Notes
Introduction
1.White 1964, 245.
2.Kowner 2006, 303.
3.Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse 1990, 173–81.
4.Finlan 2002, 327; Freedman 1982, 207.
5.My brief overview of the bargaining framework here does not capture the breadth of scholarship on the topic. For cogent reviews, see Jackson and Morelli 2011; Ramsay 2017; Reiter 2003.
6.Morrow 1989; Wittman 1979.
7.Fearon 1995. Fearon discusses a third mechanism called issue indivisibility, but he suggests that most issues are not inherently indivisible and that methods exist to make bargains involving indivisible goods (382). Powell (2006) argues that issue indivisibility is a form of credible commitment problem. I therefore do not discuss issue indivisibility in further detail here.
8.Actors may even be mutually overoptimistic about their chances of success; see Blainey 1988. Fey and Ramsay (2007) and Slantchev and Tarar (2011) offer opposing views regarding the rationality of mutual optimism.
9.Powell 2006. Debs and Monteiro (2014) create a model that allows actors to intentionally choose whether to increase their bargaining power. They suggest that commitment problems lead to war only in the presence of imperfect information. See Geller 2000 and Lemke and Werner 1996 for empirical evidence.
10.Brito and Intriligator (1985) present an earlier formalization of this argument.
11.Bennett and Stam 1996; Goemans 2000a; Long 2003; Slantchev 2004; Weisiger 2013.
12.Wagner 2000.
13.Filson and Werner 2002, 2004; Krainin, Thomas, and Wiseman 2020; Mattes and Morgan 2004; Powell 2004; Slantchev 2003a; Smith and Stam 2003, 2004; Wagner 2000; Wolford, Reiter, and Carrubba 2011.
14.Reiter 2003.
15.This helps to explain why relatively weak actors may still fight overtly stronger opponents. See Arreguín-Toft 2005; Slantchev 2003b; Sullivan 2007.
16.The alternating nature of bargaining models of war is a technical feature that should not be taken literally, but it nonetheless suggests that belligerents are free to communicate at will. Some models suggest that making extreme offers that are sure to be rejected is roughly equivalent to not negotiating; for example, see Powell 2012, 623. But this choice still precludes the analysis of the actual decision to negotiate.
17.Fearon 2013; Krainin, Thomas, and Wiseman 2020; Langlois and Langlois 2009, 2012; Powell 2017.
18.Powell (2004) creates a model that distinguishes wars based on uncertainty regarding the distribution of power from those based on the costs of fighting. The key innovation that enables this distinction in his game-theoretic model is the assumption that multiple bargaining offers can be made with no meaningful time passing between them.
19.Findley 2012; Jones and Metzger 2018; Kaplow 2016.
20.Zartman 1989, 2000, 2001, 2022.
21.Scholarly debate on this topic is active to this day, with special focus on how public diplomatic threats may be more costly to backpedal on and are thus more credible. For some key works, see Fearon 1994; Schelling 1960; Tomz 2007. For dissenting and more conditional views, see Holmes 2013; Katagiri and Min 2019; Kurizaki 2007; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012; Sartori 2002, 2005; Snyder and Borghard 2011.
22.Mastro 2019.
23.Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011, xxvii.
24.Carnevale and Lawler 1986, 636.
25.Anand, Feldman, and Schweitzer 2009. One exception is Glozman, Barak-Corren, and Yaniv 2015.
26.Acheson 1961, 104.
27.Min 2022, 321; Ponting 2004, 217–20.
28.In her discussion of costly conversations theory (CCT), Mastro (2019, 7) notes that states may still choose to cease discussions after adopting an open posture but that it is no longer credible to say they are unwilling to talk. While it is plausible that the first effort to negotiate marks a turning point with respect to potentially signaling weakness, CCT does not explain when and why actors subsequently negotiate after that point and whether this bears significance for the broader conflict.
29.Nish 1993, 98.
30.Iklé 1964; Pillar 1983.
31.Richmond 1998, 707.
32.Stasavage 2004.
33.Anand, Feldman, and Schweitzer 2009, 1.
34.Wallihan 1998, 258.
35.Lebow 1996, 12.
36.Depledge 2008, 9.
37.Glozman, Barak-Corren, and Yaniv 2015, 671.
38.Schwartz and Gilboa 2021, 1328.
39.Danneman and Beardsley 2020, 190.
40.Kang et al. 2020, 2.
41.Mastro 2019.
42.Beardsley 2009.
43.Gartzke and Poast 2018.
44.Gartner 1998.
45.Luttwak 1999.
46.Downs 1999.
47.Acheson 1961, 103.
48.Adler-Nissen 2015; Roberts 2009.
49.See Reiter (2003, 2009) for further discussion on the promises and pitfalls of developing quantitative data to explore interstate wars.
1. A Theory of Wartime Negotiations
1.For example, over seventy additional experts and leaders expressed their support for the pacifying effects of the JCPOA in a letter to Congress; see National Iranian American Council, “73 Prominent International Relations Scholars Say Iran Deal Will Help Stabilize Middle East,” August 27, 2015, https://www.niacouncil.org/press_room/73-prominent-international-relations-and-middle-east-scholars-back-iran-deal/.
2.“Press Availability on Nuclear Deal with Iran,” US Department of State, July 14, 2015, https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/07/244885.htm.
3.Clausewitz (1832) 1976, 87.
4.Star Trek: Voyager, season 4, episode 23, “Living Witness,” directed by Tim Russ, story by Brannon Braga, teleplay by Bryan Fuller, Brannon Braga, and Joe Menosky, aired April 29, 1998, on UPN.
5.Iklé 1964. His original definition: “Negotiation is a process in which explicit proposals are put forward ostensibly for the purpose of reaching agreement on an exchange or on the realization of a common interest where conflicting interests are present” (3).
6.Cohen 1991, 8.
7.Cooper 2008; Partzsch 2014; Quessard 2020; Repo and Yrjölä 2011; Wheeler 2011.
8.Schelling 1960. See Downs and Rocke 1990 for a more expansive discussion.
9.Rubinstein 1982, 97.
10.Powell 2002, 2.
11.Rubinstein 1982, 98.
12.Quoted in Roberts 2009, 3.
13.Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “diplomacy (n.),” accessed April 30, 2024, https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=diplomacy.
14.Schelling 1960.
15.See Guilbaud (2020) and Huang (2016) for broader examinations of diplomacy by nonstate actors.
16.Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011.
17.Birke 2000; Bottom 1998. See also the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation’s Management Report #10, BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table.
18.Fearon 1995. Negotiation scholars also call this the “reservation price.”
19.White and Neale 1991.
20.Langlois and Langlois 2009; Langlois and Langlois 2012.
21.Fearon 2013; Filson and Werner 2002, 2004; Krainin, Thomas, and Wiseman 2020; Mattes and Morgan 2004; Powell 2004; Slantchev 2003a; Wagner 2000; Wolford, Reiter, and Carrubba 2011. Many models include a discount factor that decreases the value of the disputed good over time, but this is not a function of the war itself.
22.Sebenius 2017, 92–93.
23.Powell 2006. Weisiger (2016b) additionally discusses the dispositional commitment problem, wherein belligerents may be even more convinced that the enemy is inherently aggressive and must be fully destroyed.
24.See chapter 3 of Weisiger (2013) for a very useful study of the conflict. Whigham and Potthast (1999) estimate that between 72 percent and 74 percent of the Paraguayan population perished.
25.Iklé 1971, 85–86; Van Evera 1999; Wittman 1979. Dittman, Kteily, and Bruneau (2021) suggest that actors who seek negotiations may seem less worthy of respect.
26.Epstein and Mealem 2013; Kissinger 1969; Loschelder et al. 2014.
27.“Verbal Message Given to Miss Lisa Howard of ABC News on February 12, 1964 in Havana, Cuba,” National Security Archive, February 12, 1964, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16163-document-07-memorandum-verbal-message-given.
28.President’s Daily Brief, February 17, 1970, Central Intelligence Agency document 0005977303. See Carson, Min, and Van Nuys (forthcoming) for more information on and analysis of the President’s Daily Brief.
29.The Office, season 3, episode 19, “The Negotiation,” directed by Jeffrey Blitz, written by Michael Schur, aired April 5, 2007, on NBC.
30.The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese (West Hollywood, CA: Red Granite Pictures, 2013).
31.Schelling 1960, 53.
32.Mastro 2019, 14.
