Psychology, Strategy and Conflict

This volume examines the explanatory nesting approach in the analysis in

international relations and its continuing relevance in the 21st century.
International relations theory urgently needs strategies for coping with
the growing complexity of the international system following the collapse
of the US–Soviet bipolar stalemate, the multiple challenges to US unipolar
hegemony, and the rise of powerful non-Western actors.
Over the course of this book, leading scholars of international relations
and diplomatic history return to an approach to explanation pioneered in
the writings of Robert Jervis. The approach calls for nesting multiple layers
of explanation – systemic, strategic, and perceptual – in an integrated
causal account that is simultaneously parsimonious and nuanced. High-
lighting the logic of strategic interactions under uncertainty, it also inte-
grates the effects of psychological biases and the unintended consequences
of acting in complex systems to provide explanations that are at once the-
oretically rigorous and rich in empirical detail. Analyzing the current state
of Realist theory, signaling under conditions of uncertainty and anarchy,
the role of nuclear weapons in international politics, the role of cognition
and emotions in economic and foreign policy decision making, and ques-
tions of responsibility in international affairs, the authors provide a com-
pelling guide for the future of international relations theory.
This book will be of much interest to students of international relations,
foreign policy, and security studies.

James W. Davis is Director of the Institute for Political Science and

Professor for Political Science at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Routledge Global Security Studies
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Arms Controls in the 21st Century Psychology, Strategy and Conflict
Between coercion and cooperation Perceptions of insecurity in
Edited by Christopher Daase and international relations
Oliver Meier Edited by James W. Davis

Reconceptualising Deterrence
Nudging toward rationality in
Middle Eastern rivalries
Elli Lieberman
Psychology, Strategy and
Conflict
Perceptions of insecurity in international
relations

Edited by James W. Davis

First published 2013
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Psychology, strategy and conflict : perceptions of insecurity in
international relations/edited by James W. Davis.
p. cm. – (Routledge global security studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. International relations–Psychological aspects. 2. Political
psychology. I. Davis, James W., 1963-
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Contents

Notes on contributors ix
Foreword xi
T homas C . S chelling

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1
J ames W . D a v is

  1 Both fox and hedgehog: the art of nesting structural and

perceptual perspectives 13
J ack S nyder

  2 Jervis’s realism 25
R andall L . S chweller

  3 Political psychology 47
R ose M c D ermott

  4 Rational signaling revisited 64

J onathan M ercer

  5 Fear, greed, and financial decision-­making 82

J anice G ross S tein

  6 Robert Jervis and the nuclear question 101

M arc T rachtenberg

  7 The meaning of the nuclear evolution: China’s nuclear

modernization and US–China security relations 121
T homas J . C hristensen
viii   Contents
  8 Reflections on system, system effects, and nineteenth-­
century international politics as the practice of civil
association 155
P aul W . S chroeder

  9 The art of the intelligence autopsy 181

J ames J . W irt z

10 The (good) person and the (bad) situation: recovering

innocence at the expense of responsibility? 199
J ames W . D a v is

11 Force in our times 220

R obert J er v is

Index 242
Contributors

Thomas J. Christensen is the William Boswell Professor of Politics of War

and Peace and Director of the China and the World Program at Prince­
ton University, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs. His most recent book is Worse than a Mono-
lith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia (Princeton
University Press, 2011).
James W. Davis is Professor of International Politics and Director of the
Institute for Political Science as well as the Center for Security Eco-
nomics and Technology at the University of St. Gallen.
Robert Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at
Columbia University.
Rose McDermott is Professor of Political Science at Brown University and
the co-­author of Man is by Nature and Nurture a Political Animal (Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2011) with Peter K. Hatemi.
Jonathan Mercer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Washington.
Thomas C. Schelling is Professor of Economics at the University of Mary-
land and 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics.
Paul W. Schroeder is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of
Illinois and Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Randall L. Schweller is Professor of Political Science and a Social and
Behavioral Sciences Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellow at Ohio State Univer-
sity. His most recent book is Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on
the Balance of Power (Princeton University Press, 2006).
Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International
Relations in the Political Science Department and the Saltzman Insti-
tute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His most recent
book is Power and Progress: International Politics in Transition (Routledge,
2012).
x   Contributors
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in
the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk
School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Her most recent
book is Sacred Aid (Oxford University Press, 2012) with Michael Barnett.
Marc Trachtenberg is Professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in History from the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, in 1974 and is the author, most recently,
of The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Pol-
itics (Princeton University Press, 2012).
James J. Wirtz is Dean of the School of International Graduate Studies at
the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. He is the co-­editor of
Over the Horizon Proliferation Threats (Stanford University Press, 2012)
with Peter Lavoy.
Foreword
Thomas C. Schelling

