Escaping the Deadly Embrace
How Encirclement Causes Major Wars

Andrea Bartoletti (Author)

9781501765919

Hardback, published 15 November 2022

252 pages, 9 charts - 9 Charts
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.907 kg

Bartoletti's Escaping the Deadly Embrace is an important addition to the scholarly literature on the onset of major wars. His argument is compelling in the majority of the cases surveyed and for that reason alone merits careful consideration by future researchers.

Encirclement, Andrea Bartoletti argues, is an essential strategic possibility of the international system and a key trigger of major war. Using historical case studies, Escaping the Deadly Embrace examines how great powers try to escape the two-front war problem and seek to preserve their security.

Encirclement is a geographic variable that occurs in the presence of one or two great powers on two different borders of the surrounded great power. The surrounding great powers may not have the capacity to initiate a joint invasion. Yet their threatening presence triggers a double security dilemma for the encircled great power, which has to disperse its army to secure its borders. When the surrounding great powers become capable of launching a two-front attack, the encircled great power initiates war. This situation, disastrous in itself, can also lead to war contagion when other great powers intervene in the new conflict owing to the rival-based network of alliances.

Combining archival work and historiographical analysis, Escaping the Deadly Embrace demonstrates the efficacy of this by assessing three major wars: the Italian Wars, the Thirty Years' War, and World War I. These findings, Bartoletti shows, have important implications for future major wars. Challenging the current focus on the US-China rivalry, he argues that the most concerning strategic scenario is the encirclement of China by India and Russia.

Introduction
1. A Theory of Encirclement and Major War
2. France and the Italian Wars
3. France and the Thirty Years' War
4. Germany and World War I
5. The Origins of Modern Major Wars
6. The Future of Major War