How the Research Is Empirically Examined 83
to anticipate the structure module that will result in noncooperation that
appears in prisoners’ dilemma games, so that the outcome is not really unex-
pected. A simpler formula is the security dilemma in which actions taken
by countries for increasing their own security (such as arms proliferation
or alliances) lead their adversaries to feel threatened and react in manners
that are perceived to be threatening.^33 The result is a conflict spiral, or an
action-reaction process, involving higher levels of threat and response.^34
This dynamic may stem from completely rational reactions to a threatening
situation and intensify because of misjudgment and emotional reactions.^35
Crisis management researchers have not recognized that some crises are
inherent in such a manner—in terms of preferences of players, alongside
diplomatic, geographical, technological, and organizational crises that
infringe on their freedom of action—which they prefer to escalate to war
despite the wish of decision makers to avoid it.^36 These crises are factors
that encourage rational players to take a series of actions that lead to war
that they would rather avoid.^37
I now discuss the three most significant wars fought in the study period,
1816–2016: the Crimean War, the First World War, and the Second World
War. The theory states that these wars did not break out because of the
failure of leaders in crisis management^38 but because of the structure of
the international system at the time, or the polarity of the system, which
like the prisoners’ dilemma game, forced the individual rational players to
be trapped in crisis behavior. These constraints are what caused, to a great
extent, the outbreak of these three wars.
The Stability of the Multipolar System, 1849–1870Despite the small number of wars fought in the multipolar system that
occurred in Eurasia in the 19th century, 1849–1870,^39 one cannot ignore
the Crimean War, which was the first war that involved the polar powers
since the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815) at the beginning of that
century.^40 There is no consensus on the reasons that led to the outbreak
of the Crimean War. Even researchers who agreed that the war broke out
because of the threat to the European balance of power do not agree on the
question of whether the threat was made by France, Russia, or Britain.^41
According to the book, the culprit for the outbreak of the war was the mul-
tipolar model that prevailed at that time, which led to the transformation
of a bilateral crisis, between Russia and France, into a multilateral crisis,
which involved most of the polar powers that constituted the system at
that time.
Crimean WarThe Crimean War is a misnomer for a conflict that took place from the
Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and affected almost every country in the