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International Relations
Morrow, James. "International Conflict: Assessing the Democratic Peace and Offense-Defense Theory." Political Science: State of the Discipline. 2002. Edited by IRA Katznelson and Helen Milner, pages 172-196. Also accessible on the web in revised form at http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/seminars/pegroup/morrow.pdf.
In his article "International Conflict: Assessing the Democratic Peace and Offense-Defense Theory" the political scientist and author James Morrow posits as his central query why different international actors such as states fight when there are peaceful settlements that both states would ideally prefer, as opposed to entering into a conflict. "Conflict is costly in material terms for nations and personal terms for leaders," (Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson, cited by Morrow, 1995). Thus, why do states enter into war?
Morrow begins his article with a theoretical overview of the potential reasons states enter into war, and ends with several specific examples, including the nations involved in World War II. Morrow is particularly interested in why democratic states, traditionally states that give at least lip service to the value of pacific settlements enter into a war. One of the key reasons they do so, he states, is uncertainty. "The other side," he suggests in a hypothetical scenario, might like to accept a potential settlement about a disputed territory rather than enter into a conflict. "However, the other side's minimal acceptable deal depends on the value it places on fighting a war; a value that combines how important the stakes are to it, its judgment about its chances on the battlefield, and how it assesses the likely costs of a war. All of these are known only to that state;...
The state making the demand cannot know any of these three, although it certainly has some beliefs about each. It cannot be certain what demand will extract the best possible settlement for itself, and asking for too much leads to war. The dilemma rests between asking for too little and demanding too much." (Morrow, 2002) Thus, in attempting not to be taken advantage of in reaching a settlement, and dealing with imperfect information, a state finds itself in a condition of escalating tensions and finally, war over the stated border. This situation, although not explicated by Morrow in particular, as he is dealing in the theoretical terms of International Relations theory, can be seen mirrored in the contemporary conflicts of the Israelis and the Palestinians as well as in the disputed regions of Northern Ireland and the former territories of Yugoslavia. In terms of World War II, the nature of imperfect knowledge and trust is particularly damaging to the seamless nature of the assumptions behind offensive-defensive theories, as "offensive dominance is claimed to make war more likely, yet the perceived dominance of defense helped to lead to the Second World War," as Hitler exploited allied reluctance to enter into war, despite the allies military power.
Uncertainty in negotiations often leads to an exaggeration of demands, whether the state is democratic or not. Democratic nations in particular (such as Britain during the 1940's) find themselves forced to treat the inherent credibility of their signals as an asset to be exploited in their international dealings. In other words, because these nations are perceived as more honest international actors, and…
Conflict is costly, but alas, Morrow states, conflict is not the only way nations measure extracted costs. War's costs are unpredictable, of course, but other nation's behavior patterns are unpredictable during negotiations. There may be some predictability in terms of specific interactions between specific nations, based on past behavior, but no national actions can be predicted with unerring accuracy.
First and foremost, Morrow stresses, it is critical to examine variation across and within cases, rather than trying to predict the outcome of individual cases. Ultimately, despite his theoretical construction, Morrow takes a dim view of theoretical predictability given that offensive-defensive theory does not necessarily predict even the conflicts of the past such as World Wars I and II. However, despite the lack of predictability of international actors and resultant war, even from an offensive point-of-view, one of the costs of initiating a crisis is the chance that it will escalate to war. If the parties involved can anticipate the magnitude of that chance, then coercive diplomacy becomes less attractive as the chance it will result in war rises.
Of course, the full effects of all factors on the probability of a crisis and of it escalating the crisis are never certain. (Morrow 2000) Morrow suggests to mitigate potential unpredictability, nations should examine not pre-historical or pre-existing measures of resolve, in other words, the current actions taken during a crisis, rather than pre-crisis balances of capabilities of actions (Morrow citing Fearon 1994b). "Actions taken in a crisis include the effects of private information as revealed by those actions during the crisis, while pre-crisis acts reflect only the observable factors and judgments about the other side's private information." In other words, as a crisis transpires, more is at least seemed to be revealed about the actors in question. Thus the states involved change their strategies accordingly Morrow concludes his article with an overall critique of the supposed universality of offensive-defensive theory, particularly is failure to account for democratic society's better ability to achieve a sense of peace between one another -- a tendency, obviously, not a universal postulate. Still, he states that such a theory as offensive-defensive theory does not explain wars taken for limited ends, merely assuming that wars are undertaken willingly by at least one of the participants though strategic responses to expectations about the likely course of a war may not be as straightforward as the theory assumes. "Offensive advantages may make war less likely in some situations, while defensive advantages increase the risk of war in others." (Morrow, 2002) Ultimately, Morrow ends his article with an optimistic view of democracy's ability to stay in a state of peace, and a dim view of political scientists in the theoretical discipline of international relations to predict strategy where knowledge of other actor's motivations, munitions, and resolve are in constant flux and subject to imperfect data.
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