power of ideas, has changed world politics, can realist approaches
to managing insecurity continue to be effective? If all realists have is bullets, it is hard
to see how realist approaches to managing insecurity can succeed unaided. What is the
liberal alternative?
Liberal Approaches: Collective Security and
Arms Control/Disarmament
Unlike realists, liberals have a theory that imagines a world without war. The core logic
of the liberal position acknowledges the structural constraint of anarchy and accepts
the priority of state insecurity as a factor motivating interstate relations, but argues that
states seeking power, including economic power, will be led by self- interest into suc-
cessively deeper and broader cooperation with other states, even if at times that coop-
eration is punctuated by war. Over time, cooperation may be institutionalized, reducing
the costs of transactions and increasing the costs and risks of cheating. Liberals also
focus on the nature of a state’s po liti cal system, arguing that, in contrast to the realist
view, there are essentially “good” (liberal and open) and “bad” (authoritarian and closed)
states. Over time, the rewards that accrue to good states will create pressures and incen-
tives on more and more bad states to become responsible partners in an interstate system.
Fi nally, liberal theorists argue that the demo cratic peace provides power ful empirical
support for their arguments, because it is virtually impossible to cite an example of
two demo cratic states going to war against one another. Given these theoretical under-
pinnings, liberal approaches to managing insecurity call on the international commu-
nity or international institutions to coordinate actions to reduce the likelihood and
destructiveness of war.
The ColleCTIve SeCurITy Ideal
Collective security is captured in the old adage “one for all and all for one.” Based on
the proposition that aggressive and unlawful use of force by any state against another
must be stopped, collective security posits that such unlawful aggression will be met