¹ Thucydides, , The Peloponnesian War (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954)Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar; Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

² Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar; Steinbruner, John D., The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Janis, Irving L. and Mann, Leon, Decision Making (New York: Free Press, 1977)Google ScholarPubMed; Holsti, Ole R., Crisis, Escalation, War (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hermann, Charles F., ed., International Crises (New York: Free Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Brecher, Michael, Decisions in Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Lebow, Richard Ned, Between Peace and War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Kagan, Donald, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Farrar, L. L. Jr, The Short-War Illusion (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1973).Google Scholar

³ For an interesting analysis of the conditions necessary for deterrence and stability from the perspectives of several different theoretical frameworks, see Morgan, Patrick, Deterrence (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

⁴ See Steinbruner, Janis and Mann, Brecher, Hermann, and Allison, cited above (fn. 2). See also Janis, Irving L., Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972)Google Scholar; George, Alexander, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980)Google Scholar; Holsti, Ole R. and George, Alexander, “The Effects of Stress on the Performance of Foreign Policy Makers,” in Cotter, C. P., ed., Political Science Annual, Vol. 6 (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 255–71.Google Scholar

⁵ Jervis (fn. 2).

⁶ Wohlstetter, Roberta, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Whaley, Barton, Codeword Barbarossa (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Knorr, Klaus, “Threat Perception,” in Knorr, , ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976)Google Scholar; Shlaim, Avi, “Failures in National Intelligence Estimates: The Case of the Yom Kippur War,” World Politics 28 (April 1976), 348–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Handel, Michael A., “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise,” International Studies Quarterly 21 (September 1977), 461–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Betts, Richard K., “Analysis, War, and Decision; Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable,” World Politics 31 (October 1978), 61–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Betts, , Surprise Attack (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1982).Google Scholar

⁷ White, Rober. H., Nobody Wanted War (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1968)Google Scholar; Stoessinger, John G., Why Nations Go to War, 2d. ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974).Google Scholar

⁸ Lebow (fn. 2); Stein, Arthur A., “When Misperception Matters,” World Politics 34 (July 1982), 505–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It should be noted that Stein is misleading in claiming to analyze misperception of intentions rather than capabilities. The payoff matrix deals only with outcomes and not with the determinants of those outcomes, so that it does not distinguish between intentions and capabilities. Payoffs and preference orderings are determined by both. Preferences for war, for example, cannot be evaluated apart from the capabilities that determine the probability of victory and the expected costs. In the present study, the distinction between capabilities and intentions is made explicit, so that their different theoretical linkages to war may be identified and analyzed.

⁹ White (fn. 7), chap. 1; Stoessinger (fn. 7), chaps. 1 and 7.

¹⁰ Holsti, Ole R., “The Belief System and National Images: A Case Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 6 (No. 3, 1962), 244–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Jervis (fn. 2), 7–8.

¹² Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

¹³ White (fn. 1), 10–14. Note that White's “virile self-image” goes beyond perceptions of actual strength and includes the preoccupation with prestige, resolve, and toughness. The belief that one should be strong is analytically distinct from perceptions of strength itself.

¹⁴ See, for example, Kent, Sherman, Strategic Intelligence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Jervis (fn. 2), chap. 8.

¹⁶ Smoke, Richard, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 268–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., 270. The exclusion of erroneous expectations about future reality from the category of misperceptions does not preclude the consideration of these expectations as an important variable in itself.

¹⁸ Blarney, Geoffrey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 4; Bueno de Mesquita (fn. 1), chap. 3; Iklé, Fred C., Every War Must End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 23–27.Google Scholar

¹⁹ White (fn. 7), chap. 1; Stocssinger (fn. 7), chap. 1; Lebow (fn. 2), 242–47. Since military capabilities are relative rather than absolute, with states evaluating their adversary's capabilities only with reference to their own and vice versa, it would be redundant to construct a separate category for perceptions of one's own capabilities.