33.Admati and Perry 1987; Cramton 1992.
34.Mastro 2019; Mastro and Siegel 2023; Pillar 1983; Pruitt and Kim 2004.
35.Laqueur 1980; Spector 1998.
36.Civil war scholars also argue that governments may refuse to negotiate with rebel groups due to fears of looking weak and inspiring other rebel groups to take action. See Kaplow 2016; Melin and Svensson 2009; Pruitt 2006; Toros 2008; Walter 2006, 2009.
37.“Record of Conversation,” June 5, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 14, Berlin Crisis, 1961–1962, document 34, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v14/d34.
38.“Telegram from the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State,” February 15, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. 2, Vietnam, January–June 1965, document 118, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v02/d118.
39.“Telegram from the Embassy in Norway to the Department of State,” June 14, 1967, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, vol. 5, Vietnam, 1967, document 201, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v05/d201.
40.Allen and Muratoff 1953, 111–12; Goldstein 1992, 32.
41.Clodfelter 2017, 195; Jaques 2007, 803.
42.Brockett and Bliss 1878, 649.
43.Brockett and Bliss 1878, 649.
44.Iklé 1971, 85–87. Lehmann and Zhukov (2019) make a similar argument regarding battlefield surrender.
45.Fearon 1994; Weeks 2008.
46.Iklé 1971; Sticher 2021.
47.Spector 1998; Tierney 2013, 176. Leaders may become “stuck” in wars due to fears of punishment for losing or exiting wars short of victory. See Croco 2011; Goemans 2000a; Stanley 2009; Weisiger 2016b.
48.Lanoszka and Hunzeker 2015, 682–83.
49.Lukacs 1999, 63.
50.Debo 1992, 122.
51.Beardsley (2009, 280) makes a similar point regarding mediation.
52.Debo 1992, 240.
53.Porter-Szücs 2014, 83.
54.Aggestam 2012.
55.Iklé 1964, 43; Pillar 1983, 51. As the hyphen seems grammatically dubious, I drop it and refer to “side effects” instead.
56.Powell 2004.
57.Anand, Feldman, and Schweitzer 2009; Danneman and Beardsley 2020; Depledge 2008; Glozman, Barak-Corren, and Yaniv 2015; Kang et al. 2020; Olekalns and Smith 2007; Richmond 1998; Schwartz and Gilboa 2021; Wallihan 1998.
58.Noesner 2010, 203–4.
59.Birnbaum and Peters (1990) provide a broader accounting of the CSCE.
60.Lebow 1996, 12–13; Hopmann 2012, 245–46. Substantial evidence also suggests that the United States harnessed arms control negotiations with the Soviets to “offset” the Soviet Union’s conventional weapons advantage while boosting its own technological advantages. See John D. Maurer, “The Forgotten Side of Arms Control: Enhancing U.S. Competitive Advantage, Offsetting Enemy Strengths,” War on the Rocks, June 27, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/the-forgotten-side-of-arms-control-enhancing-u-s-competitive-advantage-offsetting-enemy-strengths/.
61.See sections 8(d) and 8(a)(5) in the National Labor Relations Act, US Congress 1935.
62.Clausewitz (1832) 1976; McMillan 1992, 9–10. The US Army Field Manual No. 3–0 also mentions this concept as one of the nine principles of war; US Army 2017, 6–27.
63.Colosi 1984, 27–30.
64.Corbetta 2010, 2015; Frazier and Dixon 2006; Melin 2014; Regan 2002; Shirkey 2009.
65.Quoted in Colosi 1984, 27.
66.Lebow 2020. See also Montgomery 2013. Hopmann (2012, 243–45) offers an example of this behavior in the lead-up to the Kosovo War.
67.Tal 2004, 395–96.
68.Maureen Dowd, “After the War: The White House; Bush, Urging Wider Peace, Hints at Pressure on Israel to Yield Land for Security,” New York Times, March 7, 1991.
69.Lebow 1996, 22.
70.Tom Perry, Jack Stubbs, and Estelle Shirbon, “Russia and Turkey Trade Accusations over Syria,” Reuters, February 3, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria/russia-and-turkey-trade-accusations-over-syria-idUSKCN0VC169.
71.Pillar 1983, 49–50.
72.Filson and Werner 2002, 2004; Powell 2004.
73.Arreguín-Toft 2001; Biddle 2004; Knorr 1956.
74.Freedman 1998; Sullivan 2007.
75.Hanska 2017; Triandafillov 1994.
76.Dahl 2013; Handel 1977; Luttwak 1987; Van Evera 1999.
77.Gray (2018, 7) speaks to the importance of time in conflict.
78.Quoted in Foch 1918, 81.
79.US Department of the Army 1994, 4–8.
80.Beardsley 2011; Regan 2002; Regan and Stam 2000.
81.This advantage may be especially appealing for weaker parties. See McMillan 1992; Tangredi 1985.
82.Sarah El Deeb and Jamey Keaten (Associated Press), “Syria’s Warring Parties Spar over Collapsing Cease-Fire,” Seattle Times, April 20, 2016, https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/activists-is-seizes-new-ground-in-eastern-syria/.
83.Maxwell 1970, 376.
84.Goertz, Diehl, and Balas 2016; Fazal 2007, 55; Min 2020.
85.Corbetta 2010; Greig 2001, 2005; Regan and Stam 2000; Wallensteen and Svensson 2014.
86.Aggestam 2006; Pugh 2009. Rubin (1992, 252) vividly remarks that “it is the whip of external pressure and the pain of unacceptable alternatives that drives disputants to the bargaining table.”
87.Iklé 1964, 53–54.
88.Michael Goldsmith, “More Fighting as Peace Talks Collapse,” Associated Press, March 11, 1987, https://apnews.com/article/13d5f6498fd89991e2454709164b545e.
89.Thatcher 1993, 213.
90.Bjork 1985.
91.Barbara Bibbo, “Analysis: Syria’s Peace Process and the Russian and US roles,” Al Jazeera, February 28, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/28/analysis-syrias-peace-process-and-the-russian-and-us-role.
92.Beardsley 2011, 38–40; Goldstein 2011, 186.
93.Allee and Huth 2006; Beardsley 2010; Conlon, Carnevale, and Ross 1994; Gent and Shannon 2010; Greig and Diehl 2005; Pruitt 1981; Pruitt and Johnson 1970; Simmons 2002.
94.Werner and Yuen 2005.
95.Wallihan 1998.
96.Ramsay 2017.
97.Slantchev 2003a; Smith 1998a; Smith and Stam 2003, 2004.
98.Blainey 1988, 56.
99.Calahan 1944; Lehmann and Zhukov 2019; Ramsay 2008; Smith 1995.
100.Filson and Werner 2002, 2004; Pillar 1983; Powell 2004; Reiter 2009; Slantchev 2003a.
101.Fortna 2004; Mattes and Savun 2010; Werner and Yuen 2005.
102.Ramsay 2008; Slantchev 2004.
103.Ruhe 2015. Phillipson (1916, 56) also notes that in many (Western) conflicts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the onset of a temporary armistice before and during talks was almost considered a “well-nigh established rule of international law.”
104.Pillar 1983, 41.
105.Substantial literature in military affairs attests to the importance of deception as a “force multiplier” and its use, particularly by weaker parties, to gain a temporary competitive advantage on the battlefield. For a sample, see Daniel and Herbig 1982; Gulsby 2010; Handel 1982; Joint Chiefs of Staff 2006; Lewicki 1983; and Stein 1982. My contention is not that deception is irrelevant in wartime diplomacy, but rather that insincere negotiations can take place even in the absence of deception.
106.Thucydides 1972, 334.
107.Vatcher 1958.
108.Asmussen 2008.
109.Janis and Mann 1977; Jervis 1976.
110.Tversky and Kahneman 1973; Walgrave and Dejaeghere 2017. Lake (2010/11) explores the limits of rationality in explaining the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War.
111.Jost et al. 2024; Kertzer et al. 2022.
112.McDermott 2004.
113.Kertzer, Rathbun, and Rathbun 2020; Pruitt and Olczak 1995.
114.Lanoszka and Hunzeker 2015.
115.Zartman 1989, 2000, 2001, 2022. Iji and Vuković (2023) curate a compilation of works interacting with Zartman’s original argument.
116.Holsti 1966.
117.Pruitt 2005; Zartman and de Soto 2010.
118.Kleiboer 1994; O’kane 2006; Pruitt 2005.
