國際關系dissertation
 

正如一位新的棋手，對他的皇后的戰術力量所心生敬畏。國際關系學的學生往往趨向專注于構成他研究領域的大功率政策與規定。而對小功率不怎么在乎，發展中國家，學生認為他的研究所有重要的意義都是從歌利亞國際體系中延伸開來的。只有有經驗的，對政策微妙的變化都能提亮眼睛的學生，就像棋手，才能學到除了大功率以外的東西，小功率是小兵負責做的事。因此，要敢于承擔不同的失?。ú顝娙艘獾姆治觯?。偉大的國際象棋大師弗朗索瓦菲力道爾說的好：“兵是游戲的生命”。雖然這個比喻是失敗的，一個棋子與另一個更有力量的大塊之間的差距比一個大國與一個小國之間的差異小得多。它可以突出大家對小功率共同常規的誤解。這個所在問題就是是否小國家在國際體系中（與問題本身的模糊性）起重要作用。

 

The Small Power in the International System 

 

Like a novice chess player, awed by the strategic power of his queen, students of International Relations tend to focus solely upon the Great Power as a source for policies and dictates which constitute his field of study. Paying little heed to small, developing nations, the student assumes that all that is important and significant to his study will flow from the Goliath's of the International System. Only with experience and an increasing eye for the subtle flow of policy will the student, like the chess player, learn that in addition to the Great Powers, the Small Powers--the pawns—do matter. Furthermore, to assume any differently invites swift defeat (poor analysis). The great Chess master Francois-André Danician Philidor said it best: "the pawns are the very life of the game."[i] Although the analogy fails in that the power disparity between a pawn and another more powerful piece is much smaller between the average Great and Small Powers, it suffices to highlight the common misconception of the inefficacy of Small Powers. The question of whether Small States matter in the International System (and the ambiguity of the question itself) will be addressed; four aspects of the importance of the Small Power will be reviewed in turn: Strategic, Military, Economic, and Alliance . 

 

First, it is essential to address the ambiguity of terms and their implications to the analysis; some sort of definition of the descriptor 'small' and of the verb 'to matter' must be established. In the literature published on the subject, the question has been addressed in varying degrees of certitude. Traditional indicators of "smallness" center around simple objective specifications: military units, population size, gross national product, etc. For the sake of being brief, this essay will not attempt to provide a refreshed definition of the Small States; it will leave that ambitious undertaking alone. Instead, this essay will present examples of the unambiguous kind and, when needed, rely on the traditional (but sufficient) schema to make decisions regarding definition. On the other hand, the notion of mattering within the system is not quite so capable of standing on its own. Here, we will break from the traditional archetype: relying on conditions of power to determine the relevance of a state. The reason for this is simple: were the term "to matter" to be defined in terms of power, than in combination with the already established idea of smallness (defined in terms of power), the question in debate could be rewritten as such: "Do Small (non-powerful) States matter (have power)." Rather than finishing the essay before its begun, the author will provide his own definition. To matter in the International System is to be capable of influencing others in the system; that is, to matter is to be a pivotal factor within the decision-making processes of others within the system. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

Secondly, the question of the distinction just made must be reviewed. If after imagining a spectrum along which all States are placed, this analysis has drawn a line (or cited the line of others) indicating where Small States end and Great Powers begin. Is this division arbitrary? As Rothstein states, in order for this analysis to be of interest, it must first be assumed that "…the categories 'Great' Power and 'Small' Power have a significance beyond relative power ratios."[ii] This relates back to the problem of definition. If Small Powers are nothing more than weaker versions of their larger counterparts, then the question of their mattering within the International system loses relevance. That is, if Small Powers are merely weaker versions of Great Powers, than the broad school of thought concerning Great Powers could easily be applied to them. Instead, however, it will be assumed that Small Powers have distinct policies and behaviors and, as such, it is important to analyze the effects of those behaviors within the system. Therefore, the spectrum model must be dismissed or divided into two smaller spectra. The progression from Small Powers to Great Ones is not a linear formula for relative power, but a formula for the diversified behavior necessary for the diverse players of the International System. Thus established, the analysis may begin. 

