Balances Without Great Powers: Some Evidence on War and Peace in the Americas, 1816-1989

Did disputes between non-great powers in the New World, 18161989, escalate to war if the disputes involved roughly equal sides or not? Metaphorically and practically, balances of power are about measurement, but many of the usual measures prove to be incorrect. Proper assessments of the balances of fighting power qualify counts of the material resources by considering the political-organizational capacity of the state to employ what is counted, the geopolitical location and logistics, and what bystander states might do if the dispute were to escalate. A modest correlation exists between rough equality in power capabilities and war, not peace, in the Americas, 18161989. A bare majority of the wars in the Americas from 1816 until 1989 were fought between equal sides, and equal disputants were thirteen times more likely to escalate to war than non-equals were. This relationship found among non-great powers is much less strong than the relationship found among the great powers.