Barry H. Steiner

Diplomacy and international theory

Diplomacy has long been neglected as a preoccupation of international theory. To repair this deficiency, this essay focuses upon bargaining over interstate disputes and makes two distinctions. One is between diplomacy as independent and as dependent variable. Analysis of diplomacy as independent variable studies diplomatic practice as causal influence, as when overcoming pressures that increase the danger of war or deadlock. This perspective is important for developing a diplomatic ‘point of view’. Dependent diplomacy analysis is preoccupied with constraints upon diplomatic statecraft and with adaptation to them. A second distinction is between negotiated bargaining, to reconcile divergent state interests, and non-negotiated bargaining that converges upon common interests between states. The essay dwells upon the link between independent diplomacy and negotiated bargaining, on one hand, and dependent diplomacy and convergent bargaining, on the other.

Preventive diplomacy in historical perspective

The perils and difficulties of recent great power efforts to defuse and contain small power disputes have been much remarked upon. This paper justifies and operationalizes comparative investigation of eight nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century preventive diplomacy cases directed to small power ethnic conflict, to document the interplay between such conflict and great power behaviour under a variety of conditions. The purpose is to seek differentiated, historically grounded generalizations, and more sustainable foundations for contemporary policy. Similarities and divergences initially uncovered between the cases are described, and it is argued that these remain relevant despite apparently unique contemporary developments.

Diplomatic Mediation as an Independent Variable

Successful third-party diplomatic mediation illustrates diplomacy as a causative, independent element in world politics. This article asks how mediators forge agreement between force-prone, deadlocked parties in intractable diplomatic conflict, and why some such conflicts are more difficult to mediate than others. It compares three interstate and three intrastate mediation cases, each probed as a deviant episode, and tests the conventional view that intrastate conflict presents the more difficult mediation challenge. Confirming that intrastate conflict is more difficult to mediate than its interstate counterpart, the study narrows and refines the sources of the added difficulty.

What Use Overwhelming Air Superiority? A Tale of Two Campaigns

Longer wars between mismatched opponents often end with the militarily weaker side showing unexpected strengths. This article tests this tendency in two short wars in which overwhelming force superiority was applied in massive air attacks. Operation Enduring Freedom (the 2001 American campaign in Afghanistan) and Operation Cast Lead (the 2008–2009 Israeli campaign in Gaza) both began with air offensives that shifted to air-supported ground combat, but Enduring Freedom (a Type A operation) gave priority to aerial attack, while in Cast Lead (Type B) air operations primarily paved the way for ground combat. Neither campaign was fully decisive, suggesting that the residual capabilities of weaker combatants apply to short as well as protracted hostilities. The Type A attack was decisive against the Taliban, but not against al Qaeda. The more intensive Type B case, Cast Lead, did not lead to greater decisiveness than its counterpart, with Israel emphasizing force demonstration to enhance deterrence of attack, yet not seeking to destroy Hamass residual military capability. The problem of translating large military superiority into decisive war results is also evident recently in more common, stretched out, and restrained airpower use supporting higher-priority ground combat, as in NATOs 2011 intervention in Libya and the aerial drone campaign in Pakistan supporting NATO war making in Afghanistan.

Diplomacy as Independent and Dependent Variable

A distinction between diplomacy as independent variable, impacting upon other developments, and diplomacy as dependent variable, adapting to other causes, is employed to underpin focused case analysis of negotiation between states. To dramatize diplomacy as dependent variable, it is hypothesized that allies with convergent interests would find negotiations between themselves more difficult when domestic constraints such as political ideology and pressure group activity intrude. To highlight diplomacy as independent variable, it is hypothesized that adversaries with divergent interests employ diplomatic statecraft to reduce the chances of war in periods of confrontation. Using a relatively small case sample, this study confirms these hypotheses, but reveals similarities as well as differences between the case categories. It is argued that the focused case approach is a fruitful way to yield much-needed generalizations about diplomatic statecraft.

Bargaining in asymmetric crisis

Diplomacy, defined as formal communication and bargaining between states, is subject to limits that diplomatic theory must demarcate and understand. This article compares state incentives and disincentives (including rejection of negotiation as well as refusal to concede) affecting the decision whether to negotiate in six cases of interstate crisis between militarily unequal antagonists. While it has been argued that asymmetric powers are more likely to reach negotiating agreement than their symmetric counterparts, with weaker states doing surprisingly well, that finding is questioned here in the crisis context. For example, the militarily inferior antagonist, attracted to diplomacy as an alternative to war, might well anticipate inferior results from direct negotiations. The weaker antagonist’s unwillingness in these cases to negotiate with a strong opponent suppressed diplomacy, but great power support for the weaker side, and the stronger power’s lack of war readiness, added to the stronger antagonist’s willingness to negotiate.

To Arms Control or Not: Lessons of Focused Case Comparisons

Arms races, in which competitors attempt to improve their military power in relation to each other, vary in the competitors’ propensity to diplomatically seek arms restraint. To assist empirical understanding of the incidence of arms restraint, this essay compares the Soviet-American nuclear arms competition in which such restraint was ample and long-standing, with a 19th-century Anglo-French naval competition in which arms diplomacy was completely absent. In a preliminary probe, three independent variables are applied to explain this variance, each logically linked to arms restraint and to self-help: (1) use or non-use of force equivalence to compare military forces; (2) use or non-use of national intelligence to reduce strategic uncertainty; and (3) linkage or non-linkage of the competition with the rivals overall diplomatic relationship. The conclusion is that only the last of these variables accounts significantly for the differences in diplomatic effort; the naval rivalry was largely disconnected from the Anglo-French geopolitical relationship, while the superpower competition was strongly linked to the larger superpower diplomatic framework. This conclusion is applied to the contemporary North Korean-American and Pakistan-India arms competitions.

Preventive Diplomacy in the Endgame

Preventive diplomacy (PD), in which great powers act to defuse issues that could otherwise contribute to international crisis, is a recurring feature of modern world politics. In the 19th century, according to Paul G. Lauren, the major states created for this purpose `̀ rules, regulations, norms, agreements, understandings, and procedures’’ and `̀ a sophisticated and highly differentiated array of regimes’’. Similar instruments for PD have been at work in the 20th century. However, the viability of PD has been increasingly questioned more recently as the result of a series of very problematic, highly visible efforts by the major states, working through the United Nations, to defuse intrastate con ̄ ict in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Angola, and Sierra Leone. Three kinds of arguments support these doubts. The ® rst dwells on the intransigence of primary local antagonists in the face of great power intervention. The local antagonists tend to be ® rmer in pursuing their programmes, less disposed to accommodation, and less amenable to pressure from outside forces