Some speculate that a leader can tie their hands to follow through on a commitment to go to war if the leader is mad, as mad leaders might be willing to go to war even if the costs are catastrophically high. Also, sane leaders might try to bluff that their hands are tied by pretending to be mad. The chapter demonstrates that due to selection effects this kind of mad leader does not come to power, and that though leaders sometimes bluff that they are mad, this tactic does not work and does not tie hands. The chapter also evaluates the proposed tactic of tying hands by giving a computer the logistical ability to follow through on a commitment to go to war, independently of human decision-making. The chapter explains why states are deeply averse to taking this step, and demonstrates that no state has done this, including the alleged example of the Soviet/Russian Perimeter (or, “Dead Hand”) system.

The study of international relations since 1945 has focused on the question, how can states make their commitments to go to war more credible? Scholars have proposed that states often make their commitments more credible by tying their hands, by making it impossible or highly costly not to follow through on a commitment. However, tying hands necessarily makes it impossible or more difficult to stay out of war. If war is fought under undesirable political or military conditions, it becomes the “wrong war” and risks extraordinary or even catastrophic costs for the leader, society, and state. The grave risks and costs of the wrong war cause states, leaders, and societies to prefer to avoid tying hands, to give themselves the flexibility to avoid the wrong war. They prefer not to engage in brinkmanship, sign binding alliance treaties, give mad leaders or computers the ability to start wars, or deploy tripwire forces to drag the nation into war. When they rarely tie their hands to make a commitment more credible, they tie their hands as minimally as possible, to provide as much ability as they can afford to avoid getting dragged into the wrong war.

Some propose that states tie hands by signing alliance treaties. The presence of an alliance treaty increases the audience costs of violating a commitment to defend another state, having the effect of tying hands. This chapter argues that states prefer to keep their hands untied to make it easier to avoid getting drawn into the wrong wars. Accordingly, when states design alliance treaties, they routinely include flexibility language in the treaties that enable them to stay out of conflicts involving embattled allies without violating the treaty, thereby reducing or avoiding the audience costs of abandoning an ally. The chapter demonstrates that all alliances since 1945 include such flexibility language, including alliances signed by the US and Soviet Union/Russia. Further, the chapter demonstrates that in every single post-1945 case when a state allegedly abandoned an embattled ally, the flexibility language of the treaty means that the decision to stay out of the conflict did not technically violate the treaty. On the rare occasions when states want to tie hands more tightly to bolster deterrence, they make verbal statements that de facto reduce the flexibility of the alliance treaty, though such verbal statements are crafted to tie hands minimally.

This chapter briefly summarizes the central argument of the book: states do not tie hands to make commitments to go to war more credible. It shows how the argument sheds light on the causes of war, that the risks of crises inadvertently escalating to war are much lower than many fear, suggesting a complete reassessment of crisis stability. It also discusses how states communicate with each other, if they do not tie hands. Next, it applies the argument to the Ukraine War, demonstrating how the insight that states do not tie hands helps explain several aspects of the Ukraine War, including why the war has not escalated, Ukraine is not a NATO member, the US withdrew advisors from Ukraine just prior to the war, and others. Last, the chapter considers this puzzle: If these tying hands ideas first developed by Thomas Schelling lack even anecdotal empirical support, why have they endured in scholarly and policy discussions for decades? Why do any ideas endure, past the point when the weight of evidence suggested they should be discarded?

This chapter considers the “tripwire effect” claim that states sometimes deploy small troop contingents abroad to tie hands. The tripwire effect proposes that the deaths of even small numbers of foreign deployed troops would force the state to become involved, tying its hands to abide by a commitment to defend an ally. The chapter explains why states do not do this. States see tripwire effects as not reliably bolstering deterrence, and if states do fear that tripwire effects could tie their hands and drag them into an unwanted war, they remove troops in order to reduce escalation risks and keep their hands untied. The chapter examines the canonical case of alleged tripwire troop deployments, American deployments of small force contingents to Europe in the Cold War. The chapter demonstrates that neither the Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy administrations deployed small troop contingents in order to deter Soviet aggression via tripwire effects. During the 1958–1959 and 1961 Berlin Crises, when the US recognized the possibility that troop deaths might tie American hands and drag it into an unwanted war over Berlin, the US took steps to reduce the likelihood of such deaths and of escalation. It chose flexibility over tied hands.