Being a student can be a reciprocal relationship. Robert Jervis was never

formally a student of mine, though he would claim that he learned from
me. And I have learned from him.
I first met Bob when he was at Berkeley and was developing the ideas
that would become his “logic” book. He dropped in on me in my office
and briefed me on what he was thinking about. The person who was then
my secretary and who has been my wife for the last 20 years still remem-
bers how impressed I was with this young man from Berkeley, who
dropped in to talk about his dissertation plans.
I tend to think that The Logic of Images in International Relations has had
more influence on me than anything else Bob has written. That’s partly
because the ideas were absolutely new to me. The analysis focused on
something I hadn’t thought about. Later on, a lot of his work was on
things that were part of my professional interest, things I had been think-
ing about. Although I learned from his later work, it was in a different
context; one in which I already had some preparation.
About five years ago, a foundation in Moscow, which came into exist-
ence in order to translate important social science works into the Russian
language, decided the first book they would translate was my Strategy of
Conflict. And then they asked me, what should be the next book on their
list to translate? I had no hesitation in saying, The Logic of Images. And it
wasn’t the first time I had recommended the book.
As a member of Michael Spence’s dissertation committee, I steered him
to Bob Jervis’s book. The ideas about market signaling were original to
Mike, but I said, “You’ll be able to explain this better, if you understand
what Bob was talking about.” Mike appreciated the advice and afterwards
he told me how much he had benefited from having Bob’s work called to
his attention. And I think it was the clarity of Mike’s exposition – a clarity
based on his understanding of Bob’s work – that earned him tenure in the
Harvard economics faculty and later his Nobel Prize.
Not too long ago Bob and I were together at a small conference on
deterrence. The organizer wanted both what he called the “old guard”
and “newcomers.” The old guard included Richard Betts, Bob Jervis,
xii   T.C. Schelling
Morton Halperin, George Quester, and me. During the course of the con-
ference I decided that “old guard” was the wrong term. I think you
become an old guard when you stop learning and getting new ideas. Bob
Jervis never stopped learning and getting new ideas. If somebody had
been at that conference and hadn’t been able to look at the faces of the
people who spoke, they might have guessed that Bob Jervis and a few of
the others were just as fresh and youthful and productive as anybody in
the room.
The contributions to this volume reflect the freshness of Jervis’s ideas
and of Robert Jervis himself, and a robust reciprocal relationship among
the authors.
Acknowledgments

The chapters in this volume were originally presented at a conference in

New York that was co-­sponsored by the University of St. Gallen’s Institute
of Political Science and Columbia University’s Institute of War and Peace
Studies. Additional financial support was provided by the Department of
Political Science at Columbia University. Special thanks go to Richard
Betts, Director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, for hosting the
conference, and to Ingrid Gerstmann for her excellent organizational
support. The authors and editor also extend their thanks to Sebastian
Plappert and Karl Hampel for their assistance in preparing the manuscript
and index.
Introduction
James W. Davis

