69 million page views

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

Reader comment on item: My Peace Plan: An Israeli Victory

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

  • Submitting....

    Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

    Follow Daniel Pipes

    Facebook   Twitter   RSS   Join Mailing List

    All materials by Daniel Pipes on this site: © 1968-2023 Daniel Pipes. daniel.pipes@gmail.com and @DanielPipes

    Support Daniel Pipes' work with a tax-deductible donation to the Middle East Forum.Daniel J. Pipes

    (The MEF is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

    Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax-ID 23-774-9796, approved Apr. 27, 1998.

    For more information, view our IRS letter of determination.)