This is why I like Carroll Quigley’s argument, that war is for resolving uncertainty in power relations. If Alice and Bob agree on their relative strengths, they enter some settlement where the stronger party dominates the weaker party (but not so much that it’s worth it for the weaker party to resist). But if Alice and Bob disagree on their relative strengths, then they fight it out.
Considering the war in Ukraine, if the Russians expected it to be a quick adventure and the Ukrainians expected that they could hold out, then it makes sense for there to be a war instead of a negotiated settlement, because the two parties have very different expectations of what will happen if there is a war.
I think this lens also helps explain the war in Israel and Palestine, and the war in Iran. (All three feel to me like this explanation is incomplete, and domestic disagreements seem like important factors. 10⁄7 being kicked off by the parts of the government that most benefit from continued conflict feels important—but also uncertainty over the outcome must have played into their decision-making.)
Does The War Trap explain the wars that are happening now?
This is why I like Carroll Quigley’s argument, that war is for resolving uncertainty in power relations.
This is likely insufficient due to analogues of no-trade theorems and Aumann. With fully rational actors and common knowledge of rationality, you can’t just have uncertainty, you need some reason why the uncertainty is not adjudicated via some means that’s less destructive than war.
Fearon’s (partial) explanation is that there are incentives to deceive about your advantages and disadvantages (an example I gave in my summary + extension is that telling you about a new technology we developed might make it easier for you to subvert it), and relatedly that there are incentives to bluff about your military advantages.
But it’s all pretty messy and while I tend to be pretty pro-Rational Actor Model in general as an explanation for various phenomenon (including for organizations bigger than individuals), I do think the positive story for war being explained by positive EU to go to war has major theoretical (not just empirical) flaws.
If the alternative uncertainty-resolution method is a negotiated settlement, the act of starting negotiations potentially changes the balance of force by the end of the negotiation, since opposing power will learn that you are considering a war and have time to prepare itself. Many modern military conflicts have started with a surprise attack intended to knock out or demoralize the enemy before they could build up their full strength. Once the attack begins, the fact that the defender resists might indicate that you were overconfident, but it could also be a bluff or a result of their own overconfidence—in any case there is no time to negotiate and find out. But this doesn’t explain why wars continue for years if the initial attack fails.
This is why I like Carroll Quigley’s argument, that war is for resolving uncertainty in power relations. If Alice and Bob agree on their relative strengths, they enter some settlement where the stronger party dominates the weaker party (but not so much that it’s worth it for the weaker party to resist). But if Alice and Bob disagree on their relative strengths, then they fight it out.
Considering the war in Ukraine, if the Russians expected it to be a quick adventure and the Ukrainians expected that they could hold out, then it makes sense for there to be a war instead of a negotiated settlement, because the two parties have very different expectations of what will happen if there is a war.
I think this lens also helps explain the war in Israel and Palestine, and the war in Iran. (All three feel to me like this explanation is incomplete, and domestic disagreements seem like important factors. 10⁄7 being kicked off by the parts of the government that most benefit from continued conflict feels important—but also uncertainty over the outcome must have played into their decision-making.)
Does The War Trap explain the wars that are happening now?
This is likely insufficient due to analogues of no-trade theorems and Aumann. With fully rational actors and common knowledge of rationality, you can’t just have uncertainty, you need some reason why the uncertainty is not adjudicated via some means that’s less destructive than war.
Fearon’s (partial) explanation is that there are incentives to deceive about your advantages and disadvantages (an example I gave in my summary + extension is that telling you about a new technology we developed might make it easier for you to subvert it), and relatedly that there are incentives to bluff about your military advantages.
But it’s all pretty messy and while I tend to be pretty pro-Rational Actor Model in general as an explanation for various phenomenon (including for organizations bigger than individuals), I do think the positive story for war being explained by positive EU to go to war has major theoretical (not just empirical) flaws.
If the alternative uncertainty-resolution method is a negotiated settlement, the act of starting negotiations potentially changes the balance of force by the end of the negotiation, since opposing power will learn that you are considering a war and have time to prepare itself. Many modern military conflicts have started with a surprise attack intended to knock out or demoralize the enemy before they could build up their full strength. Once the attack begins, the fact that the defender resists might indicate that you were overconfident, but it could also be a bluff or a result of their own overconfidence—in any case there is no time to negotiate and find out. But this doesn’t explain why wars continue for years if the initial attack fails.