Military Intervention: A Cold War Assessment of the "Essence" of Decision

Abstract

The decision to militarily intervene in an international crisis is one fraught with complexity and uncertainty, and may ultimately lead a state to war. This research provides an analytical approach based on the work of Graham Allison in Essence of Decision to help understand why states (specifically superpowers) choose to militarily intervene in certain international crises and not others. The modified Allisonian construct presented in this study synthesizes national, organizational and individual level factors into one integrated framework. That framework is then used to comparatively analyze two important Cold War era superpower interventions the U.S.-led intervention at the Bay of Pigs and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 04, 2003
Accession Number
ADA416904

Entities

People

  • Bart R. Kessler

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Civil War
  • Cognition
  • Cold War
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Law
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Military Organizations
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Political Science
  • Political Systems
  • Second World War
  • Sociopolitics
  • Treaties

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.