This article tests the predictions of expected-utility and prospect theories against the most important dimensions of the Cuban missile crisis. Largely through use of the most recently released information on the crisis from the American and Soviet governments, I attempt to ascertain the anticipated benefits, costs, and probabilities of success associated with each of the major policy choices that the key leaders in both superpowers perceived before each of the major decisions throughout the crisis was made. Using this information and the logic of extensive-form game-theoretic models of choice, I construct a baseline for expectedutility theory that helps us to understand when prospect or expectedutility theory provides the better explanation for a particular decision. Prospect theory predicts that when individuals perceive themselves to be experiencing losses at the time they make a decision, and when their probability estimates associated with their principal policy options are in the moderate to high range, they will tend to make excessively risky, non-value maximizing choices. I find that the evidence for the Cuban missile crisis supports this prediction for the most important decisions made by both Khrushchev and Kennedy.
In the coming decades, the most powerful states in the international system will face a challenge unlike any experienced in the history of great power politics: significant aging of their populations. Global aging will be a potent force for the continuation of U.S. economic and military dominance. Aging populations are likely to produce a slowdown in states' economic growth at the same time that governments will face substantial pressure to pay for massive new expenditures for elderly care. This economic dilemma will create such an austere fiscal environment that the other great powers will lack the resources necessary to overtake the United States' huge power lead. Moreover, although the U.S. population is growing older, it is doing so to a lesser extent and less quickly than all of the other major actors in the system. Consequently, the economic and fiscal costs created by social aging—as well as their derivative effects on military spending—will be significantly lower for the United States than for potential competitors. Nevertheless, the United States will experience substantial new costs created by its own aging population. As a result, it will most likely be unable to maintain the scope of its current international position and will be less able to realize key international objectives, including preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, funding nation building, and engaging in military humanitarian interventions.
This article examines the factors that led to the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the most important U+S+ decision makers in both the Reagan and Bush presidencies+ The centerpiece of the analysis is a longitudinal study that compares the timing of U+S+ decision makers' assessments of the nature of the Soviet threat with changes in Soviet power, foreign policies, and domestic ideology and institutions+ This research design allows one to determine if America's key leaders were basing their foreign policies primarily in response to reductions in Soviet power as realists assert!, to more cooperative international policies~as systemic-constructivist and costly signals arguments claim!, or to changes in Soviet domestic politics~as democratic peace theories argue!+ I find that American leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending corresponded most closely with Soviet domestic-ideological and institutional changes+ As soon as America's most important leaders believed both that Gorbachev was dedicated to core tenets of liberal ideology, and that these values would likely be protected by liberal institutions, they believed the Cold War was ending+ These findings help to both illustrate the key determinants of leaders' perceptions of international threats and explain why outstanding Cold War disputes were resolved so smoothly, with the Americans primarily attempting to reassure the Soviets rather than coercing them with America's power superiority+ I wish to thank the following people for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article and related projects that led to it:
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