JPI Spring 2018

third party resources to halt the violence and preserve the combatants. 8 The latter insists that
negotiated settlements are more likely to break down than settlements based on military victory. 9
Barbara Walter, for whom the school of thought is named, argues that “negotiations will
succeed and promises to abide by the terms of the settlement will be credible only if a third party is
willing to enforce or verify demobilization and only if the combatants are willing to extend power
sharing guarantees.” 10 She argues that a ceasefire agreement creates a potentially devastating
opportunity for post-treaty exploitation. Over the short-term, the government and rebels will be
obligated to demobilize, disengage, and disarm their separate militaries to eliminate competing armies
and rebuild a single, national military force. Over the longer-term, combatants will be required to hand
over conquered territory to a new central government, over which neither side would possess full
control. “This dual process creates two opportunities for exploitation, and this is the reason so many
civil wars fail to end with successful settlements,” she argues. 11 The fear of post-treaty exploitation can
convince factions in a civil war to retain their weapons and reject settlements even if both sides would
otherwise prefer peace over armed conflict. In contrast, combatants who are certain that an outside
power will enforce or verify demobilization and are guaranteed leadership in the first postwar
government will voluntarily sign and implement a peace agreement; combatants who lack third party
guarantees will not. 12 Walter calls it a “credible commitment theory.” 13 Therefore, this school strongly
recommends that third parties should provide guarantees of both security and power sharing for
combatants so that those combatants can reach agreements in the first phase. To resolve the
commitment problem, third parties should guarantee combatants’ physical and political safety.
The problem with this hypothesis is that we do not observe it in the real world. For instance,
as we will see in the case study section below, since June 30, 2012 at the Geneva Conference, most of
actors engaged in the Syrian conflict have decided to push for a transnational government in Syria 14 ;
however, both the Assad regime and the rebels have broken the ceasefire agreements and continued
to fight. It seems that both sides made use of the security guarantees that the third parties provided
for them to offend their opponents and to expand their influence over the country instead of
defending themselves. Therefore, we should reconsider what roles the third-party security play in civil
wars. Do they really resolve the commitment problem, or do they worsen it?
The main point of the second school, the Wagner hypothesis, is that even if combatants reach
agreements temporarily, power shifts in favor of the dissatisfied cause conflicts in the future. As time
passes, the power balance among them will change in favor of the dissatisfied, and the dissatisfaction
will explode in the form of military force at some point. 15 If the power balance among the combatants
changes while their aims do not, war may break out. Edward Luttwak further argues that a ceasefire
actually intensifies and prolongs the struggle once it ends because “it tends to arrest war-induced
exhaustion and lets belligerents reconstitute and rearm their forces.” 16 By reaching agreements
8
Monica Duffy Toft, “Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Spring 2010) p. 7. She called the schools
“Negotiated Settlements” and “Give War a Chance.”
9
Roy Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993,” American Political Science Review, Vo. 89, No. 3 (September
1995) p. 685.
10
Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlements of Civil Wars (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002) p. 5.
11
Ibid., p. 21.
12
Ibid., p. 33.
13
Ibid., p. 6.
14
Karen De Young, “Syria Conference Fails to Specify Plans for Assad,” The Washington Post, June 30 th, 2012,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syria-conference-fails-to-specify-plan-forassad/2012/06/30/gJQAsPfeEW_story.html?utm_term=.daf30ac2d843
15
Robert Harrison Wagner, “The Causes of Peace,” in Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, ed. Roy Licklider (New York: New York University
Press, 1993) p. 260.
16
Edward N. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 1999) p. 36.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 42