Researchers have advanced various claims about the effects of emotions, particularly the effects of fear and anger, on decision making behavior. The purpose of this paper is to provide a formal assessment of the effectiveness of the strategic use fear and anger in the context of a well-specified basic International Relations crisis decision problem. The formalization is motivated by the experimental work of Lerner and Keltner (2000, 2001) who found that fearful decision makers are risk averting across frames and make pessimistic risk assessments, and that angry decision makers are risk seeking across frames and make optimistic risk assessments. The analysis presented here employs the basic International Relations crisis decision problem to compare the behavior of the decision maker in a fearful state and an angry state, respectively, to the behavior of the decision maker in an emotionally neutral state. The analysis shows when the emotions of fear and anger do and do not have the desired strategic effects. The analysis also shows that the strategic use of fear and anger can have effects that are both counterintuitive and counterproductive.