Allison And Zelikow's Analysis

in order to better protect itself from potential European aggression, in combination with Naval superiority. In 1892, France and Russia entered a mutual defense treaty. Germany, the Austrian Empire, and Italy tied their fates together in the Triple Alliance. These alliances were essentially built on the belief that if power was in rough parity and victory was unlikely, aggression was less likely. The resulting actions bear close resemblance to Jervis’ description of the spiral model, which leads to security dilemmas. In short, as each great power and collective alliance created more military power in order to feel secure, it caused other powers to feel less secure, and they in turn developed more military power, and so on. These phenomena …show more content…
Humans are predictably fallible, but drive events in infinitely variable ways that cannot be calculated with the precision of a German train schedule. Therefore, Allison and Zelikow’s model three is an informative filter with which to intellectually sift through the causes of World War I. General von Moltke’s personal influence on German policy is an appropriate link to Allison and Zelikow’s third model. Model three focuses on analysis of government politics. The key leaders of the various organizations and other influential people within governments engage in intragovernmental bargaining, pursuing goals that may be driven by individual quests for power, ideology, or their conception of a national strategic agenda. Again, governments should not be viewed as unitary actors, rather one should recognize the outcomes are driven by bargaining between key …show more content…
A note of caution to those that associate realism and the rational actor model. Some may make the mistake of dismissing the realism of Thucydides because of the weaknesses of the rational actor model laid bare by contemporary academics such as Jervis and Kahneman. This is unfortunate because many lessons Thucydides and the larger school of realism teaches will continue to illuminate international relations now and in the future due to their basis in nature of human behavior. In 1888, the venerable Otto von Bismarck predicted that “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans would ignite the next great war.” The fateful assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by an otherwise unremarkable Bosnian-Serb was merely the match that set alight the European tinderbox and tripped the machinery of industrial age mobilization. One cannot say with certainty that war between the great powers was inevitable in the early 20th Century. However, even if the Archduke happily passed through Sarajevo in June of 1914, it is likely another flashpoint would have set in motion the gears of war in that decade. The inability of the international leaders and systems of the time to effectively deal with the rising power of Germany, complicated