| 摘要 | After a war breaks out, what factors influence the belligerents’ decisions about whether to talk to their enemy, and when may their positions on wartime diplomacy change? How do we get from fighting to also talking? In The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, I argue that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation as a barrier to negotiations, and that these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to directly talk with their enemy. Specifically, leaders look to two factors when determining the strategic costs of talking to the enemy: First, will the enemy interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness? And second, if the enemy does, how will it change its military strategy in response? My research found that a country will only be willing to come to the negotiating table once it is confident that such a move will not convey weakness and that the enemy will not escalate the war in response. Through four primary case studies—North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War, Chinese decision-making in the Korean War and Sino-Indian War, and Indian diplomatic decision-making in the Sino-Indian War—the book demonstrates that the strategic costs of conversation best explain the timing and nature of countries’ approaches to wartime talks, and therefore to when peace talks begin. As a result, my findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.
In the book, I strove to provide a comprehensive theory for when leaders are willing to talk to each other during a conflict and why they sometimes refuse, build knowledge about several Asian conflicts that may be understudied compared to their European counterparts, and derive useful policy implications and recommendations from the findings. Thus, I am grateful to have the opportunity to engage with such a wide range of experts with deep theoretical, practical, and historical expertise on conflict and negotiation as well as these specific cases. This provides the opportunity to explore a number of issues in more depth, particularly regarding the applicability of my argument to other conflicts and situations.
First, there are a number of theoretical questions that remain to be explored and debated about the role of talking in international conflicts. Dan Reiter rightly derives from the book my argument that “an essential element of war termination policy is not just what offers the belligerents exchange but also whether they negotiate at all.” However, he raises the issue of what factors have the most explanatory power when it comes to conflict duration. Specifically, Reiter reminds us that the negotiating positions of states may leave no room for agreement, and that they may be so far from that outcome that it takes time during the fighting for all sides to decide what to concede to bring the conflict to an end. Reiter rightly calls for additional research, therefore, that “carefully parses the comparative effects of diplomatic posture versus actual negotiating positions on the duration of wars.” This is one of the weaknesses of qualitative historical research; I could not provide exact figures as to how much each variable mattered at a given period of time. But I was able to show that before negotiations began, in high-level internal discussions leaders discussed whether to talk far more often than they discussed what they thought they could get at the negotiating table. This suggested to me that the decision to talk is independent of the decision to settle, and obstacles to opening negotiations can prolong conflict. Since in many historical cases negotiations endured longer than the periods without talking, however, failure to reach a consensus is indeed likely a relatively greater determinant of conflict duration.
A second issue concerns the possible alternative explanations. Here, Prashanth Parameswaran and Patricia Kim bring up the issue of domestic politics, which I address in the book. Parameswaran postulates that as authoritarian countries such as China have less control over domestic public opinion, this may play a greater role in elites’ decisions about whether to talk to the enemy. Even in situations of strict control such as in North Korea today, Kim posits that a refusal to talk may be designed to send a message not only to the international community, especially Washington and Seoul, but also “the North Korean people, especially hard-liner political elites, who are skeptical of Kim Jong-un’s outreach to the United States.” I think this is right—leaders are always considering both domestic and international audiences. While the book only evaluates decision-making in wartime, and shows that in this extreme scenario leaders are the most concerned about how talking will impact the beliefs of their enemy, I would speculate that as the situation moves farther from war on the spectrum toward peace, domestic politics become increasingly relevant. In his review, John Gill highlighted some additional reasons why image mattered specifically in the case of the Sino-Indian War. In my opinion, this increases the stakes, but the underlying logic that states may not talk for fear of looking weak and emboldening the enemy would still apply.
One thing the book does not address sufficiently that Parameswaran raised was the advent of nuclear weapons and its impact on the dynamics I lay out. In Asia, China became a nuclear weapon state in 1964, India in 1974, and Pakistan in 1998 (and though it is not U.S. policy to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, Pyongyang tested nuclear weapons in 2006). In two related articles on China, I evaluate how changes in other factors like Chinese military modernization, introduction into international institutions, and domestic public opinion may impact how China has ended wars.
The impact of nuclear weapons could go a number of ways; it could put a ceiling on escalation, thus making states less fearful of emboldening the enemy and thus allowing for talks early on in a conflict between two nuclear states. One case, highlighted in Carlyle Thayer’s review, the Vietnam War, highlights how difficult it is to establish talks when there are great asymmetries of power. If one belligerent possesses nuclear weapons and the other does not, this dynamic could be exacerbated. The leaders of the nuclear state may believe they have escalation dominance, and thus be less concerned about appearing weak and embracing an open diplomatic posture sooner. However, the costs of looking weak skyrocket for the nonnuclear belligerent, making it even more difficult for it to demonstrate enough resiliency to come to the table. The bottom line is that much more research has to be done before definitively stating how nuclear weapons impact the costs of conversation.
Lastly, the reviewers highlighted the policy relevance of the book—how a fear of looking weak may create obstacles to diplomacy. Kim, for example, points out that, even in peacetime, states may be concerned about the strategic costs of conversation, exemplified by the current “trade war” with China and the impasse in nuclear negotiations with North Korea. However, whether in peacetime or wartime, Kim writes that the book does not tell policymakers when leaders will feel secure enough. Furthermore, Kim asks how policymakers can effectively manipulate belligerents’ calculations in this regard.
These are important questions and unfortunately Kim is correct that the book does not provide clear answers to them. In the concluding chapter, I address what leaders should not do. They should not escalate to bring the other side to the table, as it will have the opposite effect. They should not focus energies on negotiating over preconditions for talks, as these are just stopgap measures; once a state has minimized the strategic costs of conversation, they will be willing to talk even when preconditions have not been met. But I also provide some guidance on how to get belligerents to the negotiating table. For example, we should rethink the role of mediators. Rather than just facilitating information transmission, they could help reduce the costs of conversation, such as by offering positive inducements so that agreeing to talk is not seen as a sign of weakness or by serving as a guarantor that escalation will not occur as a result of an open diplomatic posture. Mediators can also be critical in creating off-ramps from conflict, since I show in my research that these tend to be unsuccessful when offered by one of the belligerents. I also call on the United States to adopt a blanket policy of being open to talks at any stage of a conflict as a way to model severing the connection between the willingness to talk and weakness.
While questions still remain about diplomacy in wartime, I hope The Costs of Conversation provides insight into the factors that influence states’ decisions about whether to talk to their enemies during conflicts. In addition to this contribution to international relations theory, the book’s case studies are based on extensive fieldwork in China, India, and Vietnam that will be of interest to area specialists and military history scholars. In particular, its findings have important implications for defense planners and military strategists that focus on the current challenges posed by the rise of China.
Read the rest of the book reviews here. |
