Buck passing

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Buck passing or passing the buck is the action of transferring responsibility or blame unto another person. It is also used as a strategy in power politics when the actions of one country/nation are blamed on another, providing an opportunity for war.

The latter expression is said to have originated with the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the responsibility by passing the "buck", as the counter came to be called, to the next player.

[edit] Historical Examples

Passing the buck in international political theory involves nation-states that fail to form successful and timely alliances because of other nations trying to coat-tail their multipolar hegemon. To detail this idea, Kenneth Waltz describes in his book Theory of International Politics how the French tried to talk Britain into going after Adolf Hitler during the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936.^[1]