Is military power central in determining which states get their voice heard? Must states run a high risk of war to communicate credible intent? In this book, Slantchev shows that states can often obtain concessions without incurring higher risks when they use military threats. Unlike diplomatic forms of communication, physical military moves improve a state's expected performance in war. If the opponent believes the threat, it will be more likely to back down. Military moves are also inherently costly, so only resolved states are willing to pay these costs. Slantchev argues that powerful states can secure better peaceful outcomes and lower the risk of war, but the likelihood of war depends on the extent to which a state is prepared to use military threats to deter challenges to peace and compel concessions without fighting. The price of peace may therefore be large: states invest in military forces that are both costly and unused.

In Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World, author Micah Zenko presents a new concept to capture and illuminate the phenomenon: "Discrete Military Operations."

The threat to use military force is a matter that commands immediate attention from many segments of government. Karsten, Howell, and Allen systematically analyze statistically significant numbers of actual cases to discover the determinants of success or failure of the threat to employ military force. After describing their methodology, they address several questions: what are the general characteristics of the typical threat? what types of threats succeed? what threats lead to war? did threats in the prenuclear past differ in outcome from those in the nuclear present? have the United States' threats differed substantially from those of other nations? can anything be said concerning the long-term consequences of the threats? In a concluding chapter the authors summarize their findings, compare them to the conventional wisdom, and then, as a test, apply them to six historical cases. They end their study with a look at the Solidarity and Falklands crises, and a theoretical scenario that suggests the significance of their findings.

"Daryl G. Press uses historical evidence to answer two crucial questions: When a country backs down in a crisis, does its credibility suffer? How do leaders assess their adversaries' credibility? Press illuminates the decision-making processes behind events such as the crises in Europe that preceded World War II, the superpower showdowns over Berlin in the 1950s and 60s, and the Cuban Missile Crisis."--Page 4 of cover.

On February 2-3, 2000, the U.S. Army War College, the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, and the Duke University Center for Law, Ethics, and National Security co-sponsored a conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The conference examined transnational threats, including terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, cyber threats to the national infrastructure, and international organized crime. The goal was to evaluate the seriousness of such threats and discuss strategies for dealing with them. In particular, the conference sought to address the question of how military and law enforcement could blend their strategies to better counter transnational threats. A secondary purpose was to clarify the role of the military in meeting challenges that transcend national borders and threaten our national interests. This book highlights some of the main issues and themes that ran through the conference. After looking at the various threats and undertaking a risk assessment, the report considers the unique aspects of transnational threats, and then identifies the key challenges facing the United States, paying particular attention to the role of the military. The book concludes with discussions of some of the steps that should be taken to secure ourselves against transnational threats.