Abstract: Recent tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the South China Sea have raised concerns that provocative actions, such as the use of insulting rhetoric or military force, might trigger unwanted escalation and embroil the United States in a costly war. The international relations literature, however, is ill equipped to explain these escalatory dangers of provocation. There is no theory of crisis escalation that explains the escalatory mechanisms of provocation and there is no clear conception of what it means to provoke. This paper develops a novel theory of provocation that explains how provocative rhetoric and military actions can distinctively lead to unwanted crisis escalation and conflict. This escalatory logic of provocation can potentially explain a host of important crisis-related behavior other than explosive outcomes, such as how a relatively minor issue becomes salient and intractable to resolve, and how a state that was once willing to concede a stake in dispute stands firm to risk war. To further clarify the distinctive dangers of this logic of provocation, the paper contrasts three alternative logics of unwanted escalation that are referred to as an “accidental escalation logic,” a “security dilemma logic,” and a “crisis bargaining logic.” The overlooked importance of the logic of provocation is then demonstrated in a case study of the Sino-India War of 1962 which uses original language sources. The conclusion draws implications for coercive diplomacy.

Speaker Bio: Hyun-Binn Cho is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. His research interests are in crisis escalation, coercive diplomacy, and security in the Asia-Pacific, with a focus on China and the Korean peninsula. Binn received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Previously, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, and a visiting doctoral student at the School of International Studies at Peking University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, fluent in Korean, and holds an M.A. in Political Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University, and a B.Sc. in Government and Economics from the London School of Economics. 

Drell Lecture Recording: https://youtu.be/NKN6xLhTjIo

Drell Lecture Transcript: 

Speaker's Biography: Alex Stamos is a cybersecurity expert, business leader and entrepreneur working to improve the security and safety of the Internet through his teaching and research at Stanford University. Stamos is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute, a William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. As a Chief Security Officer at Facebook and Yahoo and a co-founder of iSEC Partners, Alex has investigated and responded to some of the most seminal events in the short history of cybersecurity, and has been called the “Forrest Gump of Info Sec” by friends. He is working on election security via the Defending Digital Democracy Project and advising NATO’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. He has spoken on six continents, testified in Congress, served as an expert witness for the wrongly accused, earned a BSEE from UC Berkeley and holds five patents.

Abstract: This research proposes, develops, and demonstrates a quantitative risk analytic method for integrating a set of modern deterrence considerations with respect to nuclear weapon arsenals and policies. These considerations include multiple prospective models of antagonist behaviors, multiple levels of conflict escalation, multiple weapon capabilities and effects, and nuanced policies for protagonists and antagonists. A mathematical basis for this approach is developed on the foundation of infinite-horizon, risk-sensitive Interactive Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (IPOMDP). This foundation allows multiple decision agents to identify optimal policies when managing conflict scenarios in the face of the tradeoff between achieving political goals and avoiding the consequences of various forms of conflict. A set of deterrence-effectiveness metrics that center on the probability of specific opponent actions and conflict outcomes occurring are suggested, and a method for evaluating them is proposed. The resulting modeling and analysis framework captures complex behaviors and escalation dynamics, identifies approximately optimal policies in specific conflict scenarios, and is extensible to a large array of possible conflict scenarios. An example analysis, based on fictitious data, analyzes a bilateral, nuclear-armed, peer-state competition in a conflict escalation scenario. The example analysis evaluates various nuclear weapons arsenals and stated employment policies by examining the optimal conflict management solutions produced by the method and by comparing deterrence-effectiveness metrics. The products of this research can serve as a foundation for future work to expand the model’s capabilities and enhance its performance. Most importantly, it will provide valuable insights to policy and decision makers in government.

Speaker Bio: Jason C. Reinhardt is a national security systems analyst and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. His work focuses on probabilistic analysis methods, quantitative and non-quantitative approaches for risk analysis and management, as well as the modeling and analysis of strategic interaction in conflict escalation, asymmetric deterrence, and stability. Jason received his Ph.D. in Risk Analysis from Stanford University School of Engineering’s Department of Management Science and Engineering. He also holds a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Purdue School of Electrical Engineering at Indianapolis.