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About the event: Scholars have long debated why some conflicts spiral into prolonged cycles of hostility, while others fizzle out. Conventional wisdom suggests that states, when challenged, can demonstrate their resolve by retaliating militarily, thereby deterring future challenges. I argue that the desire for revenge, rather than deterrence concerns, shapes when individuals prefer military retaliation and why such actions provoke cyclical conflicts. Public support for military retaliation is primarily driven by a human desire to balance the suffering inflicted upon one's own ingroup, often without regard for the consequences. Consequently, instead of achieving deterrence, imposing costs on an adversary through military retaliation tends to provoke reciprocal retaliation. I test my theory using a preregistered survey experiment in which China attempts to deter U.S. intervention in a hypothetical Taiwan Strait crisis through retaliation. The results align with the logic of revenge. Rather than deterring the U.S., China's retaliation, which imposes greater suffering on the U.S., increases public support for further escalation, even in scenarios of secret U.S. retaliation with no deterrent benefit. This study contributes to the deterrence versus spiral model debate in two ways. First, it challenges the deterrence model, particularly theories of reputation for resolve. Second, it complements the spiral model by providing an alternative psychological microfoundation for the endogenous emergence of conflict spirals.

About the speaker: X Zhang is a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zhang's research interests include the political psychology of interstate conflict, public opinion, and the domestic politics of foreign policy.

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