Current Gains and Future Outcomes

Abstract

John Matthews has offered an interesting reformulation of how and when concern over relative gains acts as a barrier to cooperation.' He introduces the concept of cumulation effects: gains cumulate when current cooperation creates advantages that increase the probability of additional gains in the future. This concept clarifies why states are sometimes concerned about relative gains, focusing our attention on their impact on the future. Matthews argues that states' sensitivity to relative gains increases with increases in cumulation, and employs his argument to explain behavior in both the international economic and security realms. Matthews' framework is logically sound and appears to work well on the economic cases that he explores with it. However, I believe that he has misapplied it in the security realm. The relative gains problem is first and foremost about gains in ends. In the security realm the key end is security Matthews, however, focuses on relative gains in means-for example, power and relative force size. Confusion about whether the focus should be on ends or means pervades much of the discussion of relative gains in the security realm; Matthews has not created it.2 This conflation of ends and means supports the mistaken belief that states are especially severely constrained by relative gains concerns when evaluating whether to cooperate on security issues.3 The implications are dramatic: framed incorrectly in terms of means, relative gains problems are everywhere in the security realm; framed correctly in terms of security, the relative gains problem essentially ceases to exist. I begin by explaining the nature of this common misunderstanding, and then discuss the implications for Matthews' analysis of cooperation on security issues.