119.Greig 2001; Min 2021.
120.Zartman 2001, 9.
121.Walch (2016) attempts to extend ripeness theory to explain why parties choose to remain in or exit negotiations once they begin.
122.Vuković 2022; Zartman 2008.
123.Kuperman (2022) argues that highly capable third-party actors can engage in “muscular mediation,” through which they propose compromises and then coerce the stronger belligerent to accept this proposal. Beyond the general risk of conflict escalation, the theory I establish warns against this tactic, as negotiations borne of intense pressures are more likely to be insincere and abused for side effects.
124.Mastro 2019, 24–25; emphasis in the original.
2. Quantifying Two Centuries of War
1.These conflicts are listed by the Correlates of War (COW) Project, which defines an interstate war as a period of sustained combat involving regular armed forces of internationally recognized states where at least one thousand battle-related fatalities are sustained across all participating states. See Sarkees and Wayman 2010. Reiter, Stam, and Horowitz (2016a, 2016b) provide a revision of this conflict list. Lyall (2020) argues that the COW list of wars is incomplete and introduces an alternative dataset called Project Mars. Gibler and Miller (2022), however, identify several issues with Project Mars. The two most relevant here are that the dataset’s larger set of wars comes from pooling together different types of noninterstate wars that are already captured by other COW resources, and that Project Mars contains four fewer interstate wars than the COW Project does, without justification. Gibler and Miller conclude that the COW Inter-State War list is a highly reliable and comprehensive record.
2.For examples of civil war mediation datasets, see DeRouen, Bercovitch, and Pospieszna 2011 and Regan, Frank, and Aydin 2009.
3.Refer to Min 2020 for more details on sources.
4.Herring 1983.
5.Iklé 1964.
6.The fact that external negotiations are not the same as mediation also serves to distinguish my argument from that of Beardsley (2011).
7.White 1964, 374.
8.Dean 2007, 2.
9.Roberts 2014, 697.
10.Avirgan and Honey 1982, 84.
11.Dupuy 1987; Eggenberger 1985.
12.Clausewitz (1832) 1976, 210.
13.Dupuy (1987, 65) defines battles as “combat between major forces, each having opposing assigned or perceived operational missions, in which each side seeks to impose its will on the opponent by accomplishing its own mission, while preventing the opponent from achieving his.” Eggenberger (1985, iv) defines battles as “a general fight or encounter between hostile military forces … a confrontation between opposing armed forces that resulted in casualties or in a change in the military position.” Jaques (2007, xii) defines battles as “any clash between organised forces of combatants.”
14.Smith and Stam 2004.
15.Weisiger 2016b.
16.Reiter, Stam, and Horowitz (2016b) provide other examples of such discrepancies.
17.Slantchev 2003b; Smith 1998b; Smith and Stam 2004.
18.Castillo 2014; Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009; Hanami 2003.
19.Jaques 2007.
20.Smith 1998a; Smith and Stam 2004.
21.Clodfelter 2017, 425; Jaques 2007, 498.
22.For more on “victory” in warfare, see Bartholomees 2008 and Mandel 2006.
23.Glantz and House 2015, chaps. 4–6.
24.Dupuy 1987, 65.
25.Clodfelter 2017, 196; Eggenberger 1985, 337–38; Jaques 2007, 1943.
26.Collelo 1990, 196; Jaques 2007, 1798.
27.Slantchev 2003a; Smith 1998a; Smith and Stam 2003, 2004.
28.Shirkey and Weisiger 2012, 17.
29.Fortna 2004; Mattes and Savun 2010; Weisiger 2016b; Werner and Yuen 2005.
30.Weisiger 2016b.
31.The online appendix provides a similar overview of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, described in the introductory chapter.
32.Haythornthwaite 2004, 90.
33.Edmonds 1932, xiii.
34.Min 2020, 2021.
3. Fighting to Talk
1.Goertz, Diehl, and Balas 2016, 8. That said, Lee (2020) demonstrates that the decline in overt interstate violence since 1945 may belie the fact that states increasingly engage in strategies of subversion instead.
2.Wright 1924.
3.Mueller 2004.
4.Carter and Goemans 2011; Finnemore 2003; Zacher 2001. Altman (2020) shows that states have adopted to the territorial integrity norm by seizing smaller pieces of territory via fait accompli.
5.Fazal 2013, 2018; Morrow 2007.
6.Halperin 1961; Pauly 2018; Tannenwald 2007.
7.United Nations 1945, art. 39.
8.Pevehouse, Nordstrom, and Warnke 2004; Shannon 2009; Shannon, Morey, and Boehmke 2010; Winham 1977.
9.Hampson, Crocker, and Aall 2007.
10.See the online appendix for full results.
11.Comprehensive results from all models are in the online appendix.
12.The online appendix features more details.
13.See Hougaard 1999.
14.Jones and Metzger 2018; Metzger and Jones 2016.
15.My distinctions between victory/defeat and negotiated settlement are different from classifications that Allan Stam made in his influential book Win, Lose, or Draw. Stam (1996, 76) defines draws as situations where “both sides formally agree to cease fighting an internationally recognized and binding treaty,” which appears to align with what I call negotiated settlement. But he also codes wars where fighting ends after a long period of time as draws, even if no formal agreement is created. Additionally, any war where one side “benefits in the new territorial status quo after the war” (75) is considered to feature a winner, which means it cannot be classified as a draw even if territorial changes are codified in a diplomatic agreement. My conception of negotiated settlement thus includes cases that Stam may consider either a win/loss or a draw, depending on whether the war was actually concluded through a negotiated settlement and regardless of ultimate changes in territorial control.
16.Two of the 189 negotiation periods are not captured in the figure because the first day of war features negotiations.
17.This measure and the underlying battle data used to construct it are described in chapter 2.
18.Holsti 1991.
19.Slantchev 2004.
20.In wars with more than two states, I consider a war to feature contiguity if any two belligerents on opposing sides share a border.
21.Bennett and Stam 1996; Gartner and Siverson 1996; Reiter and Stam 2002.
22.Singer 1987.
23.Some scholarship has questioned the utility of CINC ratios as a measure of relative power, pointing out that CINC ratios are a poor predictor of dispute outcomes; see Beckley 2018. I nonetheless rely on CINC ratios for three reasons. First, the purpose of the CINC ratio in my analysis is to roughly capture observable prewar capabilities—not to successfully predict the ultimate outcome of the war. Second, some alternative measures, such as the material military power measure by Souva (2023), do not cover as many wars or countries as CINC ratios do. Third, the most comprehensive alternative measure of prewar expectations—the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score introduced by Carroll and Kenkel (2019)—is not meant to be used in statistical models where the outcome variable reflects some result of a conflict. Even so, the online appendix replicates all the quantitative analysis in this chapter using DOE scores and shows that my results are largely unchanged.
24.Choi 2004; Reiter and Stam 2002; Schultz 1999; Valentino, Huth, and Croco 2010; Weisiger 2016b. Desch (2002) and Farber and Gowa (1995) are two dissenting voices.
25.Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers 2016.
26.Halperin 1961; Waltz 1979.
27.Nuclear data come from Jo and Gartzke 2007.
28.Choi 2004; Morey 2016; Min 2022; Weisiger 2016a; Weitsman 2014; Wolford 2017.
29.Bayer 2006.
30.Snyder 1984.
31.Descriptive statistics for all these variables are in the online appendix.
32.The average measure of issue salience in pre-1945 wars is 1.877, and in post-1945 wars, it is 2.229. A t-test suggests that this difference in means is weakly statistically significant (p = 0.081).
33.See Weisiger 2016b for a deeper discussion of different views regarding the informational mechanism. My finding is consistent with what Weisiger calls the “informational obsolescence” perspective (351).
34.The online appendix features full statistical tables that correspond with the coefficient plots. It also includes the results from multistate models that use thirty-day and ninety-day windows (instead of the sixty-day window used in the main analysis).
35.This figure is essentially the same as figure 2.2 in chapter 2 but is further disaggregated by historical era.
36.We calculate this by noting that the estimated coefficient in figure 3.5 is 1.977, and exp(1.977) = 7.221. All analogous results mentioned in this chapter are calculated similarly.
37.Similarly, Min (2020) shows that negotiations in pre-1945 wars have a highly positive and statistically significant impact on war termination but that these effects disappear in post-1945 conflicts.
38.Organski 1958; Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey 1972; Wohlforth 2009.
39.Melin 2011, 2014; Wallensteen and Svensson 2014.
