Uncertainty and War Duration

Abstract

This article argues that private information plays an important role in explaining long wars. Existing rationalist explanations of long, intensely fought wars focus on commitment problems rather than private information as the cause of such wars. Commitment-problem explanations of long wars claim that while private information can explain short wars, battles and exchanges of offers for settlement should quickly reveal private information, thereby leading to an early peace. Commitment problems, on the other hand, may take years to resolve and therefore can explain long, intense wars for unitary actors. However, while commitment problems are an important explanation for long wars, private information can endure deep into lengthy conflicts because states create new private information during wars and because states often disagree about their relative ability to bear costs rather than their relative military capabilities. I explore this argument in cases on the end of the First World War and the Iran-Iraq War.

Peaceful Uncertainty: When Power Shocks Do Not Create Commitment Problems

“…32 A power shock absent a favorable outlook increased the probability of war by over 70% relative to a year with no power shock. This elevated risk of war accords with the historical record as Iraq initiated the Iran-Iraq War seeking to exploit Iran's temporary weakness (Hiro, 1991;Weisiger, 2013;Shirkey, 2016). Shocks to the dyadic power balance in this period were largely exogenous to the states' rivalry.…”

Causal beliefs and war termination

“…This long war is especially suitable for the purpose because it involved only two states, which simplifies the analytical task. Moreover, as one of the longest wars, it has previously been used to analyze the role of commitment problems (Weisiger, 2013; Reiter, 2009; Shirkey, 2016), suggesting that Iran was not interested in a peace treaty because it feared that Saddam Hussein would not stop threatening Iran. However, the present study argues that even though such commitment problems were present, they do not identify the root cause of Iran’s high expected utility of continuing the war, as religiously based causal beliefs played a more prominent role in prolonging the war.…”

“…Shirkey (2016: 263) argues that the growth in Iraqi war fighting capacity had been unclear to the Iranians, but when they ‘became aware of these Iraqi advantages and the results they brought on the battlefield, Iran quickly sought peace’. However, this study argues that private information did not play a decisive a role.…”

“…The theory of endogenous war termination, representing a simple rational choice perspective, therefore does not suffice to explain the chain of events during the war. Shirkey (2016) argues that private information was the key to understanding this long war. However, several battlefield events were very discouraging throughout the long war and revealed crucial information that was clear to the professional military, and still the Iranian leadership did not update their beliefs.…”