Conflict escalation and conflict reduction in an international crisis: Suez, 1956

Conflict research has already advanced some very useful conceptual and empirical discoveries concerning the structure and process of international conflict escalation. Some of the more basic findings suggest that when two parties involve themselves in a conflict situation, they tend to escalate the intensity, scope, and frequency of their negative signals; they tend to make more visible or even possibly compound their areas of incompatibility; they tend to raise the intensity of their mutual images; and they tend to engage in or increase the rate of a potentially destructive arms race (Boulding, 1961; North, 1963; Richardson, 1960; Singer, 1962; Smoker, 1966; Wright, 1965). Conflict reduction on the other hand is less well understood. However there is