A new question in crisis management: The effect of decision making on third parties

An international crisis is defined as a severe conflict between two or more sovereign states in which neither side is willing to back down. Crisis management literature is concerned with specific diplomatic-military steps which, when put into practice, may help a decision-maker in an international crisis achieve his/her objectives while simultaneously avoiding war. However, crisis management literature has been greatly criticized for its lack of usefulness in crisis situations. While some of these criticisms may have merit, I believe that overall crisis management literature is worthy of continued study. As a contribution to the literature, I propose a new consideration: the effects of crisis decision-making on third parties, or countries which are affected by a crisis but are not in the "decision-making loop." Using a comprehensive view of two Berlin crises involving the United States and the Soviet Union, I attempt to show that although according to the principles of crisis management the two crises were successfully resolved, the unintended side effects of U.S. decision making were widely different from the first crisis to the second. The first crisis ended with an increase in U.S.-German solidarity, while the second ended with relative German disappointment in the effectiveness of the United States as a protectorate. This inconsistency in the "successful resolution" of the two crises demonstrates a weakness of current crisis management literature that I believe can be strengthened. To achieve this goal I propose the addition of an "eighth" operational requirement to crisis management literature.