What is contemporary major power conflict about?

2024 Vilfredo Pareto Lecture

What is contemporary major power conflict about?

James D. Fearon, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

According to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (and many others), “the post-Cold War world is over.” One reason for this view is the increase in interstate conflict involving major powers in the last 10 years — both actual, as in the Russia-Ukraine war, and feared, as in the case of possible war over Taiwan. The return of major power military conflict should be surprising and puzzling. Even from a “Realist” perspective, current military and economic conditions are such that the countries with the most military capability have little to fear or gain from each other, in terms of territory. The lecture will stress two main sources of contemporary major power conflict: Competing nationalist claims on territory, and the intrinsic threat that democracies and dictatorships pose to each other, as it is common knowledge that powerful democratic states would typically prefer to see dictatorships transition to democracy, and vice versa. In the contract-poor environment of international politics, these forms of revisionism create incentives for arms build ups that can in turn create incentives for preventive wars. Combined with facts about technological and economic change and US foreign policy (in particular) over the last 25 years, this account applies to some major post-Cold War conflicts and to the return of serious military competition between major powers.

Introduction by Kasia Nalewajko, Assistant Professor, Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto

Welcome Address by Giorgio Barba Navaretti, President, Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto

James D. Fearon (fearonresearch.stanford.edu) is Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research has focused on civil and interstate war. He has also published on international relations theory, democratization, foreign aid and institution building, and post-conflict reconstruction. Fearon is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002), and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2007 to 2010 he was Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford.