- Stephen Van Evera
Stephen William Van Evera (born
10 November 1948 ) is a professor ofPolitical Science at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology , specializing inInternational Relations . His research includes the U.S. foreign and national security policy and causes and prevention of war.Biography
Van Evera received his A.B. in government from
Harvard and his Ph.D. in political science from theUniversity of California, Berkeley . During the 1980s he was managing editor of the journal International Security.Van Evera is the author of "Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict" (Cornell,
1999 ). He has also co edited "Nuclear Diplomacy and Crisis Management" (1990 ), "Soviet Military Policy" (1989 ), and "The Star Wars Controversy" (1986 ).Offense-Defense Theory
In "Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict," Van Evera proposed Offense-Defense theory, which attempts to discern what factors increase the likelihood of war. Van Evera states three main hypotheses:1. War will be more common in periods when conquest is easy, or is believed easy, than in other periods.2. States that have, or believe they have, large offensive opportunities or defensive vulnerabilities will initiate and fight more wars than other states.3. Actual examples of true imbalances are rare and explain only a moderate amount of history. However, false perceptions of these factors are common and thus explain a great deal of history.
The causes of
World War I provide a good example of Van Evera’s theory in action. Althoughtrench warfare ,poison gas , and the development of themachine gun and air support meant that defensive strategies should have prevailed, many European nations were under the illusion that conquest was easy or that they were valuable. This misconception resulted in a drawn out, bloody conflict. Recent discussion in international relation theory withdraws the idea of explaining outbreak of World War I. with the offense-defense balance.External links
*http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/TeachSem/vaneverabio.html
*http://web.mit.edu/polisci/faculty/S.VanEvera.htmlKeir A. Lieber. (2007). "The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory".in International Security Vol. 32, No. 2: 155-191.
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