40.Greig 2005.
41.Duursma 2018; Frei 1976.
42.Bercovitch 1991.
43.Butterworth 1978; Princen 1992.
44.A model that includes war termination would feature seven possible transitions, including one that is observed only eight times.
45.A simple chi-square test of independence also provides no evidence of a meaningful difference (p = 0.744).
46.Regarding the timing of mediation, see Beardsley 2011; Bercovitch 1992; Kleiboer and ’t Hart 1995; Melin 2011; Regan and Stam 2000; Ruhe 2015. Note, however, that my argument regarding third parties goes beyond strict mediation efforts.
47.Bercovitch and Gartner 2006; Gartner and Bercovitch 2006; Gartner 2011. Beardsley (2008) and Greig (2005) discuss selection bias in mediation research. Fortna (2008) makes a similar argument regarding peacekeeping missions.
48.Bercovitch 1999; Bercovitch and Fretter 2004; Bercovitch and Jackson 2001; Gartner and Bercovitch 2006.
49.Given that the ICM dataset only covers the years 1945 through 1999, my analysis in this section omits the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
50.Melin 2014.
51.Egypt and the United Kingdom fought in the 1882 conquest of Egypt and the 1956 Sinai War, but the latter also involved France and Israel fighting alongside the United Kingdom. China and the United States clashed in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion and the 1950–53 Korean War, but several other states joined the United States in the Boxer Rebellion, and both sides were multilateral in the Korean conflict. Finally, Morocco and Spain clashed twice before 1945—once in 1859–60 and again in 1909–10—and then in the 1957–58 Ifni War, but France joined Spain in the Ifni War.
52.One other war involving Greece and Turkey is the Second Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22. I instead focus on the 1897 conflict because the 1919–22 war concerned a much larger expanse of territory and erupted in the immediate aftermath of World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
53.Hatzis 2018.
54.See Dilke and Botassi 1897 for a useful account of these events.
55.Tatsios 1984, 93.
56.Anderson and Hershey 1918, 214.
57.Tatsios 1984, 98–99.
58.Freese 1897, 22.
59.Ekinci 2006, 65.
60.The Correlates of War records the start date of this conflict as February 15, 1897, the day that George I, king of Greece, proclaimed the occupation of Crete. Most treatments of the war, however, use April 17, as this is the day that diplomatic relations were severed and the Ottomans declared war on Greece. For example, refer to Clodfelter 2017, 196; or Phillips and Axelrod 2005, 540. The war is commonly called the Thirty Days’ War in recognition of the fact that the war ended on May 19.
61.Ekinci 2006, 73–74.
62.Jaques 2007, 727.
63.Vatikiotis (2014, 29–30) summarizes diary entries written by Ioannis Metaxas, who fought in the 1897 war and later served as prime minister from 1936 to 1941.
64.Tatsios 1984, 217.
65.Showalter 2014, 732.
66.Rose 1897, 173.
67.Documents diplomatiques 1897, documents 648 and 649 (pp. 343–44). My translation from the French.
68.Clodfelter 2017, 196–97.
69.Ekinci 2006, 85.
70.Clodfelter 2017, 197.
71.Phillipson 1916, 61.
72.Phillips and Axelrod 2005, 540.
73.Tatsios 1984, 119.
74.Mazower 1992, 895; Miller 2009, 4.
75.Ekinci 2006, 83.
76.Michalopoulos 2013, 73.
77.Croco (2011), Stanley (2009), and Weisiger (2016b) provide broader theories and evidence regarding leadership changes and conflict termination.
78.Vatikiotis 2014, 30.
79.Rosenbaum 1970, 621–22.
80.United Nations 1960.
81.Ker-Lindsay 2015, 19–20.
82.Boroweic 2000, 47; Ker-Lindsay 2015, 20.
83.Markides 1977, 78.
84.Asmussen 2008, 13–14.
85.Dodd 2010, 111–14.
86.Asmussen (2008, 75) notes that Ecevit’s diplomatic actions were heavily reported in the Turkish press, perhaps helping to justify the war option.
87.Asmussen 2008, 95.
88.United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Res. 353 (20 July 1974), UN Doc. S/RES/353.
89.UPI, “NATO Urges Parley on Future of Cyprus,” New York Times, July 23, 1974.
90.Nan Robertson, “Ankara Claiming Permanent Base,” New York Times, July 23, 1974.
91.Asmussen 2008, 154–55.
92.Asmussen 2008, 161.
93.United Nations (1974, 1277–78) provides the full text of this joint declaration.
94.Clodfelter 2017, 543.
95.Asmussen 2008, 171–72.
96.S. J. L. Olver to A. C. Goodison, July 15, 1974, FCO 9/1907, National Archives of the UK, Kew, Richmond.
97.Hamilton and Salmon 2006, no. 52.
98.Paul Martin, “Villagers Tell of Cyprus Atrocities,” The Times (London), August 5, 1974.
99.“Transcript of Telephone Conversation between President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger,” August 10, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 30, Greece; Cyprus; Turkey, 1973–1976, document 127, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v30/d127.
100.Kaufman 2007, 207.
101.Asmussen 2008, 194.
102.Hamilton and Salmon 2006, no. 70.
103.“Cyprus Fighting Resumes as Peace Talks Collapse; U.N. Called into Session,” New York Times, August 14, 1974.
104.Kliot and Mansfeld 1997, 497.
105.Clodfelter 2017, 543; Jaques 2007, 556.
106.Demetriades et al. 1992, 9.
107.Asmussen 2008, 155.
108.On July 21, Kissinger personally called Ecevit, who had been a former student of his at Harvard, and informed him that the United States would take all its nuclear weapons away from the border between Greece and Turkey if Turkey refused a ceasefire. See Warner 2009, 138.
109.Archival evidence suggests that Kissinger was quite inclined to allow Turkey to control one-third of Cyprus. See Mallinson and Fouskas 2017.
110.Hamilton and Salmon 2006, no. 63.
111.“Minutes of Meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group,” July 21, 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 30, Greece; Cyprus; Turkey, 1973–1976, document 110, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v30/d110.
112.Craig R. Whitney, “Turkish Plan for Cyprus Disrupts Talks in Geneva,” New York Times, August 13, 1974.
113.Asmussen 2008, 103.
114.“Minutes of Meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group.”
115.Asmussen 2008, 162. UN Security Council Resolution 355, adopted on August 1, reaffirmed support for Resolution 353 but did little to subdue Turkey.
116.“Turkey Spoils Her Case,” The Times (London), August 5, 1974.
117.“Cyprus Fighting Resumes.”
118.Polyviou 1980, 159.
119.Constandinos 2008, 268.
120.Birand 1985, 79–80.
121.Asmussen 2008, 191; Kurtulgan 2019, 208.
122.Callaghan 1987, 348.
123.Asmussen 2008, 156–57.
124.Asmussen 2008, 188.
4. Talking to Fight
1.Overdispersion tests indicate that Poisson models are appropriate for analysis; p-values equal or are very close to 1 across all models.
2.Leatherdale 1983, 155.
3.The Jaccard similarity coefficient is a commonly used 0-to-1 measure that gauges the similarity of two sets of binary vectors. The Jaccard similarity coefficient for my negotiation and ceasefire variables is practically 0.
4.Slantchev 2003a; Wagner 2000.
5.If there are fewer than sixty days before or after one of these negotiation periods, I simply use all observations that do exist.
6.In the online appendix, I show results using the thirty-day and ninety-day windows.
7.Diehl 2004; Gartner and Siverson 1996; Wang and Ray 1994.
8.Luttwak 1987; Van Evera 1999.
9.Clausewitz (1832) 1976, 198.
10.Sun-Tzu 2010, 17.
11.Coe 2018; McMichael 1990; Schub 2020; Sullivan 2012; Weisiger 2016b. Goemans (2000b) and Reiter (2009) explore how prewar expectations and demands evolve in response to information from fighting.
12.Singer 1987.
13.Hegre 2008.
14.Refer to chapter 3, note 23, for further discussion and justification of the use of CINC scores to gauge prewar expectations. Additional results in the online appendix show that a measure of inconsistency using the Dispute Expectation Outcomes scores yields similar findings.
15.Cannizzo 1980; Whitman 1941.
16.I provide more details and full results of these placebo tests in the online appendix.
17.Duffy 1997, 223.
18.Engel-Janosi 1950, 130.
