Steps To War

The Steps To War theory is a conflict research theory developed by Paul Senese and John Vasquez. It tries to identify factors that predict the likelihood that two states will enter a state of war with one another. Its basic statement is that the foreign policy actions of two states influence whether conflicts become wars.

“Steps To War” describes one possible way in which conflicts escalate. It is not a universal theory of the causes of war, and does not identify necessary, but sufficient causes. Senese and Vasquez call this escalation process the “realistic road to war” . They claim that power politics suggests realistic political theory to increase rather than decrease the likelihood of war.

Statements and methodology

1. Territorial conflicts between pairs of states are more likely to lead to war than conflicts over foreign policy behavior and conflicts based on the different political structures of the regimes of the states.
2. Senese and Vasquez define a type of foreign policy action, so-called "power political actions". These include threats, demonstrations of power, the formation of alliances and arms races. The more of these acts two states carry out, the higher the likelihood of war.
3. The relationship between the number of conflicts between two opponents and the likelihood of war is curved: at the beginning, every additional conflict leads to an increased probability, later to a lower probability.

The research was carried out with conflict data from the period 1816–2001. The theory describes conflicts between 1816 and 1945 better than that of the period 1946–2001.

literature

• Paul D. Senese, John A. Vasquez: The Steps To War: An Empirical Study. Princeton, NJ 2008: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-13892-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} John A. Vasquez: The steps to war. An empirical study . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2008, ISBN 978-1-4008-3783-0 .