Slow to Learn

• Author: William Spaniel,Peter Bils
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002716662688
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Slow to Learn: Bargaining,

Uncertainty, and the

Calculus of Conquest

William Spaniel

1,2

and Peter Bils

3

Abstract

If peace fails due to incomplete information and incentives to misrepresent power or

resolve, war is supposed to serve as a learning process and allows parties to reach a

mutually preferable bargain. We explore crisis bargaining under a third type of

uncertainty: the extent to which one side wishes to conquer the other. With

incomplete information and take-it-or-leave-it negotiations, this type of uncertainty

is isomorphic to incomplete information about the probability of victory. However,

with incomplete information and bargaining while fighting, standard convergence

results fail: types fail to fully separate because there is no differential cost for delay.

Wars correspondingly last longer while benefiting no one. These results help explain

empirical differences between territorial versus nonterritorial conflicts and inter-

state versus intrastate wars.

Keywords

bargaining, game theory, civil wars, interstate conflict

Consider the Taliban’s dilemma in September 2001. While the United States made

evident its desire to capture Osama bin Laden, whether Washington and its allies

wanted to pursue regime change in Afghanistan was unclear. Indeed, in the weeks

1

Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

2

Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

3

Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

William Spaniel, Department of Political Science, Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh,

PA 15260.

Email: williamspaniel@gmail.com

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2018, Vol. 62(4) 774-796

ªThe Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002716662688

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between September 11 and the invasion of Afghanista n, declassified documents

reveal that the United States attempted to reach a settlement that would keep the

Taliban in power (see http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB358a/

doc09.pdf). Yet these negotiations failed. Communication alone could not resolve

the Taliban’s uncertainty; if wanting to impose maximalist postwar divisions

increases an opponent’s willingness to mak e concessions, then more minimalist

types might want to bluff accordingly.

1

Similar issues have been at the root of conflicts involving Russia, Georgia, and

the South Ossetian and Abkhazian autonomous regions. The Georgian government

has sought to reign in autonomy with a pair of civil wars, one at the end of the Cold

War and another in 2008. Throughout the process, however, it has remained unclear

whether Georgia would ultimately find complete control over these regions to be

worth the cost, or if its ideal feasible outcome is to merely increase integration. This

is problematic for Russians, South Ossetians, and Abkhazians, who might wish to

maximize autonomy. Indeed, standing firm could risk future military conflict with

Georgia, while conceding some autonomy would increase the likelihood of peace at

the price of some self-determination.

Scholars of international relations appreciate these strategic choices states make

after victory (Ikenberry 2009). However, the literature remains quiet on how post-

victory expectations affect bargaining behaviors before and during a war. This

article takes a step in that direction. While the logic of crisis bargaining is straight-

forward when states know of their opponents’ postwar intentions, asymmetric uncer-

tainty over these plans leads to complex and unexpected strategic behaviors.

2

Initially, a reader familiar with the literature on bargaining and war may

assume that uncertainty over conquest may quickly reduce to a simpl e risk-

return trade-off, that is, states weigh the relative likelihood of facing a

conquest-willing type versus a conquest-hesitant type against the costs of war

and select a strategy that maximizes the trade-off. The results we present below

indicate otherwise. Uncertainty over the extent one side wishes to conquer the

other leads to identical results as uncertainty over the probability of victory in

one-shot negotiations. If, however, we allow bargaining to continue while the

states fight, then equilibrium expectations diverge: whereas learning can occur

relatively rapidly with uncertainty over power, the incentive to bluff is stronger in

the case we develop. Thus, wars last longer when uncertainty over conquest is at

the root of conflict.

Some intuition will clarify our findings. With uncertainty over power, opposing

types have differential rewards for fighting each battle. This is because more pow-

erful types are more likely to prevail in each confrontation, putting themselves in a

better bargaining position that a less powerful type cannot mimic. In turn, if the

opponent wishes to, it can offer an amount up front that a weaker type would be

willing to accept but that a stronger type would not accept. Therefore, the negoti-

ating process leading up to battle reveals substantial information, allowing the

opponent to settle with the stronger type afterward.

3

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