Military Intervention : A Cold War Assessment of the Essence of Decision

The decision to militarily intervene in an international crisis is one fraught with complexity and uncertainty, and may ultimately lead a state to war. This research provides an analytical approach based on the work of Graham Allison in Essence of Decision to help understand why states (specifically superpowers) choose to militarily intervene in certain international crises and not others. The modified Allisonian construct presented in this study synthesizes national, organizational and individual level factors into one integrated framework. That framework is then used to comparatively analyze two important Cold War era superpower interventions the U.S.-led intervention at the Bay of Pigs and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH is the author of 'Military Intervention : A Cold War Assessment of the Essence of Decision', published 2003 under ISBN 9781423501992 and ISBN 1423501993.