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Acting Alone
A Scientific Study of American Hegemony and Unilateral Use-of-Force Decision Making
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Publisher:
2010
Summary
Acting Alone: A Scientific Study of American Hegemony and Unilateral Use-of-Force Decision Making is a straight-forward analysis of unilateral U.S. military actions, which are dependent upon the power disparity between the U.S. and the rest of the world. In solving the puzzle as to why individual presidents have made the "wrong" decision to act alone, the author lays out a president's behavior, during a crisis, as a two-step decision process.
Acting Alone reviews the well-studied first decision, deciding to use force, based on international conflict literature and organized along traditional lines. The author then details the second decision, deciding to use unilateral force, with an explanation of the criticisms of multilateralism and the reasons for unilateralism. To test a new theory of unilateral use of force decision making, Acting Alone devises a definition and coding rules for unilateral use of force, develops a sequential model of presidential use of force decision making, and constructs a new, alternative measure of military power, a Composite Indicator of Military Revolutions (CIMR). It then uses three methods - a statistical test with a heckman probit model, an experiment, and case studies - to test U.S. crisis behavior since 1937. By applying these three methods, the author finds that presidents are realists and make expected utility calculations to act unilaterally or multilaterally after their decision to use force. The unilateral decision, in particular, positively correlates with a wide military gap with an opponent, an opponent located in the Western hemisphere, and a national security threat.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2010
ISBN-Print
978-0-7391-4251-6
ISBN-Online
978-0-7391-4253-0
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
256
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
List of Figures No access
List of Tables No access
Acknowledgments No access
Chapter 01. Introduction No access Pages 1 - 18
Chapter 02. Unilateral Use-of-Force Decision Making No access Pages 19 - 68
Chapter 03. Statistical Tests: U.S. Unilateral Uses of Force since 1937 No access Pages 69 - 126
Chapter 04. Does the Type of Crisis Matter? An Experimental Test No access Pages 127 - 140
Chapter 05. Opening Up the “Black Box” of a President’s Unilateral Decision: Case Studies of the 1991 Gulf War, 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, and 1989 Panama Invasion No access Pages 141 - 184
Chapter 06. Conclusion No access Pages 185 - 194
Appendix A: Coding of Crisis Dyads No access Pages 195 - 218
Appendix B: Experiment Instructions and Crisis Scenarios No access Pages 219 - 226
