Fellow foreign policy zealot Marian’s post about the addition of Turkey to the European Union overlapped with an article by Robert A. Pape in the Summer 2005 issue of International Security that I read this morning. Pape is a proponent of the “soft balancing” theory of international relations. In his words, “States balance when they take action intended to make it hard for strong states to use their military advantage against others. . . . Mechanisms of soft balancing include territorial denial, entangling diplomacy, economic strengthening, and signaling of resolve to participate in a balancing coalition.” (International Security 30:1, p. 36).

As an example of soft balancing against the US, Pape cites Turkey’s January 2003 refusal to allow the US to stage ground troops in Turkey in preparation for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Perhaps Turkey joining the EU would be a further example of soft balancing– Europe wants to insulate itself against future economic shocks that could occur as a result of, for example, the US invading Iran, or Syria, or whomever British intelligence next erroneously identifies as hiding WMD (Australia, anyone? Bunch of criminals! How about Canada? Alcan found to be manufacturing 7075 T6 aluminum tubes?)

I mostly agree with Pape’s theory, but I think he ascribes too much control to national governments. In January 2003, if I recall correctly, there were riots in Turkey over the possibility of American troops being stationed there. The Turkish government may not have been strategically balancing against the US so much as attempting to ensure political stability for the ruling party.

Other interesting information from Pape’s article:

1. What Bush II calls a war in which the US would “act preemptively” in The National Security Strategy of the United States has traditionally been called in international relations “preventive war.” A “preemptive” attack typically refers to an attack which occurs in immediate response to observed battle preparations (troop deployments, for example).
2. In a footnote, Pape says that “In the standard list of preventive wars over the past two centuries, all were started by authoritarian states: Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), Austro-Prussian War (1866), Franco-Prussian War (1870), Russo-Japanese War (1904), World War I (1914), Germany-Soviet Union (1941), and Japan-United States (1941).” Pape cites as a source Randall L. Schweller, World Politics 44:2, pp. 235-269.