Temporal Delineation of International Conflicts: Poisson Results from the Vietnam War, 1963–1965

Research findings concerning the behavior of nations in international conflict situations can be significantly influenced by the specification of the temporal domain of these situations. Therefore, we need to undertake systematic efforts to identify the onset, duration, and phases of conflicts before we attempt to explain and predict national behavior. This study applies the Poisson probability method for monitoring and measuring overtime changes in the U.S. behavior during the early years of the Vietnam war, using event data derived from the People's Daily and the New York Times Index. The results of this analysis provide a useful basis for identifying the initiation and abatement of this conflict and for demarcating the various intervening stages in its development. They enable us to be more precise and confident in coping with these analytical issues than if we rely on our intuitive historical impressions alone.