Military Coercion in Interstate Crises and the Price of Peace

Abstract. Military mobilization has a dual role in crisis bargaining: it simultaneously sinks costs (because it must be paid for regardless of the outcome), and ties hands (because it increases the probability of winning should war occur). Existing studies neglect this dualism and cannot explain signaling behavior and tacit bargaining well. I present a model that incorporates this dualism and show that many existing conclusions have to be qualified. General results that relate the probability of war to an informed player’s expected payoff from war do not extend to this environment. Because military means function in a way akin to audience costs but do not depend on regime type, foreign policy theories relying on signaling ability that depends on domestic political institutions face a serious challenge in explaining state crisis behavior. The model also provides a new two-step rationalist explanation for war illustrated by the Chinese entry in the Korean War