Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War

Abstract

States pursue their cooperative and competitive goals using both public and private policy tools. Yet there is a profound mismatch between the depth, variety, and importance of covert activity and what scholars of International Relations (IR) know about it. This article addresses this gap by analyzing how adversaries struggle for influence within the covert sphere, why they often retreat to it, and when they abandon it. It focuses on secrecy among adversaries intervening in local conflicts and develops a theory about secrecy's utility as a device for creating sustainable limits in war. Drawing on insights about secrecy and face-work from the sociologist Erving Goffman, I show that major powers individually and collectively conceal evidence of foreign involvement when the danger of unintended conflict escalation is acute. Doing so creates a kind of “backstage” in which adversaries can exceed limits on war without stimulating hard-to-resist pressure to escalate further. An important payoff of the theory is making sense of puzzling cases of forbearance: even though adversaries often know about their opponent's covert activity, they often abstain from publicizing it. Such “tacit collusion” arises when both sides seek to manage escalation risks even as they compete for power and refuse to capitulate. The article evaluates the theory via several nested cases of external intervention in the Korean War. Drawing on newly available materials documenting the covert air war between secretly deployed Soviet pilots and Western forces, the cases show how adversaries can successfully limit war by concealing activity from outside audiences. Beyond highlighting the promise in studying the covert realm in world politics, the article has important implications for scholarship on coercive bargaining, reputation, state uses of secrecy, and how regime type influences conflict behavior.

Exclusive expertise: the boundary work of international organizations

“…Flawed performances can contaminate the backstage or the frontstage. The exposure of backstage activities considered inappropriate could delegitimise frontstage displays, which is a common concern in inter-state practices of 'limited war' (Carson, 2016) and 'face-saving diplomacy' (Nair, 2019, p. 677). The excessive purification of performances can yield similar effects, as is evidenced by stress tests that fail to fail any bank (Coombs, 2020).…”

Building the Rule of War: Postconflict Institutions and the Micro-Dynamics of Conflict in Eastern DR Congo

“…73 See the literature on disarmament, demobilization and repatriation for discussions on the importance of breaking down the organizational capacity of warring factions (Muggah 2009;Spear 1999;Themnér 2011;Themnér 2015). 74 See Carson (2015) for a powerful illustration of the ways in which "backstage" strategies are employed in civil and international conflicts to advance specific political objectives without escalating . "Building the Rule of War" -Forthcoming at International Organization Please do not circulate without author's permission 44 non-military realms creates a vicious cycle of violence, compounding commitment problems by further eroding trust and thereby undermining the very purpose for which new institutions were created.…”

The Logic of “Offstage” Signaling: Domestic Politics, Regime Type, and Major Power-Protégé Relations

“…This represents an expansion of Goffman's 1959 "frontstage" and "backstage" framework. For a discussion of secret, or "backstage," signals seeCarson 2016 andCarson andYarhi-Milo 2017. 18. As long as the signal is highly visible to at least one public, domestic or foreign, we consider it to be frontstage.19.…”

“… 17. This represents an expansion of Goffman's 1959 “frontstage” and “backstage” framework. For a discussion of secret, or “backstage,” signals see Carson 2016 and Carson and Yarhi-Milo 2017. …”