19.Louis Napoleon would soon assume the title of “Prince-President.” Upon orchestrating a self-coup and becoming emperor in 1852, he took the name Napoleon III.
20.Trevelyan 1912, 145.
21.Clodfelter 2017, 177.
22.Showalter 2014, 590.
23.Robertson 1952, 372.
24.“Assemblée nationale: Séance du jeudi 10 mai,” Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, May 11, 1849; translation from Trevelyan 1912, 146.
25.Robertson 1952, 372.
26.Ward, Prothero, and Leathes 1909, 122–23.
27.“Assemblée nationale: Séance du mercredi 9 mai,” Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, May 10, 1849; translation from Trevelyan 1912, 146. This ruse was not known publicly until June 9, at which point France had begun a siege on Rome. See Dwight 1851, 147–48.
28.Trevelyan 1912, 147–48.
29.Dwight 1851, 147.
30.Quoted in Smith 1895, 35.
31.Marraro 1943, 477. This quotation comes from a message sent to US secretary of state John Clayton. See also Robertson 1952, 375.
32.Clodfelter 2017, 177.
33.Quoted in Smith 1895, 29.
34.Dwight 1851, 149–50. The Roman Assembly went into official adjournment for the first time on May 18, the day the negotiated ceasefire began, based on the triumvirate’s belief that hostilities between Rome and Paris were effectively over.
35.While the Correlates of War (COW) Project lists this conflict as an interstate war, it is unlikely that the conflict satisfies the one-thousand-casualty threshold that COW uses to identify interstate wars. Reiter, Stam, and Horowitz (2016b) exclude this war from their dataset for this reason. Nonetheless, I analyze this case because it still represents an important example of a modern-day interstate conflict.
36.Scheina 2003, 125.
37.Palmer 1997, 117.
38.St John 1999, 5–10.
39.Militarized Interstate Dispute 1154; see Gibler 2018, 140–41.
40.Gibler 2018, 141.
41.Marcella 1995, 6.
42.Palmer 1997, 113. See also St John 1996.
43.Militarized Interstate Dispute 2119; see Gibler 2018, 143–44.
44.Sarkees and Wayman (2010, 180) indicate that the war began on January 9, 1995, because of “an exchange of fire” between the two sides. Other sources, however, indicate that the January 9 encounter involved only troop exchanges without violence; for example, see Spencer 1998, 137. Most accounts identify January 26 as the first day of active hostilities. I adopt this latter view in this case study.
45.Spencer 1998, 139.
46.At the outset of the conflict, both civilian governments may not have known what their militaries were doing. See Bonilla 1999, 69; Herz and Nogueira 2002, 45–46; Palmer 1997, 119.
47.Galo Leoro, “Annex: Letter Dated 27 January 1995 from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador Addressed to the President of the Security Council,” January 28, 1995, United Nations Document Symbol S/1995/87, United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/167722.
48.Eduardo Ponce, “Annex: Letter Dated 28 January 1995 from the Deputy Minister of International Policy and Secretary General for External Relations of Peru Addressed to the President of the Security Council,” January 29, 1995, United Nations Document Symbol S/1995/89, United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/168790.
49.James Brooke, “Ecuador and Peru against Skirmish over an Old Disputed Border,” New York Times, January 29, 1995.
50.James Bone, “UN Makes Guarantors Responsible for Peru Deal,” The Times (London), January 31, 1995.
51.Gabriella Gamini, “War Intensifies as Peru and Ecuador Launch Air Raids,” The Times (London), January 31, 1995.
52.Reuters, “Peru Vows to Pull Back Tanks,” The Times (London), February 2, 1995.
53.Mac Margolis and William R. Long, “Mediators Halt Peru-Ecuador Talks,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1995. See also Mares and Palmer 2012, 45.
54.Reuters, “Ecuador Accuses Peru of New Raid,” The Times (London), February 4, 1995.
55.Some reports indicated that Peruvian soldiers got lost in the jungle and took eight days to meander back to their base. See Gabriel Escobar, “Peru, Ecuador Weigh Peace Terms,” Washington Post, February 17, 1995.
56.Reuters, “Ecuador Border Dispute Escalates,” The Times (London), February 13, 1995. Also see Reuters, “Peru ‘Shoots Down Two Ecuador Jets,’ ” The Times (London), February 14, 1995.
57.Tincopa 2021, 44–45.
58.Greene (2008) provides a highly enlightening account of the indigenous dimensions to the disputed territory.
59.A separate raid against the Ecuadorian outpost at Coangos that same day also failed; see Spencer 1998, 144.
60.Reuters, “Peru ‘Shoots Down Two Ecuador Jets.’ ” Peruvian troop strengths were indeed increased on this day; see the “What’s News—Worldwide” column in the Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1995, A1.
61.Fournier Coronado 1995, 169.
62.James Brooke, “Peru and Ecuador Halt Fighting along Border, Claiming Victory,” New York Times, February 15, 1995.
63.Monte Hayes, “Peru’s [sic] Declares Unilateral Cease-Fire in Border War,” Associated Press, February 14, 1995.
64.Manrique 1999, 9; Spencer 1998, 149. Contemporaneous reporting on control of outposts was unclear for two reasons. First, the harsh jungle environment made reporting inherently difficult. Second, the two countries accused one another of fabricating “false” versions of the outposts and leading journalists to these phantom outposts to claim victory. See Escobar, “Peru, Ecuador Weigh Peace Terms.”
65.Reuters, “Mortar Fire Shatters Truce,” The Times (London), February 15, 1995.
66.Gabriel Escobar, “Peru, Ecuador Sign Agreement to End Fighting,” Washington Post, February 18, 1995.
67.Spencer 1998, 144–45.
68.Spencer 1998, 145–46.
69.Associated Press, “Ecuador Says 13 Killed in Peru Clash,” Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1995. The number was later revised to fourteen; see Klepak 1998, 99.
70.Núñez 2014, 161.
71.William R. Long, “Peru-Ecuador Border Clash Drives Off Peace Team,” Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1995.
72.Tribune Wires, “Mortar Shells Miss Peruvian President,” Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1995.
73.“Annex: Press Release Issued on 28 February 1995 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador,” March 2, 1995, United Nations Document Symbol S/1995/173, United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/175070.
74.Palmer 1997, 123.
75.Viatori 2015, 197.
76.Quoted in Mares and Palmer 2012, 38.
77.Mares and Palmer 2012, 38; Weidner 1996, 55.
78.Jenne 2016, 180; Marcella 1999, 233.
79.Marcella and Downes 1999, 4.
80.Klepak 1998, 100–101.
81.Spencer 1998.
82.James Brooke, “Peruvians at Disadvantage in Border War,” New York Times, February 8, 1995. See also Mares 1996, 117.
83.Klepak 1998, 95–96.
84.Herz and Nogueira 2002, 45.
85.Brooke, “Peruvians at Disadvantage.” See also Mares 1996, 117.
86.Mac Margolis and William R. Long, “Brazil Leader Trying to Mediate Border Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1995.
87.Mares 1996, 118.
88.Reuters, “Ecuador Rejects Cease-Fire Plan OK’ed by Peru,” The Sun (Baltimore), February 7, 1995.
89.Quoted in Margolis and Long, “Mediators Halt Peru-Ecuador Talks.”
90.Associated Press, “Ecuador Argues Its Case,” South China Morning Post, February 7, 1995.
91.See the “What’s News—Worldwide” column in the Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1995, A1.
92.Reuters, “Ecuador Accuses Peru of New Raid,” The Times (London), February 4, 1995.
93.For example, when Peru began a new assault on Tiwinza on February 22, in direct violation of the Declaration of Itamaraty, President Fujimori claimed that his military was merely responding to Ecuadorian shelling. See Reuters, “Ecuador, Peru Truce Violated,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 23, 1995.
94.Spencer 1998, 147.
95.Mares and Palmer 2012, 39.
96.García Gallegos 1999, 200.
97.Herz and Nogueira 2002, 51.
98.Escobar, “Peru, Ecuador Weigh Peace Terms.”
99.Simmons 1999, 32.
100.Marcella and Downes 1999, 3. For more on faits accomplis, refer to Altman (2017, 2020), whose Land Grabs dataset lists the Cenepa Valley War as a fait accompli (conflict 73).
101.Kakabadse, Caillaux, and Dumas 2016, 820.
102.Weidner 1996, 52.
5. Fighting Words in the First Arab-Israeli War
1.Gene Currivan, “The Jews Rejoice,” New York Times, May 15, 1948.
