Uncertainty surrounds every major decision in international politics. Yet there is almost always room for reasonable people to disagree about what that uncertainty entails. No one can reliably predict the outbreak of armed conflict, forecast economic recessions, anticipate terrorist attacks, or estimate the countless other risks that shape foreign policy choices. Many scholars and practitioners therefore believe that it is better to keep foreign policy debates
focused on the facts - that it is, at best, a waste of time to debate uncertain judgments that will often prove to be wrong.
In War and Chance, Jeffrey A. Friedman explains how avoiding the challenge of assessing uncertainty undermines foreign policy analysis and decision making. Drawing on an innovative combination of historical and experimental evidence, he shows that foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in a manner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices. Each of these claims
contradicts widespread skepticism about the value of probabilistic reasoning in international affairs, and shows that placing greater emphasis on assessing uncertainty can improve nearly any foreign policy debate.
A clear-eyed examination of the logic, psychology, and politics of assessing uncertainty, War and Chance provides scholars and practitioners with new foundations for understanding one of the most controversial elements of foreign policy discourse.
- ISBN10 0190938021
- ISBN13 9780190938024
- Publish Date 30 May 2019 (first published 19 April 2019)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 248
- Language English