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2 - Commitment and Signaling in Coercive Bargaining

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Branislav L. Slantchev
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

What you cannot enforce, do not command.

Socrates

In this book, I analyze military threats: how states can use them to establish commitments and credibly communicate intent. My purpose is not to create a theory of interstate crisis behavior but rather to illuminate the logic of military threats insofar as they are intended to deal with the above two concerns. To assess the utility of using military threats, we must begin with a look at the fundamental strategic problems that confront decision-makers in international crises. This chapter lays the groundwork for the theory to follow. Most of the material is well known and I have no wish to rehash widely available results. However, one does not develop a theory in an intellectual vacuum, and to appreciate the argument it will be useful to outline in a general manner the crucial issues that animate most of our current thinking about crisis bargaining.

What follows is not a compendium of results, it is an attempt to provide a unifying framework for thinking about the various mechanisms for credible communication in crisis. I begin by constructing a stylized representation of a crisis that will serve to highlight the role of uncertainty, and to provide the baseline for theorizing about the use of the military instrument. I then explore the various mechanisms for credible signaling that scholars have proposed in the context of this basic model.

Type
Chapter
Information
Military Threats
The Costs of Coercion and the Price of Peace
, pp. 13 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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