Session 10 Flashcards
Q: What were Alexander George’s key contributions to international relations during the Cold War?
A: He contributed to theories of preventive diplomacy, crisis management, deterrence, and coercive diplomacy, emphasizing communication, norms, and the dangers of threat-based policies.
Q: Why did George criticize traditional deterrence theory?
A: He argued it was overly abstract, deductively derived, and often disconnected from historical reality, advocating for empirical, context-driven analysis.
Q: How has the nature of crisis changed since the Cold War?
A: Crises are now more complex, decentralized, and unpredictable, involving non-state actors, networks, and asymmetric threats, unlike the state-centric Cold War structure.
Q: Why are deterrence and coercive diplomacy less effective in today’s global system?
A: Because non-state actors, suicide bombers, and networked insurgencies may not respond to rational threat-based logic and are harder to locate or coerce.
Q: What is the “centralization reflex” in crisis management, and what’s the problem with it?
A: It’s the impulse to centralize control in crises, which can lead to rigidity, slow information flow, and ineffective responses in fast-moving, networked environments.
Q: What strategy did George advocate beyond threat-based crisis management?
A: A balanced approach combining deterrence with positive inducements, negotiation, and recognition, to create incentives for peaceful resolution and inclusion.
Q: What is the central argument of Benjamin Schwarz’s article on the Cuban Missile Crisis?
A: The popular story of U.S. heroism during the crisis is a myth; the crisis was provoked largely by U.S. actions and resolved through a secret missile trade, not through uncompromising strength.
Q: What U.S. actions helped provoke the Soviet missile deployment to Cuba in 1962?
A: Deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA sabotage operations, and Kennedy’s aggressive anti-Castro stance.
Q: How did U.S. officials really view the Soviet missiles in Cuba?
A: They acknowledged that the missiles did not alter the nuclear balance and posed a negligible military threat.
Q: Why did Kennedy take such a hard public stance on the missile deployment?
A: To protect U.S. credibility and avoid domestic political fallout, not because of an actual security threat.
Q: How was the Cuban Missile Crisis actually resolved?
A: Through a secret agreement: the Soviets withdrew missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. removing its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
Q: What long-term foreign policy myth did the crisis reinforce?
A: That military escalation and resolve are essential for credibility, a belief that later fueled U.S. interventions like Vietnam.
