Abstract
This chapter reviews and analyzes the roots and buildup to the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war and examines how the accumulation of tensions and then the war resulted in a long-lasting negative reciprocal cycle between the two countries. The case accounts for the operation and importance of all four variables, yet highlights the importance of power symmetry. Power symmetry is always an important element in any study of international crises or conflict management, and it is also important for understanding the impact of the other variables such as images and domain of operation on the direction of the evolving reciprocal cycle. The case reviewed here is an illustration of how power asymmetry coupled with negative images and a bigger appetite for risk-taking operate as an obstacle for the development of a positive tit-For-tat (TFT) reciprocal cycle.
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Notes
- 1.
Lebow (2007) writes on the merits of counterfactual analysis in social science arguing that whenever we assume that X causes Y, we also assume that Y would not have existed without X. In addition, Lebow (2007, p. 155) shows how “similar causal mechanisms can have different consequences when they operate in different contexts.”
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Niv-Solomon, A. (2017). Equal Friends or Equal Enemies: Power Asymmetry and the Impact on Reciprocal Cycles. In: Cooperation and Protracted Conflict in International Affairs . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45805-2_3
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