Ascertain whether immediate deterrence dynamics are modal in international crises

Ascertain whether immediate deterrence—defined as actors de-escalating in response to an adversary’s escalation during an international crisis—is modal across the population of crises.

Background

In evaluating their empirical results, the authors find little support for classical immediate deterrence claims in which escalation by one party induces de-escalation by the opponent. Instead, they observe more mirroring behavior, where escalation is met with escalation and de-escalation with de-escalation.

They explicitly note uncertainty about the generality (modality) of immediate deterrence dynamics, raising a core unresolved question about whether such dynamics are typical across crises or represent exceptional cases.

References

We find little evidence in our analysis to support claims that immediate deterrence works as predicted in theory; actors are not de-escalating because an adversary escalated. At least, it is far from clear that this dynamic is in any way modal.

— What is Escalation? Measuring Crisis Dynamics in International Relations with Human and LLM Generated Event Data  (2402.03340 - Douglass et al., 2024) in Section 6, Discussion