Painful Words: The Effect of Battlefield Activity on Conflict Negotiation Behavior

• Author: Eric Min
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211069618
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(4-5) 595–622

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211069618

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Painful Words: The Effect of

Battlefield Activity on

Conflict Negotiation

Behavior

Eric Min

Abstract

How does battlefield activity affect belligerents’behavior during wartime negotiations?

While scholars have studied when and why warring parties choose to negotiate, few

insights explain what negotiators do once seated at the table. I argue that actors engage

in obstinate negotiation behavior to signal resolve when undergoing contentious and

indeterminate hostilities. I explore this claim by analyzing all negotiation transcripts and

associated daily military operations reports from the Korean War. Using text-based,

machine learning, and statistical methods, I show that high levels of movement or

casualties in isolation produce clear information on future trends, thus yielding more

substantive negotiations, while more turbulent activity featuring high movement and

casualties in tandem produces cynical negotiations. Moving past contemporary liter-

ature, this study explores micro-level dynamics of conflict and diplomacy, builds a

theoretical bridge between two perennial views of negotiation, and provides a

framework for studying war by applying computational methods to archival documents.

Keywords

bargaining, conflict, conflict management, conflict resolution, diplomacy, interstate

conflict, negotiation, Korean war

University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Eric Min, Political Science, University of California Los Angeles, 3254 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095,

USA.

Email: eric.min@ucla.edu

Scholars of conflict have long scrutinized the connection between battlefield activities

and belligerents’decisions to continue or cease hostilities. One critical fact to emerge

from this research agenda is that most interstate wars over the last two centuries have

ended through a negotiated settlement (Levento˘

glu and Slantchev 2007). Diplomatic

negotiations must therefore represent a central element in understanding how, when,

and why many international conflicts come to an end short of total victory or defeat.

Recent research has emphasized that negotiations constitute a distinct stage of the

conflict resolution process, and we have increasingly deeper insight into belligerents’

decisions to initiate talks during war (Findley 2012;Jones and Metzger 2018;Kaplow

2016). That said, we know far less about what happens once negotiations begin and

how the battlefield dynamically affects the nature of subsequent discussions. Such an

oversight is troubling, as 57% of interstate wars since 1945 have included negotiations

at some point during hostilities.

1

This paper represents one of the first systematic efforts to address this issue. I outline

a theoretical framework predicated on information to help explain when and why actors

adopt specific negotiating behaviors once they participate in talks. My argument relies

on separating combat outcomes from the associated costs to fighting, each of which

represent different forms of information. When the battlefield clearly indicates that a

belligerent is losing ground without offering much resistance or is holdi ng their ground

while suffering enormous costs, both sides see evidence that the future trajectory of

conflict either trending in one side’s favor or staying stagnant. In such cases where

expectations about the war become more apparent, I argue that actors engage in

discussions aimed at negotiating a potential agreement—or what I call substantive

negotiation behavior. On the other hand, if the battlefield is both fluid and creating

significant costs, belligerents will observe unclear information is that not stable, not

trending in one side’s favor, and not certain enough for the warring parties to want to

codify through a diplomatic settlement. In those situations, actors will shift into overtly

unproductive activity—or what I call cynical negotiation behavior—to buttress per-

ceptions of their resolve through diplomacy.

The empirical approach and evidence brought to bear are unique to the topic: a

computational analysis of archival documents regarding armistice negotiations that

transpired during the Korean War. By applying text and machine learning methods to

several thousand pages of daily-level reports and negotiation transcripts from the

conflict, I derive precise measures of battlefield activity in terms of both movement and

casualties, as well as the negotiation behavior of the United Nations Command and

Communist delegations over the last 2 years of hostilities. These measures permit an

exceptionally detailed and unprecedented exploration of the relationship between the

battlefield and the bargaining table. Analysis of these data aligns with my expectations.

Periods of fighting that only feature large amounts of movement or only high levels of

costs help consolidate expectations regarding future hostilities and thus lead to more

substantive discussions. Conversely, a battlefield that is both dynamic and costly

increases actors’incentives to send supplementary signals of resolve by adopting

cynical negotiation behavior.

596 Journal of Conflict Resolution 66(4-5)