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Psychology and Deterrence. by Robert Jervis; Richard Ned Lebow; Janice Gross Stein;
Patrick M. Morgan; Jack L. Snyder
Review by: James G. Blight
International Security, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Winter, 1986-1987), pp. 175-186
Published by: The MIT Press
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The
Freudian Revo-
lution is now more or less complete. Due to the effortsof Freud and his
successors, few of us now have the slightestdoubt that there are deeper
layers to our minds than is at firstapparent, and that occurringwithin the
psychologicalunderworldare processes causing distortion,denial, and other
sorts of self-deception.We are not entirelywhat we seem to be; our actions,
we believe, are not fullyexplicable without referenceto the psychological
means by which we seem oftento defend ourselves against reality.Yet Freud
would have been the firstto admit thathis revolutionaryenterpriseconsisted
the old wine of the ancients into new, semi-scientific
mainly in transferring
bottles,fitformodern consumption. Thus, it is altogetherfittingto findthe
an attemptto apply the psyessential message of Psychology
and Deterrence
chological viewpoint to self-deceptionin foreignpolicymaking,contained in
the writingsof Thucydides, the firstgreatchroniclerof internationalpolitics.
In The PeloponnesianWar,he has the powerful Athenians say to the weaker
inhabitantsof the island of Melos, a people the Athenians will soon destroy:
Hope, danger's comforter,may be indulged in by those who have abundant
resources, if not without loss at all events withoutruin; but its nature is to
be extravagant,and those who go so faras to put theirall upon the venture
see it in its true colors only when they are ruined.'
For deepening my understandingof the relationsbetween psychologyand foreignpolicy,thanks
are due to Robert Dallek, Richard Ned Lebow, Frederic Mosher, Thomas C. Schelling, and
especially to McGeorge Bundy, JanetM. Lang, and JosephS. Nye, Jr.
JamesG. Blightis a ResearchFellow at the Centerfor Scienceand International
Affairs,Harvard
University.
1. Thucydides, The HistoryofthePeloponnesianWar,trans. Richard Crawley and R. Feetham, in
R.M. Hutchins, ed., GreatBooksof theWesternWorld(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica,1952),
Vol. 6, pp. 347-616; quotation on p. 506.
International
Security,Winter1986-87(Vol. 11, No. 3)
( 1986 by the Presidentand Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology.
175
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New Psychology
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our behavior will be determinedby his behavior."3These and related propositions,which togetherhave exertedenormous influenceon the continuing
debates about U.S. foreignpolicy,are put forwardby Schellingin the manner
of general laws, accordingto which it is considered legitimateand instructive
to deduce completelyhypotheticalconflictsbetween disembodied, adversarial, international"actors," who signal theircommitmentscrediblyand audibly to one another and who are deterred fromattackingonly because the
net gain calculated to be derived fromnot attackingis greater.
One of the definingcharacteristicsof genius is the capacity to shape not
merely the content of debate, but to determine the terms, parameters, or
contourswithinwhich debate takes place. This is certainlytrue of Schelling,
who in 1960 admitted, forexample, that the psychological study of conflict
is a legitimateenterprisebut then promptlydeclared it out of bounds for
serious students of internationalconflict.He decreed "a main dividing line
... between those that treat conflictas a pathological state and seek its
causes and treatment,and those that take conflictforgrantedand study the
behavior associated with it."4 In other words, according to Schelling, there
ought to be a great divide between clinicaland academic psychology,on the
one hand, and the strategyof internationalconflict-of deterrence-on the
other. That this great divide has been respected, even revered by students
of internationalrelations, no one can doubt. But the authors of Psychology
and Deterrencetry,in effect,to ignore Schelling's canonical dichotomyaltogether and to begin to carve out a third way: a psychologicallyinformed
approach to the preventionof internationalconflict,a hybridizationthat has
heretoforeseemed all but impossible due to the hegemony of Schelling's
great divide. Psychology is to be brought out of its closet and into contact
with cases of successful and failed deterrence,cases that the old paradigm
is held to be incapable of explaining. By openly acknowledgingand allowing
forwhat theyregardas the ubiquitous irrationality
of foreignpolicydecisionmaking,the revolutionariesseek to constructa more rationaland empirically
robusttheoryof deterrence.