 

Strategic Importance 

 

In 1941, it would have been difficult to find a Frenchman to argue that Small States do not matter; it had been just such a miscalculation which had made the German invasion of France so successful. As they learned the hard way, the fortifications designed to repel a direct invasion from Germany while practically ignoring their borders with the Small Powers Belgium and Luxemburg turned out to be totally inadequate. Unfortunately, the French had not planned on an invasion force coming through Belgium. As the Figure 1 below shows, the border with Belgium is defended only with light fortifications. Static in its role as a Small Power, Belgium played a decisive role in the German invasion which, in turn, played a decisive role in WWII. That being said, the factors which led to Belgium playing a decisive part in the invasion must be assessed. At first glance, it 

seems as though Belgium's effect had little to do with Belgium itself; in fact, one might argue that the outcome would have been the same had Belgium been an empty tract of land. Were this true, the example would be unusable. However, it was Belgium's presence which lulled France into the false sense of security which when combined with Belgium's military weakness as a Small Power allowed for Germany's incursion. Even as a Small Power, Belgium seemed enough of a shield against Germany to preclude the necessity of the Maginot Line's extension. However, perhaps the most common trait of a Small Power is an inability to provide adequate security, and no where is that exemplified clearer than in the overnight routing of Belgium forces by German blitzkrieg. Even if the essential characteristic of Belgium's role in WWII stemmed from their weakness as a Small Power, the fact remains that the nation played an important part. In the next example of the strategic importance of Small Powers, a case will be provided in which the importance of Small Powers play an essential part in the policy of the era's two Great Powers. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

Strategic importance, as shown in the first example, differs from military importance in that strategy—defined as a plan of action towards a desired goal—refers to the strategy of other nations in regards to the Small Power. This point will be contrasted with military importance in that the military then in question will be the military of the Small Power. At no time in history has Small Power based strategy been so significant as during the years directly following the Cold War. As the West withdrew its military arms, Communism, like an Iron Curtain, swallowed small nations in Eastern Europe. Every assimilation became a victory for the Soviet Union in what would end up being the longest conflict of the century. The spread of democracy and communism became the new weapons and the small nations of the world became the battlegrounds and booty of war. 

 

To deny the importance of the Small Power in this context is to invalidate the combined foreign policy of the two global Superpowers and to ignore the disastrous implications of that policy: The Korean and Vietnam Wars. The sentiment echoes in the words of one of the men who had to deal with the threat, "I felt certain that if South Korea were allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores…it would mean a Third World War."[iii] Now certainly Truman's fear alone fails to signal the importance of Korea; however, the fear led to a massive military campaign which could not be dismissed as anything less than a major world event—a major world event centered around the Small Power Korea. A decade later, the second major battle of the Cold War erupted in the jungles of another Small Power. The spread of Communism into the impoverished nation of N. Vietnam motivated one of the world's two Superpowers to invest hundreds of thousands of men and millions of dollars to halt it. Even though the Small Powers here serve only secondary roles themselves, the fact remains that global policy and attention revolved around them for two decades. 

 

Economic Importance 

 

Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela—none of these countries commands much power within the International System. On the other hand, they all have one thing in common: in their vast oil reserves, they command one aspect of power in the form of an essential industrial resource. Petroleum is one of the most important commodities on this planet, functioning in nearly all facets of industrialized life. Fortunately for the Middle-Eastern countries listed above, their land contains oil in unrivaled quantities. As they demonstrated in 1973, this gives them a leverage which seems disproportionate to their status as Small Powers. In that year, a decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (composed of the 11 States above) limited the supply of oil to certain countries, including the United States. R. Keohane cites that the United States imported 35 percent of its supply from OPEC, yet that 35 percent caused major shortages to domestic supply.[iv] Rosecrance also cites the Oil Crisis as more important than the Arab-Israeli War which prompted the embargo itself.[v] Certainly, to categorize a economic crisis as more important that an a series of bloody racial wars is to emphasize the severity of the economic crisis. Denise Bode explains the drastic nature of the situation: #p#分頁標題#e#

 

The Arab oil embargo drove the United States into an energy crisis. In the following days and months, the OPEC states used oil as a political weapon to create chaos in the United States, and it worked. The nation's oil supply was cut drastically, prices skyrocketed and consumers were forced to wait in what felt like endless lines at the gasoline pump. America's dependency on Middle East oil made the nation a hostage to OPEC.[vi] 

 

Few and far between are those who can claim to throw the United States into a state of chaos, but that is precisely the effect an OPEC embargo had upon the Western superpower. It could hardly be said of a Small Power (or a small group of them) which, at any time, had the capability to throw a global superpower into chaos that they did not matter. 

