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Crises in World Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Michael Brecher  and
Jonathan Wilkenfeld
Michael Brecher
Affiliation:
Political Science at McGill University
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Abstract

In examining patterns in international crises, the authors offer one path to a cocerted attack on a central phenomenon in world politics. After surveying the releva literature, including competing definitions, they set forth a conceptual map of int national crisis variables: actor attributes (age, territory, regime, capability, values system characteristics (size, geography, structure, alliance configuration, stability); a the crisis dimensions they wish to explain (trigger, actor behavior, superpower activity, and the role of international organizations—that is, crisis management, of come, and consequences). From this taxonomy they have developed a research frar work on international crisis, and, as an illustration of more narrow explanatory devie a crisis management-outcome model. Three clusters of hypotheses on the substar and form of crisis outcomes, and the duration of crises, are then tested against I evidence from 185 cases for the period from 1945 to 1962. The ultimate aim is illuminate international crises over a 50-year period, 1930–1980, across all continer cultures, and political and economic systems in the contemporary era.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , April 1982 , pp. 380 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1982

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References

1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

2 The first of many publications—by Robert North, Ole Holsti, Richard Brody, Dina Zinnes and others—appeared in 1961: Zinnes, Dina A., North, Robert C., and Koch, Howard E. Jr, “Capability, Threat and the Outbreak of War,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1961), 469–82.Google Scholar The principal quantitative findings were incorporated in Holsti, Ole R., Crisis Escalation War (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar A companion volume presented a detailed narrative of events: Nomikos, Eugenia V. and North, Robert C., International Crisis: The Outbreak of World War I (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

3 Paige, Glenn D., The Korean Decision (New York: Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar

4 Allison, Graham T., The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).Google Scholar

5 George, Alexander L. and Smoke, Richard, Deterrence and Defense in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

6 Snyder, Glenn H. and Diesing, Paul, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

7 McClelland, Charles A., “Action Structures and Communication in Two International Crises: Quemoy and Berlin,” Background, VII (1964), 201–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “The Beginning, Duration, and Abatement of International Crises: Comparisons in Two Conflict Arenas,” in Hermann, Charles F., ed., International Crises: Insights from Behavioral Research (New York: Free Press, 1972), 83–105.Google Scholar

8 Ibid. This volume contains papers prepared following a symposium in April 1967, sponsored by the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. Authors include Hermann, Holsti, McClelland, Paige, and Snyder, noted above, as well as James A. Robinson (whose 1962 definition of crisis was the precursor of Hermann's revision), Howard H. Lentner, Thomas W. Milburn, David C. Schwartz, and Dina A. Zinnes, Joseph L. Zinnes and Robert D. McClure.

9 See, for example, Whiting, Allen S., China Crosses the Yalu (New York: Macmillan, 1960)Google Scholar and Stremlau, J. J., The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

10 For insightful surveys of the theoretically oriented literature, see Holsti, Ole R., “Theories of Crisis Decision-Making,” in Lauren, Paul G., ed., Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory and Policy (New York: Free Press, 1979)Google Scholar, chap. 5; and Tanter, Raymond, “International Crisis Behavior: An Appraisal of the Literature,” in Brecher, , ed., Studies in Crisis Behavior (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1979). 340–74.Google Scholar

11 The first ICB study in depth is Brecher, Michael with Geist, Benjamin, Decisions in Crisis: Israel, 1967 and 1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

12 Hermann, Charles F., “International Crisis as a Situational Variable,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (New York: Free Press, 1969), 414.Google Scholar Hermann's definition was first set out in his “Some Consequences of Crisis which Limit the Viability of Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly, VIII (1963), 61–82.

13 The experts were specialists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University: Benjamin Geist (Centrali Europe); Ehud Harari (East Asia); Ellis Joffe (China); Amnon Sella (Soviet Union); Yoram Shapira (Latin America); Saadia Touval (Africa); Yaacov Vertzberger (Southeast Asia). Several Middle East area specialists in Jerusalem were consulted informally.

14 This condition of crisis is also emphasized by Snyder and Diesing (fn. 6, pp. 6–7):

The centerpiece of (the) definition is “the perception of a dangerously high probability of war” by the governments involved. Just how high the perceived probability must be to qualify as a crisis is impossible to specify…. The perceived probability must at least be high enough to evoke feelings of fear and tension to an uncomfortable degree.

See also Snyder, “Crisis Bargaining,” in Hermann (fn. 7), 217. However, the ICB Project focuses on the perceptions and behavior of a state, an action process. Moreover, Snyder and Diesing ignore the time component. Also, we are concerned with intra-war crises (see fn. 16), which Snyder and Diesing's definition excludes a priori.

