ABSTRACT
In a now-celebrated example of crisis management, the American Government carefully deliberated the alternatives of a naval quarantine or an air strike. The incomprehensible cost of nuclear war has enormously escalated the need to manage international crises below the threshold of war. Crisis and crisis management have been defined in academic literature. The requirements for successful crisis management are also well analyzed and the literature may have gone as far as it can go in prescribing rules and mechanisms for avoiding violent conflict in crisis situations. The central problem of crisis management has been well summarized by Glenn H. Snyder and Paul Diesing, namely, " to achieve an optimum blend of coercion and accommodation in one's strategy, a blend that will both avoid war and maximize one's gains or minimize one's losses." Further evidence on Henry Kissinger's proposition about military power being translated into political benefit comes from the data gathered on superpower crisis management behavior by Jonathan Wilkenfeld and Michael Brecher.
