Week 4 - Causes of War: Diplomacy and Bargaining Failure Flashcards
(25 cards)
Causal Explanations for war.
- Scourge on humanity that must be endured, like poverty, disease, crime, etc.
- Expression of human nature (biology, patriarchy)
Or
- War is fundamentally political
Prominent explanations of war
- Anarchy (e.g. (neo-)realism)
o incomplete; cannot tell us about particular war - Misperception over capabilities, resolve, etc. (Jervis)
o WWI: consensus that war would be over by Christmas
o Iraq and Kuwait 1991: Kuwait thought S. Hussein was bluffing and would not invade
Disputes and relation with IR
- International relations is fundamentally about disagreements between actors
o Combating climate change
o Control over Jerusalem
o North Korea possessing nuclear weapons
o Ukraine joining NATO
-> Involved actors cannot all get their way (zero sum)
-> - War is one way of settling disputes
Explain the diplomacy of violence according to Schelling.
- Coercion (compellence): attempting to influence outcome of a dispute by threatening the use of force
- “Do what I ask or else!”
o 2001: Afghanistan demanded to hand over terrorists by U.S. or face war
o 2003: S. Hussein given 48 hrs to leave country or face invasion - ‘Coercive diplomacy’
- War is one way of settling disputes
Why is war puzzeling and what did clausewitz say to this?
- War is perhaps the costliest and riskiest enterprise that human beings can engage in
o Difficult to argue that polities go to war for war’s sake - States would rather get what they want without having to go to war
o “In war, the aggressor is always peace-loving; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.”–Karl von Clausewitz
Why do states fight, what is the key question in this and how does bargaining theory help in answering this question?
- Peace is generally desirable, War is generally undesirable, Polities are not ready for peace at any cost
Key question: Why might political communities be unable to peacefully resolve a dispute despite their desire for peace?
- Bargaining theory offers a logically consistent and internally valid answer.
Why do you use bargaining theory?
- Mid-level theory of war and peace
- Coherent, parsimonious framework to make sense of armed conflict
o onset,
o duration,
o termination, and
o recurrence
o independently of conflict type. - Hugely influential across modern international security!
What is the basic mechanism behind bargaining?
Bargaining is about deciding how to divide the object of a dispute (the “pie” → Π) between two players (A and B)`
- E.g. territory or policy
- Π is often normalized to size 1
- Current division: status quo (SQ)
Explain the probability P for both players in bargaining theory.
- Assume there are two possible outcomes: win or lose (no draws), “winner takes all”
- Player A wins with probability p, while player B wins with probability (1 − p), such that p + (1 − p) = 1.
o p: distribution of power →summarizes likely outcome of war
o equivalent interpretation: p denotes the (expected) share of the pie that A would secure through war - depends on things like relative size, quality of armed forces, ability to finance war, etc.
What is war seen as?
- Rather than bargaining peacefully, the players can resort to fighting (war)
o War is seen as a means to an end (substitute for diplomacy) - Neither side can be assured of victory
Explain expected utility in bargaining theory.
The weighted average of all possible outcomes (utilities), with the weights being assigned by the probability that any particular event will occur.
- U(win)=Π=1
- U(lose)=0
Explain what adding the costs of fighting does to bargaining theory.
War becomes a costly lottery
- Player A pays cost a: EUA = p×Π−a = p−a
- Player B pays cost b: EUB = (1−p)×Π−b = (1−p)−b
- Which divisions/deals do the players prefer to war?
Why does the bargaining range exist and what does this imply? Also explain the puzzle of war.
War is ex-post inefficient!
The existence of the bargaining range implies that both players should always have incentives to locate peaceful settlements that avoid the cost of war.
Puzzle of war
- Put another way: Both sides would be better off if they agreed to divide up the contested good according to the expected outcome of war rather than fighting a costly war before ultimately arriving at the same (worse) outcome.
What is explaining war synonymous to?
To explain war is synonymous to: explaining why the actors did choose war as a particular means of resolving their disagreement, rather than negotiation.
What are the three logical solutions to the puzzle of war according to Fearon 1995?
- Incomplete information
- Commitment problems
- Indivisibility
-> Conditions under which war can occur despite it being ex-post inefficient.
Explain what happens in the bargaining model when there is
incomplete information.
- Probability of winning/losing (p)
o One or more side unsure about the type s/he is facing
= Weak vs. strong type
o Mutual optimism (1−p +p > 1) (Fey and Ramsay, 2007)
o Some argue that power balance can introduce uncertainty about probability of winning losing (Reed, 2003) - Costs of fighting (a,b)
o One or more side unsure about how costly it is for the opposition to fight
o How willing they are to accept cost (cost function)
o Resolve: What type is the opposition - How big is the pie? (Π)
o Little research, even though it might apply to some important situations
Why do you not just reveal the incomplete information?
- Revelation leads to weaker bargaining position
a. Incentives to misrepresent
b. Revelation leads to vulnerabilities
c. Consequence: adversaries try to ’screen’
d. E.g. brinkmanship - Inability to reveal
a. Lack of signalling technology
b. Consequence: actors try to “signal” their type
c. E.g. audience costs
Explain commitment problem. Also explain relation to expected future power shifts.
- Underlying challenge: making credible promises not to use force to revise the settlement at a later date
- Quintessential example: prisoners dilemma
- Common in the absence of an enforcement mechanism (e.g. courts) → anarchy of the int’l system
- E.g. peace agreement involving DDR in civil wars
Commitment problems and future power-shift
- Actors expect a power-shift in the future.
- The actor that is expected to become stronger has incentives to exploit its strength in the future.
- The anticipation of this power-shift provides incentives for the future weaker party to fight today.
Explain the information problem and the commitment problem.
- Information problem. Underlying challenge: who would prevail in war?
o Uncertainty over the threat to use force: EU(fight) - Commitment problem. Underlying challenge: will the peaceful settlement be honored at a later date?
o Uncertainty over the promise not to use force: EU(accept)
What are the variants of the commitment problem according to Powell 2006?
- Bargaining over objects that are a source of future bargaining power
a. Strategic territory, e.g. Golan heights - Prevention: war in response to changing power
a. Aim: prevent an adversary from becoming stronger in the future
b. E.g. U.S. President Eisenhower in 1953 considered an attack against the S.U. before it acquired a larger nuclear force - Preemption: war in response to first-strike advantages
a. “Use it or lose it” imperative
b. E.g. 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq Israeli surprise attack destroying 300 aircraft while they were still on the ground
What does indivisibilty do to bargaining?
Indivisibility makes bargaining impossible and leads to a breakdown of negotiations
- Indivisibility prevents a shared bargain
- “All or nothing” bargaining situation
- War occurs if both sides prefer war to getting nothing
- Indivisibility not a physical property of a good but the way in which it is valued
o Often socially constructed
o E.g. Jerusalem - Strategic incentives to claim that compromise is impossible
- Indivisibility problems often driven by weak enforcement mechanisms (commitment problems)
What if the pie is not divisible?
- Could have a lottery with the same probabilities p and 1−p, but without the costs!
o Both actors should prefer the lottery because it yields the same outcome, but avoids the costs.
o Practical obstacle?
Criticism of the bargaining model according to Lake 2010
- Unitary actor assumption
a. Is war ex-post inefficient for leaders? (Chiozza & Goemans 2004) - Two-player action
- Focus on process up to war, post-war calculus missing
- Information failure due to cognitive biases
a. Complement with behavioural insights
How do you avoid war according to the bargaining model?
- Raising the cost
- Increasing transparency
- Providing outside enforcement of commitments
- Dividing apparently indivisible goods
- (Raising the utility of peace