²⁰ See Knorr, Klaus, Military Power and Potential (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1970).Google Scholar

²¹ Clausewitz, Carl von, On War, ed. by Rapoport, Anatol (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968)Google Scholar; Tsu, Sun, The Art of War, trans, by Griffith, S. B. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

²² For a good analysis of the administrative and political dimensions of military power, see Knorr (fn. 20), chaps. 4–5.

²³ Iklé (fn. 18), 20–21; Shirer, Willia. L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1959), 1170.Google Scholar

²⁴ White (fn. 7), 29–30, 312–13.

²⁵ Guderian, Heinz, Panzer Leader, abridged ed., trans, by Constantine Fitzgibbon (New York: Ballantine, 1957), 368.Google Scholar

²⁶ Blarney (fn. 18), chap. 3; Lebow (fn. 2), 242–47.

²⁷ See ibid.; Stoessinger (fn. 7), chaps. 1–3; White (fn. 7), chap, 1; Blainey (fn. 18), chap. 3; Tuchman, Barbara, The Guns of August (New York: Dell, 1962)Google Scholar, throughout.

²⁸ Quoted in Blainey (fn. 18), 46.

²⁹ Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 238.Google Scholar

³⁰ Tuchman (fn. 27), 142.

³¹ Farrar (fn. 2), 3–7; Fischer, Fritz, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

³² Thucydides (fn. 1), 120–22; Kagan (fn. 2), 340, 346, 355–56; Croix, G.E.M. de Ste., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972), 151, 207–8, 341.Google Scholar

³³ Kagan (fn. 2), 340.

³⁴ For a similar argument based on an alternative conceptualization, see Stein (fn. 8), 506–10.

³⁵ Farrar (fn. 2), 148; Kagan (fn. 2), 355.

³⁶ On the concept of a scapegoat war, see Blainey (fn. 18), chap. 5. On the security dilemma, see Jervis (fn. 2), 62–76.

³⁷ This formulation differs somewhat from Blainey's (fn. 18, 113–24). He argues that war can be conceptualized as an instrument for the measurement of power differences and that “wars usually begin when fighting nations disagree on their relative strength” (p. 122). Missing from this formulation is any consideration of the value of the interests at stake: if they are small, the costs of war may be too high to justify the gains. Also missing is any explicit consideration of alternative policy instruments, such as economic coercion, that might secure the objective with lower costs.

³⁸ For an elaboration of the distinction between miscalculation and loss of control, see Snyder, Glenn H., “Crisis Bargaining,” in Hermann (fn. 2), chap. 10Google Scholar; also Williams, Phil, Crisis Management (New York: Wiley, 1976), 94–96.Google Scholar Snyder refers to the risks of deliberate escalation as “bargaining risks,” and the risks of escalation due to loss of control as “autonomous risks” inherent in the nature of violence and the institutional and psychological context. The phenomenon of loss of control cannot be fully analyzed here, but its importance is widely recognized. It is the central concern of the crisis management literature and of recent studies of crisis behavior. See Williams (fn. 38); Lebow (fn. 2), chap. 8; Bell, Coral, The Conventions of Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; George, Alexander L., Hall, David K., and Simons, William R., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar, chap. 1; Holsti (fn. 2); Brecher (fn. 2); Young, Oran R., The Politics of Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

³⁹ Jervis (fn. 2), chap. 3; Lebow (fn. 2), chaps. 3–4; Smoke (fn. 16), chaps. 9–10; Holsti (fn. 2); Snyder, Glenn H. and Diesing, Paul, Conflict Among Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, chap. III.

⁴⁰ Most scholars, however, have concluded that Hitler was bent on a course that made a general war inevitable in spite of his miscalculations. See, for example, Bullock, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Bantam Books, 1961).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Fay, Sidney B., The Origins of the World War, 2 vols. (New York: Free Press, 1928)Google Scholar: Vol. I, pp. 42–43, 390, 467; Vol. II, p. 9; Farrar (fn. 2), 3–6.

