472not21.doc October 21, 1996 472not1.doc If leaders are to be held responsible for their actions, they must be capable of -------- --------. If Saddam Hussein is so damned insane, can be held accountable for his war crimes? Decision-makers diagnose problems, draw inferences, examine alternatives, and make choices through mechanisms that bear little resemblance to -------- -------. If leaders were aware of ambiguity and contradiction, sought additional information, considered multiple interpretations, challenged the validity of indicators, used probabilistic language, expressed skepticism, and were aware of biases in information processing, then they were approximately ----------- . __________________ 472not.2.doc How can people deter cars by walking in front of them? If the driver can stop faster than the pedestrian can stand aside, then the driver should be deterred. In the art of commitment, how can you couple capabilities to objectives? Take irrevocable steps like throwing a steering wheel out of the window of a car in a game of chicken. Establish resolve by showing that you have no alternative but to continue to support an ally, e.g., by stationing ground troops on the ally's territory as opposed to naval forces, which are more easily withdrawn. What is the relation of bridge burning to commitment? Do you burn the bridge before you cross it or after? Can a threat operate against a driver-less vehicle? 472not3.doc Decision-making involves ------------ and -------------. Approaches to value conflict: resolve: find action that satisfies competing values devise single policy stage satisfaction over time accept: trade off one value to achieve another. avoid: restructure--turn aside information that heightens value conflict; ignore, discount, deny, forget, misinterpret; see what you expect to see, and hence assimilate images into preexisting beliefs--unmotivated bias. Motivated bias: see what you want to see. devalue--downgrade one value over others. Distinguish deterrence by threat from deterrence by denial. 472not4.doc First wave deterrence theory assumed that capabilities were the key to achieve compliance. Second waver Schelling added resolve to capability; third wavers George and Smoke as well as Blechman and Kaplan added controllability and calculability of risk. Pape compared balance of resolve & balance of interests, with vulnerability of civilians & balance of forces as they relate to coercion. And fourth wavers, Jervis, Lebow, and Stein, added misperception based upon errors in information processing. 472not5.doc Distinguish search and persuasion from strategies of deterrence and coercion. 472not6.doc 472not9.doc Threat credibility: enhance likelihood of carrying out a threat via irrevocable commitments to foreclose alternatives to compliance, appear to lose control over subordinates, pretend to be reckless, seem to be irrational. Because each side decides whether to stand firm by examining its own payoffs and estimating the likelihood the other will retreat, bargainers calculate critical risk. CR is a ratio of a challengers payoffs compared with the credibility that a defender will stand firm. If the defender's CR is higher than the initiator's credibility of challenging deterrence, the initiator should refrain from challenging the defender. If the defender's CR is lower than the initiator's credibility, deterrence is likely to fail. Applied to coercion, if the CR of the initiator is greater than the credibility of the defender, it should do or undo. Techniques for establishing credibility and commitment to a no-retreat position include relinquishing options, burning bridges, feigning anger, severing communication links, pretending irrationality, faking drunkenness, loss of control over militant factions of an organization, throwing steering wheels out of car windows, backing into a corner. But committing oneself to stand firm only works if the adversary can retreat. 472not7.doc Distinguish intrinsic from strategic interests, and state how they relate to credibility of commitments and deterrence failure. Hint: for which type of interests is it easier to establish commitment, or to deter? Why? According to the psychology of deterrence, are would be challengers more inner-directed or outer-directed? In other words, do challengers pay more attention to their own strategic and domestic situations than to the interests and capabilities of their adversaries? If so, what are implications for deterrence and coercion? 472not12.doc Unmotivated biases are short-cuts to rationality like inattention to base rates. People pay insufficient attention to the overall frequency of events and pay too much attention to the vividness of some case from the recent past or that occurred in the formative years of the persons. For example, the Munich analogy blows away other evidence relevant to threat perception. Motivated biases example: Japanese leaders assumed that the U.S. Would withdraw from the pacific after the attack at pearl harbor because they did not wish to confront the possibly of war with the U.S. Motivated by the desire not to see war if they assaulted pearl harbor, the Japanese failed to believe intelligence to the contrary. Motivated errors in information processing cause insensitivity to warning--receptivity to signals blocked--and hence, there is a higher likelihood of deterrence failure. Motivated bias response to needs or external pressure. Motivated bias can lead to faulty assessment of adversary resolve, overconfidence, insensitivity to warnings, and thus defeat deterrence. Insensitivity to warning a hallmark of defensive avoidance: avoid, dismiss, deny warnings that increase fear. According to the psychology of deterrence, how do signs labeled, "no trespassing" and beware of dogs relate to commitments in international security affairs? Classical deterrence theory: leaders leap through windows of opportunity. Fourth wavers: leaders turn inward into basements of felt need and fears rather than through windows of opportunity. Windows are illusions. 472not11.doc Prospect theory Approaches to cooperation: Rational Choice and Prospect Theory Rational choice: maximization of subjective expected absolute gain or loss. National security issues are framed as relative gain problems and thus are difficult to resolve. That is, two sides tend to cooperate when they both frame the problem as avoidance of loss than the maximization of gain. People pay more attention to losses than to gains: a loss is more painful that an equivalent gain is desirable. More painful to lose $1,000 on south university than it is pleasurable to find $1,000. Cognitive heuristics include loss aversion, endowment effect, reference points, anchoring. What effect do they have on deterrence failure and why? Deterrence may work against an adversary who frames a problem as maximization of gains, does not anchor with reference points that emphasize losses over gains, and does not overweight highly probable events as certain ones.