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Dilemmas About Security Dilemmas

Ever since Thucydides students of international politics have focused on the security dilemma as a cause of conflict.1 Defined as the unfortunate fact that policies designed to increase the state’s security often have the effect of decreasing the other’s security (even though this is not desired or intended), at first glance this appears to be more a problem than a dilemma. The latter aspect appears once we realize that while arming (or making alliances) can end up heightening tensions, making the state less secure, and even producing an unnecessary war, the failure to take such precautions can endanger the state if it is faced by adversaries who will take advantage of its weakness. So the question of how many and what kind of arms a state should procure not only presents trade-offs with consumption and investment, but confronts the state with difficult judgments about how to maximize its security. Over the past fifteen years, Charles Glaser has been wrestling with the security dilemma, what it tells us about international politics, and how leaders should react to it, and Rational Theory of International Politics pulls together and extends this body of work.2 As is his wont, Glaser proceeds with great care and thoroughness, generously acknowledging what others have said. He makes major contributions by laying bare basic arguments that had become obscured and pushing forward current lines of argument, but this kind of enterprise necessarily excludes positions outside its purview and runs the risk of accepting too quickly some propositions that need further probing.