In the twentieth century, theoretical innovation in the academic field of

international relations was fostered by a series of “great debates.” In the
first decades following World War II, Realist theories engaged the progres-
sive and transformational arguments of post-­Versailles Idealists and their
belief in the pacifying effects of international institutions, with reference
to enduring patterns of competition and conflict in international history
and an imputed innate human lust for power. With neither position
clearly vanquished – the basic point of contention remains a defining
fault-­line in the discipline – a second debate was provoked by champions
of the behavioral revolution who were skeptical of interpretive histories,
legal philosophy, and theories that ascribed causal power to imputed
unobservable, unmeasurable, and hence unscientific constants of human
nature. Dominant during the 1960s and 1970s, the behavioral revolution
generated much data but produced very little by way of substantive theo-
retical breakthroughs. By contrast, the 1980s and early 1990s were charac-
terized by remarkable theoretical innovation. At first dominated by a
reinvigorated debate between Realism and Idealism, with adherents to
Kenneth Waltz’s Neorealist Theory of International Politics squaring off
against scholars inspired by the ideas found in Robert Keohane and
Joseph Nye’s Power and Interdependence and the related discussion of inter-
national regimes, a third debate emerged as constructivists wedded an
interest in the role of shared ideas with a commitment to interpretivist
methods to challenge both Neorealist and Liberal adherents to materialist
and positivist approaches to explaining international politics.
In retrospect, the 1980s appear to have been something of a golden age
of theorizing about international relations. Subsequent decades have not
been characterized by major theoretical innovation, even if the research
programs inspired by these debates produced incremental progress remin­
iscent of the sort of research Thomas Kuhn termed “normal science,” itself
often associated with what Robert Cox derided as merely “problem
solving.”1
Somewhat lost in the exuberance and passion of the 1980s and early
1990s was a less dogmatic and more integrative approach to theory-­building
2   J.W. Davis
associated with the work of Robert Jervis. Drawing on the strengths of
structural realism yet recognizing the importance of historical context,
growing international interdependence, and the associated increase in the
complexity of the international system, the approach was also sensitive to
the fact that in the end, politics remains a social activity driven by the
behaviors of real human beings. Applying insights from cognitive and
social psychology, Jervis stressed the links between individual beliefs and
structural constraints, thereby anticipating some of the arguments later
associated with social constructivism.
In this volume, leading students of international relations and diplo-
matic history reengage central themes and questions that have animated
the scholarship of Robert Jervis, and in doing so recast a number of con-
temporary debates over foreign policy strategy and international conflict
with a view toward reinvigorating theoretical progress in international rela-
tions theory. True to Jervis’s approach, the authors avail themselves of
developments in psychology, neural science, history, behavioral eco-
nomics, and political science to develop novel arguments that challenge
not only propositions derived from more dogmatically disciplinary theo-
ries, but also arguments made by Jervis himself.
Although many of the authors gathered here were students of Robert
Jervis, given the diversity of their substantive and methodological commit-
ments, it would be difficult to identify commonalities that would constitute
the defining features of a coherent school of thought. And though they
have applied ideas and arguments developed by Jervis in their own schol-
arship, two of the authors – Marc Trachtenberg and Paul W. Schroeder –
are diplomatic historians rather than political scientists trained in
international relations theory. Yet the contributors to this volume share a
common interest in the central themes and political problems toward
which Jervis consistently directs his scholarship. They were asked to con-
tribute because their own scholarship is at the forefront of the various
research programs spawned by Jervis’s writings.

Actors and their environment

Social science usually begins with the question of whether behavior is best
explained by reference to the actors or to their environment. In psychol-
ogy the question is cast in terms of the person or the situation; in eco-
nomics, consumers or markets; in political science, agents or structures. In
international relations, this basic levels-­of-analysis question is complicated
by the fact that we are often interested in explaining the behavior of states,
which in a strict sense cannot “act” at all.2
But already in his early works Jervis suggests that such dichotomies,
though perhaps helpful for heuristic purposes, are fundamentally mislead-
ing. Thus in Perception and Misperception in International Politics he examined
the interaction between the structure of the international system, with
 Introduction   3
anarchy as its key defining feature, and the perceptions held by individual
decision-­makers of their adversaries and environment, and found “little
evidence for the existence of the homogeneity of behavior that would
allow us to ignore everything except the international setting.”3 Returning
to themes first developed in his dissertation,4 Jervis later engaged with pro-
ponents of a game-­theory approach to analyzing state behavior and dem-
onstrated the recursive relationship between actors’ perceptions and
structures.5
Disagreement over the degree to which anarchy necessarily produces
security dilemmas that mirror the structure of the Prisoner’s Dilemma,
thereby forcing even status quo states to behave as aggressors, is at the
heart of the contemporary debate between the “offensive” and “defen-
sive” schools of Realism, as Randall Schweller argues in Chapter 2. Start-
ing from the premise that the international system reflects a high degree
of ontological uncertainty – that is, much about the actor’s environment is
fundamentally unknowable given the complexity of the international
system – Schweller argues that intense, Prisoner’s-Dilemma-­type security
dilemmas only arise when offensive weapons and strategies enjoy a large
advantage and are indistinguishable from available defenses. When
these conditions do not obtain, it is a misnomer to characterize the situ-
ation confronting states as a dilemma. If states behave as though they
are confronting a dilemma, it must be the result of unwarranted and
incorrect certainty that they face an aggressor. Offensive realists believe
decision-­makers always are (or should be) guided by such certainty. By
contrast, defensive realists are persuaded that the pervasive sense of inse-
curity within which decision-­makers contemplate strategic choices results
primarily from uncertainty over the preferences and intentions of
others.
The degree to which structures are independent of the actors and their
beliefs, and at the same time can determine their behavior, is also at the
core of Janice Gross Stein’s analysis of the “Great Recession” and the
resulting financial crisis plaguing today’s global economy. Starting from
Jervis’s analyses of spiral dynamics and the security dilemma in interna-
tional politics, Stein incorporates new findings from psychology, behavi­
oral economics, and neural science into her analysis. She concludes that
competitive markets alone are inadequate devices for weeding out the
“irrational” exuberance and myopic behavior of bankers that helped
create the crisis, and hence do not produce like actors whose behavior is
explainable in terms of market rationality. The thesis is provocative not
only in the context of the financial crisis, but also because it challenges
widely-­accepted substantive and methodological claims first made popular
by Milton Friedman, claims that also form the core of Waltz’s argument
that the striking “sameness” among states is the product of the intense
competition dictated by international anarchy.6 For Friedman and Waltz,
individuals in highly competitive environments will be forced to act “as if ”
4   J.W. Davis
they were rational cost-­benefit utility maximizers. Those who are not suffi-
ciently “socialized” eventually “fall by the wayside,” as Waltz famously
argued.7
In his own book-­length analysis of the workings of complex systems,
Jervis argued that the hypothesis lacks strong empirical support.8 The
problem, Stein suggests, resides in a conception of microeconomic ration-
ality that fails to account for the pervasive role played by emotions in indi-
vidual choice, a subject more thoroughly developed by Rose McDermott
in Chapter 3. Structures cannot deprive human beings of emotions,
although they may serve to awaken or fuel them. And as Stein’s analysis
demonstrates, changes in individual emotional states may work through
feedback loops to change the defining features of the environment. In the
case of the economic and financial crisis, fear generated by structural
uncertainty produced destabilizing positive feedback that led to market
failure rather than the clearing equilibrium predicted by standard eco-
nomic models. If the claims can be extended to foreign policy decision-­
making, the implications for balance-­of-power theory, not to speak of
international politics, are unsettling.