⁴² Jervis (fn. 2), 71.

⁴³ Smoke (fn. 16), chaps. 8 and 7; Fay (fn. 41); Kagan (fn. 2); Small, Melvin, Was War Necessary? (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

⁴⁴ Snyder (fn. 38), 227.

⁴⁵ Dorn, Waker L., Competition for Empire, 1740–1763 (New York: Harper & Row, 1940), 306.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Smoke (fn. 16), chaps. 5–8.

⁴⁷ Lebow (fn. 2), 121.

⁴⁸ Tuchman (fn. 27), 143.

⁴⁹ Kagan (fn. 2), 351; de Ste. Croix (fn. 32), 70–71.

⁵⁰ Wolfe, Joh. B., Louis XIV (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 442–46.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Kagan (fn. 2), 352–53.

⁵² Mann, Golo, Wallenstein, trans. by Kessler, C. (London: André Deutsch, 1976), 532–33.Google Scholar

⁵³ Shirer (fn. 23), 1170.

⁵⁴ Hill, David Jayne, A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, 3 vols. (London: Longman's Green, 1914), Vol. III, p. 458.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Kagan, Donald, The Archidamian War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), 22–23.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Quoted in Dorn (fn. 45), 375.

⁵⁷ According to one study of interstate wars since 1816, the category of defeated initiator comprises 30–35 percent of all cases. J. David Singer and Small, Melvin, The Wages of War 1816–1965 (New York: Wiley, 1972), 367.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Clausewitz, (fn. 21), 140, 184, 162.

⁵⁹ A potential problem in both these cases is the danger of a self-fulfilling or self-denying prophecy. A's perceptions of B's lack of hostility may be correct, but may either lead A to fail to augment his capabilities, thus providing B with an unexpected opportunity for war that he cannot resist, or may cause A to take coercive actions that generate an unexpected conflict spiral leading to war. Alternatively, A's incorrect perceptions of B's peaceful intentions may lead to a passivity that moderates B's initial hostility. Underestimation of the adversary's hostility may induce conciliatory gestures that pacify an initially hostile adversary through a downward action-reaction spiral. What is more common, overestimation of the adversary's hostility may result in an arms buildup that provokes a nonaggressive adversary into a conflict spiral. All these, of course, are simply the “consequences” of the misperceptions discussed earlier. The problem is that the same phenomena might be viewed either as the consequences of misperceptions or as indicators confirming the existence of those misperceptions (as opposed to correct perceptions). Unless the analyst can make this distinction by carefully drawing temporal boundaries around a “misperception” and determining its accuracy, causal inferences cannot be made.

⁶⁰ Jervis, Robert, “Hypotheses on Misperception,” World Politics 20 (April, 1968), 454–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶¹ Arrow, Kenneth, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1951).Google Scholar

⁶² For a discussion of practical solutions to Arrow's paradox and an argument for the assumption of a dominant decision maker, see Bueno de Mesquita (fn. 1), 11–18.

⁶³ An exception is the case of preemptive strikes generated by overestimations of the adversary's hostility. If these perceptions actually are erroneous, it might be concluded that misperceptions are a cause of the war. However, the misperceptions and the preemptive strike may both be the products of underlying forces which produce the crisis—in which case an inference of a causal relationship between misperception and war would be spurious.

⁶⁴ An exception would be hypotheses suggesting that under certain conditions military overconfidence, and perhaps overestimation of the adversary's hostility, may be necessary conditions of war.

⁶⁵ This tentative conclusion that misperception is often an important cause of war is not necessarily inconsistent with Stein's argument (fn. 8) that “misperception creates conflict only in a narrowly circumscribed range of situations.” Even if it were true that there are few empirical situations in which misperception contributes to conflict, Stein could not draw this inference from his study. He deals only with the theoretically denned conditions under which misperception matters, but not with the empirical question of how often these situations occur. It is entirely possible that misperception leads to war only under a narrow range of theoretical conditions, but that such conditions occur quite frequently.