POL208Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Preemptive War, Preventive War, Nuclear Triad
Document Summary
There are many problems within states which can lead to war, such as: information. This lack of information can lead to uncertainty over an actor"s capabilities and resolve: credibility. There are incentives to misrepresent a threat; e. g. if you want to deny foes a rst- strike advantage, one should bluff. If credibility is valid, then costly = good: resolve. Question: how can one make a credible commitment: obtaining/creating objects which affect power distribution, such as wmds, yielding nuclear weapons (or more elaborately, a nuclear triad), which eliminates any rst-strike advantages yielded by states, hand-tying" political maneuvers. If a state yields technology that can annihilate a potential foe (such as nukes) without threat of retaliation, then one has the rst-strike advantage. First-strike advantage is expressed by two rationales: preemptive war. In this case, a war is imminent. State a attacks state b just before they mobilize their forces.
