Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T15:01:31.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rationality at the Brink: The Role of Cognitive Processes in Failures of Deterrence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jack L. Snyder
Jack L. Snyder
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access

Abstract

Decision makers in international crises seek to reconcile two values: on the one hand, avoiding the loss of prestige and credibility that capitulation would entail and, on the other, avoiding war. These values conflict with each other, in the sense that any policy designed to further one of them will jeopardize the other. Cognitive theory suggests that in ambiguous circumstances a decision maker will suppress uncomfortable value conflicts, conceptualizing his dilemma in such a way that the values appear to be consonant. President Kennedy's process of decision and rationalization in the Cuban missile crisis fits this pattern. He contended that compromise would allay the risk of war in the short run only at the cost of increasing it in the long run. Thus, he saw his policy of no compromise as furthering both the goal of maintaining U.S. prestige and credibility and the goal of avoiding war.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , April 1978 , pp. 345 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This trade-off relationship is discussed in A George, Alexander L., Hall, David K., and Simons, William R., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy: Laos, Cuba, Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown 1971), 232–38.Google Scholar

2 From Schelling's article in Archibald, Kathleen, ed., Strategic Interaction and Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press 1966), 150,Google Scholar as quoted in Allison, Graham, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown 1971), 19.Google Scholar

3 Schelling, Thomas, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1960; citation from New York: Oxford University Press 1963), 4.Google Scholar

4 Schelling, Thomas, Arms and Influence (1971 ed., New Haven: Yale University Press 1966), 69ffGoogle Scholar

5 Schelling (fn. 3), 37; emphasis added.

6 Brodie, , Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1965), 280.Google Scholar

7 Allison (fn. 2).

8 George, and George, , Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York: Dover Publications 1956). 9Google Scholar

9 Steinbruner, John D., The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974), 101.Google Scholar

10 See Janis, Irving L., Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1972), esp. 236–37.Google Scholar This shifttorisk hypothesis has come under criticism in recent years, however. See Tullar, W. L. and Johnson, D. F., Group decision-making and the risky shift: a transnational perspective (Technical Report 48, Rochester, N.Y.: Management Research Center, University of Rochester 1972).Google Scholar

11 Steinbruner (fn. 9).

12 Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson 1957), 43–44Google Scholar

13 Steinbruner, has discussed the implications of his theory for deterrence strategies in “Beyond Rational Deterrence: The Struggle for New Conceptions” World Politics, XXVIII (January 1976).Google Scholar The discussion presented here takes a different direction and should not be construed as reflecting Professor Steinbruner's views on the implications of his model for deterrence theory.

14 These principles and some of their experimental underpinnings are presented in Steinbruner (fn. 9); Festinger (fn. 12); Janis (fn. 10); Brehm, Jack W. and Cohen, Arthur R., Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance (New York: Wiley 1962);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and deRivera, Joseph H. with Rosenau, James N., The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill 1968).Google Scholar

15 Brehm and Cohen (fn. 14), 71.

16 For fuller explanation and illustration of the rational-analytic paradigm, see Steinbruner, (fn. 9), and Samuelson, Paul, Economics (New York: McGraw-Hill 1973).Google Scholar

17 Steinbruner (fn. 9), 51.

18 Ibid., 55.

19 Ibid., 62.

20 Ibid., 73.

21 Ibid., 88.

22 Ibid., esp. 103–09.

23 Experimental evidence suggests that when the objective probability of a desirable occurrence is relatively high, people tend to view that probability as approaching certainty; conversely, impossibility is often imputed to events which are only moderately unlikely. DeRivera (fn. 14), 109.

24 Steinbruner (fn. 9), 110. The principal study which Steinbruner uses to illustrate his theory is the debate on the M.L.F. (multilateral force). His discussions of the Cuban crisis are limited to this examination of Kennedy's certainty regarding his impeachment and to one of Kennedy's certainty in his inferences about Soviet intentions and the consequences of a no-response policy, 89.

25 Allison (fn. 2), 8–9.

26 Ibid., 9.

27 Sorensen, Theodore, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row 1965), 705.Google Scholar

28 Abel, Elie, The Missile Crisis (New York: Lippincott 1966), 43.Google Scholar

29 Sorensen (fn. 27), 682–83.

30 See Stone, I. F., “The Continuing Debate” in Divine, Robert A., The Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Quadrangle 1971), 163;Google Scholar and Horelick, Arnold L., “The Cuban Missile Crisis: An Analysis of Soviet Calculations and Behavior” World Politics, XVI (April 1964).Google Scholar

31 Abel (fn. 28), 52.

32 Sorensen (fn. 27), esp. 678.

33 Abel (fn. 28), 49.

34 Hilsman, , To Move A Nation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1967), 197.Google Scholar

35 Kennedy, Robert F., Thirteen Days (New York: Norton 1969), 166–67.Google Scholar

36 Kennedy, Robert, quoted in Alsop, Stewart and Bartlett, Charles, “In Time of Crisis”, Saturday Evening Post (December 8, 1962), 16.Google Scholar

37 Abel (fn. 28), 70.

38 Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1965), 796.Google Scholar

39 Sorensen (fn. 27), 694.

40 President Kennedy, quoted in Kennedy (fn. 35), 67.

41 Abel (fn. 28), 199.

42 Kennedy (fn. 35), 127.

43 Wohlstetter, and Wohlstetter, , “Controlling the Risks in Cuba”, in Art, Robert J. and Waltz, Kenneth N., eds., The Use of Force (Boston: Little, Brown 1971), 234.Google Scholar The quotation is from Stone (fn. 30), 164.

44 In addition, each side was to agree not to violate the sovereignty of the other's client. It should be noted that the final agreement did entail one element of “compromise.” The United States agreed to forswear an invasion of Cuba as a condition for the removal of the missiles. That was not much of a concession, and Kennedy certainly lost no prestige by agreeing to it. In fact, he had to warn his subordinates not to be excessively gleeful in public print about the settlement.

45 Stone (fn. 30), 221.

46 Schlesinger (fn. 37), 741; emphasis added.

47 Stone (fn. 30), 222.

48 Abel (fn. 28), 175–77.

49 Stone (fn. 30), 222.

50 Kennedy, speech at American University, June 10, 1963, quoted in Abel (fn. 28), 91.

51 Schlesinger (fn. 37), 742.

52 This does not necessarily indicate that Khrushchev's decision was analytical in the sense of weighing trade-offs, making indifference calculations, etc. It is possible that the cognitive pressures on Khrushchev and his colleagues were structured differently from those on Kennedy. Only detailed information on the Soviets' decision process, which is currently unavailable, could resolve this question.

53 Schilling, , “Technology and International Relations”, The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan and Free Press 1968), 593.Google Scholar

54 Holsti, , “Crisis, Stress, and Decision-making”, International Social Science Journal, XXIII, No. 1 (1971), 61–62,Google Scholar citing Korchin, Sheldon J. and Levine, Seymour, “Anxiety and Verbal Learning”, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 54 (March 1957), 238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Steinbruner (fn. 9), 147.