15 For an elaboration of these differences, see Brecher (fn. 11), 2–6. Parenthetically, in a recent article Hermann dropped “surprise” as a necessary condition of crisis and changed “high-priority goals” to “valued goals.” Hermann, Charles F. and Mason, Robert E., “Identifying Behavioral Attributes of Events that Trigger International Crises,” in Holsti, Ole R., Siverson, Randolph M., and George, Alexander L., eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980), pp. 193–94.Google Scholar ICB focuses on military-security crises. We recognize—but are not exploring at this stage—other types of crises, such as political, economic, and cultural.

16 Illustrative indicators of an IWC are: the entry of a new major actor into an on going war; the exit of a major actor; a technological escalation; a major nontechnological escalation; defeat in a significant battle; and perception of the likely entry of a major actor into an ongoing war. The concept of intra-war crisis arose from the discovery of changes, during a war, that profoundly affected coping and choice as a result of higher threat and greater time pressure and a perceived shift in the military balance. Examples of these indicators are: the entry of P.R.C. forces into the Korean War in October 1950 (an IWC for the United States and South Korea); the defeat of France in June 1940 (a crisis for the United Kingdom); the dropping of the atomic bomb in August 1945 (a crisis for Japan); defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 (a crisis for France); and the Soviet threat to intervene in the Suez-Sinai War of 1956 (an IWC for Israel).

17 A member of the international system whose decision makers perceive threat, time pressure, and the likelihood of military hostilities—that is, a state confronted with a crisis—is designated a crisis actor.

18 Not all actor-cases fall into a cluster. Our set includes single-actor cases, in which only one state perceives a situational change as triggering a crisis for itself; for example, Portugal was the sole crisis actor in a 1955 crisis over Goa triggered by India; the U.S. was the single crisis actor in the 1965 Dominican Republic coup and invasion.

19 Valuable suggestions were made by the following persons: Africa—Douglas Angiin (Carleton), Naomi Hazan (Jerusalem), Nelson Kasfir (Dartmouth), Saadia Touval (Tel Aviv); Central and Eastern Europe—Karen Dawisha (Southampton), Benjamin Geist (Jerusalem), Galia Golan (Jerusalem), Amnon Sella (Jerusalem); Central and South America—Alexandre de Barros (Rio de Janeiro), Thomas Bruneau (McGill), Jorge Dominguez (Harvard), Edy Kaufman (U.C.L.A.), E. S. Milenky (Washington): East Asia—Ehud Harari (Jerusalem), Ellis Joffe (Jerusalem), George T. C. Yu (Illinois); Middle East—Richard H. Dekmejian (SUNY-Binghamton), Jacob Landau (Jerusalem); North America—Alan Dowty (Notre Dame), Alexander L. George (Stanford), Charles F. Hermann (Ohio State), Shlomo Slonim (Jerusalem); Southern Asia—Karl Jackson (U.C.-Berkeley), Paul Kattenburg (South Carolina), Guy Pauker (RAND), Leo Rose (U.C.-Berkeley), Martin Rudner (Australian National University); Southern Europe—Luigi Bonanate (Turin), Filippo Sabetti (McGill); Western and Northern Europe—Kjell Goldmann (Stockholm), Peter Gourevitch (U.C.-San Diego), Barbara Haskell (McGill), Frederic. S. Pearson (Missouri).

20 The finding for Africa is due at least in part to the fact that many of these states achieved independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, and hence had less “opportunity” for crisis participation than the older states.

21 This distribution reinforces Kende's finding: “It is primarily in respect to Europe and North America … that the world presents a relatively peaceful picture; it is much less peaceful from the perspective of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Kende, Istvan, “Twenty-five Years of Local Wars,” Journal of Peace Research, VIII (No. 1, 1971), 53.Google Scholar See also Kende, , “Wars of Ten Years (1967–1976),” Journal of Peace Research, XV (No. 3, 1978), 227–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Attempts to generate a statistically precise sample foundered on the small number of cases relative to the large number of variables. Thus, it was not possible to produce an accurate set of “case-types” as a composite of age, territory, regime, capability, and values, and of crisis dimensions such as trigger, actor behavior, outcome, etc. We there fore decided on a judgmental designation of case-types as one basis for selection.

23 See Brecher, Michael, “State Behavior in International Crisis: A Model,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XXIII (No. 3, 1979), 446–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 For the prototype of vertical studies, see Brecher with Geist (fn.11). The vertical segment of the Project, including a list of monograph-length case studies completed and in progress, is reported by Brecher, in Comparative Foreign Policy Notes, VIII (No. 2, 1980), 32–40.Google Scholar

25 A preliminary version of the typologies was presented in Brecher, , “Toward a Theory of International Crisis Behavior,” International Studies Quarterly, XXI (No. 1, 1977), 63–74.Google Scholar

