ABSTRACT
Alexander George is the preeminent scholar of Soviet-American crises. His careful historical and systematic studies have set new standards for the analysis of bargaining. This chapter attempts to follow some of his exacting standards in analyzing two crises: the 1958-1959 Berlin Deadline crisis and the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis. Specifically, we first show how one can use three variables from different levels of analyses to predict actors' constrained preferences in a given situation. As a second step, we test our model by comparing its deductions with historical evidence. This analysis allows us to show the fundamental similarities between the two crises, both with respect to actors' evaluations of options as well as to the outcomes.
