M.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The following study develops a structured focused comparison of two South American territorial crises: the Beagle Channel Crisis between Argentina and Chile (1977--1978) and the Cenepa Crisis between Ecuador and Peru (1994--1995). From a conventional perspective, the Beagle Channel Crisis should have escalated to war because it was a fully militarized inter-state crisis carried out by a military dyad. In contrast, the Cenepa Crisis should not have ended in war because it was a democratic dyad and the dissatisfied state was the weaker power. Yet the opposite happened in both cases: in the Beagle Channel Crisis the escalation process was contained, whereas in the Cenepa Crisis the situation escalated into an intensive war. / Based on a comparison of these two dyads, this study argues that deterrence strategy alone is not sufficient to prevent war. Only an interaction of deterrence strategy and third party involvement can contain an escalatory process, constituting a tool for strengthening deterrence.

This document is a comparative synthesis of the reports on regional case studies written by PERCEIVE's partners. Each report is based both on an original data collection and on the analysis of the focus group's section that addresses communication issues. Each partner collected national and/or regional communication plans, which were mostly used for the first chapter of this report: "Communication strategy at different levels and LMAs' organization."

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