2.The first interstate war to occur after the UN’s founding was the First Kashmir War between India and Pakistan, which began in 1947.
3.I briefly discuss the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War in chapter 1.
4.Schneer 2010.
5.Stein 2009, 11.
6.The Yishuv had already established a sizable government, to the extent that the State Department observed “virtually a state at the threshold of birth.” See Jensehaugen, Heian-Engdal, and Waage 2012, 283.
7.Kimche and Kimche 1960, 162. See Shlaim 1995 and Rogan and Shlaim 2007 for more on Arab-Israeli relations.
8.Morris 2008, 197.
9.Stein 2009, 30.
10.Tal 2004, 164.
11.Tal 2004, 160.
12.Karsh 2002, 50.
13.Kimche and Kimche 1960, 161.
14.Quoted in Morris 2008, 198.
15.Bregman 2000, 16; Luttwak and Horowitz 1983, 30.
16.Quoted in Tal 2004, 156.
17.Quoted in Morris 2008, 253–54.
18.Quoted in Lorch 1961, 152.
19.Peter Grose, “Jerusalem’s Old Jewish Quarter Is Losing Its Arab Character,” New York Times, May 29, 1971, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/05/29/81947827.html?pageNumber=3.
20.Shlaim 2007, 91.
21.Clodfelter 2017, 571; Tal 2004, 229–30.
22.Sachar 1976, 328.
23.Tal 2004, 205.
24.Ilan 1989, 86.
25.Ilan 1989, 116–17.
26.This logic coincides with broader claims made by Kaplow (2016) and Walter (2009).
27.In a July 1949 speech following the war, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett reflected the sentiments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating that Israel would not make any “declarations about our desire for peace, since the Arab world interprets them as a sign of weakness and as an indication of our willingness to surrender.” Quoted in Caplan 1997, 106.
28.Ilan 1989, 74; Touval 1982, 40.
29.Ilan 1989, 91.
30.Lorch 1961, 250; Sachar 1976, 328.
31.Haganah Information Service, “HIS Information, Daily Precis,” June 11, 1948, HA 105/94, quoted in Morris 2008, 267.
32.Sachar 1976, 327.
33.Quoted in Sachar 1976, 327. Carmel’s characterization of this respite is further evidence that the Israelis were militarily exhausted but were not in a position to unilaterally stop fighting to recover themselves.
34.Stein 2009, 36–37.
35.Shlaim 1995, 294. The number would rise to eighty-eight thousand by October and ninety-six thousand by December. See Bregman 2000, 16.
36.Bell 1966, 232. On June 11, approximately sixty thousand Jewish and Arab troops existed in Palestine. By the time the truce ended prematurely on July 8, this number had increased to one hundred thousand. See Karsh 2002, 64.
37.Slonim 1979, 498.
38.An assessment submitted by the Central Intelligence Agency on August 5, 1948, underscored the belief that a global arms embargo would “keep the war on a small scale and of a more or less local nature.” See “Report by the Central Intelligence Agency,” August 5, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, document 512, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d512.
39.See especially Ilan 1996, chap. 6, which emphasizes the impact of Western European weapons in shifting the war in Israel’s favor.
40.Morris 2008, 268.
41.Lorch 1961, 254.
42.Morris 2008, 269.
43.Folke Bernadotte, “Text of Suggestions Presented by the United Nations Mediator on Palestine to the Two Parties on 28 June 1948,” July 3, 1948, United Nations Document Symbol S/863, United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/470499.
44.United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 53 (1948),” July 7, 1948, United Nations Document Symbol S/RES/53(1948), United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/280506.
45.Ilan 1989, 125.
46.Ilan 1989, 139–40.
47.Morris 2008, 270–71. The Jordanians were privately opposed to renewed hostilities but did not want to attract attention by being a sole dissenting vote; see Glubb 1957, 150; Shlaim 1995, 299–300. Throughout the war, the Arab League was hampered by a lack of military and diplomatic coordination. Pollack (2002, 2019) offers an overview of Arab armies’ relative ineffectiveness.
48.Morris 2008, 278–85.
49.Morris (2008, 293–94) provides a detailed summary of Operation Dani and how goals shifted over time.
50.Karsh 2002, 64.
51.Persson 1979, 166.
52.Tal 2004, 345–46.
53.Morris 2008, 296.
54.Tal 2004, 346–48.
55.Tal 2004, 358–59.
56.Ilan 1989, 161.
57.Tal 2004, 363.
58.On July 26, Israeli minister of foreign affairs Moshe Sharett stated that Israel would be willing to participate in a roundtable mediation effort if the Arab states would recognize Israel as an equal state. This offer was rejected on September 6. See Persson 1979, 191.
59.Tal 2004, 350.
60.Persson 1979, 201–2.
61.An Egyptian official initiated a peace feeler with Israel on September 21, suggesting a bilateral agreement. Ben-Gurion refused, concealed this development from his cabinet, and proceeded to develop plans for a military attack. See Shlaim 1990, 229–31.
62.Stein 2009, 44.
63.Shlaim 1990, 228.
64.See Gradus 1978 for deeper discussion of the historical and geological importance of Beersheba.
65.Karsh 2002, 68.
66.Waage 2011, 284.
67.Tal 2004, 387.
68.United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 61 (1948),” November 4, 1948, United Nations Document Symbol S/RES/61(1948), United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/112005.
69.Tal 2004, 396.
70.Sarkees and Wayman 2010, 147.
71.Neff 1995, 93.
72.The Correlates of War marks January 6, 1949, as the official end of the war, due to the ceasefire between Israel and Egypt. I include the subsequent mediation at Rhodes in my discussion of the war’s overall resolution.
73.Bell 1966, 241.
74.Shlaim 1995, 300.
75.Quoted in Caplan 1997, 41.
76.Morris 2008, 376.
77.“The Acting Secretary of State to the Special Representative of the United States in Israel (McDonald),” December 30, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, vol. 5, part 2, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, document 858, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d858.
78.Records now show that a British intervention would have been unlikely. See Tal 2004, 456.
79.Ben-Dror (2020) provides an effective summary of the Rhodes conference.
80.McManus 2023; Ramsbotham and Schiff 2018; Zartman 1997.
81.Shlaim 1995, 294.
82.Garfinkle 2015, 61.
83.Mark Landler, “In Middle East Peace Talks, Clinton Faces a Crucial Test,” New York Times, September 4, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/world/middleeast/05clinton.html.
84.Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kerschner, “Arc of a Failed Deal: How Nine Months of Mideast Talks Ended in Disarray,” New York Times, April 28, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/world/middleeast/arc-of-a-failed-deal-how-nine-months-of-mideast-talks-ended-in-dissarray.html.
85.Ramsbotham and Schiff 2018.
86.See Rudoren and Kerschner, “Arc of a Failed Deal.”
6. The “Talking War” in Korea
1.Carson 2016; Huff and Schub 2021; Mastro 2019, chap. 2; Mercer 2013; Slantchev 2010; Stanley 2009.
2.Previous scholars have applied content analysis methods to international negotiation transcripts to study bargaining stages and dynamics. See Druckman 2023, chap. 11, for an example.
3.Stewart 2005, 221.
4.Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue 1993, 146.
5.Fehrenbach 1963, 108.
6.United Nations Security Council. “Resolution 84 (1950),” July 7, 1950, United Nations Document Symbol S/RES/84(1950), United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/112027.
7.Tucker 2010, 331.
8.In a meeting between President Truman and General MacArthur on October 15, Truman asked about the likelihood of Chinese intervention in the conflict. MacArthur responded that there was “very little” chance of such an event. See Nichols 2000, 39.
9.Whiting 1968, 94.
10.Hannings 2007, 632.
11.Clodfelter 2017, 659–60.
12.Taliaferro 2004, 209.
13.Pillar 1983, 68.
14.Quoted in Kennan 1972, 28–29.
15.“Memorandum by Mr. Lucius D. Battle, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State,” December 4, 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 7, Korea, document 959, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d959.
16.Zhu 2001, 27.
17.Zhu 2001, 27.
18.“The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State,” December 9, 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 7, Korea, document 1017, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d1017.
19.For more information on the proposal and the strategic considerations behind China’s refusal to accept the ceasefire group’s terms, see Chen 2018; Zhihua and Xia 2011.
20.Zartman 2000.
21.Mastro 2019, 47–49.
