brinkmanship
Sign in to savethumb|300px|The handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis has been described as brinkmanship. Brinkmanship or brinksmanship is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict. The maneuver of pushing a situation with the opponent to the brink succeeds by forcing the opponent to back down and make concessions rather than risk engaging in a conflict that would no longer be beneficial to either side. This might be achieved through diplomatic maneuvers, or by creating the impression that one is willing to use extreme methods rather t
Article
19 sectionsContents
- Origins
- Credible threats
- Cold War
- Conceptualization
- Contextualization
- Eisenhower's "New Look" policy
- Kennedy's flexible response
- Practices and effects of Cold War
- Korean War (1950–1953)
- Berlin Crisis
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- Arms race
- Aftermath of Cuban Missile Crisis
- Détente
- Ronald Reagan and end of the Cold War
- North Korean nuclear crisis
- See also
- References
- External links
thumb|300px|The handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis has been described as brinkmanship. Brinkmanship or brinksmanship is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict. The maneuver of pushing a situation with the opponent to the brink succeeds by forcing the opponent to back down and make concessions rather than risk engaging in a conflict that would no longer be beneficial to either side. This might be achieved through diplomatic maneuvers, or by creating the impression that one is willing to use extreme methods rather than concede. The tactic occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labor relations, contemporary military strategy (by involving the threat of nuclear weapons), terrorism, and high-stakes litigation.
The term is chiefly associated with John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State from 1953 to 1956 during the Eisenhower administration. Dulles sought to deter aggression from the Soviet Union by warning that the cost might be massive retaliation against Soviet targets. The British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell compared it to the game of chicken.