Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

Good question: what kind of people would kill in order to strengthen their bargaining position?

IR scholarship has something to say about it

[THREAD]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1170469619154530305

Bargaining is how a number of IR scholars think about the process by which war or violence breaks out.

In other words, war happens because the parties fail to reach a deal that can avoid war.

This is a classic idea found in many, many works, from Schelling (including the first ever piece in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1957)...

books.google.com/books?id=7RkL4…

...to Blainey

books.google.com/books?id=Mcknp…

IR scholars love to cite James Fearon's 1995 @IntOrgJournal piece when making this point:

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

But here's the thing: bargaining CONTINUES during the war

This is the heart of Von Clausewitz's famous dictum that "war is merely the continuation of policy by other means"

books.google.com/books?id=DRoL0…

Following Fearon's piece, one of the first scholars to make explicit that bargaining continued DURING war was Suzanne Werner in this Journal of Conflict Resolution piece

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

And she elaborated further on the idea in this piece with Darren Filson in @AJPS_Editor

jstor.org/stable/3088436…

This nice @SecStudies_Jrnl paper by @ALanoszka & @MichaelHunzeker deals with the peace negotiations that took place DURING World War I fighting

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

And, related, @MiraRappHooper's @SecStudies_Jrnl paper deals with how the allies wanted to PREVENT negotiation of separate peace agreements while the fighting was ongoing

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Not only does the bargaining continue, but war ITSELF is part of (not separate from) the bargaining process!

This notion lies at the heart of Branislav Slanthev's 2003 APSR piece

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Though Slantchev claims that fighting leads to a convergence of views (since fighting reveals info), this is challenged by Jean-Pierre P. Langlois and Catherine C. Langlois in this @BJPolS piece:

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

All of the above logic applies to civil wars just as well as international wars, as Barbara Walter made clear in this ARPS (@AnnualReviews) piece

annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Walter's piece is important, since Afghanistan (the conflict to which @realDonaldTrump is referring) is viewed as an insurgency.

On this point, a 2014 @BJPolS piece Reed M. Wood and @jacob_kathman find that targeting of civilians can actually strengthen the bargaining position of an insurgent group:

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

BUT....the relationship is curvilinear: the probability of settlement is highest for groups that engage in a moderate level of civilian killing but declines at particularly high levels.

Their sample is civil wars in Africa between 1989 (end of the Cold War) and 2010

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…

So if one views the recent Taliban attack as being on the high end of violence (which is reasonable, since it killed US personnel), then @realDonaldTrump's decision is consistent with the findings of Wood and Kathman.

There is more that can be said about war, violence, and bargaining positions.

But the main idea is that it's not at all unbelieveable that a group would think violence can strengthen their position.

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