Uncertainty
International politics is plagued by pervasive uncertainty – not only about
the intentions of others, but also about one’s own preferences and the
actions one is likely to take in the future. The challenges to successful
foreign policy making are thus immense. In most cases, effective strategy
will rest on the ability of decision-­makers in one state to make relatively ac-
curate predictions of how both they and decision-­makers in other states
will behave under given circumstances. Because decision-­makers in the
other states also are basing their strategies on beliefs about the likely
behavior of those in the first, all have an incentive to try and persuade
themselves and others to hold certain beliefs.
The state’s ability to send credible signals and influence potential adver-
saries’ beliefs about the state’s interests and resolve to defend them is
central to theories and strategies of deterrence. Thomas Schelling’s own
work on signals has given rise to two related, yet distinct, strands of
argument.9
Building on the fundamental assumption that deeds are generally more
credible than words, economists and rational-­choice theorists in political
science have developed an argument whereby signals are held to be costly,
and hence credible, to the degree to which they generate potential audi-
ence costs for the sender. Because democratically elected leaders are
expected to face higher domestic audience costs than the leaders of
authoritarian regimes, their threats and promises should enjoy ipso facto a
higher level of credibility and thus prove more effective in engendering
the desired belief in the target.10
 Introduction   5
In Chapter 4, Jonathan Mercer develops a second strand of argument
with roots in Schelling’s earlier work. Returning to arguments first made
by Jervis in The Logic of Images in International Relations, Mercer casts doubt
on the validity of claims based on straightforward understandings of what
makes a signal “costly” and thereby credible. Mercer identifies a number
of issues that confound simple applications of abstract arguments over the
informational value of costly signals to the real world of international rela-
tions. If it is widely believed that “cheap talk” is uninformative,11 then both
the “sincere” as well as the imposter (that is, a state interested in project-
ing false images of its interests and resolve) will resort to the sending of
costly signals. And unless the state engages in actions that bring it close to
destruction, actors and observers may have quite different understandings
of what constitutes a costly signal; or, they may not understand an
intended act of communication as a signal at all.
If signals are conventional, as both Jervis and Mercer argue, then the
structure of strategic interaction is neither entirely material nor objectively
given. Rather, strategic frameworks are to some degree social construc-
tions based on intersubjective beliefs, as constructivists have long main-
tained.12 The point is further underscored in Marc Trachtenberg’s chapter
on the nuclear question. Although the material effects of a nuclear explo-
sion can be predicted by the laws of physics, when it comes to the social
structure produced by nuclear weapons Jervis maintained that “there is no
reality to be described that is independent of people’s beliefs about it.”13
Together, the chapters by Mercer, Stein, and Trachtenberg not only dem-
onstrate that Jervis anticipated the later focus of constructivist scholars on
the role of ideas, intersubjective understandings, and social interaction,
but also suggest some interesting and as yet unexplored ways to link cogni-
tivist, social psychological, and constructivist-­inspired research.14

