Rationality & the Analysis of International Conflict

by Michael Nicholson

In this book, Michael Nicholson outlines social scientific approaches to international relations and then describes the problems of rational decision-making in conflict situations. He shows how rationality is in many strategic situations hard to define and often leads to paradoxes such as the prisoners dilemma, and explores rational beliefs about the international system. He examines theories of arms races, alliances, and the international problems of ecology. Here he is critical of the classical school of international relations for a lack of rigor in dealing with the problems of evidence and belief. Finally, Michael Nicholson discusses the philosophy of science, policy, and ethics. This book is both an exposition and a defense of a social scientific approach to international relations. With its emphasis on social scientific approaches, theory building and testing--and above all its clarity and accessibility--it provides students with a key to understanding the complex field of conflict analysis.

Genres: International Relations

280 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1992

About the author

Michael Nicholson OBE (born 9 January 1937) is an English journalist and former ITN Senior Foreign Correspondent.
Born in Romford, Essex, Nicholson attended the University of Leicester and is one of the world's most decorated and longest serving British television correspondents. Nicholson joined ITV in 1964 and over the ensuing forty years he reported from 18 war zones: Biafra, Israel, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Indo-Pakistan, Northern Ireland, Falklands, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, the Gulf Wars, 'Desert Storm' 1991 and 'Shock and Awe,' Baghdad 2003.
During the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, Nicholson's car broke down just as Turkish paratroopers were landing over his head onto the island . Nicholson walked up to the first of them and greeted them with 'I'm Michael Nicholson. Welcome to Cyprus'. His film was flown back to London on an RAF plane and made the Evening News the next day. A world scoop.
Nicholson was ITN’s first bureau chief in South Africa, based in Johannesburg from 1976 to 1981 and the first television correspondent to be allowed to live in apartheid South Africa, a brief covering Africa from Cape Town to the Sahara. During this time Nicholson covered the Soweto riots, spent much time in UDI Rhodesia covering the war of independence and was the first foreign journalist to interview Robert Mugabe on his release from prison.
In 1978 he and his cameraman Tom Phillips and sound recordist Micky Doyle, were in Angola to interview the UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. Pursued by Cuban mercaneries working for the communist MPLA government, they were trapped and spent for four and a half months in the bush, walking a total of 1,500 miles, trying to escape. They were eventually airlifted out in a dramatic escape.
In 1981 he returned to England, motoring overland through Africa and Europe with his wife Diana and two small sons, Tom and William, a six month journey of some twelve thousand miles, recorded in the book 'Across the Limpopo'.
Nicholson was on holiday in the Lake District when the Falklands War began. Flown by a chartered aircraft to Southampton he boarded the aircraft carrier 'HMS Hermes' for the six week journey to the South Atlantic. At 45 years old, Nicholson was more experienced than all his journalistic colleagues: "But this was the first war, other than Northern Ireland, where I was among my own people. It made it a very special war and the Falklands a very special place." Nicholson and BBC journalist Brian Hanrahan (on his first major foreign story)were regularly flown over to the Royal Fleet auxiliary ships to broadcast their phoned reports, as broadcasting from Royal Navy ships was forbidden. After the conflict, Nicholson was awarded the South Atlantic Medal

Reviews

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

It ought to come as little surprise that this book is not strictly rational in its approach. It is clear that this author has an agenda to push, and manages to have a surprisingly strident ax to grind against those who question the rational and scientific basis of the psychoanalytical school, for reasons that appear puzzling. Although reading about international conflict and calls for peace is far from unusual for me [1], this book managed to be a bit strange by its desire to defend bounded rationality while also defending the legitimacy of psychoanalysis. The author seems aware of the tension he is caught in, but his agenda of trying to discredit realism and neo-realism (a common issue among these writers from what I have seen) leads him to engage in dangerous fallacies. What could have been a great book instead ended up merely being an okay book that sometimes overstayed its welcome by a considerable degree. At least the book was not bad, and at times it was genuinely entertaining, but I would rather not waste my time reading globalist propaganda if I can help it.

The author takes about 250 pages to cover a variety of subjects The first part of the book looks at conflict, from concepts of conflict to social science and the study of conflict. The second part of the book looks at rational behavior in the study of rationality and conflict, conflict and the paradoxes of rationality, zero sum games, emotion and rationality, the warping of rationality in international crises, followed by a brief assessment on rational choice. The third part of the book covers some topics in conflict analysis like the statistical analysis of warlike behavior, arms and arms races, ecology and the free rider, and the theory of alliances. The fourth part has the author dealing with his critics in classic straw man fashion and looks at the connection between social science and values. Clearly, the author wants to say things about ecology even though these do not deal precisely with conflicts, at least not as they are described. The author also wants to have his cake and eat it to, by presenting rationality in such a way that avoids moral judgments while also allowing himself to make moral judgments that support his own political worldviews while simultaneously showing a great deal of dislike for those who judge international relations by moral standards.

In all, this book is demonstration of the mental gymnastics that people do in order to behave like hypocrites. No stone is unturned if it can help the author plead for his own particular narrow causes. No reasonable opportunities are missed to make the author appear to be rational and statistical and to show off, even though in some cases this demonstrates just how dodgy the measurement of arms races and conflicts happens to be. If the author is trying to show the legitimacy of social science approaches to international conflict as he so strenuously claims, he goes about it in a rather odd manner, and in one that alienates at least as many potential readers as it appeals to. In fact, this is not a very appealing book at all, even if it is at least a reasonably decent primer on the way that statistical analysis works in the social sciences, and that is worth reviewing from time to time. It is likely one can find more congenial and less hypocritical books to read and review, though. This book finds the author more interested in scoring points than in being fair-minded, and that makes for a tough book to read for someone like me.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...