10 - Crises and the international system: arenas, alignments and norms

Summary

The present chapter examines one dimension of the setting in which crises occur, namely, the international system. A second dimension, the historical background – the specific developments which explain why a particular conflict becomes so acute as to precipitate a crisis – is outlined in each of the case studies, and its significance in determining the outcome of the crises is examined in Chapter 15. It has come to be recognised that crises are influenced by the character of the changing international system, but precisely in what ways has been unclear. This chapter attempts to clarify the nature of that influence.

Two approaches to the study of the international system may be distinguished: the work of theorists of system structure in the ‘neorealist’ school, such as Kenneth Waltz, Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, and the more heterogeneous body of writing which may be termed historical sociology, which includes earlier works by F.H. Hinsley and Richard Rosecrance, and more recent contributions by Paul Schroeder, Gordon Craig and Alexander George.

Waltz does not seek to relate crises to international systems, but his comments on war would apply equally to crises:

A theory of international politics will, for example, explain why war recurs, and it will indicate some of the conditions that make war more or less likely; but it will not predict the outbreak of particular wars Within a system, a theory explains recurrences and repetitions, not change.