Fifteen Eighty Four

My new book, _Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars_ opposes conventional wisdom in in international relations scholarship.  Contra widespread thinking, it proposes that states do not “tie their hands” when they wish to make threats more effective. They prefer to retain the flexibility to avoid undesired wars, rather than make it impossible or highly costly to back down from implementing threats that would drag the state into a costly or even catastrophic war.

This helps explain many patterns in international relations.  It explains why crises almost never escalate into inadvertent wars, why states do not sign binding alliance treaties, why states do not deploy troops abroad to serve as tripwires, why “mad leader” tactics do not work, and why states will not hand over decisions to start wars to computers, even those empowered by artificial intelligence.

The book demonstrates this argument with careful historical work.  It shows that the risks of nuclear World War III were much lower than commonly thought, even during apparently dangerous events like the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises.  It shows that the US and Soviet Union universally signed alliance treaties that including flexibility language allowing signatories to stay out of wars involving allies without breaking the treaties.  It also shows that the small troop deployments to Europe, including Berlin, were not intended to serve a trip-wire function long attributed to them.  It also casts the Vietnam War in new light, describing how alliance dynamics pulling the US into war in 1964 and 1965 were an outlier rather than representative of alliance dynamics during the entire Cold War.

One contemporary take-away from the book is that into the 2020s the risks of crises escalating uncontrollably to world war or nuclear war is much lower than some pundits would have us believe.  Remember the panic a few months ago about India and Pakistan being on the brink of nuclear war over some border clashes?  That crisis fizzled far short of war.  Russia has fought a terrible war for two and half years against Ukraine, and NATO hasn’t come close to becoming involved.  The alleged tinderboxes of the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula haven’t experienced war for decades.

Then there is the recent Iran/Israel/US conflict.  The belligerents all carefully controlled escalation.  Iran attacked a US base that it knew was guarded by missile defenses, and did not launch more dangerous attacks on American warships in the Persian Gulf.  Iran stopped attacking Israel before Israel ran out of missile defenses.   The US limited its attacks on Iran.

Why did none of these conflicts escalate further?  Because the belligerents did not want them to escalate, and the means to prevent their escalation.  When all sides want to secure peace, they can.

Want to learn more?  Here is a recent podcast in which I discuss the book.