Book contents
- Warning about War
- Warning about War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Conflict Warnings as Persuasion Attempts
- Chapter 2 A Theory of Conflict Warning as Persuasion in Foreign Policy
- Chapter 3 Inside-Up Warnings within States and International Organisations
- Chapter 4 Outside-In Warnings
- Chapter 5 Outside-In Warnings
- Chapter 6 (Mis-)identifying Warnings and the Problem of Hindsight Bias
- Chapter 7 What Makes Individual Officials Persuasive Warners?
- Chapter 8 Explaining Differences in Persuasiveness
- Chapter 9 Warning within EU Institutions and the Ukrainian-Russian Conflict of 2013–2014
- Chapter 10 When Are Warnings Heeded and What Can Warners Do?
- References
- Index
Chapter 8 - Explaining Differences in Persuasiveness
The EU Members States and the 2008 Five-Day War in Georgia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2019
- Warning about War
- Warning about War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Conflict Warnings as Persuasion Attempts
- Chapter 2 A Theory of Conflict Warning as Persuasion in Foreign Policy
- Chapter 3 Inside-Up Warnings within States and International Organisations
- Chapter 4 Outside-In Warnings
- Chapter 5 Outside-In Warnings
- Chapter 6 (Mis-)identifying Warnings and the Problem of Hindsight Bias
- Chapter 7 What Makes Individual Officials Persuasive Warners?
- Chapter 8 Explaining Differences in Persuasiveness
- Chapter 9 Warning within EU Institutions and the Ukrainian-Russian Conflict of 2013–2014
- Chapter 10 When Are Warnings Heeded and What Can Warners Do?
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on the case of the Georgian-Russian War of 2008. It concentrates on the question of which warnings were communicated by whom within the European Union system and how were they perceived in terms of notice, acceptance and mobilisation to act by the EU’s member states as the key decision-makers. It considers not only warnings in relation to South Ossetia, but also those from a few months earlier related to Georgia’s other separatist region of Abkhazia that were in fact to some extent successful. Rather than a classic case of warning failure, the analysis shows considerable variation in impact among member states and between the cases of Abkhazia as compared with South Ossetia. It is argued that these differences are due to the relatively low level of diagnostic difficulty in making knowledge claims, differences in receptivity among member states due to threat perceptions and policy preferences, and source credibility given warners’ respective track records as well as suspicions of national biases. The case confirms that many factors work interdependently in producing different outcomes for warnings over time and highlights that warnings should be considered an integral part of evolving and historically contingent discourses on foreign policy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Warning about WarConflict, Persuasion and Foreign Policy, pp. 215 - 237Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019