Causal inference accordingly becomes more important in the very conditions that make it more difficult. When people feel less confident about discovering causes, they feel less able to control or manage their environment and correspondingly more at risk. They become insecure and vulnerable, and all the more so to the degree that their livelihood, status, or security depends on causal inference. People have strong instrumental and psychological motives to find ways around this dilemma. I identify and evaluate four generic strategies for coping with the causal dilemma in international relations theories