Psychology
Jervis is perhaps best known for his applications of cognitive psychology to
the study of political decision-­making. As Rose McDermott suggests in
Chapter 3, few have attempted to move very far beyond his contributions,
largely because they appeared to be so definitive. On the one hand, the cog-
nitivist revolution in psychology, on which Jervis based most of his analyses
of foreign policy decision-­making, reigned supreme for the better part of
three decades. On the other, given the sheer weight of historical data he
used to substantiate them, Jervis’s claims seemed beyond empirical critique.
Jervis was quick, however, to note that later developments in psychology –
in particular the experimental findings of Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky that subsequently formed the basis of Prospect Theory15 – insofar as
they addressed how people make decisions under conditions of risk or uncer-
tainty, might produce novel insights in the field of international relations.16
But the past 10 to 15 years have been characterized by revolutionary advances
6   J.W. Davis
in psychology and the newer cognate field of neural science that have led to
a more refined understanding of human cognition than that available when
Jervis first began to study foreign policy decision-­making. Of particular inter-
est to students of international politics is the degree to which the long-­
standing dichotomy between emotional and rational thought has given way
to a conception of rationality that incorporates affect. Regarding human psy-
chology to be the product of evolutionary pressures, McDermott returns our
attention to fundamental questions of human nature that were at the heart
of classical Realism. But whereas Morgenthau’s effort to explain both the
pervasiveness of war and periods of great-­power peace in terms of an invaria-
ble conception of human nature ultimately proved unpersuasive, McDer-
mott argues that differing environmental cues trigger specific adaptive
responses from a repertoire of environmentally conditioned psychological
mechanisms and thereby produce predictable behavioral patterns. At the
forefront of the search for the micro-­foundations of both human universals
and individual idiosyncrasies, neural science holds the potential to challenge
but also enrich social science and will, no doubt, attract the interest of
increasing numbers of political scientists.17

Diplomatic history
Whereas a casual observer might assume that the ultimate test of models
of international relations and associated theories would be their ability to
explain and anticipate developments in the real world of international
politics, current debates in the field often suggest otherwise. Too often it
is the abstract theories themselves, and anomalies internal to them, which
constitute the object of interest for students of international politics. At
the extreme, mathematical manipulations displace empirical data and
international relations theory is reduced to little more than a branch of
applied mathematics.
The contributors to this volume all share a commitment to the close
link between international relations theory and diplomatic history. As
Marc Trachtenberg reminds us in his chapter, though interested in theory
for its own sake, Jervis sees theory, history, and contemporary policy ques-
tions as closely linked, and he stands out for his ability to deploy historical
data in support of theoretical conjectures.18
In their respective contributions to this volume, Marc Trachtenberg
and Paul Schroeder adopt a different tack and apply theories developed
by Jervis to the analysis of diplomatic history with great effect. With a focus
on the nineteenth-­century international system, Schroeder demonstrates
how complex interconnections frustrated states’ efforts to pursue their
goals. Whether directed at upholding the status quo understood in terms
of the prevailing rules and practices of the European system (as was the
case in the Crimean War), or revising it (Bismarck’s goal), straightforward
policies produced the sort of unintended consequences predicted by Jervis
 Introduction   7
in System Effects. But if system effects are pervasive and unmanageable, what
accounts for the relative absence of a general war among the European
great powers from 1763 to 1914? At times, it seems, statesmen can devise a
system of rules that allow them to collectively manage the unintended con-
sequences of their policies when these threaten equilibrium. If, however,
the contemporary international system is more complex and differs in fun-
damental ways from that of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, can
statesmen devise mechanisms for coping with the unintended con-
sequences of their actions in ways that maintain the current era of great-­
power peace?

