Foundations of compensation theory in international relations

The Authors present a new theory that explains aspects of international relations, particularly those related to power balancing and the dynamics of war and peace. The article addresses the questions of what compensation means in international relations, and under which conditions certain 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 international arena can be viewed as compensatory. The second part describes historical examples of compensation in international politics, focusing especially on territorial compensation as the most prominent form. The third part examines contemporary uses of territorial and other types of compensation. In the fourth part, the authors offer a theoretical framework for understanding compensation in IR, identifying three key situations in which it occurs. The fifth part tests the theory through examples from the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, revisiting definitions of proxy war and interpreting the direct and “by, with, and through” military engagements of the U.S., Italy, Russia, and Egypt as instances of compensatory behavior. The final section concludes 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.