26 Andriole, Stephen J., Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, and Hopple, Gerald W., “A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Behavior,” International Studies Quarterly, XIX (June 1975), 160–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 East, Maurice A., “Size and Foreign Policy Behavior: A Test of Two Models,” World Politics, XXV (July 1973), 556–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 East, Maurice A. and Hermann, Charles F., “Do Nation-Types Account for Foreign Policy Behavior?” in Rosenau, James N., ed., Comparing Foreign Policies: Theories, Findings and Methods (New York: John Wiley, 1974), 269–305.Google Scholar

29 Hopple, Gerald W., Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Rossa, Paul J., and McCauley, Robert N., “Societal and Interstate Determinants of Foreign Conflict,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 11 (Summer 1977), 30–67.Google Scholar

30 Rosenau, James N., “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Barry Farrell, R., ed., Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 27–92.Google Scholar

31 Rummel, R. J., “The Relationship Between National Attributes and Foreign Conflict Behavior,” in David Singer, J., ed., Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence (New York: Free Press, 1968), 187–214Google Scholar, and “Some Empirical Findings on Nations and Their Behavior,” World Politics, XXI (January 1969), 226–41.

32 Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Hopple, Gerald W., Rossa, Paul J., and Andriole, Stephen J., Foreign Policy Behavior (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1980).Google Scholar

33 Allison (fn. 4), and “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 63 (No. 3, 1969), 689–718.

34 Brecher, Michael, Steinberg, Blema, and Stein, Janice, “A Framework for Research on Foreign Policy Behavior,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XIII (No. 1, 1969), 75–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brecher (fn. 11).

35 George, Alexander L., Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Elective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980).Google Scholar

36 Hermann (fn. 12).

37 Stein, Janice G. and Tanter, Raymond, Rational Decision-Making: Israel's Security Choices, 1967 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

38 Azar, Edward E., “Conflict Escalation and Conflict Reduction in International Crisis: Suez, 1956,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XVI (No. 2, 1972), 183–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Deutsch, Karl W. and David Singer, J., “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability,” World Politics, XVI (April 1964), 390–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Kaplan, Morton, System and Process in International Politics (New York: John Wiley, 1957).Google Scholar

41 McClelland (fn. 7), and “Access to Berlin: The Quantity and Variety of Events 1948–1963,” in Singer (fn. 31), 159–86.

42 Rosecrance, Richard N., Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963)Google Scholar, and “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, X (No. 3, 1966), 314–27.

43 J. David Singer and Melvin Small, “Alliance Aggregation and the Onset of War, 1815–1945,” in Singer (fn. 31), 247–86.

44 Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).Google Scholar

45 Young, Oran R., The Intermediaries: Third Parties in International Crises (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 A state that does not perceive one or more of the three necessary conditions of crisis as directly applicable to itself, but is involved in a less intense form of activity is termed an involved actor, as distinct from a crisis actor.

47 The inclusion of international organization variables in the ICB Project followed valuable discussions with Ernst Haas in 1979, and constitutes an attempt to replicate for crisis management the role of the U.N. and regional organizations in conflict management, as reported in Haas, Ernst, Nye, Joseph S., and Butterworth, Robert L., Conflict Management by International Organizations (Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1972).Google Scholar

48 Cox, Robert W. and Jacobson, Harold K. et al., The Anatomy of Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 437–43.Google Scholar The grouping of states is to be found in Butterworth, Robert L., Managing Interstate Conflict 1945–1974: Data with Synopses (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1976), 486.Google Scholar A much more complex power index with 25 variables has been constructed by the Situational Analysis Project, as reported in Rosecrance, Richard, Alexandroff, Alan, Healy, G., and Stein, Arthur, “Power, Balance of Power, Status in Nineteenth-Century International Relations,” Sage Professional Papers in International Studies, No. 3, 02–029 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1974).Google Scholar Extensive work has been done in an attempt to refine the concept of power. For an illuminating survey of that literature, see Baldwin, David A., “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Techniques,” World Politics, XXXI (January 1979), 161–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 A monopoly of power by one unit would result in the termination of the international system as such.

50 In those portions of the analysis in which we assess the impact of superpower involvement in crises, U.S. and U.S.S.R. actor-cases are excluded. For an analysis that focuses exclusively on U.S. and U.S.S.R. behavior in crises (as it relates to crisis outcomes), see Wilkenfeld, and Brecher, , “US and USSR Behavior in Crisis Management: A Comparison,” in Kegley, Charles W. Jr, and McGowan, Patrick J., eds., Foreign Policy: US/USSR, Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, VIII (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1982).Google Scholar

51 For a more extensive treatment of this and all other variables discussed in the following pages, see the Appendix.

52 Chi-squares and tests of significance were computed, but are not reported here. These tests should be viewed as advisory, since we are dealing here with the entire population of cases. Furthermore, many of the hypothesized relationships are tested by contrasting the distributions in two rather than three rows of the matrix, or in contrasting rows across matrices.