The nuclear question

Explaining (and maintaining) superpower peace during the Cold War was
the subject of heated scholarly and policy debates, debates to which Jervis
made important contributions. Although deeply skeptical of the general
thrust of American nuclear strategy for much of the Cold War, Jervis con-
cluded that nuclear weapons ultimately exerted a strong stabilizing influ-
ence on the superpower rivalry and go a long way to explaining the absence
of Armageddon.19 In Chapter 6, Trachtenberg returns to the history of US–
Soviet competition to point out tensions in the logic of Jervis’s arguments
about the stability-­enhancing effects of nuclear weapons in general, and
their effects on crisis decision-­making in particular. Trachtenberg emerges
clearly troubled by an account of stability that rests on decision-­makers’
ability to master the manipulation of risk in diplomatic crises, a world where
“[p]eople’s minds become the battlefield” of international politics.20
The Cold War has been relegated to history, yet nuclear weapons
remain a menacing feature of the international system, as witnessed by
current debates over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and President Barack
Obama’s stated goal of a nuclear-­free world.21 But although scholars have
devoted significant analysis to the implications of the rapid growth of
China’s overall economic and military power for relations with the United
States, less attention has been devoted to the likely consequences of
China’s nuclear modernization program, the subject to which Thomas
Christensen turns in Chapter 7.
If nuclear weapons exerted a strong pacifying effect on relations
between the United States and the Soviet Union, it was because neither
side believed it could gain a strategic benefit from initiating a first strike.
With the advent of mutual second-­strike capability, mutual assured
destruction (MAD) was a fact and not a strategy, as Jervis persuasively
argued.22 Moreover, escalation from conventional to nuclear warfare
might result from the inability of decision-­makers to control the complex
dynamics of modern warfare. Hence, Jervis concluded, “mutual second
strike capability does not make the world safe for major provocations and
limited wars.”23
8   J.W. Davis
Given the relatively small size and vulnerability of the Chinese nuclear
arsenal, Christensen is not persuaded that Chinese elites believe that the
People’s Republic enjoys a secure second-­strike capability, a state of affairs
that could give rise to nuclear first-­strike incentives in a conventional con-
flict with the United States. Futher, given the nature of the US–Chinese
dispute over Taiwan, Beijing’s acquisition of secure second-­strike capabil-
ity combined with the particular make-­up and configuration of its emerg-
ing conventional weapons systems not only give rise to dynamics
reminiscent of the stability-­instability paradox Jervis downplayed, but may
blur the lines between conventional and nuclear systems in a way that
makes escalation more likely.24
Although clearly concerned about the possibility of nuclear war
between China and the United States, Christensen remains optimistic that
relations between the two can be managed through greater transparency
and strategic dialogue. He too seems to prefer a world in which peace is
not dependent on statesmen mastering the manipulation of risk in crises.
But to foreshadow a question Marc Trachtenberg asks in his analysis: to
what extent do we have any choice in the matter?

Judging foreign policy decisions

To the extent that foreign policy outcomes can be attributed to compel-
ling features in the state’s environment or constants of human nature, it
becomes difficult to praise leaders for foreign policy successes or blame
them for failure. To judge the effectiveness or even morality of individual
policy choices requires us to assume the relative autonomy of the decision-­
making level of analysis and a rather predictable and unmediated effect of
individual choices on outcomes.
In many ways, Jervis’s Perception and Misperception in International Politics
can be seen as an effort to understand when decision-­makers can claim
praise for success or be held accountable for failures of policy. And given
the many environmental and cognitive limitations facing decision-­makers,
Jervis is quite forgiving when it comes to attributing blame.
Nonetheless, Jervis has been active in developing a method for the post-­
hoc evaluation of foreign policy decision-­making and has led influential
studies of flawed intelligence assessments which contributed to important
policy failures. In Chapter 9, James Wirtz describes the method and dis-
cusses how it was applied by Jervis in two “postmortems” of intelligence
failures: the failure of the Central Intelligence Agency to predict the
in­ability or unwillingness of the Shah of Iran to respond effectively to the
challenge posed by the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s; and the flawed
National Intelligence Estimate on the Iraqi possession of weapons of mass
destruction in 2002. These postmortems are rare examples of the direct
use of international relations theory by government officials, and they
have produced a lasting impact on intelligence analysis and policymaking.
 Introduction   9
While the central focus of such postmortems is understanding the
organizational, procedural, and psychological reasons why decision-­makers
got things wrong, the analysis is not far removed from the question of
whether they could, or indeed should, have gotten things right.25 When
evaluating decision-­making processes in such terms, the line between
explanation, judgment, and indeed prescription – never as sharp as pro-
ponents of positive social science maintain – becomes quite blurry indeed.
Jervis has tended to avoid explicit ascriptions of praise or blame even
where one senses his frustration when decision-­makers behave in clearly
self-­defeating ways. Even when criticizing the incoherence of American
nuclear strategy, he was quick to note the difficulties of coming up with
good alternatives.26 Recently, however, he has become more overtly prone
to judging the general course of American foreign policy, even as he con-
tinues to grapple with the complexities of ascribing responsibility for out-
comes in a complex world.27
My own attempt to reconcile the demands of responsible statesmanship
with the complexities of international politics is found in Chapter 10 and
begins with a discussion of the difference between an “ethic of conviction”
and an “ethic of responsibility” as guideposts to foreign policy decision-­
makers. Though not completely satisfying, the framework, first proposed
by Max Weber, is better than the alternatives. The distinction informed
the foreign policy judgments of classical Realists, and its influence can be
seen in many of Jervis’s writings, including the concluding chapter of this
volume, where he turns to the role of force in the world.

