Suchergebnisse

When does the war party win in the decision-making process? Why does the peace party lose even if war is too risky? In this article, we show that certain balancing acts of the peace party might increase the confidence of the war party. We examine how the Ottoman Empire's risky Crimean War decision and its war declaration against Russia on 4 October 1853 were shaped by internal debating through time, foreign penetration, and dynamic interplay between the Ottoman decision makers and a changing European strategic environment. The large literature on the Crimean War does not include a systematic analysis of the Ottoman origins of the Crimean War and the Ottoman war decision. We trace the Ottoman decision-making process in the fateful months of 1853 to establish the origins of the Crimean War. We empirically demonstrate the gradual formation of the Porte's war decision by showing how the peace front stumbled upon war by inadvertently changing the decision structure in favor of the war party within a year.

Why did the fracturing Ottoman Empire enter the Great War? Why did the Ottomans drag their feet for a period of three months although the alliance treaty stipulated that the Ottomans should enter the war against Russia if the latter fought with Germany? This article sets forth a neoclassical realist analysis of the war decision by the members of Ottoman foreign policy executive as the outcome of dynamic interactions between the systemic stimuli/structural modifiers and unit-level variables that occurred in a limited time frame (August to November 1914) and sequentially influenced the strategic calculus of the actors involved. It demonstrates that a changing amalgamation of systemic and unit-level factors were instrumental in the Ottoman decision to enter the Great War, the most prominent of which was the divided foreign policy executive.