Be careful of budiling expectations on a selective reading of history Mr. Pipes

Submitted by Konstnatinos Travlos (United States), May 1, 2010 at 23:49

Mr. Pipes be carefull of extracting conclusions from a selective reading of history and from just succesfull cases instances of your conditions. That is choosing on the dependent variable and a logical and scientifc fallacy.

Compete Victory can sometimes end succesfully a enduring rivalry (like the one Israel and the Palestinians, or Israel and the Arab states hae) but they seldom do. If you look at large-n studies of rivalry termination you will find that your optimistic (and I am afraid vague) expectation may be teneous. Political shocks in one or the otehr side do end rivalries more often then total victories, and most of the time the other side has a hard time bringing about those shocks.

Here is a suggested literature if you are interested

Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz "War and Peace in Interantional Rivalry", 2001 Michigan University Press

Michael P.Colaresi, Karen Rasler and William R.Thompson "Strategic Rivalries in World Politics", Cambridge University Press 2007

Klein, Diehl and Goertz 2006,Journal of Peace Research, Vol.43, no 3 pp 331-348

The Initiation and Termination of Enduring Rivalries: The Impact of Political Shocks
Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl
American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 30-52

Measuring Rivalry Termination, 1816-1992

D. Scott Bennett
The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 227-254

if you have access to J-Stor, or to a university library with access to J-Stor there is a rich slew of empirical, large-n (as opposed to 1 or two case studies) tests of hypotheses of rivalry termination. Even if you do not agree with the theories behid them, the emprical story should be of interest to you, and every Israeli.

With Respect

K.Travlos

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