22.“13 June 1951 Handwritten Letter from Mao Zedong to Gao Gang and Kim Il Sung,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 6/7 (1995/96): 61. The Communist states likely sought another party to bring up talks in order to save face; see Stueck 1995, 217.
23.“Editorial Note,” n.d., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 7, part 1, Korea and China, document 355, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951v07p1/d355. The term “third party” may feel suspect in this context, given that the Soviets were actively dictating China’s involvement in the Korean War. Regardless, the Soviet Union was officially a nonbelligerent at the time, and Malik also made his statement in his capacity as president of the Security Council.
24.Stueck 1995, 216.
25.Stueck 1995, 209.
26.US Department of State 1957, 2637.
27.Mastro 2019, 50.
28.Truman 1955, 438.
29.“The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Gifford) to the Secretary of State,” November 30, 1951, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 7, part 1, Korea and China, document 757, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951v07p1/d757. During a conversation between Stalin, Kim Il-sung, and Zhou Enlai in September 1952, Kim Il-sung stated clearly that “in view of the serious situation in which the Korean people have found themselves we are interested in the quickest possible conclusion of an armistice.” See “Record of a Conversation between Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Pak Heon-yeong, Zhou Enlai, and Peng Dehuai,” September 4, 1952, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, f. 45, o. 1, d. 348, ll. 71–82, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114936.
30.Joy would step down from his position as senior UNC delegate in May 1952. Major General William Harrison Jr. assumed the role through the remainder of the war.
31.Tucker 2010, 502–3.
32.Murray 1953, 982.
33.Hermes 1966, 39.
34.Stueck 1995, 230–31.
35.Ridgway 1967, 182–83.
36.Quoted in Toner 1973, 97.
37.Hermes 1966, 507.
38.The line of contact at the time is very similar to the territorial borders between the two Korean states today.
39.Joy stated this plainly during a speech on April 29, 1953: “Instead of showing good faith they dragged their feet at every opportunity and used the thirty days of grace to dig in and stabilize their battle line.” See Joy 1978, 5.
40.Carson 2016; 2018, chap. 5. See also Brune 1998.
41.Vatcher 1958, 109–13.
42.“Twentieth Meeting of Staff Officers on Details of Agreement on Agenda Item 3, Held at Pan Mun Jom, 16 February 1952,” February 16, 1952, United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953, Record Group 331, Set T1152, Roll 6, National Archives, College Park, MD.
43.Item 5 was settled in short order at the start of 1952. Both delegations saw the item as being largely insubstantial.
44.The UNC screened POWs in April 1952 and found that about 40,000 out of 132,000 total POWs would refuse to be repatriated; see Hermes 1966, 171. Chang (2020) revises the predominant view that many Communist POWs willingly chose to refuse repatriation.
45.Tierney 2017, 131–32. Truman said, “We will not buy an armistice by turning over human beings for slaughter or slavery.” Quoted in Stanley 2009, 158.
46.The fact that the Communist states were not parties to the Geneva Convention weakened their standing to make this charge.
47.Eisenhower’s effect on the armistice agreement remains a matter of debate. Calingaert (1988), Eisenhower (1963, 178–81), and Shepley (1956) make the affirmative case; Dingman (1988), Friedman (1975), and Keefer (1986) make the negative case.
48.Boose 2000; Weathersby 1998; Weathersby 2004, 84–85. For more on how leadership changes appear to help break logjams during protracted conflicts, see Croco 2011; Stanley 2009; Weisiger 2016b.
49.In the UNC proposal, any POWs refusing to be repatriated would be transferred to a Neutral Nations Repatriation Committee for ninety days, during which representatives of China and North Korea could try to persuade them to return. See Boose 2000, 27.
50.Some recent scholarship suggests that the UNC may have implicitly allowed this release. See Chae 2017.
51.See Mastro 2019, chap. 2. Reiter (2009, 83) states that “the remainder of the war, from mid- 1951 to mid-1953, can be characterized straightforwardly… . On the diplomatic front, a slow dribble of concessions emanated from both sides, eventually culminating in an armistice in July 1953.”
52.My work represents a complementary piece to the analysis of the Korean War by Mastro (2019). Her exploration of why the Chinese opted to adopt an open diplomatic posture concludes that “the decision to talk is independent from the decision to settle, and the costly conversations framework seeks to explain the former, not the course of negotiations once they begin” (51).
53.Edwards 2006, 1951.
54.This statistic comes from daily operations reports filed by the UNC, which I describe in greater detail later in this chapter.
55.Zhu 2001, 158.
56.Lindesay Parrott, “Allies Reiterate Final Truce Stand,” New York Times, June 13, 1952, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/06/13/84323792.html?pageNumber=3. Belligerents also did not want to be blamed for ending negotiations. In instructions sent to the UNC delegation on November 28, 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized that “the decision to cease discussion of an armistice must be made by Communists and not the UNC.” See “The Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Far East (Ridgway),” November 28, 1951, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 7, part 1, Korea and China, document 748, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951v07p1/d748. The UNC’s decision to indefinitely suspend talks in October 1952 came after multiple weeks of posturing to publicly signal that the Communists were the obstinate party.
57.Joy 1955, 168–69. See also Hermes 1966, 29.
58.Zhu 2001, 60.
59.Vatcher 1958, 67.
60.Xia 2006, 55.
61.Weathersby 1998, 179.
62.Matray (2012) further argues that much of the bitter tone that negotiations took was spurred by the UNC’s opening proposals, which the Communists saw as intentionally humiliating.
63.Foot 1990, 51.
64.“VKP(b) CC Politburo Decision with Approved Message Filippov (Stalin) to Mao Zedong,” November 19, 1951, Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, f. 3, op. 65, d. 828 [9], ll. 42–43, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110833; “Ciphered Telegram No. 25902 from Beijing, Mao Zedong to Cde. Filippov [Stalin],” November 14, 1951, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, f. 45, op. 1, d. 342, ll. 16–19, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113013.
65.Zhu 2001, 59.
66.Craig and George 1995, 234.
67.Hermes 1966, 110. See also Hastings 1987, 267.
68.Record Group 333 (Records of International Military Agencies), Set T1152 (United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953) (microfilm).
69.Coverage of UNC reports ends on June 30, 1953, which is twenty-seven days prior to the armistice taking effect.
70.These terms are mutually exclusive to each category; enemy capture is an instance of a loss, while any use of the word capture not preceded by enemy is an instance of a gain.
71.The measures of gains and losses have a correlation of 0.260 at the daily level.
72.Clodfelter 2017, 664.
73.The entirety of negotiation transcripts totals over 1,580,000 words.
74.“Summary of Proceedings, Twenty-Third Session, 17th Meeting at Pan Mun Jom, Sub-delegation on Agenda Item 2, Military Armistice Conference,” November 10, 1951, United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953, Record Group 331, Set T1152, Roll 3, National Archives, College Park, MD.
75.“Transcript of Proceedings, 114th Session, 88th Meeting at Pan Mun Jom, Military Armistice Conference,” August 3, 1952, United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953, Record Group 331, Set T1152, Roll 2, National Archives, College Park, MD.
76.“Eighteenth Meeting of Staff Officers on Details of Agreement of Agenda Item 3, Held at Pan Mun Jom, 14 February 1952,” February 14, 1952, United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953, Record Group 331, Set T1152, Roll 6, National Archives, College Park, MD.
77.“Transcript of Proceedings, Eighty-Fifth Session, 59th Meeting at Pan Mun Jom, Military Armistice Conference,” June 17, 1952, United Nations Command Korean Armistice Negotiations, 1951–1953, Record Group 331, Set T1152, Roll 2, National Archives, College Park, MD.
78.See Katagiri and Min 2019 for more information and an application of a comparable technique to study diplomacy during the Berlin Crisis.
79.Full sets of performance metrics for all candidate models are in the online appendix.
80.Refer to Breiman 2001 and Chen, Liaw, and Breiman 2004 for more technical details.
81.Using cross-validation tests, I find that a probability threshold of 0.56 is ideal for determining whether statements are sincere or insincere.
82.All four example statements provided earlier in the chapter were correctly coded as being sincere or insincere by the supervised learning model.
83.Hermes 1966, 160.
84.My balanced random forest model predicts that the speech act featuring this proposal is sincere.
85.A chi-squared test finds this difference to be highly statistically significant (p << 0.01).
86.There are 1,374 unique speaker-meeting-days in the data.
87.Orr and Fainer 1951.
88.Gaubatz 1991.
