General Findings: Foreign Policy Crises

Abstract

This chapter presents select findings from the past near-century of foreign policy crises (late 1918–2017), based upon in-depth case studies of 29 foreign policy crises, cited in this chapter. It explores the Context Dimensions of these crises; and provides an array of Findings:On Attributes of Foreign Policy Crises, that is, external crises for individual states, specifically, their Trigger, Triggering Entity, Duration, Decisions by each crisis actor, their Decision-Makers, their Attitudinal Prism, and their perceived Value Threats; On Coping, that is, Crisis Management by Crisis Actors, specifically, on their Information Processing, Consultation, their Decisional Forum, and their Search for, and Consideration of, Alternatives; On Crises in Global System Structures: Multipolarity (end of WW I, November 1918–September 1945), Bipolarity (September 1945–November 1962), Bipolycentrism (December 1962–1990), and Unipolycentrism (1991-). This chapter challenges longstanding views in the literature on Conflict, in Coping with Foreign Policy Crises: New Evidence Confronts Conventional Wisdom. It presents Hypotheses on Effects of Time and Impact of Stress: Cognitive Dimension; Decisional Dimension. It also reports a widely-shared Response to Stress by Decision-Makers of Foreign Policy Crisis Actors, which it explains by the phenomenon of Commonality in Foreign Policy Decision-Makers’ Coping with High Stress. This explanation of the Stress-Behavior Relationship is based upon the Evidence from 29 Foreign Policy Crises presented in this chapter.This chapter concludes with a novel Test of Neo-Realism, also based upon the Evidence from 29 foreign policy crises.