The future of international relations theory

Robert Jervis was quick to recognize that the end of the Cold War posed im-
portant questions not only for the future of world politics, but also for inter-
national relations theory.28 On the one hand, the events that led to the
peaceful end of the superpower competition were unforeseen.29 To under-
stand how a system that was held to be extremely stable suddenly collapsed
requires an approach to theorizing that integrates variables at different levels
of analysis. On the other, the collapse of the Soviet Union freed the United
States from an overriding concern with security, presenting it with an
unprecedented range of strategic choice.30 If the leading states of the inter-
national system enjoy a significant room for choice, then explaining their
foreign policies requires theories that not only identify the defining material
features of the system, but also incorporate the values, preferences and
beliefs held by domestic societies and individual decision-­makers as well as
the structures that arise by virtue of the interactions among the actors.
Despite their aesthetic appeal, simple theories most likely are insufficient
for the task. Nonetheless, many fear that if we descend from the uppermost
heights of abstraction we will end up seeing less and less. Individual objects
and processes might come into sharper focus, but our range of vision will be
10   J.W. Davis
restricted, our ability to recognize patterns and interdependencies dimin-
ished. But as Jack Snyder argues in Chapter 1, richness and rigor are not
mutually exclusive. Jervis has demonstrated how we can have both.
Thomas Hobbes once maintained that intellectual virtues were those abil-
ities of the mind that people desired for themselves.31 Rigorously engaging
Robert Jervis’s rich contributions to international relations, the contributors
to this volume attest to his intellectual virtues and in doing so, point us in
the direction of renewed progress in international relations theory.