 

At the height of its power, Imperialist Japan threatened to destroy the world's most powerful navy and follow with an invasion of the United States. After years of intense combat and the detonation of two atom bombs, the Empire capable of that threat lay in ruin, renouncing the deficiency of war for all time.[vii] In the place of military imperialism, Japan assimilated economic ambitions and in a relatively short period of time proceeded to the front of the economic powers of the world. In fact, despite the lack of any sort of Japanese military, many today rightly consider it one of the world's Great Powers. However, to do so would be to betray even the most liberal of definitions of a Great Power; Rothstein's own definition underscores the importance of a military strength in that it is essential for security—"A Small Power is a state which recognizes that it can not obtain security primarily by use of its own capabilities."[viii] Even in its present state, Japan fails to meet the requirement of a Great Power, but without a doubt, within the past fifty years Japan has been simultaneously an economic power and a International Small Power. It is inherent within the notion of an economic power to matter within the International system; and what's more, if liberal scholars claiming increases in International interdependence receive even the slightest credibility, the significance of economic power increases several times over. Given that economic muscle ensures that its bearer matters within the system, the case for Japan could hardly be disputed; Samuel P. Huntington names Japan as the only rival to the economic power of the West.[ix] As the sole rival in International economics, it would be ludicrous to argue that Japan does not matter in the system 

 

Military Importance: 

 

To question the capacity of the Small Power to provide military importance within the International System is to commit the same error as the Soviet Forces which for a decade were unable to dominate the seemingly inferior forces of Afghanistan. In that Middle-Eastern country, soldiers of the Soviet Union failed to bring Afghanistan under their control, sustaining thousands of casualties. Like other Small Powers, Afghanistan possesses but one of the facets of power: it can defend itself. The rugged environment made guerilla defense a viable solution to the overt military force preferred by the Soviet Union. In fact, the evolution of military technology has led to the obsolescence of conventional military tactics. The traditional count of infantry units as a measure of power no longer serves to adequately represent the ability of a power to bring about their military ends. As the second half of this century has shown, this lesson has been a costly one for Great Powers. In the jungles of Vietnam and the deserts of Afghanistan, Great Powers have been unable to convert raw military energy into success. Massive military operations, the decisive factors in traditional types of war, no longer seems practical or even desirable. Tom Rogers highlights the effects of what appeared to be a small invasion on the International System, as well as, points out the changing role of military strength as an indicator of overall power. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan reaffirmed the modern proposition that military strength does not necessarily yield political results. Even with its great military arsenal, boasting the most vast nuclear potential and one of the most sophisticated scientific sectors in the world, the Soviets were unable to dominate a determined peasant society and its overmatched guerilla militia. However, the dynamic at work in Afghanistan was more than a determined rebel movement, it was also the force of global events which Moscow helped create but over which it had little control.[x] 

 

Perhaps the best way to understand the global effects of the Afghanistan invasion by the Soviet Union is to understand the effects the invasion had on the Soviet Union itself. The Soviet incursion cost 15,000 lives and the equivalent of 75 billion dollars.[xi] As the price of continued Soviet occupation in both lives and foreign relations abroad increased and the benefits—the ideologically wish to spread Soviet communism abroad—remained relatively low, the failed invasion marked the beginning of a new era for Soviet foreign policy. For the first time since the Cold War started, the Soviet Union announced both a drastic 33% decrease in defense spending and a revised philosophy concerning foreign policy which stressed cooperation rather than conflict. Although these changes, mirroring Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, cannot be attributed wholly to the failed invasion, it would be arrogant to dismiss the obvious connection between the two. Of course, the changes in the Soviet Union signaled more than change in policy; they heralded the downfall of the Superpower and a new era for the International system. Although the Afghan invasion was only a symptom of a larger disease, it was a death-pang of a dying behemoth. As the United States learned in the previous decade, The David versus Goliath effect of attempting military invasion on the home soil of a smaller, but fanatically determined adversary represented the shift in the relevance of traditional military tactics in a new technologically advanced world. 

 

In the new arena of military conflict, incredible machines dominate the armies of the most powerful and the threat of nuclear, chemical, or biological attack looms in the background as an unthinkable, yet too possible, nightmare. For the first time in history, numbers and resources no longer represent the most important factor in gauging military strength; the scientific minds of the few now pose a greater threat than the brute force of the many. The world's first glimpse of these new facts have, thankfully, been convincing enough: the atom bombs that leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand alone as the only two deployments of what are now considered weapons of mass destruction. As the weapons continue to develop, their plausibility as weapons of war decreases, yet the threat remains. What seems worse, the continued threat of a nuclear capable rogue nation with hostile intentions introduces whole new dimensions of the traditional security dilemma. The smallest of countries wielding a strain of the smallpox or anthrax viruses could have the most profound effects upon the International System: death, violence, and revenge. Whereas Small Powers in the past inherently lacked the ingredients of military might in that they possessed neither manpower or resources, it seems any nation today could. A case in point, recent discoveries in cities formerly controlled by the Taliban, the former ruling government of Afghanistan, proves that nuclear capability is at least one of their ambitions, and experts concede that "the chance that he has nuclear weapons is low…it's not zero. And he's clearly shown an intention to get nuclear weapons,"[xii] referring to the Al-Qaeda terrorist Osama Bin Laden who is intimately linked with the Taliban. David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, continues, "the means to get [nuclear weapons}, mainly, nuclear explosive material, are there."[xiii] If the rogue leadership of one of the poorest nations on Earth has the knowledge and perhaps the means to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of such weapons into Small Powers is no longer a stretch of the imagination; in fact, it seems quite probable. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

