Report
On October 20, 2025, Professor James D. Fearon of Stanford University delivered a lecture at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, titled “What Is, or Was, Contemporary Interstate Military Conflict About?” The lecture was co-hosted by Professor Ryo Sahashi’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the Security Studies Unit at the Institute for Future Initiatives, and the International Politics Study Group at the University of Tokyo. The event was held in person and was attended by more than 30 faculty members and students.
Professor Fearon argued that the primary drivers of today’s interstate conflicts are not traditional national-security concerns per se, but rather regime-type conflict between democracies and autocracies, as well as nationalism-based territorial claims. He further explained how these factors create credible commitment problems that lead states to arm up, generating structural conditions that can produce preventive war dynamics.
Professor Fearon first noted that sharp conflicts of interest between major and middle powers often stem from motives that differ from conventional security logics. As the first source of such conflict, he highlighted regime insecurity： the very existence of powerful democracies such as the United States is perceived by authoritarian regimes as an inherent threat to their internal stability. In other words, from the perspective of dictatorships, the United States and its allies appear as revisionist actors, seeking changes to the domestic political status quo rather than territorial acquisition.
As a second source, he pointed to nationalist territorial claims, using the PRC’s claims on Taiwan and the contrasting preferences of Taiwanese public opinion as a representative example.
Professor Fearon then argued that, under such conditions, states have strong incentives to engage in military buildup, since it is extremely difficult to obtain credible assurances from the other side. Autocratic regimes, in particular, cannot fully trust promises by the United States or the EU that they will refrain from supporting domestic uprisings, even if those democracies do not openly aim for regime change. In an environment with strongly conflicting preferences over regime type and territory, states choose to strengthen their military capabilities to avoid being coerced—or to prevent being coerced themselves.
He further emphasized that actual armed conflict becomes more likely through the logic of preventive war that emerges from these arming trends. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, President Putin’s nationalist ideology, which views Ukraine as part of a “Greater Russia,” is crucial. As Ukraine expanded its military capabilities to counter perceived threats, Putin sought to lock in his preferred outcome through military action, despite the substantial costs and risks—costs that, as Fearon noted, he gravely underestimated.
Similarly, in the China–Taiwan relationship, a prosperous and democratic Taiwan constitutes a regime-security threat for Beijing. Because the PRC cannot credibly commit to respecting Taiwan’s long-term political autonomy, negotiated settlements to finesse the sovereignty issue are not self-enforcing, making the stakes of the conflict effectively indivisible, according to Professor Fearon.
An active Q&A session followed the lecture. One participant asked how authoritarian regimes perceive democratization support conducted by relatively weaker democratic states, including Japan, and how Japan’s democracy-promotion diplomacy is interpreted by such regimes. Professor Fearon responded that Japan is a major regional power with significant influence, and he did not rule out the possibility that Japan’s democracy-support policies could be perceived by authoritarian states as posing a systemic, regime-type challenge.