This article offers an empirical description and discussion of interstate conflict behavior. The basis is a recently completed data set consisting of all recorded instances of threats, displays, an...

Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1976: Procedures, Patterns, and Insights

A command and control system is a technological, procedural, and organizational extension of the sensing, processing, and communicating capabilities of the military commanders whose decisions it supports. However, the increase in battlefield information rate brought about by modern weapons, sensors, and tactics requires selective but extensive application of automation to assist commanders and their staffs in reaching timely and appropriate decisions. The background and context of the problem and the development of a taxonomy of force management decisions in U.S. Air Force tactical command and control is presented. The processing requirements for those decisions are identified along with the types of processing errors and other critical problems in man-computer interaction. Finally, Air Force developments in decision aids for tactical command and control are reviewed, and implications and issues for command and control systems research, development, and design are drawn.

Force Management Decision Requirements for Air Force Tactical Command and Control

A redefinition of crisis is offered which departs from the conventional view, notably in the emphasis on finite time instead of short time and in the addition of perceived “high probability of war.” A concept of intrawar crisis is introduced. Preliminary results of mapping crises from 1939 to 1975 are indicated, along with the selection procedures for 30 cases to be analyzed in depth (“vertical” research). Three boundary-free typologies are explicated: dimensions of crisis, attributes of crisis actor, and characteristics of crisis decisional unit. Building upon an earlier research framework, a model of crisis behavior and choice is specified, along with the methods to be utilized to produce comparable findings about 22 research questions focusing on threat, time, and probability of war. “Horizontal” research across the 450 cases will seek to discover meaningful patterns in the crisis behavior of states.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2600147

Toward a Theory of International Crisis BehaviorA Preliminary Report

Qualitative analysis of China's behavior in five situations of international conflict suggests several important similarities in the structure and sequence of Peking's actions. These similarities imply the existence of a relatively stable and coherent strategy of conflict management, and provide a basis for inferring the nature of this strategy. As a result of China's strategic vulnerability, this strategy places a major emphasis on engaging in confrontations with stronger adversaries only under carefully controlled conditions, and on manipulating the “incidental” aspects of these confrontations (e.g., time, place, target, and scale of confrontation) to Peking's advantage. Peking's relative success in applying this strategy is assessed in terms of the “coercive diplomacy” model discussed by Alexander George et al. This assessment identifies areas of strength and weakness in the Chinese approach to conflict management.

Chinese Conflict Calculus and Behavior: Assessment from a Perspective of Conflict Management

This article presents a theoretical argument that the study of time provides crucial explanatory perspectives to the analysis of governmental crisis responses. The article claims that time is an external condition and an internalized feature of organizational behaviour. It follows that time influences governmental crisis responses but can also be exploited by actors during such critical episodes. The article discusses the properties of time and its consequences during crises along these two notions, reviewing existing scholarly work on time and crises. It concludes with a plea for a more explicit and systematic time-centred study of governmental crisis responses.

Time and Crisis

: Chapter 1 of this report reviews the contract tasking and the project accomplishments. Chapter 2 describes procedures used to select 289 crises since 1946 for greater analysis. Characteristics of the 289 are presented and a sample of 41 is selected for more intensive analysis in Chapter 3, where over 70 different kinds of crisis management problems are examined for the 41 crises. Chapter 4 examines the relationships among the different types of problems based on the results of canonical correctional analysis. Chapter 5 examines the relationships between the environment in which the crisis occurred, the characteristics of the crisis, and the crisis management problems that were observed. Heavy use of regression analysis is made in detailing these relationships. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses the potential uses of the findings for crisis management planning.

Planning for Problems in Crisis Management

: This report describes the development and structure of CACI's crisis management executive aid developed for the Cybernetics Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; presents the structure of the executive aid and reviews the characteristics and uses the three data files that are available for analysis, which deal with crisis characteristics, actions and objectives, and crisis management problems; describes the data used in the aid; reviews the findings and analyses that have been performed to date on the data file; and describes procedures used to evaluate the executive aid and to transfer it to locations accessible to the U.S. Government and other users. The operation of the executive aid itself is described in detail in several separate volumes, a User's Guide, a Program Documentation Manual, a Sample Output, and a Codebook.

Executive Aid for Crisis Management

: This Interim Technical Report documents research to date on developing a prototype executive aid for crisis management. The report contains four chapters, eight appendices, and a bibliography. Chapter 1 describes the effort in the context of ARPA's Crisis Management Program. Chapter 2 reviews the structure of the prototype executive aid while, Chapter 3 considers the role of data in the aid and the types of data required. Chapter 4 gives a completion schedule for the remaining research tasks. The eight appendices highlight various facets of the research, including potential crises found for 1976, the sample for which data have been collected, the type of data gathered, and the best option solution algorithm.

Leo Hazlewood

Papers

Planning for Problems in Crisis Management

Executive Aid for Crisis Management

Executive Aids for Crisis Management