It seems no breach of logic to say that any nuclear-capable nations has, as an inherent property, of mattering in the International System or at the least, such a nation is capable of mattering depending upon their intentions. 

 

Conclusion 

 

As his skills increase, the newcomer to the game of chess soon learns that pawns, far from being the useless sub-pieces he had presumed, constitute one of the most important aspects of the game. With care, their position on the game board—a microcosm for the International System—carry significance in their position, their material worth, and their capturing power: easy symbols of the strategic, economic, and military importance of the Small Power. The point of the analogical comparison is simple: just as ignoring pawns within a game a chess leads to an incomplete understandings of the complexity of the game, ignoring Small Powers within the International System leads to an incomplete understanding of the system's true complexity. 

 

I have argued that in three majors areas, Small Powers have the capacity to matter within the system. At this point, it is also important to distinguish between mattering and a capacity to matter. My argument in no way asserts that Small Powers, by their nature, will consistently matter; instead, it is argued that the properties of a Small State are not exclusive to mattering. The distinction is important in explaining the seeming inconsistency between my argument and empirical evidence. First, to argue that Small Powers do matter would beg the question of why, in the International system, the cases in which they do matter are outnumbered by cases in which they do not; in other words, why, if Small Powers have such potential efficacy within the system, is this argument needed. Drawing one final time on Rothstein's analysis of the Small Power, his analysis of the policies of the Small Power answer the question: Neutrality, isolation, and withdrawal constitute the major political moves of the Small State and to carry those out, it is essential for a Small Power to seem irrelevant. In fact, Rothstein argues that "in speaking of policies for weakness, policies referred to are primarily those by which the Small Power attempts to remove or isolate itself from power conflicts…"[xiv] The tendency for the Small Power to seem unimportant within the system, therefore, reflects merely the (successful) strategic withdrawal which helps ensure its survival. 

 

Strategically, Small Powers often prove enticing for larger powers. History shows that at the outbreak of conflict, Great Powers often scramble to assimilate Small Powers into coalitions, hoping to control resources, land, or ideological fuel. As the Maginot Line demonstrates the simple geographic importance of controlling land, the Cold War Superpowers fought fierce wars for control of politically insignificant nations. Secondly, economic power has increasingly become the major indicator of overall power. As Japan and OPEC illustrate, the ability to leverage economic assets can be a very important way of securing desired ends. The emergence of Japan as an economic power after the Cold War and the ability of OPEC to withhold petroleum provide cases in point. Finally, with the emergence of technological warfare, the ability of a Small Power to provide military rivalry to a Great Power has increased exponentially. Afghani resistance to Soviet Domination brings to mind the biblical tale of David versus Goliath. On all counts, it becomes evident that to ignore the capacity of the Small Power to matter within the system is to leave noticeable gaps in any analysis of cause and effect within that system. #p#分頁標題#e#

reference

 

[i] Eade, James. Chess for Dummies (New York: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc, 1996), p. 33. 

 

[ii] Rothstein, Robert L. Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 23. 

 

[iii] Truman, Harry S. Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p. 333. 

 

[iv] Keohane, R. After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p.199. 

 

[v] Rosecrance, Richard. "Trade and Power" in Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace (Boston: Longman, 2002), p. 281. 

 

Bode, Denise. "20 Years After OPEC Oil Embargo, United States at More Risk than Ever" in The Oil Daily (18 October 1993). 

 

[vii] Pyle, Kenneth B. The Japanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Era (Washington D.C.: The AEI Press, 1992), p. 22. 

 

[viii] Rothstein, Robert L. Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 22. 

 

[ix] Huntington, Samuel P. "The Clash of Civilizations?" in Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace (Boston: Longman, 2002), p. 218. 

 

[x] Rogers, Tom. The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Analysis and Chronology (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 4. 

 

[xi] Ibid., p. 222-223. 

 

[xii] Blitzer, Wolf. "Bin Laden: A Nuclear Threat?" (www.cnn.com 16 November 2001). 

 

[xiii] Ibid. 

 

[xiv] Rothstein, Robert L. Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 32-37.