This chapter applies the Chapter 5 alliance flexibility argument to three of America’s most important alliances: NATO, the Taiwan alliance, and the Manila Pact. All three alliance treaties included several types of flexibility language, and across all three alliances the US and others repeatedly used the flexibility language to justify staying out of undesirable conflicts. The only exception is President Johnson’s 1964 decision to intervene in the Vietnam War, motivated by the Manila Pact alliance. However, this chapter demonstrates the exceptionality of this decision. The Manila Pact was designed to be flexible, and the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Ford administrations all used the flexibility language to stay out of conflicts involving Manila Pact signatories including Laos, Pakistan, and South Vietnam. Johnson himself used the flexibility language to keep the US out of the 1965 India–Pakistan War. The chapter discusses why Johnson felt unable to use the flexibility language of the Manila Pact to stay out of the Vietnam War, even though he recognized the existence of such language. This is one of the first discussions of this new irony of the Vietnam War: Johnson knew of an escape route to avoid US involvement, but chose not to use it.

If inadvertent escalation is not occurring, it may be because brinkmanship tactics are successfully coercing states into backing down before inadvertent escalation can occur. This chapter assesses this possibility, asking the empirical question, has brinkmanship helped nuclear coercion succeed? To evaluate this question, it examines all cases of successful nuclear coercion, from two separate data sets of nuclear coercion success. It finds that brinkmanship has never helped nuclear coercion succeed: There are no nuclear crises in which one side deliberately engaged in brinkmanship, and the other side backed down because it feared inadvertent escalation to war. To the contrary, nuclear crisis participants routinely act to reduce inadvertent escalation risks. The only partial exception is the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which fears of inadvertent escalation helped push Moscow to move toward a settlement. However, this is only a partial exception, as Washington did not deliberately create risks of inadvertent escalation (i.e., it was not engaging in a policy of brinkmanship), Moscow moved to settle also because of fears of deliberate American escalation, and the crisis outcome is better framed as a compromise rather than American diplomatic victory.

When a commitment is challenged, a state might choose to back down rather than follow through on a promise to go to war. This prospect makes the commitment not credible. One way to solve this problem is to remove choice from the committing state, to create a risk of inadvertent, uncontrolled escalation to war. This technique has been labeled brinkmanship. This chapter proposes that states do not engage in brinkmanship. To the contrary, they seek to control inadvertent escalation risks in order to retain the ability to choose whether or not to go to war. The chapter demonstrates this proposition empirically. It shows that inadvertent escalation to war since 1945 almost never happens, suggesting that states are not deliberately creating such risks. Further, in the small number of instances that inadvertent escalation did occur, it was not because a state was deliberately creating such risks in order to make a commitment more credible. The chapter also demonstrates the lack of brinkmanship in the Berlin, Taiwan Straits, and Cuban Missile Crises, showing that contra conventional wisdom, states and leaders have the motivation and ability to control carefully escalation risks. States do not engage in brinkmanship, they do not play Russian Roulette.

After 1945, the United States found it necessary to create and maintain global security commitments. A central foreign policy problem became, how can the US credibly threaten to go to war to defend its global interests? In the 1950s, the economist Thomas Schelling used the emerging field of game theory to provide a conceptual solution: states can make commitments more credible by tying their hands, making it impossible or excessively costly to renege on a commitment. Schelling and others used this tying hands insight to craft an understanding of the Cold War and international relations more generally, describing several means by which states tie their hands, including engaging in brinkmanship, signing binding alliance treaties, giving mad leaders or computers the ability to start wars, and deploying small force contingents to foreign soil to serve as tripwires. This book argues that this description is flawed, that states do not tie their hands, that they instead prefer to keep their hands untied, giving them the ability to avoid the wrong war. The book provides support for this argument by examining an array of empirical evidence, with special focus on the most salient crises and conflicts of the Cold War.

This chapter examines the connections between sex, gender, and violence. It gives readers a basic introduction to the concepts of the biological category of sex, and the social category of gender, and how sex and gender relate to each other. It examines whether sex category factors such as testosterone levels and upper body strength affect propensities for violence. It identifies a number of factors connecting social and political structures pertaining to sex and gender – including the first political order, patriarchy, brideprice, polygyny, marriage market obstruction, militarized masculinity and the political repression of women – to various forms of violence, including wars between states, civil wars, terrorism, insurgency, violence against women, honor killings, selective abortion and infanticide, and sexual assault. It applies many of these concepts to a quantitative study examining when peacekeeping troops engage in sexual exploitation and abuse, and also to a case study of India. Last, it considers potential policy solutions to sex and gender repression and inequality, and to violence caused by them.