Psychology and Deterrence

by Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein

Detterence is the most basic concept in American foreign policy today. But past practice indicates it often fails to work - and may increase the risk of war. Psychology and Deterrence reveals this stratgy's hidden and generally simplistic assumptions about the nature of power and aggression, threat and response, and calculation and behavior in the international arena. Most current analysis, the authors, note, ignore decisionmakers' emotions, preceptions, and domestic political needs, assuming instead that people repond to crisis in highly rational ways. Examining the historical evidence from a psychological perspective, Psychology and Deterrence offers case studies on the origins of World War I, the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Falklands Wars as seen by the most important participants. These case studies reveal national leaders to be both more cautious and more reckless than theory would predict. They also show how deterrence strategies often backfire by aggravating a nation's sense of insequrity, thereby calling forth the very behavior they seek to prevent. The authors' conclusions offer important insights for superpower bargaining and nuclear deterrence.

Genres: Psychology, International Relations, Nonfiction, Politics

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Robert Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, and has been a member of the faculty since 1980. Jervis was the recipient of the 1990 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Jervis is co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, a series published by Cornell University Press, and the member of numerous editorial review boards for scholarly journals.

While Jervis is perhaps best known for two books in his early career, he also wrote System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, 1997). With System Effects, Jervis established himself as a social scientist as well as an expert in international politics. Many of his latest writings are about the Bush doctrine, of which he is very critical. Jervis is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he was awarded the NAS Award for Behavior Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War from the National Academy of Sciences. He participated in the 2010 Hertog Global Strategy Initiative, a high-level research program on nuclear proliferation. He was also president of the American Political Science Association in 2001.

Reviews

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, evidence based discussion of how deterrence works - or, rather, doesn't - in the real world. Rather than being a book built around one thesis, it's a really interesting discussion of several different aspects of the concept. This includes examining the biases that the intended recipient of a deterrent message will have, looking at how difficult it is to transmit unambiguous messages across cultures when tensions are high, and the negative effects that deterrence can have on security dilemmas. No doubt there are many more recent books on this topic, but this one is robust, well written, and without pretension.