Escaping the Deadly Embrace

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.

Andrea Bartoletti holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

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.

Stacie Goddard, Wellesley College, author of Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy:

Escaping the Deadly Embrace offers a definitive answer to why encirclement can cause major power wars. Andrea Bartoletti's book is an important contribution to our understanding of the causes of great power wars across five hundred years of European history.

John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago, author of The Great Delusion:

Andrea Bartoletti's truly ambitious book offers a clever theory on what causes major-power wars. Encirclement of one great power by rivals is the root cause, he argues. Escaping the Deadly Embrace is a must read for all international relations theorists.

Jack S. Levy, Rutgers University, author of War in the Modern Great Power System:

Escaping the Deadly Embrace is theoretically innovative and grounded in an impressive grasp of international history. It is an important contribution to theories of balance of power and the origins of major wars.