President Obama recently disclosed the size of the United States' nuclear weapons stock. Though I don't watch television news, it's not hard to imagine the hornets nest this will stir up, so it seemed prudent to give a little bit of perspective on it.

States want to be viewed favorably. In today's world everyone relies on each other. Not only that, but citizens have a remarkable degree of indirect control. Take China in 1989. I won't say the same of the incident because I will be in that country in a few months and would rather not have my own blog firewalled, but there was a big human rights incident which will come up with a bit of quick googling if you're not already aware of it. At any rate, the favored response of the Bush administration was to kind of pave over the incident. But because the United States supports human rights and freedom whenever it is feasible the favored response of the people (vis-a-vis their representatives in Congress) was to take a harder line on China. At the time China was not a huge creditor or powerful nation and we could afford to snub them. As a result America leveled economic sanctions on the PRC in 1990.

States must also deal with large multinational corporations. They too are subject to the whims of their consumers and do not want to be seen dealing with states that do bad things. As a result, PR is actually moderately important for a state in the modern international system. Further, if a state A acts like a total dick to state B, relations deteriorate. Generally it is in everyone's interest to have good relations. However, states have interests that diverge and often they will have to pull dick maneuvers. But because they they can't go too far over the line they must pick and choose.

Russia's nuclear deterrent is very important to it's security strategy. Ultimately, it is more important to them to keep that under secret than it is to incur the bad rap among citizens of other countries, consumers of the mulitnational corporations and the foreign policy making apparati of other states. They will probably not disclose how many nuclear weapons they have. Yet because they don't want to be total dicks, they will be forced to make concessions on things that are less important to them. That might be specific provisions in a new non-proliferation treaty. More importantly though these things add up, and there is an interplay between the actions of multiple states, not just the two at hand. In other words, combined with President Obama pushing them into yet more dick maneuvers and more bad behavior on the part of a certain recalcitrant middle eastern state Russia may decide it is in their interest to support greater sanctions on, oh say... Iran.

For all intensive purposes the US has effectively more nuclear weapons than any nation in the world and a vastly superior military than the next closest plausible combination of states. There is zero chance any other country will be able to use this information to effectively mitigate our second strike capability. President Obama has not stupidly disclosed previously confidential information for no reason. What has done is turned a meaningless tidbit of information into a potent piece of diplomatic leverage. This has characterized his foreign policy for the past year: forceful when necessary yet unlike his predecessor, utilizing the utmost pragmatism.

Most of the United States' wars have been started by Democrats. It may seem counterintuitive but it's true. WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam. This is a big question in IR, because obviously Democrats are the more dovish party.

There's a concept called diversionary war theory. The idea is that when the economy is bad or his poll numbers are down a president will engage in a foreign conflict to provoke what's called a "rally around the flag effect". (ie: before 9/11 Bush had low poll numbers, after 9/11 he had some of the highest ever) In a time of crisis the country comes together.

Some authors say this applies not so much to poll numbers as to the economy. But this still doesn't explain why Democrats have started more wars than Republicans.

I'm bullshitting with a bullshit little project right now that involved coming up with a bullshit hypothesis that was a bullshit part of the overall grade. In the process thereof I managed to come up with something though:

H1: Republicans' elite constituencies would prefer economic problems be solved by monetary policy whereas Democrats are more apt to rely on fiscal policy. It is easier to change monetary policy than to engage in diversionary conflict, but it is easier to engage in diversionary conflict than it is to change fiscal policy. Thus, Democrats will be more likely to divert than Republicans.

Republicans would rather fix the economy through the Fed. That's done by having Tim Geihtner talk to Ben Bernanke at lunch. Democrats would rather fix the economy by increasing federal expenditures, tweaking tax codes, etc. which requires a huge amount of effort. So basically, it's easier to talk to Ben Bernanke than it is to bomb some shithole on the other side of the earth, but it's easier to bomb some shithole on the other side of the earth than it is to change spending patterns and tax codes. So in the event of a high misery index, Republicans don't have as much reason to bomb some shithole on the other side of the earth because it's easier to do what they would want to do in the first place. Democrats on the other hand do.

Thus: why most wars are started by Democrats.