"Foundations of Compensation Theory in International Relations"

The Authors present a new theory that explains aspects of international relations, particularlythose related to power balancing and the dynamics of war and peace. The article addresses thequestions of what compensation means in international relations, and under which conditionscertain actions can be interpreted as forms of compensation. The article is divided into six parts.The introduction outlines the research questions and suggests that certain activities in the inter-national arena can be viewed as compensatory. The second part describes historical examples ofcompensation in international politics, focusing especially on territorial compensation as themost prominent form. The third part examines contemporary uses of territorial and other typesof compensation. In the fourth part, the authors offer a theoretical framework for understand-ing compensation in IR, identifying three key situations in which it occurs. The fifth part teststhe theory through examples from the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, revisiting definitions ofproxy war and interpreting the direct and “by, with, and through” military engagements of theU.S., Italy, Russia, and Egypt as instances of compensatory behavior. The final section con-cludes that the proposed theoretical framework of compensation is valid and applicable for explaining aspects of the behavior of international actors, including both states and non-state entities