Jack Snyder . “ Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks : Predicting

Waltz’s neorealist theories, while perhaps suitable for the systemic uses Waltz associated them with, have been often been misapplied to predict and analyze individual states’ foreign policies. This is not to say that neorealism gives no guidance to states’ foreign policies. On the contrary, even Waltz discusses foreign policy choices: the basic argument – that a bipolar world is fundamentally more stable than a multipolar one – stems from the tension and uncertainty that states face in the latter world. In the extreme, a state will either feel so dependent on its allies for security that it allows itself to be drawn into (“chain-ganged”) wars in which it has no interest, or be so complacent as to avoid conflict (“pass the buck”) even when a new hegemon is rising and threatening its alliance. (Bipolar systems do not hold these perils, because a Great Power in such a system knows that its allies are too minor to risk war over, and incapable of singlehandedly handling any threats.) However, there is no coherent or parsimonious explanation as to why a state will fall into these traps, or even when a state will engage in chain-ganging vs. buck-passing. Waltz dodged the issue, and most subsequent attempts at explanation have been largely unsatisfactory. Barry Posen, though, began a promising avenue of explanation when he implies that chain-ganging is a function of perceived offensive advantage in war, while buck-passing is a result of perceived defensive advantage. Christensen and Snyder hope to systematize this theory, and provide it with a more rigorous theoretical underpinning.