Force without war, 1975–82

Presidential Decision Making and the Political Use of Military Force

“…The author collected similar data for the years 1977 through 1988 using their methodology for identifying opportunities. Data on the use of force were gathered from Blechman and Kaplan's "Political Use of the United States Armed Forces 1946-1976" data set, an updating of this information by Zelikow (1986), a study done by the Center for Naval Analyses entitled: "The Use of Naval Forces in the Post-War Era: U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps Crisis Response Activity, 1946-1990" and from the archival sources mentioned above.3 These same data sources also establish what international events led to or preceded uses of force.…”

“…7Information on prior uses of force was taken from Blechman and Kaplan (1978) and Zelikow (1986). In almost every case, a prior use of force was considered to be one occurring in the same country or in the waters around that nation as the current opportunity.…”

“…The avoidance of superpower war has been one of the few fundamental and consistently adhered to goals of all American presidents during the Cold War (Walt, 1989;Johnson, 1985-1986, George, Farley, and Dallin, 1988. Presidents have feared that if a military confrontation between the superpowers began, events might rapidly spiral out of their control and lead to nuclear war.…”

“…Such analyses have generally been ignored in the use of force literature. Because the type of force employed is of as much concern to the president as the decision to use force (Allison, 1971), and since it may have great bearing on the outcome of international crises (Blechman and Kaplan, 1978;Zelikow, 1986), it is crucial to model the actual military response presidents choose and not just the decision to act.…”

“…Data on the use of force and opportunities to use force were compiled from the Blechman and Kaplan (1978), Zelikow (1986), and Job and Ostrom (1986) data sets as well as the author's own research. To test statistically the validity of the decision-making model, a maximum likelihood technique, tobit, is used to predict when presidents use force and what level of force they employ.…”