Methodological themes and variations

This paper reports on the tangible progress that has been made in clarifying the underlying processes that affect both the likelihood of war in general and of nuclear war in particular. It also illustrates how difficult it is to make progress in this area. Nonetheless, what has been achieved should not be minimized. We have learned a good deal on both the theoretical and the methodological fronts and, perhaps, most important, we have learned a good deal about the limits of our knowledge. Knowledge of our ignorance---especially in a policy domain where confident, even glib, causal assertions are so common---can be a major contribution in itself. The most important service the behavioral and social sciences can currently provide to the policy making community may well be to make thoughtful skepticism respectable: to sensitize those who make key decisions to the uncertainty surrounding our understanding of international conflict and to the numerous qualifications that now need to be attached to simple causal theories concerning the origins of war