Introduction to International Relations Lecture 9: Brinkmanship Professor Branislav L. Slantchev Department of Political Science, University of California – San Diego May 11, 2005 Overview. Having discussed strategies of coercion in two generic situations (deterrence and compellence), we now turn to the problem of using inherently incredible threats to gain bargaining leverage. Some threats involve actions that are too painful for both the actor making them and the recipient. If the pain that the threatener would cause himself by the execution of the promised action is too great, then commitment strategies of the types that we discussed may be too dangerous for they can irrevocably commit him to a course of action from which there is no escape. We now study alternative risk strategies, or brinkmanship. These do not involve pre-commitment tactics but instead rely on a generation of risk. We study the Six Day War of 1967 as an example of a brinkmanship that went over the brink. Outline of Lecture 9: Brinkmanship 1. The nuclear revolution a) Massive Retaliation b) moral opprobrium (nuclear v. non-nuclear) c) credibility problem (nuclear v. nuclear) d) Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) e) what to do if threat is “too big”? 2. Crisis bargaining a) Game of Chicken b) risk and commitment c) severing communications d) preemption and disaster 3. How to make big threats credible? a) strategic irrationality • Nixon’s Madman Theory • George W. Bush v. Kim Jong Il • provocability and vindictiveness b) threat that leaves something to chance (brinkmanship) • modified chess game analogy • shared risk of disaster • autonomous generation of risk • blurring the brink c) limited retaliation • splitting threat in small steps • bargaining through gradual escalation • McNamara’s “No Cities” Doctrine 4. An example: Six Day War of 1967 9 Because it may be rational to use force under certain circumstances, the threat to use force becomes a foreign-policy tool that could be used to achieve better bargaining outcomes in mixed-motive situations. We examined two archetypal situations. In the first, an actor attempts to establish a credible commitment to respond to attempts to change the status quo; that is, he tries to deter his opponent from doing something he does not like. In the second, an actor at- tempts to establish a credible commitment to continue inflicting damage on his opponent while the opponent persists in a course of action; he tries to compel his opponent to undo his alteration of the status quo. We discussed several strategies that actors can use for deterrence and compel- lence purposes, and noted that there are many ways one could alter the strategic calculations of the other actor. Although we analyzed examples that involved military situations, it is important to realize that the concepts are much more general and can be applied in wide varieties of circumstances. At any rate, the threat to use force could be regarded as an instrument of policy, much like the Clausewitzian conception of war. Until, that is, you consider the arrival of nuclear weapons. How could an instrument of such enormous destructive power ever be utilized for political purposes? The nuke, but its very nature, seems to defy rational use. Even the threat to use it seems incredible against an opponent similarly equipped. The nuclear weapons seem to have caused a revolution in military thinking, in particular in relating military means to political ends by undoing the credibility of the threat to employ it. The nuclear revolution laid bare the credibility problem in a way that previ- ous weapons did not make possible. First, even in a crisis between a nuclear and non-nuclear state, it is not clear that the nuclear state can credibly threaten to resort to nuclear weapons. It is simply hard to imagine a threat that involves rat- tling the rockets over an issue of peripheral interest, and almost anything short of one’s own survival could be deemed peripheral when it comes to nukes. To- day (now that we know the effect of a nuclear strike), launching nukes against a non-nuclear state would cause immense moral opprobrium, and would not be tolerated by citizens in any country that has a representative government. The U.S. did maintain a posture of massive retaliation, according to which it could potentially resort to nukes in response to crises throughout the world (like the Korean War, for example). But if the explosion of such crises is any indication, this particular threat was not believed by various adversaries who went ahead anyway. Second, in a crisis between two nuclear powers, the dangers multiply to a degree that it makes the resort to the weapon appear totally irrational. Threat- ening with nukes, as we discussed when we talked about crisis stability, could be inherently dangerous if it can cause the reciprocal escalation of fear of sur- prise attack. And when the two sides have second-strike capability, then using nukes seems to become completely irrational because regardless of who strikes first, both opponents would be surely destroyed. 1 It is worth noting that the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is an American invention. The Soviets never really subscribed to MAD and consis- tently argued that deterrence was a worthless concept. They adhered to a doc- trine of a winnable nuclear war, and correspondingly initiated large-scale civilian programs that would enable the country to survive (in some sense) after ab- sorbing a nuclear strike. The programs that included vast evacuation schemes, creation of shelters, and stockpiling, scared many American analysts who rec- ommended time and again that the U.S. should pursue similar programs. For many domestic reasons, it was not possible for the U.S. to create a program that required an unprecedented amount of control over the citizens, something that the USSR had in abundance. At any rate, keep in mind that the principal Ameri- can antagonist during the Cold War professed disbelief in MAD, and his actions do indicate that perhaps the Soviets were not as deterrable as the Americans would have hoped. So, back to the idea of using nuclear weapons: if it is not possible to rationally employ a nuke, then how, in the world, would one credibly threaten with it? And if one cannot rely on the nukes for anything other than self-defense against an invasion of the homeland, of what possible use are the enormous stockpiles? Why did the U.S. and the USSR, for example, engage in such a costly arms race? We now study several ideas how one might rationally threaten with something that has incredibly bad consequences for both the threatener and the recipient of the threat. Although I used the nuclear weapons example to motivate the discussion, it will quickly become clear that the logic is widely applicable across a wide variety of situations that involve relying on inherently incredible threats to extract bargaining concessions. So, let’s define our problem first in terms that will make it easier to grasp. 1 Crisis Bargaining: The Game of Chicken When deterrence fails (that is, when a demand by a challenger is made), an in- ternational crisis begins. During this brief and intense period, actors maneuver for better bargaining positions, communicate threats and promises, and try to avoid costly fighting. While deterrence can be seen as bargaining in a peaceful situation and compellence as bargaining in a fighting situation, crisis bargaining occurs in an environment that is not quite war but is less than peace as well. A crisis is the last chance to avoid the transition from peace to war, it is the last chance to settle the contested issue by diplomatic means or limited military de- ployments. If a crisis is resolved, we’re back to deterrence. If it is not, we enter the period of compellence. Crises occur regularly and crisis bargaining is a vast and very important area of research in international relations. Understanding how some crises can be peacefully resolved raises the hope that we might be able to avoid sinking into war as often as we do. Very few wars come as bolts out of the blue, most are preceded by intense crisis periods. Understanding crisis bargaining is therefore 2 crucial to our understanding of war and peace. Crises, however, are not limited to military conflicts. Just about any mixed- motive bargaining situation in which the actors work with a sense of urgency (e.g. against a deadline of some sort) would qualify as a crisis. Of course, mil- itary crises that involve potentially the deaths of many and the destruction of property are that much more intense and dangerous than ordinary ones. We begin with a very simple formulation of crisis bargaining, one that has been extensively used to describe the tense dynamics of the situation. This is the so-called Game of Chicken. The original game goes something like this. Two guys in souped-up cars race against each other down a narrow road in front of a cheering crowd. Each can choose to keep going or swerve (we assume that whenever they swerve, they swerve to the right). If they both swerve, they avoid collision and neither gains anything. If one swerves but the other keeps going, the first loses face and is declared a wimp, and the other is declared the tough guy, wins in reputation and the admiration of the girls in the crowd. If neither swerves, they collide and die (we do not know whether this results in reputational gain or loss). What would the actors do? If one of the guys believes that the other will keep going, then the only rational response is to swerve.