Offense, defense, and preventive attack after World War II

Jun Hyuk Park, Purdue University

Abstract

Critics of international relations research point out that most theories of war have paid too much attention to preventive attack cases between major powers, but their assumed universality does not fit preventive attack cases between major and minor powers and ones between minor powers (Levy, 1989; Levy, 1998). For example, why did the United States attack a minor power like Iraq and how did it win a rapid victory? On the other hand, why did the U.S. consider a preventive attack against another minor power North Korea but not attack it? Further, why did a minor power like Israel attack another minor state Egypt in 1956 and how did it win a rapid victory despite not having overwhelming military capability? With these questions in mind, my goal is to offer a better theory than other theories of war, like power transition theory and the existing version of offense-defense theory, in order to explain why preventive attacks by great and minor powers against minor ones were launched or considered but not actually carried out and how preventive attackers achieved victory when such attacks were launched. In this study, I argue that offense-defense theory of military strategy and technology is a better theory to more effectively explain the occurrence of preventive attack and how preventive attackers achieve victory. In particular, the revised version of offense-defense theory suggested in this paper newly provides military strategy as another important factor because understanding offensive and defensive action and the likelihood of preventive attack is not possible by looking only at military technology, that is, the character of the particular weapons systems; it should be comprehensively analyzed by taking into account the combination of military strategy and technology.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Rockman, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Political science

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