Notes
  1 See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1970; and Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World
Orders: Structural Realism and Beyond,” in R.O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and
Its Critics, New York, Columbia University Press, 1986, 204–254.
  2 See Robert Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in R.O.
Keohane, ed., Neorealism and its Critics, New York, Columbia University Press,
1986, 318; Iver B. Neumann, “Beware of Organicism: The Narrative Self of the
State,” Review of International Studies 30:2, 2004, 259–267; Colin Wight, “State
Agency: Social Action Without Human Activity,” Review of International Studies,
30:2, 2004, 269–280. For classic discussions of the levels-­of-analysis question in
international relations, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1954; and J. David Singer, “The Level-­of-
Analysis Problem in International Relations,” in J.N. Rosenau, ed., International
Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory, New York, Free Press,
1969, 20–29.
  3 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, Prin-
ceton University Press, 1976, 21.
  4 Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1970.
  5 See Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics
30:2, 1978, 167–214; Jervis, “Realism, Game Theory, and Cooperation,” World
Politics 40:3, 1988, 317–349, esp. 327; Jervis, “From Balance to Concert: A Study
of International Security Cooperation,” in K.A. Oye, ed., Cooperation Under
Anarchy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, 58–79; and Jervis,
“Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate,” in C.
Elman and M.F. Elman, eds., Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising
the Field, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2003, 277–309.
  6 See Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in M. Fried-
man, Essays in Positive Economics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 153,
3–43; Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York, McGraw-­Hill,
1979, 77, 127–128.
  7 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 71, 91, 118–119.
  8 Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life, Princeton, Prin-
ceton University Press, 1997, 105–107.
  9 The classic references are Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Cam-
bridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1960; and Schelling, Arms and Influence,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966.
10 The relevant literature is large and expanding. For an introduction to interna-
tional relations applications, see James D. Fearon, “Domestic Audiences and
the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88:3,
1994, 577–592; Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International
 Introduction   11
Organization 49:3, 1995, 379–414; and Michael Tomz, “Domestic Audience
Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach,” International
Organization 61:4, 2007, 821–840. The central claim that democratic leaders
enjoy more credibility because of audience costs has been challenged from two
directions. For the claim that non-­democratic leaders are similarly constrained
by audience costs and thus less likely to bluff than might otherwise be expected,
see Jessica L. Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling
Resolve,” International Organization 62:1, 2008, 35–64. For empirical evidence
that audience–cost mechanisms rarely play a significant role in generating cred-
ibility, see Jack Snyder and Erica D. Borghard, “The Cost of Empty Threats: A
Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review 195:3, 2011, 437–456.
Examining a number of historical cases, Marc Trachtenberg likewise found
little evidence that audience–cost mechanisms adequately explain the course of
international crises. See Trachtenberg, “Audience Costs: An Historical
Analysis,” Security Studies 21:2, 2012, 1–40.
11 The claim is not universally accepted. For a sampling of “cheap talk” models,
see Vincent P. Crawford and Joel Sobel, “Strategic Information Transmission,”
Econometrica 50:6, 1982, 1431–1451; Thomas W. Gilligan and Keith Krehbiel,
“Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational
Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures,” Journal of Law, Economics and
Organization 3:2, 1987, 287–335; Helen V. Milner and B. Peter Rosendorff,
“Trade Negotiations, Information and Domestic Politics: The Role of Domestic
Groups,” Economics and Politics 8:2, 1996, 145–189.
12 See the discussion of coordination games in Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules,
Norms and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in Interna-
tional Relations and Domestic Affairs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1989, 69–94.
13 Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1984, 38.
14 Jervis has referred to his work on signaling as “premature rational choice com-
bined with premature social constructivism.” See Thierry Balzacq and Robert
Jervis, “Logics of Mind and International System: A Journey with Robert Jervis,”
Review of International Studies 30:4, 2004, 560. I thank Marc Trachtenberg for
alerting me to this article.
15 The classic works include: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect
Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47:2, 1979, 263–291;
Tversky and Kahneman, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of
Choice,” Science 211:4481, 1981, 452–458; Tversky and Kahneman, “Rational
Choice and the Framing of Decisions,” Journal of Business 59:4, 1986, 251–275.
16 See Robert Jervis, “The Political Implications of Loss Aversion,” Political Psy-
chology 13:2, 1992, 187–204. Studies by students of Jervis that apply prospect
theory to international relations include: Barbara R. Farnham, Roosevelt and the
Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-­Making, Princeton, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1997; Rose McDermott, Risk Taking in International Relations: Prospect
Theory in American Foreign Policy, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1998;
and James W. Davis Jr., Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Influence,
Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
17 For a discussion of how findings from neural science may change the way we
think about social scientific concepts and categories, see James W. Davis, Terms
of Inquiry: On the Theory and Practice of Political Science, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2005, especially Chapters 2 and 3.
18 For Jervis’s own understanding of the links between international history and
international relations, see Robert Jervis, “International History and Interna-
tional Politics: Why Are They Studied Differently?” in C. Elman and M.F.
12   J.W. Davis
Elman, eds., Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of
International Relations, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2001, 385–402; and Robert
Jervis, “International Politics and Diplomatic History: Fruitful Differences,”
published by H-­Diplo/ISSF on March 12, 2010, online, www.h-­net.org/~diplo/
ISSF/essays/1-Jervis.html.
19 For a systematic critique of US nuclear policy, in particular what came to be
known as the “countervailing strategy,” see Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear
Strategy. For the argument that nuclear weapons fundamentally alter the nature
of competition among states that possess them and helped keep the peace after
1945, see Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the
Prospect of Armageddon, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989. But see too John
Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the
Postwar World,” International Security 13:2, 1988, 55–79.
20 Marc Trachtenberg, “Robert Jervis and the Nuclear Question,” in this volume.
21 For a sampling of the arguments, see Kenneth Katzman, Iran: US Concerns and
Policy Responses, CRS Report for Congress, Washington, DC, Congressional
Research Service, Library of Congress, October 26, 2010; James Dobbins,
“Coping with a Nuclearising Iran,” Survival 53:6, 2011/2012, 37–50; Josef Joffe
and James W. Davis, “Less Than Zero: Bursting the New Disarmament Bubble,”
Foreign Affairs 90:1, 2011, 7–13; Bruce Blair, Matt Brown, and Richard Burt, “In
Support of Zero,” Foreign Affairs 90:4, 2011, 173–76 and the response by Joffe
and Davis, 176–178; Tanya Ogilvie-­White and David Santoro, eds., Slaying the
Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-­First Century, Athens, GA,
University of Georgia Press, 2012; and Fred Charles Iklé, Annihilation from
Within, New York, Columbia University Press, 2006.
22 Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, 74–106.
23 Ibid., 21.
24 For discussions of the stability-­instability paradox see Glenn Snyder, “The
Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in P. Seabury, ed., The Balance of
Power, San Francisco, Chandler, 1965, 184–201; Jervis, The Illogic of American
Nuclear Strategy, 29–34; Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, 19–22.
25 See Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the
Iraq War, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2010. For an independent applica-
tion of Jervis’s ideas to the conflict between the US and Iraq, see Charles A.
Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, “Chronic Misperception and Interna-
tional Conflict: The U.S.–Iraq Experience,” International Security 36:1, 2011,
73–100.
26 Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, 147.
27 For a critique of the Bush Doctrine, see Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in
a New Era, New York, Routledge, 2005, especially Chapters 4 and 5. For an
analysis of the difficulties of attributing causation – and hence responsibility –
to individual behavior, see Robert Jervis, “Causation and Responsibility in a
Complex World,” in M. Finnemore and J. Goldstein, eds., Back to Basics: State
Power in a Contemporary World, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.
28 Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?” Interna-
tional Security 16:3, 1991/1992, 39–73.
29 For the classic statement on the durability of the Cold War bipolar system, see
Waltz, Theory of International Politics, especially Chapters 8 and 9.
30 Jervis, “The Future of World Politics,” 69.
31 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civil, London, Collier Macmillan, [1651] 1962, 59.