| In Military Persuasion, Stephen J. Cimbala reconciles two central
approaches to war and peace studies. In the study of crisis management
and war termination, the security literature overwhelmingly emphasizes
the making of credible deterrent threats and coercive bargaining,
while peace studies and conflict resolution literature focuses on
conciliation and the offering of acceptable terms prior to or during
a conflict. Cimbala contends that both threats and accommodation have
their place in successfully preventing and ending conflicts.
Military
Persuasion is particularly welcome in the 1990s, as policymakers
and scholars debate whether nuclear deterrence deserves credit as
a positive factor in the avoidance of military confrontation between
the superpowers during the Cold War years. Cimbala examines several
cases of great-power decision making before, during, and after the
Cold War to demonstrate that deterrent threats alone have not successfully
avoided war during this century. In some important instances, such
as the months leading up to World War I, threats have actually fed
into a chain of miscalculation that ultimately led to war. Cimbala
also considers the Berlin crisis of 1948, the Cuban Missile Crisis
of 1962, and the Gulf War of 1991, the first major post–Cold
War conflict. Military Persuasion makes a significant contribution
to war and peace studies, firmly grounded in a realistic appraisal
of the human dimension to crisis management. |
|
|
