IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ginixx/v39y2013i1p30-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Balances Without Great Powers: Some Evidence on War and Peace in the Americas, 1816--1989

Author

Listed:
  • William B. Moul

Abstract

Did disputes between non-great powers in the New World, 1816--1989, escalate to war if the disputes involved roughly equal sides or not? Metaphorically and practically, “balances of power” are about measurement, but many of the usual measures prove to be incorrect. Proper assessments of the balances of fighting power qualify counts of the material resources by considering the political-organizational capacity of the state to employ what is counted, the geopolitical location and logistics, and what bystander states might do if the dispute were to escalate. A modest correlation exists between rough equality in power capabilities and war, not peace, in the Americas, 1816--1989. A bare majority of the wars in the Americas from 1816 until 1989 were fought between equal sides, and equal disputants were thirteen times more likely to escalate to war than non-equals were. This relationship found among non-great powers is much less strong than the relationship found among the great powers.

Suggested Citation

  • William B. Moul, 2013. "Balances Without Great Powers: Some Evidence on War and Peace in the Americas, 1816--1989," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 30-53, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:39:y:2013:i:1:p:30-53
    DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2013.749750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2013.749750
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03050629.2013.749750?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:39:y:2013:i:1:p:30-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GINI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.