RobertJervisleads offwith two chapterscontaininga wide arrayof briefly
described cases, which he interpretsin the light of some selected findings
fromcognitive psychology. His subject is bias in the perception of threats,
and he divides the psychological domain of interestinto two types: unmo3. Ibid., p. 13.
4. Ibid., p. 18.
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New Psychology
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have become total. Irrational actors would replace rational actors in the
analyses of internationalrelations specialists, who would by then have bid
goodbye to deterrenceand hello to psychology.
The conclusions to the volume, contained in two chapters by Lebow, are
boldly psychological.6First,Lebow argues that "denial, selective attention,
and otherpsychologicalsleightsof hand" (p. 173) are ubiquitous in situations
when deterrenceis on the line and that internationalaggression is farmore
a functionof perceived need than of opportunity.Lebow thus provides an
extended gloss on his well-knownargumentthatstates do not jump through
windows of opportunity.As Lebow sees it, states (or presumablytheirleaders) are best understood as turninginward ratherthan outward toward their
own unresolved wishes and fears. They leap, one might say, into murky
basements of feltneed, ratherthan throughwindows of perceived opportunity.7And since the theoryand practice of deterrencehas heretoforeemphasized the arrangementsrequired forpreventingwindows of opportunity
fromarising, it is no wonder, according to Lebow, that historyis littered
with failuresof deterrencecaused by misperceptionand misunderstanding.
In a thoroughlyFreudian argument,Lebow argues, in effect,that such windows (hence rational deterrenceitself) are illusions-manageable fantasies
which are preferredto the frightening
realityactuallyfaced by policymakers,
especially in the nuclear age.8 This is, in fact, exactly the formof Freud's
argumentagainst what he regarded as the illusion of religion.9
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ofWarand Peace | 181
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psychologicallessons fromsome astonishingand peaceful reversalsin international relations, especially that of Sadat in 1975. But this is exceedingly
cold comfortfor the psychological revolutionariesfor,as Stein points out,
the key prerequisite to that initiativewas a bloodbath of proportions that
were unacceptablyabhorrentto both sides. Likewise with the superpowers,
the countries whose sour relationshiphovers like a cloud over this entire
book. The Kennedy-Khrushchev peace initiativeof 1963 is almost unthinkable without the terrifying
Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. And so it
goes: a book whose authors set out to conduct a psychological revolution
ends by engaging in courageous but unequivocal conceptual self-destruction.
What has gone wrong? Why have these psychologicalanalyses led to such
pessimism? Let us firstbe clear about what is notwrong: the psychological
analyses of deterrencein this volume are not uninterestingor implausible.
In this thoroughlyFreudian era, very few people tryto resistpsychological
explanations per se, and many of them put forthin this volume are very
compelling. On the level of what is sometimescalled "politicalpsychology,"
therefore,the book must be regarded as a brilliantsuccess. There is, one is
inclined to conclude with the authors, a huge psychologicaldeficiencyin the
theoryof rational deterrence. We see clearly that the theorydoes not put
nearly enough emphasis on nonrational determinantsof human thinking
and behavior.
The problem, rather,is one that is endemic to the entirefield of political
psychology.As Stanley Hoffmannhas pointed out, while "politicsis wholly
psychological,"
proposed solutions to (what may be regarded as importantly
psychological) problems of war and peace must be wholly political."1And
this means criticallythat proposed solutions must be situated firmlywithin
the cognitivecontextof the policymakers,who must come to believe thatthe
proposals will help to solve what theyregard as real problems of war and
peace, of deterrenceand reassurance, not "perceptual distortion"or "paranoia" or other psychological problems. Lebow is correctto conclude that
foreignpolicymakersare quite unlikelyto respond favorably,iftheyrespond
at all, to overtlypsychological proposals.12They are in factlikely to regard
11. Stanley Hoffmann, "On the Political Psychology of War and Peace: A Critique and an
Agenda," PoliticalPsychology,
Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 1986), pp. 1-21; quotation on p. 1.
12. See J.P. Kahan, R.E. Darilek, M.H. Graubard, and N.C. Brown, with assistance fromA.
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ofWarandPeace1183
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ton Mifflin,1982), pp. 123-158. See also Alexander L. George, "The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962,"
in AlexanderL. George, David K. Hall, and William E. Simons, TheLimitsofCoerciveDiplomacy:
Laos, Cuba, Vietnam(Boston: Little,Brown, 1971), pp. 86-143.
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