crises and war (15) Flashcards
Lebow proposes a classification of four distinct types of crises:
1) Justification of Hostilities Crises
2) Spin-off Crises
3) Brinkmanship Crises
4) Accidental Crises.
what are Justification of Hostility Crises:
- Normally, if a crisis leads to war, it is because of psychological and cognitive biases during the crisis.
o But in justification of hostility crises, decision-making for war occurs prior to the crisis, so it is not really a crisis.
o The crisis provides the casus belli for the aggressor.
Purpose of crisis is to mobilize domestic and international support for war by making other look like the aggressor, and thereby making them lose their bases of support. Lose element of surprise.
what are the 5 step formula for Justification of Hostility Crises:
1) Exploit a provocation to arouse public opinion (react > initiate);
2) Make unacceptable demands;
3) Legitimize demands with international principles;
4) Deny or understate your actual objective;
5) Employ rejection of your demands as a casus belli.
An alternate approach is not to declare war oneself, but to get the other to declare war on you (domestic and international opinion can then be more easily mobilized), but this is harder. Can evolve from an attempt over accommodation, or start out as a justification of hostility crisis
what is (II): Brinkmanship Crises:
This is an attempt to undermine the commitment of one adversary to a value, and it is marked by the initiator’s unwillingness to initiate war.
what is the three (non exclusive and non static) goals of Brinkmanship crises?
1) Obtain benefits;
2) It may also seek a trade-off, in which a concession is sought elsewhere;
3) The purpose may also be to undermine a state’s credibility through humiliation.
Withdrawing from a commitment has reputational and domestic costs.
ex;cuban missile crisis= ussr humiliation. by the usa
what are the 2 conditions for a brinkmanship crisis:
1) The existence of serious domestic and/or international threats that a successful challenge of an adversary’s commitment promises to overcome (increases risk propensity);
2) The perception by the initiator’s policymakers that the adversary in question is likely to back away from his commitment when challenged (limits the extent of a risk).
Threats that lead to brinkmanship crises are:
- (1) negative shifts in the distribution of power;
- (2) weakness in the initiator’s political system (diversionary hypothesis for war);
- (3) intra-elite competition for power;
- (4) states can pursue aggressive policies for idiosyncratic reasons (that are not linked to the need of their states).
We can make use of strategic form games theory to help us model….
model brinkmanship crises, which are approximated by what is called as chicken game.
what is : Spinoff Crises:
Crises that are secondary outgrowths of ongoing wars that affect third parties.
Factors that affect the incidence of spinoff crises
1) Geographic proximity: closer states tend to have a greater interest and stake in what is happening.
2) The longer and more stalemated the crisis, the greater the likelihood of spin-off crises, because more desperate measures will be tried:
3) Spinoff crises are more likely to occur as the military position within a state increases in influence because they are more likely to escalate to include all the military options;
4) Public attitudes in the primary and third parties may make a spinoff crisis more likely or harder to resolve;
5) A primary party may try and provoke a conflict between a secondary and tertiary party.
Spin-off crises can unfold in two ways:
1) Belligerents make unacceptable demands on third parties;
2) Crisis situations arise that adversely affect the interests of the third party, that in turn make demands on the crisis initiators.
In all cases, the decision-makers were willing to go to war to protect their interests
what are Accidental Crises:
Whose defining characteristic is the perception by central decision-makers that the provocation triggering the crisis was both undesired and unsanctioned by the central decision-makers of the adversary.’
