BEHAVIOR AND INTERACTION

Up to this point, we have summarized a fair representation of data-based studies that illustrate how the conflict process culminates in war. What most of these studies lack is the inclusion of variables that are more susceptible to political intervention; most of the investigations discussed so far rest heavily on structural conditions and the characteristics of the states, dyads, and systems out of which these wars arise.

Behavioral correlates of war

For example, in the Behavioral Correlates of War project (BCOW), largely under the direc­tion of Russell Leng at Middlesbury, we begin to identify moves, countermoves, and tactics that have tended to play a significant role in the escalation of rivalries and disputes to war. In attempting to address why some disputes culminate in war, Leng and Gochman (1982) propose two factors that can account for differing outcomes: disputes associated with bargaining behavior, and those associated with the attributes of the actors. They define behavioral elements as the manner in which actors interact with one another, whereas attributes at the various levels of social aggregation are meant to signify the context within which disputes unfold. The authors use a bargaining model, and differentiate tactics in extremes: “fight” and “prudence.” The “prudence” strategy suggests a situation wherein one side surrenders or accepts a diplomatic compromise before the conflict becomes highly militarized. Their analysis suggests an independent impact of bargaining behavior on dispute outcomes where 83 per­cent of “fight” decisions resulted in war, while no disputes erupted in war emerging from “prudent” strategies.

In another study, Leng (1988) attempts to examine the effects of changes in the strategy choices of policymakers from one crisis to the next, and in order to answer this question he constructs four crisis-learning games from a data-based study of bargaining in recurrent crises between evenly matched states. He finds that states unsuccessful in one crisis were likely to use more coercive bargaining strategies in the next crisis. For Leng, the crisis could have been averted if the initial strategy was not what realpolitik reasoning prescribed, but rather if the initial strategy were more cooperative, while subsequent strategies had been tit-for-tat responses. He argues that realpolitik reasoning, which prescribes using a confrontational initial choice, forecloses certain outcomes in later stages of the bargaining game.

In an earlier study, Leng and Walker (1982), with data generated according to the Behavioral Correlates of War coding scheme, randomly select twenty “serious disputes” within the twentieth century. They find that disputants will adopt increasingly coercive bargaining strategies during the confrontation phase of the crisis in the absence of an awareness of the crisis structure. Leng (1993) analyzes the effectiveness of reciprocating influence strategies in militarized interstate crises, and notes that the success of recip­rocating strategies in these crises is related to withholding cooperative initiatives until the reciprocating party has demonstrated its resolve. He suggests that the use of reciprocating strategies in defense of the status quo reflects a prudent understanding of the defensive nature of a firm-but-flexible influence strategy, and that the underly­ing logic of a reciprocating strategy and its relative effectiveness can be seen as well when reciprocating strategies intersect with trial-and-error as well as bullying strategies.

Arms races

Among those studies that should also shed some light on the behavioral phenomena is that of arms races, developing from the early work of Richardson (1960) and Huntington (1958). Perhaps the first data- based treatment going back to the Congress of Vienna was that by Wallace (1979), who finds an extraordinarily strong relationship between countries that are rapidly arming and their disputes escalating to war. Of ninety-nine total dyadic disputes between 1816 and 1965, twenty-eight occurred while both countries were building up their weapons, and twenty- three of those escalated to war. The conclusion was a strong statement that arms races led to wars, but his findings were called into question largely because he disaggregated multilateral wars such as World War I and World War II into dyadic wars. As a matter of fact, Diehl (1985), who did not disaggregate the World Wars, found a positive but somewhat weaker relationship between arms races and wars.

Other analyses have also suggested a posi­tive relationship. In a bivariate logit analysis carried out by Sample (2000), the relationship was statistically significant using one measure of arming, but not so over the whole Correlates of War (COW) period using the other. She observes that there is a militarized dispute occurring in 15 or 16 percent of the dyad years characterized by a mutual military buildup. Her evidence suggests that rapid military buildups do increase the likelihood of war and that military buildups are positively related to the occurrence of a militarized dispute between two countries. The empirical evidence cautions us to be careful as we postulate links between arms race and war, and as Siverson and Diehl (1989) note, “If there is any consensus among arms race studies, it is that some arms races lead to war and some do not.”

