IT TAKES 2 TO TANGO - NONMILITARIZED RESPONSE IN INTERSTATE DISPUTES

In a large fraction of all cases where a state faces an immediate mili tary threat, it chooses to respond without resort to the threat, displ ay, or use of military force. We seek to account for this phenomenon o f nonmilitary response and to assess the utility of this strategy. We present a series of hypotheses to account for nonmilitary response, ba sed on the literature on reciprocity, and test them using cases of int erstate conflict involving Latin American states since 1816. Target st ates are less likely to respond militarily when the issues at stake ar e not highly salient, when the initiator's threat does not involve the actual use of military force, and when the target is substantially we aker than its adversary. A militarized response is more likely when th e target state has employed a similar strategy in past conflict agains t the same adversary, regardless of the outcome of that past confronta tion, and when the target is preoccupied with a civil war. No signific ant effect appears for contiguity or for the target state's preoccupat ion with another militarized dispute. Regarding the consequences of no nmilitary response, responding with militarized means did lessen the l ikelihood of defeat in a confrontation and increase the prospects for a successful outcome, but this advantage was small. From a more long-t erm perspective, nonmilitary response served to decrease the likelihoo d of future confrontations against the same adversary and to increase the length of time until the outbreak of the next confrontation. There thus seems to be a trade-off in terms of the outcome of the confronta tion between the slight short-term costs of responding militarily and the longer term benefits of helping to postpone or avoid future confli ct.