International Political Earthquakes Michael Brecher International Political Earthquakes is the masterwork of the preeminent scholar Michael Brecher. Brecher, who came of age before World War II, has witnessed more than seven decades of conflict and has spent his career studying the dynamics of relations among nations throughout the world. Brecher argues that when terrorism, ethnic conflict, military buildup, or other local tensions spark an international crisis, the structure of global politics determines its potential to develop into open conflict. That conflict, in turn, may then generate worldwide political upheaval. Comparing international crises to earthquakes, Brecher proposes a scale analogous to the Richter scale to measure the severity and scope of the impact of a crisis on the landscape of international politics. Brecher challenges, with convincing evidence from 29 in-depth case studies from 1938 to 1991, the conventional wisdom that decision making under high stress is flawed and that high stress seriously undermines the quality of decisions in foreign policy crises. Michael Brecher is R. B. Angus Professor of Political Science at McGill University.