| Summary/Abstract |
How can states de-escalate a crisis and avoid spiraling toward war? Doing so requires the actors to reassure each other of their willingness to issue and commit to concessions.Footnote1 Yet reassurance is fundamentally difficult: states have incentives to misrepresent their aims as moderate in order to dupe the other into offering concessions and drawing down its military readiness, only to renege and issue further demands in the future. Thus, credible signaling mechanisms are essential for peaceful crisis resolution.
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