Bargaining, negotiations, and conflict termination

Moving further along the continuum from explaining armed conflict to reducing or mitigating it, we turn here to a few studies of a quantitative sort that address the amelioration and termination of armed conflict.

By constructing a laboratory bargaining setting, Boyle and Lawler (1991) set up an experiment in which parties exchange offers and counter-offers on an issue across a number of rounds while also having the option to engage in punitive action against one another. The tactics that the authors provide to the actors are hostile or conciliatory, and the goal for both parties is to maximize their utility through mutual conciliation, but it is difficult for either side to convince the other that they want to achieve the goal of mutual conciliation; thus, the game gets repeated over a number of rounds or only ends with the intervention of third parties (e.g. allies, international institutions). In the absence of credible or trustworthy third parties, the authors conclude that the theory of unilateral initiatives, using conciliatory tactics, offers a way to mitigate the distrust that exists, while punitive or retaliatory action furthers the distrust and mutual antagonism between the actors involved. The results of their experiment indicated that the best combination of tactics was a mix of unilateral initiatives and retaliation, which produced an agreement rate of over 50 percent.

An important question the bargaining literature has recently sought to address is why states would go to war at all considering the heavy costs associated with it. While attempting to answer this question, Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2000) point out that though most armed conflict can be viewed as a result of misperceptions, incomplete information, or even irrationality, it might also be the result of long-term incentives.

Three rationalist explanations for going to war are given by Filson and Werner (2007), who first state that despite the presence of a potential settlement, both actors might prefer to fight because no actor is able to credibly maintain the terms of the agreement; second, the issue in dispute may not be divisible; third, the actors in the conflict might have differing beliefs that ensure they cannot agree on a mutually acceptable agreement, and will then continue to engage each other in armed conflict until one or both side's resources fall below the minimum necessary resources to continue fighting. They define war as an alternating sequence of negotiations and battles; in war, each actor's objective is to obtain as many benefits as possible while conserving military resources. The amount of resources at each stage depends on who wins each battle. The sequence of battles and negotiations can end when one side's resources fall below the minimum level necessary to continue fighting, although it typically ends sooner than that. Their model also finds that when the costs of war are decreased, the duration of war is likely to increase. In the end, the models they provide are useful for understanding the decisions of actors in the run-up to and the continuation of armed conflict, but they do not provide as much insight into how to resolve a conflict, though their model helps establish under what conditions conflict is terminated.

Walter (2003), in an analysis of government decision-making, concludes that one of the most common indivisible issues of dispute is territory, but its indivisibility does not rest with the land's strategic importance. Rather, she points out that governments refuse to negotiate with the very first challenger over territory as it is part of a rational strategy to eliminate high long-term costs of multiple future wars. She asserts that a government's decision to negotiate has more to do with the signal the government wishes to send to future challengers than with any specific characteristics of the conflict itself. States do this as part of a rational reputation-building strategy. Consequently, conflict resolution should be looked upon as not only a present condition but an inter-temporal goal, where governments need to redefine issues of dispute in a narrow enough way, such that it allows them to simultaneously negotiate with one challenger, while maintaining a reputation for toughness against all other potential challengers at later stages.

Offering an important challenge to some of the bargaining models presented here is Reiter (2003), who notes that much of it comes from theoretical literature that pro­poses that armed conflict in and of itself may have positive utility for states. It can be used as a means of furthering national identity or a government's hold on domestic political power through the manifestation of an external enemy, and goes on to say that some forms of this argument are beginning to earn some empirical support. Another critique of this literature is in its practical application, specifically, when attempting to quantify the potential benefits and military resources of actors.

One of the most obvious conclusions from the many studies discussed above is that the most effective way of mitigating armed conflict is for the protagonists in disputes, rivalries, and confrontations to avoid the many moves that show up as tension generating and should be avoided. In this connection, we need to appreciate that while the road to war has more than sufficient exits, they are too infrequently taken. Sometimes they are not well-marked, sometimes they provide a temporary detour but bring us right back onto the original path, sometimes there is just too little certainty as to what lies beyond, and of course there rarely will be police who can not only direct the traffic, but enforce agreements that have been made along the way. If we knew more about the behavioral throughput between background conditions and the onset of hostilities, we should be able to monitor and perhaps discourage conflict-generating tactics and moves.