Dan Reiter

How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by 'tying their hands' to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehensive analysis of key international crises, including the Berlin, Taiwan Straits, and Cuban Missile Crises, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Reiter provides new perspectives on the causes of wars, the role of international alliances, foreign troop deployments, leader madness, and the impact of AI on international relations. With critical insights into contemporary foreign policy challenges, such as America's role in NATO, the risks of war with China, containing a resurgent Russia, and the dangers of nuclear war, Untied Hands is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how states can effectively manage international crises while avoiding the wrong wars.

How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by 'tying their hands' to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehensive analysis of key international crises, including the Berlin, Taiwan Straits, and Cuban Missile Crises, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Reiter provides new perspectives on the causes of wars, the role of international alliances, foreign troop deployments, leader madness, and the impact of AI on international relations. With critical insights into contemporary foreign policy challenges, such as America's role in NATO, the risks of war with China, containing a resurgent Russia, and the dangers of nuclear war, Untied Hands is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how states can effectively manage international crises while avoiding the wrong wars.

A high-speed glide through Florida surf culture and a deep dive into the lore of a classic surfing destinationNot far from where the Apollo 11 rocket launched to the moon, surfers make their way to the shore in the night. Clutching their surfboards, they chase a familiar dream: more speed, more altitude, and going beyond the limits of what has been done before. For that, they want to be the first ones to catch the early morning waves.In this book, Dan Reiter chronicles stories of the sport on Florida's Space Coast, a region that has produced some of the world's finest surf champions, Pipe masters, and surfboard builders. On this stretch of sand between Cape Canaveral and Sebastian Inlet, Florida's surf history reaches back to the native Ais people of the Atlantic Coast and continues to the elites of today, including Kelly Slater, Caroline Marks, and CJ Hobgood. Reiter offers insights into the evolution of surfboard shaping and design, the distinctive culture of the East Coast surfboard industry, and the traits and traditions that make Florida surfing unique. United by the background of Florida sun, soaring blue skies, and shifting sandbars, each one of this book's eclectic chapters tells its own story of passion and pursuit. Weaving together history, personal experiences, and interviews with the greats, Reiter redefines surf literature and invites readers to share in the thrill of a rising swell.

How do foreign policymakers learn from history? When do states enter alliances? Why have some small powers chosen to enter alliances whereas others have stayed neutral? In Crucible of Beliefs, Dan Reiter uses work in social psychology and organization theory to build a formative-events model of learning in international politics. History does inform the decisions of policymakers, he suggests, but it is history of a specific sort, based on firsthand experience in major events such as wars. Tested against balance-of-threat theory, the leading realist explanation of alliance behavior, Reiter's formative-events model of learning emerges as a far better predictor of states' decisions. Crucible of Beliefs shows that, contrary to balance-of-threat theory, state leaders ignore the level of international threat and focus instead on avoiding past mistakes and repeating past successes. A serious blow to realism, these findings demonstrate that to understand the dynamics of world politics, it is essential to know how leaders learn from history.

The 2002 National Security Strategy suggested preventive attacks, diplomacy, deterrence, and other policies as means of curtailing threats presented by the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons to terrorists and rogue states. Dr. Dan Reiter, the author of this External Research Associates Paper, analyzes which mix of these policies might best and most cost-effectively address the NBC threat, with special focus on preventive attacks. The past performances of preventive attacks, diplomacy, deterrence, and other policies as means of curtailing the NBC threat are analyzed. The author's central findings are that preventive attacks are generally unsuccessful at delaying the spread of NBC weapons; that deterrence, especially nuclear deterrence, is highly successful at preventing the use of NBC weapons by states; and that diplomacy has had moderate and perhaps unappreciated success at curtailing the spread of NBC weapons.

Why do some countries choose to end wars short of total victory while others fight on, sometimes in the face of appalling odds? How Wars End argues that two central factors shape war-termination decision making: information about the balance of power and the resolve of one's enemy, and fears that the other side's commitment to abide by a war-ending peace settlement may not be credible. Dan Reiter explains how information about combat outcomes and other factors may persuade a warring nation to demand more or less in peace negotiations, and why a country might refuse to negotiate limited terms and instead tenaciously pursue absolute victory if it fears that its enemy might renege on a peace deal. He fully lays out the theory and then tests it on more than twenty cases of war-termination behavior, including decisions during the American Civil War, the two world wars, and the Korean War. Reiter helps solve some of the most enduring puzzles in military history, such as why Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, why Germany in 1918 renewed its attack in the West after securing peace with Russia in the East, and why Britain refused to seek peace terms with Germany after France fell in 1940. How Wars End concludes with a timely discussion of twentieth-century American foreign policy, framing the Bush Doctrine's emphasis on preventive war in the context of the theory.

Why do democracies win wars? This is a critical question in the study of international relations, as a traditional view--expressed most famously by Alexis de Tocqueville--has been that democracies are inferior in crafting foreign policy and fighting wars. In Democracies at War, the first major study of its kind, Dan Reiter and Allan Stam come to a very different conclusion. Democracies tend to win the wars they fight--specifically, about eighty percent of the time. Complementing their wide-ranging case-study analysis, the authors apply innovative statistical tests and new hypotheses. In unusually clear prose, they pinpoint two reasons for democracies' success at war. First, as elected leaders understand that losing a war can spell domestic political backlash, democracies start only those wars they are likely to win. Secondly, the emphasis on individuality within democratic societies means that their soldiers fight with greater initiative and superior leadership. Surprisingly, Reiter and Stam find that it is neither economic muscle nor bandwagoning between democratic powers that enables democracies to win wars. They also show that, given societal consent, democracies are willing to initiate wars of empire or genocide. On the whole, they find, democracies' dependence on public consent makes for more, rather than less, effective foreign policy. Taking a fresh approach to a question that has long merited such a study, this book yields crucial insights on security policy, the causes of war, and the interplay between domestic politics and international relations.