89.Plenary sessions serve as the baseline category. Descriptive statistics for all variables are in the online appendix.
90.Full statistical results for all models in this chapter are presented in the online appendix.
91.Almost 12 percent of statements (1,588 statements) were exchanged following Stalin’s death.
92.Hermes 1966, 508; Kim 2012. See Downes 2008 and Valentino, Huth, and Croco 2006 for more discussion on the practice of targeting civilians in war.
93.The estimated coefficient for Communist ground losses is significant at the 90 percent level.
94.Zhu 2001, 89.
95.Rummel 1998, chap. 10.
96.Clark 1954, 257.
97.William L. Langer, “Evaluation of Malik’s Speech of 23 June 1951,” June 25, 1951, Central Intelligence Agency Office of National Estimates, CIA-RDP79S01011A 000400020023–9.
98.Joy 1955, 166.
99.Boose 2000.
Conclusion
1.As I noted in chapter 6, we now know that the Communist delegation chose to resume talks using the UNC’s previous proposal because of the Soviet Union’s insistence. See Boose 2000.
2.United Press, “Red Drive in Korea Blunted by U.N. Units, Van Fleet Says,” New York Times, October 8, 1952, late city edition.
3.Greg MacGregor, “Panmunjom Talks Viewed Hopefully,” New York Times, April 19, 1953.
4.Robert Kee and Richard Lindley (hosts), BBC, “TV Interview for BBC1 Panorama (2010Z) (Falklands),” Margaret Thatcher Foundation, April 26, 1982, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104783.
5.Dimitar Dilkoff, “Why Russia Is Pushing a Return to Negotiations: The Kremlin Wants to Buy Time to Prepare for a ‘Full-Scale Offensive’ in Early 2023, Sources Say,” Meduza, October 14, 2022, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/10/14/why-russia-is-pushing-a-return-to-negotiations.
6.Admati and Perry 1987, 362.
7.Zartman 1989, 2000, 2001, 2022.
8.Saunders 1991; Stein 1989. In the realm of trade disputes, see Busch 2007.
9.Bachrach and Baratz 1962.
10.Romer and Rosenthal (1978) provide an important model of agenda setting. In the realm of international relations, see Bennett and Sharpe 1979; Binder and Golub 2020; Kteily et al. 2013; Murphy 2010; Princen 2007; Tsebelis and Garrett 1996.
11.Quoted in Woolsey 1991, 105.
12.Doyle and Hegele (2021) and Schiff (2008) analyze prenegotiation in armed conflicts.
13.Adler-Nissen 2015.
14.Roberts 2009, 10–11.
15.Ritchie 1932, 122–23.
16.Nicolson (1939) 1963, 67.
17.Sartori 2002, 2005.
18.Joy 1955.
19.Young 1968, 29.
20.Cohen 1991, 144. For more on the attribution of irrationality or infantile qualities to people seen as “Others,” see Carson, Min, and Van Nuys (forthcoming).
21.Adair and Brett 2004; Brett et al. 1998; Janosik 1987; Solomon 1995.
22.Lall 1966, 151.
23.Acheson 1961, 105.
24.Huang 2016; Kaplow 2016; Melin and Svensson 2009; Pruitt 2006; Toros 2008; Walter 2006, 2009.
25.Licklider 1995.
26.Howard and Stark 2017/18; Toft 2010.
27.Arreguín-Toft 2001, 2005; Sullivan 2007.
28.DeRouen and Möller 2013; Mattes and Savun 2010; Toft 2009; Walter 1997.
29.Regan, Frank, and Aydin 2009. Greig and Regan (2008) analyze specific factors that influence when and why third parties offer to mediate civil wars.
30.Pechenkina and Thomas 2020.
31.Trager 2017.
32.Siniver and Hart 2021.
33.Bull 1977.
34.Jack Nasher, “Top 10 World Changing Negotiations for 2022,” Forbes, December 27, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacknasher/2021/12/27/top-10-world-changing-negotiations-for-2022/.
35.Reuters, “U.S. Accuses Iran of Trying to Deflect Blame for Nuclear Talks Impasse,” July 17, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-deputy-foreign-minister-says-vienna-talks-must-await-irans-new-2021-07-17/.
36.Chanlett-Avery et al. 2018.
37.Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel Nexon, “Kim Jong Un Gets to Sit at the Cool Table Now,” Foreign Policy, June 21, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/21/kim-jong-un-gets-to-sit-at-the-cool-table-now/.
38.Editorial Board, “Opinion: No More Concessions,” Washington Post, June 12, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-singapore-summit-was-a-victory-for-kim-jong-un/2018/06/12/3731e970-6e44-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html.
39.See Tangredi 1985.
40.Frank Jordans, “Greenpeace Chief Warns of ‘Greenwashing’ at UN Climate Talks,” Associated Press, October 21, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/climate-environment-and-nature-environment-united-nations-greenpeace-308a04052994ecf028ca08c323e109.
41.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Climate Finance, 8.
42.Jocelyn Timperley, “The Broken $100-Billion Promise of Climate Finance—and How to Fix It,” Nature, October 20, 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3.
43.Fankhauser et al. 2021.
44.Death statistics come from the PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset Version 1.0, where data associated with the Correlates of War are limited to the 1900–1997 period.
45.Gaddis 1986, 1987; Pinker 2011. Braumoeller (2019) and Siverson and Ward (2002) offer refutations.
46.For examples of research that addresses broader notions of wartime costs beyond the loss of human lives, see Bellamy and Zajtchuk 1991; Collier 1999; Glick and Taylor 2010; Mansfield and Pevehouse 2000.
47.Luttwak 1999, 36–38.
48.Stedman 1996, 363.
49.Clayton and Dorussen 2022; Frazier and Dixon 2006.
50.Beber 2012; Crescenzi et al. 2011; Favretto 2009; Kydd 2003; Melin 2011; Savun 2008.
51.Regan and Stam 2000.
52.One partial exception is Greig and Regan 2008.
53.Melin 2014.
54.This idea is related to but distinct from the recommendation that third parties must be willing to be committed to enforcing peace for the long term. See Beardsley 2011; Melin 2014; Walter 2002.
55.Corbetta and Dixon 2005; Kim 1991. Scholarship on the impact of third-party military intervention on conflict duration focuses predominantly on civil wars. See Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, and Joyce 2008; Cunningham 2010; Gent 2008; Regan 2002; Sullivan and Karreth 2015.
56.Escribà-Folch 2010.
57.United Nations, “To End Yemen’s Tragic Plight, Parties Must Agree on Humanitarian Action, Nationwide Ceasefire, Special Envoy Tells Security Council,” press release, April 15, 2021, https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sc14494.doc.htm.
58.United Nations, “Ceasefire in Tigray More Urgent Than Ever: UN Relief Chief,” United Nations News, August 6, 2021, https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1097292.
59.Narang 2015.
60.An additional dilemma regarding humanitarian aid is that militant groups may intentionally create suffering to augment the refugee population, which in turn allows them to exploit humanitarian aid for the purposes of furthering their attacks. See Barber 1997; Terry 2002.
61.Dave Lawler, “Russia Agreed to Open ‘Humanitarian Corridors’ for Fleeing Civilians: Ukraine Official,” Axios, March 3, 2022, https://www.axios.com/2022/03/03/russia-ukraine-peace-talks-belarus.
62.Daniel Boffey and Lorenzo Tondo, “Russia Accused of Shelling Mariupol Humanitarian Corridor,” The Guardian (US edition), April 26, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/26/russia-accused-of-shelling-mariupol-humanitarian-corridor. See also Carla Babb, Nike Ching, Heather Murdock, Anita Powell, Cindy Saine, and Jeff Seldin, “Ukraine Says Russia Is Shelling Promised Humanitarian Evacuation Corridors,” Voice of America, March 4, 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-says-russia-shelling-promised-humanitarian-corridors/6471228.html. Some observers anticipated that Russia would exploit humanitarian corridors in this manner. For instance, see Anna Borschevskaya, “The Sinister Reason Russia Wants Humanitarian Corridors in Ukraine,” 19FortyFive, March 4, 2022, https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/03/the-sinister-reason-russia-wants-humanitarian-corridors-in-ukraine.
63.Reuters, “Nearly 125,000 People Evacuated via Humanitarian Corridors in Ukraine, Says President,” March 13, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nearly-125000-people-evacuated-via-humanitarian-corridors-ukraine-says-president-2022-03-13.